Modest Quotes - Page 15

• A fellow once came to me to ask for an appointment as a minister abroad. Finding he could not get that, he came down to some more modest position. Finally, he asked to be made a tide-waiter. When he saw he could not get that, he asked me for an old pair of trousers. It is sometimes well to be humble.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Humble, Pairs, Tides

  Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, James Ford Rhodes, John Esten Cooke (2017). “CIVIL WAR – Complete History of the War, Documents, Memoirs & Biographies of the Lead Commanders: Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant & William T. Sherman, Biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis & Robert E. Lee, The Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, Presidential Orders & Actions”, p.797, Madison & Adams Press

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• Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.

  James C. Collins

  Humble, Leader, Fearless

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• No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth - and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man's mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.

  Ayn Rand

  Integrity, Thinking, Reality

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.260, Penguin

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• Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze by the sweet power of music.

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Inspiration, Eye

  William Shakespeare (2001). “The Merchant of Venice: The Applause Shakespeare Library”, p.152, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• ... semantics ... is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflict. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense

  Alfred Tarski

  Real, Illusions Of Grandeur, Class

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• Many analysts now regard modest, zero, or negative growth in our rate of energy use as a realistic long-term goal.

  Amory Lovins

  Zero, Long, Goal

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• Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

  Wendell Berry

  Freedom, Heart, Thinking

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.62, Counterpoint Press

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• I'd like to have two armies: one for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general's bowel movements or their colonel's piles, an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.

  Jean Larteguy

  Country, Military, Army

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• I cannot become modest; too many things burn in me; the old solutions are falling apart; nothing has been done yet with the new ones. So I begin, everywhere at once, as if I had a century ahead of me.

  Elias Canetti

  Fall, Done, Century

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• As president, I will fight illegal immigration in order to preserve an appropriate level of legal immigration. At the same time, I believe our system of legal immigration needs to be re-examined. As part of this re-examination, I support a modest, temporary reduction in the annual rate of legal immigration.

  Bob Dole

  Believe, Fighting, Order

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• Who can describe the transports of a beam truly parental on beholding a daughter shoot up like some fair and modest flower, and acquire, day after day, fresh beauty and growing sweetness, so as to fill every eye with pleasure and every heart with admiration?

  George Fordyce

  Daughter, Flower, Heart

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• We should allow others' excellences, to preserve a modest opinion of our own.

  Isaac Barrow

  Appreciation, Excellence, Opinion

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• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Thinking, Religion

  "What I Believe". "The Forum", 84, (p. 139), September 1930.

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• When luck is on your side it is not the time to be modest or timid. It is the time to go for the biggest success you can possibly achieve.

  Donald Trump

  Success, Your Side, Achievement

  Donald J. Trump, Bill Zanker (2007). “Think BIG and Kick Ass in Business and Life”, HarperBus

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• A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

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• The solitude lends much appeal, because a sea without a harbour surrounds it. Even a modest boat can find few anchorage, and nobody can go ashore unnoticed by the guards. Its winter is mild because it is enclosed by a range of mountains which keeps out the fierce temperature; its summer is unequal. The open sea is very pleasant and it has a view of a beautiful bay.

  Tacitus

  Beautiful, Summer, Latin

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• Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Greatness, Men, Use

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• I have a most peaceable disposition. My desires are for a modest hut, a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, very fresh milk and butter, flowers in front of my window and a few pretty trees by my door. And should the good Lord wish to make me really happy, he will allow me the pleasure of seeing about six or seven of my enemies hanged upon those trees.

  Heinrich Heine

  Peace, Crazy, Flower

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• I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth onely in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield it self upon honest and lawfull terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.

  John Donne

  Honesty, Integrity, Yield

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• I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing. Then I want to do something modest; to work out by myself a tiny, formal motive, one that my pencil will be able to hold without technique.

  Paul Klee

  Knowing Nothing, Drawing, Work Out

  "Artists on Art, from the 14th - 20th centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, p. 442, 1972.

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• One of these modest little moves may be more embarrassing to your opponent than the biggest threat

  Siegbert Tarrasch

  Moving, Littles, Chess

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• Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed - naked and pure-minded. And no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty in the soiled mind, there was no other way to get it. ... The convention mis-called "modesty" has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anyone's whim - anyone's diseased caprice.

  Mark Twain

  Mind, Naked, World

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• Traveling provides occasions for shaking oneself up but not, as people believe, freedom. Indeed it involves a kind of reduction: deprived of one’s usual setting, the customary routine stripped away like so much wrapping paper, the traveller finds himself reduced to more modest proportions - but also more open to curiosity, to intuition, to love at first sight.

  Nicolas Bouvier

  Believe, Sight, People

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• Life is very fleeting. It’s important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we’ve done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That’s it. I don’t feel particularly important. What we create is not important. We’re very insignificant.

  Oscar Niemeyer

  Moving, Optimistic, Simple

  "Why Oscar Niemeyer is king of curves" by Tom Dyckhoff, www.thetimes.co.uk. December 12, 2007.

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• For example, Michael Jordan earns $100million a year but continues to play basketball and remains a modest human being.

  Franz Beckenbauer

  Inspirational, Basketball, Years

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