Top 50 Shyness Quotes

I was living in New York City and flat broke. My next door neighbor was an actor and he always seemed to be having more fun than I was. He convinced me to give acting a shot, but because of my shyness I was sure it would be a lost cause.

There was a combination of shyness and just fear of looking stupid that kept me out of a lot of interesting creative conversations that I could have had at an early age.

Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.

I think I had a shyness about me, I think I discovered acting as a way to break out of that and as a way of belonging, a sense of being special.

It was their individuality combined with the shyness of their behavior that remained the most captivating impression of this first encounter with the greatest of the great apes.

I always felt I had to fill silences, usually by singing or whistling. It was nerves and shyness, really.

I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It’s really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable.

I’m shy, but I’m not clinically shy. I don’t have social anxiety disorder or anything like that. I more have a gentle shyness. Like, I have a little trouble mingling at parties.

My mother’s side taught me to be a little bit afraid of everything. For a long time, I was quiet and cautious. But shyness makes you notice other people’s excruciations and feel for them. I think that made a writer of me.

I’m very shy so I became very outgoing to protect my shyness.

I’ve gotten better at not making people feel uncomfortable with my shyness.

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

Powerful new drug-free treatments have been developed for depression and for every conceivable type of anxiety, such as chronic worrying, shyness, public speaking anxiety, test anxiety, phobias, and panic attacks. The goal of the treatment is not just partial improvement but full recovery.

What people don’t realize is they mistake my shyness for cockiness most of the time.

Shyness is about the fear of social judgments – at a job interview or a party you might be excessively worried about what people think of you. Whereas an introvert might not feel any of those things at all, they simply have the preference to be in a quieter setting.

I’ve gotten over my shyness from many years of doing public events.

I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it’s shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it’s a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It’s truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.

My shyness probably defined the first 30 years of my life, really. It’s a crippling thing. It can be very lonely knowing that you’ve got things to say, but you daren’t say them.

A lot of vices that I’ve had over the years were always to make up for some sort of character deficiency, one of them being shyness.

And like the old stereotype, I overcame my shyness by making my friends laugh.

For acting, a two-week workshop helped me break my shyness and made me able to perform in front of people.

I think a lot of my shyness and non-athleticism came because I didn’t have a father to instill those in me.

Divorce is hard enough when you’re an adult – never mind when you’re a child. That was probably when my shyness started, when I was at my shyest.

I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.

Rapping gave me confidence. I got asked to do talent shows and I came up out of my shyness that way. My name was Xperteez back then.

You know what my greatest personal stumbling block is? My shyness.

What I never overcame is a kind of shyness.

It is strange: I love to be in front of the audience, but I have this opposite side that is afraid of meeting people, that doesn’t want to talk. I feel it’s like having a little hard stone inside me of problems, doubts, and shyness.

It may be that that we can sing what we often cannot say, whether it be from shyness, fear, lack of the right words or the passion or dramatic gift to express them. More souls have rallied to more causes by the strains of music than by straining rhetoric.

Having kids is the deal-breaker on shyness! Once you have a baby, you learn to speak up loud and clear to protect them, defend them, and encourage them. I have three sons, so I’ve experienced that in triplicate.

What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone, isolated on e-mail, in chat rooms, which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people.

Introverts probably have a higher degree of sensitivity to outside stimulus and tend to back off. In your quiet shyness as a child, you end up with an accumulation of thoughts and ideas, building up big, imaginative worlds. You have to get it all out somehow, so it goes into your work.

I am uninterested in appearing in newspapers and on television. Many people think I am striking a pose – that I want to create a sense of shyness. But it’s just not something I want to do. I overdosed.

You know I was a shy guy and people didn’t know that and still don’t know it today. I’m sure basketball brought my shyness out because of the fact that you have to do interviews, and that people are always talking to you in terms of the fans and everything.

I cover my shyness by being exactly the opposite. You know, really loud and very Italian. I am an extremely insecure and fragile person, and only the people that really know me know that. But I push myself.

It’s so much easier for me to get up and be someone else than expressing my own thoughts and feelings. There’s definitely something about creating a cloak of a character that helped me deal with my shyness.

Shyness displays itself differently in me. I think it’s more an awkwardness.

When you’re shy, the worst thing you can do is go into all these casting rooms and be scrutinized. But with shyness, I think you just have to bite the bullet.

For me, I had to overcome shyness to be an actor. But as a director, you lose your subjectivity, your self-consciousness. And instead of just your role, it’s the life of the whole play that becomes a reflection of you.

They say shyness is a form of egotism, and you are only shy because you care too much about what people think of you. And maybe its true, maybe I am just an egotist.

Distilled down, it is pretty simple, the only way to overcome shyness is to allow yourself to be vulnerable and nothing made me as vulnerable as unconditional love.

It’s hard because people often don’t recognise shyness; they think it’s just someone being rude. I have had to work to overcome that, especially if I’m meeting my readers at author events, because I don’t want them to think I’m snooty or rude.

It is not altogether shyness that now makes me unsuccessful in company. Sometimes it is a state of mind that is three parts meditation, that will not free the thoughts until their attendant trains are prepared to follow them.

In talking, shyness and timidity distort the very meaning of my words. I don’t pretend to know anybody well. People are like shadows to me and I am like a shadow.

I started studying shyness in adults in 1972. Shyness operates at so many different levels. Out of that research came the Stanford shyness clinic in 1977.

I’m extremely introverted. I used to think it was shyness, but I got over that, so it must be door No. 2. It’s still hard for me to be away from home much, and I have to make sure I get lots of time alone in my room when I’m touring.

I’m concerned with the lost, the lonely, the shy. I think shyness is in some ways more widespread now than formerly. I used to be shy myself. Of course, you can’t be me now and remain shy, but I remember very well what it felt like.

Overcoming my shyness has been a lifelong struggle.

I think Sweden is known for people being a bit more quiet than other cultures, and I guess it’s a mixture: shyness and leaving room for other people to talk. Of course, when people get drunk, all of that disappears.

I think I’m not a natural-born salesman, for sure, but If I have a product I really believe in, I can overcome some of the shyness and get through the things that aren’t natural to me.