Modesty
idea · 8 works · 9 mentions · 15 anchored passages
modesty · Christian modesty · Pudicitia · al-ḥayāʼ · bashful · flower of character · modest · reverence · shame · shamefaced
in the texts
Nicomachean Ethics
The middle disposition regarding shame, praised though technically not classed as a virtue.
For though Modesty is not a virtue, it is praised, and so is the modest man.
Modesty cannot properly be described as a virtue, for it seems to be a feeling rather than a disposition;
Modesty can only be virtuous conditionally—in the sense that a good man would be ashamed if he were to do so and so;
Risālah fī ʻilm al-akhlāq
The restraining sense of shame that keeps a man from blameworthy things.
Modesty is a virtue by which a man guards himself against blameworthy matters.
Mukhtaṣar fī ʻilm al-nafs al-insānīyah
Modesty, the restraint that stops a desired act on account of others' disapproval even in the absence of any possible reproach.
As for modesty, its cause is that when a man resolves upon a thing he desires to do, and that thing is reprehensible in people's eyes, he falls short of doing it, even though they have no way of reproaching him (5) for it.
and so he leaves it off out of modesty before them.
Iphigenia in Aulis
The virtue of modesty or reverent restraint, explicitly named and invoked to govern the conduct of women and strangers in the play.
Go within—it is wrong for maidens to be seen—after you have given me your hand and a kiss, on the eve of your lengthy sojourn far from your father’s side.
I praise your reverent address to modesty.
O modesty revered!
De Cultu Feminarum
The chief virtue governing dress, gait, and demeanor in the treatise
Of perfect, that is, Christian modesty, know that the longing for itself is not only not to be longed after, but even to be execrated.
For even if any modesty can be believed in among the heathen, it is so far established imperfect and uncomposed, that, although in mind it acts to some extent tenacious of itself, yet in the licenses of dress it dissolves itself, after the perversity of the heathen, coveting that whose effect it shuns.
For where God is, there is modesty, there gravity, its helper and companion.
De Exhortatione Castitatis Liber
The virtue of restraint in desire, defined as not seeking to recover what God has taken away and as measured use of what is permitted.
For it is modesty not to desire what has been taken away — and taken away by the Lord God, without whose will not even a leaf falls from the tree, nor a sparrow worth a single penny falls to the ground.
For the rest, you abuse indulgence, when you use it without modesty.
De Pudicitia
Chastity and sexual/bodily integrity, the central virtue defended in the treatise.
Modesty, the flower of character, the honour of bodies, the grace of the sexes, the integrity of the blood, the good faith of the family, the foundation of holiness, the prejudgement in favour of every good disposition — though rare, not easily made perfect, and scarcely ever lasting — will yet abide in the world to some degree, if Nature has laid the groundwork, if discipline has persuaded, if ce …
just as it makes no difference as to places, whether modesty be slaughtered in bedchambers or on towers.
Symposium
A personified virtue associated with Lacedaemonian shame before cowardice.
For the goddess they worship is not Impudence but Modesty.