Quotes about Humility

All the exercises of the spiritual life, our reading and praying, our willing and doing, have their very great value. But they can go no farther than this, that they point the way and prepare us in humility to look to and to depend alone upon God Himself, and in patience to await His good time and mercy. The waiting is to teach us our absolute dependence upon God's might working, and to make us in perfect patience place ourselves at His disposal.

A vessel must be empty if it is to be filled, and if we are to be filled with the life of God we must be utterly empty of self.

Humility is the only soil in which virtue takes root; a lack of humility is the explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a virtue along with the others, but is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God and allows Him, as God, to do all.

The nearer we are to God, the less we are in ourselves, but the stronger we are in Him. The more I see of God, the less I become, the deeper is my confidence in Him. To become lowly, let God fill eye and heart. Where God is all, there is no time or place for man.

Shall we not accept the salvation that Jesus offers? He gave up His own will; He gave up His own honor; He gave up any confidence in Himself; He lived dependent upon God as a servant whom the Father had sent. There is the salvation we need, the Spirit of humility that was in Christ.

It is that which made the angels, Jesus himself, and the holiest saints humble. It is the first and chief mark of the relationship of the creature to God, of the Son to the Father—it is the secret of blessedness, the desire to be nothing, that allows God to be all in all.

It is often spiritual laziness that, under the appearance of humility, professes to have no will, because it fears the trouble of searching out the will of God, or when found, the struggle of claiming it in faith.

Water always fills first the lowest places. The lower, the emptier a man lies before God, the speedier and the fuller will be the inflow of the divine glory.

Your will be done": Let these be the most profound and most exalted words of your life, in daily submission to the will of God.

It is indeed the deepest happiness of heaven to be so free from self that whatever is said of us or done to us is swallowed up in the thought that Jesus is all and we are nothing.

Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil.

The humble man seeks at all times to act according to the rule: with honour preferring one another; by charity serve one another; esteem[ing] others better than themselves; submitting yourselves one to another.