922 Humility Quotes

Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must.

When I was crossing into Gaza, I was asked at the checkpost whether I was carrying any weapons. I replied: Oh yes, my prayer books.

Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.

Do they think that I am such a damned fool as to think myself fit for President of the United States? No, sir; I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way, but I am not fit to be President.

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

Well I don't know how many pounds make up a ton, Of all the nobel prizes that I've never won, And I may be the mayor of simpleton, But I know one thing, And that's I love you.

All I did was sit on the riverbank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river.

Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.

If I have any justification for having lived it's simply, I'm nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There's some value in that.

That is a very good question. I don't know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?

Sometimes the best way to be useful is to get out of somebody's way.

The greatest obstacle to discovering the truth is being convinced that you already know it.

Why aren't you more grateful when I prove how wrong you've been?

It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.

I drive a jeep. An old jeep, so nobody will say I'm driving a BMW anymore. I couldn't stand that BMW, ha ha ha! BMW make pure trouble!

People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.

I usually never stay at the board after a game. Especially against Spassky. I made a dumb suggestion and he refuted it instantly! I know I'm going to have to play him some day and it was really stupid to look like such a jerk in front of him.

Even today, I dare not say that I have reached a state of achievement. I'm still learning, for learning is boundless.

Showing off is the fool's idea of glory.

God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of.

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

I'm a terrible long-term planner.

Here's the thing.. I'm slower than the average tree sloth when it comes to writing. Because of that, the scripts I write are never all they could be and therefore the shows aren't either. They're certainly made better by those that I work with but I often feel as though I'm the weak link in the whole system. I've even recommended to the executive producer that I be fired. It really would be the best thing for the show.

Go; say not in thy heart, And what then were it accomplished, Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use or the good! Go, when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accomplished, What thou bast done and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then. Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit Say to thyself: It is good: yet is there better than it. This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little; Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.

Moi ! moi qui me suis dit mage ou ange, dispense de toute morale, je suis rendu au sol.

I believe I forgot to tell you I was made a Duke.

Audrey was meek, gentle and ethereal, understated both in her life and in her work. She walked among us with a light pace, as if she didn't want to be noticed. I regret losing her as a friend, as a role model, and as a companion to my youthful dreams.

It is the things which Ausonius reveals unconsciously that win him liking, not those which he sets out to celebrate with a kind of innocent pomp: not the chair of rhetoric at twenty-five, nor the imperial tutorship in his fifties, nor the consulship at sixty-nine, but that he loved and taught rhetoric all his life, and kept his simplicity.

I don't see myself as Brazilian's main star. I don't think I'm so important so as to be the reason for a whole night party.

There's been so many lovely things said about me, and I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to thank everybody. Thank you.

Some twenty years ago I stopped talking about the Babe for the simple reason that I realized that those who had never seen him didn't believe me.

Pero el que no pudiere alcancar a tener la sabiduria en servidumbre, logrela en familiaridad.

Why you gotta act like you know, if you don't know? It's okay if you don't know everything.

It is natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity - in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes - an interesting side branch.

It would be lovely to think I had become a genius,' he smiles, 'but the fact is that I've forgotten most of it. Occasionally I can be watching University Challenge and a stray fact emerges from the recesses of my subconscious that I didn't know I knew, but for the most part I'm as vague on the details as I ever was.

'Bob's knowledge of players and the game in general is unsurpassed. Football has known no equal in management or prize-winning, but his modesty and dignity were overwhelming as he led this club from one triumph to another. His name will always be synonymous with Liverpool.'

I would not like to defend or justify Bobby Fischer. He is what he is. I am asking only for one thing. For mercy, charity. If for some reason it is impossible, I would like to ask you the following: Please correct the mistake of President Francois Mitterrand in 1992. Bobby and myself committed the same crime. Put sanctions against me also. Arrest me. And put me in the same cell with Bobby Fischer. And give us a chess-set.

That first novel of mine, Non-Stop, is directly attributable to Heinlein. His 'Common Sense' seemed to me such a good story, but bereft of any human feelings. I thought long about that story, and then I thought how wonderful it would be to write about a spaceship in which people have been imprisoned for generations and to put in something of the human feeling. So that novel is directly attributable to Heinlein. I thought, in my youthful arrogance, that I could do it better - I didn't! I thought I could do it differently, and I think I did do it differently. And I suppose that on the whole, I've concentrated on doing things differently ever since.

Growth: 'In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to understand others. We must try, live, create, feel, grow and love. '

Life: 'I am just a student of the world; a miniscule and frail embodied consciousness struggling to understand, and be a meaningful part of this great, mysterious play of life which is set on the stage of our baffling home in the universe.'

Vanity: 'Self-made men often worship their creator.'

Compassion: 'Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man.'

Love: 'True love is quiescent, except in the nascent moments of true humility.'

Intelligence: 'An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.'

Education: 'Our understanding of the world around us is constantly being redefined and expanded, and so therefore, it is wiser to be passionate about seeking for truth than knowing it.'

Knowledge: 'Remember that the greatest fool in the world may ask more than the wisest man can answer.'

Patience: 'The more a person knows the more they realize they don't know. To seek knowledge is healthy, but rather than making a personal investment in a proposition, make your investment in patience, time and tolerance. For nothing is more forbearing, charitable or fickle with knowledge than time.'

What a creative genius - what an inventor... A guy like that, you just sit back and say, okay, I'll never get there!

I'm just a regular guy, you know? There's no leotard and cape under my clothes. I shit, I piss, I drink too much and throw up, just like everybody else.

'I'm never really comfortable with people cheering for me.'

'I mean, come on, hello! The way I see it, I'm not that big of a prize'.

We won't be deceived by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great. Someone else indispensable and unique and great can always be found at a moment's notice.

You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand. For example, I perceive by my senses what makes a magnet point north, what makes tides rise and fall, and what becomes of an animal after death. Your people are not proportioned to perceive such miracles, just as someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that.

Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die Outstretch'd in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: 'Man's measur'd path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb until he touch'd the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destin'd for.' How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

Prince : Why don't you purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka?

Ooh, look at me, I'm Dave, I'm writing a book! With all my thought in it. La la la!

I would rather just make music and share it with people than worry about what kind of peanut butter someone got me on the rider and have a diva tantrum over the wrong pair of socks.

I'm not the kind of man that likes to blow his own horn, although if I could I would.

[He's] the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made.

With what is he concerned? Drawing was at its lowest ebb; it had to be restored. Looking at these nudes, I exclaim, 'Drawing has come back again!' As a man and painter he sets an example. Degas is one of those rare masters who could have had anything he wanted, yet he scorned decorations, honors, fortune, without bitterness, without jealousy.

I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities who was willing to work quite hard and had the necessary imagination and determination. I was just an average bloke; it was the media that transformed me into a heroic figure. And try as I did, there was no way to destroy my heroic image. But as I learned through the years, as long as you didn't believe all that rubbish about yourself, you wouldn't come to much harm.

'Elvis' initial hopes for a music career involved singing in a gospel male quartet. His favourite part was bass baritone, and he himself had an almost 3-octave vocal range... Yet to posterity's surprise, such a superlative and magnetic natural talent always remained humble --perhaps too humble to keep performing forever.'

Albert! Stop telling God what to do.

If thou wouldst make progress, be content to seem foolish and void of understanding with respect to outward things. Care not to be thought to know anything. If any should make account of thee, distrust thyself. (158)

The most important point is - and remains - not to take oneself seriously. There is no past, and, certainly, no future. There are but a few years - ten at the most. You pass your days as best you can, doing as little harm as possible. Let the desires be few and treat expectations as weeds. You read, scribble as the spirit moves you, hear some new music, see every week the few people you are attached to. Again: guard yourself, above all, against self-dramatization, a feeling of importance, and the sprouting of expectations.

In all my life I never competed for fortune, for a woman, or for fame. I learned to write in total isolation. My first work was also my best, and the first thing published. I never belonged to a circle or clique. I did not know I was writing a book until it was written. When my first book was published there was no one near me, an acquaintance let alone a friend, to congratulate me. I have never savored triumph, never won a race.

It is yet a higher speech of his than the other, 'It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.'

Je n'ai rien vaillant; je dois beaucoup; je donne le reste aux pauvres.

But when you're in a picture with Astaire, you've got rocks in your head if you do much dancing. He's so quick-footed and so light that it's impossible not to look like a hay-digger compared with him.

'I'm just a bum who climbs chimneys.'

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

Always in these matters desiring rather to be taught than to teach.

And of his port as meke as is a mayde.

My inquiries into physics could perhaps be given the title: legacies. For people do also bequeath trifles, after all.

Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope, that my Country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.

The Cincinnatus of the West.

There runs a strange law through the length of human history - that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility. This is the great fall, the fall by which the fish forgets the sea, the ox forgets the meadow, the clerk forgets the city, every man forgets his environment and, in the fullest and most literal sense, forgets himself. This is the real fall of Adam, and it is a spiritual fall. It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.

Oh holy asinity! holy ignorance! Holy foolishness and pious devotion! You who alone do more to advance and make souls good Than human ingenuity and study...

'What do I know? I'm a recovering alcoholic DJ.'

The 2004 tour hasn't ended. I still have to finish Latin America and Europe. [Celia Cruz and I] were good friends. Emilio did her first video; we wrote a song for her. I would have loved to have had her there [when recording '90 Millas']. But she was there. I felt her. That's the beauty of a legacy. Celia was economical and tasty in her choices. And in the pocket like you wouldn't believe? [Which means] It's like a rhythm, from son music. To have it it is to be locked in, like a tuned engine. Once you're in the pocket, you're free. That's why, for most of these songs, I sang and I sang until I had the emotion, then . . . one take. {Couldn't you be considered the heiress to Celia Cruz?] you can't give youself a title! That's crazy! If I ever start talking like that, please put me out of my misery. I don't care if I'm 80, with my butt to my ankles, put me down.

Well, you know, in the first place I'm a pretty private person. But I can assure you that I'm no saint by any means of the imagination. You know, we go to parties and we drink like any other people. But I think the key word is balance. I've been married (to keyboardist Emilio Estefan) for 28 years; we've been together for 30 years. I had my son when I was very young and my priority has always been my family. My husband has been very supportive. We live a very normal life, something that may be boring to some people. But it's a great life! We travel a lot. My son is 26 and my dauther is 11. Family is the center of our lives. We try to stay out of the tabloids.

It is always hard to hear people say such nice things about us, because quite honestly I feel very privileged and honored to be of service in any way I can. I think that is my mission here on earth in some way -- whether it is entertaining people or trying to help in whatever way I can. So [the attention and acclaim] is pretty embarrassing to me.