Modesty Quotes

I never took the fame too seriously. It was a great period in my life, but it doesn't define me.

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Boasting of glory does not make glory.

true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers.

I like when money makes a difference but don't make you different

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means that you are very conceited indeed.

[Turkish women] had lived free of the veil for 5,000 years, and had been covered only in the last 600 years.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Silence is the greatest ornament of the woman.

Modesty died when clothes were born.

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.

A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.

We are immodest before the barbarians, who are more chaste than we. Even more, the barbarians are wounded at our lack of modesty; the Goths do not permit debauchees of their own nation to remain among them; alone in the midst of them, by the sad privilege of their nationality and their name, the Romans have the right to be impure. The oppressed fly to the barbarians to seek for mercy and a shelter.

People seem very arrogant when they say 'I'm right and you're wrong', but in practice we all believe we're right. We have a staggering arrogance in our own belief. That can be tempered by not being 100% certain; by being provisional. No matter what the debate is, very few people have the modesty to suspend judgement on a whole range of things; most intelligent people have an opinion and are expected to have an opinion by other people - but it always requires making a personal judgement that goes way-beyond your expertise. We do it all the time.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other

For me, I haven't succeeded in any way whatsoever.

Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.

Come on, I'm a television star. Nobody on television is curing cancer. I've had a great ride, and I'm very honored to have been in this business. I'm happy if I managed to affect people in a positive way.

This is why it's hard to talk about winning awards. You can't do it without sounding like a tool.

I never thought I could sing. I still don't.

I ain't gonna win no Oscars.