Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

George Bernard Shaw

The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

Share

Humility | Teach | Learn |

View Author

German Proverbs

Too much humility is pride.

Share

Humility | Pride |

View Author

George Santayana

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

Share

Courage | Dignity | Grace | Humility | Man | Religion |

View Author

Hosea Ballou

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

Share

Humility | Man | Worship | Privilege |

View Author

Hosea Ballou

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

Share

Heart | Humility | Pride | Religion |

View Author

John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck

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.

Share

Death | Dirty | Humility | Order | Time |

View Author

Joseph Addison

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.

Share

Contemplation | God | Good | Humility | Mankind | Men | Contemplation |

View Author

Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

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.

Share

Divinity | Giving | God | Humility | Nothing | Property | Receive | God |

View Author

Martin Luther

The humility of hypocrites is, of all pride, the greatest and most haughty.

Share

Humility | Pride |

View Author

Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL

In humility lies true greatness, and that knowledge and wisdom are profitable only in so far as our lives are governed by them.

Share

Greatness | Humility | Knowledge | Wisdom |

View Author

Saint Francis de Sales NULL

Those who entertain an extreme and inordinate dread of being damned, show that they have more need of humility and submission than of understanding.

Share

Dread | Extreme | Humility | Need | Submission | Understanding |

View Author

Thomas Fuller

Pride, perceiving Humility honourable, often borrows her Cloak.

Share

Humility | Pride |

View Author

William Law

To pretend to devotion without great humility and renunciation of all worldly tempers is to pretend to impossibilities. He that would be devout must first be humble, have a full sense of his own miseries and wants and the vanity of the world, and then his soul will be full of desire after God. A proud, or vain, or worldly-minded man may use a manual of prayers, but he cannot be devout, because devotion is the application of an humble heart to God as its only happiness.

Share

Desire | Devotion | God | Heart | Humility | Man | Sense | Soul | Wants | Will | World | God |

View Author

Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

The art of humility begins with a recognition of our dependence on others and an appreciation of God’s gift of life... He discovers that those of a gentle spirit do have the earth for their possession; that humility opens the gates of the mind and heart so greatness can flow through.

Share

Appreciation | Art | Dependence | Earth | God | Greatness | Heart | Humility | Life | Life | Mind | Spirit | Appreciation | Art |

View Author