But still, one hoped he was just being modest when he told Fallon, "I played it once and shot myself in the foot".
"I'm not being modest or putting myself down, but I'm not beautiful enough," she says of her chances at true movie stardom.
I permitted myself a modest vintage binge in autumn, buying three secondhand shirts and two secondhand jumpers.
In imagining myself as modest, mysterious and fiercely intelligent, I'm forced to realize that, in real life, I have none of these qualities.
Nobel Prize-winner and County Derry farmer's son, arguably the world's most celebrated poet and yet (I saw this myself) a modest, friendly guy who would come up at a party and say without any affection "I'm Seamus Heaney".
And not every high school senior is uncomfortable with questions like "Where do you hope to get in?" I consider myself a modest person, but the experience of college applications and acceptance has been a great opportunity for me to brag -- and I'm sure I'm not the only senior out there who likes to brag.
So when I took office, I decided that each night I would read 10 letters out of the tens of thousands that are sent to us by ordinary Americans every day this is my modest effort to remind myself of why I ran in the first place.
For canopy tour virgins (like myself) on more modest courses, garden variety anxiety is often the biggest challenge.
I am willing to try to again, preferably in a "modest, private affair, all to myself," but in public if I should ever be challenged.
What's more, its modest spec sheet prompted many (myself included) to dismiss its odds of being the fabled X Phone.
