Word: modeste
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...friends, Lenin was relatively open and generous. Unlike many tyrants, he did not crave a tyrant's riches. Even when we strip Lenin of the cult that was created all around him after his death, when we strip away the myths of his "superhuman kindness," he remains a peculiarly modest figure who wore a shabby waistcoat, worked 16-hour days and read extensively. (By contrast, Stalin did not know that the Netherlands and Holland were the same country, and no one in the Kremlin inner circle was brave enough to set him straight...
...inhumanities of apartheid, where being black reduced one to the status of a nonperson, kindled in him a kind of absurd courage to change the world. It meant that instead of the easy life in a rural setting he'd been brought up for, or even a modest measure of success as a lawyer, his only future certainties would be sacrifice and suffering, with little hope of success in a country in which centuries of colonial rule had concentrated all political and military power, all access to education, and most of the wealth in the hands of the white minority...
...conclusion, we asked Dean Lewis to sign our bill as a statement of support for the recognition of both Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges on female undergraduate diplomas, and to work within negotiating constraints to advocate for an important change, however "modest." Now, we ask the Harvard-Radcliffe community to take notice of the fact that by stating he could find no good reason to sign the diploma bill, Dean Lewis was simply saying he could find no good reason to give his own signature to female diplomas. Female undergraduates have been waiting since 1977 for full Harvard College recognition...
Usually when a movie star dreams up an extravagantly ambitious and costly project, the world shudders, knowing the result will be an overblown, unwatchable exercise in narcissism. With Tom Hanks, though, things are different. Hanks is so modest and so intelligent that if he invests himself in a film there's good reason to believe it has merit. There is also reason to hope it will be a success. While it's satisfying to see certain stars get their comeuppance, Hanks seems to be someone who deserves to flourish...
...across to much larger celebrity a decade later. There were, however, important differences between the gangs. For one thing, the Newtons were far more successful, financially speaking, than their successors. More important, they did not come to a premature and legend-inspiring end. They all attained great age and modest respectability; one of them even turned up as a guest of Johnny Carson...