Modest Quotes - Page 16

• Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with as many patrons as beholders.

  Joseph Addison

  Acceptance, Awkward, Merit

  Joseph Addison (1856). “The works of ... Joseph Addison, with notes by R. Hurd”, p.118

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

  Dan Simmons

  Passion, Brain, Crowds

  Dan Simmons (2011). “The Fall of Hyperion”, p.316, Spectra

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  117 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• That holy, humble, meek, modest, retiring Form, sometimes called the Spirit of Prayer, has been dragged from the closet, and so rudely handled by some of her professed friends, that she has not only lost all her wonted loveliness, but is now stalking the street, in some places, stark mad.

  Asahel Nettleton

  Prayer, Humble, Mad

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 193, 1895.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• 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'

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've been fortunate to meet and work with a lot of really smart people. The thing that strikes me most about them is how they continue to explore and learn every day. I have tried to apply that approach in my modest career as well.

  Bill Russell

  Smart, Careers, People

  Source: www.usatoday.com

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would be a healthy exercise for every politician to look in the mirror every morning and remind himself that he holds office only because, in a two-man race against another mediocrity, a modest majority of those half-informed people who imagined that their votes mattered reckoned that he was the lesser evil. And they weren't too sure about that.

  Joseph Sobran

  Morning, Exercise, Men

  13 Copy quote

• I run a modest-sized laboratory thats looking specifically at what we call the pathogenic mechanisms of HIV disease, or AIDS.

  Anthony S. Fauci

  Running, Disease, Hiv

  4 Copy quote

• Louis XIV was very frank and sincere when he said: I am the State. The modern statist is modest. He says: I am the servant of the State; but, he implies, the State is God. You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Kings, Struggle, Humble

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Women who are the least bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ignorance, Vices, Principles

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.309

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Character, Suffering, Peculiar

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.75

  8 Copy quote

  Show source