Top 100 Quotes About Modesty
#1. Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.
Harriet Martineau
#2. As to modesty and decency, if we are simians we have done well, considering: but if we are something else-fallen angels-we have indeed fallen far.
Clarence Day
#3. I suppose that by this time they had finished their dressing. Roger Scurvilegs tells us nothing on such important matters; no doubt from modesty. "Next morning they rose," he says, and disappoints us of a picture of Udo brushing his hair.
A.A. Milne
#5. I don't look in the mirror; don't like what I see; never have. I am not my idea of a beauty. Never was. This is not false modesty. I've just never been enamoured of my face, which of course is magnified umpteen times on screen.
Lauren Bacall
#6. Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
Mary Wollstonecraft
#7. In late marriage alone lies the compulsion to retain an institution which, twist and turn as you like, is and remains a disgrace to humanity, an institution which is damned ill-suited to a being who with his usual modesty likes to regard himself as the 'image' of God.
Adolf Hitler
#8. A girl's modesty is first noted by her external presentation, but if it's not followed by the confidence of internal modesty, she still forfeits the power of her virtue.
Dannah Gresh
#9. Great men suffer hours of depression through introspection and self-doubt. That is why they are great. That is why you will find modesty and humility the characteristics of such men.
Bruce Barton
#10. We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.
Jean Rostand
#11. True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty.
C.S. Lewis
#12. If guys practiced self-control, 'modesty' wouldn't be such a huge deal.
Zach Hunter
#13. Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary And pitch our evils there?
William Shakespeare
#14. Modesty in dress and language and deportment is a true mark of refinement and a hallmark of a virtuous Latter-day Saint woman.
Ezra Taft Benson
#15. You cannot limit the power of your modesty to just what you wear. It is also controlled or forfeited by where you are willing to go with guys, why you go there, and how you act.
Dannah Gresh
#16. Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#17. I am by far your superior, but my notorious modesty prevents me from saying so.
Erik Satie
#18. But I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so
modesty
are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.
Daphne Du Maurier
#19. It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear.
Jeremy Taylor
#20. Several country towns, within my observation, have at least a dozen taverns. Here the time, the money, the health and the modesty, of most that are young and of many old, are wasted. Here diseases, vicious habits, bastards and legislators are frequently spawned.
John Adams
#21. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good. Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.'
Maya Angelou
#22. Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
Kahlil Gibran
#23. They praised his modesty and did not listen to him, for listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#24. It is strange that modesty is the rule for women when what they most value in men is boldness.
Ninon De L'Enclos
#25. I understood, by dint of digging into my memories, that modesty helped me to shine, humility helped me to triumph and virtue to oppress.
Albert Camus
#26. To test a modest man's modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.
Franz Grillparzer
#27. If men only knew, modesty makes women fall in love faster than all the cock-a-doodling in the world.
Barbara Kingsolver
#28. The proper name for the thing is modesty; but as we live in an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names, we will yield to a more modern nomenclature and call it dignity.
G.K. Chesterton
#29. Modesty and humility are the sobriety of the mind, as temperance and chastity are of the body.
Benjamin Whichcote
#30. Consider an achievement accidental if it is not coupled with modesty. Because if the achiever had endeavoured for it, it would certainly have killed their pride.
Raheel Farooq
#31. There is a sad forgetfulness of Christian modesty, especially in the life and dress of women.
Alice Von Hildebrand
#33. To acknowledge our faults when we are blamed, is modesty; to discover them to one's friends in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not take care, is pride.
Confucius
#34. To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
William Hazlitt
#35. Two kinds of people live a life without care: one kind are extremely worthy of praise, the other kind are extremely worthy of criticism. The first are those who care nothing for the pleasures of the world and the second (i.e. those who are deserving of criticism) care nothing for haya or modesty.
Ibn Hazm
#36. I took a look out the window before I left the room, though, to see how all the perverts were doing, but they all had their shades down. They were the heighth of modesty in the morning.
J.D. Salinger
#38. Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.
Joseph Addison
#39. You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty.
Louisa May Alcott
#41. There's a proud modesty in merit; averse from asking, and resolved to pay ten times the gifts it asks.
John Dryden
#42. Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.
W.S. Gilbert
#43. I don't think that modesty is the outstanding characteristic of contemporary politics, do you?
Edward Heath
#44. A false modesty is the meanest species of pride.
Edward Gibbon
#45. Rebuilt in Victorian times, it retained the modesty of its medieval origins. Small and neat, its spire indicated the direction of heaven without trying to pierce a hole in it.
Diane Setterfield
#46. Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more.
Mark Twain
#47. I see there is a good deal of grandiloquence in my book - my friends and foes have told me. I think it must be true, for there is a good deal of grandiloquence in me - and in nature also: I saw a sunset last evening that was a gross imposition upon modesty.
Max Ehrmann
#48. No sex, age, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one vastly beneath the rank of man.
Bruce Barton
#49. I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#50. Bacamarte evidenced neither vanity nor modesty; he listened in silence, as impassive as a stone god.
Machado De Assis
#51. I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.
Christopher Hitchens
#52. The greatest treasure you can leave your children is a sense of modesty and the advice to follow virtuous persons.
Theognis Of Megara
#53. The allure of immodesty is not in what is seen but what is not seen. Modesty issues a challenge for one man to romantically earn your virtue.
Dannah Gresh
#54. Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.
Noah Webster
#56. You find in some a sort of graceless modesty, that makes them ashamed to requite an obligation.
Seneca The Younger
#57. What can be found equal to modesty, uncorrupt faith, the sister of justice, and undisguised truth?
Horace
#58. Adornment, what a science! Beauty, what a weapon! Modesty, what elegance!
Coco Chanel
#59. False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.
Jean De La Bruyere
#60. That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty.
Marcus Aurelius
#61. You little know what you have done, when you have first broke the bounds of modesty; you have set open the door of your fancy to the devil, so that he can, almost at his pleasure ever after, represent the same sinful pleasure to you anew.
Richard Baxter
#62. To varying degrees, we all feel awkward. Whether we hide it with arrogance, shyness, modesty; whether we play the clown or the trendsetter, everyone struggles.
Miranda Hart
#63. Modesty is not one of my virtues. At the time, virtue was not one of my virtues.
Frank W. Abagnale
#64. Nor do we accept, as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#66. Generally speaking, the greater a woman's beauty, the greater her modesty.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#67. Spite of all modesty, a man must own a pleasure in the hearing of his praise.
George Farquhar
#68. Where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant.
Thomas Love Peacock
#69. Modest about our national pride - and inordinately proud of our national modesty.
Ian Hislop
#70. The modesty of women, which, in its most primitive form among animals, is based on sexual periodicity, is, with that periodicity, an essential condition of courtship.
Havelock Ellis
#71. Modesty was designed by Providence as a guard to virtue, and that it might be always at hand it is wrought into the mechanism of the body. It is likewise proportioned to the occasions of life, and strongest in youth when passion is so too.
Jeremy Collier
#72. As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
#73. Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism. St. Pierre To cultivate the sense of the beautiful, is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#74. In fact, it seems that most of the Bible's instructions regarding modesty find their context in warnings about materialism, not sexuality ...
Rachel Held Evans
#75. Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?"
"Only from ugly people," Jace confided. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me." He winked at the girls, who giggled and hid behind their hair.
Cassandra Clare
#76. We did not lack modesty - on the contrary - but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.
Georges Bataille
#78. Modesty is not one of my virtues.
Alan King
#79. Adorn thyself with simplicity and modesty and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow
Marcus Aurelius
#80. Some pretend want of power to make a competent return; and you shall find in others a kind of graceless modesty, that makes a man ashamed of requiting an obligation, because it is a confession that he has received one.
Seneca The Younger
#81. False modesty is as bad as false pride. Know exactly what you are capable of at any moment, and act accordingly. Any other path is folly - and could be deadly in battle.
Christie Golden
#82. Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way to merit that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties.
Lord Chesterfield
#83. In connection with death, or birth, or love, modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness.
Margaret Deland
#85. Modesty ... consists in pretending not to think better of ourselves and our belongings than of the man we are speaking to and his belongings.
Bertrand Russell
#86. I entered Excessive Modesty Mode. Nothing is stupider and more ineffective than Excessive Modesty Mode. It is a mode in which you show that you're modest by arguing with someone who is trying to compliment you. Essentially, you are going out of your way to try to convince someone that you're a jerk.
Jesse Andrews
#87. With perfect and unyielding faith,
With steadfastness, respect, and courtesy,
With modesty and conscientiousness,
Work calmly for the happiness of others.
Santideva
#88. My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
#89. Great minds tend toward banality. It is the noblest effort of individualism. But it implies a sort of modesty, which is so rare that it is scarcely found except in the greatest, or in beggars.
Andre Gide
#90. Journalists ask me, 'Why don't you ever talk about sex in your performances?' True, I don't talk about sex - not in my personal life and not in my professional life. This is modesty.
Gad Elmaleh
#91. She looks down at the ground to hide her smile of pleasure and to affect modesty, but when the dance brings them together and she takes his hand, her eyes come up to him and they gaze at each other with absolute longing.
Philippa Gregory
#92. 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
#93. By the virtue of modesty the devout person governs all his exterior acts. With good reason, then, does St. Paul recommend this virtue to all and declare how necessary it is and as if this were not enough he considers that this virtue should be obvious to all.
Pio Of Pietrelcina
#96. I do not believe in sex distinction in literature, law, politics, or trade - or that modesty and virtue are more becoming to women than to men, but wish we had more of it everywhere.
Belva Lockwood
#98. Character Ethic as the foundation of success - things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.
Stephen R. Covey
#99. The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
William Hazlitt
#100. We've been turned away from our bodies, shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty; we've been victims of the old fool's game: each one will love the other sex. I'll give you your body and you'll give me mine.
Helene Cixous
