Self Conscious Quotes

“Nothing is as irritating to a shy man as a confident girl.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“You looked strange climbing in the tree like that."
Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her.
"I didn't do it to look nice," she said.
"But you do care."
Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to. "I don't," she said.
"All girls do," he added, pushing the point.
"You must not know many girls."
"I know a million," Peter said, dark and serious. There was a long awkward silence, but if Peter regretted his words, I couldn't tell.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

“He completely lacked any ardent interest that might have occupied his mind. His interior life was impoverished, had undergone a deterioration so severe that it was like the almost constant burden of some vague grief. And bound up with it all was an implacable sense of personal duty and the grim determination to present himself at his best, to conceal his frailties by any means possible, and to keep up appearances. It had all contributed to making his existence what it was: artificial, self-conscious, and forced—until every word, every gesture, the slightest deed in the presence of others had become a taxing and grueling part in a play.”
― Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

“Deep in the shadows, a hot ember from a lit cigarette glows. For a brief second, the light illumines the face of the famous chimp, Bosco, champion bicyclist. He stares back, emotionless, unimpressed. His relentless gaze makes me uncomfortable, self-conscious, intimidated.”
― Michael Benzehabe, Persianality

“To come across as younger than they are: Women buy creams that promise to slow aging; men buy fast cars.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Rhianonn turned and pointed at her ass. “And I could be wrong, but I think this thing is even bigger than is normal for a human my size. How is that acceptable?”
― G.A. Aiken, Dragon Actually

“A poor but confident man is as hard to find as a rich but shy man.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A gold tooth is to some blacks, what braces are to all whites.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It's amazing what the possiblity of romance can do to you. I'm self-conscious now in ways I never was before.”
― Deb Baker, Murder Talks Turkey

“His limp had been very pronounced that day, and he had been self-conscious, feeling—as he often did—as if he were playing the role of an impoverished governess in a Dickensian drama.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“But being a teenager is one good day of being a superhero, followed by a hundred days of being self-conscious about every little damn thing. It's one big, selfish moment when you don't give a shit about other people's opinions, but you still want your friends to love who you are and what you do.”
― Julian Winters, Running With Lions

“Some people are so self-conscious that they are unable to make eye contact for longer than a second, even when they are wearing dark sunglasses.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“There is a very fine line (almost transparent), between cordiality and hypocrisy--knowing to distinguish them is a gift of Gods.”
― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

“I never liked to just absorb something somebody else created. I’m too self-conscious, and too critical, I guess, and it always felt like I was wasting time. But after you went away... well, it started to feel like time was wasting me. Every tick of the second hand was like a needle in my skin. Tick, tick, tick...”
― Ryū Murakami, Tokyo Decadence

“To get anywhere in life,
there is but one rule.

Never seek external validation
for your own inner peace.”
― Azra Gregor

“God knows your every need.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

“Never let others upset or belittle you without your approval. It is crucial to be self-conscious at all times because with so much going on, you cannot afford to have others in charge of your own life.”
― Gift Gugu Mona

“Suddenly I caught sight of myself in a glass and saw what a figure of fun I looked. Hitherto I had always taken my appearance for granted; now I saw how inelegant it was, compared with theirs; and at the same time, for the first time, I was acutely aware of social inferiority. I felt utterly out of place among these smart rich people, and a misfit everywhere.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“Travel unsettles the appropriate. You’re bound to be inappropriate. Which is probably why I don’t feel the intense embarrassment some do at not being able to speak foreign languages correctly. It seems to me that one of the privileges of travel is never to fit in. And not to fit in, not to be able to, is a kind of freedom. One of the freedoms that money can buy, like buying a hotel room in which one is psychologically unburdened and can act out guilty pleasures, capitalist ones, no doubt.”
― Lynne Tillman, Motion Sickness

“Problem was, whenever I locked eyes with an animal I felt something more soulful than I
ever felt from the humans I knew, and what I saw in that sprawled giraffe’s eye made me ache
to the bone.”
― Lynda Rutledge, West With Giraffes

“Every time he was confident of overcoming the awkwardness that transcended their exchange, Missy would turn the tables on him and remind him otherwise. Her intense silence heightened his acute awareness of her presence and in turn, made him more self-conscious, both in his manner of speech and presentation. Trust Missy to be the only person in this world who had the power to make him feel this way.”
― Alexis Lawrence, Seasons: The Mysterious Woman

“Only after becoming self-conscious can we open the doors of universal consciousness.”
― Debasish Mridha

“The broth was nearly clear and colorless, singing with notes of the sea- and Belle had never actually been to the sea. When she broke her bread to dip, the crust shattered, the crumb inside moist to the point of almost being a custard.
The terrine was so rich she managed only one tiny demitasse spoonful.
She and her father didn't eat fancily but they ate well enough and even had meat once or twice a week. The herbs that still flourished in her mother's garden spiced up dishes more than it seemed like they should have. They supped well, like all Frenchmen and women.
But even Christmas was nothing compared to this.
Belle suddenly realized she was shoveling it all in like a character from one of those stories who was tricked into eating magic food until he exploded or grew too large to escape.
And a slightly more down-to-earth part of her spoke up warningly, in what she liked to pretend was her mother's voice: You are, at the very least, going to have an extremely upset stomach from this rich new food.”
― Liz Braswell, As Old as Time

“Some adults are so self-conscious that they are unable to look, for longer than two seconds, a child or even an animal in the eye.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“If you can’t control your sexuality, you will have a hard time maintaining your sensuality.”
― Lebo Grand

“Being enough is something you are not something you earn.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“Nothing took the dignity out of one's exit like wearing clothing several sizes too large.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire

“Everything I love about myself is a confidence a man has given me, and everything I hate about myself is a scar a man has left me.”
― Trevor Church, My First 500 Lovers

“I have referred to the air of drama which meets you everywhere in the pages of Sainte-Beuve. He sometimes gets the credit for having dramatized the situation. I wonder, was it he who dramatized the situation or was it the people who were actors in the story? And in particular, was it not Mother Angelique? That great woman was not without her faults; Bremond (who compares her unfavourably throughout with her sister Agnes) writes of her imperiousness, her prodigious freedom in passing judgements on her neighbour; there was no dealing with a woman who was at once up in the clouds and scrupulous. 1 But it is not of her faults that I would write here; they were personal to herself What is more important, it seems to me, is a single weakness which she contrived to hand on to her spiritual children. She was incurably self-conscious; she was always dramatizing situations. She herself said that the object of humiliations was to destroy self and my own will, and the I and the my; St. Cyran, Pascal, Nicole did the same. Of their supernatural achievements it is not for us to judge; but as a matter of plain earthly fact it seems clear that no one of the four ever got rid of that self-consciousness which makes you see yourself out of the comer of your eye at every turn in life.”
― Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion

“The worst thing anxiety ever did was to turn everyone into a stranger, no matter how many times you interacted with them.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia