Top 155 Modest Quotes

Boys are quite often whimsical. Whereas girls are modest by nature and know their responsibilities very well. Their weapons are service, sacrifice, and love, by which they conquer over the males.

Given that many girls are indoctrinated to believe that they should be feminine and modest about their abilities, as well as brought up to assume that girls are not innately gifted at science or math, it is not surprising that so few can see themselves as successful computer scientists.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Before the ’80s, no girl would ask to click a photograph. That was modest and demure.

Of course I’ve already taken a very modest position on the monetary system, I do take the position that we should just end the Fed.

Because of ‘World War Z’ and ‘The Walking Dead,’ I can’t pitch a modest little zombie film which is meant to be sociopolitical.

The first bookstore I loved wasn’t a little independent gem nestled in a neighborhood: it was a modest Waldenbooks in our local shopping mall.

Be modest, be respectful of others, try to understand.

On their own merits modest men are dumb.

I started out from a pretty modest background, so I always had a pretty good sense of money. I always had to work for my money, save my own money, I always bought my own stuff with my money… trying not to waste money unnecessarily.

You may be modest and un-egotistical in your life; I’m quite ordinary. But I play big egotistical parts.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

One of the challenges for sub-Saharan Africa is that markets are of modest size. This makes regional integration important.

In the deregulated realm of US banking and finance, crime does occasionally pay for its foul deeds, not in prison time but by making modest rebates to the victims.

Students come away with a clear message about how admissions works: If you have money, connections or ‘insider‘ knowledge, you have a leg up. It’s hardly surprising that many students of modest or lower means decide it’s not even worth playing.

I don’t know how smart I am. I just try to be what I am. I hope I’m modest. I think that’s a desirable trait.

No modest man ever did or ever will make a fortune.

An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return.

Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, it was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson.

I have had the good fortune to live – as an inside witness and, even, a modest participant – at a time when our understanding of this wonder we call ‘life’ has made its most revolutionary advances.

I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that’s greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I’m trying to do that in a modest way.

When you compare the relatively modest tax that will ensue from prohibiting companies from receiving a subsidy and deducting that subsidy, the benefits dramatically outweigh the costs.

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

Cyberattacks have become a permanent fixture on the international scene because they have become easy and cheap to launch. Basic computer literacy and a modest budget can go a long way toward invading a country‘s cyberspace.

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

Dealing with environmental lawsuits and grassroots resistance is expensive. Industrial wind and solar developers have to hire lawyers, public relations specialists, and scientists willing to testify that this or that project poses only a modest threat to endangered birds and bats.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

I kind of feel like the job of actors and writers and people who make television and movies is to keep people company. In whatever modest way I’m able to accomplish that, I want to.

In 1988, federal data showed a modest China-trade surplus of $1.6 billion in Canada‘s favour.

Let’s stop telling people from modest backgrounds that their education is capped at a certain level because of where they grew up. In fact I can attest to the fact that all this attitude does is put people off wanting to test the waters and apply, or push themselves towards higher education at all.

I don’t know how much the economy has changed since Jonathan Swift‘s ‘A Modest Proposal.’

Grilling is an easy tradition to start at any age! To get started, one only needs a modest investment in equipment and a little bit of outdoor space.

To be meek, patient, tactful, modest, honorable, brave, is not to be either manly or womanly; it is to be humane.

Before my book, ‘California,’ came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let’s put it this way – I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn’t want it to disappoint, but I didn’t expect it to be a best-seller, either.

I’m a very modest person. But I’m also extremely confident. And if you put me in the situation or in the moment, I’m gonna have some swagger, I’m gonna have some cockiness.

I’m quite modest. I don’t want to tell people I’m a leader.

It’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

The modest person is usually admired, if people ever hear of them.

We’ve always actually been remarkably commercially successful. Not in terms of making huge amounts of money, which we rarely do, but in terms of not losing money and making modest amounts of money. We’re actually strangely consistent in that respect.

The college that takes students with modest entering abilities and improves their abilities substantially contributes more than the school that takes very bright students and helps them develop only modestly.

A modest dose of self-love is entirely healthy – who would want to live in a world where everyone hated themselves? But taken too far, it soon becomes poisonous.

My friends kidded me about going so far on such modest talent. I always agreed with them. I had no illusions about my films, nor did I consider myself anything special as an actor or a singer.

How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.

Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.

If architects weren’t arrogant, they wouldn’t be architects. I don’t know a modest good architect.

I have had the opportunity to become acquainted with many wonderful people from many walks of life. I have known rich and poor, famous and modest, wise and otherwise.

My parents had us very young. We lived in a modest house. We built forts, we hiked, we went camping and they wanted us to be independent. It’s how children grew up in the 1940s and 50s: outside all the time, playing in the dirt, riding your bike around.

It’s always been hard trying to find the right pieces that go together, but it’s always been something that interests me – finding new ways to be fashionable and cute but still being modest.

I think I have an inherent modest level of stress, but I’m only super-aware of it when it goes away, when I’m on holiday and I think, ‘Oh this feels pretty good.’

To test a modest man’s modesty do not investigate if he ignores applause, find out if he abides criticism.

I mean no film is beyond criticism, but I think we’ve made a very modest movie.

I do feel it’s hard to be modest and humble and egoless when people are telling you you are so great and wanting to give you prizes and energy. I’m trying hard not to be an awful, narcissistic human being.

I made a point when I made the Ugly Casanova record to not write a song and then say, ‘This is a Modest Mouse song’ or ‘This is an Ugly Casanova song.’ The people who were open to it not being a Modest Mouse record liked it.

A modest man is usually admired, if people ever hear of him.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

I find it more consoling to think of myself as little than to think of myself as big. I think I’ve gotten that from animals, particularly dogs. Dogs live such a modest life, and they don’t live long, and the more you’re around them, you kind of accept that.

Facebook draws from the public and public-interest sphere, a simultaneously bold and modest step towards acknowledging that our new networked technologies deeply affect our lives in ways not always captured or best shaped by the typical template of consumer and seller.

A multi-tier social protection system must be based on a modest basic income so as to enable the precariat to build lives involving a balance of different types of work, not just labour in jobs.

America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn’t put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist.

If you’re successful, you must express a modest appearance.

Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.

My father worked in a post office and never made probably more than $8,000 a year as an employee of the post office, so when people can rise up from very modest circumstances and do well economically, I think that’s a good thing about America, and we should encourage that kind of activity.

One of the things with Canada is we’re of a modest enough size that we never feel that the ideal outcome of any given deal is, we win and you lose.

I am a birthday person. I am not modest about birthdays.

The true color of life is the color of the body, the color of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest color of the unpublished blood.

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one’s enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one’s friends.

Let’s find those areas where modest and reasonable tax cuts will have the biggest positive impact on our economy, and which will improve the lives of those who need it most: working families, retirees, and small business owners.

Singing in character you can be more of a show off or more modest because it isn’t yourself it’s a nice way to sing, unusual, a bit like being in musical I guess.

Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography. A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse, for a relatively modest cost.

Economists should be modest and be aware that they are part of the broader social science community. We need to be pragmatic about the methods we use. When we need to do history, we should do history. When we need to study political science, we should study political science.

Mother set impossibly high standards for us, creating tremendous pressures and undermining our ability to accomplish whatever modest aims we may have set for ourselves.

I will continue to distribute blankets, sleeping bags, warm clothing and food on a regular basis, in the hope that my modest efforts will give some comfort to those people we are able help.

I had a very modest upbringing.

Intelligent design is a modest position theologically and philosophically. It attributes the complexity and diversity of life to intelligence, but does not identify that intelligence with the God of any religious faith or philosophical system.

‘Scandal,’ I sort of experienced the ascent and the transition from a modest start to a full-blown hit.

After a two-year stint at Stars, I wanted to start my own full-service restaurant, but I didn’t have the funds to do so, so I got a modest loan from my parents and opened Chipotle with the goal of having it fund that restaurant.

People hear that and say I’m being modest, but I am not a modest person, but I have to be truthful about what I’m doing and what I’m doing is channeling.

‘Marley and Me’ was a book I was proud of and believed in, but I thought it would just have a modest audience because it is such a personal story about my marriage and my family.

The last time I visited Qaddafi was in May of 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his rather modest residence where he took me to show me how it had been left.

Corney & Barrow are proud to have the royal warrant, meaning that they provide the Palace with some of the greatest – and necessarily most expensive – wines from around the world. I am pleased to say that they also hold my own warrant, for providing exceptional wines at – surprisingly – modest prices.

I think, going forward, we need to be much more modest on expectations with regard to China growth: That’s just being realistic.

The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.

I’m not painting myself as a down-home, modest guy.

Social democrats are characteristically modest – a political quality whose virtues are overestimated. We need to apologise a little less for our shortcomings and speak more assertively of achievements. That these were always incomplete should not trouble us.

I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie.

I’m just writing less of my own music lately – I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

I think a British icon is someone who conducts themself with real dignity: someone who is truly talented and modest. These are things that I would aspire to in my career.

The modest three hours a day I spend with my colleagues is about right – I certainly couldn’t imagine going into quarantine with them.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‘I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.’ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‘Yes, I deserve it.’

There’s so much that can be learned from French cooking, especially really traditional, more modest meals.

We live in a modest system, a galaxy called the Milky Way. If we named every star in the Milky Way and put them in the Hollywood telephone directory and stacked those telephone directories up, we’d have a pile of telephone directories 70 miles high.

When immigration proceeds at a steady but modest clip, deep change comes slowly, and there’s time for assimilation to do its work.

The point came when people were doing things I didn’t feel competent to do myself. I’m not being modest; I honestly get lost. I was lucky in spotting what I did when I did, but there comes a point where you realise what you’re doing is not going to be much good.

The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.

I’m very, very modest.

All due respect and trying to be as modest as I can be, I am a dancer. But I don’t think I would be on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ mainly because I would be too shy.

I just owe almost everything to my father and it’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

No person who is well bred, kind and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want for manners or of heart.

What makes you better is not playing every single game in a modest championship. What makes you better is playing 10 games in a very competitive league.

The kids who take up athletics actually come from modest to poor backgrounds. They make it on their own steam; some of them don’t even have the basic means like shoes and enough food to eat.

I come from an extremely modest background. So now I have way more than what I’m used to.

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

Nondiscrimination has been the law of the land for over three decades, yet, in some workplaces, the standard for treatment of pregnant women has remained in the dark ages. Some are fired or demoted, with no hesitation, when a modest accommodation would allow them to continue to work and support their families.

I work hard, and I haven‘t done badly in life. But I pretty much came from very modest roots… I go home on my train; I cut my own grass… I don’t have anything against people that are more elite, but it’s just not who I am or what I’m about.

I would love to have my own fashion line. I love modest clothing that’s still flirty.

We’re going to reserve our efforts and our national solidarity for the most humble, the most modest, and the most poor among us.

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them.

The only possible role that I can see for reconciliation would be to make modest changes in the major package to improve affordability, to deal with what share of Medicaid expansion the federal government pays, those kinds of issues, which is the traditional role for reconciliation in health care.

I like Modest Mouse. I’m our biggest fan. And enemy. I won’t waste people’s time by putting out a Modest Mouse record just because. That’s fair, right?

I think I’m very permeable. I can very easily, without even choosing to do it, enter the life of another. Or, to put it in a more modest and accurate way, for that life to enter mine.

I’m not shy. I’m modest, but I’m very outgoing.

I liked flying, when I got into it, loved it. And I found I was very good at it. I’m not modest about the fact that I was a good pilot.

I grew up very modest, and I never forget that.

The odds of being successful are the same for every group that is educated in America. It’s just that the group that is not wealthy is 95 percent of the population. So if there are 100 successful people in a room, probably 95 out of 100 came from more modest means.

To see a small, modest team built on hard work, where the players are so close, so together, win week after week, stay up there and play so well, when they’re so consistent and they win the league, that makes people take them to their hearts.

Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

Audrey, it seems to me, never strove or hoped to leave a lasting legacy with her films – she was far too modest for that. But what I think she would have wanted, had she been given more time, would have been to continue her work for children because she knew that is a task with so much to be accomplished.

Social Security was designed to give a few years of modest benefits to people whose bodies were worn out through coal mining, factory work and other physically demanding labor.

I would like to win the Pulitzer Prize. I would like to win the Nobel Prize. I would like to win a Tony award for the Broadway musical I’m now working on. Aside from these, my aspirations are modest ones.

I’m on Twitter, and I have over 10,000 followers. Which is pretty modest compared to Charlie Sheen.

I grew up as a baseball player, and given my modest size, it was always clear that I would end up playing in the infield.

It well becomes a young man to be modest.

Christian sisters should not at any time dress extravagantly, but at all times dress as neat, modest, and healthful, as their work will allow.

I’ve never wanted to get adjusted to my income, because I knew I wanted to go back to public service. And in comparison to what my mother earns and how I was raised, it’s not modest at all. I have no right to complain.

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.

A poor worker is taxed heavily to receive his own money back with a modest supplement. Surely it would be more efficient just to pay the supplement and take him out of direct tax altogether.

College professors used to be badly paid and worth it. Colleges used to be modest institutions; they should go back to being modest institutions.

Chinese women are much more modest than American women when it comes to clothes. We tend to show less flesh.

I thought if I was lucky it would be a nice, modest-sized, modest-budgeted film that would be a modest success. And then something happened.

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

Wearing modest clothing is a belief, and I’m not going to say that every Muslim woman is in my shoes, but the majority of us do have a choice.

I grew up in a very modest home. We grew a lot of our food in our backyard. We fished; my brothers hunted.

With a modest amount of looks and talent, and more than a modicum of serendipity, I’ve managed to stretch my 15 minutes of fame into 50 years of good fortune.

Publicly I’m a very modest dresser, by Hollywood’s standards.

My philosophy is very much to encourage my children to forge their own success and happiness, even though that will undoubtedly involve much more modest levels of wealth creation.

By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused; the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint.

As a consequence while we had a roof over our heads, food on the table, and clothes to wear to school we were constantly conscious of being of modest means.

Once a popular Alaska governor with a modest record of accomplishment, Palin could conceivably revive her reputation in this era of short memories. But it’s hard to imagine her name atop the GOP ballot in 2016, when a cast of heavyweights who sat out 2012 will be vying for the nomination.

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.

Inflation is lower and more stable and the real business cycle fluctuations are more modest.

An inevitable question asked of a performer who has made a modest success of his career is, ‘How has success changed you?’ It’s a loaded question because it automatically assumes that there has been a change. And, in a sense, the assumption is a correct one. Basically, however, most people remain pretty much the same.

I’m not too modest of a person. I’ve got a pretty blue sense of humor.

Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous.

Hoover himself had risen from the most modest means of any president since Abraham Lincoln. Orphaned as a small boy, he worked his way through Stanford‘s ‘pioneer‘ class – the first freshmen at Stanford. He started his mining career in hard labor.

I think I’ve become more modest as the years have gone on.

It is not good to demonstrate your luxury and your wealth: to rub it in the faces of others is insulting. So you should be modest; try not to insult people by showing that you can do what they cannot.

I’m a leftie, and I’ve always believed in doing things on a modest scale.

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

Be modest, humble, simple. Control your anger.

Eric Ashcroft, a gentle, kind, popular man with a wicked sense of humour, was always modest about his wartime exploits, but eventually, with much prompting from his persistent son, he told me of his terrifying experience on D-Day.

You will not see me dressed in plain, modest outfits.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‘Run like hell and all of fire.’ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.