A Quote by Maya Angelou

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

Maya Angelou

Quote Topics

Affectation Against Drops Learned Life Modest Modesty Person Soon Wall

Quote Author

Maya Angelou
American - Poet
April 4, 1928 - May 28, 2014

I don't think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. It's a learned affectation.

Maya Angelou

I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's like decal stuck up on a person.

Maya Angelou

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

Harriet Martineau

I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals.

Maya Angelou

Modesty means to be free from undue familiarity, from indecency, from lewdness, pure in thought and conduct. Speaking of modest apparel, it means decent, seemly. The opposite of modesty is conceit, boldness, immodesty, brazenness, lewdness.

Elisabeth Elliot

Modesty is a learned affectation. It's no good. Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.'

Maya Angelou

I'm a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I'm even afraid of it - it's a learned affectation and it's just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

Maya Angelou

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I do plead with the mothers of Zion to undertake modesty in dress. We may like to follow the fashion, but let us follow it in modesty. The most precious thing that a girl has is her modesty and if she preserves this in dress, in speech, in action, it will arm, and protect her as nothing else will. But let her lose her modesty, and she becomes a victim of those who pursue her, as the hare is of the hound; and she will not be able to stand unless she preserves her modesty.

L. Tom Perry

Some of the most frantic lies on the face of life are told with modesty and restraint; for the simple reason that only modesty and restraint will save them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.

Jean Cocteau

At heart a truly modest man, he had nevertheless the modest man's pride in his modesty in the face of achievement.

Pearl S. Buck

The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utterly different things. Secrecy has always an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gentle and reserved. Today, modesty is thrown to the winds, even in the presence of the grey guardians. But secrecy is hugged, being a vice in itself. And the attitude of the grey ones is: Dear young ladies, you may abandon all modesty, so long as you hug your dirty little secret.

D. H. Lawrence

It is a common teaching of the Saints that one of the principal means of leading a good and exemplary life is certainly modesty and the mortification of the eyes. Just as there is nothing better than modesty to preserve devotion in a soul and to edify one's neighbor, so too, there is nothing worse than immodesty and licentious glances to expose a person to the danger of becoming lax and loose in morals.

Alphonsus Rodriguez

Why, to hear Betsy Bobbet talk about wimmin's throwin' their modesty away, you would think if they ever went to the political pole, they would have to take their dignity and modesty and throw 'em against the pole, and go without any all the rest of their lives.