Quotes about Humility

If you want to reach the top, don't run over others. Likely, the only way you'll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

Sometimes people call folks here at the Simple Way saints. Usually they either want to applaud our lives and live vicariously through us, or they want to write us off as superhuman and create a safe distance. One of my favorite quotes, written on my wall here in bold black marker, is from Dorothy Day: "Don't call us saints; we don't want to be dismissed that easily

Lord, free us from our self-deception and attune our hearts to your Spirit, that we might remember how you humbled yourself, and learn to serve one another, whatever our disagreements. Amen.

Patting mother Theresa on the back, someone said to her: 'i wouldn't do what you do for a million dollars.' She said with a grin: 'me neither.

In an age of million-dollar mansions for God, it's hard to imagine that our God prefers tents.

Lord, keep us from following the gods of pride, stubbornness, vanity, sloth, greed, and comfort that beckon for our allegiance every day. You brought us through the night watches, you who neither slumber nor sleep. We pray to follow you along the path of generosity, humility, and love throughout this day. Amen.

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.

thank you that we are unable to save ourselves and that each time we try, we fail. Have mercy on us. Be the strength in our weakness. Clear our heads of the foolishness of believing we can be our own gods. Steer our hearts to utter dependence on you. Amen.

And in a very special way, as Jesus says in Matthew 25:40, in the least of these, we find Jesus in disguise. Perhaps we are just as likely to encounter God over the dinner table or in the slums or in the streets as in a giant auditorium. Of course, suggesting that God doesn't need these million-dollar megacathedrals is the sort of thing that gets you in big trouble.

Not many people get argued into thinking differently, but experiences and stories move us, especially when we have the humility to listen and view the world from a different lens, from someone else's eyes.

The way of Jesus is not a proposal for how to take over the nation-state and make it Christian. It is, rather, a lesson in learning not to take over--to be a community where we find a new way of life by giving ourselves for others.

Francis de Sales, a sixteenth-century bishop, said, "We often say that we are nothing, that we are misery itself and the refuse of the world, but we would be very sorry if anyone took us at our word or told others that we are really such as we say.