Quotes About Humility

Não são prostitutas e cobradores de impostos as pessoas que encontram maior dificuldade em se arrepender; são os religiosos que julgam não ter motivos de arrependimento, tranquilos porque não quebraram nenhuma lei no sábado.

It was C. S. Lewis who said, "We need to be reminded more than instructed.

Finally, my old and now retired spiritual director, Larry Hein, who wrote this blessing—"May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit"— has come up with another one:

There was a time in the not too distant past when a thunderstorm caused grown men to shudder and feel small.

The reply to the question Who is my neighbor? plunges us into the scandal of Jesus. The way of tenderness is not chronic niceness, sloppy sentimentality, or a soporific spirituality for the softheaded. The spiritual life isn't a theory. Living the spiritual life, treading the way of tenderness, calls for radical conversion, renunciation of a circumscribed moral code, and al life of humble service.

He was not poor that we might be rich. He was not mocked that we might be honored. He was not laughed at so that we could be lauded.

Humility and fraternal love are spiritual bedfellows. When we befriend our own brokenness and minister to our wounds with tenderness and compassion, the "other" is no longer an intruder but a fellow sufferer.

Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don't have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. As we glance up, we are astonished to find the eyes of Jesus open with wonder, deep with understanding, and gentle with compassion.

The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.' 'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either.

How I treat a brother or sister from day to day, how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike, how I deal with normal people in their normal confusion on a normal day may be a better indication of my reverence for life than the antiabortion sticker on the bumper of my car.

As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others -- and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.

Do the truth quietly without display.

I am content that others should be wiser than I.

Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more.

The truth lies in poverty and simplicity.

pride was dangerous and could make you vulnerable.

The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding... Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry.

I reached a healthy place in which I was able to stop projecting my needs on another human being. We both came to understand that each of us is limited in our capacity to be for another what is needed, and learned to forgive each other for not being God.

We might be competent in many subjects, but we cannot become an expert in the things of God. God is greater than our minds and cannot be caught within the boundaries of our finite concepts. Thus, spiritual formation leads not to a proud understanding of divinity, but to docta ignorantia, an "articulate not-knowing.

humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift.

It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.

Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion. But the father of the prodigal son is not concerned about himself. His long-suffering life has emptied him of his desires to keep in control of things. Can I give without wanting anything in return, love without putting any conditions on my love?

God's compassion is described by Jesus not simply to show me how willing God is to feel for me, or to forgive me my sins and offer me new life and happiness, but to invite me to become like God and to show the same compassion to others as he is showing to me.