Sourced

• Shyness is just egotism out of its depth.
  • Penelope Keith (b. 1939), British actress. Daily Mail (UK) newspaper, 27th June 1988

• He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart.
  • Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, 1811.

• He's not an asshole, he's just shy. I think you have shy/asshole confusion, my friend.
  • Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm

• Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life you'd like to.
  • Morrissey in the Smiths song Ask

Unsourced

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

• The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed and nervous.
  • Jerome K. Jerome

• Even the sun blushes when it sinks.
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

• True lovers are shy when people are by.
  • 18th Century English proverb