Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Modesty
Maximum ornamentum amicitiæ tollit, qui ex ea tollit verecundiam.
He takes the greatest ornament from friendship, who takes modesty from it.
Cicero—De Amicitia. XX.
Modesty is that feeling by which honorable shame acquires a valuable and lasting authority.
Cicero—Rhetorical Invention. Bk. II. Sec. LVI.
Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more.
Modesty died when clothes were born.
Modesty died when false modesty was born.
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)—Memoranda. Paine’s Biography of Mark Twain. Vol. III. P. 1513.
Immodest words admit of no defence;
For want of decency is want of sense.
Wentworth Dillon—Essay on Translated Verse. L. 113.
Thy modesty’s a candle to thy merit.
Henry Fielding—Tom Thumb the Great. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 8.
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.
Goldsmith—The Deserted Village. L. 329.
Like the violet, which alone
Prospers in some happy shade,
My Castara lives unknown
To no looser eye betrayed.
Habington—Castara. (1634). In Elton’s ed. P. 166.
Why, to hear Betsy Bobbet talk about wimmin’s throwin’ their modesty away, you would think if they ever went to the political pole, they would have to take their dignity and modesty and throw ’em against the pole, and go without any all the rest of their lives.
Marietta Holley—My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s.
Cui pudor et justitiæ soror incorrupta fides nudaque veritas quando ullum inveniet parem?
What can be found equal to modesty, uncorrupt faith, the sister of justice, and undisguised truth?
Horace—Carmina. I. 24. 6.
Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
La Bruyère—The Characters or Manners of the Present Age. Ch. II. Sec. 17.
Adolescentem verecundum esse decet.
Modesty becomes a young man.
Plautus—Asinaria. V. 1. 8.
Wenn jemand bescheiden bleibt, nicht beim Lobe, sondern beim Tadel, dann ist er’s.
When one remains modest, not after praise but after blame, then is he really so.
Jean Paul Richter—Hesperus. 12.
Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman’s lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there?
Measure for Measure. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 167.
Not stepping o’er the bounds of modesty.
Romeo and Juliet. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 27.
Da locum melioribus.
Give place to your betters.
Terence—Phormio. III. 2. 37.
He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modesty conceal’d.
Thomson—The Seasons. Autumn. L. 229.