No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.

To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.

The higher a man is in grace, the lower he will be in his own esteem.

Just as with the man in the fairy tale who turned whatever he touched into gold, with me everything is turned into newspaper clamor.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.

When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, they always hang their heads; but men hold theirs the higher the more they receive, getting proud as they get full.

When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done, he is dead,--dead in trespasses and sin of blear-eyed vanity.

I must dispel vanity with vanity.

you must be always as a drop of dew hidden in the heart of this beautiful Lily of the valley ... One must be so little to draw near to Jesus, and few are the souls that aspire to be little and unknown. ... Our Beloved needs neither our brilliant deeds nor our beautiful thoughts. ... The Lily of the valley asks but a single dewdrop, which for one night shall rest in its cup, hidden from all human eyes.

If we're focusing on others in an attempt to justify ourselves before God or to "exalt ourselves" as "giants of the faith," we will not only not grow as we ought, but we will also delude ourselves into thinking we're better than we are. And we may be sure that God will humble us. So it is better to humble ourselves and trust in the grace of God than to be opposed by God because of pride (James 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5).

No man ruleth safely but he that is willingly ruled.