“You cannot think worse of me than I do of myself.”
―Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
Category: HUMILITY
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I reminded him of all the people who love him and all the people he’s loved. I told him I thought it was unfair for a man to be judged by a moment, by a season. We are all more complicated than that. Certainly my friend will have to face the consequences of his actions, and those consequences will be severe. He is being pruned, as it were. His limbs are being cut back. But I hope he doesn’t live into his failures the way so many people do.
—Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy
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A continuously happy life produces extremely unhappy consequences. In nature we see that there are not always pleasant springs and fruitful summers, and sometimes autumn is rainy and winter cold and snowy, and there is flooding and wind and storms, and moreover the crops fail and there are famine, troubles, sicknesses and many other misfortunes. All of this is beneficial so that man might learn through prudence, patience and humility. For the most part, in times of plenty he forgets himself, but in times of various sorrows he becomes more attentive to his salvation.
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Humble yourself before God; that is, like the wise thief say from your whole heart: “I have received as I deserve according to my deeds. Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.” Do not be like the other thief who railed at everyone, cursed, blamed others for his sufferings, and in this way only made his situation worse and perished.
—Abbot Nikon Vorobiev, Abbot Nikon Letters to Spiritual Children p.174 -
“Sometimes the annoyances that make you long for solitude are better for producing humility than the most complete solitude could be.”
—François Fénelon, The Seeking Heart
“In constant intercourse with other people we can sooner come to see our defects than we should in solitude.”
“The thing that annoys you about others is a reflection of you.”
—Maria Stenvinkel, 7 Things You Need to Know to Live Your Best Life and Make a Better World
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
—Hermann Hesse
Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting. When then a man irritates you, you must know that it is your own opinion which has irritated you. Therefore especially try not to be carried away by the appearance. For if you once gain time and delay, you will more easily master yourself.
Epictetus, Enchiridion
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
—Carl Jung
“We often look out to other people – they’re difficult, they’re rude, they’re arrogant, they’re…I can’t deal with that person, look at how bad they are. – but turn it around, let it become a mirror. Is that, in fact, myself? Is it myself?”
—Fr. Daniel Fanous, Dealing with Difficult People
“When I’m quiet, everyone is happy at home. Why? Maybe I’m the one that is causing all the turmoil.”
—Fr. Paul Girguis
“Some of us at work, we’re very nice. At church, we’re loved by all. But the people in our house cringe when the garage door opens and they know we’re coming home.”
—Fr. Anthony Messeh
Correct yourself of your faults and hold fast to piety. Commit your conscience, your life, and deeds unto God, Who knows our hearts. However, look upon yourself impartially. Are you not indeed difficult in your character, especially to those of your household? Perhaps you are morose, unkind, unsociable, taciturn. Expand your heart for sociability and kindness, though not to over-indulgence and connivance; be gentle, not provoking, calm in reproof.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
The Holy Fathers say that, unless we humble ourselves, the Lord will not stop humbling us. He will use someone in order to humble us. Someone will provoke our anger and do it until we learn to remain calm and peaceful when provoked. When we can stay calm when someone attacks us from all sides, when we can keep our inner peace in spite of that person’s rudeness, then our soul will become meek and humble and we will live this life with a full understanding of it. And our neighbors will tell us, “You have changed; you used to have a fiery temperament, but now you have somehow become calm and dispassionate.”
—Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives -
If you fall into some transgression, quickly turn to the realisation of your weakness and be aware of it. For God allows you to fall for the very purpose of making you more aware of your weakness, so that you may thus not only yourself learn to despise yourself, but because of your great weakness may wish to be despised also by others. Know that without such desire it is impossible for this beneficent self-disbelief to be born and take root in you. This is the foundation and beginning of true humility, since it is based on realisation, by experience, of your impotence and unreliability.
From this, each of us sees how necessary it is for a man, who desires to participate in heavenly light, to know himself, and how God’s mercy usually leads the proud and self-reliant to this knowledge through their downfalls, justly allowing them to fall into the very sin from which they think they are strong enough to protect themselves, so as to make them see their weakness and prevent them from relying foolhardily on themselves either in this or in anything else.
Unseen Warfare
Lorenzo Scupoli -
“If you desire salvation, you must be like the dead. You must think nothing of the wrongs men do to you, nor of the praises they offer you. Be like the dead. Thus you may be saved.”
—Saint Macarius the Great -
“A horse when alone often imagines that it is galloping, but when it is with others it finds out how slow it is.”
—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent -
Offer to those who visit you what is necessary both for the body and for the spirit. If they are wiser than we are, let us show our philosophy by silence. And if they are brethren following the same way of life, let us open the door of speech to them in due measure. Yet it is better to regard all as superior to us.
—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
SO GOOD QUOTES 