1.
I am by far your superior, but my notorious modesty prevents me from saying so.
Erik Satie
2.
Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.
Erich Maria Remarque
4.
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.
Arthur Conan Doyle
6.
Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
Mary Wollstonecraft
7.
Conceit spoils the finest genius?and the great charm of all power is modesty.
Louisa May Alcott
8.
Let your modesty be a sufficient incitement, yea, an exhortation to everyone to be at peace on their merely looking at you.
Ignatius of Loyola
12.
In all modesty, my summing up of 1955-6 and 1956-7 must be that no club in the country could live with Manchester United.
Matt Busby
13.
Indecency in anything spoils it. And modesty in anything adorns it.
Ibn Majah
14.
There is a grey blur, and a green blur. I try to stay on the grey one.
Joey Dunlop
15.
If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.
Mason Cooley
16.
The girl who chooses to be modest, chooses to be respected.
Howard W. Hunter
18.
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.
Mark Twain
21.
At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings.
Hector Berlioz
22.
Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.
Oliver Herford
23.
There is a sad forgetfulness of Christian modesty, especially in the life and dress of women.
Alice von Hildebrand
24.
I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.
Jean-Paul Sartre
25.
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.
Edith Sitwell
26.
Gaming is the destruction of all decorum; the prince forgets at it his dignity, and the lady her modesty.
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
27.
Modesty means to be free from undue familiarity, from indecency, from lewdness, pure in thought and conduct. Speaking of modest apparel, it means decent, seemly. The opposite of modesty is conceit, boldness, immodesty, brazenness, lewdness.
Elisabeth Elliot
28.
The convention missionaries call "modesty" has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody's whim - anybody's diseased caprice.
Mark Twain
29.
'Infidel' is a term of reproach,
which Christians and Mohammedans,
in their modesty,
agree to apply to those who differ from them.
Thomas Huxley
31.
We lament, too, the destruction of purity among women and young girls as is evidenced by the increasing immodesty of their dress and conversation and by their participation in shameful dances.
Pope Pius XI
32.
Modesty died when clothes were born.
Mark Twain
34.
Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.
W. S. Gilbert
35.
You don't want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I'm here because I've been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I'm paying for someone else who has yet to come.
Maya Angelou
37.
Modesty answers not the crude how of femininity, but the beautiful why.
Wendy Shalit
38.
I don't think anyone who genuinely embraced sincerity, charity and modesty could be intolerant or divisive.
Julian Baggini
39.
In all modesty, we must admit that governments are not always the best doctors when it comes to diagnosing economic ailments and prescribing the right treatment.
Kim Campbell
40.
Avoid failing, not only against purity, but even against the least rules of an exact modesty.
Paul of the Cross
41.
Ambition is never modest. If modesty means to have middling success, then I can only say: I'm not interested.
Emmanuel Macron
42.
The most insidious of sophisms are usually repeated to justify immodesty and seem to be the same everywhere.
Pope Pius XII
43.
There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery.
Jean de la Bruyere
44.
Modesty in human beings is praised because it is not a matter of nature, but of will.
Lactantius
45.
By God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own modesty.
Robert Clive
47.
Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.
Jesse Jackson
48.
What can be found equal to modesty, uncorrupt faith, the sister of justice, and undisguised truth?
Horace
49.
Genuine wisdom is usually conspicuous through modesty and silence.
Napoleon Hill
50.
We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.
Georges Bataille