Quotes About Humility

Teachers and helpers of all kinds will be of limited use if they are doing their work to build up their own egos. In fact, setting out to help others is a very quick way to pop the bubble of ego.

And who am I, that I should be asking you of all people for an easy life? As you think best then Lord, but only, give me patience when my own runs out...

The body of Christ—yes, we may be; broken, we certainly are. And we may be limping along to begin with, but when Christ takes us into his hands he breaks us again—tears us to shreds at times. He has to grab hold of our pride… arrogance… contempt… cynicism… hardheartedness… He has to break those things up, or there would never be any humility, no compassion, no gratitude.

Never use the message of the cross to crucify those you don't like, or the sword of the Spirit to attack other believers.

There is a danger in becoming an overly perfected meat eater only—a person who becomes spiritually fat on the meat and can become critical of a church or believer who is not on the same level of the deeper knowledge he or she is experiencing. This becomes pride.

I used to think I knew all the answers. Then I thought I knew maybe a few of the answers. Now I'm not even sure I understand the questions. Nobody knows anything.

That's the only hitch in learning: it's humbling. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. Anyway, all that's a long way around saying that it's crazy to do things just to prove you can do 'em. The more you learn, the more you'll find yourself doing things you never thought you could do in a million years.

I simply wish to offer my fart-helt apologies, sir, for you're just an honest man doin' your job, and I'm a dishonest lad doin' mine, and of the two, you have far more reason to hang your head high than does I.

taking pride in such ignorance is self-defeating.

Laughter deriding others is only too often incense one burns at one's own self-constructed altar, an altar one knows to be rickety.

Sir, I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I'm not sir, and that sir is an idiot.

One common cause of this mistake of preferring to imagine and admire a great ideal instead of beginning to do little deeds is our impatience with little baby steps, our lack of humility.

Prayer is easier than we think. we want to think it is too hard or too high and holy for us, because that gives us an excuse for not doing it. This is false humility. We can all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly, and stupid of us.

Go back to Socrates: Know thyself. For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints. Which are you?

Haven't you forgotten the first and most important lesson in all of philosophy, the lesson taught to all of us by Socrates, the father of philosophy? That you are wise only when you are humble, that the very first bit of wisdom and the prerequisite for all others is the realization that we are not wise

Your heart may be paltry compared with the heart of a great saint, but your heart is what God wants from you.

High and holy ambition--to be a saint--is not opposed to holy humility--total reliance on God's grace. Exactly the opposite. Ambition without humility is ambition that fails. It is pride, which goes before a fall (Prov 16:18). Humility without ambition is false humility.

Socrates: "Know thyself." For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints.

We pray to obey God, not to "play God". We pray, not to change God's mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. We pray to "let God be God". Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for things, for God has commanded us to ask (Mt 7:7).

But to observe our neighbor's faults with the intention of looking down upon them or of detracting them . . . is sinful.

Unworthy" does not mean "undeserving", for we are all undeserving! It means "incapable of receiving.

Of course we should use all our powers, of mind and will and imagination, but not trust in them, for that is trusting in ourselves.

But all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.

To a humble mind nothing is more astonishing than to hear its own excellence.