Quotes About Modesty

Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neither do uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude of the voyager.

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

A conversa impregnada de vaidade e o pretensiosismo são raramente compatíveis com a virtude.

The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.

Among his own country folk Confucius wore a homely look, like one that has no word to say.

How dare I claim to be a sage or a benevolent man?

It just bothered me that you might think I'm somethin special. I aint.

To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status.

The cronies had such a curious pomposity under their assumed modesty. It was all so ex cathedra, and it all pretended to be so humble.

The ancients thought it shameful to seek advancement or want to be the head of something, or the chief or senior.

The first sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.

What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than in J. C. Penney pantsuits.

If you done it, it ain't bragging.

The skeptical Silberstein came up to Eddington and said that people believed that only three scientists in the world understood general relativity. He had been told that Eddington was one of them. The shy Quaker said nothing. "Don't be so modest, Eddington!" said Silberstein. Replied Eddington, "On the contrary. I'm just wondering who the third might be."30

In doing so, he learned one of his pragmatic lessons about jealousy and modesty: he found that people were reluctant to support a "proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise one's reputation.

Kilby displayed his awshucks humility. "When I hear that kind of thing," he responded, "it reminds me of what the beaver told the rabbit as they stood at the base of Hoover Dam: 'No, I didn't build it myself, but it's based on an idea of mine.

It was a grand triumph but not one easily understood. The skeptical Silverstein came up to Eddington and said that people believed that only three scientists in the world understood general relativity. He had been told that Eddington was one of them. The shy Quaker said nothing. Don't be modest, Eddington, said Silverstein. Replied Eddington, On the contrary, I'm just wondering who the third might be.

If I were a young man again and had to decide how to make a living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher," he intoned to Theodore White of the Reporter magazine. "I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler, in the hope of finding that modest degree of independence still available.

simplicity may be improved, but pride and conceit never. Well

he was too proud a man to be a vain one.

having, yet not possessing; working, yet not taking credit; leading without controlling or dominating.

give much, boast little, nurture others, and decline recognition or credit