Joseph Addison on Modesty
← Back to Joseph Addison Profile
“True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.”
“In short, if you banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.”
“A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades in paintings, it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colours more beautiful, though not so glaring as they would be without it.”