Top 165 Modest Quotes

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.

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

I’m a very modest person.

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

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.

I grew up in a modest neighborhood just outside of Los Angeles. It was an industrial community of blue-collar, working people… some of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met.

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.

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.

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.

The awareness of our own strength makes us modest.

I lost 80 percent of my wealth and then gave away over half of the rest. So I’m a man of modest means now. But if you budget carefully and watch your expenditures, you can get by on a couple billion dollars.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I felt more doubtful than usual with ‘Goon Squad,’ because I knew that the book’s genre wasn’t easily named – Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? – and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.

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.

Pete Seeger is a modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured man. He’s a good folk singer, if you can stand folk singing. And he’s such an excellent banjo player that you almost don’t wish you had a pair of wire cutters.

The extraordinary thing about my mother, she’s so modest about me.

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.

Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous.

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

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.

My mother was a very natural woman. She never spoiled herself, never wore make-up, and wore modest jewellery, but she always had a few special items for when she wanted to feel like a lady. One of those special items – and I remember it because it seemed so elegant – was her Guerlain powder.

I have people who say, ‘You should dress up like this, or you should dress more modest; you should cover up more.’ And then, at the other end of the spectrum, you have, like, ‘Why are you still wearing your scarf? You’re in America, you know.’

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.

I have had some amazing experiences as a musician – even with my modest skills.

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.’

To not be modest about it, you’ll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have done their best work by far with me.

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

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.

For better or for worse, in ‘The Last Savage,’ I have dared to do away completely with fashionable dissonance, and in a modest way, I have endeavored to rediscover the nobility of gracefulness and the pleasure of sweetness.

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.

The street I lived on for the first handful of years of my life was lined with modest, lower-middle-class houses with small front yards and cracked driveways – your typical North Jersey neighborhood, with all the odd hidden darkness that that implies.

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

It well becomes a young man to be modest.

Newt Gingrich is a boastful kind of guy. But when it comes to Wall Street, the former House speaker is surprisingly modest.

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 don’t take fancy vacations. I buy all my jewelry at Claire’s. I can’t remember the last time I went out to a fancy dinner. My family lives in a modest two-bedroom apartment, and my kids share a bedroom. But I do have one extravagant vice: shoes.

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.

I signed a very modest $3,000 bonus with the Braves in Milwaukee. And my old man didn’t have that kinda money to put out.

It was a challenge to be able to create a character without being able to use one’s normal set of expressions. All the rubber and makeup attached to your face left you with only a modest range of facial movements.

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

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.

Too often, if you look back through the history of representation and you take the work of African-American artists, the work is on such a modest scale that it becomes sort of inconsequential.

In contrast to our sinking taste, there has been a revival of interest in verse drama in England, Scotland, and elsewhere. The movement has been slow but sure and, above all, modest in its demands.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

I think of myself as a shy, modest, relatively unassuming person.

I grew up in a very modest house. We were poor-we lived on the poverty level. We all got jobs as young kids.

Every writer dreams of having a backyard cottage, similar to Dahl’s ‘writing hut.’ English cottages and charming huts might seem out of reach, but a good carpenter could build a modest cottage on the cheap.

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’m intrigued by people who make their modest living doing good things for others. Teachers, nonprofit workers, librarians… those are the heroes in our society.

Yes, ‘Bonanza’ has made me very comfortable. I have a big four-level contemporary house in West Los Angeles and a modest summer home in East Marion, LI.

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.