Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing…

Nothing is more amiable than true modesty, and nothing more contemptible than the false. The one guards virtue, the other betrays it.

— Joseph Addison

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

— Joseph Addison

Wherever valor true is found, true modesty will there abound.

— W. S. Gilbert

Nothing that isn't a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

— Joseph Addison

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

— Joseph Addison

Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency, especially…

— Joseph Addison

True modesty is a discerning grace And only blushes in the proper place; But counterfeit is blind, and skulks through fear, Where 'tis a…

— William Cowper

Egotism is true modesty. In religious enquiry each of us can speak only for himself.

— John Henry Newman

True modesty does not consist in an ignorance of our merits, but in a due estimate of them.

— Augustus William Hare

True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.

— William Hazlitt

A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.

— Joseph Addison

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with…

— Joseph Addison

A man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

— Samuel Butler

We gave him a hearty welcome, for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man..

— Edgar Allan Poe

“It is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible.”

— Isaac Asimov