Humility Quotes

There is only one certain test of the virtue and that is humiliation. The acceptance of humiliation alone shows the depth and reality of our humility.

~ Nivard Kinsella

I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorize in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relations; but still they cannot be equals.” (10)

~ Jane Austen

You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know - You have qualities which I had not supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what - not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees any thing like it - but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return.” (326)

~ Jane Austen

It is an illusion to worry about pride without having those things that may predispose someone to fall into the trap of pride...

~ Assegid Habtewold

There is a fine line between humility and humiliation, and when Augustine’s critics, both loyal and disloyal, fault him for morbid self-criticism, they generally mean to imply that he has crossed the line. You can have a relationship with another person only if you know something of humility; otherwise your ego gets in the way. If, however, you are humiliated instead of humbled, there is no ‘you’ to enter into a relationship. Massilians and Pelagians had differing understandings of when humility before God became too much of a good thing, but they had common cause in not liking Augustine’s scruples about the human will to relate to God. If everything about the soul’s relationship to God is God’s doing, including the very desire to be in relation, where exactly does the soul surface in its redemption? The Word seems to have become a monologue.

~ James Wetzel

History teacher Bob Alston's expertise late not in his sweeping knowledge of the topic but in his ability to pick after a tumble, to get a fix on what he does not know, and to generate a roadmap to guide his new learning. He was an expert at cultivating puzzlement it was Alston's ability to stand back from first impressions, to question his quick leaps of mind, to keep track of his questions that together pointed him in the direction of new learning.

~ Sam Wineburg

Never believe you're so great or important, so right or proud, that you cannot kneel at the feet of someone you hurt and offer a humble, sincere apology.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Courtship is driven by hormones, marriage is sustained by humility and self-sacrifice.

~ Ron Brackin

You don't have to be a big name to do big things. Shine does not require recognition.

~ T.f. Hodge

The height of cleverness is in one's ability to be very clever without seeming clever at all.

~ Criss Jami

Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace.

~ Augustine Of Hippo

Vengeance would have us assault an enemy's pride to beat him down. But vengeance hides a dangerous truth, for a humbled foe gains patience, courage, strength, and greater determination.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.

~ Kathleen Norris

His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.

~ John Charles Pollock

I was wrong, you were right. I'm dumb, you're smart. I'm ugly, and you're a stone-cold fox.

~ Toooldforthis

False humility is a form of psychosis which was imprinted on most of us since birth. It is a mental illness because it locks us in a victim state of keeping our light turned down, denying who we really are and silently begging for permission to simply show up as ourselves in the world. But there is good news. This is a jail whose lock is broken. We can walk free whenever we know the truth, and by so doing we show others an example of an end to madness. An example of freedom.

~ Jacob Nordby

If you are humble you will never have to struggle against positive change.

~ Paul Bamikole

They (Reagan and Kennedy) had some combination of cheerfulness and vulnerability that made them seem like boys on adventure who had become lost in needed a small kindness to get them back on the right path.

~ Scott Farris

I overreacted to praise, signing an autograph. I'd write a check to buy it back.

~ Brian Spellman

Humility is recognizing the fullness of our sin, so we can embrace the fullness of God's mercy.

~ Alisa Hope Wagner

The only competition in art is the search for truth. No matter who gets there first, we all win.

~ Joe Leigh-Corrigan

You must love yourself first to the soul of your aura...

~ Jennifer Pierre

Plimpton was a presence. He looked for ways in which he could make himself ridiculous. That made him a great storyteller.

~ Stefan Fatsis

I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.

~ Nadine Gordimer

Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was the symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

~ Carson Mccullers

Life is not a competition with others. Life is a competition with yourself—to do your personal best each day.

~ Cameron C. Taylor

People who have fallacious objectives are like the barren soil. The flowers grow from soil which is composed of the right objectives.

~ Idries Shah

In reverent pauses, when we slow down and think about the gift of life, we may briefly touch humility.

~ Bryant Mcgill

The subtle whispers, cues and nudges are there as guideposts, to gently carry the humble listener along the path back to the source and the true self.

~ Bryant Mcgill

[Soetsu Yanagi's] main criticism of individual craftsmen and modern artists is that they are overproud of their individualism. I think I am right in saying Yanagi's belief was that the good artist of craftsman has no personal pride because in his soul he knows that any prowess he shows is evidence of that Other Power. Therefore what Yanagi says is 'Take heed of the humble, be what you are by birthright, there is no room for arrogance'.

~ Bernard Leach

Humility is a virtue that one can find, in which God in heaven rejoices ,and in His love he enfolds you, close to his heart He does bind.

~ Henrietta Newton Martin

Humility is patient because it is neither past nor forward seeking — it is content.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Surrender is not a weakness, but rather an empowering state of humility.

~ Bryant Mcgill

I believe a man’s finest hour often comes when he is at his weakest. When he is broken, affronted and at a place of great emotional transparency. It’s there he has the rare insight of an inescapable truth…he’s merely a man. As his bravado washes away into a puddle of reflective tears, it reveals that he is merely flesh, blood and bones and amounts to very little without the love and guidance of our creator. It’s only then, that I believe, a man begins to truly find his way.

~ Jason Versey

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

~ Richard Rohr

You don’t want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I’m here because I’ve been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I’m paying for someone else who has yet to come.

~ Maya Angelou

The assumption that we are infallible can we justify the suppression of opinions we think false. Ages are as fallible as individuals, every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd.

~ John Stuart Mill

If I turn mine eyes upon myself, I find myself a traitor with the rest

~ ;William Shakespeare

Think less of yourself and more of others…and others will think more of you. ~Jason Versey

~ Jason Versey

What if she'd sought God's Word for her pain? What if she'd resolved to forgive Rees for hurting her and trusted God to work that forgiveness out in her heart, so that she would have arrived in London with an attitude of humility and trust in God to lead her to the right person?

~ Axtell Ruth