Modesty

Modesty is, for the Book of Changes, not mere self-effacement but the one attitude that keeps a person in accord with the movement of heaven and earth — and therefore the surest road to lasting success. It is the title-theme of hexagram 15, whose Judgment is simply:

MODESTY creates success.

The commentary grounds this in cosmic law, in one of the book's most quoted passages:

It is the law of heaven to make fullness empty and to make full what is modest; when the sun is at its zenith, it must, according to the law of heaven, turn toward its setting, and at its nadir it rises toward a new dawn.

Because fullness invites decline and emptiness invites increase, the modest person alone "carries things through" to completion. Modesty recurs across many hexagrams as the corrective to arrogance and the safeguard of a high position.