Quotes & Sayings About Self Effacing
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Top Self Effacing Quotes
I think growing up in Indiana prepares anyone for a life in comedy. I do feel like there is a certain kind of self-effacing cynicism among all Hoosiers. — Jim Gaffigan
The self-effacing person is soothing and gracious, while the self-promoting person is fragile and jarring. Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space - self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused with lovely emotions like admiration, companionship, and gratitude. — David Brooks
In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible. — Ben Folds
My work is really abject and self-effacing sometimes. I mean, it's big and overwrought, but it's just paper dolls, and it's kind of silly. — Kara Walker
All I can see when I look at him is a belt swinging toward Tobias, and the butt of a gun slamming into Caleb's jaw. I don't care that he hurt Caleb
I would have done it, too
but that he is simultaneously a man who knows how to hurt people and a man who parades around as the self-effacing leader of Abnegation, suddenly makes me so angry I can't see straight.
Especially because I chose him. I chose him over Tobias.
"Your brother is a traitor," says Marcus as we turn a corner. "He deserved worse. There's no need to look at me that way."
"Shut up!" I shout, shoving him hard into the wall. He is too surprised to push back. "I hate you, you know that! I hate you for what you did to him, and I am not talking about Caleb." I lean close to his face and whisper, "And while I may not shoot you myself, I will definitely not help you if someone tries to kill you, so you'd better hope to God we don't get into that situation. — Veronica Roth
They possess the self- effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don't need to prove anything to the world: — David Brooks
I am thinking of the onion again ... Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away, or merely radiating halos like ripples. — Erica Jong
My readers often say to me, 'If we lived next door to each other, we'd be best friends.' That is precisely what I wanted to say to smart, funny, self-effacing Ellen McCarthy after I finished reading The Real Thing. I loved every lesson laid out in a book that wouldn't dare to call itself a field guide to marriage but amounts to as much on every page. This is a deeply useful little book. — Kelly Corrigan
The thing you fail to grasp is that people are not basically good. We are basically selfish. We shove and clamour and cry for adoration, and beat down everyone else to get it. Life is a competition of prattling peacocks enraptured in inane mating rituals. But for all our effacing and self-importance, we are all slaves to what we fear most. You have so very much to learn. Here. Let me teach you. — Christopher Nolan
Now try these Drivetime talismans on for size: organized chaos ... wild discipline ... reverent blasphemy ... self-effacing grandiosity ... fanatic moderation ... selfish gifts ... twisted calm ... garish elegance ... insane poise ... ironic sincerity ... blasphemous prayers ... orgiastic lucidity ... aggressive sensitivity ... convoluted simplicity ... macho feminism. Homework Discuss what is wetter than water, stronger than love, and more exotic than trust. — Rob Brezsny
Too many people are confusing charisma with autocrat, fat cat. So I think we have to be a little more sophisticated when we hold up or tear down these stereotypes. Whether we call it charisma or not, a leader cannot be self-effacing to the point of being wimpy. — Noel Tichy
Why were there no words that spoke positively about being concerned about the self? Why was there only negative connotation in terms like "selfish", "self-interested", "self-centred", "self-obsessed" and so on? Why was it so much better to be without a self: "selfless", "self-sacrificing", "self-effacing", etc? — A.J. Dalton
Women are always self-effacing and self-denying. There's a term that enrages me, and I always used to swear that I'd never play characters described that way. The term is "long-suffering." — Helen Mirren
The people in Miami are so different from anywhere else I've been in America. They're so down to earth, really friendly, and quite self-effacing, with a good sense of humor. I'm not saying other parts of America don't have a sense of humor, but Miami maybe has to have a really good sense of humor for lots of different reasons, and it works. It works for me. — Tracey Emin
When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience- if only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through. — Ian McEwan
You should never try irony or self-effacing humour. — Tim Robbins
... Some people, under a nervous and self-effacing manner, conceal a great deal of vanity and self-satisfaction. — Agatha Christie
I'm drawn to girls with a certain self-effacing, humorous quality and an innate independence and point of view. I love the notion of never taking yourself too seriously or being too put together. — Chris Benz
Most of all the actor will love the boys and girls, the men and women, who sit in the cheapest seats, in the very last row of the top gallery. They have given more than they can afford to come. In the most self-effacing spirit of fellowship they are listening to catch every word, watching to miss no slightest gesture or expression. To save his life the actor cannot help feeling these nearest and dearest. He cannot help wishing to do his best for them. He cannot help loving them best of all. — Minnie Maddern Fiske
It's self-effacing, it's hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor. — Jerry Leiber
I think I have great responsibility, and when I do my music, when I try to relate to my audience, I just try to do it in an honest fashion, you know, just try to be as earnest as possible and sometime it may be self-effacing. Sometimes it may be finger-pointing. Sometimes it may be beautiful, and sometime it may be ugly. — Q-Tip
Nanny Ogg was about to say: What? You mean not compliant and self-effacing like what you is, Esme? But she stopped herself. You didn't juggle matches in a fireworks factory. — Terry Pratchett
[he] was a quiet, self-effacing boy - like a shy guest at the party of his own life. — Arnaldur Indridason
The larger the ego, the less the need for other egos around. The more modest, humble, and self-effacing we feel, the more we suffer from solitude, feeling ourselves inadequate company. — Barbara Holland
Do you remember when I told you that I sometimes believe that you're not real? That I imagined you just to hurt myself?" Reed says softly with a bitterly self-effacing laugh that has nothing to do with humor. "I know now that you have to be real. This kind of pain cannot exist if you were imaginary," Reed's sexy voice breathes. I feel like I could reach out and touch him, he feels that close to me. "I know you exist, but you're like a sunset to me now - beautiful and so distant that no matter how fast I fly, I cannot reach you. You are always on the next horizon," Reed says sadly, and my breath catches in my throat as an unbelievable ache throbs in my chest. "Tel me where you are. I wil meet you
wherever you are in the world. I wil be there. Just you and me, I swear it. We don't have to endanger anyone else
we'l make sure Buns and Brownie and Zephyr are safe. Just you and me, I promise ... I wil meet you anywhere at anytime ... I wil ... — Amy A. Bartol
Evan Handler is not only a fine actor, he's a damn good writer. It's Only Temporary is wise and funny and as righteously indignant as it is endearingly self-effacing. In what may be a literary first, the book actually left me wanting more. — Meghan Daum
A geek is a person, male or female, with an abiding, obsessive, self-effacing, even self-destroying love for something besides status — D. B. Weiss
What I see as specially English is the charm - everyone is so polite. Being restrained is part of the charm. And I love the sense of humour - it takes me back to Australia. The English are great at making fun of themselves. They're so self-effacing. — Danielle De Niese
Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences. — Thornton Wilder
Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy - these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They — James C. Collins
Sometimes you don't even notice these people, because while they seem kind and cheerful, they are also reserved. They possess the self-effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don't need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline. They radiate a sort of moral joy. They answer softly when challenged harshly. They are silent when unfairly abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when others try to provoke them. But they get things done. They perform acts of sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would display if they were just getting the groceries. They are not thinking about what impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about — David Brooks
Until self-effacing men return again to spiritual leadership, we may expect a progressive deterioration in the quality of popular Christianity year after year till we reach the point where the grieved Holy Spirit withdraws - like the Shekinah from the temple. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
After all, Christmastide is the time of year for warming brandies, for assertive burgundies and meaty Medoc wines, and for gladsome whiskies. And an Islay malt: well, this is the octave of St Andrew, and you will doubtless recall that he is not only the patron saint of Alba, of Scotland, but was also a fisherman. How better to toast my favorite apostle (he being all the things I personally am not, starting with humble and self-effacing) than with the sea-salty dram of an Islay whisky? — Markham Shaw Pyle
They were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the most brutal answers - that is, to look failures in the face, even their own, while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the end. — Carol S. Dweck
What I call Professionalism someone else might call the Artist's Code or the Warrior's Way. It's an attitude of egolessness and service. The Knights of the Round Table were chaste and self-effacing. Yet they dueled dragons. — Steven Pressfield
Being humble does not mean being weak, reticent, or self-effacing. It means recognizing principle and putting it ahead of self. It means standing firmly for principle, even in the fact of opposition. — Stephen Covey
It is not merely the brevity by which the haiku isolates a particular group of phenomena from all the rest; nor its suggestiveness, through which it reveals a whole world of experience. It is not only in its remarkable use of the season word, by which it gives us a feeling of a quarter of the year; nor its faint all-pervading humour. Its peculiar quality is its self-effacing, self-annihilative nature, by which it enables us, more than any other form of literature, to grasp the thing-in-itself. — Reginald Horace Blyth
One thing Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't is self-effacing. Everything has to be the biggest. His money, his muscles, his movies and his machines. — Arnold Schwarzenegger
In regards to being a fashion aficionado, there's a certain amount of taking yourself seriously in the professional world. The self-effacing person can't completely go down the serious road. But I design, and love when things are beautiful. — St. Vincent
There is ample reason to question whether low self-esteem is to blame for violence. Think of the obnoxious, hostile, or bullying people you have known - were they humble, modest, and self-effacing? (That's mainly what low self-esteem is like.) Most of the aggressive people I have known were the opposite: conceited, arrogant, and often consumed with thoughts about how they were superior to everyone else. — Roy F. Baumeister
Dexter is modest, even self-effacing, and certainly aware of the limits of his considerable talent. But if there was a limit to what I could discover on the computer, I had not found it yet. I sat back down and went to work. — Jeff Lindsay