Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.
Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one!
God is displeased at the diffidence of souls who love Him sincerely and whom He Himself loves.
Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.
Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe; averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.
A tardiness in nature, Which often leaves the history unspoke, That it intends to do.
Diffidence is a sort of false modesty.
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?
Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant. From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved.
I went from resenting my mother-in-law to accepting her, finally to appreciating her. What appeared to be her diffidence when I was first married, I now value as serenity.
Diffidence and awkwardness are antidotes to love.
Submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.
Diffidence in an officer is a good mark because he will always endeavor to bring himself up to what he conceives to be the full line of his duty.
No pains must be spared to wipe out all feeling of diffidence, embarrassment, or shame on the part of those receiving relief; [we] must be one great family of equals. The spiritual welfare of those on relief must receive especial care and be earnestly and prayerfully fostered. A system which gives relief for work or service will go far to reaching these ends.
Modesty is related to diffidence, diffidence is related to shyness, Shyness is a synonym for timidity, timidity is a characteristic of the meek, the meek do not inherit the Earth, they serve those who are self confident and self assertive.
I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul The former love has never gone away, But let it not recall to you my dole; I wish not sadden you in any way. I loved you silently, without hope, fully, In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain; I loved you so tenderly and truly, As let you else be loved by any man.
Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections - whether from diffidence or some other instinct.
or simply: