Best 116 quotes in «shyness quotes» category

I live in a shell, so I can't blame people when they don't want to crack me. But people like you are the reason I left the nest.

I'm never really comfortable at parties. Maybe I'm just not the partying type. ...I think it's because I'm never sure what to do with myself. I mean, there're drinks, but I don't like being drunk.... There's music, but I never really learned to dance to anything that involved an electric guitar. There are people to talk to...but once you put all the stupid things I do aside, I'm really not that interesting. I like reading, staying home, going on walks with my dog.... Who wants to hear about that? Especially when I would have to scream it over music to which no one dances. So I'm there but not drinking, listening to music but not dancing, and trying to have conversations with near-strangers about anything other than my own stupid life.... Leads to a lot of awkward pauses. And then I start wondering why I showed up in the first place." -- Cold Days (The Dresden Files Book 14), pg. 33

Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

Invisible people see invisible things.

I spoke his language; I was fluent in shy.

I realised I really was shy. And once I was in it, I couldn't escape. I'd go to talk and find my face was made of cement. Nothing would come out. On winter days, I'd feel myself turning grey at the edges and fading into the walls. Was this defensive strategy? It was paralysing. And it went on for years.

It’s a dangerous feeling getting noticed, being wanted. Getting seen deep and proper, it’s shit hot but terrible too. It’s like being took over. And your whole skin hurts like you suddenly grew two sizes in a minute.

It's better to dance like a fool, than to stand around like an idiot.

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

It is often asked why the greatest performers are so timid in private. Confident people get attention naturally. Shy people must do something extraordinary or outrageous to have similar recognition.

It is through this practise of gratitude that I discovered something quite profound: shyness doesn’t survive when your cup is overflowing with gratitude. It doesn’t matter if you’re grateful for things that have happened or things that have yet to come to fruition, gratitude grows Quiet Confidence.

It’s amazing how few words a person can get by with.

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.

It was a relief to inhabit someone else's life for a while, to get her personal issues for a brief respite. In a play, she knew exactly how all her character's problems would be resolved. No matter how the cast performed, the end turned out the same. No questions, no worries, no unknowns.

It's tricky being shy. You blame yourself for it, and other people blame you too.

It's not that easy to find someone I can relate to. I'm tough to crack because I'm shy.

I was on the shy side at school (one school report called me ‘diffident’) and Braefield had added a special timidity, but when I had a natural wonder... I lost all my diffidence, and freely approached others, all my fear forgotten.

I was a shy girl, but when I read, I was adventurous. Books made me bolder.

I wanted to be Feinberg's student, but I didn't know how to go about it. Since it was premature for formal arrangements and since I was naturally reticent and shy, I simply began to greet him very politely whenever our paths crossed. Graduate school was a small community. In corridors and elevators and on campus, I was soon running into Feinberg several times a day, always giving him a polite hello and a nice smile. He would reciprocate similarly with a sort of nervous curling of the lips. As time passed, this limbo of flirtatious foreplay continued unabated. I could never find the courage to broach the question of being his student; I supposed I must have hoped it would just happen wordlessly. Every time I saw him I smiled; every time I smiled he bared his lips back at me with greater awkwardness. Our facial manipulations bore increasingly less resemblance to anything like a real smile; each of our reciprocated gestures was a caricature, a Greek theatrical mask signaling friendliness. One day, on about the fifth intersection of our paths on that particular day, I could stand it no longer. I saw him heading towards me down one of the long dark, old-fashioned Pupin corridors, and immediately turned towards the nearest stairwell and went up one floor to avoid him. Having succeeded at this once, I was compelled to do it repeatedly. Soon I was moving upstairs or downstairs to another floor as soon as I saw him approaching, like the protagonist in some ghastly version of the video game Lode Runner.

No longer did she look like a shy little maid who was trained to censor her thought before it reached her mouth. These past few days had turned her into a reserved yet intelligent young woman.

My face is like some sort of bashful chameleon, flashing red at any sign of social interaction. Stupid face.

My days of torment were over, but the damage was done. I conflated the bullies and my bathroom accidents with an inchoate sense that something was wrong with me. I broadcast my sense of otherness through my slumped posture, downcast expression, and extreme timidity. Kids at school called weird so often that after a while I believed them. I hid myself behind a curtain of tangled hair.

Nothing is as irritating to a shy man as a confident girl.

rather awkwardly shy and therefore at times defensive and rather too assertive

She didn't understand how other people did it, how they just strolled right up to strangers and started conversations -- how they made themselves into people strangers would ever want to meet. She wasn't shy, not exactly. She was afraid.

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.

[Schulz] came to see that the better part of his shyness was really vanity, or self-centeredness. "Shyness is an illusion," he would say, late in life. "If you get out and do something and talk to people, you don't have to be shy. Shyness is the overtly self-conscious thinking that you are the only person in the world; that how you look and what you do is of any importance.

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.

She loved sinking into her bed on evenings like this, but apparently she shouldn't, because it worried her aunts, who thought she ought to be out dancing. It worried her a little bit, too, because what if they were right, and because sometimes a great loneliness welled up in her and threatened all the dams she built to hold it back. You couldn't cure loneliness by wallowing in it, up above the world, on an island removed from everything. She knew that. But she had such a hard time with all the cures. They seemed rough and brusque and brutal, as if they abused her skin with a pot scrubber . . . forcing herself into a mass of people, a stranger among strangers. . . . But it was much more tempting to curl up with a book under her thick white comforter. Still, sometimes after she curled up, she regretted her lack of courage and felt bleakly lonely. It was important to have a really good book.

Now you're uncomfortable?' Leander smirked, 'After all that?' 'That's different,' Axton said, sitting up and pulling a pillow to his chest, unconsciously hiding. 'Fine,' Leander said, rolling his eyes, 'You have these stupid gold eyes, something something, I love looking into them, PS: fuck you. Is that better?

She yearned to be admired, and feared to be insulted; and yet seemed tragically conscious that she was destined to miss both these extremes of sensation, or to enjoy them only at second hand in the experiences of her more privileged friends.

She talked to her, listened to her, read to her; and the tranquillity of such evenings, her perfect security in such a tête-à-tête from any sound of unkindness, was unspeakably welcome to a mind which had seldom known a pause in its alarms or embarrassments.

Silence has always been my default mode—my best defense against the rest of the world.

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." (Initiation)

She's given up trying to stand out.

Shyness blocks and breaks routes toward the fraternizing with others and success of career and life.

Shyness is a safety mechanism to save you from the fear of being wrong, and the ridicule that comes along with it. As human beings, we crave love, acceptance, and belonging. As part of this, we fear the opposite: shame and ridicule. If we lack confidence in ourselves, we constantly fear this—and seek external validation.

Shyness is born from a lack of self-confidence and fear of ridicule. In my case it latched on to the young boy who didn’t have confidence in himself or his abilities after being belittled by his first-grade teacher. Introversion, on the other hand, is a tremendous gift that allows for inquisitive curiosity about life. Introversion created in this young boy a fascination with life, nature, science, creativity, and imagination.

Shyness is cute in children, but disgusting in adults.

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

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.

Some people are extroverts only when they are drunk.

The comedy in our lives was those first few weeks we lived together in Paris: Our bodies desired one another, our souls opened for one another. We experienced all of the happiness and anguish of first love. Those first few weeks in Paris, we barely touched lips; yet the few times we did, it had the force of a collision of stars.

Tess is a bit shy," her mother used to tell people in an audible whisper, her hand over her mouth. "Gets it from her father, I'm afraid." Tess had heard the cheerful disrespect in her mother's voice and had come to believe that any form of shyness was wrong- morally wrong, in fact. You should want to go to parties. You should want to be surrounded by people. No wonder she felt so ashamed of her shyness, as if it were an embarrassing physical ailment that needed to be hidden at all costs.

The love of books was an instant connection, and a true boon for a girl who tended toward shyness, because it was a source of endless conversation.

Shyness in the young may be charming to look at but is painful to the one who suffers it.

The mind speaks louder than the voice.

Shyness is just egoism out of its depth.

Shy people are my favorites. The unmistakable glint of shyness in someone's eyes can mesmerize me for years!

The idea that you are not good enough and that people will not like you is something that has been ingrained into your mind over many years. You have hundreds of experiences that you can call up as evidence of the fact that people will not like you -- and that things will not turn out well. These ideas are incredibly convincing. They compel us to hesitate, to shy away, and to avoid the situations -- and people -- that we find frightening. This sets up a reinforcing cycle, where we avoid reaching out, don't get good responses from others as a result, and then gain further evidence that we are not worthy. In order to truly overcome your social anxiety at a deep, gut level, you must repeatedly take bold action. It is only through trying something new, and with a different perspective, that you learn to see the world and the people around you in a different light.