diffidence

• Explains some of his early diffidence -- that is, slight shyness coupled with extreme knowledge -- and his energy. —  Wi-Fi Networking News
• Like a sensible man he complied at once, without affecting that air of false diffidence which is so common among modern songsters and story-tellers I will tell you," said the old man--having previously wet his lips at a silver tankard, which was as bluff and genuine as himself--"of King Gundalf's wooing. —  Erling the Bold
• With Byron, as with some of his prototypes among the men of action in France and elsewhere, theatrical ostentation, excessive self-consciousness, extravagant claims, cannot hide from us that their power was secretly drained by an ever-present distrust of their own aims, their own methods, even of the very results that they seem to have achieved This diffidence was an inseparable consequence of the vast predominance of exalted passion over reflection, which is one of the revolutionary marks. —  Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I Essay 3: Byron
• In other words, if it is more conceivable that Mind should be the ultimate cause of cosmic harmony than that the persistence of force should be so, then it is not irrational to accept the more conceivable hypothesis in preference to the less conceivable one, provided that the choice is made with the diffidence which is required by the considerations adduced in Chapter V I conclude, therefore, that the hypothesis of metaphysical teleology, although in a physical sense gratuitous, may be in a psychological sense legitimate. —  A Candid Examination of Theism
• Look at Newton: his diffidence is almost as celebrated as his genius. —  Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men

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