Modest Quotes - Page 4

• Gratefully accepting the proffered honor, [to inscribe a new legal work to him] I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Learning, Men, Giving

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• Modest wisdom plucks me from over-credulous haste.

  William Shakespeare

  Haste, Pluck

  William Shakespeare, James Boswell, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, Edward Capell (1821). “The plays and poems of William Shakspeare”, p.226

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• Honestly, I grew up in pretty modest circumstances. We were a middle-class family.

  Larry Gagosian

  Class, Grew Up, Middle

  Interview with Peter M. Brant, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 27, 2012.

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• People are brought up to think, "It's nice to be modest. It's nice to hide your light under a bushel." Well, bullshit! I've never bought that. In my business, the only thing you've really got is your talent; it's the only thing you have to sell.

  Johnny Carson

  Nice, Thinking, Light

  Source: www.alex-haley.com

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• I think people who share my dreams can enjoy reading my novels. And that's a wonderful thing. I said that myths are like a reservoir of stories, and if I can act as a similar kind of "reservoir," albeit a modest one, that would make me very happy.

  Haruki Murakami

  Dream, Reading, Thinking

  Source: www.bookbrowse.com

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• American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

  Fanny Kemble

  Animal, Men, Stupidity

  Fanny Kemble (1890). “Further Records, 1848-1883: A Series of Letters”

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• Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest.

  Walt Whitman

  Drinking, Son, Men

  "Song of Myself " l. 497 (written 1855)

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• We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Military, Historical

  Barack Obama (2009). “Barack Obama: Speeches on the Road to the White House”

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• A modest ring at the bell at length allayed her fears, and Miss Benton, hurrying into her own room and shutting herself up, in order that she might preserve that appearance of being taken by surprise which is so essential to the polite reception of visitors, awaited their coming with a smiling countenance.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Taken

  CHARLES DICKENS (1871). “THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, AND SKETCHES BY "BOZ".”, p.218

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• The theory of evolution by natural selection is an ecological theory-founded on ecological observation by perhaps the greatest of all ecologists. It has been adopted by and brought up by the science of genetics, and ecologists, being modest people, are apt to forget their distinguished parenthood.

  John L. Harper

  Science, Theory Of Evolution, People

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• Globally, emissions may have to be reduced, the scientists are telling us, by as much as 60% or 70%, with developed countries likely to have to make even bigger cuts if we're going to allow the developing world to have their share of growing industrial prosperity...The Kyoto Protocol is only the first rather modest step. Much, much deeper emission reductions will be needed in future. The political implications are mind-blowing.

  Michael Meacher

  Country, Cutting, Kyoto Protocol

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• To master an actual technique, mental culture should come first.
  Acquiring a technique requires a careful, modest, non-mean, free and attentive mind. In other words a player should do his utmost and nothing less.

  Kyuzo Mifune

  Mean, Player, Mind

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• The great majority of people in England and America are modest, decent and pure-minded and the amount of virgins in the world today is stupendous.

  Barbara Cartland

  England And America, People, Majority

  Interview in Wendy Leigh's Speaking Frankly, 1978.

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• When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

  Alain de Botton

  World, Proust, Scene

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.164, Pan Macmillan

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• Seeking the Cave is part travelogue, part literary history, and part spiritual journey. James Lenfestey is a lively and entertaining tour guide. Modest, funny, curious, and wide open to the world, he gives us perceptive glimpses of Chinese culture, ancient to contemporary, and into what it means to be a poet, both now and twelve centuries ago. The account of his quest to find Han Shan's cave is a delight from beginning to end.

  Chase Twichell

  Spiritual, Mean, Journey

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• What I will no longer accept is the mediocre life of a modest little gentleman.

  Joan Miro

  Gentleman, Littles, Mediocre Life

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• Joining Modest Mouse was just consistent with what I used to do as a teenager: I followed where I thought I would make some interesting music.

  Johnny Marr

  Teenager, Interesting, Joining

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• Such reproductions may not interest the reader; but after all, this is my autobiography, not his; he is under no obligation to read further in it; he was under none to begin. A modest or inhibited autobiography is written without entertainment to the writer and read with distrust by the reader.

  Neville Cardus

  May, Entertainment, Distrust

  Neville Cardus (2012). “Autobiography”, p.56, Faber & Faber

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• To create an atmosphere dedicated to health..to present charming interiors that will attract maternity patients...to develop distinctive decoration and furnishings that can be installed at modest expenditure - and will require a minimum of maintenance costs.

  Dorothy Draper

  Design, Atmosphere, Cost

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• Be modest, be humble, be simple.

  Amy Chua

  Humble, Simple, Be Humble

  Amy Chua (2011). “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Be modest, be humble, be simple.Make sure you come in first so that you have something to be humble about.

  Amy Chua

  Humble, Simple, Firsts

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• Examine the measure of your children's capacities, and leave none of them uncultivated. However modest you may be in dress and other expenditures for a person of your rank, consecrate all you have to your children's education.

  Sophie von La Roche

  Children, May, Dresses

  Sophie von La Roche (1991). “The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim: Extracted by a Woman Friend of the Same from Original Documents and Other Reliable Sources”, p.138, SUNY Press

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• Although I am a strong political conservative, I now believe that the costs of our fruitless struggle against illegal drugs are not worth the modest benefits likely to be achieved.

  Ernest Van den Haag

  Strong, Believe, Struggle

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• The seeds of today's runaway government were planted when it was decided that government should help those who can't help themselves. From that modest, compassionate beginning to today's out-of-control mega-state, there's a straight, unbroken line. Once the door was open, once it was settled that the government should help some people at the expense of others, there was no stopping it.

  Harry Browne

  Government, Doors, People

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• A modest critique of an age in which an actor is the President, in which fashion models are asked for their opinions, in which getting into a nightclub is seen as a significant human achievement.

  Jay McInerney

  Fashion, America, Achievement

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