Quotes about Humility

Nothing on earth is so well-suited to make the sad merry, the merry sad, to give courage to the despairing, to make the proud humble, to lessen envy and hate, as music.

I want to be cremated so people won't come to worship at my bones.

Pride dies 20 minutes after death.

Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.

Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization ? Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism ? Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.

Jesus tended to honor the losers of this world, not the winners. Our modern culture extravagantly rewards beauty, athletic skill, wealth, and artistic achievement, qualities which seemed to impress Jesus not at all.

Christian faith, which is at its heart about self-giving—God's self-giving and human self-giving—and not about self-imposing.

In God's presence I feel small because I am small.

Prayer helps correct myopia, calling to mind a perspective I daily forget. I keep reversing roles, thinking of ways in which God should serve me, rather than vice versa. As God fiercely reminded Job, the Lord of the universe has many things to manage, and in the midst of my self-pity I would do well to contemplate for a moment God's own point of view.

Could it be that Christians, eager to point out how good we are, neglect the basic fact that the gospel sounds like good news only to bad people?

It seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for His entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism.

Jesus gave a vivid object lesson his last night with the disciples by washing their feet, like a servant. Parents know the self-giving principle by instinct as they pour their energies into their self-absorbed children. Volunteers in soup kitchens and hospices and mission projects learn this lesson by doing.* What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver.