|
|
|
More "Modesty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brief infallibility of manner; that lofty light air, that politely disdainful view of Valori and mankind: he has now need of men. Complains of nothing, is cheerful, quizzical;—ardently busy to "grind out the notches," as our proverb is; has a mild humane aspect, something of modesty, almost of piety in him. Help me, thou Supreme Power, Maker of men, if my purposes are manlike! Though one does not go upon the Prayers of Forty-Hours, or apply through St. Vitus and such channels, there ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Seth laughed, in spite of himself. "Young man," he observed, "you ain't cultivated your modesty under glass, have you?" ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at least have 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... sacrifice rather than abandon all hope of calling her my own. The proud title of Riverola was as nothing in my estimation when weighed in the balance against her charms—her bewitching manner—her soft, retiring modesty. I moreover flattered myself that I was not indifferent to her; and I loved her all the more sincerely because I reflected that if she gave her heart to me, it would be to the poor and humble Cornari, and not to the rich ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... tell you? You ought to get acquainted with Princess Passek," continued Maslenikoff, who had become talkative; "she has entirely devoted herself to this cause. Elle fait beaucoup de bien. Thanks to her and, without false modesty, to myself, everything has been changed, and changed so that none of the old horrors can be found there, and they are decidedly well off there. You will see it. There is Fanarin. I am not personally acquainted with him; besides, our roads do not meet because ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... this effectiveness of Emerson, no pose, no literary art; nothing that corresponds even remotely to the pretended modesty and ignorance with which Socrates lays pitfalls for our ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... system, are here simply 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 the reverse of the former, and of that asserted by the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... tells us, "raised his reputation to a great height generally throughout the kingdom." Even courtiers and crown-lawyers spoke respectfully of him. "His carriage," says Clarendon, "throughout that agitation, was with that rare temper and modesty, that they who watched him narrowly to find some advantage against his person, to make him less resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just testimony." But his demeanour, though it impressed Lord Falkland ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... skin. The soft dark hair comes low on her white forehead. With a gaily-coloured shawl covering her head, and drawn across her chin, as they wear it in the Island, she looks, or looked when I last saw her, a hidden, gliding image of modesty. And despite that sin of the past she is modest. It was the ignorant sin of a child, and out of the days of horror and wrath that followed—her purging—she brought only the maternity that burns like ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... as able to entertain several admirers at once as are some of her blond sisters across the sea. Her voice was softer and her laugh more attractive than that of many an American belle of high social standing. In fact the women of this island village were, as a class, of remarkable dignity and modesty, so that there was probably less to shock one's modesty here than at many a fashionable American watering place. Of course ignorance of their language made it impossible to understand all that was going on, but to judge by their actions and the tones of their ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... with great shrewdness causing the appointment of committees to cooeperate with the Bar Association, with the Committee of Seventy, and with the Municipal Taxpayers' Association. These represented regenerated Tammany. Kelly affected extreme modesty, but as he moved about the hall of the national convention, urging the nomination of Greeley, the delegates recognised a master in the art of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was the teacher of Govinda, the teacher of S'a@nkara; but he was probably living when S'a@nkara was a student, for S'a@nkara says that he was directly influenced by his great wisdom, and also speaks of the learning, self-control and modesty of the other pupils of Gau@dapada [Footnote ref 2]. There is some dispute about the date of S'a@nkara, but accepting the date proposed by Bha@n@darkar, Pa@thak and Deussen, we may consider it to be 788 A.D. [Footnote ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... those faces, according to their different temperaments, could be seen first the same vague, hard interest that had been Thyme's when she first looked at them, then the same secret hostility and criticism, as though they too felt that by this young girl's untouched modesty, by her gushed cheeks and unsoiled clothes, their sex had given them away. With contemptuous movements of their lips and bodies, on that doorstep they proclaimed their emphatic belief in the virtue and reality ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to the ground and the disloyal young Britons were scurrying off through the woods in twenty different directions, leaping over fallen logs, crashing through underbrush and whooping like a pack of wild Indians. The crucial moment had proved too much for schoolboy modesty. Mr. Watson glared around to find himself left with only a handful of embarrassed and giggling girls. Just one boy remained, little Tommy Basketful, who was too small to run away and who held to his sister's ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... which they do not know or which they fear; set themselves above all by constituting themselves the supreme judges of all. They would all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed crocodile tears upon their mothers' breasts; but generally they believe in nothing, blaspheme women, or play at modesty, and in reality are led by some old woman or an evil courtesan. They are all equally eaten to the bone with calculation, with depravity, with a brutal lust to succeed, and if you plumbed for their hearts you would find in all a stone. In their ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... still alive, has graven on his tomb that he was "corpore procerus."[444] The taste of the English for finery becomes so well known, that to them is ascribed, even in France, the invention of new fashions. Recalling to his daughters, in order to teach them modesty, that "the deluge in the time of Noah happened for the pride and disguises of men, and mostly of women, who remodelled their shapes by means of gowns and attire," the Knight de la Tour Landry gives the English ladies the credit, or rather the discredit, of having invented the immeasurable ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... our little lessons upon the beauties of modesty and humility, we have picked out basic arrogances—tail of a peacock, horns of a stag, dollars of a capitalist—eclipses of astronomers. Though I have no desire for the job, I'd engage to list hundreds of instances in which the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... weaknesses, which her friends do not conceal. It was a weakness, not perhaps that she overestimated herself; that might be pardoned; but that she took no pains to conceal her high opinion of her abilities and worth. One likes to see an appearance of modesty, and that little deceit Margaret did not practice. On the contrary, Mr. Emerson says, "Margaret at first astonished and then repelled us by a complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of Scaligar.... In the coolest way, she said to her friends, 'I ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... of sages such as Heraclitus. They were able to say proudly of themselves that much had been revealed to them, for they did not attribute their knowledge to their transitory personality, but to the eternal daimon within them. Their pride had as a necessary adjunct the stamp of humility and modesty, expressed in the words, "All knowledge of perishable things is in perpetual flux like the things themselves." Heraclitus calls the eternal universe a play, he could also call it the most serious of realities. But the word "earnest" has lost its force through being applied to earthly ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... uneducated and neglected. The finer affections become blunted. Woman is no more the gentle wife, companion, and friend of man, but his fellow-labourer and fellow-drudge. She is exposed to influences which too often efface that modesty of thought and conduct which is one of the best safeguards of virtue. Without judgment or sound principles to guide them, factory-girls early acquire the feeling of independence. Ready to throw off the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Let him [Anatolius] know to what sort of man he has succeeded, and, expelling all the spirit of pride, let him imitate the faith of Flavian, his modesty and his humility, which raised him up even to a confessor's glory. If he will shine with his virtues, he will be praiseworthy and everywhere he will win an abundance of love, not by seeking human things, but divine favor. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... modesty but modesty should never lead to a denial of the truth. Remember, Jacob, that thou ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... both men and women should wear the Spanish costume, that they no longer should receive Mohammedan names, or marry without permission. The Moriscoes contended that no particular dress involved religious opinions, that the women used the veil according to their notions of modesty, that the use of their own language was no sin, and that baths were used, not from religious motives, but for the sake of cleanliness. These expostulations were, however, without effect. Nothing could move the bigoted king. So revolt followed ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... importance, in the gift of the Home Office. It meant, no doubt, the abandonment of more brilliant things; Darrell was content to abandon them. His determination to apply for it seemed, indeed, to himself an act of modesty—almost of sacrifice. As to the technical qualifications required, he was well aware there might be other men better equipped than himself. But, after all, to what may not general ability aspire—general ability properly ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chamber, he diligently applied himself to the task of carrying into practical effect the suggestion which had arisen in his mind. By an arrangement of transparent glasses and reflecting surfaces—which, were it not for a well-defined natural modesty, he would certainly be tempted to describe as highly ingenious—he ultimately succeeded in bringing about the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... head. "Only the stupid, the guilty, and the base are proud and overbearing," he said. "But, whoever has seen you, Louisa, on the day of your first arrival in Berlin, will never forget your sweet image in its radiance of grace, modesty, and loveliness. It was on a Sunday, a splendid clear day in winter, the day before Christmas, which was to become the greatest holiday of my life. A vast crowd had gathered in front of the Arsenal Unter den Linden. Every one was anxious to see you. At the entrance ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... But the modesty of the English tongue forbids us to translate the rest of the phrase. Dean Swift might have related how Balzac wished to express his contempt for all the royalties of the earth. Now that he is in ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Los condenados did not deter him from employing a similar symbolism and similar motifs again; and, after the tremendous hit of Electra, he deliberately chose, for Alma y vida, his next effort, a subject and style which should discourage popular applause.[5] Such was the modesty, unconsciousness and intellectual ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... Travelling Companion," which was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned the other day on the ground that it was not a work of genius, and that "Jekyll" had supplanted it. Then came one of those financial fluctuations to which (with an elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in the third person. For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me to conjecture how I looked, but I felt dreadfully destitute of sail as I scudded over the rough pathway that wound around the shore. Blushing, panting, and utterly overwhelmed with conflicting emotions of modesty and despair, I darted behind the friendly shelter of a rock, and inwardly resolved that if ever I went bathing in Finland again, I would at least perform my ablutions in a more appropriate costume than Nature ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... greatest 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... is due that assumption of extravagant and conventional pudor which forms one of the most abiding features of the pastoral drama. To censure an exaggeration of the charm of modesty on the threshold of the seicento, or to object a strained sense of chastity against the author of the golden-age chorus, may indeed seem strange; but, as with Fletcher at a later date, the very extravagance of the paradox may supply us with ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Peggy presided, was subject on the contrary to some painful vicissitudes. When the post of housekeeper had been deputed to her, Peggy had been greatly elated by her increased importance, and with characteristic modesty had expatiated upon her peculiar fitness for the post, and declared her intention of exhibiting a really well-conducted establishment to the gaze of the world. She provided herself with a huge account book, marched about the house jingling an enormous bunch of ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... prominent characteristics of both sexes. With the boy this is satisfied without much pretence at secrecy. False modesty prevents the girl from openly obtaining the desired information. She obtains it secretly from her companions. Mothers do not give their daughters credit for the instinct that compels the satisfaction of their curiosity. Sometime ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... all the more proper that you should tell the story, Mr. Passford, and spare Mr. Gilfleur's modesty," said ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... titles means Struck by the Pawnee, and was occasioned by some blow which the chief had received in battle from one of the Pawnee tribe. The second is in English Half Man, which seemed a singular name for a warrior, till it was explained to have its origin, probably, in the modesty of the chief, who, on being told of his exploits, would say, 'I am no warrior, I am only half a man.' The other chiefs spoke very little; but after they had finished, one of the warriors delivered a speech, in which he declared he ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... an extraordinary difficult Author; for this requires more than double the time of a Historian or the like, which was as much as I cou'd allow my self. I made choice of these three Plays as well for their Modesty as Regularity, for above all things I wou'd by no means give the least Encouragement to Lewdness or Obscenity, which grow too fast of themselves; and therefore I thought I cou'd not chuse better than ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... dishes that we know during the winter, and when prepared after the recipe given here it precedes all other forms of serving corn meal. To mix it properly one must know the proper values of herbs and condiments, and this recipe is the result of much discriminating study. Modesty prevents us giving it more than the name of "scrapple." It is prepared in the following manner, differing from that ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... silk, and pleasant, serene, gray eyes. She was dressed very simply in white, with a blue band across her hair, and a blue scarf and sash around throat and waist. Her face, though showing signs of quiet strength, and of a self-confidence which was the flower of maidenly modesty and innocence, was not beautiful according to any recognized standard. Bressant, from his intuitive perception of form and proportion, was aware of this. The forehead was too high, the nose irregular, the mouth lacked the perfect curve, and the teeth, though white and even, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... contemptuous air, that his sentiments were of a dangerous tendency, and that it was to be an enemy to the state to believe that the sun revolved round its own axis, and that the year had twelve months, he held his tongue with great modesty and meekness. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... animals, though the animals also are there slandered! The women were free and complaisant; there were many children about. But matings, I thought, occurred only of free and mutual desire, and not more frequently than in other countries. The women were not without modesty, nor the men without a pale chivalry. At first I thought constraint or rule did not enter in, but after a talk with their priest through Diego Colon, I gathered that there prevailed tribe and kinship restraints. Later we were ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... showing her heart to the world, with falling hair and rending sobs. As he lay thus trying to court back his dream of perfect roses, I had my delight in knowing he would never dream-what Senda saw so plainly, yet with such faultless modesty— that all true love draws its strength and fragrance from the riches not of the loved one's, but of ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... a more ridiculous compound of pretended modesty, and real want of delicacy, than is to be found with this class of sojourners on the highway. Should any of their own sex arrive, of whom some little scandal has been afloat, they are up in arms, and down they plump in their rocking-chairs; and although the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... descended from the antient family of the Livingstons. He was born about the year 1555. His father, David Rollock, sent him to Stirling to be educated for the university under Thomas Buchanan, where his genius, modesty and sweetness of temper soon procured to him the particular friendship of his master, which subsisted ever after. From this school, he went to the university of St Andrews, where he prosecuted his studies for four years; at the end of which, his progress had been so great, that ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... be quarrelling about over-appreciations and under-appreciations—and after all I have no interest nor wish, I do assure you, to depreciate myself—and you are not to think that I have the remotest claim to the Monthyon prize for good deeds in the way of modesty of self-estimation. Only when I know you better, as you talk of ... and when you know me too well, ... the right and the wrong of these conclusions will appear in a fuller light than ever so much arguing ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... giving him away?" he said. "My dear Miss Falconer, everybody knows him. Every ball-room every tennis-court, is strewed with his wrecks. And all the time he doesn't know it; but goes his way crowned with a modesty which is the marvel and the wonder of this most ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... extreme modesty she did not realize how much she had gained in intellectual culture. Women left to themselves have time to read, and Giselle had done this all the more because she had considered it a duty. Must she not know enough to instruct and superintend the education of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fair star I saw two brilliant eyes, With sweetness, modesty, so glistening o'er, That soon those graceful nests of Love before My worn heart learnt all others to despise: Equall'd not her whoever won the prize In ages gone on any foreign shore; Not she to Greece whose wondrous beauty bore Unnumber'd ills, to Troy death's anguish'd ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Haeberlein was actually in London last week in connection with the disgraceful Kellner business. ON DIT that he escaped detection through the instrumentality of one of the fair sex, whose audacity outweighed her modesty." ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... of man a familiar name. Probably it may be quite common in similar localities, but its size, its brief periodicity, and inconspicuousness, contribute to make it, at present, one of the rarities of botany. Beneath a kidney-shaped leaf a tiny, solitary, hooded, purple flower shelters with becoming modesty, the art of concealment being so delicately employed that it seems to preserve its virginal purity. There is proof, however, that the flower does possess some "secret virtue," for if the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... thinking, though his pathos, indeed, sometimes reached intensity. His humor was always delicate and kindly; his sentiment never degenerated into sentimentality. His diction was graceful and elegant—too elegant, perhaps; and in his modesty he attributed the success of his books in England to the astonishment of Englishmen that an ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... for the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, But the foolish despise wisdom and discipline. Reverence comes through wise instruction, And before honor goes modesty. ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... once, and, struck by Ruth's modesty and beauty, he went to her and said she was not to glean in any other fields but his all the time of harvest. He told her she need fear no rudeness from the young men, for he had laid his commands upon them not to molest or ...
— A Farmer's Wife - The Story of Ruth • J. H. Willard
... "Well, my modesty forbids me to explain how far the rumor is true. But, the fact is, she has given me the most unmistakable proofs of her favor. Of course, a man who has seen as much of the world as I have cannot be expected to reciprocate such a passion in its sentimental aspects; but from ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and slit-like nostrils, and wide mouths filled with opalescent teeth. Being cold-blooded, they needed no clothing, beyond their belts and equipment, and the emblem of the Chartered Ullr Company painted on their chests and backs. They had no need for modesty, since all were of the same gender—true, functional hermaphrodites; any individual among them could bear young, or fertilize the ova of ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... exaggerated deference, modesty, timidity, France in the eighteenth century surrendered to England the exclusive privilege of constructing her astronomical instruments. Thus, when Herschel was prosecuting his beautiful observations on the other side of the Channel, we had not even ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Odes, his voice is raised in a paean of unmixed triumph. "The pure home is polluted by no unchastity; law and morality have destroyed crime; matrons are blessed with children resembling their fathers; already faith and peace, honour and maiden modesty, have returned to us," &c. [11] This can hardly be mere exaggeration, though no doubt the picture is coloured, since the popularity of Ovid's Art of Love, even during Horace's lifetime, is a sufficient proof that profligacy ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... regard the fathers, upon seeing the reverence with which the captains treated them, who always kissed their hands on seeing them. This custom has remained even until the present in the islands. However, they do not kiss the hand, but the habit or girdle. I suppose that the fathers' modesty would not permit the captains to kiss the hand, and they substituted therefor the habit or girdle. Upon the Indians seeing this, they have followed the same custom. Consequently, as a rule, when an Indian comes to talk to a father, he kisses the latter's hand. With this instruction that the fathers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... Now (by my modesty) a goodly Broker: Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines? To whisper, and conspire against my youth? Now trust me, 'tis an office of great worth, And you an officer fit for the place: There: take the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... opportunity for a flank movement. In the Count's breast rage and astonishment contended for the mastery as he contemplated the curious miscarriage of his newspaper assault. He had chosen this line of attack partly because his modesty counseled him to keep his own personality in the background, partly because the wider the publicity of his rival's disgrace the more complete would that disgrace be. But as his newspaper ally failed him, he took the campaign into his own hands; ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... reckoned that, with an assured income of 12,000 ducats, the youth would be contented to amuse himself, while he left the government of Florence in the hands of his Vizier.[9] But here the wily politician overreached himself. Cosimo wore an old head on his young shoulders. With decent modesty and a becoming show of deference, he used Guicciardini as his ladder to mount the throne by, and then kicked the ladder away. The first days of his administration showed that he intended to be sole master in Florence. Guicciardini, perceiving that his game was spoiled, retired ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... infallible signs. Generally speaking, the chief of these were: long hair, and a tendency to make lugubrious remarks beginning with Verily, verily I say unto you. In actual life, too, lots of men did grow their hair long and cultivate the verily-verily habit; hoping that, despite their innate modesty, their fellow-men might not fail to take the hint and pierce the disguise afforded, often by a personal morality you might ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... silent for a while. "And yet," resumed he, "I believe that I was wrong to invite him hither. In your unconscious modesty, you have not perceived, my child, that Gunther loves you with all the fervor of a true and honest heart. He may have indulged the thought that I would bestow my daughter upon a poor little imperial secretary, whose brother enjoys ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... it invests them with a synthetic and general character and allows only the pure idea, the divine principle, of them to be seen, whether this be the cause I cannot say, but I feel that if I embraced her I would hold in my hands the heaven of human pleasure. It is certain that modesty communicates an invincible attraction to women. My uneasiness is so great that it would be vain for me to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... crusade. When families of eight or ten men, women and children are all huddled promiscuously together in a single apartment, a condition common among our poor all over the land, there is little hope of inculcating morality and modesty. And yet in spite of the fateful heritage of slavery, in spite of the manifold pitfalls and peculiar temptations to which our girls are subjected, and though the safeguards usually thrown around maidenly youth and innocence are in some ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... any reader, whether Protestant or Catholic, not to admire the frankness and candor, the honest conscientiousness, the courage, and, at the same time, womanly modesty and ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... us a grateful memorial of both his parents. He says that from his grandfather he learned (or, might have learned) good morals and the government of his temper; from the reputation and remembrance of his father, modesty and manliness; from his mother, piety, and beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and, further, simplicity of life far removed from ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... to cure Anthony's-fire, or a wet bed in an ice-house to cure an ague, as recommend a sinner to those accursed lies, Roman penance, and Auricular Confession."—The mental purity of Nuns consists in a life totally "contrary to the laws of God, of modesty, of decency. They are constantly exposed to the obscene interrogations, and the lewd actions of the Priests. Notwithstanding God has fixed a bar on every female mind, it is broken through by the Priests putting questions to them upon those subjects, as the scripture declares, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... already so bountifully been bestowed in large donations, that it seems wanting in modesty, if not in equity, to make further immediate demands upon heads of houses, ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... that grief, which came while his troubles were beginning, much else had come to Lincoln; and now through four years of unsurpassed trial his capacity had steadily grown, and his delicate fairness, his pitifulness, his patience, his modesty had grown therewith. Here is one of the few speeches ever delivered by a great man at the crisis of his fate on the sort of occasion which a tragedian telling his story would have devised for him. This man had stood alone ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the most expensive of these establishments; and from that point on, their progress towards finished cynicism, fatty degeneration of the intellect, and smiling abandonment of all scruples, all ideals, and all modesty, was rapid and certain. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... clandestine murders, and Rome itself a theatre of horrors, where nobility of descent and splendour of fortune marked men out for destruction; where the vigour of mind that aimed at civil dignities, and the modesty that declined them, were offences without distinction; where virtue was a crime that led to certain ruin; where the guilt of informers and the wages of their iniquity were alike detestable; where the sacerdotal order, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... friend you are, aren't you, Fritz?" said she. "You worship Mr. Rassendyll. I know you think I should worship him too, if he asked me. Well, I shouldn't. I am foolish enough to have my own idol." All my modesty did not let me doubt who her idol might be. Suddenly she drew near to me and whispered in my ear. I think that our own happiness brought to her a sudden ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... morally the best part, but it is by all odds the least interesting—it is found in the type of man belonging to the plains in a temperate zone, who differs in every respect from the real northman, his distant cousin and hereditary enemy. If Charles Juxon was remarkable for anything it was for his modesty and reticence, in a word, for his apparent determination not to be remarkable ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... where it falls into consideration that, though he wanted not wit nor courage, for he had very fine attractives, as being a good piece of a scholar, yet were those accompanied with the retractives of bashfulness, and natural modesty, which, as the wave of the house of his fortune then stood, might have hindered his progression, had they not been reinforced by the infusion of sovereign favour, and the Queen's gracious invitation; and that it may appear how ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... bliss again than speak of it aloud. If their blood had not been lashed by their rapid march, if the darkness had not offered complicity, they would, for a long time yet, have continued kissing each other on the cheeks like old playfellows. Feelings of modesty were coming to Miette. She remembered Justin's coarseness. A few hours previously she had listened, without a blush, to that fellow who called her a shameless girl. She had wept without understanding his meaning, she had wept simply because she guessed that what he spoke of must ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... witticisms are not witty, but you are evidently well satisfied with their literary value. You may, perhaps, have really suffered, but you have no respect for your own suffering. You may have sincerity, but you have no modesty; out of the pettiest vanity you expose your sincerity to publicity and ignominy. You doubtlessly mean to say something, but hide your last word through fear, because you have not the resolution to utter it, and only have a cowardly ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... tiger before them, and a careless or scoffing multitude ranged all around—these were strong witnesses to the great principle of Faith—noble proofs of the power of living and dying for things unseen. This was their function. It was for others to show forth the humility and modesty in which, as a ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... surprised to find one who seemed to think it a duty to keep his knowledge and taste in the background. She gave him credit for more talent than appeared; for more, perhaps, than he really had. She was piqued, too, at his very modesty and self-restraint. Why did not he, like the rest who dangled about her, spread out his peacock's train for her eyes; and try to show his worship of her, by setting himself off in his brightest colours? And yet this modesty awed her into respect of him; for she ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... by a physician, especially if a social acquaintance, is an unnecessary embarrassment. The false modesty that makes physical examination unwelcome to many adults, men as well as women, is easily overcome when the advantages of such examination are understood. It is likewise easy to prove to a teacher that the loss of time required in ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... Odalisque, supine, Defying prurient modesty turned she, Displaying in her beauty candidly Wonder of ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... on the most friendly terms with our neighbors. The colonel and my father smoke their afternoon cigar together in our sitting-room or on the piazza opposite, and I pass an hour or two of the day or the evening with the daughter. I am more and more struck by the beauty, modesty, ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Grangousier, and he commanded the page to begin. Then Eudemon, asking leave of the viceroy, his master, so to do, with his cap in his hand, a clear and open countenance, ruddy lips, his eyes steady, and his looks fixt upon Gargantua, with a youthful modesty, stood up straight on his feet and began to commend and magnify him, first, for his virtue and good manners; secondly, for his knowledge; thirdly, for his nobility; fourthly, for his bodily beauty; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... perfect ease and freedom with which it is done; no awkwardness or confusion appearing on either side; the most well-behaved and decent young woman going into it without a blush, and they are by no means deficient in modesty. What is pure in idea is always so in conduct, since bad actions are the common consequence of bad thoughts; and though the better sort of people treat this ceremony as a barbarism, it is very much to be doubted whether more faux pas have been committed ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... Therefore, if you look around for plants, do not go to those who advertise, "layers for immediate bearing," or "plants of superior quality to all others grown;" but go to men who have honesty and modesty enough to send you a sample of their best plants, if required, and who are not averse to let you see how they grow them. Choose their good, strong healthy, one year old plants, with strong, firm, healthy roots, and let those who wish to be humbugged ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... a certain age should lead the youth, and he should in all things follow her counsels with respect and obedience. But she for her part should know at what moment to lay down her authority, and begin, with a fitting modesty, to follow him whom she has ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... virgin modesty Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth, That would be woo'd, and not unsought be won Not obvious, not obtrusive, but ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... or tree. Will Clark wrote his twice—once on Pompey's Pillar, on the Yellowstone, and once on the rock far down in Nebraska, as we noted when we passed near that place. But the simplicity, the modesty of those two, sinking everything in their great duty to their country—it's those things, my boys, which make their Journal the model of its kind and class, and their journey the greatest of its kind in all the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... that, he has told you more than the truth! I am a patriot. The rest my modesty compels me ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... winning about this young man's modesty, and something flattering in his respectful admiration. He seemed, also, to know his place, a fact which was even more in his favor. Undoubtedly he had force and ability; probably his love of adventure and a happy lack of settled purpose had led him ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... March exulted, "nobody could be so conceited all the time as Mr. Beaton is most of the time. He must have moments of the direst modesty, when he'd be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for their clothes on the bank, and stood shrinking behind some inadequate rag. The more spirited of the naiads threw pebbles at the cowardly intruders, who, safe behind the leafy cover that was meant to shield modesty, threw jeers and mockery in return. But the Gentile boys ran away soon, or ran away punished. A chemise and a petticoat turn a frightened woman into an Amazon in such circumstances; and woe to the impudent wretch who lingered after the avengers plunged into the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... an anxious friend in Paris, who thought Irving was ruining his prospects by neglecting to leave his card with this or that duchess who had sought his acquaintance, he writes: "He attributes all this to very excessive modesty, not dreaming that the empty intercourse of saloons with people of rank and fashion could be a bore to one who has run the rounds of society for the greater part of half a century, and who likes to consult his own humor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ease and grace in the company of great ladies and gentlemen. As may be easily imagined, the little Pierre's education had not been neglected. He did not fail to array himself in a manner befitting the occasion; and at the banquet he served his father's guests with so much modesty and grace that he drew forth praise ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... am not of it, but frequently in company with it: 'tis all disjointed. Madame * * *, who, though a learned lady, has not lost her modesty and character, is extremely scandalized with the other two dames, especially Moll Worthless, who knows no bounds. She is at rivalry with Lady W. for a certain Mr. * * *, whom perhaps you knew at Oxford. If you did not, I'll tell you: he is a grave young man by temper, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... it would be half enough if only the nation had the money to give away. "Why," exclaimed one gushing orator, "if we had the money the only course we could take would be to offer his Royal Highness whatever he pleased to accept, and even in that case we should have reason to fear lest his modesty might do an injury to his generosity by making him confine his demand within the strictest bounds of bare necessity." "Were we," another member of the Court party declared, "to measure the prince's allowance by the prince's merit, as we know no bounds to the latter, we could prescribe ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Burns has thus recorded his impression of the meeting:—"A Mr Dudgeon, a poet at times, a worthy, remarkable character, natural penetration, a great deal of information, some genius, and extreme modesty." Dudgeon died in October 1813, about his ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... led by the nose, to a strange degree, if there were an artist dexterous enough, daring enough! His own natural judgment was good, and, though apt to be hasty and headlong, was always likely to come right in the end; but internally, we may perceive, his modesty, self-distrust, anxiety and other unexpected qualities, must have been great. And then his explosiveness, impatience, excitability; his conscious dumb ignorance of all things beyond his own small horizon of personal ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... climing thoughts, And with thy vertue beat ambition downe, 1490 And this no lesse inblazon shall thy fame. Then those great deeds and chiualrous attempts, That made thee conqueror in Thessalia. Ant. This noble mind and Pincely modesty, Which in contempt of honours brightnes shines, Makes vs to wish the more for such a Prince, Whose vertue not ambition won that praise, Nor shall we thinke it losse of liberty. Or Romaine liberty any way impeached, For to subiect vs to his Princely rule, 1500 Whose thoughts fayre ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... and through the mire. These women, too, were pure once. Think of your sisters, those of you who have them. Misery, prostitution, the police, Saint-Lazare—that is what those beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels of modesty, gentleness and loveliness, fresher than lilacs in the month of May, will come to. Ah! you have got yourselves killed! You are no longer on hand! That is well; you have wished to release the people from Royalty, and you deliver over your daughters to the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... From the natural modesty of her character she had a great dislike to her biography, or memorial of her in any shape, being written, for she destroyed all letters that might have been used for such a purpose, publicity of any ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... rudely outraged. In the field, in the rude cabin, in the press-room and in the factory, she was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant men. No chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty. From her girlhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passions. All the virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. If the instinct of chastity asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tigress for the ownership and possession of her own person, and oftentimes ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... them news of their redemption by an angel from the sanctuary;—a speech which, although Father Aldrovand shook his head, was received by her companions with such general acclamation, as greatly embarrassed the young man's modesty. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the world. The philosophers have a wonderful saying concerning the eye that there are spiritual tints in the soul which are visible in the movements of the eyelids—pride and haughtiness, humility and meekness. Accordingly the ethical qualities due to the sense of sight are pride, meekness, modesty and impudence, besides the subordinate qualities derived ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... kitchen, he found Betty's nose as much in the air as its construction would permit. For a hook-nosed animal, she certainly was the most harmless and ovine creature in the world, but this was a case in which feminine modesty was both concerned and aggrieved. She showed her resentment no further, however, than by simply returning no answer in syllable, or sound, or motion, to Robert's request. She was washing up the tea-things, and went on with her work as if she had been in absolute solitude, saving that her ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... different Challenger who greeted us in the morning—a Challenger with contentment and self-congratulation shining from his whole person. He faced us as we assembled for breakfast with a deprecating false modesty in his eyes, as who should say, "I know that I deserve all that you can say, but I pray you to spare my blushes by not saying it." His beard bristled exultantly, his chest was thrown out, and his hand ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... making the flames of our resin torches flicker weirdly. During the meal 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 ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... fower raal sailors, as ye call's 'em, now aboard, barrin' Misther Mackay and the second mate; an' them's Adams over thar aft at the wheel, these two idle jokers here beside me, the ship's bhoy, an' thin mesilf—though, faix, me modesty ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... titular respect have been condemned abroad, and we are accused of being all "colonels" and "generals;" but a wife should still give her husband his title. In addressing the President we say "Mr. President," but his wife should say, "Allow me to introduce the President to you." The modesty of Mrs. Grant, however, never allowed her to call her many-titled husband anything but "Mr. Grant," which had, in her case, a sweetness ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... courier I send thee divers rhymes which may divert thee. Soothly they are most honest chronicles, albeit in all modesty I may say ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... of whom stared at the pretty child till even she observed it, and showed that she did by the color that came and went in her cheeks. It annoyed me as much as if she had been my own little daughter, for I like modesty, and have often been troubled by the forward manners of schoolgirls, who seem to enjoy being looked at. So I helped this one out of her little trouble by making room between the old gentleman and myself, and motioning her ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... chain, whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having to hop up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for modesty's sake, and instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which she was frequently subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned with ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... think you mean what you now mention. If there wanted no more, said he, than to prove the sincerity of my wishes in this point to gain your approbation of them, my chaplain should this moment put it past a doubt, and confirm my proposal:—but, pursued he, I will not put your modesty to any farther shock at present;—all I intreat is, that you will consider on what I have said, and what the passion I am possessed of merits from you. In concluding these words he kissed her with the ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... suddenly set aside and had then and there to take to breaking stones; and this young fellow who had strayed into the town straightway ignored and discounted the experience of their many years. They tried, by the most ancient of all methods, to teach the young man modesty. But they gave it up. Peter Jorgensen had the strength of three men and the courage of ten. It was not good to meddle with one who had stolen his capacities from God himself, or perhaps was in league with Satan. So they ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... bring him to dinner. And where is my child, Marie?" Scarcely had she pronounced this name, than a young girl about sixteen entered the room;—a rosy, round-faced girl, wearing her hair in smooth bandeaux caught behind her ears, which were red with modesty and shyness. She did not please me very much at the first glance; I was prejudiced against her by Alexis, who had described the Captain's daughter to me as a fool. Marie seated herself in a corner and began to sew. The soup was brought on the table. Basilia, ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and destroying their moral as well as their religious instincts, and then they embrace the most revolting doctrines, and reconcile themselves to the most appalling deeds. They look on marriage as irrational, and regard modesty and chastity as vices. Shame is a weakness in their eyes, and natural affections are irrational prejudices. Scruples against lying, theft and murder, when any great good is to be gained by those practices, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Fanny, though these were considerable, were the least of her charms. Mr. William Fairbairn, who afterwards saw her in her home at Willington Quay, describes her as a very comely woman. But her temper was one of the sweetest; and those who knew her were accustomed to speak of the charming modesty of her demeanour, her kindness of disposition, and withal ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Jennings, as a beautiful young woman shrunk back with modesty. "There, sir, is the very gal that was made for you. If she had been made to your order, she could not ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... him upon his poems. But this is not to be meant of his Canterbury Tales, they being written in the latter part of his life, when the courtier and the fine gentleman gave way to solid sense and plain descriptions. In his love-pieces he was obliged to have the strictest regard to modesty and decency; the ladies at that time insisting so much upon the nicest punctilios of honour, that it was highly criminal to depreciate their sex, or do anything that might offend virtue." Chaucer, in their ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... cannot agree with the propositions advanced in general conversation, be silent. If pressed for your opinion, give it with modesty. Never defend your own views too warmly. When you find others remain unconvinced, drop the subject, or lead to some ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... don't even represent a syndicate of Eastern capitalists. On the contrary, I am a penniless adventurer whom chance alone has cast upon your hospitable grand staircase." These words were spoken with a suggestion of mock modesty that had precisely the effect of a deliberate wink, and Mr. Haviland smiled and ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... regard for decency than that which bestows the graces of lightness, brightness, wit, and gaiety upon indecency. His unabashed apology was that the artistic laws of the conte obliged him to decline the laws of modesty; and among those who applauded his tales were the Duchess de Bouillon and Mme. de Sevigne. It is indeed impossible not to applaud their skill in rapid and easy narrative, and the grace, freedom, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... "I don't think I could hit him," he said with becoming modesty. They laughed aloud. "But, say, don't forget about Mr. King. Tell him I want him to parade most of the time in ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... acquaintance was useful to my men and to me, as they presented us with exquisite fishes (amongst them salmon), seeds, and pinole. I had opportunity of visiting them four times and found them always as friendly as the first time, noticing in them polite manners, and what is better, modesty and retirement in the women. They are not disposed to beg, but accept with good will what is given them, without being impertinent, as are many others I have seen during the conquest. This Indian village has some scows ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... the brush, a mysterious element that we call poetry. The swaggerers, so puffed up by self-conceit that they are confident over-soon of their success, can never be taken for men of talent save by fools. From this point of view, if youthful modesty is the measure of youthful genius, the stranger on the staircase might be allowed to have something in him; for he seemed to possess the indescribable diffidence, the early timidity that artists are bound to lose in the course of a great career, even as pretty ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... sensation that is produced by modesty, is amply compensated by the prepossession it creates in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... womankind, Or love, in his yet wayward mind, Had ghastly doubts its precious life Was pledged for aye to the wrong wife. Could it be else? A youth pursues A maid, whom chance, not he, did choose, Till to his strange arms hurries she In a despair of modesty. Then, simply and without pretence Of insight or experience, They plight their vows. The parents say 'We cannot speak them yea or nay; The thing proceedeth from the Lord!' And wisdom still approves their word; For God created so these two They match ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... believe that it is your modesty then. Jasper may be a fine boy, but he will do well if he grows up as good ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the opening of the door. He was all himself. Such an unaffected modesty and politeness; yet such an ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... forceful, frank, naive. She was impressed by his nearness; but Lane saw that it was the fact of his being a soldier with a record, not his mere physical propinquity that affected her. She seemed both bold and shy. But she did not show any modesty. Her short skirt came above her bare knees, and she did not try to hide them from Lane's sight. At fifteen, like his sister Lorna, this girl had the development of a young woman. She breathed health, and something elusive that Lane could not catch. If it had not been ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... false modesty about the boy; neither did he hold malice. If he had felt slightly aggrieved at not having been invited earlier, he forgot it after the first mouthful and for a time there was no further conversation in number ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... for my Travels. However, I must not let his Memory die, but give the World an Account of him as far as I cou'd gather from the Gentleman when he was disposed to Answer to Questions concerning himself, in which he always behaved himself with a well guarded Modesty. ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... once, twice, and her head fell upon his breast, and for a moment she lay wrapped in her youthful modesty as in a mantle. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... from the limits of a due caution and modesty, consider this as the throne before which the mind holds its court. Hither the senses bring in their reports, and hence the sovereign will issues his commands. The whole system appears to be conducted ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... talkative. His silence seemed to be the joint result of modesty and unpleasing remembrances. His features were characterized by pathetic seriousness, and his deportment by a gravity very unusual at his age. According to his own representation, he was no more than eighteen ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... there are a great many things I don't understand, and I am not good at argument." There were shouts of "Go on! fire ahead, play the game!" but he said, "I think we will close the service with a hymn." His frankness and modesty, and his respectful, courteous manner gained the sympathy of the men, so that all joined heartily in singing, "Sun of My Soul." In the prayer that followed his voice grew steady and his nerve came back to him. The words were ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... of a kind action naturally enkindled in him a desire to return the favor in some way, he threw me the cocoa-nuts from the trees; and, although I believe that from the first he felt an ardent desire to be near his benefactor, his natural modesty prevented his thrusting himself upon me without considerable preliminary skirmishing. His fellow monkeys, keenly sensible of his noble qualities, and happy in having got rid of the odious despot who had so long oppressed them, were only too glad to aid him in any reasonable ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... to the grave- diggers, and was weaned out of myself to observe the conduct of visitors. This was dayspring, indeed, to a lad in such great darkness. Not that I began to see men, or to try to see them, from within, nor to learn charity and modesty and justice from the sight; but still stared at them externally from the prison windows of my affectation. Once I remember to have observed two working- women with a baby halting by a grave; there was something monumental ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... animal! sweats with its tongue and smiles with its tail. Gentlemen, Homo equals in wisdom, and surpasses in cordiality, the hairless wolf of Mexico, the wonderful xoloitzeniski. I may add that he is humble. He has the modesty of a wolf who is useful to men. He is helpful and charitable, and says nothing about it. His left paw knows not the good which his right paw does. These are his merits. Of the other, my second friend, I have but one word to say. He is a monster. You will ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... penitent, never failed, if he passed the shop, to enter and congratulate Madame Legrand on the excellent acquisition she had made in securing this young man, who would certainly bring her a blessing along with him. Derues affected the greatest modesty, and blushed at these praises, and often, when he saw the good father approaching, appeared not to see him, and found something to do elsewhere; whereby the field was left clear ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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 ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... when a voting on some question of education or local taxation takes place in a district, these committees of the National Lifeboat Association do not, as such, take part in the deliberations—a modesty, which unfortunately the members of elected bodies do not imitate. But, on the other hand, these brave men do not allow those who have never faced a storm to legislate for them about saving life. At the first signal of distress they ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... remarks were received. And to this crowd Count Ville-Handry displayed his good-fortune. He assumed all the airs of the master of the house; as if he had been in his own house, gave orders to the servants, and then, with mock modesty, went from group to group, eagerly picking up all the compliments he could gather on Miss Brandon's beauty, and his ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... he had been painting, but he positively forbade it. He said it was a 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 from ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... a general, a statesman, and a ruler paled before the exalted virtues of his private life. His urbanity, his gentleness, his modesty, his meekness, his simplicity, and his love won all hearts, and have never been exceeded except by Alfred the Great. He was a Saint Louis on a throne, in marked contrast with the suspicion, duplicity, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... it. No place can be better off for hotels, and few so ill off for lodgings—the latter are only to be had in small dingy houses opening upon the street. They are, of course, very noisy; nor are the let-ters of them at any pains to induce you by the modesty of their demands to drop a veil over this defect. Defect, quotha! say, rather misery, plague, torture. Can any word be an over-exaggeration for an incessant tintamare, of which dogs, ducks, and drums are the leading instruments, enough to try the most patient ears? The hotels ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... sat, for in the three months he had eaten bread there, so carefully did he guard his eyes that he had not noticed the place. One day, during recess, having looked by chance on one of his companions, he reproached himself as for a grave sin against modesty. He cultivated silence, as preserving from sins of the tongue; and his greatest penance was the limit which his superiors set to his bodily penances. He sought after false accusations and unjust reprimands as opportunities of humility; ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... interference of government. Short and tight breeches were so much the rage in France, that Charles V. was compelled to banish this disgusting mode by edicts, which may be found in Mezerai. An Italian author of the fifteenth century supposes an Italian traveller of nice modesty would not pass through France, that he might not be offended by seeing men whose clothes rather exposed their nakedness than hid it. The very same fashion was the complaint in the remoter period of our Chaucer, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that if he had been offered the post Vauban would have turned it down in order to concentrate on his own specialty, which was the attack and defence of fortresses. Marmont and Bertrand, lacked this modesty, and the affection which Napoleon had for them prevented him from listening to ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... the courses, being seldom less than two hours and a half; which was a subject of never- failing entertainment. By way of beguiling the tediousness of these banquets, a select association was formed at the lower end of the table, below the mast, to whose distinguished president modesty forbids me to make any further allusion, which, being a very hilarious and jovial institution, was (prejudice apart) in high favour with the rest of the community, and particularly with a black steward, who lived for three weeks in a broad grin at the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... His modesty surprised me all the more, because of all those performers who are generally infatuated with their own skill, he was the most wonderfully clever one that I had ever met. Certainly, I had frequently seen ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... perfect silence, but Felix, who learned all things quickly, had already learned that the silences frequently observed among his new acquaintances were not necessarily restrictive or resentful. It was, as one might say, the silence of expectation, of modesty. They were all standing round his sister, as if they were expecting her to acquit herself of the exhibition of some peculiar faculty, some brilliant talent. Their attitude seemed to imply that she was a kind of conversational mountebank, attired, intellectually, in gauze and spangles. This ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... it their business to cast dirt on a girl's name who has disregarded the commonest rules of modesty and propriety.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... some of the nonjuring clergy fell into habits of idleness, dependence, and mendicancy, which lowered the character of the whole party. "Several undeserving persons, who are always the most confident, by their going up and down, did much prejudice to the truly deserving, whose modesty would not suffer them to solicit for themselves...... Mr. Kettlewell was also very sensible that some of his brethren spent too much of their time in places of concourse and news, by depending for their subsistence upon those whom they ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... known, is related to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy against distrustful care. "Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin." This, however, is far inferior to the allusions in Job and in the 19th Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... palace, whither I carried a distracting tooth-ach, amused even that torture by the variety of its wonders. The sleeping faun, praised on from century to century, and never yet praised enough; so drunk, so fast asleep, so like a human body! Modesty reproving Vanity, by Leonardo da Vinci, so totally beyond my expectation or comprehension, great! wise! and fine! Raphael's Mistress, painted by himself, and copied by Julio Romano; this picture gives little satisfaction ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... possibly. We were not jubilant, but Mr. Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world than that. He saved what he called the "richest" piece of the rock, in order to determine its value by the process called the "fire-assay." Then we named the mine "Monarch of the Mountains" (modesty of nomenclature is not a prominent feature in the mines), and Mr. Ballou wrote out and stuck up the following "notice," preserving a copy to be entered upon the books in the mining recorder's office in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Maro's Muse, or Tully's tongue, Or raping numbers like the Thracian Song, In crowning of her merits he would be Sumptuously poor, low in Hyperbole. To write is easy; but to write on thee, Truth would be thought to forfeit modesty. He'l seem a Poet that shall speak but true; Hyperbole's in others, are thy due. Like a most servile flatterer he will show Though he write truth, and make the Subject, You. Virtue ne'er dies, time will a Poet raise Born under better Stars, shall ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Duvivier, the youthful and accomplished daughter of the general. Many distinguished suitors contended for the honor of her hand; but the moment Victor appeared, they felt they had a formidable rival. The belle of the chateau could not help showing her decided preference for him, though, with a modesty and delicacy natural to his position, he refrained from making ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... indecent attitudes she was called upon to assume, but noticing a score of young women, many of them from the best homes in the town, all yielding to the vulgar embrace, she cast aside that spirit of modesty which had been the development of years of home-training, and setting her face against nature's protective warnings, gave herself, as did the others, to this prolonged embrace set to music. Having learned to dance, its fascinations led ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... back; upon which the men pursue them violently, overtaking them before they get to their places, and throwing their tobes around them: but there is nothing indelicate in all this. On the contrary, the whole dance is quite a pattern of modesty to the Europeans, the Arabs, and the Moors,—to these latter especially, whose dance, as introduced here, is of the most lascivious and beastly description. This entertainment takes place every night; it is the great solace and delight of the people: they have no other amusement. They ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... looked upon me as their deliverer and friend; they loaded me with presents, and offered more, indeed, than I would accept. All repeated that I was Saladin the Lucky. This compliment I disclaimed, feeling more ambitious of being called Saladin the Prudent. It is thus that what we call modesty is often only a more refined species of pride. But to ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... pre-eminently a life of the mind, as this is of the body. Preoccupations of food, money, lust, pain, etc., are of the body and are gone. Music, the Arts, intellectual and spiritual knowledge, and progress have increased. The people are clothed, as one would expect, since there is no reason why modesty should disappear with our new forms. These new forms are the absolute reproduction of the old ones at their best, the young growing up and the old reverting until all come to the normal. People live in communities, as one would expect if like attracts like, and the male ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... never remitted; where grace was always spoken. In this home her looks were seldom alluded to in any way, and vanity was not in her. She had her lovelinesses; her hair was long and fair, her eyes were beautiful, and her skin was of exquisite purity, like her eyes. Her charm lay in her modesty and quaint dignity, her grave and gentle gaze, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... and all doubt, and devote yourself in patience and trust to helping me along my path as no one else could. I know what I ask, and the sacrifice I demand, and if this were the time to use false modesty, I should say how little I ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... went into her room, I met an Italian painter with her. She spoke Italian with him, and although he was evidently more artisan than artist, she addressed him with such amiability and modesty, with such respect even, one could not avoid recognizing that nobility of soul which is the true nobility of birth. When the painter had taken his leave, she said to me: "I wish to show you a picture which will please you. The original is in ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... as the third {in order}, after these; fiercer in disposition, and more prone to horrible warfare, but yet free from impiety. The last {Age} was of hard iron. Immediately every species of crime burst forth, in this age of degenerated tendencies;[30] modesty, truth, and honor took flight; in their place succeeded fraud, deceit, treachery, violence, and the cursed hankering for acquisition. The sailor now spread his sails to the winds, and with these, as yet, he was but little acquainted; and {the trees}, which had long stood on the lofty ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the beautiful; but in Mr. Arnold there is no trace of any such tendency; pure, without effort, he feels no enjoyment and sees no beauty in the atmosphere of the common passions; and in nobleness of purpose, in a certain loftiness of mind singularly tempered with modesty, he continually reminds us of his father. There is an absence, perhaps, of colour; it is natural that it should be so in the earlier poems of a writer who proposes aims such as these to himself; his poetry is addressed ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... mind as he exercised his body, twisted himself into everything and out of everything, imitated work and fun and shirking, and learned how to puff himself up into a very devil of a fellow where his surroundings were yielding, and to make himself almost invisible with modesty when they were hard. He was training himself to be that little ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... was laughter, and profaneness wit; And such the guest and manners of the hall, No wedded lady on the 'Squire would call: Here reign'd a Favourite, and her triumph gain'd O'er other favourites who before had reign'd; Reserved and modest seemed the nymph to be, Knowing her lord was charm'd with modesty; For he, a sportsman keen, the more enjoy'd, The greater value had the thing destroyed. Our 'Squire declared, that from a wife released, He would no more give trouble to a Priest; Seem'd it not, then, ungrateful and unkind That he should trouble ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... nephew retired and, after a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the game for, Billy being a great favorite with the little girls, she came back pouting and blushing, to announce that he wanted Miss Pilgrim. The young lady showed no mock modesty, but arose at once and laughingly went out to her youthful admirer, who, as I afterward learned, embraced her ardently and told her he loved her better than any girl in the world. As he turned to go back she told him that he might send to her one of her juvenile cousins, Reginald Rumbullion. ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... we descend, the shores become bolder; the rugged hills, at first barely visible on the right, come near and nearer the water: low rocks begin to lift their heads above the surface of the stream, while others have their innate modesty overpowered by wooden fixtures lifting their heads above the highest tides to warn the mariner of his danger. At length a gigantic cone of rock rises out of the water on the right of the channel to a height of fifty or sixty feet, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... hundred were taken or destroyed. A sixth announces a great capture of stores and provisions, though all the boats were empty. A seventh reports that the Canadians killed about three hundred, and would have killed more but for the bad quality of their tomahawks. An eighth, with rare modesty, puts the English loss at fifty or sixty. That of Villiers is given in every proportion of killed or wounded, from one up to ten. Thus was Canada roused to martial ardor, and taught to look ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... it was more from conviction than policy, though that policy was surely the most prudent in the world, that the great Duke always spoke of his victories with an extraordinary modesty, and as if it was not so much his own admirable genius and courage which achieved these amazing successes, but as if he was a special and fatal instrument in the hands of Providence, that willed irresistibly the enemy's overthrow. Before his actions he always had the church service ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... and who are pledged to the observance of rigid vows, who are possessed of great learning and eloquence, who are fully conversant with the Vedas and their branches as also with sacrifices, who have piety and modesty, whose souls are devoted to virtue, who possess fame, and who have enjoyed the grand rites of coronation, all wait upon and worship Yudhishthira. And, O king, I beheld there many thousands of wild kine with as many vessels of white copper for milking ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... they assented indifferently, which injured my egotism. But I was too adroit to show it. I still demurred with mock modesty. Penton would have ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... be brought to look upon her exploit as in any way remarkable, and when by-and-by honours and distinctions were showered upon her, and people came from long distances to see her, she kept through it all the dignity of perfect simplicity and modesty. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... doctor's spirit there, under all that exterior of meekness and modesty, I saw at a glance, and liked her none the less for it, if truth were told. And now we were nearing the gate, with its gray-stone pillars, on one of which, that from which the marble ball had rolled, to hide in the grass beneath, perchance, until the end of all, I had seen the joyous ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... frankly and truthfully explained by a girl's mother at the moment her interest and curiosity seeks satisfaction. That she gets on as well as she does, results, of course, from the essential soundness of the girl's nature, the armor of modesty, right instinct, and reverence with ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... the o'-lag does not seem to weaken the boys or girls or cause them to degenerate, neither does it appear to make them vicious. Whereas there is practically no sense of modesty among the people, I have never seen anything lewd. Though there is no such thing as virtue, in the modern sense of the word, among the young people after puberty, children before puberty are said to be virtuous, and the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... Gipsy vagabond class have worn the champion's belt of the world; and, on the other hand, this mixture of English and Gipsy blood has produced some fine delicate Grecian forms of female beauty, dove-like, soft in eye, hand, and heart—the flashy fire in the eye of a Gipsy has been reduced to the modesty and innocence and simplicity of a child. Our present race of Gipsies, under the influence of education, refinement, and religion, will, if properly and wisely taken in hand and dealt with according to the light of reason and truth, produce a class of men and women well qualified to take their share, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the bounds prescribed to modesty itself, were I to neglect availing myself of the authority of others, who were not only far from being professors of this art, but who hold the highest rank in the public opinion for solidity of understanding, and purity of morals, and who yet did not disdain to give their opinion in favor ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... the condition of the human mind in a country, where such a wretched thing as this has thrown the State into convulsions, and how must we bless our own situation in a country, the most illiterate peasant of which is a Solon, compared with the authors of this law. There is modesty often, which does itself injury; our countrymen possess this. They do not know their own superiority. You see it; you are young, you have time and talents to correct them. Study the subject while in Europe, in all the instances which will present themselves to you, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... say, this one may be allowed to do it with impunity, the other may not; not that the thing {itself} is different, but that he is who does it. I see {signs} in them, so as to feel confident that they will turn out as we wish. I see that they have good sense and understanding, that they have modesty upon occasion, {and} are affectionate to each other; you may infer that their bent and disposition is of a pliant nature; at any time you like you may reclaim them. But still, you may be apprehensive ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... work, and the girl's ringlets swept lightly over his cheek. Their hands met and their breaths mingled. For an instant Evariste tasted an ecstatic bliss, but to feel Elodie's lips so close to his own filled him with fear, and dreading to alarm her modesty, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... her face a new emotion was visible which found expression now in a musing smile, now in a stray tear. Her face was shadowed with the consciousness of a new life, of a far stretching future with unknown duties, a new dignity and a new happiness. Vikentev wore an expression of modesty, almost of timidity, and was ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Schubert and some of his friends,—feelings which, however, are by no means rare among the impulsive youth of South Germany,—but his naive simplicity, cheerful and eminently sociable disposition, insensibility to envy, and incorruptible modesty, were qualities calculated to transform the respect due to his genius into a strong personal liking. Schubert was, in truth, a child of nature, one whom to know was to love; for his faults might be summed up into a general incapacity to understand his own interests, and it might ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... hung about their chairs and cracked jokes with them. One evening while they were thus employed there came among them a stranger, a young lady beautifully clad and carrying an ivory spinning-wheel. With becoming modesty she asked to be allowed to join the company, which permission the simple youths and maidens readily accorded. None was more eager to do honour to the new-comer than the son of their host. While the others were still gaping in awestruck fashion, he quietly fetched her a chair and performed ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... great ladies and gentlemen. As may be easily imagined, the little Pierre's education had not been neglected. He did not fail to array himself in a manner befitting the occasion; and at the banquet he served his father's guests with so much modesty and grace that he drew forth praise ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... positive fact that the notorious Eric Haeberlein was actually in London last week in connection with the disgraceful Kellner business. ON DIT that he escaped detection through the instrumentality of one of the fair sex, whose audacity outweighed her modesty." ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... ancients, and confirmed by the submissive verdict of modern imitation." This is unphilosophical, unsatisfactory; nor is that of grace less so—"that artless balance of motion and repose, sprung from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls short of the demands, nor overleaps the modesty of nature. Applied to execution it means that dexterous power which hides the means by which it was attained, the difficulties it has conquered." We humbly suggest, that both parts of this definition may be found where there is little grace. It is evident that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... of the moonlight, beautiful and kind and full of peace. She moved now around the water, in a measured cadence that by some unfathomable witchery of her devising conveyed a thought of maidenhood and modesty. It dawned on Tess, who watched her spell-bound, that there was not one immodest thought in all Yasmini's throng of moods, but only a scorn of all immodesty and its pretensions. And whether that was ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... simple-minded as himself, took it in kindliness, and journeyed with the Indian to a large village about three days away. Arrived there, all the inhabitants of the place sat in a circle round the missionary. They appeared (he says) in so much modesty and silence 'that I seemed to behold statues, and not live Indians.' To awaken their attention he played upon the viol d'amore, and, having thus captured their ears, began to preach to them. The good priest ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... of the gay apparel of the young women of Boston, and their lack of plainness and modesty in the manner of wearing and ordering their hair; and said he could in no wise agree with some of his brethren in the ministry that this was a light matter, inasmuch as it did most plainly appear from Scripture that the pride and haughtiness of the daughters of Zion did provoke the judgments ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... partial ignorance, will instantly be treated as more or less incapable, by the ordinary man who has already gained a partial knowledge, or is capable of assuming a knowledge which he does not possess. But, for God's sake! let the honest and modest man stick to his honesty and modesty, cost what ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... he would acquiesce in one more sacrifice, severe as it might be, to the desires and interests of his country. With the letter Madison sent a draft of an address, and in reference to it remarked: "You will readily observe that, in executing it, I have aimed at that plainness and modesty of language which you had in view, and which indeed are so peculiarly becoming the character and the occasion; and that I had little more to do, as to the matter, than to follow the just and comprehensive outline ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... have been permitted to look over a series of nine letters, which were addressed by her to Mr. Bronte, during the brief term of their engagement in 1812. They are full of tender grace of expression and feminine modesty; pervaded by the deep piety to which I have alluded as a family characteristic. I shall make one or two extracts from them, to show what sort of a person was the mother of Charlotte Bronte: but first, I must state the circumstances under which this Cornish lady met the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Of a "retiring modesty and habitual reserve," his ambition was no more than the consciousness of his power, and was subordinate to his sense of duty; he took the foremost place, for he knew from inborn magnanimity that it belonged to him, and he dared not withhold the service required ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... explain the word Pastern as meaning the knee of a horse, he replied at once, "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," so in his books he made no attempt to be thought wiser or more learned than he was. And this modesty which he showed for himself he showed for his author too. The common notion that he depreciated {33} Shakespeare is, indeed, an entire mistake. There were certainly things in Shakespeare which were out of his reach, ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... The amount of discretion, modesty, and reserve which Francis put into these two syllables gave Aaron to think that he had two real young ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Four Peaks country like the rumor of an Indian uprising and every man rode into Hidden Water with an eye out for calico, some with a foolish grin, some downcast and reserved, some swaggering in the natural pride of the lady's man. But a becoming modesty had kept Lucy Ware indoors, and Kitty had limited herself to a furtive survey of the scene from behind what was left of Sallie Winship's lace curtains. With the subtle wisdom of a rodeo boss Jefferson Creede had excused himself to the ladies ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... hesitation and stammering which usually characterized Ramsden Waters's utterances. Eunice was puzzled. She was also faintly resentful. True, there was not a word in what he had said that was calculated to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty; nevertheless, she felt vaguely that Ramsden Waters had exceeded the limits. She had been prepared for a gurgling Ramsden Waters, a Ramsden Waters who fell over his large feet and perspired; but here was a Ramsden Waters who addressed her not merely as an equal, ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... settled the problem," he cried, leaning against the mantelpiece. "At least," he added, with his usual modesty, "I have settled it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... touching his birth and quality, I was confirmed in an opinion of his integrity and moderation, and looked upon him as a man of honour, in despite of the lowness of his pedigree. Nevertheless, he was at bottom a most perfidious wretch, and all this modesty and self-denial were the effects of the most villanous dissimulation, a cloak under which he, unsuspected, robbed me of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... beautiful and inspiring city, Liverpool a rising seaport, and Glasgow a town where urbanity and sweet reasonableness prevailed. It might be remembered of him that he had praised the Birmingham man for his childlike humility, and the Edinburgh man for his excessive modesty. It was his first visit to Bristol, and it was presumption on his part to speak on the subject at all. Silence was the better part when a man was situated as he was. There were some exquisite lines ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... Thornton's expressed desire, that she would ask for whatever they might want in the progress of her mother's illness. Mrs. Thornton's brow contracted, and her mouth grew set, while Margaret spoke with gentle modesty of her mother's restlessness, and Dr. Donaldson's wish that she should have the relief of a water-bed. She ceased. Mrs. Thornton did not reply immediately. Then she ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... so soft and mild. And at the royal banquet spread for all It chanced Yasodhara sat next the prince— An accident by older heads designed— And the few words that such constraint allowed Were music to his ears and touched his heart; And when her eyes met his her rosy blush Told what her maiden modesty would hide. And at the dance, when her soft hands touched his The music seemed to quicken, time to speed; But when she bowed and passed to other hands, Winding the mystic measure of the dance,[3] The music seemed to slacken, time to halt, Or drag his limping moments lingering ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... all things quickly, had already learned that the silences frequently observed among his new acquaintances were not necessarily restrictive or resentful. It was, as one might say, the silence of expectation, of modesty. They were all standing round his sister, as if they were expecting her to acquit herself of the exhibition of some peculiar faculty, some brilliant talent. Their attitude seemed to imply that she was a kind of conversational mountebank, attired, intellectually, in gauze and ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... amiable young man of fortune, who has for some time past paid his addresses to her, I think that we may consider ourselves fully justified in attributing the slightly equivocal nature of her answer to a pardonable girlish modesty and coyness, and that I shall not be premature in offering you my hearty congratulations on the successful issue of your suit—a-hem I—" And so saying, Mr. Coleman rose from his seat, and taking Lawless's unwilling hand in his own, shook it with ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... integrity. Pelistes had brought with him to the camp his only son, who had never drawn a sword except in tourney. When the young man saw that the veterans held their peace, the blood mantled in his cheek, and, overcoming his modesty, he broke forth with a generous warmth: 'I know not, cavaliers,' said he, 'what is passing in your minds, but I believe this pilgrim to be an envoy from the devil; for none else could have given such dastard and perfidious counsel. For my own part, I stand ready to defend my king, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... from that time forward, he became the hope and promise of his native land. As a proof of this high regard, he was offered the command of the regiment to be raised: which, however, he refused to accept; for his modesty told him that he was too young and inexperienced to be intrusted with a matter of such moment to his country. To Col. Fry, an officer of some note in the province, the command of the regiment was therefore ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... One of my sex! no woman's face remember, Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen More that I may call men, than you, good friend, And my dear father: how features are abroad, I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,— The jewel in my dower,—I would not wish Any companion in ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... exceeding plain: for if a Roman poet might have liberty to coin a word, supposing only that it was derived from the Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he used this liberty but seldom, and with modesty; how much more justly may I challenge that privilege to do it with the same prerequisites, from the best and most judicious of Latin writers! In some places, where either the fancy or the words were his, or ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... enshrined upon my mantelshelf, scanning the carriage windows as the train rolled up. He recognized me as infallibly as I had recognized him; he appeared to know by instinct how a young American of an aesthetic turn would look when much divided between eagerness and modesty. He took me by the hand, and smiled at me, and said: "You must be—a—you, I think!" and asked if I should mind going on foot to his house, which would take but a few minutes. I remember thinking it a piece of extraordinary affability that he should give directions about the ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... was decided that marriage should be left to the younger and more fruitful. Wherefore, if it is said that trouble has come, Hazael answered, we should be sorry for our weak brethren, and if stories reach us, he continued, we should receive them with modesty: we should not go out to seek stories of the misfortunes of those who have not been as wise as we, and of all we should not wish to go down to Jordan to inquire out the truth of these stories; Caleb and Benjamin ask betimes for leave to visit them. Eleazar, too, has asked; but ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... time when eminent 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 clerical ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of Fanfar, which we have completed, for Fanfar's modesty was too great to allow him to say what we have said ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... 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 its ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... hand, everybody liked him. It was amusing to me, in my sick room, three hundred miles off, to hear of the impression he made, with his innocence, his fresh delight in his new life, his candor, his modesty, and his bright cleverness,—and then, again, to learn how diligently he had set about learning what I, his correspondent, was really like. In his dreams he had seen me very aged,—he thought upwards of eighty; and he had never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... offer. Even then, in the flush and vigor of his youth, he was led. So was it always. He was never a leader, but always a follower. Nature made him very large, but so stinted him in propelling force, that it is doubtful if he had ever emerged from obscurity if his friends had not urged him on. His modesty in these innocent days is most touching to witness. After a long internal conflict, he resolved, in his twentieth year, to "make one more trial" at ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... country which he had too cruelly oppressed to be able to hold even an inferior rank in it. His last letter to the Suliots opened the eyes of his followers, but under the influence of a sort of polite modesty these were at least anxious to stipulate for the life of their vizier. Kursheed was obliged to produce firmans from the Porte, declaring that if Ali Tepelen submitted, the royal promise given to his sons should ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Danton, Collot d'Herbois, and Robespierre allege against her? What savage greatness did they discover in stirring up a whole nation to avenge their quarrel on a woman? What remained of her former power? She was a captive, a widow, trembling for her children! In those judges, who at once outraged modesty and nature; in that people whose vilest scoffs pursued her to the scaffold, who could have recognised the generous people of France? Of all the crimes which disgraced the Revolution, none was more calculated to show how the spirit of party ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... my beloved and the darling of my beauty! Where is his grave, that we may make there a guest-house?" The chamberlain said, "That youth is yet alive. When the king commanded his death, I was about to kill him, but he said, 'That queen is my mother. Through modesty before the king, she revealed not the secret that she has a tall son. Kill me not; it may be that some day the truth will become known, and repentance profiteth not, and regret is useless." The king commanded them to bring the youth; so they brought him forthwith. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... which they wrapped themselves, like the female Moors of Granada, and the men had cloths of cotton round their loins. Both sexes appeared more particular about these coverings, and to have a quicker sense of personal modesty than any Indians ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... clip our pinions let them try, Not having heart themselves to fly. It was the hour when devotees Breathe pious curses on their knees; 50 When they with prayers the day begin To sanctify a night of sin; When rogues of modesty, who roam Under the veil of night, sneak home, That, free from all restraint and awe, Just to the windward of the law, Less modest rogues their tricks may play, And plunder in the face of day. But hold,—whilst thus we play the fool, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... than egoism; for egoism may be conquered by nature, whereas only by reflection do we get the better of vanity. It does not seem, indeed, as if men were ever born modest, unless we dub with the name of modesty a sort of purely physical bashfulness, which is nearer to pride than is generally supposed. True modesty can be nothing but a meditation on vanity. It springs from the sight of others' mistakes and the dread of being similarly deceived. ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... various sizes adapted to the respective ages of a dozen small children of one family which he made part of his story of Great Expectations, though, with the reserves always necessary in copying nature not to overstep her modesty by copying too closely, he makes the number that appalled little Pip not more than half the reality. About the whole of this Cooling churchyard, indeed, and the neighbouring castle ruins, there was a weird strangeness that made it one of his attractive walks in the late year or winter, when from ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Sprague answered with palpably assumed modesty. "My plans, naturally, call for a great deal of research work, a large expenditure of money, a ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Simontault," said Parlamente; "you forget yourself. Have you laid aside your accustomed modesty to don it ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... the matter up in despair, when, on the twenty-seventh day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with the person whom he sought. The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay away from kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which was more truly modesty; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid for that public place. On the two following, Frank had himself been absent on some of his excursions among the neighbouring families. It was not until the fourth, accordingly, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which conditions and regulates the State, that it was then necessary to explain politics and history by economic relations, and not to proceed inversely."[4] "This discovery which revolutionized historical science was essentially the work of Marx," says Engels, and, with his customary modesty, he adds: "The part which can be attributed to me is very small. It concerned itself directly with the working-class movement of the period. Communism in France and Germany and Chartism in England appeared to be something more than mere chance which could just as well not have existed. These ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Perkins, in graceful peroration, "that I have done poor justice to the eloquence of this gallant sailor. My unhappy translation cannot offer you that voice, at times trembling with generous emotion, and again inaudible from excessive modesty in the presence of this illustrious assembly—those limbs that waver and bend under the undulations of the chivalrous sentiment which carries him away as if he were still on that powerful element he daily battles with ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... President of the Royal Council of that Country even while he was very young, an Honour the greatest of the Nobility were well pleased to see him adorned with, and made no Scruple to sit below him: His distinguish'd Modesty and Humility in all his publick Appearances, recommends him to the Affections of the whole Country; and tho' the Fortunes of his Family have suffered by the Disasters of the Times, yet he supports a handsome Figure ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... the high sense universally entertained of his services was conveyed, manifested the warmth of feeling which animated the American bosom. This unexampled tribute of voluntary applause, paid by a whole people to an individual no longer in power, made no impression on the unassuming modesty of his character and deportment. The same firmness of mind, the same steady and well-tempered judgment, which had guided him through the most perilous seasons of the war, still regulated his conduct, and the enthusiastic applauses of an admiring nation ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... battling desperately to save the stabbed constitution from howling demagogues and fanatics, who raved and ranted where Washington, Webster, and Calhoun had once swayed a free and happy people. The old venerated barriers and well-guarded outposts, which decorum and true womanly modesty had erected on the frontiers of propriety, were swept away in the crevasse of sans souci manners that threatened to inundate the entire land; and latitudinarianism in dress and conversation was rapidly reducing the sexes to an equality, dangerous to morals and subversive of all chivalric ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... 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, so big she was, where she meant ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... my blushes, young gentleman, draw it a little milder!" cried the delighted manager, almost bursting with mock modesty. "Greatest actor in Europe—oh, very funny, very good indeed! Off the stage, too! Oh dear, dear, dear, what wags there are in the world! And pray, young gentleman, from whom did you ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... that the alchemists of old were not the foolish and superstitious people we supposed them to be. We have given far too little credit to past civilizations and we are coming to understand now that we have rated them too low. Our modesty must necessarily increase as it becomes clearer that much of our supposed contribution to the world's progress is not invention but rediscovery. We are beginning to see that it is not safe to put aside without careful examination ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... woman to possess one, foretells she will observe modesty and kindness in her deportment, and thus win the love of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... soft lingering rays kissing the fleecy clouds, o'er which a blush came and went, now deepening as the rose carmine, giving place to the most delicate tinge that e'er sat upon a maiden's cheek,—born of pure modesty. The scent of the delicate jasmine perfumed the air, while the pensive strains of some fair one, soft and clear as the tones of a wind-harp, was borne on the stillness of evening to the ear of the lovely Sea-flower, who, reclining upon ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... praised by Virgil would have put me in Elysium while I was alive. But I know your modesty will not suffer me, in return for these encomiums, to speak of your character. Supposing it as perfect as your poems, you would think, as you did of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... personally and had visited his home and experimental grounds at Bell, Maryland, some of us more than once. Few of us knew his varied and high attainments in many other fields than plant breeding, though a moment's thought would have made a discerning person see that his modesty, self-effacement, kindliness and sympathy were things that most often come to those whose experiences of life have been the widest. His accomplishments in plant breeding and other fields, a bibliography of his writings, and the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... a woman, to see a feeling of repulsion on the faces of others, when her true destiny is to move all hearts about her to emotions of grace and love. One result of this inward trouble is that an old maid's glance is always oblique, less from modesty than from fear and shame. Such beings never forgive society for their false position because they never forgive ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... overtook the grandmother and several of her grandchildren. She was pleased at his noticing her, and answered his enquiries with modesty and propriety. She corroborated what her daughter had said, and in her answers discovered not only an acquaintance with the general truths of the Gospel, but a feeling sense of their importance. She said, 'I love to go to church, and do go now, sir, when ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader. And ask a Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and all the prophets cannot persuade him to pronounce the textual Chetiv. For these causes we all know the Bible itself put by the Papist must be next removed, as Clement ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... read, and pretended to be intellectually and poetically inclined, as ladies not specially favoured by Apollo sometimes do—before they marry. Cold she always was; nobody ever heard of Lady Honoria stretching the bounds of propriety; but Geoffrey put this down to a sweet and becoming modesty, which would vanish or be transmuted in its season. Also she affected a charming innocence of all vulgar business matters, which both deceived and enchanted him. Never but once did she allude to ways and means before marriage, and then it was to say that she was glad that they should be so ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... apparel" seem to have been an infinite source of anxiety; there must be only one slash on each sleeve and one in the back. Men also must be prohibited from shoulderbands of undue width, double ruffs and cuffs, and "immoderate great breeches." Part of the solicitude was for modesty, part for gravity, part for economy: none must dress above their condition. In 1652, three men and a woman were fined ten shillings each and costs for wearing silver-lace, another for broad bone-lace, another for tiffany, and another for a silk hood. Alice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Almost as with a blush, her long, brown eyes were illumined, as she bridged the years to her lover near half a century dead and dust. With the gentleness of modesty so innate in the women of Hawaii, she covered her spontaneous exposure of her heart with added ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... Sark lifted a green bosom above her perpendicular cliffs, with the pride of an affluent mother among her brood. Dowered by sun and softened by a delicate haze like an exquisite veil of modesty, this youngest daughter of the isles clustered with her kinsfolk in the emerald archipelago between the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... never to be unfair to friend or fellow-combatant or ally, but always to fix his eyes on justice and rectitude, he believed he could induce others to keep from base actions and walk in the paths of righteousness. [27] And he would bring more modesty, he hoped, into the hearts of all men if it were plain that he himself reverenced all the world and would never say a shameful word to any man or woman or do a shameful deed. [28] He looked for this ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... between them strengthened every day. Susan, watching him when Ella's friends gathered about him, watching the honest modesty with which he evaded their empty praises, their attempts at lionizing, could not but thrill to know that HER praise stirred him, that the deprecatory, indifferent air was dropped quickly enough for HER! It was intoxicating to know, as she did know, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... claims, to one of my age and fortunes, I pressed that noble hand, half raising it to my lips,—an action of respect that would have misbecome neither; but he gently withdrew the hand, in the instinct of his natural modesty. I had then no heart to speak further on such a subject, but faltering out that I would go and see my uncle, I took up the light and ascended the stairs. I crept noiselessly into Roland's room, and shading the light, saw that, though he slept, his face was very troubled. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he not struck his hand against a tree, I shouldn't be here at the present moment." "Here! here!" said the landlord, "now that's just as it should be; I like a modest man, for, as the parson says, nothing sits better upon a young man than modesty. I remember, when I was young, fighting with Tom of Hopton, the best man that ever pulled off coat in England. I remember, too, that I won the battle; for I happened to hit Tom of Hopton, in the mark, as he was coming in, so that he lost his wind, and falling squelch ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... referred to the surprising interiors of the city in the Fifties. What I meant was this: there was not an alley so miserable and so muddy but somewhere in it there was pretty sure to be a cottage as demure in outward appearance as modesty itself. Nothing could be more unassuming: it had not even the air of genteel poverty. I think such an air was not to be thought of in those days: gentility kept very much to itself. As for poverty, it was a game that any one might ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... gesture, Shakespeare's advice is all-embracing. "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you overstep not the modesty of nature." And here comes the consideration of a very material part of the actor's business—by-play. This is of the very essence of true art. It is more than anything else significant of the extent to which the actor has identified himself with the character ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... inmost shade of the forest her mind had become calmer, and better able to unravel the confusion of thoughts that surged like troubled waters through her brain. The dominant idea was, that her self-respect had been wounded; the shock to her maidenly modesty, and the shame attendant upon the fact, affected her physically, as if she had been belittled and degraded by a personal stain; and this downfall caused her deep humiliation. By slow degrees, however, and notwithstanding this state of abject despair, she felt, cropping up somewhere ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... toward the edge of the brilliant jungle. She seemed to be without false modesty, for I saw her glancing with evident admiration at Ray's lithe and powerful white-skinned figure. We followed her into the giant mushrooms, glad to escape the overpowering ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... Java and Amboyna, Penang, Ceylon, and even Mauritius. The elaborate review of their position, signed by the three faithful men of Serampore, at the close of 1817, amazes the reader at once by the magnitude and variety of the operations, the childlike modesty of the record, and the heroism of the toil which ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... eagerly came forward to see them. "If it is not my rose herself," I thought, "it maybe some relation—cousin, sister, friend: I am interested in the whole town since she lives here." The girls came nearer. They walked without affectation: you could imagine that the spirit of Modesty herself had taught them that quiet demeanor. Suddenly they looked up and saw me. Am I Mephistopheles, to produce such a dire effect? They looked down, they simpered, they laughed a laugh that was not natural: their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... debates in the House are usually the playground of cranks of all varieties, and the plain common-sense man seems to shrink from being vocal in such company. It is a pity. The plain common-sense man should believe in himself a little more. The result would perhaps startle his modesty. And he should begin instantly on the resumption of Parliament. He will of course be told that he is premature. But no matter. When he gets up and makes a row he will be told that he is premature, until Sir Edward Grey is in a position to announce in the icy cold and impressive tones of omniscience ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... peace over lasting and uniform, but such as they failed not to nourish. A conduct which proved more pleasing than secure; since treacherous is that repose which you enjoy amongst neighbours that are very powerful and very fond of rule and mastership. When recourse is once had to the sword, modesty and fair dealing will be vainly pleaded by the weaker; names these which are always assumed by the stronger. Thus the Cheruscans, they who formerly bore the character of good and upright, are now called cowards ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... was 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 ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... compelled to hear the same statement, and she left nothing undone to arrogate to herself the glory of any future advantages which it might be the good fortune of the duke to realize. Her own merits, as something which did not admit of a doubt, but was at the same time a burden oppressive to her modesty, she laid at the feet of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... He showed similar modesty and simplicity in his deportment and conversation. He made no allusion to the stirring scenes in which he had been so gloriously engaged; and, if others made any, turned the discourse into some other channel, particularly ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Modesty might have directed her hasty action of enwrapping her shoulders, but it was scarcely likely, considering Miss Aldclyffe's temperament, that she had all her life been used to a maid, Cytherea's youth, and the elder lady's marked treatment of her as if she were a mere child or plaything. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... going through similarly miserable, narrow, low passages, to magnificent palaces and astoundingly beautiful and luxurious courts and gardens. I asked what was the reason of the poor outward appearance of these otherwise luxurious dwellings. Was it modesty,—was it to deceive ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... think modesty becomin' to a youngster," replied Stevens. "I hate a brag. An' I've no use fer these four-flush cowboys thet 're always lookin' fer trouble an' talkin' gun-play. Buck, I don't know much about you. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... with exquisite fishes (amongst them salmon), seeds, and pinole. I had opportunity of visiting them four times and found them always as friendly as the first time, noticing in them polite manners, and what is better, modesty and retirement in the women. They are not disposed to beg, but accept with good will what is given them, without being impertinent, as are many others I have seen during the conquest. This Indian village ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... imaginable kind end degree of obstacle end difficulty. He showed them how to maintain the bearing of gentlemen, in the moments of hottest exasperation and provocation which can arise in forensic warfare. He taught them how to look on success undazzled—to bear it with modesty of demeanour, and subordination of spirit. He exhibited to them the inestimable value of early acquiring accurate and extensive local knowledge—of being thoroughly imbued with the principles of jurisprudence, and habituating the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
