#modest

Immodest and attractive is easy. Modest and repulsive is easy too. But modest and attractive is an art form. ↗

— Douglas Wilson

#attractive #attractiveness #immodest #immodesty #modest

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

— Pol Pot

#leader #modest #people #quite #tell

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

— Chely Wright

#grew #house #i #jobs #kids

Modesty is a reflex, arising naturally to help a woman protect her hopes and guide their fulfillment -specifically, this hope for one man. (...) Along with this hope comes a certain vulnerability, because every time a man fails to stick by us, our hopes are, in a sense, dashed. This is where modesty fits in. For modesty armed this special vulnerability -not to oppress women, but with the aim of putting them on an equal footing with men. The delay modesty created not only made it more likely that women could select men who would stick by them, but in turning lust into love, it changed men from uncivilized males who ran after as many sexual partners as they can get to men who really wanted to stick by one woman. ↗

— Wendy Shalit

#modesty #change

To forgive and to be forgiven are the two points of holy magnificence and holy modesty; round these two centres the whole doctrine of largesse revolves. ↗

— Charles Williams

#doctrine #forgive #forgiven #holy #largesse

Modesty is the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it. ↗

— Oliver Herford

#art

Modesty answers not the crude how of femininity, but the beautiful why. ↗

— Wendy Shalit

#femininity #modesty #women #beauty

When virtue and modesty enlighten her charms, the lustre of a beautiful woman is brighter than the stars of heaven, and the influence of her power it is in vain to resist. ↗

— Akhenaton

#beautiful #beautiful woman #brighter #charms #enlighten

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#cakes #humor #modesty #pretense #tea-parties

They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more. ↗

— Malcolm Cowley

#conversation #future-plans #lost-generation #modest #new-york