Modesty (n.) is a scandal — To require of strength that it should not be strength, that it should not show itself as a strenuous wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to be master, a thirst for enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.
Modesty (n.) toward people takes its revenge by being all the more presumptuous toward things — city, state, the age, mankind.
Modesty (n.) cries out to high heaven, not your sin — your stinginess even in sinning.
Modesty (n.) in a woman is no conscious hypocrisy: her instinct divines that a genuinely naive modesty most seduces a man into overestimating her — where dissembling works better unconscious, it becomes unconscious.
Modesty (n.) is what one has to atone for most: having underestimated oneself, lost one's ear for one's instincts — and this lack of self-reverence takes revenge through every kind of deprivation.
Modesty (n.) is dangerous when it adapts us too early to the tasks chance assigned — a premature resignation that, unless it ends in an explosion, withers a spirit into something petty and factual.
Modesty (n.) is dangerous: adapting too early to the milieu chance put us in, before our force and goal are conscious, spoils and keeps us down — the spirit withers, unless it finally explodes.