Great Throughts Treasury

"Religion is a profound humility, a universal charity." - Benjamin Whichcote

"Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism." - Blaise Pascal

"“God” is a convenient way of expressing our wonder in the vast splendor of the universe, and our humility over the modesty of man’s achievements." -

"Cruel men are the greatest lovers of mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in others, not in themselves." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Humility is to have a right estimate of one's self - not to think less of himself than he ought. The higher a man is in grace, the lower he will be in his own esteem." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"Humility is the foundation of all virtues." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exultation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It is – is nothing, yet at the same time, one with everything." - Dag Hammarskjöld

"Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower

"True humility... is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues." - Edmund Burke

"None of us really knows why events happen in our lives. The problem is that we think we should know; but living requires humility, for life is a mystery. All will be revealed in its own time." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Humility is the wish to be great and the dread of being called great. It is the wish to help and the dread of thanks. It is the love of service and the distaste for rule. It is trying to be good and blushing when caught at it." - Frank Crane

"Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man." - Franz Kafka

"The churches must learn humility as well as teach it." - George Bernard Shaw

"Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace." - George Santayana

"Too much humility is pride." - German Proverbs

"Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"How can there be pride in a contrite heart? Humility is the earliest fruit of religion." - Hosea Ballou

"The act of divine worship is the inestimable privilege of man, the only created being who bows in humility and adoration." - Hosea Ballou

"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility." - Jacob Bronowski

"The greatest friend of truth is time; her greatest enemy is prejudice; and her constant companion is humility." - James Bryant Conant

"Humility does not consist in hiding our talents and virtues, in thinking ourselves worse and more ordinary than we are, but in possessing a clear knowledge of all that is lacking in us and in not exalting ourselves for that which we have, seeing that God has freely given it us and that, with all His gifts, we are still of infinitely little importance." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

"Without humility there can be no humanity." -

"Humility and resignation are our prime virtues." - John Dryden

"I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man." - John Ruskin

"Humilities are piled on a soldier... so in order that he may, when the time comes, be not too resentful of the final humility - a meaningless and dirty death." - John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck

"A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility - these only, denominate men great and glorious." - Joseph Addison

"The humility of hypocrites is, of all pride, the greatest and most haughty." - Martin Luther

"It is my humility that gives God his divinity and the proof of it is this. God’s peculiar property is giving. But God cannot give if he has nothing to receive his gifts. Since I make myself receptive to his gifts by my humility so I by my humility do make God giver and since giving is God’s own peculiar property I do by my humility give God his property." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

"Science is the most intimate school of resignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seemingly most insignificant of facts." -

"Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which usually we long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul and humility." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL

"The greatest ornament of an illustrious life is modesty and humility, which go a great way in the character even of the most exalted princes." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

"In humility lies true greatness, and that knowledge and wisdom are profitable only in so far as our lives are governed by them." - Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL

"Nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is humility. It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived, the starting point for a fresh development." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

"We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility." -

"The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Fullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance, and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence." -

"They are proud in humility; proud that they are not proud." - Robert Burton

"Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources." - Ronald S. Miller

"Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues; hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance." -

"There is something in humility which strangely exalts the heart." -

"Those who entertain an extreme and inordinate dread of being damned, show that they have more need of humility and submission than of understanding." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Motives are symptoms of weakness and supplements for the deficient energy of the living principle, the law within us. Let them then be reserved for those momentous acts and duties in which the strongest and best-balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, and where humility no less than prudence prescribes deliberation." -

"There is small chance of truth at the goal, where there is not childlike humility at the starting-post." -

"Humility leads to the highest distinction, because it leads to self-improvement. Study your own characters; endeavor to learn and to supply your own deficiencies; never assume to yourselves qualities which you do not possess; combine all this with energy and activity, and you cannot predicate of yourselves, nor can others predicate of you, at what point you may arrive at last." - Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet

"Disasters teach us humility." -

"Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of self." - T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot

"The glory of wisdom is in humility." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"Humility stems from the inner recognition made in the true Light that being, life, knowledge, wisdom, and power are truly rooted in God, not in the created world." - Theologia Germanica, aka Theologia Deutsch or Teutsch NULL

"Pride, perceiving Humility honourable, often borrows her Cloak." - Thomas Fuller

"There is no true Holiness, without Humility." - Thomas Fuller