Quotes about Humility

If and worms'-meat must have such respect, think, then, what reverence thou shouldst approach thy Maker (569).

what a silly, frail, and forward pieces are the best of men (647)!

8"Forp My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. 9"Forq as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona.

As Desmond Tutu told me on a recent trip to Cape Town, "We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!

Try to say that: "I don't know anything". We used to call it "tabula rasa" in Latin. Maybe you could think of yourself as an erased blackboard, ready to be written on. For by and large, what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know, or that we don't need to know. We have to pray for the grace of beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind man, "I want to see".

Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.

Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God—but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create a God who is just like you—whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.

The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong!

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

All we can give back and all God wants from any of us is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given—which is ourselves!

And we must—absolutely must—maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.