FROM How to Root Out Hidden Faults by Fr. James F. McElhone:

Pride of timidity is self-love manifested by shyness, backwardness, cowardice. Pride of timidity is self-love protecting self through the hiding of weaknesses from fear of ridicule. Now it must not be thought that the quiet person is necessarily humble. A fine reserve is praiseworthy, but timidity is carrying reserve to excess. Quietness of disposition may not show that there is pride beneath.

Ordinarily the talented are not so subject to pride of timidity, just because they are talented. Still those who have ability are not so generally developed as not to have some weakness or other; and even a strong weakness, as they view it. Self-love seeks to protect, to hide that weakness, and so develops a habit of timidity from it. Moreover, the talented are sometimes very much under the rule of human respect. They fear what others may say or think about them; they are in certain circumstances afraid to do what is right or to avoid what is wrong.

Nevertheless, pride of timidity is usually the predominant fault of those who have weaknesses and who seek to hide such weaknesses from fear of ridicule. Those who are governed by timidity are more or less under its spell in thought, word, and deed: when they pray, when they study or recite, when they work, when they play,—in fact in anything that is done in a public way. They actually fear what others say or think about them; they remember things that have passed; they imagine what might happen; they picture improbable or almost impossible conditions or circumstances which will place them before the public eye. Day after day, in many small ways, they feel timid, and eventually it becomes a strong habit, so that they avoid through human respect what they should not avoid or do what they should not do.

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