Humility quotes
2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside humility — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Humility must accompany all our actions, must be with us everywhere; for as soon as we glory in our good works they are of no further value to our advancement in virtue."
"If after all your efforts you cannot succeed, you could not please our Lord more than by sacrificing to Him your will, and remaining in tranquility, humility, and devotion, entirely conformed and submissive to His divine will and good pleasure."
"Everything is gestation and bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life."
"While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace."
"On Pride: This sickness is most dangerous when it succeeds in looking like humility. When a proud man thinks he is humble his case is hopeless."
"Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men."
"If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone."
"The truth is in the mystery."
"Good action and thoughts produce consequences which tend to neutralize, or put a stop to, the result of evil thoughts and actions. For as we give up the life of self (and note that, like forgiveness, repentance and humility are also special cases of giving), as we abandon what the German mystics called "the I, me, mine," we make ourselves progressively capable of receiving grace. By grace we are enabled to know reality more completely, and this knowledge of reality helps us to give up more of the life of selfhood - and so on, in a mounting spiral of illumination and regeneration."
"Our best thoughts come from others."
"To the extent we behave with humility, to that extent good will result."
"The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too."
"Praised be the Lord, who has redeemed me from myself."
"The people that I admire have a wonderful balance of self-belief and humility."
"True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue."
"If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are."
"Humility is self-forgetfulness."
"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man."
"Don't judge men's wealth or godliness by their Sunday appearance."
"The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has."
