|
|
|
More "Diffident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hopewell Drugg's store. Janice had thought often of poor little Lottie and her father during this week; but as they neared the store and she heard the wailing notes of the man's violin again, she felt a little diffident about broaching the subject of the storekeeper and his child to the school-mistress. It was Miss Scattergood herself who opened ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... shall be, that we beware we take not at the first either too high a strain or too weak: for if too high, in a diffident nature you discourage, in a confident nature you breed an opinion of facility, and so a sloth; and in all natures you breed a further expectation than can hold out, and so an insatisfaction in the end: if too weak, of the other side, you may not ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... spoke so positively when taken out of herself by the interest and importance of a subject, she had no very high opinion of her own judgment and power to decide. A little more self-esteem would have been good for her; she was too diffident, "I have not come across people on whose knowledge I could rely," she told me. "I have been obliged to study alone, and to form my opinions for myself out of such scraps of information as I have had the capacity to acquire from reading and observation. ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... painting in oil, and on an enlarged scale, some of his more specially popular sketches in Punch, and very anxious to succeed with them, but nervously diffident of success with them, even with [Greek: hoi polloi]. He was not at his happiest in these efforts; and there was something pathetic in his earnestness and perseverance in attempting a thing so many can do, but which he could not ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... with contempt, partly by way of self-exaltation, and partly to gratify the natural gaiety of his disposition. He says himself to Belford,* 'Thou knowest I love him not, Jack; and whom we love not, we cannot allow a merit to; perhaps not the merit they should be granted.' 'Modest and diffident men,' writes Belford, to Lovelace, in praise of Mr. Hickman, 'wear not soon off those little precisenesses, which the confident, if ever they had them, presently ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... him, to instruct us even by our dangers, and to make us know, by our own experience, how weak we are, when we rely only on ourselves, or on human succours. For when we come to understand the deceitfulness of our hopes, and are entirely diffident of human helps, we rely on God, who alone can deliver us out of those dangers, into which we have engaged ourselves on his account: we shall soon experience that he governs all things; and that the heavenly pleasures, which he confers on his servants on such occasions, ought to make us despise ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Estella burst out laughing. This was very singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity. When she left off—and she had not laughed languidly, but with real enjoyment—I said, in my diffident way with her,— ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... more than average calibre. The Third Hand has yet to be heard from, and if, as is possible, he have considerable strength in the suit that the Second Hand thinks of declaring, such a bid will offer an ideal opportunity for a profitable double. The Second Hand, therefore, should be somewhat diffident about bidding two in a suit. He should make the declaration only when his hand is so strong that in spite of the No-trump, there seems to be a good chance of scoring game, or he has reason to think he can force and defeat ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... Yes, I know well enough that few men are better calculated to win a woman's heart than I. I'm a fine fellow, Dick, and worthy any woman's love—happy the girl who gets me, say I. But I'm timid, Dick; shy—nervous—modest— retiring—diffident—and I cannot tell her, Dick, I cannot tell her! Ah, you've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it. RICH. Robin, do you call to mind how, years ago, we swore that, come what might, we would always act upon our hearts' dictates? ROB. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... entered, had not yet recovered sufficiently from his soul-shaking plunge to follow her lead. Inarticulate, distrusting his newly found supreme happiness, he must needs stay out of those enchanted waters or plunge again. And he was afraid to plunge—diffident, still deeming himself unworthy of the miracle of this wonder-girl's love—even though every fiber of his being shrieked its demand to feel again that slender body in his clasping arms. He did not consciously think those thoughts. ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... We are too diffident and nice, Too learned and too over-wise, Too much afraid of faults to be The flutes ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... long time, my friend!" interposed Heliobas gently. "You are too despondent,—perchance too diffident, concerning ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... found myself shut into a narrow box, like one of those which considerate pawnbrokers provide for their more diffident clients, and in a similar, but more intense, degree, pervaded by a subtle odour of uncleanness. The woodwork was polished to an unctuous smoothness by the friction of numberless dirty hands and soiled garments, and the general appearance—taken ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... can be depended upon to meet all the varied conditions which arise in the practice of the day, but I have frequently employed a simple exercise which seems to 'coax' the hand into muscular activity in a very short time. It is so simple that I am diffident about suggesting it. However, elemental processes lead to large structures sometimes. The Egyptian pyramids were built ages before the age of steam and electricity, and scientists are still wondering how those massive stones ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... your will. Assert your will. But even if you decide to act in harmony with the United States, that does not mean subordinating British interests to the President's views, which are not those of the majority of his people." But Mr. Lloyd George, invincibly diffident—if diffidence it be—shrank from marching alone, and on certain questions which mattered much Mr. Wilson ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Sir Charles, in love with Rosetta Belmont. Being diffident and modest, Rosetta delights in tormenting him, and he is jealous even of William Faddle "a fellow made up ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... a strange inspiriting effect on this shy and diffident boy. The recital of all the difficulties in the way was the most powerful argument to a nature like his, and when at length the doctor wished him good-night and told him to take till the following ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... the action, been carried by the Duke of Weimar. It commanded the hills and the whole camp. But the heavy rain which fell during the night, rendered it impossible to draw up the cannon; and this post, which had been gained with so much bloodshed, was also voluntarily abandoned. Diffident of fortune, which forsook him on this decisive day, the king did not venture the following morning to renew the attack with his exhausted troops; and vanquished for the first time, even because he was not victor, he led back his troops over the Rednitz. Two thousand ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... consider—its likes and dislikes, habits, manners and accomplishments and its friendly or possibly unfriendly relations with your other guests. This done, determine between whom and whom you will seat it; between what and what you will plant it, that is, so as to "draw it out," as we say of diffident or reticent persons; or to use it for drawing out others of less social address. But how many a lovely shrub has arrived where it was urgently invited, and found that its host or hostess, or both, had actually forgotten its name! Did not know how to introduce it to any fellow ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... a year elapsed before General Thomas was again given so important a command as the one he thus declined, and then he relieved Rosecrans and took command of the Army of the Cumberland when it was besieged by Bragg at Chattanooga. Thomas, though diffident to a degree, was one of our greatest soldiers. He served uninterruptedly from the opening to the close of the war, distinguishing himself in many battles, especially at Stone's River, at Chickamauga, on the Atlanta campaign (1864), and at Nashville, December 15 and 16, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... full bosomed, wet eyed, held out her one little present to her girl, her ewe lamb, whom she was now surrendering. But no hand of the bride was extended for the bride's bouquet. The voice of the bride was not low and diffident, but high ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous, the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ships mysterious white ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... come back without the light in his face he usually brought with him, as if the radiance from the sanctuary lamp loved to linger on the blind face. He was difficult all the rest of the morning, and the kind, patient woman who read aloud to him and wrote his letters became nervous and diffident, thinking it was ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... through the dispersing, purposeless crowd and caught up with him as he was about to lose himself in a dark network of little squalid streets. He felt oddly young and diffident, for the schoolmaster is always the schoolmaster though he be mad ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... inspired, or at least to imagine myself to be so; and pardon me if I gave utterance in verse to some of my feelings. But do not in the least imagine that you are going by any means to be presented with a fatiguing copy of my passionate numbers; in the first place I am very diffident, and in the next—but never mind the next, I will tell you in plain prose that I felt convinced in my heart, I felt a rapturous presentiment that the unutterably lovely being I had that day beheld would ere long be ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... presented just now with two spectacles, which may help us to take modest and diffident views of the progress of the species.... At home there is an utterly unreasonable and unaccountable financial panic among the depositors in the Birkbeck Bank, while in America the free and enlightened democracy of a portion of New York State has suddenly relapsed into primitive barbarism ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... read the other debates. He is wasting no words; he is meeting Douglas point by point, whether successfully or not. He seemed embarrassed, diffident at first. Why not? He is fighting a giant; then there are ugly faces in the audience, men in drink, slave owners from Missouri, Democrats who hate sectionalism and loathe the rise of the Republican party. Whispers ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... and though she at first made a slight movement—not of resistance, but of timid reluctance, utterly unlike herself—she suffered him to hold her hand. He drew closer to her, himself more diffident in the moment of success than he had ever been when he anticipated failure; she was so unlike any woman he had ever known before. Very gently he put his arm about her, and drew her ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... true that—partly as a result of ancient traditions and education, partly of genuine feminine characteristics—many women are diffident as to their right to moral responsibility and unwilling to assume it. And an attempt is made to justify their attitude by asserting that woman's part in life is naturally that of self-sacrifice, or, to put the statement in a somewhat ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... why you think he's conceited," Mary went on, warming up to the never-ending pleasure of analysis, "but it's because he's really diffident. Lots of people I know who people think are snobby are ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... discovering her hidden resources. Major Burnham has chosen men from England, Ireland, the United States, and South Africa for sterling qualities, and they have justified his choice. Not the least like a hero is the retiring, diffident little major himself, though a finer man for a friend or a better man to serve under would not be ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... to his diffident nature, Malcolm walked to the other end of Addison's Walk; then something seemed to drag at him, and he retraced his steps slowly and reluctantly; finally, as though constrained by some unseen power that overmastered his reserve, he sat down on the bench and touched ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the hill to the solitary little inn of Garra-na-hina. At the door, muffled up in a warm woolen plaid, stood a young girl, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and diffident in look. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... to Slane on her account; but surely something more important would bring him eventually, and then she might hope to see him. She knew he would not desert her. And she had some manuscript ready to confide to him now if he should repeat his offer; but she was too diffident to send it to him except at ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... counter, with Horace Jewdwine of Lazarus College, Oxford. Jewdwine had proposed him on his own merits, somebody else had seconded him (he supposed) on Jewdwine's, and between them they had smuggled him in. This would be his first appearance as a Junior Journalist. And he might well feel a little diffident about it; for, though some of the members knew him, he could not honestly say he knew any of them, except Rankin (of The Planet) who possibly mightn't, and Jewdwine who certainly wouldn't, be there. But the plunge had to be made some time; he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... by Dr. Bronner, state that at first we found Emma very quiet and diffident, possibly somewhat shy and timid. At best she did not talk freely, only in monosyllables as a rule. She appears rather nervous. She says she thinks of lots of things she does not speak of. Emma smiles in friendly enough fashion, and ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Tariff to our colonial produce, is one of its most interesting and satisfactory features. That, however, which has justly attracted to it incomparably the greatest share of public attention and discussion, is the introduction of foreign cattle. This topic is one requiring to be spoken of in a diffident spirit, and most guarded language. Whether it will effect its praiseworthy object of lowering the price of animal food, without being overbalanced by its injurious effects upon our all-important agricultural ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... had walked away with Arabian. She had just left him when she met Craven in the hall of the hotel. Garstin had not allowed either her or Arabian to look at what he had done. He had, Miss Van Tuyn thought, seemed unusually nervous and diffident about his work. She did not know how he had gone on, and was curious. But she was going to dine with him that night. Perhaps he would tell her then, or perhaps he had only asked her to dinner that she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... university without any considerable difficulty. His prudent and sagacious mother had managed every thing with consummate forecast and tact; and to avoid any difficulty that might have resulted from too many unanswered questions, her son had been represented to the faculty as a very modest and diffident youth, who knew much more than he could tell—like the grave bird, of which it was believed that although it said but little, it thought the more. Indeed, it is believed that he had actually read Cornelius ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... correspond with the atmosphere. While Dundee had always carried himself bravely before men, and had kept his misgivings to himself, and seemed the most indifferent of gay Cavaliers, he had really been a modest and diffident man. From the first he had had grave fears of the success of his cause, and more than doubts about the loyalty of his comrades. He was quite prepared not only for desperate effort, but for final defeat. No ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... the general talk of such men was often apt to be over his head, as it would have been over mine, and often made him painfully diffident and shy. He needn't have been; he little knew the kind of feeling he inspired ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... himself flushing. With a diffident, awkward gesture he took Sylvia's hand in his—and then he uttered an exclamation of surprise ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... student of public speaking to recall that this distinguished orator at first had serious natural defects to overcome. His voice was weak, he stammered in his speech, and was painfully diffident. These faults were remedied, as is well-known, by earnest daily practise in declaiming on the sea-shore, with pebbles in the mouth, walking up and down hill while reciting, and deliberately seeking occasions for conversing ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Servite saint Filippo Benizzi (d. 1285). He executed them in a few months, being endowed by nature with remarkable readiness and certainty of hand and unhesitating firmness in his work, although in the general mould of his mind he was timid and diffident. The subjects are the saint sharing his cloak with a leper, cursing some gamblers, and restoring a girl possessed with a devil. The second and third works excel the first, and are impulsive and able performances. These paintings met with merited applause, and gained for their author the pre-eminent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the old male was ill-advised. Hitherto the Pup had felt diffident in the face of such a reception, but now a sudden red rage flared into his eyes. Young as he was, he was as big as his antagonist, and, here on land, a dozen times more nimble. Here came in the advantage of Captain Ephraim's training. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... present at the first Council of the new Sovereign. This, I think, was the most interesting scene I have ever witnessed.... I am quite in raptures with the deportment of the young Queen. Nothing could be more exquisitely proper. She looked modest, sorrowful, dejected, diffident, but at the same time she was quite cool and collected, and composed and firm. Her childish appearance was gone. She was an intelligent and graceful young woman, capable of acting and thinking for herself. Considering that she was the only female in the room, and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... orderly Liberty. To such a reader the novel comprehends all human society, its customs and secrets. The untraveled man may sit in his library and become as familiar with the world as with his native town; the diffident student may mingle familiarly in the society of courts; the bashful girl may learn the most engaging manners; the slow may learn the trick of wit; the rich may learn sympathy for the poor; the weak may be warned ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... rather vague, but Ruth felt a little diffident about asking for further particulars. Besides, it was not long ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... and on 16 August she writes from Antwerp to say she has had an interview with William Scott (dubbed in her correspondence Celadon), even having gone so far as to take coach and ride a day's journey to see him secretly. Though at first diffident, he is very ready to undertake the service, only it will be necessary for her to enter Holland itself and reside on the spot, not in Flanders, as Colonel Bampfield, who was looked upon as head of the exiled ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... all. The lips are delicately cut, and as changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up look about the lower lip—a determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can see wit astride upon it. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam of fancy was breaking upon him. The slightly tossed nose confirms the fun of his expression, and altogether it is a face that sparkles, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... and Joel was no longer the diffident youth, but a man, competent and energetic. He took the direction of every thing; nothing was overlooked. Of course the relatives were sent for. It was the old story: they had paid great respect to their rich cousin, but they did not seem to care much for the memory of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a man,' so his thoughts ran, 'who had been of age some twenty years or so; who was a diffident man, from the circumstances of his youth; who was rather a grave man, from the tenor of his life; who knew himself to be deficient in many little engaging qualities which he admired in others, from having been long in a distant region, with nothing softening near him; who ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... who lives secluded from companionship, when he goes out into the world, will find not merely that he is diffident and sensitive about his own defects, real or imaginary, but that he is different from other people. It may take him all his life to learn—perhaps he will never learn—that his emotional and intellectual experiences are no prodigies ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... sometimes think you're a little too diffident. You plodders who go straight on, stopping for nothing, generally gain your object in ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and all with such a strong family likeness of dark furniture and chintz. Aunt Caroline called them by their names and, throwing open their doors, announced them in prideful tones. Desire felt very diffident, they were such exclusive rooms, so old and settled and sure of themselves—and she was so new. They might, she felt, cold-shoulder her entirely. It ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... made his statement concerning the substantiality of original sin may not have felt absolutely sure of the exact meaning, bearing, and correctness of his position, yet the facts do not warrant the assumption that afterwards he was in any way diffident or wavering in his attitude. Whatever his views on this subject may have been before 1560—after the fatal phrase had fallen from his lips, he never flinched nor flagged in zealously defending it. Nor was he ever disposed to compromise ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... about the same age—between seventeen and eighteen. Emily was fair and pretty, girlish and diffident—blue eyes and light hair. Laura had a proud bearing, and a somewhat mature look; she had fine, clean-cut features, her complexion was pure white and contrasted vividly with her black hair and eyes; she was not what one calls pretty —she ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... a diffident, hesitating call, and, looking back, as she was mounting the stairs, beheld Violet, who changed the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gabbled them off, morning, noon, and night. There was so much to say—whole books full. It was a great temptation to skip the driest pages, but he never yielded to it, conscientiously scampering even through the passages in the tiniest type that had a diffident air of expecting attention from only able-bodied adults. Part of the joy of Sabbaths and Festivals was the change of prayer-diet. Even the Grace—that long prayer chanted after bodily diet—had refreshing little variations. For, just as the child put on his best clothes for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of this spate of talk, becoming more diffident and fearful every moment. He had never had any thought as to how he should tell the Paymaster that the goodwife of Ladyfield was dead, that was a task he had expected to be left to some one else, but Jean Clerk ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... after kindling his cigar with a few vigorous whiffs, "what's the use of being foolish? My aunt was never diffident about telling her story, and why should I hesitate to tell mine? The young lady's name,—we'll call her simply Margaret. She was a blonde, with hazel eyes and dark hair. Perhaps you never heard of a blonde with hazel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... acquaintance of Annie's brother and husband, and Jack's friends, Mr. Forrest Felton and Mr. Percy Lanman, and—so pleasant and genial were their ways—felt at home in their presence at once. This was a great relief to her; for she felt very diffident at meeting men whom she had heard Jack praise ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... really astonishing how Hiram's countenance had changed. How every trace of keen, shrewd apprehension had vanished, leaving only the appearance of a highly intelligent and interesting, but almost diffident youth! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the human race than personal freedom! Dost Thou see these stones in the desolate and glaring wilderness? Command that these stones be made bread—and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... going to tell you about your mother and myself," her father said huskily, but at that moment the timbers of the bridge began to crack dangerously and the horse plunged forward. When her father had regained control of the frightened beast they were in the streets of the town and his diffident silent nature ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... ambitious mother, would be absolutely incredible to a man bred up in such schools. They are often utterly unable to act, think, or speak for themselves. If they happen, as they sometimes do, to get well informed in reading and conversation, they remain, Hamlet-like, nervous and diffident; and, however speculatively or ruminatively wise, quite unfit for action, or for performing their part in the great drama ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... belongs the credit of having negotiated this concession, but it is doubtful if it would ever have received the imperial sanction had it not been for Best's victory. Even when he had the document in his hands the conqueror was diffident, and could hardly believe the good news. He was "doubtful whether it was the King's firman or not, and, being resolved, would not receive it until some of the chiefs of the city should bring it down unto him to Swally, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... looked rather grim and truculent hadn't it been for the mild familiar accommodating gaze with which his large light-coloured pupils—the leisurely eyes of a silent man—appeared to consider surrounding objects. He was evidently more friendly than fierce, but he was more diffident than friendly. He liked to have you in sight, but wouldn't have pretended to understand you much or to classify you, and would have been sorry it should put you under an obligation. He and his wife spoke ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... be best for me to here declare that I am not, in the usual sense, peculiar, nor was I different in my childhood from other children, save as each differs from the other. I was very diffident, and—not using the word in the psychical sense—sensitive. I was not given to morbid states or to the "dreaming of dreams." Perhaps I was imaginative; most children are; and I loved fairy tales, but not unduly. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... that a piece of music and a tree have something in common, that both are built up in accordance with equally uniform and simple laws. Hence the question: What are these laws? And hence the temptation to work out a physiology of creative art (like Boborykin), or in the case of younger and more diffident writers, to base their arguments on nature and on the laws of nature (Merezhkovsky). There probably is such a thing as the physiology of creative art, but we must nip in the bud our dreams of discovering ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... that secret gives me a certain hold on Pertinax! Caesar would have his head off at a word from me. But the best way with Pertinax is to stroke the honest side of him —the charcoal-burner side of him—the peasant side, if that can be done without making him too diffident. He is perfectly capable of offering the throne to some one else ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... endeavoured to soothe the terrors of Lady Margaret, and to reconcile the veteran Major to his opinion of Morton, Evandale, getting the better of that conscious shyness which renders an ingenuous youth diffident in approaching the object of his affections, drew near to Miss Bellenden, and accosted her in a tone of mingled ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mind;—not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... a little diffident about accepting his employer's invitation to dinner. Brought up in the country in comparative poverty, he felt afraid that he should show, in some way, his want of acquaintance with the etiquette of the ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... than two footmen refreshing themselves on the top of the front stairs with a view of the opposite houses, and gratifying the anxious public at the same time with a view of themselves, it is difficult to imagine. They always look so diffident and respectful, that involuntarily our interest in them becomes almost too lively for words. We think with disdain on miserable soldiers and hungry mechanics, and half-starved paupers and whole-starved labourers; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... that you have learned to love me." He repeated all this to himself as he walked up and down Stratton, and declared to himself that she was very lovely. It had been given to him to ascertain this, and he was rather proud of himself. But he was a little diffident about his father. He thought that, perhaps, his father might see Florence as he himself had first seen her, and might not have discernment enough to ascertain his mistake, as he had done. But Florence ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... to greet the travelers. She pressed her brother's hand so heartily that he was forced to draw it back. The head forester was somewhat diffident; he had a certain feeling of shyness in the presence of his diplomatic brother-in-law, whose sarcastic tongue he secretly feared. But Toni did not allow "his excellency" her uncle, or his wife, either, to ruffle ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... fear; terrorize, intimidate, cow, daunt, overawe, abash, deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c. 909. Adj. fearing &c. v.; frightened &c. v.; in fear, in a fright &c. n.; haunted with the fear of &c. n.; afeard[obs3]. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sugar he rolled out of the door with a half-diffident, half-inviting look in his eye, as if he expected me to follow. I did so, but the sniffing and snorting of the keen-scented Pomposo [Footnote: Pomposo: the writer's horse.] in the hollow, not only revealed the cause of his former terror, but decided me to take another direction. After ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... of the principal hotel in Columbus, Ohio, and made inquiry as to whether there was anything about the place that she could do. She was of a helpless, fleshy build, with a frank, open countenance and an innocent, diffident manner. Her eyes were large and patient, and in them dwelt such a shadow of distress as only those who have looked sympathetically into the countenances of the distraught and helpless poor know anything about. Any one could see where the daughter behind her got the timidity and shamefacedness ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... possibilities of his solitude, He had had as yet no time to experience the relief, to appreciate his liberty, before he was face to face with this new loneliness. To-night, he thought, as he looked at the empty place and remembered his wistful, almost diffident invitation, the solitude was almost unendurable. If she had only understood how much it meant, surely she would have made some effort, would not have been content with that half-embarrassed, half-doubtful shake of the head! In the darkened room, with the throb ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this general survey, you may be sure, the most material spot of me was not excused the strictest visitation; nor was it but agreed, that I had not the least reason to be diffident of passing even for a maid, on occasion; so inconsiderable a flaw had my preceding adventures created there, and so soon had the blemish of an over-stretch been repaired and worn out at any age, and in my naturally small ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... had not been responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was trying to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not taken Bielby's advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs. St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... gayety he was curiously diffident with her. All the pretty speeches he would have made to Carlotta under the circumstances ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... has been received may make me less diffident in avowing it; and, as a second edition has been generally called for, I have endeavoured to make it, in every respect, less unworthy of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... The res mancipi is explained from faint and remote lights by Ulpian (Fragment. tit. xviii. p. 618, 619) and Bynkershoek, (Opp tom. i. p. 306—315.) The definition is somewhat arbitrary; and as none except myself have assigned a reason, I am diffident of my own.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the house. Her meek and diffident expression of countenance had quite disappeared. Her face now wore a look of stern determination and the blue eyes ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... hated cousins might attempt to prove. But there again she was distrustful, both of him and of her own judgment. He might be—it seemed likely—one of those men who conceal the good as well as the bad in themselves, one of the morally shy men. Or again, perhaps, one of the morally diffident, who shrink from arrogating to themselves high standards because they fear for their own virtue if it be put to the test, and cling to the power of saying, later on, "Well, I told you not to expect too much from me!" Such various types of men exist, and they do not fall ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... of daylight his ways were such as any man of reserved and diffident ways, having no fixed employment, might follow in a smallish community. He sat upon his porch and read in books. He worked in his flower beds. With flowers he had a cunning touch, almost like a woman's. He loved them, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... is a boy who from natural disposition, or early training, or both, is mild, diffident, and gentle. So far he is an estimable character. Were this all, he were not a muff. In order to deserve that title he must be timid and unenthusiastic. He must refuse to venture anything that will subject him to danger, however slight. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... silence-loving and shade-seeking side of his character is doubtless exaggerated, and, in so far as it points to him as a sombre and sinister figure, is almost ludicrously at fault. He was silent, diffident, more inclined to hesitate, to watch and wait and meditate, than to produce himself, and fonder, on almost any occasion, of being absent than of being present. This quality betrays itself in all his writings. There is in all of them ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... His diffident manner suddenly left him. He jumped like lightning from his horse, threw the reins over the animal's head so he would stand, and ran around to face ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... fled from him. He seemed to be no longer on an equality with her. He was diffident, he was respectful. If this girl was a friend of Mr. Gay the distinguished poet and dramatist whose latest work, "The Fables," was being talked about at Button's, at Wills', at every coffee-house where the wits gathered, she must be somebody in the world of fashion and letters. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Childhood is diffident. Children for the most part are averse to the addressing themselves to strangers, unless in cases where, from the mere want of anticipation and reflection, they proceed as if they were wholly without the faculty of making calculations and deducing conclusions. The child neither knows ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... been intending to call, but I—" Miss Towne paused, looking rather confused. "You see—I—didn't know but I might intrude. You girls are so different from myself," she suddenly blurted out, as though anxious to bare her diffident soul to her dainty hostesses and have it over with. "I mean different because you aren't poor and have lots of friends and can entertain them and all that. I know it is the custom at college for the upper class girls to ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... put it on—not without some diffident contemplation of the blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges round ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... protection as her dinners. The ancients sought, by the distribution of crowns and flowers, to stimulate the enterprising and reward the successful; but England, despising such empty honours and distinctions, tempts the diffident with a haunch of venison, and rewards ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... Beaumanoir came in, diffident for once in his life, since none knew so well as he how dear to his friend was the blushing and embarrassed girl whom he now ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Elizabeth Simpson, the minister's daughter. From early childhood they had seen and known each other at school, and between them had sprung up a warm childish friendship, apparently because their ways home lay along the same route. In such companionship the years sped; but Fred was a diffident boy, and he was seventeen and Elizabeth near the same before he began to feel those promptings which made him blushingly offer to carry her book for her as far as he went. She had hesitated, refused, and then assented, as is the manner of her ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... maybe I might get a chance sometime as a sort of local correspondent around here," was the diffident reply. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... make some difference. It proves that a widely preached scientific conclusion may be as spectral as Bathybius. On other more important points, therefore, we may differ from the newest scientific opinion without too much diffident apprehensiveness. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... irreproachable. Amiable, unselfish, warm-hearted, from the time of her marriage she devoted herself to the promotion of the happiness of her husband. His neglect and unfaithfulness caused her, in secret, to shed many tears. Naturally diffident, and rendered timid by his undisguised indifference, she trembled whenever the king approached her. A casual smile from him filled her with delight. The king could not be insensible to her many virtues. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... he were a bad little boy who had realized his errors. It was a meek-and-mild act that had paid off more than once in Ross's checkered past. So he faced the man seated behind the desk in the other room with an uncertain, diffident smile, standing with boyish awkwardness, respectfully waiting for ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... strangely at variance with his manner, which was as diffident as that of a village dog on the Fourth of July. As he advanced toward the showroom he exhaled the odour of mothballs, characteristic of an old stock of cloaks and suits, so that before he looked up Morris was able to identify ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... Povey, a person universally esteemed, both within and without the shop, the surrogate of bedridden Mr. Baines, the unfailing comfort and stand-by of Mrs. Baines, the fount and radiating centre of order and discipline in the shop; a quiet, diffident, secretive, tedious, and obstinate youngish man, absolutely faithful, absolutely efficient in his sphere; without brilliance, without distinction; perhaps rather little-minded, certainly narrow-minded; but what a force in the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... with men, being manly, frank and cordial in his relations with them, and women admired him greatly, although they were somewhat intimidated by his grave and serious manner. The truth was that he was rather diffident with women, largely owing to ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... restless, intelligent womanhood, Palla had gone abroad with a married school-friend, Leila Vance. Under her auspices she had met nice people and had seen charming homes in England—Colonel Vance being somebody in the county and even somebody in London—a diffident, reticent, agriculturally inclined land owner and colonel of yeomanry. And long ago dead in Flanders. And his wife a ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... to the most searching examination, seeking in vain to escape from the force which compelled him to play the part of prophet. Terrible, indeed, must have been the wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered intellect, alone and diffident, within ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... any distance under observation is one of the most trying things I know. I advanced in bad order, hoping that my hands did not really look as big as they felt. The same remark applied to my feet. In emergencies of this kind a diffident man could very well dispense with extremities. I should have liked to be wheeled ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... gentleman. Thirty at the utmost. An expressive, one might say handsome, face. A very bad manner. In the last degree constrained, reserved, diffident, troubled. His eyes were on Miss Bella for an instant, and then looked at the ground as he addressed the master of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... often diffident, now and then fell upon a note of quiet authority which suited well with the speaker's grave, pure countenance. As he spoke thus, Mrs. Peckover rose, and said she would first go upstairs just to see how things were. She was absent ten minutes, then a little girl—Amy ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... together. Neither side came off from that contest with cause for rejoicing. The Rutulians were vanquished; the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. Upon this Turnus and the Rutulians, diffident of their strength, have recourse to the flourishing state of the Etruscans, and their king Mezentius; who holding his court at Coere, at that time an opulent town, being by no means pleased, even from the commencement, at the founding ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... her. But Katya answered him in monosyllables; she withdrew into herself, went back into her shell. When this happened to her, she did not very quickly come out again; her face even assumed at such times an obstinate, almost stupid expression. She was not exactly shy, but diffident, and rather overawed by her sister, who had educated her, and who had no suspicion of the fact. Arkady was reduced at last to calling Fifi to him, and with an affable smile patting him on the head to give himself an appearance of being ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... words he ever spoke to me, though I saw him again. We shook hands in silence, and he left. Nor would the others stay. I had ruined the night. We were all self-conscious, diffident, suspicious. Even Vicary was affected. How thankful I was that my silent lover had not come! My secret was my own—and his. And no one should surprise it unless we chose. I cared nothing what they thought, or what they guessed, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... at Belden, and a dread of what unknown trouble she might meet at Rock Cove. This Eastern world was so different from the whole-hearted, kindly one she had left behind her, that instead of wonting to it, she grew timid, diffident of herself, even among the girls, and shy about venturing abroad. So she made her mind up bravely to stay where she was, and ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... was a curly-headed, powerful country lad, twenty-four years old, who, two months before, had come from an Illinois farm to join the expedition. The frontier was to him a place of varied diversion, Independence a stimulating center. So diffident that the bashful David seemed by contrast a man of cultured ease, he was now blushing till the back of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... brought with him a porterhouse steak, and Marion was again driven from the kitchen. At the end of an hour, Dicksie, engrossed over the broiler, was putting the finishing touches to the steak, and McCloud, more engrossed, was watching her, when a diffident and surprised-looking person appeared in the kitchen doorway and put his hand undecidedly on the casing. While he stood, ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... often capricious; sometimes they do not represent the dominant public wish. The voice of one insistent person asking for his book day after day may impress itself on the mind more forcibly than the many diffident murmurs of a considerable number. In libraries that possess a system of branches, there is little difficulty in recognizing a general public demand. Such a demand will be reported from a large number of branch libraries ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... influence on fiction of the ethical ideal. With Mrs. Carew Captain Quint exchanged reminiscences of travel on distant seas. Brandes attempted to maintain low-voiced conversation with Rue, who responded in diffident monosyllables ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... doth some god distract me with false joy? Herc. In very deed dost thou behold thy wife. {1200} Adm. See that it be no phantom from beneath. Herc. Make not thy friend one that evokes the shades. Adm. And do I see my wife, whom I entomb'd? Herc. I marvel not that thou art diffident. Adm. I touch her; may I speak to her as living? Herc. Speak to her: thou hast all thy heart could wish. Adm. Dearest of women, do I see again That face, that person? This exceeds all hope; I never thought that I should see thee more. Herc. Thou hast her; may no God ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... kindling his cigar with a few vigorous whiffs, "what's the use of being foolish? My aunt was never diffident about telling her story, and why should I hesitate to tell mine? The young lady's name,—we'll call her simply Margaret. She was a blonde, with hazel eyes and dark hair. Perhaps you never heard of a blonde with hazel eyes and dark hair? She was the only one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... was safe. She knew well what had been the effect, what would now be the increasing effect of her weakness and misery on Lucy's tender heart. By the mere living in Lucy's sight she would gain her end. From the first she had realised the inmost quality of the girl's strong and diffident personality. What Manisty feared she ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... putting on the meat." There was a slight hesitation before Jean handed him the pages she had done. "I expect it's awfully crude," she apologized, with one of her diffident spells. "I'm afraid you'll ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... for a certain modern style of poetry in my companion, I bethought me of a poem which I had written on the roadside a few days before, and which, I confess, I was eager to confide to some sympathetic ear. I was diffident of quoting it after such lines as Rosalind had recalled, but by the time we had reached our coffee, I plucked up courage to mention it. I had, however, the less diffidence in that it would have a technical interest for her, being indeed no other than a song of cycling a deux which had been suggested ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... while he proclaims to them the weightiest and vitalest of truths—then was Mr. Barnes a great ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ. He combined modesty and majesty to a remarkable degree. He had a commanding figure, keen eye, handsome features, and a clear distinct voice; but so diffident was he that he seldom looked about over his congregation and rarely made a single gesture. His simple rule of homiletics was, have something to say, and then say it. He stood up in his pulpit and delivered his calm, clear, strong, spiritual utterances with ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to call, but I—" Miss Towne paused, looking rather confused. "You see—I—didn't know but I might intrude. You girls are so different from myself," she suddenly blurted out, as though anxious to bare her diffident soul to her dainty hostesses and have it over with. "I mean different because you aren't poor and have lots of friends and can entertain them and all that. I know it is the custom at college for the upper class girls to be kind to entering ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... heart-broken sigh stirred this sable curtain which shut in my companion's face. I felt a deep sympathy for her, whoever she might be, old or young, pretty or ugly. I inferred that she was a widow; I could hear that she was in affliction; but I was far too diffident to invent any little courteous way of expressing my sympathy. In about half an hour, she put her veil to one side, and asked me, in a low, sweet, pathetic voice, if I had any objection to drawing down the blind, as her veil smothered her, and she had wept so much that her eyes could not bear the ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... Allan who is now on his way for many an hour. As he made his way, he marveled that he should have had notice brought upon himself, for he was young and diffident and should by every token have escaped attention in these his first days at court. How would his heart have grown tumultuous had he known that none other than Arthur himself had made him choice. But that he was not to know ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... there arise many questions that he would like to talk over with his father, but he feels diffident about asking him. Too often the boy grows up and goes away to college without ever talking with his father about manhood. In all matters concerning his business relations and success, the boy has received careful instruction. He has not been left to work out those ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... to be asked, though diffident in volunteering information. 'She's ill,—very badly, too,—and she is not looked after. I wish I knew what ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... join the Poyser party on this public occasion. Opportunities of getting to Hetty's side would be sure to turn up in the course of the day, and Adam contented himself with that for he disliked any risk of being "joked" about Hetty—the big, outspoken, fearless man was very shy and diffident as to ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... lady returned Percival's smile,—rather a diffident, uncertain effort, to be sure, but still a smile,—and murmured something about night before last ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... seek an expression—and a few diffident proposals for a finer environment—the need and its satisfaction: had the Commission seen the relation of these incipient ideas, animated it, and made it the nerve center of the study, a genuine program might have resulted. But the two ideas never met and fertilized each other. Nothing dynamic ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going, now relating the latest town news, and now ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... whence came an urgent invitation to visit that city. It was in Massachusetts that men began to steal into the women's meetings and listen from the back seats. In Lynn all barriers were broken down, and a modest, refined, and naturally diffident young woman found herself addressing immense audiences of men and women. In the old theater in Boston for six nights in succession, audiences filling all the space listened entranced to the messenger of emancipation. There is uniform testimony ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... last words he ever spoke to me, though I saw him again. We shook hands in silence, and he left. Nor would the others stay. I had ruined the night. We were all self-conscious, diffident, suspicious. Even Vicary was affected. How thankful I was that my silent lover had not come! My secret was my own—and his. And no one should surprise it unless we chose. I cared nothing what they thought, or what they guessed, as they filed out of the door, a brilliant ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... them again, and that he might not know all at once; and when he had read a friend's letter for the second time, he sprang from his seat and cried, "Thank God! thank God! that I am so fortunate as to have such friends!" To his inwardly diffident nature these helps were a real requirement; they served to cheer him, and only those who did not know him called his joy at the reception of praise—conceit; it was, on the contrary, the truest modesty. How often did he sit there, ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... yet recovered sufficiently from his soul-shaking plunge to follow her lead. Inarticulate, distrusting his newly found supreme happiness, he must needs stay out of those enchanted waters or plunge again. And he was afraid to plunge—diffident, still deeming himself unworthy of the miracle of this wonder-girl's love—even though every fiber of his being shrieked its demand to feel again that slender body in his clasping arms. He did not consciously think those thoughts. ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... for any number of years past, though seemingly never grown older (as the speaker reflects), singing his way meagrely from farm to farm, to the sound of [152] his harp. His name?—It was scarcely a name at all, in the diffident syllables he uttered in answer to that question, on first coming there; but of names known to them it came nearest to a malignant one in Scripture, Apollyon. Apollyon had a just discernible tonsure, but ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... suspected you of being so diffident, but I dare say you thought this was a chance for ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... some other great man, but I had to give it up. "Didn't Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by her charming present?" I was ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... reinforcements that may be required, I am a little diffident about giving a definite opinion until matters still further develop and the result is known of Buller's operations to relieve Ladysmith. I trust that if White and Buller succeed, without very heavy losses, in joining hands, it will not be necessary to send the 8th division or another ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... should have practised such reticence, why it signified kindness and thoughtfulness to Mrs. Damerel, neither he nor she could easily have explained. But their eyes met, with diffident admiration on the one side, and touching amiability on the other. Then they discussed Nancy's inexplicable behaviour from every point of view; or rather, Mrs. Damerel discussed it, and her companion made a pretence of doing so. Crewe's manner had become patently ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... touch with them during his years at the University and subsequently as the recognized "lord of the manor," excepting a rather lengthy period devoted to travel abroad. On more than one occasion he responded generously to diffident appeals for help, coming from one or the other of his old friends. He never failed to contribute from his store of wealth, for young Jenison was the richest as well as the kindliest planter ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... king? Had you made it to be understood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you had gone further than your wise ancestors,—that you were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated Constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in this land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models of the old common law of Europe, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... looking traveller (though indeed its looks belie it) has started on its way; more diffident, if the truth must be told, than even its predecessors. For it thought within itself—Perhaps there will be no welcoming hands held out this time; hands may grow tired of such kind offices. But it has not been so. And now the sense of gratefulness ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Died from the touch that kindled them to sound; And the pause follow'd, which when song expires Pervades a moment those who listen round; And then of course the circle much admires, Nor less applauds, as in politeness bound, The tones, the feeling, and the execution, To the performer's diffident confusion. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Lambert's appearance to scare anybody, and least of all a bow-legged man beside a fire in the open air of the Bad Lands, where things are not just as they are in any other part of this world at all. His manner was rather boyish and diffident, and wholly apologetic, and the All-in-One glistened in his hand like a razor, or a revolver, or anything terrible and destructive that a startled camp cook might make ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... trade, Miss Bruce," said he briskly. "I must ask your earnest attention for a quarter of an hour, while I explain our position as regards the estate. At present it appears beset with difficulties. That's my look-out. Before we begin," added Tom, with a diffident faltering of voice, partly natural, partly assumed, "forgive my asking your future address. It is indispensable that we should frequently communicate, and—and—I cannot help hoping and expressing my hope for your happiness in the home you ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... be admitted that the vogue of Thorwaldsen owed much to the remarkable social qualities of the man. His handsome face and fine form were supplemented by a manner most gentle and winning; and whether his half-diffident ways and habit of reticence were natural or the triumph of art was a vexing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... talk of such men was often apt to be over his head, as it would have been over mine, and often made him painfully diffident and shy. He needn't have been; he little knew the kind of feeling he inspired among the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... through the motions as if he were a bad little boy who had realized his errors. It was a meek-and-mild act that had paid off more than once in Ross's checkered past. So he faced the man seated behind the desk in the other room with an uncertain, diffident smile, standing with boyish awkwardness, respectfully waiting for the ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... mechanical for Mr. Todd. Willie translated with scornful particularity. Under our pupil's diffident manipulation we began to romp through the park at the rate of one mile ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... air, whether with plough or spade, and cordially admired this provision of nature. He sang O fortunatos agricolas! indeed, in every possible key, and with many cunning inflections, till I began to wonder what was the use of such people as Mr. Arch, and to sing the same air myself in a more diffident manner. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "If what I say is distasteful to you, please stop me." She waited a moment; then, as he evinced no desire to check or interrupt her: "I am very diffident about saying this to you—to a man so justly celebrated—pre-eminent in the greatest of all professions. I am so insignificant in comparison, so unimportant, so ignorant where you are ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... forewarned that we read Fuller's remarkable statement about the king's change of heart. "The frequency of such forged possessions wrought such an alteration upon the judgement of King James that he, receding from what he had written in his 'Daemonology,' grew first diffident of, and then flatly to deny, the workings of witches and devils, as but falsehoods and delusions."[43] In immediate connection with this must be quoted what Francis Osborne has to say.[44] He was told, he writes, that the king would have gone as far as to deny any such operations, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... he any formed plan. That idea, indeed, of going to Startup had come across his brain,—of going to Startup, and of asking assistance from the prosperous elder brother. But so diffident was he of success that he hardly dared to mention it to ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... and stern, full bosomed, wet eyed, held out her one little present to her girl, her ewe lamb, whom she was now surrendering. But no hand of the bride was extended for the bride's bouquet. The voice of the bride was not low and diffident, but high ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... afford her the same protection as her dinners. The ancients sought, by the distribution of crowns and flowers, to stimulate the enterprising and reward the successful; but England, despising such empty honours and distinctions, tempts the diffident with a haunch of venison, and rewards the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... his locum tenens was usually a gentleman of very opposite characteristics. He was tall, thin, modest, and even diffident. He slipped into your cell, as I said before, with the deferential air of an undertaker. His speech was extremely soft and rapid, although he stuttered a little now and then from nervousness. "I suppose you know," I asked on his first visit, "what I am here for?" "Y-e-s," he stammered, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Beatrice's sarcasm, was by no means deficient in good sense or ability; his education had owed much to the counsels of Mr. Geoffrey Langford, whom he regarded with great reverence, and he was so conscious of his own inexperience and diffident of his own opinion, as to be very anxious for assistance in this, the first very serious case which had fallen under his own management. The proposal had come at first from himself, and this was a cause of great rejoicing ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been diffident from the beginning, and at the first hesitation on the other side he had taken it for granted that all was lost. His slight vitality sank instantly under the disappointment, he refused to eat, he could not sleep, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. My memory of past errors and perplexities, makes me diffident for the future. The wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of the faculties, I must employ in my enquiries, encrease my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending or correcting these faculties, reduces me almost to despair, and makes me resolve to perish on the barren rock, on which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... busied; they showed me, among other grim relics, C.'s broken machine gun and perforated cartridge tray. They told me many stories of daring deeds performed by other members of the squadron, but when I asked them to describe their own experiences, I found them diffident and monosyllabic. ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... avowals the diffident never speak if they can write. That is why my apology for a furtive existence is here set down in solitude instead of being told face to face. You have borne so many years with my unresponsive and incomprehensible ways that shame at last constrains me to this poor defence; for ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... if they had seen any new faces in church. But no; neither of them had, it was evident, seen my ladies in half-mourning, about whom I was diffident of inquiring directly. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... heat of the action, been carried by the Duke of Weimar. It commanded the hills and the whole camp. But the heavy rain which fell during the night, rendered it impossible to draw up the cannon; and this post, which had been gained with so much bloodshed, was also voluntarily abandoned. Diffident of fortune, which forsook him on this decisive day, the king did not venture the following morning to renew the attack with his exhausted troops; and vanquished for the first time, even because he was not victor, he led back his troops over the Rednitz. Two thousand dead which he left behind ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... But there again she was distrustful, both of him and of her own judgment. He might be—it seemed likely—one of those men who conceal the good as well as the bad in themselves, one of the morally shy men. Or again, perhaps, one of the morally diffident, who shrink from arrogating to themselves high standards because they fear for their own virtue if it be put to the test, and cling to the power of saying, later on, "Well, I told you not to expect too much from me!" Such various types of men exist, and ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... the wild had given her a ruddy color, the glow of perfect physical condition. But her garments were tattered and sadly out of date. The wardrobe of the steamer-trunk lady had suffered in the winter's wear. She was barely presentable in the outing suit of corduroy. So that she was inclined to be diffident about her appearance, and after a time when she was not thinking of the strange episodes of the immediate past, her mind, womanlike, began to dwell ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... revolving-drum on Calais pier that nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous, the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ships mysterious white trails ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too delicate,' Louisa answered him composedly: 'I have never made that objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don't understand what ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... to so quiet a member of society. She seemed to divine my object, and sustained the dialogue; I never knew her to do it before. It is not diffidence, it seems, that has been the cause of this reserve; I was the more diffident of the two, failing to express my thoughts well, from a hurry and uncertainty of mind which I am not often troubled withal. It was partly astonishment, in truth, that confused me. Little Ugly and I actually exchanging ideas! I shall call her Little Ugly still, however, for ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... cow, daunt, overawe, abash, deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c 909. Adj. fearing &c v.; frightened &c v.; in fear, in a fright &c n.; haunted with the fear of &c n.; afeard^. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... your servant," said the vicomte. "Ladies, I beg of you to accept my apologies. I admit the extent of my rudeness, Mademoiselle." He bowed and turned away, leaving Victor puzzled and diffident. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... proposition?" asked Charlie, eyeing the diffident youth beside him critically, as if to judge his ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... interest in the business at all: they do not count. The sympathy of a mother may be reckoned on, but not her judgement, for she is either wildly favourable, or, mistrusting her own tendencies, is more diffident than need be. The most that relations can do for the end before us is to worry, interrupt, deride, and tease the literary member of the family. They seldom fail in these duties, and not even success, as a rule, can persuade them that there is anything ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... for domestic life which always appeared in the man, made it matter for surprise that he had waited so long before taking another wife. It would not have occurred to most of those who knew him that his extreme devotion to women made him shy, diffident, all but timorous in their presence. But Piers Otway, for all his mental disturbance at this moment, remarked the singular deference, the tone and look of admiring gentleness, with which Mr. Jacks turned to his wife as he presented ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... lives secluded from companionship, when he goes out into the world, will find not merely that he is diffident and sensitive about his own defects, real or imaginary, but that he is different from other people. It may take him all his life to learn—perhaps he will never learn—that his emotional and intellectual experiences are no prodigies of sentiment and phoenixes ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... another mute,—not so much tormented with cruel kindness as Dick Wilson, because she had a certain short, decided way of answering and refusing, and was supposed to be rather sullen than diffident. However that might be, she certainly did not give much pleasure to the company;—nor did she appear to derive much from it. Eliza told me she had only come because her father insisted upon it, having taken ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... master could make any response to this presumably gratifying information, Johnny had rejoined his brother. The two boys waved their hands towards him with the same diffident and mysterious sympathy that left him hesitating between a smile and a frown. Then he proceeded on his way. Nevertheless, for no other reason than that he felt a sudden distaste to meeting any one, when he reached the point where ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... so small, and in some things diffident," Chilian said. "The winters are long and cold, and she has not been used to them. Cousin Giles thinks her ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... little diffident about accepting his employer's invitation to dinner. Brought up in the country in comparative poverty, he felt afraid that he should show, in some way, his want of acquaintance with the etiquette of the dining table. But he had a better than ordinary education, and, having read ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... into good Humour, and, as Plato said, it was allowable in Physicians to lie to their Patients to keep up their Spirits, I am half doubtful whether my Friends Behaviour is not as excusable. His Manner is to express himself surprised at the Chearful Countenance of a Man whom he observes diffident of himself; and generally by that means makes his Lie a Truth. He will, as if he did not know any [thing] [2] of the Circumstance, ask one whom he knows at Variance with another, what is the meaning ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... either at the latter end of July or early in August, 1666, and on 16 August she writes from Antwerp to say she has had an interview with William Scott (dubbed in her correspondence Celadon), even having gone so far as to take coach and ride a day's journey to see him secretly. Though at first diffident, he is very ready to undertake the service, only it will be necessary for her to enter Holland itself and reside on the spot, not in Flanders, as Colonel Bampfield, who was looked upon as head of the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... and lieth at his length, is overcome by adversity; while he that is active and skillful is sure to reap success and enjoy prosperity. Intelligent persons engaged in acts with confidence in themselves regard all who are diffident as doubting and unsuccessful. The confident and faithful, however, are regarded by them as successful. And this moment misery hath overtaken us. If, however, thou betakest to action, that misery will certainly be removed. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... about with her a preeminence so natural and human, that beauty was in truth the only word that fitted her. Now, as the Dean passed on from her to some one else, she glanced down at the little figure in terra-cotta satin, and, with a kindly diffident expression, she sat down and began to talk to Lucy. Marcia Wellesdon was a sorceress, and could win whatever hearts she pleased. In a few moments she so soothed Lucy's nervousness that she even beguiled from her some bright and natural talk about the journey ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his thirty-fourth year; and inherits the mental qualities of both his parents—the demeanor and person of his father. He has a reserve which is not cynical, but only diffident; yet it gives him, at least at first sight, and till you have become familiar with his features, which are of a cast at once refined and aristocratic, yet full of goodness—an air of hauteur, which ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... suspect. Yes, I know well enough that few men are better calculated to win a woman's heart than I. I'm a fine fellow, Dick, and worthy any woman's love—happy the girl who gets me, say I. But I'm timid, Dick; shy—nervous—modest— retiring—diffident—and I cannot tell her, Dick, I cannot tell her! Ah, you've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it. RICH. Robin, do you call to mind how, years ago, we swore that, come what might, we would always act upon our hearts' dictates? ROB. Aye, Dick, and I've always kept ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... across the Great Desert without any lady, and was not sure that she was prepared to be fallen in love with by M. Delabordeau, even if there should ultimately be any readiness on the part of that gentleman to perform the role of lover. With Mr. Ingram the matter was different, nor was she so diffident of her own charms as to think it altogether impossible that she might succeed, in the teeth of that little chit, Fanny Damer. That Mr. Ingram would join the party up the Nile she had very little doubt; and then there would be one place left for her. ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... becoming that dreaded personage—an old maid. No, she was beset with admirers; some loving her, some her wealth, and some both. To all but one she turned a deaf ear; that one, though the least presuming of the many, and too diffident to urge his claim until impelled by the irresistable violence of his love, possessed, unknown to himself, a magnetic power over the heart of the fair being. Many were the doubts and fears of both—natural accompaniments of true, sincere, devoted, but unacknowledged, love—but all ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes courageously to meet it and all that ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Having failed to enter any bets with the book-makers of The Pavement in York, I did not care to make them here. With all my passion for racing, I never know or care which horse wins; but I tried to enter into the joy of a diffident young fellow near me at the Grand Stand rail, who was so proud of having guessed as winner the horse next to the winner at the first race; it was coming pretty close. By the end of the third or how far they exceed those of the Saratoga track. Possibly one does not do its extent justice because ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... you are perhaps acquainted with Senor Torres by reputation? You know who he is?" Professor Jesus Herara raised his brows and inclined his head like a polite school-teacher endeavoring to encourage a diffident pupil. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... his serene, gentle, expression, I am told (for I have not witnessed those scenes myself), and looked around at the people with an air of placid sufficiency which was the first hint to the world of the man's overweening, immeasurable conceit, hidden hitherto under a diffident manner. It could be seen too in his dogged assertion that if he had been given enough time and a lot more money everything would have come right. And there were some people (yes, amongst his very victims) who more than half believed him, even after the criminal ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the days of King David in the performances of sacred music, together with the psalter, the timbrel, the sackbut, and the cymbal." The wrath of the polemical Deborah of the Relief-Kirk was somewhat appeased by this explanation, and she inquired in a more diffident tone, whether a Mozart was not a metrical paraphrase of the song of Moses after the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; "in which case, I must own," she observed, "that the sin and guilt of the thing is less grievous in the sight of HIM before whom all the actions of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... character that should lead him to an open declaration against France, that it is not easy to account for the different line which he pursues; it must, however, be attributed to the influence of the very weak persons who are in familiar confidence with him, and to his being too diffident in himself to decide upon the important measure of engaging Prussia in war. I am, however, inclined to believe that such will at last be his decision, though there is too much hesitation in his own mind to give us any ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... domestic tragedy is laid at the Bell Inn, in Wood-street, and the heroine may possibly be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading the direction of a letter close to the York waggon, from which vehicle she has just alighted. In attire—neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanor—artless, modest, diffident: in the bloom of youth, and more distinguished by native innocence than elegant symmetry; her conscious blush, and downcast eyes, attract the attention of a female fiend, who panders to the vices of the opulent and libidinous. Coming out of the door of the inn, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... during the afternoon she foiled all the devices of De Forrest to get her under the mistletoe bough, and yet with such grace that, however disappointed, he could not become angry. As for Hemstead, he was fat too diffident to attempt any such strategy, much as he would have liked ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... this spate of talk, becoming more diffident and fearful every moment. He had never had any thought as to how he should tell the Paymaster that the goodwife of Ladyfield was dead, that was a task he had expected to be left to some one else, but Jean Clerk and her ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... sternly smothered the glint of tenderness which, at sight of her, rose to his eyes, and recognized her greeting only in casual fashion, it was because such was the requirement of his stoic code. And to the girl who had been so slow of utterance and diffident with the stranger, words now came fast and fluently as she told her story of the man who lay hurt at ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... which was inevitable, and it seemed to him that this in itself was significant of a determination on her part that was fatal to his hopes. With a lover's indefinite power of blinding himself to what is before his eyes, he believed that if she had been more diffident of him, more uneasy in his presence, he should have had more courage; but for her to breakfast unafraid with him, to meet him at lunch and dinner in the little dining-room where they were often the only guests, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and Marjorie came over to Ruth's on Wednesday evening, Harold found the girl to be just as he had expected: rather quiet and diffident, even pretty, but not striking-looking; and he made no attempt to become intimate with her. After they had tired of playing cards, whenever Jack and Ruth saw fit to dance together, he offered to do likewise with Marjorie, as a mere matter of form. But he did not find her ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... interrupted by a diffident yet insistent knock on the door. This in itself was such a violation of E.H.Q. rules, never to interrupt the thinking of an E, that all three stopped talking. The three Juniors, who had been sitting by, listening, arose from their seats and stood facing ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... express them, and in no less terror of some awful rejection on her part, or of her mockery, an apprehension which strikes like ice to the most fervid soul. The revulsion which led him to crush down every feeling as it sprang up in his heart cost him the intense pain that diffident and ambitious natures experience in the frequent crises when they are compelled to stifle their longings. And yet, in spite of himself, he broke the silence to ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... relief. Among other things, it opened the prospect of the return of his colleagues and a considerable lightening both of his professional and of his manifold civic duties. He was, moreover, much encouraged—as a man of his modest, almost diffident, nature was bound to be—by the recognition which Songs of the Ridings had brought from every side: not least from the dalesmen, for whom and under whose inspiration they were written. And all his friends rejoiced to ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... filling Pamphlets with it to make madmen Merry, and wisemen Sick. There is a Decency, or shall I rather say a Chastity in Writing or Thinking on such exalted Subjects, that great Minds are apt to Cherish, which keeps them Cautious and Diffident, where weak Men are as bold and as rash (to use an homely Phrase) as a blind Mare in a Mire. I have known many silly Preachers, and paperscull'd Writers in my Time, that were troubled with the Divinity Squirt, and were forc'd ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... Miss Enid said warmly. "He's always doing kind things like that. I know his reputation for being diffident and hard to get acquainted with, but once you ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... success that had attended Wolsey's policy during his seven years' tenure of power, and the influential position to which he had raised England in the councils of Christendom, might well have disturbed the mental balance of a more modest and diffident man than the Cardinal; and it is scarcely surprising that he fancied himself, and sought to become, arbiter of the destinies of Europe. The condition of continental politics made his ambition seem less than extravagant. Power was almost monopolised by two young princes ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... little touches of formalism, due to her training, that are really refreshing to elderly people, and sit quaintly upon her. She is charming, both when her natural vivacity crops out, that has been so repressed, and when she is shyly diffident. Cards and invitations are left for her, and Grandon Park blossoms out into unwonted gayety. The people who go away find no difficulty in renting their houses to those who want to come; perhaps the Latimers have ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... engaged in intimate conversation as they passed the door. The one was George Rumm, skipper of the Black Eagle—a timid, weak-mouthed, shifty-eyed man, with an obsequious drawl in his voice, a diffident manner, and, altogether, a loose, weak way. The other was old Tom Tulk of Twillingate. Archie leaped back with an apology to Skipper George. The boy had no word to say to Tom Tulk of Twillingate. Tom Tulk was ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... were so many penances; for though the world may not agree with Earle as to the degree in which this quality sets off a man, there is no question of Lord Falkland's welcome of the modest man, even if that grave divine "Mr. Earles," did not point out this diffident guest as one who "had a piece of singularity," and, for all his ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... is—not in any hesitating or diffident way (and you know, my friend, that whatever people may say of me, I often do speak diffidently; though, when I am diffident of things, I like to avoid speaking of them, if it may be; but here I say with no shadow of doubt)—your ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... hesitancy in grappling with the problems of Nature by engineers, but they seem to be diffident and neglectful of human nature in their calculations, leaving it out of their equations, greatly to their own detriment and the world's loss. We can say that matters outside of the known are not our concern, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • John A. Bensel
... life and character, he is a retiring, but most worthy youth. Are there not some young ladies who would prefer the company of the showy, chattering fop; who would receive his address, yea, accept him as a husband, and reject the diffident, modest youth? Yet the latter would make a kind, affectionate, provident husband; likely to attain to respectability, high-standing, and wealth: while the former would most probably prove a poor, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... Never has England been so cosmopolitan, at least so European, in its absorption of ideas and knowledge. It is only since the icebound Puritan days that England has become insular, self-contained, in part hugely conceited, and in part absurdly diffident, concerning itself. The best work of Byron and Shelley aimed at breaking down this attitude, and if we are again growing out of our insularity—which is open to much doubt—it is in no small measure due ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Day; fifteen eventful months had passed by since Darsie Garnett and Hannah Vernon had made their appearance in Clough in the character of modest and diffident Freshers. Now, advanced to the dignity of second-year girls, they patronised new-comers with the best, and talked, thought, and behaved as though, deprived of their valuable support, the historical centre of Cambridge must ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... who are diffident in the house of a stranger, or who are backward in describing an article out of their usual ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... not as tall as himself. He spoke of him as his particular friend, the Count Montifalcone, who was on his way with him to join those struggling for Grecian independence. His manners were elegant: but he appeared to be very bashful, or diffident; and, at all events, appeared very much disinclined to enter into conversation. The Greek, however, introduced his Italian friend to Miss Garden; and though, at first, he was very much reserved, as he gazed at her animated and lovely countenance, he appeared to gain courage, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... He was in no way embarrassed by his unaccustomed surroundings or by the commanding appearance of the great lady who was addressing him. He was a man who believed in himself, and such men are too much in earnest to be diffident. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... him shun practical extremes and be ultra only in what is purely theoretic; let him be stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on fasting; unflinching in insisting on the Eternity of punishment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial comforts of Time; ardent and imaginative on the pro-millennial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious toward every other infringement of the status quo. Let him fish for souls not ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of mind;—not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never yields ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... words had a strange inspiriting effect on this shy and diffident boy. The recital of all the difficulties in the way was the most powerful argument to a nature like his, and when at length the doctor wished him good-night and told him to take till the following day to decide, Riddell was already growing ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... a certain girl, Miss Dayton," he asked, "who on a memorable class day gave the pleasure of her company to a diffident student who in ecstasy at playing escort to the lovely girl and her dignified Aunt Marcia, nearly forgot all which he ever knew, managing only to stammer through an effort at conversation which must have ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... living only with Englishmen, and never discoursing with foreigners; not out of contempt to them, but from a sort of repugnance to foreign languages, and a timidity, which even at the age of fifty, rendered him very diffident ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... faults were no great matter; he was diffident, placable, passive, unambitious, unenterprising; life did not much attract him; he watched it like a curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... fate. She went through her training experiences like another being. She was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home to Woodhouse at Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply knocked out. Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, so ladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strapping and strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... been thrust amongst that renowned company of ships to load for her maiden voyage. There was nothing to vouch for her soundness and the worth of her character, but the reputation of the building-yard whence she was launched headlong into the world of waters. She looked modest to me. I imagined her diffident, lying very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against the wharf to which she was made fast with very new lines, intimidated by the company of her tried and experienced sisters already familiar with all the violences of the ocean and the exacting love of men. They ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... King says tenderly to him that he would esteem himself happy, if he could call so noble a young Prince his son. But the Elector understands neither the Queen nor the King, he is silent and does not propose. He is so modest and diffident—perhaps he dare not. They must wait awhile. If he has not declared himself on the last day of his visit, they must take the initiative and woo him, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... days used to come out to see us Gregory, in his long-skirted black coat and full civilian dress; of whom I have told a separate history elsewhere. Very pointed was Camille's neglect of both Harry and me, to make herself lovely to the dark and diffident new-comer, while Estelle positively pursued me with compensatory sweetness; and Gregory, whenever he and I were alone together, labored to reassure me of his harmlessness by expatiating exclusively upon the charms ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... as teaching an organ-grinder how to turn the handle of his organ! Oh, Maurice, I can laugh to-day! I could almost—I—get up and dance the tarantella all alone here in my little, bare room with no books and scarcely any flowers. And at the station show Emile he is welcome. He is a little diffident at coming. He fancies perhaps he will be in the way. But one look of yours, one grasp of your hand will drive it all out of him! God bless you, my dearest. How he has blessed me in giving ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... we do not differ, sir," said Ozzie. And Mr. Prohack found satisfaction in the naturalness, the freedom from pose, of Ozzie's diffident and disconcerted demeanour. His sympathy for the young man was increased by the ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Horace Jewdwine of Lazarus College, Oxford. Jewdwine had proposed him on his own merits, somebody else had seconded him (he supposed) on Jewdwine's, and between them they had smuggled him in. This would be his first appearance as a Junior Journalist. And he might well feel a little diffident about it; for, though some of the members knew him, he could not honestly say he knew any of them, except Rankin (of The Planet) who possibly mightn't, and Jewdwine who certainly wouldn't, be there. But the plunge had to be made some ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... popular with his fellows at school, and beloved by his teachers. There was in him a natural chivalry of character, which characterized him above all of his early compeers, and made him a model in conduct. Truthful and manly, retiring and diffident, until occasion called out the latent spirit of his nature; then the true greatness of his soul would burst forth in an impetuous eloquence, startlingly fierce and overwhelming. Nor was this excitement always wasted in ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... see what you mean"—Winnie replied, her dark cheek flushing faintly under the tacit reproof. She had passed her twenty-fifth birthday, but her voice had in it the docile self-repression of a school-girl. She spoke with diffident slowness, her gaze fastened upon her plate. "Of course—my grandfather was a lawyer—and your point is that merchants—and others who make ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she's there, There's virtue, the title it surely may claim, 15 Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... going away," Madison continued; "and he is to send more money here for the 'cause'—when I ask for it—only you are not to know, because you might be diffident about ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... beating heart, and felt for his father's letter. He had become so diffident, and his head felt so confused, that he would gladly have sat down for a moment to rest and compose himself. But there was no rest here. A great wagon stood at the door, and within, colossal bales and barrels; while broad-shouldered giants, with leathern ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... difference. It proves that a widely preached scientific conclusion may be as spectral as Bathybius. On other more important points, therefore, we may differ from the newest scientific opinion without too much diffident apprehensiveness. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... attending to Joan, had entirely forgotten his cousin; and Malcolm, doubtful and diffident, was looking hesitatingly at the gateway, when Ralf Percy called out, 'Ha! you there, this is our way. That is only for the royal folk; but there's good sack and better sport down here! I'll show you the way,' he added, good-naturedly, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... think he's conceited," Mary went on, warming up to the never-ending pleasure of analysis, "but it's because he's really diffident. Lots of people I know who people think are snobby ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... respecting affairs, both here and abroad. He is rather downcast. However, he thinks this Belgian insurrection will be put down. Rothschild has exported 800,000L in silver and 400,000L in gold to meet his bills when they become due—diffident of ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... the allurement of a woman, would have known exactly how to cajole her, to give her a flower, and hesitate when he spoke her name—and a number of useful things—but he was too terribly in earnest to be anything but a real, natural man; that is, hurt from her coldness and diffident of ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... have naturally expected. The reason was soon forthcoming. Following his usual plan of getting as much information as possible out of the French, he heard the old man, who seemed unaccountably shy and diffident, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Your diffident self-suspecting mortal is not very angry that others should feel more comfortable about themselves, provided they are not otherwise offensive: he is rather like the chilly person, glad to sit next a warmer neighbour; or the timid, glad to have a courageous fellow-traveller. It ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... of the various theories of electro-chemical decomposition, whilst it has made me diffident, has also given me confidence to add another to the number; for it is because the one I have to propose appears, after the most attentive consideration, to explain and agree with the immense collection of facts belonging to this branch of science, and to remain ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... we feel rather diffident before you," spoke up Little Billy. "We know it is an outrage, this causing you to lose your ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... is," said Katie, "to see such perfect modesty! Mr. Rivers, you are almost too diffident ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... several bad cases of diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left the dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively on mustard and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A piano, harmoniously related to the dinner-bell, tinkled responsive to a diffident and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy curls. "I sez to Mariar, 'Mariar' sez I, 'praise to the face is open disgrace" I heard no more. Dreading some susceptibility to sincere ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... seemed to consider the bargain satisfactorily concluded. The youngest of the party very modestly kept behind the others, and, before he was observed to have done so, missed several presents, which his less diffident, though not importunate companions had received. As the night closed in they became desirous to depart, and they left us before dark, highly delighted with their visit. As I had purchased one of their canoes, a boat was sent to land its late owner, as only one person can sit in ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Shelley on some points; but on others, which all the world agree to praise highly, and to practice very little, he agreed so entirely, and showed unequivocally that he did agree, that, with the exception of one person (Vincent Novello), too diffident to gain such an honor from his friends, they were the only two men I had then met with, from whom I could have received and did receive advice or remonstrance with perfect comfort, because I could be sure of the unmixed motives ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... was the type of the cautious man who only looks to the present, who hopes by staving off a crisis till Tuesday that something fresh will "turn up" by Wednesday. He was disposed, from the very first, to distrust and to waylay the plans of Raleigh. We are told, and can well believe it, that he was "diffident" of Sir Walter's designs. He was uncomfortable in the presence of that breezy "man of desperate fortunes." A very excellent example of the opposition of the two types is offered by the discussion about the golden city of Manoa. Raleigh believed, and after all disappointments continued to be sure, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... officers were ashamed of my uniform, I should be ashamed of my officer. Beware, then, of the really well-bred and apologetic gentleman whose clothes are at once quiet and fashionable, whose manner is at once diffident and frank. Beware how you admit him into your domestic secrets, for he may be a bogus Earl. Or, worse still, ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... empty wagon. The hay-barges in North River afford comfortable beds, and many Bummers occupy them. In wet or cold weather, the Bummer patronizes the cheap lodging-houses, or the cellars, and as a last resort applies for shelter at the station house. He is diffident about asking assistance at the last place, however, for he has a vague idea that the police would be only too glad to get him safely lodged on the Island. One of his favorite amusements is attendance upon the police courts. This affords him a few hours of rest ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... this kind that untoward things happen. My sister gave a "candy-pull" on a winter's night. I was too young to be of the company, and Jim was too diffident. I was sent up to bed early, and Jim followed of his own motion. His room was in the new part of the house, and his window looked out on the roof of the L annex. That roof was six inches deep in snow, and the snow had an ice-crust upon it which ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
