quotations about modesty
Modesty is my best quality.
JACK BENNY
The Jack Benny Program
If there's one quality I hate in a woman, it's modesty. Besides making me, with my trombone mouth, feel vaguely uncouth, I think it's a chickenshit response to the demands of the marketplace, or the universe, not that I can tell them apart.
EMILY CARTER
Glory Goes and Gets Some
The thunder of false modesty was deafening.
SEBASTIAN FAULKS
Engleby
Modesty in woman veils in some measure homeliness.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Modesty is fear.
LJUPKA CVETANOVA
The New Land
Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives the persons who labor under it by the prejudice it affords every worthy person in their favor.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
The Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone
Thy modesty's a candle to thy merit.
HENRY FIELDING
Tom Thumb the Great
It is modesty that lends an all-conquering charm to everything human here below--to the king, to the queen, to the archbishop, prime minister, duchess, and the dairymaid. Without modesty there can be no royal dignity, no sense of a holy calling, no eloquence, no real refinement, no natural delicacy. Devoid of modesty there can be no manly bearing, no nobility of nature, no charm, no grace; no beauty in maidenhood. Modesty, when worn by women, is the gem that dazzles all others, and leads captive the noblest specimens of the opposite sex; it eclipses every art and every wile; all bodily beauty, as it is of the soul. The humble maiden clad in modesty, walks abroad with an air of queenly dignity, which cannot be approached by many an occupant of a throne; and as she passes along through gardens and fields filled with the choicest flowers of earth, she, with the bloom of heavenly modesty on her cheek, lends a charm to all around, and makes it as complete as any earthly picture can be. Man, without modesty, thou art but a beast. Woman, without modesty, every charm of thy nature is gone; all the light of thy soul; and the beauty of thy body has vanished.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Modesty", Short Essays
Modesty is only arrogance by stealth.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The Long Earth
A great man is always willing to be little.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Compensation", Select Essays and Poems
Be modest! It is the kind of pride least likely to offend.
JULES RENARD
The Journal of Jules Renard
The power of modesty is so great that a tender woman betrays herself with her lover rather by deeds than by words.
STENDHAL
De l'Amour
Modesty, if you consider it, is the most unforgivable sort of falsehood: it's a lie that does damage to no one but yourself.
MEREDITH DURAN
Wicked Becomes You
Immodest and attractive is easy. Modest and repulsive is easy too. But modest and attractive is an art form.
DOUGLAS WILSON
5 Paths to the Love of Your Life
The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast.
PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA
Autobiography of a Yogi
Maidenly modesty is like aquavitæ, which keeps in perfect condition as long as it is tightly stoppered, but, if the air gets to it, evaporates at once.
ANTONIO SIMEONE SOGRAFI
Olivo e Pasquale
Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
In short, if you banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, November 24, 1711
From the time of the flood to the present period, not one man ever derived any benefit from modesty, and not one woman any harm from it.
MME. AUGUSTE VON PAALZOW
attributed, Day's Collacon