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More "Modesty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... painter's prerogative to warn even—love from that holy of holies. I often wonder what was behind the curtain. I realized from that moment that if you want to see a great artist's best work, you must override his modesty and secretiveness—and tear the screen ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... the Government of the United States should make to Captain Ericsson "such suitable return for his services as will evince the gratitude of a great nation." Upon hearing this suggestion, Ericsson, with characteristic modesty, remarked,—"All the remuneration I desire for the Monitor I get out of the construction of it. It is all-sufficient." Nevertheless we think the suggestion well worthy of consideration. In the same spirit of manly independence, he discountenanced the movement set on foot among the merchants ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... instances of this kind, without producing the impression on the reader's mind that Charles was forward and captious in his inquiries. Certainly Mr. Upton had his own thoughts about him, but he never thought his manner inconsistent with modesty and respect ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... the honest perseverance might have been; but the worst faults of boyhood have something exciting and even romantic about them—they would not be so alluring if they had not—while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... disease! Miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known Mix railing, indiscretion, and fury in his disputations Moderation is a virtue that gives more work than suffering Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer) More ado to interpret interpretations More books upon books than upon any other subject More brave men been lost in occasions of little moment More solicitous that men speak of us, than ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... modesty than they like to admit. She was stunned by my cold-blooded catalog of her body just long enough for me to make a quick lunge across her lap to the door ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... her person; her brilliancy was limited to her eyes, which commanded love. She claimed universal admiration." In regard to her character, all are unanimous. De Retz, who knew her well, speaks of her in these terms: "Madame de Montbazon was a very great beauty. Modesty was wanting in her air. Her jargon might, during a dull hour, have supplied the defects of her mind. She showed but little faith in gallantry, none in business. She loved her own pleasure alone, and ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... intensest and possibly least appealing form it is exhibited by people who become awkwardly embarrassed in the presence of a stranger, however fluent and vivacious they may be with their friends. This type at its best may be described by the epithet of self-sufficient modesty. To be such a person may be said to be an achievement rather than a weakness. To be self-sufficient and modest at the same time means that one is going about one's business, that one is too absorbed in one's work to be continually and anxiously noting what sort of figure one ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... natives usually met with by the navigators had little idea of decency or modesty, the same was not true of the New Zealanders, and Cook gives a curious example of this fact. Although not so clean as the natives of Tahiti, whose climate is much warmer, and although they bathed less often, they took a pride in their persons, and showed a certain coquetry. For instance, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... seemed to him that Gilbert was even more ideally fitted. The Club was founded by Dr. Johnson, the home of the best talk in the land, where Garrick and Goldsmith were at times shouted down by the great Lexicographer—a sign, said Chesterton, of his modesty and his essential democracy: Johnson was too democratic to reign as king of his company: he preferred to contend with them as an equal. The old formula still in use had informed my father "you have had the honour to be elected," but Wilfrid Ward felt ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... doublet by the grain; The monk beneath the hood can spy; Master from man can ascertain; I know the nun's veiled modesty; I know when sportsmen fables ply; Know fools who creams and dainties stow; Wine from the butt I certify; All things ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... let me believe that it is your modesty then. Jasper may be a fine boy, but he will do well if he grows up as ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... dangerous; she related to her the insincerity, the faithlessness, and want of candour in men, and the domestic misfortunes that flow from engagements with them; on the other hand she made her sensible, what tranquillity attends the life of a virtuous woman, and what lustre modesty gives to a person who possesses birth and beauty; at the same time she informed her, how difficult it was to preserve this virtue, except by an extreme distrust of one's self, and by a constant attachment to the only thing which constitutes a woman's happiness, to love and ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... we had a glimpse of cells where fouler deeds were being done than modesty permits to mention, and which caused my companion to snatch me away in anger from this fatuous court into the princess' treasury (for we went where we list notwithstanding doors and locks). There we saw myriads ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... much, from him shall much be required. Now dare we say that the moral and religious standard of our people has risen as its economic prosperity has risen? The observance of Sunday rest, the Sunday mass, the reverence for marriage, the restraints of modesty—what ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... uncle Toby, sighing again, "the story of the ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted; and particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other (I forget what), was universally pitied by the whole regiment; but finish the story thou art upon." "Tis finished already," said the corporal, "for ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... an uncertain gesture, in which pride mingled with modesty; then, growing bolder, he smiled and said, "I knew her, the old sneak. Certainly, she'll spend the rest of her life looking in every ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... tells, with all due modesty, of his early days at Kelso—the respectable friends by whom he was surrounded—his acquiring the reputation of a clever youth, and running nigh being a good deal spoilt in consequence. At nineteen, he went to London, to enter the counting-house of a mercantile uncle, and during two years spent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... and crafty modesty of her sex, Julia evaded this very pleasant shaft by saying: "How much you know, August! How do ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... this volume, is the history of his nation as written out by one of them who had already reached adult years, at the epoch of the first arrival of the Spaniards, in 1524. Unfortunately, his simple-hearted modesty led him to make few personal allusions, and we can glean little information about his own history. The writer first names himself, in the year 1582, where he speaks of "me, Francisco Ernantez Arana."[57-1] The ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... we heard of Sir Philip Sidney's immortal act of chivalry as he lay on the field at Zutphen! But definite information has it otherwise. To learn of the prodigious industry of the youthful Mill, the perseverance of Darwin, the heroic struggle of Scott, the gentleness of Stevenson, the modesty of Browning, the lifelong consecration of Motley,—is not the leaven of inspiration made ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the most impudent man of his time; so was CAESAR; so was LUTHER. Even now, when half the human race has grown impudent, we cannot but wonder at the impudence of that obscure monk. GALILEO, too, was a very impudent fellow until the well-bred 'Rev. and dear Sirs' of his time taught him modesty. And CROMWELL! what an Arch-Impudence was he! And NAPOLEON! he put Impudence itself to the blush. And have there been no Impudences among us? It cannot be denied that our Fourth-of-July-men made a very impudent declaration, to say the least of it. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... people; the vulgar truth is that he enjoyed "treating" them. This was not because he was what is called purse-proud; handling money in public was on the contrary positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of personal modesty about it, akin to what he would have felt about making a toilet before spectators. But just as it was a gratification to him to be handsomely dressed, just so it was a private satisfaction to him (he ...
— The American • Henry James
... Where Beethoven felt contempt for even the praise of those he knew were not great enough to understand him, MacDowell was merely uncomfortable; both because he hated insincere attentions and because his modesty would seldom allow him to believe that he deserved even honest congratulations.[Note: When in London in 1903, MacDowell was asked to give some recitals from his compositions, after the Philharmonic performance of his D minor Piano Concerto, but on seeing ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... to be a dash of vanity in the latter part of this remark, which surprised March not a little; for it seemed to him quite inconsistent with the stout hunter's wonted modesty of demeanour and speech. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the parliament, giving an account of his successes in the war, he generally concludes with some expression of this strained evangelical modesty, and seems very much afraid lest Speaker Lenthall and other honourable members should attribute the victories he announces, in any measure to the army and the general who won them. He might be very sure, however, that, notwithstanding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... was one of maidenly modesty; if Aunt Gouverneur had planned to bring the two people together at her table, Phillida wished it known that she was not a party to the plot. But Millard ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... into his arms ladies of high position but with an unconfessable past, anxious for novelties although exceedingly mature. This middle class woman who would advance so confidently toward him and then retreat with such capricious outbursts of modesty, was a new ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... step toward her and observed her more attentively. She did not lower her eyes at first. But she blushed. And never had he seen so pathetic a face, marked with such modesty and such dignity. He said to her, as on that first evening ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... perils whose extent had been concealed from her. And, moreover, is it necessary for a girl to be any the less under the watchful eye of her mother, because she is mistress of her own actions? Are we to count as nothing the modesty and the fears which nature has made so powerful in the soul of a young girl, for the very purpose of preserving her from the misfortune of submitting to a man who does not love her? Again, what girl is there so thoughtless as not to discern, that ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... address of Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER was as follows: Ladies and Gentlemen:—It is but a little while ago that the question whether a woman might, with modesty and propriety, appear upon the public platform to speak her sentiments upon moral and philanthropic questions, agitated the whole community. Although I do not regard myself as excessively conservative, I remember very well when the appointment of women, by the Anti-Slavery Society of New ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and Caunus may have originated in the disgust which the natives felt for their conquerors, and as a covert reproach to them for sanctioning alliances of so incestuous a nature. While Ovid enters into details in the story, which trench on the rules of modesty and decorum, the moral of the tale, aided by some of his precepts, is not uninstructive as a warning to youth to learn betimes how to regulate ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Maria said again. There was an odd inflection in her voice which her father did not understand. Her cheeks burned hot against his, but it was not due to the modesty of young girlhood, which flees even that which it secretly desires. Maria was reflecting upon her horrible deception, how every day and every minute of her life she was deceiving her father, but she dared not tell him. She ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fiftieth, if reached, is a period of extreme senility. Pure in race, ancient in history, and carefully studied, this race deserves some further attention here than can be extended to others with which I have to deal. The moral side of the Mincopies seems to be highly developed; the modesty of the young girls is most strict; ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... and the proud sense of freedom of the poet of Suessa—lies the reason why the refined Venusian, who in the Alexandrian age of Roman poetry revived the Lucilian satire, in spite of all his superiority in formal skill with true modesty yields to the earlier poet as "his better." The language is that of a man of thorough culture, Greek and Latin, who freely indulges his humour; a poet like Lucilius, who is alleged to have made two hundred hexameters before dinner and as many after it, is in far too great a hurry ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... head to foot, inclusive. The young person wore an ordinary wimple, but her gown was trimmed with fur, which was, in those days, almost a sign of superior rank or wealth. But what most struck Catherine was the candour and modesty of the face. She felt sure of sympathy from so good a countenance, and began ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... indispositions by which you are attacked, and which thus makes you share with the least of your ecclesiastics the task of administering the sacraments in places most remote from the principal settlements. I shall add nothing to this statement, which is entirely sincere, for fear of wounding your natural modesty, etc...." The prince himself is no less flattering: "My Lord Bishop of Petraea," writes Louis the Great, "I expected no less of your zeal for the exaltation of the faith, and of your affection for the furtherance of my service than the conduct ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... this subject Cato delivered a speech in which he made out that the law ought to prevail, and finally he added these words: "Let the women, then, be adorned not with gold nor precious stones nor with any bright and transparent clothing, but with modesty, with love of husband, love of children, persuasion, moderation, with the established laws, with our arms, our victories, our trophies."—Lucius Valerius, a tribune, spoke in opposition to Cato, urging that the privilege of the old-time ornament be restored to the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... that on the occasion of the capture of Huningen he thus characterized a certain M. de Montjoie, who was now serving in the Bavarian army after taking a German name, which I have forgotten. The Emperor added, however: "At least, he has had the modesty not to keep his French name." In general easy to conciliate on nearly all points, the Emperor was pitiless towards all those who bore arms against their country; and innumerable times I have heard him say that there was no greater crime ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Modesty, in people of moderate ability, is merely honesty, but in people of great talent it is hypocrisy. Hence it is just as becoming in the latter to openly admit the regard they have for themselves, and not to conceal the fact that they are ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... told me was flowered beautiful with colours very lively. I thought they were. As to the rest of her toilet, I am at a loss for words. The overskirt was lute-string silk, I was told. The hoops were vast; the dress cut square, with a "modesty-fence" of stiff lace. A huge high cap "with wings is the last thing," cried the lady, turning round to be seen, and well pleased at my admiration. She was an immense and an amazing figure. I did wonder, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... like experience to make a man able to see every side," said the reformed one, with becoming modesty. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... less trouble about classification, if the system-mongers would consent to admit at the outset that no infallible system is possible, and would endeavor, amid all their other learning, to learn a little of the saving grace of modesty. A writer upon this subject has well observed that there is no man who can work out a scheme of classification that will satisfy permanently even himself. Much less should he expect that others, all having their favorite ideas ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... leaving the house Zangwill remarked in a musing tone, "What fine humility, or rather modesty. I can't imagine any other man of Howells' eminence taking ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ask him what this wreck amounted to, that she should for the moment sink to nothing in comparison with it. But, at this instant, a small group of men and women joined them, and, catching sight of the faces of Sarah Ann Nanjulian and Modesty Prowse, her friends, she ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... allowing the two women that lived in her to be confounded with each other, in continuing to be, with Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, the virtuous, respectable girl she had been, in emerging from her orgies without carrying away the taste of them, in displaying, when she left her lover, a sort of old-maidish modesty, shocked by the scandalous courses of other maids. She never uttered a word or bore herself in a way to arouse a suspicion of her clandestine life; nothing about her conveyed a hint as to the way her nights were passed. When she placed her foot upon the door-mat outside Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... yourself, Valerie!" he cried. "I found our family there; the most noble, the most gigantic persons in the world! Thy cousin Jambon, it is a giant, eight feet high, at the least. He denies it, he is the soul of modesty, but I have eyes, and I see. This man has the soul greater than his vast body; we have discussed life, death, in short, the Infinite, we three, Jambon and Jacques and I. He has a father—both have fathers! it is the course of nature. The father of D'Arthenay here is a prince, a diamond ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... think otherwise. And as with regard to the subject of which I am writing, it may be said that "egotism is true modesty," I shall venture to say why I think so, even at the risk of wearying by a twice-told tale, for I shall have to go over well-worn ground, and I must of necessity tread more or less in the footprints of others. The reasons which satisfy me have ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... from being the author of sin, has been found hitherto to exceed all the power of philosophy. Happy, if she be thence sensible of her temerity, when she pries into these sublime mysteries; and leaving a scene so full of obscurities and perplexities, return, with suitable modesty, to her true and proper province, the examination of common life; where she will find difficulties enough to employ her enquiries, without launching into so boundless an ocean of doubt, uncertainty, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... a little at the thought of the women she had won him from. He talked to her now freely and openly, though always with that unassuming modesty which was so attractive. She knew what he had already had to combat. What a life of self-pleasing and gay-living lay open to him if he chose to take it. She knew that, if he chose it, though he might still win ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... my remarks are correct, I have no doubt they will show you the necessity of being silent, and to attend with activity, perseverance, and modesty, to the interests of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Forces first laid Siege to that Town, the Priests, who were apprehensive of it, having been long since made sensible of the profound Regard to Chastity and Modesty of us Hereticks, by the ignominious Behaviour of certain Officers at Rota and Porta St. Maria, the Priests, I say, had taken care to send away privately all the Nuns to Majorca. But that the Heretick Invaders might have no Jealousy of it, the ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... with growing wonder. "Why this sudden modesty?" he said with a smile. "I thought you prided yourself on your share in the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but expressive face, his simple manners,—all revealed in him a laborious and resigned existence, that lofty personal dignity which is imposing to others, and the secret nobility of heart which can meet all events. His modesty inspired a sort of respect in those who knew him. Solitary in the midst of Paris, he knew the social world only by glimpses during the brief moments which he spent in his patron's ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... an extraordinary figure; we must study him, as well as his books. Fortunately we have his life story in his own words, written with the same lovable modesty and sincerity that marked all his work. Reading that story now, in Grace Abounding, we see two great influences at work in his life. One, from within, was his own vivid imagination, which saw visions, allegories, parables, revelations, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... prelates of the older Church were eulogizing debauched princes like Louis XV, and using the unspeakably obscene casuistry of the Jesuit Sanchez in the education of the priesthood as to the relations of men to women, the modesty of the Church authorities was so shocked by Linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system in plants that for many years his writings were prohibited in the Papal States and in various other parts of Europe where ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... wicked plot against the peace, nay, as I infer from that club, against the very life, of an innocent creature? Behold what I suffer, and how unjustly!—I, of all animals, whose life,—the sad state I am now in constrains me against modesty to say it,—whose life is notoriously a pattern of all the virtues;—I, too, ungrateful biped, who have watched your flock through so many sleepless nights, lest some ill-disposed dog might do harm to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... a letter from [Huxley] with such tremendous praise of my book, that modesty (as I am trying to cultivate that difficult herb) prevents me sending it to you, which I should have liked to have done, as he is ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the joy and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might she be proud of her! At sixteen, Hannah Wilson was, beyond a doubt, the prettiest girl in the village, and the best. Her chief characteristic was modesty. Her mind was like her person: modest, graceful, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... it has in him. But official red tape, and his early misfortune... prevent the giving of any higher official standing to even such a genius. Born and bred to such conditions, Muller understands them, and his natural modesty of disposition asks for no outward honours, asks for nothing but an income sufficient for his simple needs, and for aid and opportunity to occupy himself in the way he ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... retire. He refused to trust the faith of the Romans, unless Aetius and Jason, the sons of two great officers of state, were sent as hostages to his camp; but he offered to deliver, in exchange, several of the noblest youths of the Gothic nation. The modesty of Alaric was interpreted, by the ministers of Ravenna, as a sure evidence of his weakness and fear. They disdained either to negotiate a treaty or to assemble an army; and with a rash confidence, derived only from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... want an animated "No" To brush the surface, and to make it flow; But still remember, if you mean to please, To press your point with modesty and ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Christians have found it very hard to exemplify in practice. These are modesty and civility. The Founder of the Christian religion appeared among a people accustomed to look for a Messiah, a special ambassador from heaven, with an authoritative message. They were intimately acquainted with every expression having reference to ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... received the congratulations and commendations of the people in their vicinity with becoming modesty, and a little later moved on ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... ladies, and the Court, at the manners of this superb creature, who was proclaimed a lady of courtesy and beauty. The king first, then the queen, and afterwards every individual member of the company, complemented l'Ile Adam on having chosen such a wife. The modesty of the chatelaine did more than pride would have accomplished; for she was invited to court, and everywhere, so imperious was her great heart, so tyrannic her violent love for her husband. You may be sure that her charms, hidden ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... included the lower part of the vagina and rectum, the sphincter and, the fourchet, and perineum. Hemorrhage was profuse, and the wound caused excruciating pain. The subject fainted on the spot from hemorrhage and shock. Her modesty forbade her summoning medical aid for three days, during which time the wound was undergoing most primitive treatment. After suturing, cicatrization followed ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... ideal republic in the name of science, which, through modesty and euphemism, he called philosophy. Aristotle, a practical man, refuted the Platonic utopia in the name of the same philosophy. Thus the social war has continued since Plato and Aristotle. The modern socialists refer all things to science one ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... described her at seventeen, we see the slight girlish form of La Valliere making her reverence before royalty, owing her charm, as the court lady relates, more to a certain grace, modesty and tenderness in bearing and expression than to the dazzling whiteness and rosiness of her skin, the exquisite blueness of her eyes and the brilliancy of her blonde hair of the shade which the French ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... or exciting any comment. It also implies that Jesus deliberately bewitched Judas in order to bring about his own betrayal. Later on John claims that Jesus said to Peter "If I will that John tarry til I come, what is that to thee?"; and John, with a rather obvious mock modesty, adds that he must not claim to be immortal, as the disciples concluded; for Christ did not use that expression, but merely remarked "If I will that he tarry till I come." No other evangelist claims personal intimacy with Christ, or even pretends to be his contemporary (there is no ground for identifying ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity. Confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the superior man. This admission may have been the result of his extraordinary humility and modesty. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... head of vital and spiritual beauty, where purity and luxuriance, woman and mind, dwelt in harmony and joy. As she seemed ever to be ripening, so she seemed never to have been a child, but, with faculties and sense clear and unintimidated, she was never wanting in modesty, nor accused of want of self-possession. Judge Custis made her his reliance and pride; she never reproved his errors, nor treated them familiarly, but settled the household by a consent which all paid to her character alone. More than once she had appeared at the furnace mansion when the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... called, for their conduct in this kingdom. This happy event will not, I am sure, be the less acceptable, from being principally brought about by part of the crews of his majesty's ships under my orders, under the command of Captain Troubridge. His merits speak for themselves. His own modesty, makes it my duty to state that, to him alone, is the chief merit due. The recommendation bestowed on the brave and excellent Captain Hallowell, will not escape their lordship's notice, any more than the exceeding good conduct of Captain Oswald, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... who plainly and daily suffered for their creed, who stood to lose all the things most of us strive for, people who valued neither comfort, nor money, nor the world's good word. That they took help, and even sacrifice, as a matter of course, seemed in them mere modesty and sound good sense; tantamount to saying, 'I am not so silly or self-centred as to suppose you do this for me. You do it, of course, for the Cause. The Cause is yours—is all Women's. You serve humanity. Who am I that ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of thought, blooming youth succeeded this age, and she stood, blushing in maiden modesty, the gay young sister of other days; and his heart was filled with sadness as he gazed upon her stiff in the icy arms of death, and felt that she could no more return his affection. He was an aged man, and knew much of the sorrow and the trials of life; ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Book at the wrong End, with an Apology for the Author's inability to handle such weighty Points as they deserved; and indeed Tom, that single Confession was the only Thing that look'd like Truth or Modesty in the whole Performance. How could I be affronted by such miserable Efforts of Malice? and above all, if the natural elevation of my Mind, had not enabled me to look down on them with Disdain, the Dignity and usefulness of my Life, help'd me ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... and roof, and defy you to spoil any charm you think I have, if you will only not make me awkward or silly; and you may make me as self-conscious as Esther's St. Cecilia there, only she calls it modesty." ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... exuberance of spirits, there were the greatest modesty and simplicity in the demeanour of these poor girls. When they proceeded in a more sober mood, we joined in the conversation, asking questions about their prospects at Ajaccio, and the schooling they had received. They had no friends at Ajaccio; but the “Mother of Mercy” would guide and ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... (in the limited sense which was of no use to her) an audience. She did not quite seem to know what she wanted of me. But she said she had understood at Stafford House that I had a theatre in which she could read; with a good deal of modesty and diffidence she at last got so far. Now, my little theatre turns my house out of window, costs fifty pounds to put up, and is only two months taken down; therefore, is quite out of the question. This Mrs. Dickens explained, and also my profound inability ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... twenty-three years old when her first book of poems was published; so we read in her letters, in which she entreats her father not to curtail ANY of the verses addressed to him; there is no reason, she says, except his EXTREME MODESTY why the verses should be suppressed,—she speaks not only with the fondness of a daughter but with the sensibility of a poet. Our young authoress is modest, although in print; she compares herself to Crabbe (as Jane Austen might have done), and feels 'what ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... There were true modesty and manhood in the noble fellow, when he overheard a visitor in his employer's office relate the incident of the rescue, without suspecting that the hero stood before him, and never dropped the slightest intimation that ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... to hold out against her wooing? I don't like to apply the word "wooing" to a young girl's conduct, but we all know that woman does her part in the great system of human mating when the persons most interested do the choosing; and it is right that she should. The modesty that prevents a woman from showing her preference is the result of a false philosophy, and flies in the face of nature. Her right to choose is as ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... to all that they said," and allowing them their natural wishes and ways, is touchingly expressed. And those who know Egypt will know that Bata still lives there—several Batas I have known myself. His sweetness of manner, his devotion, his untiringly earnest work, his modesty, his quietness, makes Bata to be one of the most charming friends. Bata I have met in many places, Bata I have loved as one of the flowers of human nature, and Bata I hope often to meet again in divers forms and varied ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... not about men, as blaming them;" but when he adds, "or praising them," the injunction seems to me of doubtful value. Surely Marcus Aurelius more wisely advises that "when thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who live with thee; for instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth. For nothing delights so much as the examples of the virtues, when they are exhibited in the morals of those who live with us and present themselves in ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Hater L20 and keep L10 towards a boy's keeping. Thence Mr. Coventry and I to the Attorney's chamber at the Temple, but not being there we parted, and I home, and there with great joy told T. Hater what I had done, with which the poor wretch was very glad, though his modesty would not suffer him to say much. So to the Coffee-house, and there all the house full of the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and women employed in the sweatshops, may be inferred from the fact that men and women to the number of twelve have been found sleeping together in one of these workrooms. The tenement-house factories are so crowded that no such thing as privacy or modesty, on the part of men or women, is possible; the usual water-closet is a wooden bucket upon every landing, which fills the air with ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... he had not handled his man skilfully. He remembered that even Socrates, for all the popular charm of his mock-modesty and his true geniality, had ceased after a while to be tolerable. Without such a manner to grace his method, Socrates would have had a very brief time indeed. The Duke recoiled from what he took to be another pitfall. He almost ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... details as to the ship's doctor's career, a first-page prominence. Mr. Fletcher himself had proved to be both generous and grateful. In assessing the value of his own life at 1,000 pounds, he had argued with good humour and good sense, he had erred on the side of modesty, and Robert Stonehouse, having weighed the argument gravely, had accepted its practical conclusion as just and reasonable. He had taken rooms, thereupon, if not actually in Harley Street, at least ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... hours, and created much sensation in the island, and every one agreed in praising Lord Byron's great knowledge of the Scriptures, joined to his moderation and modesty. Kennedy, however, a little irritated by the superiority granted to his adversary, did his best to dissipate the impression produced by it. He went so far as to reproach his friends for having allowed themselves to be blinded by the rank, the celebrity, and the prestige of Lord Byron. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... home-like sat she there, her wings scarce moving. Now suddenly she stoops—I mean the maiden— Down to the spring, and lets her little feet Sink in its waters, while her colored skirt Covered with care what they did not conceal; And I within the shadow of the trees, Inly admired her graceful modesty. And as she sat and gazed into the brook, Plashing and sporting with her snow-white feet, She thought not of the olden times, when girls Pleased to behold their faces smiling back From the smooth water, used it as their mirror ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; no true beauty without the signature of these graces in the very ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... shame, Frank," interrupted Vernon, "a very different kind of thing, though too often confounded with modesty. It's the latter—It's your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... born in Virginia; a man of fine character, lacking none of the sterner stuff of the soldier, but blended with modesty and gentleness; universally popular in the army, which he joined in 1840 and continued in till his death, rising to be general of a division through gallantry in the Indian frontier wars and in the Civil War, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... agreed, and sent to Camillus to desire him to take the command; but he answered that he would not until they that were in the Capitol should legally appoint him. When this answer was returned, they admired the modesty and tempter of Camillus; but they could not tell how to find a messenger to carry the intelligence to the Capitol, or rather, indeed, it seemed altogether impossible for any one to get to the citadel whilst the enemy was in full possession of the city. But among ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... silent for some time, for though she was quick-witted enough, a woman's natural modesty and her own frankness, prevented her from guessing at my artifice. I, too, astonished at my success in making her believe ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... necessary, without making a study of their subtilties, for the most insecure attitude of mind for girls is to think they know, in these difficult questions, and the best safeguard both of their faith and good sense is intellectual modesty. Without making acquaintance in detail with the phenomena of spiritualism and kindred arts or sciences, it is needful to know in a plain and general way why they are forbidden by the Church, and also to know how those who have lost their balance and peace of mind ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... glances they exchanged, he was amazed at La Zambinella's continued reserve toward him. She had begun, it is true, by touching his foot with hers and stimulating his passion with the mischievous pleasure of a woman who is free and in love; but she had suddenly enveloped herself in maidenly modesty, after she had heard Sarrasine relate an incident which illustrated the extreme violence of his temper. When the supper became a debauch, the guests began to sing, inspired by the Peralta and the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... fashionable bankruptcies spring from this polluted source. The stars of this order rise and fall in estimation, become fixed planets or meteors of the most enchanting brilliancy, in proportion not to the grace of modesty, or the fascination of personal beauty, but to the notoriety and number of their amours, and the peerless dignity of their ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... where modesty resides Is found the priceless treasure of Pure Truth. If pride within you secretly abides That, forced by the elixir's charm, The Sooth You needs must speak—be wholly pure in thought, Despising not the teachings wise, of old; When ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... own spiritual image; their unqualified straightforwardness, their transparent simplicity of mind and heart, their fearlessness, their complacent rusticity, their childish notions of the uses of wealth, their personal modesty and communal vanity, their happy oblivion to world standards, their extravagance of speech, their political bigotry, their magisterial down-rightness, their inflammability, and their fine self-reliance. They saw these ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... inquiry of eighty-six physicians, of much the same nationalities, that only one had himself been sexually abstinent before marriage. There seem to be no similar statistics for the English-speaking countries, where there exists a greater modesty—though not perhaps notably less need for it—in the making of such confessions. But if we turn to the allied profession which is strongly on the side of sexual abstinence, we find that among theological students, as has been shown in the United States, while prostitution may be infrequent, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... elate, Defies all bowlers' concentrated spite. That hero is myself, I need not state. 'Tis sweet to see their captain's growing ire And his relief when I at last retire; 'Tis sweet to run pavilionwards and say, "Yes, somehow I was seeing them to-day"— Thus modesty demands that I retort To murmured compliments upon my play. Cricket in sooth is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... Mr. Badger's modesty," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I would take leave to correct him and say three ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... man is insane is, I suppose, going too far; but to say that he does not know the value or the meaning of the words he uses, to say that he is driven by an extraordinary and brainless prejudice, is certainly the modesty of truth. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... due to myself to say, that the manner in which the Autobiography is subordinated to the general subject in the present volume, and also the manner in which it is veiled by the title, are concessions to the modesty of her who had the best right to decide in what fashion I should profit by her goodness, and are very far from ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... followers, that they were docile, artless, generous, but inclined to ease; that they were well-formed, grave, and far from possessing the vivacity of the natives of the south of Europe. They expressed themselves with a certain modesty and respect, and were hospitable to the last degree. Reading between the lines of the records of history, it is manifest that after their own rules and estimates, their lives were chaste and proper, though it was admissible for kings to have several wives. Moreover, though living in ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... eyes upon him there was something in the gentle dignity and purity of her look that held him back, abashed, and curiously afraid. She made him feel the power of her sex,—a power invincible when strengthened by modesty and reserve,—and the easy licence which modern women, particularly those of a degraded aristocracy, permit to men in both conversation and behaviour nowadays, would have found no opportunity of being exercised in her presence. So, though his impulse ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... contrary to her wish and will—she wished not to long for him, not to call him back, not to love him! Angrily she roused herself and sought to recall the burning gaze with which Soelver had wounded her modesty. So with a vexed and hard stroke of the oars she pushed the boat ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... steel succeeded then, And stubborn as the metal were the men. Truth, Modesty, and Shame the world forsook; Fraud, Avarice, and Force their places took. Then sails were spread to every wind that blew; Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new: Trees rudely hollowed did the waves sustain, Ere ships in triumph plough'd ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... determined in her heart upon making the conquest of this big beau, I don't think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange these delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off her hands. What causes young people to "come ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... replied, somewhat severely, "you may not know that I have a scientific reputation which, putting aside all modesty, I may say is an enviable one. You used a word last night to which I must interpose serious objection. You more than hinted that I hid—superstitions. Let me inform you, Larry O'Keefe, that I am solely ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... lumbering body and diminutive brain, was whole worlds superior to inorganic nature. That the marvellous thing called human personality should outlast the decay of what is so much inferior to itself, is therefore not only not inconceivable, but in itself not even improbable. It is a strange sort of modesty—to say the least of it—which would make us think ourselves of less account in the scale of existence or the sight of God than unconscious matter in its cruder and lower stages. One might as sensibly ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... childlike gladness to be made acquainted with it, which those only can have, who dare look at their own hearts—and that with a steadiness which religion only has the power of reconciling with sincere humility;—without this, and the modesty produced by it, I am deeply convinced that no man, however wide his erudition, however patient his antiquarian researches, can possibly understand, or be worthy of understanding, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... nearly had me, though," I hastily intervened to spare my own modesty. "And It did ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... things which are called beautiful by the vulgar, for example, material things and works of art. That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty. Which of these things is beautiful because it is praised, or spoiled by being blamed? Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was, if it is not praised? or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... the scheme is the perfection of decoration, with the subject well subdued, yet so subtly placed that notwithstanding its modesty, the eye promptly seeks it. The castle in the distance, the motive holding aloft the sign of the Zodiac, are seen even before the splendid columns and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... desired her father that he would not be so liberal in his offers, for that no man should ever be allowed that freedom, except him who should be her lawful husband. The Emperor was not less delighted by her resolute modesty than he had before been by the loveliness of her person, and calling to him Guido, one of his barons, gave her to him in marriage, at the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and this completely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one characteristic which made all his schoolfellows from the bottom class to the top want to mock at him, not from malice but because it amused them. This characteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity. He could not bear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There are "certain" words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate in schools. Boys pure in ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... great themes, his own mind had gained their dignity. Accustomed to the company of dead statesmen and heroes, his own ideas had risen to a higher standard. The flattery of society had added a new grace to his natural modesty. He was now a citizen of the world by his reputation; the past was his province, in which he was recognized as a master; the idol's pedestal was ready for him, but he betrayed no desire to show himself ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fully characteristic of Milton whose genius lay rather in strength than in tenderness. Yet perhaps we love Lycidas all the more for giving us our almost solitary glimpse of a Milton in whom the affections are more than the will, and sorrow not sublimated into resolution. Its modesty, too, is astonishing. He had already written the Nativity Ode, Comus and Allegro and Penseroso, and yet he fancies himself still unripe for poetry and is only forced by the "bitter constraint" of the death of his friend to pluck the berries ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... was induced to write his book has been mentioned. The expressions of modesty Saxo uses, saying that he was "the least" of Absalon's "followers", and that "all the rest refused the task", are not to be taken to the letter. A man of his parts would hardly be either the least in rank, or the last to be solicited. The words, however, enable ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and brought with him one or two of his companions, who had been, by the way, present in the affair of the empty money-boxes; and though he never fancied that there was any danger in meeting his brother-in-law, for he had no idea that he had been seen on the night of the attack, with a natural modesty, which did him really credit, he kept out of the young bridegroom's sight as much as he could, and showed no desire to be presented to him. At supper, however, as he was sneaking modestly down to a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seen a good many handsome people, but there was a modesty, grace, and dignity, and an expression of deep latent sentiment in that woman's countenance, that, combined with her straight nymph-like figure, and the sort of chastity that characterized her whole person ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... moment that one realises that, one also realises that there is no prima facie impossibility that God should so reveal Himself—for indeed it seems an idea which no human mind would dare to originate, except in a kind of insane delusion; and the teaching of Christ, His utter modesty and meekness, His perfect sanity and clear-sightedness, make it evident to me that we may put out of court the possibility that He was under the influence of a delusion. He, it seems to me, took all the old vague ideas of sacrifice and consummated them; He showed ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed, have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a "dilapidated farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland," so naturally did she take to her new role. When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her curtsy to the King one ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... with the Allies in the Crimea, had written a good official report on his observations there, had become manager of a big railroad after leaving the service, and had so impressed people with his ability and modesty on the outbreak of war that his appointment to the chief command in West Virginia was hailed with the utmost satisfaction. Then came the two affairs at Philippi and Rich Mountain, the first of which was planned and carried out by other men, while the second was, if anything, spoiled ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... tried to persuade her to remain with him, and not accompany her husband to Ithaca. Ulysses gave Penelope her choice, to stay or go with him. Penelope made no reply, but dropped her veil over her face. Icarius urged her no further, but when she was gone erected a statue to Modesty on the spot where ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... possess the faith he preached, he comforted with the assurance that it was no easier matter for himself, and that he had to pray God daily to increase his faith. His saying, 'A great doctor must always remain a pupil,' was meant especially for himself. The modesty which made him willing, even in the early days of his reforming labours, to yield the first place to his younger friend Melancthon, he displayed to the end, as we have seen in reference to Melancthon's principal work, the 'Loci Communes.' Whenever he was ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... these girls is decoyed from the peaceful dwelling of her parents, and left by her infamous seducer a prey to poverty and prostitution in a brothel at Philadelphia, her whole appearance is neat, and breathes an air of modesty: you see nothing in her dress, language, or behaviour, that could give you any reason to guess at her unfortunate situation; (how unlike her unhappy sisters so circumstanced in England!) she by no means gives over the idea of a husband, she is seldom disappointed: ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... he, "your modesty and your efforts to throw much of the credit on Tom Flannery are certainly becoming to you. I like you for the spirit you show in the matter. But, nevertheless, I recognize in you the chief of the undertaking—the one who planned and carried out the entire scheme. Now, here is a little present ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... mind does you credit. I am glad to find that you are not lacking in that supreme attribute of young womanhood— modesty. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... much more ready to consider the former as true, and the latter as false. The unpretending modesty of real worth they generally mistook for imbecility, or a consciousness of questionable points of character; while bold-faced assurance was thought to be an open exhibition of manliness—the free, undisguised manner of those who ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... preface to the "No-Protestant Plot",[77] that you shall be forced hereafter to leave off your modesty: I suppose you mean that little which is left you; for it was worn to rags when you put out this Medal. Never was there practised such a piece of notorious impudence in the face of an established ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... version of ours, the fathers throng about another than Horatius after the session of that memorable morning. Publicly and privately, Mr. Crewe is being congratulated, and we know enough of his character to appreciate the modesty with which the congratulations are accepted. He is the same Humphrey Crewe that he was before he became the corner-stone of the temple; success is a mere outward and visible sign of intrinsic worth in the inner man, and Mr. Crewe had never ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pick up something.' Lobster-like, finding myself in hot water, I turned several beautiful shades of red immediately. I became terror-stricken—I, the dignified Professor of Applied Science at Jay College, Kentucky! All my innate modesty began to assert itself; and is not this the surest protection of the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... peaceful and contemplative life), he has always been somewhat timid; saving only when a just indignation against some wrong or lapse of duty to himself or to others moves him, then he plucks up more spirit than those who are held to be courageous; otherwise he is of a most patient disposition. Of his modesty it is not possible to say as much as he deserves; and so also of his manners, and his ways, they are seasoned with pleasantries and sharp sayings: for instance, his conversation at Bologna with a certain gentleman, who, seeing the mere largeness and mass of the bronze ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... the Patterne pearls for a dinner-party of grand ladies, telling her that he would commission Miss Isabel to take them to her. Clara begged leave to decline them, on the plea of having no right to wear them. He laughed at her modish modesty. "But really it might almost be classed with affectation," said he. "I give you the right. Virtually ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... now, and as pretty a girl, according to Buzzby, as you could meet with in any part of Britain. Her eyes were blue and her hair nut-brown, and her charms of face and figure were enhanced immeasurably by an air of modesty and earnestness that went straight home to your heart, and caused you to adore her at once. Buzzby doated on her as if she were his only child, and felt a secret pride in being in some indefinable way her protector. Buzzby philosophized about ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Rattlesnake Mountain," William went on to say, "and explore the country thereabouts, which has not been visited by a boy of Stanhope, in this present generation, at least. That is all for me; and now I'll skidoo!" with which the chairman dropped down into his chair again with becoming modesty. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... insensibly imitate them, and imitation will work gradual but certain detriment to your character. Other men are refined without being affected. They can relax into occasional pleasantries without violating modesty. They can be loyal to their government without indulging private hatred against her foes. They can be cool and brave in battle, and not be braggarts in the absence of danger. Above all, they can be humble, spiritual, and active Christians, and yet mingle in the ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... this they perceived that they were become naked to one another; and being ashamed thus to appear abroad, they invented somewhat to cover them; for the tree sharpened their understanding; and they covered themselves with fig-leaves; and tying these before them, out of modesty, they thought they were happier than they were before, as they had discovered what they were in want of. But when God came into the garden, Adam, who was wont before to come and converse with him, being conscious of his wicked ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... waste on luxuries. That brought me to the man himself. I had known him at Oxford—not as one of my immediate set; but we were a sociable college, and I had seen a good deal of him, liking him for his physical energy combined with a certain simplicity and modesty, though, indeed, he had nothing to be conceited about; liked him, in fact, in the way that at that receptive period one likes many men whom one never keeps up with later. We had both gone down ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... should be honored by the world. Her sufferings were far more unendurable, her heroism far more noble, than any which in more recent times have been so much pitied and so much applauded; but she was a simple missionary's wife, an American by birth, and she told her tale with an artless modesty—writing only what it became her to write, treating only of matters that became a woman. Her captivity, if so it can be called, was voluntarily endured. She of her own free will shared the sufferings of her husband, taking to herself no credit for anything she did; putting her trust in God, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... was very animated. Many compliments were paid Paganel on his twofold talents as hunter and cook, which the SAVANT accepted with the modesty which characterizes true merit. Then he turned the conversation on the peculiarities of the OMBU, under whose canopy they had found shelter, and whose ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... comes every day to circle above Les Errues. I, an amateur of ornithology am, perhaps, with all modesty, permitted ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the feet of youth, beauty, and talent! Mademoiselle Honoria, I salute in you the future Empress of the tragic stage. Mademoiselle Rosalie, modesty forbids me to extol the acquired graces of even my most promising pupil; but I may be permitted to adore in you the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... charitable, and always full of real piety and goodness. In private, where he was free, he was gay, joked, and bantered pleasantly, and laughed with good heart. He liked to be made fun of there was only the story of his sleeping with the canon's servant that wounded his modesty, and I have seen him embarrassed when Madame de Beauvilliers has related it,—smiling, however, but praying her sometimes not to tell it. His piety, which, as I have said, commenced early in life, separated him ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... with a strutting attitude that somehow retained a sort of modesty, "I 'ad the gweatess success. Hah! a nuss is a nuss those time'. Only some time' 'e's not. 'Tis accawding to the povvub,—what is that povvub, now, ag'in?" The proverb did not answer his call, and he waved it away. "Yesseh, eve'ybody wanting me ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Gabriel wouldn't have a show with a lot of corpses like them! Of course it ain't my business to give advice to a man like you, and I'm probably offendin' you sayin' this, but someway you don't seem to see what's so plain to everybody else. It's your modesty keeps you blind, I guess. But here's what I don't see: why don't you come out of this little hole in the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... answered, for his father's pleasure putting aside his normal modesty, "I'm six feet two inches tall, and I weigh two hundred pounds in the pink of condition. I have a forty-eight-inch chest, with five and a half inches chest-expansion, and a reach as long as a gorilla's. My underpinning is good, too; I'm not one of these fellows with spidery legs and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... something peculiarly provocative of curiosity in the laconic replies of the man. May wondered whether his reticence was due to modesty or to moroseness. Perhaps she could ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... Diana, and tossed her head archly disdainful. "La! Sir Rowland, your modesty will be the death of you." Archness became this lady of the sunny hair, tip-tilted nose, and complexion that outvied the apple-blossoms. She was shorter by a half-head than her darker cousin, and made up ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... young wife with unaccustomed tenderness. For the Colorado girl had about her a certain modesty that was disarming, an appeal of helplessness Beatrice could ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... my Iliad; and I call it Nescio quid, which is a degree of modesty; but however, if it silence these fellows, it must be something greater than any ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... difference was not essential. The men wore a string around the waist. Most of them wore nothing else, but a few had loosely hanging from this string in front a scanty tuft of dried grass, or a small piece of cloth, which, however, was of purely symbolic use so far as either protection or modesty was concerned. The women did not wear a stitch of any kind anywhere on their bodies. They did not have on so much as a string, or a bead, or even an ornament in their hair. They were all, men and women, boys and well-grown young girls, as entirely ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... other wives came the next night. A few hung back from modesty and dread of being catechized; but ere long about half a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... She was not self-consciously thinking of her lovers, not congratulating herself on their acquirement, but the consciousness that she had achieved them lay graciously round her heart, gave the soft satisfaction to her musings that comes to one who has accomplished a duty. With all modesty she felt the gratification of the being who approaches his Destiny. She had advanced a step in her journey as ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... been set forth with no undue modesty. 'It hath flourished, and felt also the storms of affliction, under Britons, Romans, Saxons, and Normans. To speak somewhat of the antiquity thereof, I hope I shall take no great pains to prove it (and that without opposition) the prime town ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... go to the trench that the Germans had lost and his section was the short cut. Modesty was not the only reason for not taking it. As we started along a road parallel to the front, the head of a soldier popped out of the earth and told us that orders were to walk in the ditch. I judged ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... turned it over in his hands, bit it and then held it in his palm as though to judge its weight. His expert opinion was, "It's gold, Okie," and was uttered without a shred of modesty. ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg
... answered with becoming modesty. "In my humble way I do strive towards unity, that is all. Even towards the Church of Rome I would extend a friendly and helpful hand. We cannot, of course, go to her, yet she should never be discouraged from coming to us.—But here is your good husband back again—ceased ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... some rare privilege, extreme purity of form combined with strength of countenance. The nobility of her life was manifest in the general expression of her person, which might have served as a model for a type of trustfulness, or of modesty. Her health, though brilliant, was not coarsely apparent; in fact, her whole air was distinguished. Beneath the little gloves of a light color it was easy to imagine her pretty hands. The arched and slender feet were delicately shod in bronzed kid boots trimmed with a brown silk fringe. Her blue ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... put down a piece of money; and the man behind the counter said nothing, but took the money and filled the bottles, which were hidden under the tattered shawl again, and the speechless phantoms glided out, guarding that little travesty of modesty ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... to whom it was addressed, though its effect, in producing submissive attention, did not escape his observation. When he could disengage himself from the assiduities of the other ladies, he sometimes addressed Emily: but she knew nothing of Parisian fashions, or Parisian operas; and her modesty, simplicity, and correct manners formed a decided contrast to those ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Creator—but without ever finding him, naturally! It's more usual for old cuckoos to look for him in their dotage—and for good reasons! The urge for this youthful quest was accompanied by a purity of heart and a modesty that even caused his nurses to smile—yes, we can laugh now when we hear that this boy would only change his underclothing in the dark! But even if we're corrupted by the crudities of life, we're still ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... metamorphosed strata of that age, may with justice be looked upon as one of the most valuable results which have been attained by British geologists for many years." A very just remark indeed! If only geologists would learn a little modesty from this discovery, which completely turns upside down their old world-building process of grinding down all the upper strata out of the molten granite, and gives us, instead, the baking of the strata into crystalline rocks; a process exactly ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Arbor in 1900, when Biffy Lee coached the Michigan team. It was at this time that I met Neil Snow, who was captain of the team, and when I grew to know him, I soon realized how his great, quiet, modest, though wonderful personality, made everybody idolize him. Modesty was his most noticeable characteristic. He was always the last to talk of his own athletic achievements. He believed in action, more than in words. After his playing days were over he made a great name for himself as an official in the big games. The larger colleges in the East had come to realize ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... said brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder are ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... altogether inexplicable. No man needs flatter his vanity much on the ground of being liked by women, for there never yet was man but some woman was pleased with him. Corney was good-looking, and, except with his own people, ready enough to make himself agreeable. Troubled with no modesty and very little false shame, and having a perfect persuasion of the power of his intellect and the felicity of his utterance, he never lost the chance of saying a good thing from the fear of saying a foolish one; neither having said a ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... before the guest will ascend the steps ahead of the hostess. The same occurs again on entering the reception hall, and taking the seat of honour. The luckless foreigner sometimes makes the mistake of conceding to her guest's modesty and allows her to take a lower seat, which is a grievous offense, and she is only pardoned on the plea that she is an outside barbarian, and does not understand the rules of ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... for me, that my lawyers had allowed themselves to become unduly excited over a trifle. A discrepancy had been discovered in my agent's accounts; it was clearly established that he had been speculating; but the fellow's excessive modesty and moderation had saved me from ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... amusement from her discomfiture when she finds thee as gaunt as a wolf and as black as a cinder. Only, as I have represented thee to have been devoured by a tiger, thou wilt kindly say that I saved thy life, but concealed the circumstance out of modesty." ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... But there was something that settled down only too rapidly. This was the kitchen floor. There was a bare rock forming the back wall of the house, and down it a runnel of water gently trickled. In the wet season it lost all modesty, made a lake that rose above the boards, and tried to find an exit by the back of the chimney. This explained why the fire needed two days' coaxing and blowing before it would burn, notwithstanding that our servant had been reared in the knowledge of such chimney-places ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... richest and most elegant Spanish costume ever worn by prince. There was a general outcry; all eyes were at first turned toward the king, then toward the black domino with pink rosettes, who retreated as fast as possible with a modesty that was not affected. All unmasked. The ladies gathered round the king, who, it was remarked, had the most violent fancy for the gipsy costume. Young or old, all the gipsies received his homage; he took them by the hand and gazed at them with an air which made all the other masks ready to burst ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, to pretend to instruct this our knowing age; it amounting to little less, when I own, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may be useful to others. But, if it may be permitted to speak freely of those who with a feigned modesty condemn as useless what they themselves write, methinks it savours much more of vanity or insolence to publish a book for any other end; and he fails very much of that respect he owes the public, who prints, and consequently expects men should read, that wherein he intends not they ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... witnessed the joy with which the Parisians received their King John and the Dauphin Charles. The King had not been well educated, yet he respected literature and learned men. The Dauphin was an accomplished prince; and our poet says that he was captivated by his modesty, sense, and information. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... you have made my point, in spite of your modesty with regard to your upbringing. What is the full limit at which you may requisition ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... much moved, wanted to defend himself by modesty, but he was unable. It was then formally agreed that the feast had been eaten in the grand dining-hall of Doctor's House, after being cooked in the kitchen of Doctor's House, and that they would go comfortably to bed in the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... than that, considering by night, she had come to the conclusion that a religious difference was not too great a barrier to be removed, and that La Tournoire was not a person to be regarded with any horror. Though modesty might plead against her continuing in the company of a man with whom she exchanged such feelings as had so rapidly grown up between us, yet circumstance, most imperative of all dictators, showed her no other course than to remain under ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... situation will permit. It is perhaps an indifferent sign of a disposition to keep his word, that, having introduced himself in the third person singular, he proceeds in the second paragraph to make use of the first. But it appears to him that the seeming modesty connected with the former mode of writing is overbalanced by the inconvenience of stiffness and affectation which attends it during a narrative of some length, and which may be observed less or more in every work in which the third ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a man through conscientious study, striving after truth and love of art, has been acquired by M. Pissarro. The rest depended on destiny only. There is no character more worthy of respect and no effort more meritorious than his, and there can be no better proof of his disinterestedness and his modesty, than the fact that, although he has thirty years of work behind him, an honoured name and white hair, M. Pissarro did not hesitate to adopt, quite frankly, the technique of the young Pointillist painters, his juniors, because it appeared to him better than his own. He ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... those creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, and I mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The humblest hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tour among the Indian tribes, he proposed to take his young pupil with him as an interpreter. Writing to Sir William Johnson about the matter, he referred to Joseph in most glowing terms: 'As he is a promising youth, of a sprightly genius, singular modesty, and a serious turn, I know of none so well calculated to answer my end as ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... their husbands. Under this difficulty they had no hopes but that the plenty in which they lived might invite modest women, of small fortunes, to go over thither from England. However, they would not receive any but such as could carry sufficient certificate of their modesty and good behavior. Those, if they were but moderately qualified in all other respects, might depend upon marrying very well in those days, without any fortune. Nay, the first planters were so far from expecting money with a woman, that 'twas a common thing for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... child, still feeling the hand of benediction resting upon him, concludes his Life of Washington by a description of his reception in New-York, of which he had been a witness. Why does he not (it would have been a most pardonable allusion) bring in the incident referred to above? Ah! modesty forbade; yet, as he penned that description, his heart must have rejoiced at the boldness of the servant who broke through the crowd and presented to the General a boy honored with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... advanced intellects," are supposed to find their exponent in Professor Baden Powell. All other thinkers have "minds of a less comprehensive capacity," "accustomed to reason on more contracted views." (p. 133. See also p. 131, top.) Is this the modesty of real Science? the language of a true Philosopher ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... expiration of this period, it was found that my progress (for I will speak the truth in modesty) had been more considerable than my patrons expected: I had also written in the interim several little pieces of poetry, less rugged, I suppose, than my former ones, and certainly with fewer anomalies of language. My preceptor, too, spoke favourably of me; and my benefactor, who ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... throughout is one of profound conviction; and the hardships which he encountered, and which he relates with so much simplicity and modesty as to enforce belief, are proof that he took his mission to heart. In the two journeys he performed to America—journeys that would have supplied a diffuse book-maker with matter for many volumes, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... of modesty entered the model's mind, and she went back to her easel to paint the rounded limbs and marble huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as of nature—if the veiled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... dictates, of never producing any grief. If you persevere in the resolution you have taken, if you continue to labor with unabated zeal at your personal improvement, be assured that the knowledge you will have acquired will exalt you highly above all others; and whereas science and modesty will be combined in you, you will succeed in becoming an accomplished woman. The talents which you cultivate have their pleasant side, and if you devote to them a portion of the day, you will unite ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... more candid?" says he; "more full of trust in himself, and yet with a certain modesty withal! There! you can go, Mrs. Monkton, with a clear conscience. I am not afraid to give myself up to the open-handed dealing of your son." Then his tone changes—he follows her quickly as she turns from him to the children to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... softly, as they left the hot, red streets, filled with lumbering bullock-carts and omnipresent rickshas, "why do you look away when I talk of our marriage? Is it because the Koran teaches modesty in woman, or is it because you are over-proud of your husband when you ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... of the pupil, and you must teach in accordance with the laws of psychology. You will succeed after a while, but precipitation, compulsion, and disputes are useless. The improvement of a soprano voice, ruined by over-screaming, requires prudence, patience, calmness, and modesty, and a character of a high type generally. It is also a very thankless task, and success is rare; while on the piano a fair ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... fashionable hotels in Newport. We were holding a convention there at that time, and some of them had been present at one of the sessions. "Really," said I, "ladies, you surprise me; our conventions are not as public as the ballroom where I saw you all dancing last night. As to modesty, it may be a question, in many minds, whether it is less modest to speak words of soberness and truth, plainly dressed on a platform, than gorgeously arrayed, with bare arms and shoulders, to waltz in the arms of strange gentlemen. And ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the page, and he was sent to the New World to discover something to the advantage of his own modesty, and incidentally to accumulate for shipment anything that might be useful to the Spanish treasury. He landed in Boriquen, as Porto Rico was then called, and began a general subjugation and slaughter of ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... to this result. By the concession of all travellers, American females are distinguished above all others for their general intelligence, and yet they are complimented for their retiring modesty, virtue, and domestic faithfulness, while the other sex is as much distinguished for their respectful kindness and attentive gallantry. There is no other country where females have so much public respect and kindness accorded to them as in America, by ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... discrimination, and with a view to the continuance of its effect. We cannot help wishing that our own Shakspeare, who lays down such excellent rules for the guidance of actors, and cautions them so earnestly against "overstepping the modesty of nature," and the danger of "tearing passion to rags," had remembered, that the poet himself has certain limits imposed upon him, which he cannot transgress with impunity. We should not then have observed, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... considered before giving a final estimate of her character, of her role in French history, and of her right to be ranked among the most illustrious women of France. Critics in general seem to show her a marked hostility; such men as Caro assert that she had no modesty, that she lacked sentiment, delicacy, and reserve. M. Saint-Amand said that she reflected the vices and virtues of her age, summing up the passions and illusions, being intellectually and morally the disciple of Rousseau, but ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... she would have said, with all the easiness of a girl of quality, but a modesty they have exchanged for the paint-pot and whitewash in which they now blaze out. What she did not say left much to be guessed. 'T is certainly these rich city folk for an illiberality of mind and petty ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... battle. Things had gone worse than he had anticipated. He had not hoped for too much—a tie would have satisfied him; a victory for Hillton had been beyond his expectations. St. Eustace far outweighed his team; her center was almost invulnerable and her back field was fast and heavy. But, despite the modesty of his expectations, Gardiner was disappointed. The plays that he had believed would prove to be ground-gainers had failed almost invariably. Neil Fletcher, the left half, on whom the head coach had placed the greatest reliance, had, with a single exception, failed to circle ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Nathaniel's short speech the guests rose to their feet, and all turned towards the young Mr Jasper, wishing him in succession health, happiness, and success in his proposed profession. He received the compliments paid to him with due modesty. His voice slightly trembling from nervousness, he returned thanks in a very neat and proper speech, which it is ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... frequently selected characters illustrating piety and holiness. The author divided his characters into thirty-five classes, illustrating qualities, and found that national activity led, with piety a close second; that then came in order those illustrating firmness of faith, bravery, modesty, and chastity; then pity and sympathy, industry, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... must be a personage altogether superior—this is essential. If he does not possess this attribute, he must assume it. Modesty is ineffective; mock-modesty is distasteful; you must instruct your audience. The commonest platitudes will serve if you call it a "lecture," and address them to an audience as if they were a ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... looks did not belie the man. In intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... explained, and in a like manner through each succeeding one of the four-and-forty courses. At the conclusion Yin again arose, being encouraged by the repeated uttering of his name by those present, and with extreme modesty and brilliance set forth his manner of thinking concerning all subjects with ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... him into the career of politics and ironical fate set him at its head. For myself, I had an intense contempt for the political mind, and it struck me that he had some of the same feeling. He had little personal quaintnesses, too, a deference, a modesty, an open-mindedness. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... gained himself immortal honour by his manner of filling up this last character. Who is there that can forget, or be insensible to, the inimitable nameless graces and varied traits of nature and of old English character in it—to his unpretending virtues and amiable weaknesses—to his modesty, generosity, hospitality, and eccentric whims—to the respect of his neighbours, and the affection of his domestics—to his wayward, hopeless, secret passion for his fair enemy, the widow, in which there is more of real romance and true delicacy ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Court, at the manners of this superb creature, who was proclaimed a lady of courtesy and beauty. The king first, then the queen, and afterwards every individual member of the company, complemented l'Ile Adam on having chosen such a wife. The modesty of the chatelaine did more than pride would have accomplished; for she was invited to court, and everywhere, so imperious was her great heart, so tyrannic her violent love for her husband. You may be sure that her charms, hidden under the garments of virtue, were none the less ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... feared the air and many other inconveniences, could gain no privilege over the others. All she obtained, under pretence of modesty and other reasons, was permission to journey apart; but whatever condition she might be in, she was obliged to follow the King, and be ready to receive him in her rooms by the time he was ready to enter them. She made many journeys to Marly in a state ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... shattered, shaking skeleton; piercing to the most vital marrow of the bones, and sapping the manly strength of youth—faugh! the idea sickens me. Nose, eyes, ears shrink from it. You saw that miserable wretch, Amelia, in our hospital, who was heavily breathing out his spirit; modesty seemed to cast down her abashed eye as she passed him; you cried woe upon him. Recall that hideous image to your mind, and your Charles stands before you. His kisses ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Burgesses, of which he had been elected a member at the close of the war. When he entered that body to take his place, the welcome extended to him was so overwhelming that he stood silent and abashed. But the venerable Speaker of the House exclaimed, "Sit down, Mr. Washington; your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... or annihilation. The very definition of virtue was that it helped man to cross over to the other shore, and that other shore was not death, but cessation of all being. Thus charity was considered a virtue; modesty, patience, courage, contemplation, and science, all were virtues, but they were practised only as a means of arriving at deliverance. Buddha himself exhibited the perfection of all these virtues. His charity knew no bounds. When he saw a tigress starved, and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... them. It is a beautiful world. And truly, Mistress Cyn," the poet said, reflectively, "that Pevensey is a very splendid ephemera. If not a king himself, at least he goes magnificently to settle the affairs of kings. Were modesty not my failing Mistress Cyn, I would acclaim you as strangely lucky, in being beloved by two fine fellows that have not their like ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... cried Kitty, "and the bit about my modesty is too funny for words!—Oh, if some of it would only happen! But I am afraid Gilbert will not stir up any fairy stories and set ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in its bearing; it, too, had employed the gods in the service of its ethical aim. But its central idea was felicity, not virtue; its starting-point was the popular dogma of the felicity of the gods, not their justice. In this way it had come to lay stress on a virtue which might be termed modesty, but in a religious sense, i.e. man must recognise his difference from the gods as a limited being, subject to the vicissitudes of an existence above which the gods are raised. Socrates says just the same, only that he puts knowledge or virtue, which to him was the same thing, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... are advancing at about the same rate of speed as those on horseback. The latter have ceased showing off, as if satisfied with the impression they must have made, and are now approaching in tranquil gait, but with an air of subdued triumph—the mock modesty of the matador, who, with blood-stained sword, bends meekly before the box ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... and tremendous, boldly facing the world with the calm of one who was thought, and possibly thought himself, to be not much less than a deity. And upon each pedestal, shrinking delicately back, was once a little wife. Some little wives are left. They are delicious in their modesty. Each stands away from the king, shyly, respectfully. Each is so small as to be below his down-stretched arm. Each, with a surely furtive gesture, reaches out her right hand, and attains the swelling calf of her noble husband's ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... the Duke of Parma, "The English regarded their victory with modesty, and were languidly indifferent to their valour." They looked upon the defeat of the Spanish Navy as a token of the Ruler of all things being decidedly partial to the Protestant faith. The Spaniards, as a whole, would not ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... others, and found that a similar modesty and reticence was a general characteristic ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Charmides is Temperance or (Greek), a peculiarly Greek notion, which may also be rendered Moderation (Compare Cic. Tusc. '(Greek), quam soleo equidem tum temperantiam, tum moderationem appellare, nonnunquam etiam modestiam.'), Modesty, Discretion, Wisdom, without completely exhausting by all these terms the various associations of the word. It may be described as 'mens sana in corpore sano,' the harmony or due proportion of the higher and lower elements of human nature which 'makes a man his own master,' according to the ...
— Charmides • Plato
... uninteresting performances with which we are constantly bored in the fashionable musical world. It is self-love which gives us those flat, empty adagios, those cold, keen runs and embellishments. Love of the art has more modesty in the undertaking, and more warmth in the execution. George says that she has heard all the greatest singers of modern times, but that her grandmother, in her old age, singing fragments of the operas of her own time in a cracked and trembling voice, and accompanying herself on an old harpsichord ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... the scandal novels were still princes and courtiers, but their exploits were more licentious than the lowest pothouse amours of picaros and their doxies. The chivalrous conventions of the heroic romances had degenerated into the formalities of gallantry, the exalted modesty of romantic heroines had sunk into a fearful regard for shaky reputations, and the picture of genteel life was filled with scenes of fraud, violence, and vice. As the writers of anti-romances in ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... one reads it, and reflects on what one reads, one seems to get a clear view of just those qualities which make the best kind of Briton. Every nation produces brave men. Every nation has men of energy. But there is a certain type which mixes its bravery and its energy with a gentle modesty and a boyish good-humour, and it is just this type which is the highest. Here the whole expedition seem to have been imbued with the spirit of their commander. No flinching, no grumbling, every discomfort taken as a jest, no thought of self, each working only for the success of the enterprise. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Owing to Dr. Handerson's modesty, even we who were for years associated with him in medical college, in organization, and professional work, knew but little of him. He would much rather discuss some fact or theory of medical science or some ancient worthy of the profession than his own life. Seeing this tall venerable ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... stone-flower of the deep, with its daisy-like disc, and fine long prickly arms, which never cease their graceful serpentine motion, and its colours hardly alike in any two specimens. Handle them not, meanwhile, too roughly, lest, whether modesty or in anger, they begin a desperate course of gradual suicide, and, breaking off arm after arm piecemeal, fling them indignantly at their tormentor. Along with these you will certainly obtain a few of that fine bivalve, the great Scallop, which ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... infinitesimal role in the common work, is the only reward they desire. Can it be that the disease of individualism is a thing of yesterday? The soldier of 1914 has cured us of it. Never have disinterestedness and modesty been pushed ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... life there is the same matter for astonishment as in Napoleon's; there is the vast disproportion between beginnings and climax, between the relative modesty of early aims and the stupendous magnitude of the climacteric result. One asks how in a few years the impecunious son of the Corsican notary became the world's despot, and how the fashionable young spendthrift ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... doctor, who is certainly not overburdened with modesty, starts out by asserting that he is a great ada[']wehi, who never fails and who surpasses all others. He then declares that the disease is caused by a mere screech owl, which he at once banishes to the laurel thicket. ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... only buy pictures, and not paint them; and in the way of action, he had to content himself with making a rule to render scrupulous moral justice to handsome examples of it in others. On the whole, he had an incorruptible modesty. With his blooming complexion and his serene gray eye, he felt the friction of existence more than was suspected; but he asked no allowance on grounds of temper, he assumed that fate had treated him inordinately well and that he had no excuse for taking an ill-natured ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... all, I might have foreseen that you'd come out on top. The day before yesterday your modesty was making you say that your mother could eat you. I, on the contrary, insisted that you could eat your mother. Who was right? I ask: who was right? When it really comes to the point—well, you have a serious talk with your mother, ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... with yourself, reader, how much you dare to say, aloud, you are worth. If you have no courage to name any price whatsoever for yourself, believe me, the cause is not your modesty, but that in very truth you feel in your heart there would be no bid for you at Lucian's sale of lives, were that again possible, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... magic mirror, and for a long time without success, as it always became blurred when he looked into it in the presence of a girl. At last he found one whose image was faithfully and brilliantly reflected—whose modesty and truthfulness were attested by the mirror. He took her with reluctance to the Prince of Spirits, because he had fallen in love with her himself; but his faithfulness to the contract was duly rewarded. On returning home, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... my uncles had rallied me very much on what they called my virtue; they had treated my shyness in the presence of women as a sign of continence; and it was especially in this matter that they urged me to evil by ridiculing my modesty. While parrying these coarse gibes and making thrusts in the same strain, I had been drinking enormously. Consequently, my wild imagination had become inflamed, and I boasted that I would be bolder and more successful with the first woman brought to Roche-Mauprat than any of my uncles. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... showed that their descent into the scrotum may be complicated with the formation of congenital hernia. Some years after, when he had retired from his academical duties at Gottingen, he published between 1757 and 1765 the large and elaborate work which, with singular modesty, he styled Elements of Physiology. This work, though professedly devoted to physiology, rendered, nevertheless, the most essentially services to anatomy. Haller, drawing an accurate line of distinction between the two, gave the most clear, precise and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible sadness, the sinister disgust into which Mora's death had thrown her. What a terrible blow for the proud girl! Ennui, pique, had thrown her into this man's arms; she had given him pride—modesty—all; and now he had carried all away with him, leaving her tarnished for life, a tearless widow, without mourning and without dignity. Two or three visits to Saint-James Villa, a few evenings in the back of some ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Mr. Loveless went from here just now? Ber. O yes—he has been walking with me. Col. Town. He has! Ber. Upon my word I think he is a very agreeable man; and there is certainly something particularly insinuating in his address. Col. Town. [Aside.] So, so! she hasn't even the modesty to dissemble! [Aloud.] Pray, madam, may I, without impertinence, trouble you with a few serious questions? Ber. As many as you please; but pray let them be as little serious as possible. Col. Town. Is it not near two years since I have presumed to address you? Ber. I don't ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... said Monsieur Papalier, a planter, to Bayou, his neighbour in the plain, who now sat opposite to him; "what an air of infinite modesty he put on! At this moment, I daresay he is snapping his fingers, and telling the women that all the money in ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... own cause. The man who discusses trifles in the style of philosophy makes himself an egregious bore. As Shakespeare said, "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature." ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... of some sort or other which they are without. If he has not brilliant wit, he may have solid sense; if he has not subtlety of understanding, he may have energy and firmness of purpose; if he has only a few advantages, he may have modesty and prudence to make the most of what he possesses. Propriety is one great matter in the conduct of life; which, though, like a graceful carriage of the body, it is neither definable nor striking at first sight, is the result of finely balanced ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of my father's modesty; and partly of his pride. He had so much more confidence in my mother's judgment as to such matters than in his own, that he never ventured even to help, much less to cross her, in the conduct of my education; on the other hand, in the fixed purpose of making ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... challenged my fate, and would meet it. I had even changed with the women of the house the silk dress I wore, and my fine linen, for the mean rags you cleansed me of last night, —that they might pay themselves so; and when all was expended, and the last trick tried that pride, honor, and modesty could wink at, I came away in the night, leaving no unsettled scores behind me. But I saw my own resources sinking fast; I knew I must presently be debtor to some one for protection, aid, and counsel. I remembered you,—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... turn to the stage. What actresses you have!—certainly you English are a gallant nation; you are wonderfully polite to come and see such horrible female performers! By the by, you observed when that young lady came on the stage, how timidly she advanced, how frightened she seemed. 'What modesty!' cry the audience; 'we must encourage her!' they clap, they shout, they pity the poor thing, they cheer her into spirits. Would you believe that the hardest thing the Manager had to do with her was to teach her that modesty. She wanted to walk on the stage like a grenadier, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... were looked for in a bride by Saxo's heroes, and chastity was required. The modesty of maidens in old days is eulogised by Saxo, and the penalty for its infraction was severe: sale abroad into slavery to grind the quern in the mud of the yard. One of the tests of virtue is noticed, "lac ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... meant by saying they had no "modesty" was that this great life-view had no shady places; they had a high sense of personal decorum, but no shame—no knowledge of anything to ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... he must not let their relationship reach the emotional climax toward which he guessed it was racing. But his experience in such matters was limited. He did not know how to break off their friendship without hurting her, and he was eager to minimize the possibility of danger. His modesty made this last easy. Out of her kindness she was good to him, but it was not to be expected that so pretty a girl would fall in love with a ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... to write his book has been mentioned. The expressions of modesty Saxo uses, saying that he was "the least" of Absalon's "followers", and that "all the rest refused the task", are not to be taken to the letter. A man of his parts would hardly be either the least in rank, or the last to be solicited. The words, however, enable us ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... was fascinated by beauty.... He had even obtained a sumptuous English keepsake, and (oh shame!) gloated adoringly over its 'elegantly engraved' representations of the various ravishing Gulnaras and Medoras.... But his innate modesty always kept him in check. In the house he used to work in what had been his father's study, it was also his bedroom, and his bed was the very one in which his father had ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... been carried to one of the ante-chambers, reclines on a couch of softest tapestry, a physician at one side, and Alice, bathing her temples with aromatic liquid, on the other. She presents a ravishing picture of delicacy, modesty, and simplicity,—of all that is calmly beautiful in woman. "I can scarcely account for it; but, she's coming to," says the man of medicine, looking on mechanically. Her white bosom swells gently, like a newly-waked zephyr playing among virgin leaves; while her ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... forgive (without waiting to see if the event justified the exercise of mercy) that she owns to having given her hand to Miss Westerfield, at parting, not half an hour after that young person's shameless forgetfulness of the claims of modesty, duty and gratitude had been first communicated to her. To say that this was the act of an inconsiderate woman, culpably indiscreet and, I had almost added, culpably indelicate, is only to say what she has deserved. On the next occasion to which I feel bound to advert, her conduct was even more ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... success with the gentlemen of the Poughkeepsie. Her youth, beauty, and modesty, told largely in her favor; and the simple, womanly affection she unconsciously betrayed in behalf of Harry, touched the heart of every observer. When the intelligence of her aunt's fate reached her, the sorrow she manifested was so profound and natural, that every one sympathized with her grief. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... With blushing modesty the lad made a stammering response to the welcome, while Thomas Ashley beamed with gratification, and his mother could scarce conceal her pride. The ceremony was ended presently, and the company took formal possession of the blockhouse. The family ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... Pshaw! I'll walk awhile And let the cool air fan me. 'Twas not wise. 'Tis only Folly with its cap and bells Can jest with sad things. She seemed earnest, too. What if, to pique me, she should overstep The pale of modesty, and give bold eyes (I could not bear that, nay, not even that!) To Marc or Claudian? Why, such things have been And no sin dreamed of. I will watch her close. There, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... This member of the family of Lewises, whose bravery was so usefully proved on this occasion, was endeared to all who knew him by his inflexible probity, courteous disposition, benevolent heart, and engaging modesty and manners. He was the umpire of all the private differences of his county—selected always by both parties. He was also the guardian of Meriwether Lewis, of whom we are now to speak, and who had lost his father ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... to-night; his share shall be ten thousand dollars, and I will hand him the money to-morrow. [Great applause from the house. But the "invulnerable probity" made the Richardses blush prettily; however, it went for modesty, and did no harm.] If you will pass my proposition by a good majority—I would like a two-thirds vote—I will regard that as the town's consent, and that is all I ask. Rarities are always helped by any ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... told me that she liked Angus from the start because he seemed so robed in health and draped in a kind of pathetic modesty, with eyes whose colour she was certain would not fade. How women do love the metaphors of millinery! How better than the sage of Chelsea they understand the philosophy of clothes! But she also added that she was charmed by the way ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... incapable of speaking in public as a first minister or the crown ought to speak. Now I consider that there is no validity in that objection; for I happened to be present when the noble duke last year had the modesty and candour to declare, in another place, his unfitness for the situation of first minister; and I really thought I had never heard a better speech in my life, or observed less want of capacity in any one who might be called on to take part in a debate. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the wall because conscience tells me that too much weakness for thee is about to draw me astray from duty. What thou takest for deceit is only shame and modesty." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... character—an utter disregard for his own aggrandizement and self-interest, and a sincere desire to make everybody about him happy and comfortable. And, underlying it all, was a sublime faith in Almighty God. These three essentials make the great man: modesty, unselfishness, and faith in God. Anyone is great who possesses them, and no one is great who lacks either of them. If the reader has not gathered that Dr. Jones' character was a most happy combination of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... hearts," said Headland; "but it strikes me that a country girl wholly unaccustomed to the society of gentlemen is very likely, in spite of all your caution, to be more interested in you than you may in your modesty suppose. Whatever your cousins, who, from your account, must be unusually simple-minded, unworldly ladies, may think, their young protege may suspect that you would not come over every day for the sole purpose of working at their grotto, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... of indolent, pampered, sham good-humoured, old and middle-aged men. (So he distributed the intolerable load of self-accusation.) Why was he doing nothing to change things, to get them better? What was the good of an assumed modesty, an effort at tolerance for and confidence in these boozy old lawyers, these ranting platform men, these stiff-witted officers and hide-bound officials? They were butchering the youth of England. Old men sat out of danger contriving death for the lads in the trenches. That ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... that Mr. World and Miss Church-Member next visited the hall devoted to the "Literature of the Passions." After they had entered, Miss Church-Member, at first, felt embarrassed, and her sense of modesty would not have allowed her to remain had it not been that her conscience was eased by ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... chaperon, and catches our hearts fresh before they are jaded with the crowded beauties of May. A really modest flower would wait for the other flowers to come first. A subtle affectation is surely a different thing from modesty. The violet is simply artful, the young widow among flowers, and to hold up such a flower as an example is not doing one's duty by the young. For true modesty commend me to the agave, which flowers once only in half a hundred years, as one may ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the first, but has some significant additions. Aword is said relative to his controversy with a critic, which is mentioned later.[27] Bode confesses further that the excellence of his work is due to Ebert and Lessing,[28] though modesty compelled his silence in the previous preface concerning the source of his aid. Bode admits that even this disclosure is prompted by the clever guess of a critic in the Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent,[29] ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... persuaded that only by the modesty and distinguishing affection illustrated in Jesus' career, can Christian Scientists aid the establishment of Christ's kingdom on the earth. In the first century of the Christian era Jesus' teachings bore much fruit, and the Father was glorified therein. ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... people of England. Yet the delay and the expense, grievous as they are, form the smallest part of the evil which English law, imported without modifications into India, could not fail to produce. The strongest feelings of our nature, honour, religion, female modesty, rose up against the innovation. Arrest on mesne process was the first step in most civil proceedings; and to a native of rank arrest was not merely a restraint, but a foul personal indignity. Oaths were required in every stage of every suit; and the feeling of a quaker about an oath is ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her sweet regard for what was due to Modesty and Decorum, she would have no Parley with me save in the presence of the Black slave,—'tis true that she did not understand a word of English—and directly she had come to an end of her Narrative, she sent the Tumbling Urchin to inquire whether the Physician ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... came in; for the pride and irritation and struggling rebellion which had all been at work, were smothered or at least kept under by her subdued feeling, and her brow wore an air of almost shy modesty. She did not see the two faces which were turned towards her as soon as she appeared, though she saw Mr. Carlisle rise. She came forward and stood ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... expressed also their desire that the Government of the United States should make to Captain Ericsson "such suitable return for his services as will evince the gratitude of a great nation." Upon hearing this suggestion, Ericsson, with characteristic modesty, remarked,—"All the remuneration I desire for the Monitor I get out of the construction of it. It is all-sufficient." Nevertheless we think the suggestion well worthy of consideration. In the same spirit of manly independence, he discountenanced the movement set on foot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Spoon" exhibition passed off without any such hubbub, except where the pieces were of such a character as to offend the delicacy and modesty of some of those crouching, fawning, bootlicking ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the Colonel; "there's a frank modesty about that 'think.' But do you dare to run the risk for the sake of your officers and brother-privates, who are in ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... Moon, This being by several Learned Men lookt upon, as a very rational Notion, it was thought fit to offer it by the Press to the Publick, that other Intelligent Persons also might the more conveniently and at their leisure examine the Conjecture (the Author, such is his Modesty, presenting it no otherwise) and thereupon give in their sense, and what Difficulties may occur to them about it, that so it may be either confirm'd or laid aside accordingly; As the Proposer himself ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... order yourself, Captain Rolls," replied the surgeon, with a smiling face, and in a tone of marked gentleness, as if the subject under discussion were some very noble deed, which he declined to acknowledge merely from exaggerated modesty. "When the ship sprung a leak, you commanded that all the superfluous ballast should be thrown overboard. The men first cast out the heavy ballast; then you ordered them to add whatever else could be spared. Then the cannon went, though it was a great pity, for we stand in need of them, especially ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... said this to the distinguished critic, if I found that his class was more advanced than I. But it proved that their session was within quarter of an hour of its end,—and with some lingering remains of native modesty, I waited for another occasion,—a morrow which never came,—before putting myself under Mr. Ruskin's volunteer tuition. But I tell the story to illustrate what might have been. Had I been legitimately a working-man in London, whatever the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the different couples on that memorable occasion, what objections were made, on the one hand, by shrinking modesty, and what arguments and entreaties were put forth, on the other hand, by the ardent lovers, need not be narrated here. Whether it was meek compliance with a loved one's wish, or dread of Spanish etiquette, or respect for the "royal will," or whatever else it may have been, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... "that you understand the language of flowers. When I was of the sentimental age I knew the floral alphabet and could convey all manner of covert messages through the agency of pinks and pansies and rosebuds and all the sweet go-betweens of Cupid's court. The blue violet, I believe, signifies modesty, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... companions. His observation is always shrewd and always kindly; you are left to guess his dislikes from his omissions. Mr. TAYLOR was himself in command, during SCOTT'S last expedition, of two parties, and of the work done on these journeys he writes with the modesty characteristic of men who speak of dangers and adventures in which they have personally taken part. One opinion of his I cannot refrain from quoting; it is that the tragedy of SCOTT'S expedition was caused by Seaman EVANS'S illness. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... power of will, and undoubted honesty of purpose. His faults were those which may be traced to an imperfect education, excessive prejudices, a violent temper, and the incense of flatterers,—which turned his head and of which he was inordinately fond. We fail to see in him the modesty which marked Washington and most of the succeeding presidents. As a young man he fought duels without sufficient provocation. He put himself in his military career above the law, and in his presidential career above precedents and customs, which subjected him to grave animadversion. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... gave to what passed on the Rhine. The Cardinal intimating that he heard the Princes in those parts had a great aversion to Oxenstiern, Grotius replied, that it was impossible it should be otherwise as things were situated; and that a Foreigner, however great his prudence and modesty might be, would be always odious to Princes whose authority and dignity he eclipsed. The end of the conference was more calm: The Cardinal conducted Grotius to the door of the chamber, excusing himself that his health did not permit him to go farther. A month after this ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... better men on the staff began to comment on the city desk's discrimination. Banneker had, for a time, shone in heroic light: his feat had been honorable, not only to The Ledger office, but to the entire craft of reporting. In the investigation he had borne himself with unexceptionable modesty and equanimity. That he should be "picked on" offended that generous esprit de corps which was natural to the office. Tommy Burt was all for referring ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... I? I haven't heard you play for two years, nor Constance sing for three. No false modesty shall keep me from demanding ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... with the picturesque town of Lymington rising among the green trees and green fields. I had, I confess, a feeling—grand as I had to appear—that I knew less than anybody else on board about affairs nautical; but modesty is the frequent companion of merit, and though I was very little, I ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
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