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1 " My dear Watson," said [Sherlock Holmes], " I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers. "
2 " 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. "
3 " Sunshine, I... Starla's voice broke off as she entered the room and caught sight of him standing naked in the corner. She eyed him in an odd, detached way, as if he were an interesting piece of furniture.Talon and modesty were strangers, but the way she stared at him made him damned uncomfortable. In spite of the sunlight, Talon grabbed the pink blanket off the bed and clutched it to his middle.You know, Sunshine, you need to find a man like that to marry. Someone so well hung that even after three or four kids, he'd still be wall to wall.Talon gaped.Sunshine laughed. " Starla, you're embarrassing him. "
4 " The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken; Great Benevolence is not benevolent; Great Modesty is not humble; Great Daring does not attack. If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. "
5 " To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again. "
― Marilynne Robinson
6 " He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good. "
― Confucius , The Sayings of Confucius
7 " Vanity degrades your soul whereas modesty strengthen it "
8 " 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 , Hitch 22: A Memoir
9 " I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work.Let God worry about your modesty I want to see your enthusiasm. "
10 " A society which sees her modesty or her " hang-ups" as a problem is necessarily a society which will not be able to get him to commit. Conversely, a society which respected modesty, or what now goes by " hang-ups" , was one in which men were obligated. "
11 " a little modesty stays ridicule "
12 " On the whole I try to keep Modesty and Willie in timeless settings, which is why I avoid all the latest slang and in-words. It won't be long before 'brill' sounds as dated as 'super' does now. [Uncle Happy, 1990] "
― Peter O'Donnell
13 " He slowed down a bit more. " Gaia, how do you know these things?" She shrugged. " I'm smart." " And modest, too." " Modesty is a waste of time," she pronounced. " I'll keep that in mind. "
14 " In my time first cousins did not meet like strangers. But we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us. "
― J. Sheridan Le Fanu , Uncle Silas
15 " No doubt he must very soon realize that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don't think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledge of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. "
16 " His whole effort, therefore, will be to get the man’s mind off the subject of his own value altogether. He would rather the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one. Your efforts to instil either vain glory or false modesty into the patient will therefore be met from the Enemy’s side with the obvious reminder that a man is not usually called upon to have an opinion of his own talents at all, since he can very well go on improving them to the best of his ability without deciding on his own precise niche in the temple of Fame...The Enemy will also try to render real in the patient’s mind...the doctrine that they did not create themselves, that their talents were given them, and that they might as well be proud of the colour of their hair...Even of his sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much: once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased "
― C.S. Lewis , The Screwtape Letters
17 " Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level "
― Gustave Flaubert , November
18 " You win the Game,” Vitas says. His features obscured under the long black robe, regal-like modesty against our animalistic near nudity.― Ant Ryan, Celestial Spheres "
19 " I think the skin revolution for women, I will call it, really all started with Mariah Carey. Madonna was pretty risqué too, but she was pretty much always known as a " bad girl." Mariah was a good girl, supposedly Christian, turning very bad, in the late 90's. So then, all the other little girls and teens and women across America thought it would be ok for them to " come out" too essentially, or flaunt whatever they had. Modesty went completely out the window for many women, starting in the late 90's. "
20 " There are so many of you, and you are still just the way I thought I'd grow up, with all that was enviably grown-up about you: the lace tops with modesty inserts, and the spangles as if for nights out, the stiff hair, the cardigans grown over with a fungus of secondary sexual characteristics--bristling with embroidery and drooping with labial frills. "
― , Vertigo
