#modest

With a woman of sophistication, class and modesty and refinement, I become a totally tongue-tied buffoon. I can't even look her straight in the face. ↗

— Iain Glen

#class #even #face #her #i

Modesty should be typical of the success of a champion. ↗

— Major Taylor

#modesty #should #success #typical

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing. ↗

— Paul Theroux

#being #gain #modest #never #reputation

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

Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"--that planted too stimulating an image--but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#modesty #underwear #victorian-era #home

If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader. ↗

— Sarah Fielding

#candor #his #judgment #less #modesty

But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything. ↗

— Ian Hamilton Finlay

#am #artist #asked #consider #embarrassing

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

— Carlisle Floyd

#artist #because #modest #position #put