Modest Quotes - Page 11

• In the middle 1970s an astronomer I admire put together a modest manifesto called "Objections to Astrology" and asked me to endorse it. I struggled with his wording, and in the end found myself unable to sign, not because I thought astrology has any validity whatever, but because I felt (and still feel) that the tone of the statement was authoritarian.

  Carl Sagan

  Astrology, Atheism, Together

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.388, Ballantine Books

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• Then the Parson might preach, & drink, & sing, And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring; And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church, Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

  William Blake

  Children, Spring, Bird

  'Songs of Experience' (1794) 'The Little Vagabond'

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• The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain" - that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain" - that is natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists because so great is his humility that he does not think it important that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no artifice to make us forget him.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Rain, Humility, Thinking

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2696, Delphi Classics

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• Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

  Novalis

  Soil, Harvest, Poor

  Motto for "Pollen and Fragments" by Novalis, 1798.

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• Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.

  Anthony Trollope

  Country, Book, Doctors

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...”, p.714, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• When a man has his heart in the right place and good taste, he can not only do well in politics but is even predetermined for it. If someone is modest and does not yearn for power, he is certainly not ill-equipped to engage in politics; on the contrary, he belongs there. What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things.

  Vaclav Havel

  Lying, Heart, Men

  International Herald Tribune, October 29, 1991.

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• I'd like to think, eight years ago, I was pretty humble and modest. But I think, with each year, you get more modest, more humble, more appreciative. The off the field tragedies put things in better perspective, but life happens to everybody, and I think we all just try to do the best we can.

  Brett Favre

  Humble, Thinking, Eight

  "Green Bay's big cheese aging gracefully". rockymountainnews.com, October 23, 2007.

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• Human beings do not wish to be modest; they want to be as expressive - that is, as immodest - as fear allows; fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem.

  Edward Sapir

  Fashion, Wish, Want

  Edward Sapir, David Goodman Mandelbaum (1985). “Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality”, p.380, Univ of California Press

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• Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Thinking, Hands, Years

  "Mapping Ideology" by Slavoj Žižek, p.1, 1994.

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• Surely we have had enough of confusing maleness with "usefulness" and other human virtues. If men had a more modest view of what their masculinity ought to entail, perhaps they could move on from debilitating feelings of loss to tackling their real economic and political problems.

  Ellen Willis

  Real, Moving, Loss

  "How Now, Iron Johns?". "The Nation", December 13, 1999.

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• It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

  Mark Twain

  Simple, Men, Ninety Nine

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.7082, Delphi Classics

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• The impact of the Kyoto Protocol on global temperature is quite modest, especially for the first century. The reduction in global mean temperature in the Annex I case relative to the reference in 2100 is 0.13ºC; this compares with a difference of 0.17ºC from the Kyoto Protocol calculated by Wigley. The temperature reduction in the optimal run is essentially the same as the Kyoto runs by the 22nd century.

  Henry Sylvester Jacoby

  Running, Mean, Kyoto Protocol

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• The different policies reduce damages by only a modest amount. Indeed, one of the surprises is how little the policies affect the damages from global warming. The reasons are that, because there is so much inertia in the climate system and because the Protocol reduced the global temperature increase by only a fraction of a degree over the next century.

  Henry Sylvester Jacoby

  Kyoto Protocol, Littles, Next

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• Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

  Alain de Botton

  Happiness, Success, Fall

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• The Constitution was written by 55 educated and highly intelligent men in Philadelphia in 1787, but it was written so that it could be understood by people of limited education and modest intelligence.

  John Jay Hooker

  Men, Intelligent, Philadelphia

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• The blushing beauties of a modest maid.

  John Dryden

  Maids, Blushing, Girlhood

  John Dryden, C. B., Esquire Charles BATHURST (1852). “Selections from the poetry of Dryden, including his plays and translations. [The editor's preface signed: C. B., i.e. Charles Bathurst.]”, p.191

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• I think you keep two sets of books. In one set, you record the truth -- how well you are really doing. This is the secret set -- just for you and loved ones. In the other set are more modest entries and statements, and these are for public consumption!

  Helen Gurley Brown

  Book, Thinking, Two

  Helen Gurley Brown (2000). “I'm Wild Again: Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts”, p.113, Macmillan

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• Modest women choose a man by the mind, not the eye.

  Publilius Syrus

  Eye, Men, Mind

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• I was always trying to look modest and natural. I don't like women who come into the lab and you see immediately that it took them two hours to dress in the morning.

  Christiane Nusslein-Volhard

  Morning, Two, Always Trying

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I certainly think that the world views the United States as a place to be respected. All over the world our values are respected; who we are, a place that you can come and come from modest circumstances to great things, that's respected.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Thinking, Views, United States

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• ...how little our side of the industry did to move its business to the more ethical firms and to make a fuss about conflicted or unethical behavior. Had a number of us moved our business, we might have slowed or even stopped the 30-year slide in conflicted, unethical behavior that we have experienced. I, for one, regret the modest nature of our moves. We all could have done more. We have tolerated a pretty nasty decline in standards. Shame on us.

  Jeremy Grantham

  Regret, Moving, Numbers

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• The sovereign good of man is a mind that subjects all things to itself and is itself subject to nothing; such a man's pleasures are modest and reserved, and it may be a question whether he goes to heaven, or heaven comes to him; for a good man is influenced by God Himself, and has a kind of divinity within him.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Heaven, Good Man

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• Even in the world of molecules the civilising influence of modest restraints is a cause for rejoicing.

  John Charles Polanyi

  Molecules, World, Causes

  "Some Concepts In Reaction Dynamics". "Nobel Lectures", Chemistry 1986, p. 403, December 08, 1986.

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• I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco.

  Nikolai Gogol

  Wall, Rain, Russia

  Nikolai Gogol (1985). “The Complete Tales of Nikolai Gogol”, p.1, University of Chicago Press

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• Prudery is often immodestly modest; its habit is to multiply sentinels in proportion as the fortress is less threatened.

  George D. Prentice

  Habit, Fortresses, Proportion

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