This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, aka Rabbi Avraham Maimuni, aka Rabbeinu Avraham ben ha-Rambam NULL
Anger an arrogance are partners. Inner feelings of conceit lead a person to become angry. Conversely, humility leads to forgiveness.
Anger | Arrogance | Character | Feelings | Forgiveness | Humility |
Your awareness of your self-worth is not a contradiction to the obligation to be humble. Humility is not a lack of awareness of your positive accomplishments and abilities. Only a fool is not aware of what he really is an this is not humility. Humility is the internalized awareness with every fiber of your body that everything, yes everything, you have is not your own. Rather it is a gift from the Almighty who bestowed His kindness on you. The more a person actually feels that what he has is a gift the greater is his humility.
Awareness | Body | Character | Contradiction | Humility | Kindness | Obligation | Self | Self-worth | Worth | Awareness |
Self-knowledge leading to self-hatred and humility, is the condition of the love and knowledge of God. Spiritual exercises that make use of distractions have this great merit, that they increase self-knowledge. Every soul that approaches God must be aware of who and what it is. To practice a form of mental or vocal prayer that is, so to speak, above one’s moral station is to act a lie: and the consequences of such lying are wrong notions about God, idolatrous worship of private and unrealistic phantasies and (for lack of the humility of self-knowledge) spiritual pride.
Character | Consequences | God | Humility | Knowledge | Love | Lying | Merit | Practice | Prayer | Pride | Self | Self-hatred | Self-knowledge | Soul | Worship | Wrong | God |
Live unconditionally and non-judgmentally, with a measure of humility - we can’t be taught anything new if we think we already know it all.
David Mallet, also David Malloch
Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humility and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish.
Affliction | Character | Fortitude | Honor | Humility | Patience | Virtue | Virtue |
Pride looks back upon its past deeds, and calculating with nicety what it has done, it commits itself to rest; whereas humility looks to that which is before, and discovering how much ground remains to be trodden, it is active and vigilant. Having gained one height, pride looks down with complacency on that which is beneath it; humility looks up to a higher and yet higher elevation. The one keeps us on this earth, which is congenial to its nature; the other directs our eye, and tends to lift us up to heaven.
Character | Complacency | Deeds | Earth | Heaven | Humility | Looks | Nature | Past | Pride | Rest |
A sincere acquaintance with ourselves teaches us humility; and from humility springs that benevolence which compassionates the transgressors we condemn, and prevents the punishments we inflict from themselves partaking of crime, in being rather the wreaking of revenge than the chastisements of virtue.
Acquaintance | Benevolence | Character | Crime | Humility | Revenge | Virtue | Virtue |
The light of the understanding, humility kindleth and pride covereth.
Character | Humility | Light | Pride | Understanding |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Self-control is promoted by humility. Pride is a fruitful source of uneasiness. It keeps the mind in disquiet. Humility is the antidote to this evil.
Character | Control | Evil | Humility | Mind | Pride | Self | Self-control |
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
There is something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolution from Him who is supreme, falls to a low condition.
Enough | God | Heart | Humility | Nature | Nothing | Pious | Pride | Revolution | Wisdom |
The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things - that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from that which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only to protection to His realm.
Dignity | Discovery | Duty | Experience | God | Humility | Liberty | Life | Life | Obligation | Repentance | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Teach | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |