You may perhaps remember how Wendell Phillips, in his great Harvard address on "The Scholar and the Republic" reproached some men of learning for their conservatism and timidity, their backwardness in reform. And it is true that conservatism and timidity are never so hateful and harmful as in the scholar. "Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold," those words which Emerson liked to quote, are words which should ever ring in the scholar's ear.英文原著 · 《James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist》
Taxed with his timidity, he attempted to excuse himself on the inadmissible plea of moral rectitude. `I have as much personal courage in an honourable cause,' he exclaimed in a passage of false dignity, `as any man in Britain; but as I knew I was committing acts of injustice, so I went to them half loth and half consenting; and in that sense I own I am a coward indeed.'英文原著 · 《A Book of Scoundrels》
She had been at Miss Minchin's school about two years when, one foggy winter's afternoon, as she was getting out of her carriage, comfortably wrapped up in her warmest velvets and furs and looking very much grander than she knew, she caught sight, as she crossed the pavement, of a dingy little figure standing on the area steps, and stretching its neck so that its wide-open eyes might peer at her through the railings. Something in the eagerness and timidity of the smudgy face made her look at it, and when she looked she smiled because it was her way to smile at people.英文原著 · 《A Little Princess》
"That poet you spoke of to me -- the one you said was a friend of yours -- he is my friend now too, and I have learned to sing some of his songs. I am going to sing one now." She seemed to have no timidity at all, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with a Russian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams of pas- sion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, and now sad:英文原著 · 《A Mountain Woman》
Never yet had she completely "broken down." She told herself that her body was perfectly well. But she was afraid. That was the truth. And to feel fear was specially hateful to her, because she abhorred cowardice, and was inclined to despise all timidity as springing from weakness of character. She dreaded reaching Mergellina. She dreaded seeing this woman, Ruffo's mother. And Ruffo? Did she dread seeing him?英文原著 · 《A Spirit in Prison》
He stood hanging his head like a culprit, and said, with well-feigned timidity, that he came, by desire of Miss Vizard, to inquire how she was getting on, and to hope the people were beginning to appreciate her.英文原著 · 《A Woman-Hater》