Shyness Quotes

“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.”
― Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“But she wished she had had the guts to go up to him and say hello. Or possibly break his legs, she wasn't sure which.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire

“Deep rivers run quiet.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness."

-Edward Ferrars”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“You're always saying people don't like you but people can't like something that's not there.”
― Cath Crowley, A Little Wanting Song

“The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hoardes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone?”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“We often marvel at how introverted, geeky, kid 'blossom' into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it's not the children who change but their environments. As adults they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don't have to live in whatever culture they'er plunked into.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Into the dark night
Resignedly I go,
I am not so afraid of the dark night
As the friends I do not know,
I do not fear the night above
As I fear the friends below.”
― Stevie Smith, Selected Poems of Stevie Smith

“Nothing is as irritating to a shy man as a confident girl.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Shyness is a luxury reserved for those who are above the poverty line. To a beggar, being shy is deadly.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.”
― Philip Zimbardo

“Being shy is a symptom of a low self-esteem.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Confessions of a Misfit

“Shyness is just egoism out of its depth.”
― Penelope Keith

“I had taken the photograph from afar (distance being the basic glitch in our relationship), using my Nikon and zoom lens while hiding behind a fake marble pillar. I was hiding because if he knew I'd been secretly photographing him for all these months he would think I was immature, neurotic and obsessive.
I'm not.
I'm an artist.
Artists are always misunderstood.(Thwonk)”
― Joan Bauer

“Leah looked at her parents, lost in their own fantasies, and decided that the three of them were a pretty pathetic family - but she wasn't sure who was more pathetic: the dateless girl spending the night of the big dance by herself in her bedroom, or the parents who foolishly believed a boy would arrive on their doorstep with flowers, a limo, and a promise to rescue their daughter from her solitude.”
― J.M. Reep, Leah

“We met a great many other interesting people, among them Lewis Carroll, author of the immortal "Alice"--but he was only interesting to look at, for he was the silliest and shyest full-grown man I have ever met except "Uncle Remus.”
― Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1, Reader's Edition

“It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth. This was what I had done. I had built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“I almost tell him that I'd never be able to do something like that, just take out my instrument and begin playing on a street corner. But it feels to personal. Yes, I'm shy, but why bring it to his attention? I'm too shy to talk about how shy I am.”
― Andrew Clements, Things Hoped For

“The misfortune of solitary and timid people - who are timid from self-consciousness - is just that, though they have eyes and indeed open them wide, they see nothing, or see everything in a false light, as though through coloured spectacles.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Diary of a Superfluous Man

“Shyness can be interpreted as a kind of aggression.”
― Richard Ayoade

“She had spoken it; but she trembled when it was done, conscious that her words were listened to, and daring not even to try to observe their effect.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Watching what happens isn’t the same as being part of it.”
― Janice Hadlow, The Other Bennet Sister

“It's tricky being shy. You blame yourself for it, and other people blame you too.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars

“Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: 'try on' a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the 'fit' and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies' dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. 'Mariam,' he said as if by way of explanation, 'has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.' On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“So, what's up with you and Damian?" Helena asks.

"What do you mean?" I can feel the hear of a blush coloring on my cheeks. I can't ever seem to not show how I feel. It's becoming pretty annoying.”
― Lisa Ann Sandell, A Map of the Known World