Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Keble

God hath sworn to lift on high Who sinks himself by true humility.

John Cassavetes

You can fail in films because you don't have the talent, or you have too much humility, or you lack ferociousness. I'm a gangster. If I want something, I'll grab it.

Lois McMaster Bujold

You couldn't be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you'd been abused into affecting public humility.

Lord Byron

She was like me in lineaments-- her eyes Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone Even of her voice, they said were like to mine; But soften'd all, and temper'd into beauty; She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings, The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind To comprehend the universe: nor these Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine, Pity, and smiles, and tears-- which I had not; And tenderness-- but that I had for her; Humility-- and that I never had. Her faults were mine-- her virtues were her own-- I loved her, and destroy'd her!

Maimonides

If one avoids haughtiness to the utmost extent and is exceedingly humble, he is termed a saint, and this is the standard of saintliness.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

About humility we speak with an analogy: When the branches are full of fruit, they just bow down.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom.

Mahatma Gandhi

Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.

Mahatma Gandhi

The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one's conduct and a little receptiveness.

Mahatma Gandhi

Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.

Gavin Rossdale

Those times when I play on stage in front of lots of people, it's such an unusual and borderline unhealthy process, even though I love it and I really do it with humility. I don't have serfs getting me grapes after, or things like that.

Freya Stark

All greatness in style begins, I imagine, with such respect, deep and passionate enough to produce a humility which will not assert itself at the expense even of inanimate things: out of which submissiveness a desire to serve is born, in disinterested accuracy toward the object, whatever it may be.

Freya Stark

We love those people who give with humility, or who accept with ease.

Josh Billings

The more humble a man is before God the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.

Kathy Acker

The personal interiorization of the practice of humiliation is called humility.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Pride juggles with her toppling towers, They strike the sun and cease, But the firm feet of humility They grip the ground like trees.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated.

John Dryden

Humility and resignation are our prime virtues.

Lord Chesterfield

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

John Buchan

Without humility there can be no humanity.

John Bevere

Godly fear, faith, and humility is the true threefold cord that can’t easily be broken (see Ecclesiastes 4:12).

John Bevere

True humility is absolute obedience and dependence on God. It puts Him first, others second, and ourselves third in all things.

Maya Angelou

You don't want modesty, you want humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says someone was here before me and I'm here because I've been paid for. I have something to do and I will do that because I'm paying for someone else who has yet to come.

Max Beerbohm

Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.

Max Beerbohm

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.

Kathie Lee Gifford

... humility + humor = humanity.

Kathleen Norris

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.

Karl Marx

The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille

Julia Cameron

The beginner's humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step.

Glenda Jackson

To counter-balance the natural humility of motherhood, I garden ... In the garden, more than any place, I really feel successful.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.

Joseph Brodsky

If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

Oscar Wilde

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.