God wants me to be third, never first. God comes first, my neighbor second, and I am third!
Humility Quotes
Thomas à Kempis, John Climacus, Shakespeare, Addison and Emerson lead a short list. The sourced lines are not what you would expect. Sartre’s The Devil and the Good Lord (1951) has a character refusing to be modest while granting that he is humble. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in 1943, says that at very best a person wrapped up in himself makes a small package. Asimov, in 1972, calls modesty an unnatural attitude that is taught to children only with difficulty.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less” is credited to C. S. Lewis and flagged misattributed. The notes say Rick Warren’s 2002 use of it is the one most often traced to Lewis, and that Ken Blanchard wrote something very similar in 1999. A line on pride turning angels into devils, credited to Augustine, is disputed; the notes give a medieval anthology from about 1306.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
Often, to our comfort, shall we find
The sharded beetle in a safer hold
Than is the full-wing'd eagle.
God hath sworn to lift on high
Who sinks himself by true humility.
On the contrary, modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.
Religion … is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.
A lever. We lower when we want to lift. In the same way, “He who humbleth himself shall be exalted.”