Quotes About Reticence

He fell quiet, but she understood this was his way. He was not a talkative man. Once, she'd imagined him sitting alone in his house, a monster ready to devour anyone who came near. What she imagined now was a man who had both his rank and his natural reticence working against him. She smiled at him. If he continued in his gruff ways the rest of his life, she would defend him to anyone. Anyone.

If a man didn't make sense, the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation, for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity.

The name Shatner is Austrian and partly Germanic, and there's Germanic reticence and silence perhaps, but there is passion underneath.

There is no reticence nor any limit to a 'Majique.' Only the unwillingness of the mind to open itself to the limitless power of possibilities that exist within the unbelievable.

She was, on the contrary, inclined to be silent; she shrank from expressing herself even in talk, let alone in writing.

Any future is unknown – but sometimes it acquires a particular fogginess, as if some other force had come to the aid of destiny's natural reticence and distributed this resilient fog, from which thought rebounds.

Be charming, and shut up!

I am saying nothing.

We all know that the survivors of war rarely speak of their experience. We tell ourselves they do not want to relive the horror of the battlefield. I think the greater reason for their reticence lies in their charity, because they know that the average person cannot deal with the images of a straw village worked over by a Gatling gun or Zippo-tracks, or women and children

Often confused with shyness, introversion does not imply social reticence or discomfort. Rather than being averse to social engagement, introverts become overwhelmed by too much of it, which explains why the introvert is ready to leave a party after an hour and the extravert gains steam as the night goes on.

In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely.... Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius...

They had failed to understand that there was no such thing as private life in wartime Germany. No amount of reticence could change the fact that every individual German belonged to the generality of Germans and must share in the general destiny of Germany, even as more and more bombs were falling on the just and unjust alike.

But, this time I have departed from my usual reticence because I know that there are some who, in their pleasant homes in America without any real knowledge of the facts, declare that the days of missionary hardships are over.

Clumsiness attempts to fix simplicity straight in the eye. It is not a mark of incompetence but of reticence.

When it comes to letting the world in on the secrets of his heart, he has about as much shrinking reticence as a steam calliope.

The old man bridled at this. All his life he had gone out of his way to avoid any situation that might be mistaken for a friendship.

I feel ashamed of my nation's reticence. Its desire to keep walking, to move on, not to comment, not to interrogate, not to take any interest in something peculiar, unusual, in anything that isn't entirely normal.

Recordando a Needleman Needleman no era un hombre fácil de comprender. Su reticencia era tenida por frialdad, pero poseía una gran capacidad de compasión.

when virtue had been declared a crime, there was no refuge even in reticence.

there is something implicitly uninteresting about the look of a person who will tell you whatever you want to know.

Her exclamations, and also her reticences on the subject of her sons, were equal to the most lamenting verses in Jeremiah, and completely deceived the sisters, who supposed their sinful brothers to be doomed to perdition.

I never told anybody what was going on. Not a soul.

Those who have known pain profoundly are the ones most wary of uttering the clichés about suffering. Experience with the mystery takes one beyond the realm of ideas and produces finally a muteness or at least a reticence to express in words the solace that can only be expressed by an attitude of union with the sufferer. JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN

I don't mean to be highfalutin about it, but I try to limit my visibility.