False Humility Quotes

A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you." The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?" The old man replied simply, "The one you feed.

False humility is more insulting than open pride!

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.

It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.

Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. Faith replaces wonder with epistemological arrogance disguised as false humility. Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.

My dear, here is lesson number one for using opportunity; waste no time on false humility. Tell the world about your achievements don't wait for someone else to do it.

False humility is the pride of not being proud, real humility is without the consciousness that pride exists.

False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit.

Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.

Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.

When we refrain from acting on what God says in His Word because we believe we can do more to help His cause, in reality it's pride - false humility. We indirectly communicate we know more than God, because God loves the poor, but at the same time tells us to pay those who labour in His Word doubly.

Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners.

Thus in order to be a "radical" one must be open to the possibility that one's own core assumptions are misconceived.

Unsettling are the days in which everyone is an expert.

Prayer is easier than we think. we want to think it is too hard or too high and holy for us, because that gives us an excuse for not doing it. This is false humility. We can all do it, even the most sinful, shallow, silly, and stupid of us.

False humility is a form of psychosis which was imprinted on most of us since birth. It is a mental illness because it locks us in a victim state of keeping our light turned down, denying who we really are and silently begging for permission to simply show up as ourselves in the world. But there is good news. This is a jail whose lock is broken. We can walk free whenever we know the truth, and by so doing we show others an example of an end to madness. An example of freedom.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed.

My dear, here is lesson number one for using opportunity: waste no time on false humility. Tell the world about your achievements; don't wait for someone else to do it.

False humility is better than no humility at all.

That was his mistake, the false humility of youth that is itself a sort of pride.

I often use alcohol as an artificial check on my skills.

Perhaps he did not think himself worthy of the King’s Tower, or perhaps he did not care. That was his mistake, the false humility of youth that is itself a sort of pride. It was never wise for a ruler to eschew the trappings of power, for power itself flows in no small measure from such trappings.

A Native American wisdom story tells of an old Cherokee who is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.

A Cherokee elder was teaching his young grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil- he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt and ego. The other is good- he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. This same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too." The boy thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The elder simply replied, "The one you feed.

Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.

Narcissistic pleasure seekers routinely avoid developing the humility required to manufacture a life of full measure. Shallow persons such as me hide their insecurities behind a false persona of bravado, boasting of their inconsequential deeds, pyrrhic victories, and adamant refusals to tackle any task that they fear.

If all emotions are common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God – saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it – this life lived in simplicity, humility, cheerfulness – he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.

False humility and morbid introspection are, in fact, the opposite of brokenness, as they reveal a preoccupation with self, rather than Christ.

High and holy ambition--to be a saint--is not opposed to holy humility--total reliance on God's grace. Exactly the opposite. Ambition without humility is ambition that fails. It is pride, which goes before a fall (Prov 16:18). Humility without ambition is false humility.

All discourses and disciplines proceed from commitments and beliefs that are ultimately religious in nature. No scientific discourse (whether natural science or social science) simply discloses to us the facts of reality to which theology must submit; rather, every discourse is, in some sense, religious. The playing field has been leveled. Theology is most persistently postmodern when it rejects a lingering correlational false humility and instead speaks unapologetically from the the primacy of Christian revelation and the church's confessional language.

The assumption that we are infallible can we justify the suppression of opinions we think false. Ages are as fallible as individuals, every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd.

Pride is not all of one kind.

I believe this not in the sense that it is part of my creed, but in the sense that it is one of my opinions. My religion would not be in ruins if this opinion were shown to be false.

You must hiss at people who intend to undermine your individuality with their false pride and intellectual stupidity. You must frighten them away, lest they should do you harm. Act like you have a lot of venom inside you, but never inject them into anyone.

One of the few freedoms that we have as human beings that cannot be taken away from us is the freedom to assent to what is true and to deny what is false. Nothing you can give me is worth surrendering that freedom for. At this moment I'm a man with complete tranquillity...I've been a real estate developer for most of my life, and I can tell you that a developer lives with the opposite of tranquillity, which is perturbation. You're perturbed about something all the time. You build your first development, and right away you want to build a bigger one, and you want a bigger house to live in, and if it ain't in Buckhead, you might as well cut your wrists. Soon's you got that, you want a plantation, tens of thousands of acres devoted solely to shooting quail, because you know of four or five developers who've already got that. And soon's you get that, you want a place on Sea Island and a Hatteras cruiser and a spread northwest of Buckhead, near the Chattahoochee, where you can ride a horse during the week, when you're not down at the plantation, plus a ranch in Wyoming, Colorado, or Montana, because truly successful men in Atlanta and New York all got their ranches, and of course now you need a private plane, a big one, too, a jet, a Gulfstream Five, because who's got the patience and the time and the humility to fly commercially, even to the plantation, much less out to a ranch? What is it you're looking for in this endless quest? Tranquillity. You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there'll be nothing more to worry about, and instead you become a bigger and bigger slave to how you think others are judging you.

Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and they know it. And because they're at ease with themselves, they can afford to be open with others... Having discovered who we are and having opened ourselves to life and having learned to be comfortable with it, we know that God is working in us. We know, most of all, that whatever happens we have nothing to fear... we are free of the false hopes and false faces and false needs that once held us down. We can fly now. Let all the others scratch and grapple for the plastic copy of life. We have found the real thing.

So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.

shishthata - humility - etiquette is the basis of culture, combination of disrespect for elders and false-ego leads to rudeness of behaviour.

Pride cannot be hidden just like humility cannot be faked.

A prophet is always underestimated, and part of what makes one a prophet is that he doesn't really mind it.

Jesus does not want us to walk in a false humility that minimizes how much He enjoys loving us or how much He wants us to enjoy being loved by Him.

an ounce of honest pride is better than a ton of false humility, although an ounce of true humility is worth an ounce of honest pride

Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not. Is it not possible to attract only positive conditions into our life? If our attitude and our thinking are always positive, we would manifest only positive events and situations, wouldn’t we? Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real. Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn’t. Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is — which is the only sane way to live — there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore. There is only a higher good — which includes the “bad.” Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good-bad, like-dislike, love-hate. Hence, in the Book of Genesis, it is said that Adam and Eve were no longer allowed to dwell in “paradise” when they “ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I lived in Boston until last year,” he said, in a falsely low-key way, because “Boston” was code for Harvard (otherwise he would say MIT or Tufts or anywhere else), just as another woman said, “I was in New Haven,” in that coy manner that pretended not to be coy, which meant that she had been at Yale.

Snow still chose to dwell behind the armory, in a pair of modest rooms previously occupied by the Watch's late blacksmith. Perhaps he did not think himself worthy of the King's Tower, or perhaps he did not care. That was his mistake, the false humility of youth that is itself a sort of pride. It was never wise for a ruler to eschew the trappings of power, for power itself flows in no small measure from such trappings.

In general, one must have value oneself in order freely and willingly to acknowledge value in another. This is the basis for the requirement that modesty accompany all merits, as well as the disproportionately loud praise for this virtue which alone, among all its sisters, is always added to the praise of anyone distinguished in some way by the person who dares to praise him, so as to conciliate the worthless and silence their wrath. For what is modesty if not false humility which someone with merits and advantages in a world teeming with perfidious envy uses to beg the pardon of those who have none? Someone who does not lay claim to merit because he in fact has none is being honest, not modest.

Many people are miserable because they think that occasional destructive feelings necessarily make them terrible persons. But just as Aristotle maintained, “One swallow does not make a spring,” we must understand that one or two or even a dozen unadmirable traits does not make an unadmirable person. Long ago Edmund Burke warned humanity about the danger of false generalization in society; of judging a whole race by a few undesirable members. Today we should likewise become aware of the generalization about our individual personality. A splendid freedom awaits us when we realize that we need not feel like moral lepers or emotional pariahs because we have some aggressive, hostile feeling s towards ourselves and others. When we acknowledge these feelings we no longer have to pretend to be that which we are not. It is enough to be what we are! We discover that rigid pride is actually the supreme foe of inner victory, while flexible humility, the kind of humility that appears when we do not demand the impossible or the angelic of ourselves, is the great ally of psychic peace.

Humility reminds us of our limits; humility teaches us that we are physical beings existing in a broken world. Not only are we limited and imperfect ourselves, but our bodies and our sense of our bodies have been shaped by the false messages around us. Simply learning to “love your body” will not free you from shame because, at times, your body will feel very unlovable. What will free you from shame is humility; what will free you from shame is accepting that you are not and were never meant to be divine.

God didn't create you to walk around in self-defeat in any form. Neither are we fashioned to become someone's emotional slave; adhering to the harshness of their words in humility and remorse, while fearing a verbal lashing if we reject their false authority.

what those men did to you, none of that was God. That was abuse. That god, the one they believe in, that’s a fictitious and false god. He doesn’t exist. God is a God of love and compassion and humility. And you should FIRE that god from your childhood! Just fire him!

God liked what he did, I like that by the way, isn't that touching! If we are supposed to learn from God, clearly one thing you might want to pick up is what real humility is about! You are allowed to say that your work is good if it's good, if you want to imitate God, don't go around saying to something good you've done: naaah! That's fake, that's false humility. Real humility acknowledges what you've done. I've always been touched by that, God looks at what he did: eeeh, that was a good job. Isn't that something! He saw it was good.

Humility is the power to admit that you may be wrong. Admitting to false beliefs is not weakness, it is the first step on the path to truth. And make no mistake, there is no such thing as individual truth, only individual perception. Perception is subjective, but truth isn’t.

One of the best things about growing up is that, if you can learn from experience, you come to the realization that two things matter more than anything else, truth with a lowercase t and Truth with an uppercase T. You have to tell the truth, demand the truth from others, recognize lies and refute them; you've got to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be, not as others who wish to dominate you might say it is. Embracing truth frees you from false expectations, fruitless pursuits, disappointment, pointless anger, envy, despair. And the bigger kind of Truth, that life has meaning, is the surest source of happiness, because it allows you to recognize your true value and potential, encourages a humility that brings peace. Most important, the big-T Truth makes it possible for you to love others for who they are, always without consideration of what they might do for you, and only from such relationships arise those rare moments of pure joy that shine so bright in memory.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.94 “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” –CHEROKEE LEGEND

One day, a young boy went up to his grandfather, who was an old Cherokee chief. ‘Edudi?’ the boy asked. ‘Why are you so sad?’ The old chief bit his lip and rubbed his belly as if his stomach pained him unmercifully. ‘There is a terrible fight inside me, Uhgeeleesee’, the chief said sternly. ‘One that will not let me sleep of give me peace’. ‘A fight Grandfather? I don’t understand. What kind of fight is inside you?’ The old chief knelt in front of the boy to explain. ‘Deep inside my heart, I have two wolves. Each strong enough to devour the other, they are locked in constant war. One is evil through and through. He is revenge, sorrow, regret, rage, greed, arrogance, stupidity, superiority, envy, guilt, lies, ego, false pride, inferiority, self-doubt, suspicion and resentment. The other wolf is everything kind. He is made of peace, blissful tranquillity, wisdom, love and joy, hope and humility, compassion, benevolence, generosity, truth, faith and empathy. They circle each other inside my heart and they fight one another at all times. Day and night. There is no letup. Not even while I slumber’. The boy’s yes widened as he sucked his breath in sharply. ‘How horrible for you’. His grandfather shook his head at these words and tapped the boy’s chest right where his own heart was located. ‘It’s not just horrible for me. This same fight is also going on inside you and every single person who walks this earth with us’. Those words terrified the little boy. ‘So tell me Grandfather, which of the wolves will win this fight?’ The old chief smiled at his grandson and he cupped his young cheek before he answered with one simple truth. ‘Always the one we feed’. Be careful what you feed, child. For the beast will follow you home and live with you until you either make a bed for it to stay, or find the temerity to drive it out.

A final caution to students: in making judgments on literature, always be honest. Do not pretend to like what you really do not like. Do not be afraid to admit a liking for what you do like. A genuine enthusiasm for the second-rate is much better than false enthusiasm or no enthusiasm at all. Be neither hasty nor timorous in making your judgments. When you have attentively read a poem and thoroughly considered it, decide what you think. Do not hedge, equivocate, or try to find out others' opinions before forming your own. But having formed an opinion and expressed it, do not allow it to petrify. Compare your opinion then with the opinions of others; allow yourself to change it when convinced of its error: in this way you learn. Honestly, courage, and humility are the necessary moral foundations for all genuine literary judgment.

the bad kind of pride was when you had confidence without any self-reflection, and the bad kind of humility was when you had self-reflection without any confidence.

May any praise of your character come from others instead of yourself.

False success makes people arrogant; true success makes them mild.

Deep inside your heart there are two wolves. Each strong enough to devour the other, they are in constant war. One is evil through and through. He is revenge, rage, greed, arrogance, stupidity, superiority, envy, guilt, lies, ego, false-pride, inferiority, self-doubt, suspicion, and resentment. The other wolf is everything kind. He is made of peace, blissful tranquility, wisdom, love and joy, hope and humility, compassion, benevolence, generosity, truth, faith, and empathy. They circle each other inside your heart and they fight one another at all times. Day and night. There is no letup. Not even while you sleep. Be careful which wolf you feed. For that beast will follow you home and live with you until you either make a bed for it to stay, or find the temerity to drive it out.

Have you ever considered making at least a pretense of humility, Mr. Hunt? Just for the sake of politeness? “I don’t believe in false modesty.” “People might like you more if you did.” “Would you?

False ideas about yourself destroy you. For me, I always stay a student. That’s what martial arts are about, and you have to use that humility as a tool. You put yourself beneath someone you trust.

Guilt is a huge player in the way blacks and whites relate to each other. It’s huge and deadly when it is denied. It’s huge and deadly when it is wallowed in. It’s huge and deadly when it is exploited. There is no deliverance and no relief and no healing in any of those ways of dealing with guilt. Denial drives it below the surface where it creates endless illusions and self-justifications. Wallowing in it produces phony humility and obsequiousness and moral cowardice. Exploiting it gives a false sense of power that turns out to be only the weapon of weakness. If guilt is not dealt with more deeply, there will be no way forward.

An essential virtue is humility. … The principle of humility and prayer leads one to feel a need of divine guidance. Self-reliance is a virtue, but with it should go a consciousness of the need of superior help—a consciousness that as you walk firmly in the pathway of duty, there is a possibility of your making a misstep; and with that consciousness is a prayer, a pleading that God will inspire you to avoid that false step

Rather than rewarding intellectual humility, we too often mistakenly conflate (false) certainty with confidence and power. Too many people rise to the top following the strategy of always certain, but often wrong.

I've never met a soldier who knew he was a hero. It's not false modesty. They simply decide to do something that they know they must do, usually for there comrades, because if they don't, those people will suffer in some way. For them, that compulsion is far stronger than any fear. The fact we find it exceptional is a sad indictment of the human race. I'd like to live in a world of heroes. If we did, there would be no wars.

What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others? And I’m not referring to the false servitude that high-ranking state-employed flunkeys exhibit so proudly, as if it were a badge of virtue: the façade of humility they wear is nothing more than vanity and disdain. Cloaked every morning in the ostentatious modesty of the high-ranking civil servant, Etienne de Broglie convinced me long ago of the pride of his caste. Inversely, privilege brings with it true obligations. If you belong to the closed inner sanctum of the elite, you must serve in equal proportion to the glory and ease of material existence you derive from belonging to that inner sanctum.

I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck...And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.

Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind. To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero . . .). To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people who do <. . .> behind closed doors. If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.

One evening, a Native American elder told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride and superiority. The other is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth and compassion.’ The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, ‘Which wolf wins?’ The elder simply replied, ‘The one that you feed.

Science is knowledge meeting humility meeting curiosity: ever-evolving, always learning. Atheism is often but knowledge meeting arrogance: a masquerade under the wing of the beauty of science. Religion is infamously a weight under the one wing; then under the other is atheism, the championed masquerade.

There’s an old Cherokee legend about two wolves at war. It’s good food for thought on the topic of self-control. One night a grandfather was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The boy paused to think for a moment before looking up at his grandfather. “Which wolf will win?” He asked. The wise man simply replied, “The one that you feed.”  Hearing that story, I’m reminded of the scripture that says, And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. – Galatians 5:24

Solitude from what is ordinary, imaginary and false is something very great. It means that for the first time I know that “I am.” It is a solitude from all the known and from all that is not right now, in the present moment outside of time. This solitude appears as a void. But it is not a void of despair. It is a complete transformation of the quality of my thinking. When the mind is free of all talking, fears, desires and pettiness, it is silent. Then comes a sense of complete nothingness, the very essence of humility. At the same time, there is a feeling of truly entering another world, a world that seems more real. I am a particle of a greater reality. I experience solitude not because something is missing but because there is everything—everything is here.

Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.

An old Cherokee man was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he told the boy. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil — he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” After a few moments to make sure he had the boy’s undivided attention, he continued. “The other wolf is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside of you, boy, and inside of every other person, too.” The grandson thought about this for a few minutes before replying. “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee man simply said, “The one you feed, boy. The one you feed…

I am an ordinary man from an equally ordinary family." The statement should have reeked of false humility. After all, Sir Ross was a man of remarkable accomplishments and abilities. Surely he was aware of his own achievements, his keen mind, his good looks, his sterling reputation. However, Sophia realized that he did not consider himself superior to any other man. He demanded so much of himself that he could never live up to his own impossible standards. "You are not ordinary," she half whispered. "You are fascinating." There was no doubt that Sir Ross was often approached by women who had a personal interest in him. As a handsome widower with deep pockets and considerable social and political influence, he was probably the most eligible man in London. Yet Sophia's bold statement had clearly caught him off guard. He gave her a baffled stare, seeming unable to reply.

King David in Psalm 37 writes "Take delight in the Giver, and He will give you the desires of your heart," intimating that the secret to finding our way in the world is more about cooperating with God than appeasing God. That the Giver of life is also the Giver of our desires, which means that life has an invitational co-creative nature to it... Why do we always believe that the path of our deepest desire would be so far from the path that God would have us walk? How is the path of desire so different from the path to the Giver of that desire?

If we regard sanctification as a purely personal matter which has nothing whatever to do with public life and the visible line of demarcation between the Church and the world, we shall land ourselves inevitably into a confusion between the pious wishes of the religious flesh and the sanctification of the Church which is accomplished in the death of Christ through the seal of God. This is the deceitful arrogance and the false spirituality of the old man, who seeks sanctification outside the visible community of the brethren. It is contempt of the Body of Christ as a visible fellowship of justified sinners, a contempt which disguises itself as inward humility, whereas it was the good pleasure of Christ to take upon him our flesh visibly and to bear it up to the cross. It is also contempt of the fellowship, for we are then trying to attain sanctification in isolation from our brethren. And it shows contempt for our fellow-sinners, for we are withdrawing from the Church and pursuing a sanctity of our own choosing because we are disgusted by the Church’s sinful form. By pursuing sanctification outside the Church we are trying to pronounce ourselves holy.

If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.

One of the legitimate tasks of philosophy is to investigate the limits of even the best developed and most successful forms of contemporary scientific knowledge. It may be frustrating to acknowledge, but we are simply at the point in the history of human thought at which we find ourselves, and our successors will make discoveries and develop forms of understanding of which we have not dreamt. Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.

The purpose of Shamrock’s formula is simple: to get real and continuous feedback about what they know and what they don’t know from every angle. It purges out the ego that puffs us up, the fear that makes us doubt ourselves, and any laziness that might make us want to coast. As Shamrock observed, “False ideas about yourself destroy you. For me, I always stay a student. That’s what martial arts are about, and you have to use that humility as a tool. You put yourself beneath someone you trust.” This begins by accepting that others know more than you and that you can benefit from their knowledge, and then seeking them out and knocking down the illusions you have about yourself.

An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. “One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, self-pity, arrogance, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego. “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, truth, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, compassion and faith. “This same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.

The truth is, that all genuine appreciation rests on a certain mystery of humility and almost of darkness. The man who said, “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed,” put the eulogy quite inadequately and even falsely. The truth “Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.” The man who expects nothing sees redder roses than common men can see, and greener grass, and a more startling sun. Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall possess the cities and the mountains; blessed is the meek, for he shall inherit the earth. Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are. Until we see the background of darkness we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine.

Community as openness . . . Communities are truly communities when they open to others, when they remain vulnerable and humble; when the members are growing in love, in compassion and in humility. Communities cease to be such when members close in upon themselves with the certitude that they alone have wisdom and truth and expect everyone to be like them and learn from them. The fundamental attitudes of true community, where there is true belonging, are openness, welcome, and listening to God, to the universe, to each other and to other communities. Community life is inspired by the universal and is open to the universal. It is based on forgiveness and openness to those who are different, to the poor and the weak. Sects put up walls and barriers out of fear, out of a need to prove themselves and to create a false security. Community is the breaking down of barriers to welcome difference.

One of the best things about growing up is that, if you can learn from experience, you come to the realization that two things matter more than anything else, truth with a lowercase t and Truth with an uppercase T. You have to tell the truth, demand the truth from others, recognize lies and refute them; you’ve got to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be, not as others who wish to dominate you might say it is. Embracing truth frees you from false expectations, fruitless pursuits, disappointment, pointless anger, envy, despair. And the bigger kind of Truth, that life has meaning, is the surest source of happiness, because it allows you to recognize your true value and potential, encourages a humility that brings peace. Most important, the big-T Truth makes it possible for you to love others for who they are, always without consideration of what they might do for you, and only from such relationships arise those rare moments of pure joy that shine so bright in memory.

16. Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind. To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero …). To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people who do <…> behind closed doors. If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.

You are wrong. You are profoundly and disturbingly wrong about a spectacularly large number of things. You accept facts that are not facts, values that are incompatible with each other, and a fair number of truly dumb ideas about how to change the world. If you ever really understood the extent of your wrongness, you would never trust another word you said. You need not feel shamed about this. I am wrong too; everybody is wrong about a lot of things. Given the number of things that all of us believe (or do not believe to be facts, the number of things that we consider (or do not consider) valuable, and the number of policies that we think (or do not think) will work, there is no possible way that anybody is going to be right about everything - or even most things. You already accept this about 99.9999 percent of the human population. You know perfectly well that everybody else is wrong about a lot of things. And if you really think about it, you will realize that you are probably not the only person in the world who is always right.

Maxims & Other Quotes II Exactly how we deal with our souls was at this moment the only question I thought worth asking. 181 Borges: What I most admire about Whitman is that he created Walt Whitman, an ideal projection not of himself but someone like him, a character every reader could find in his heart and admire. 184 Borges: Mythos, in Greek, is not a story that is false, it’s a story that is more than true. Myth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense energies pour through those holy fissures. Our stories, our poems, are rips in these holy fissures, as well, however slight. 193 Borges: Don’t question survival, mine or yours. More powers lie at your disposal than you realize. 194 Parini: I just don’t know enough. Borges: Nor I. But we all proceed on insufficient knowledge. 195 Borges: I’ve found a name for myself. Borges the Reenactor! The problem is, one never wins old battles. The losses only mount. 250 Borges: Remember that the battle between good and evil persists, and the writer’s work is constantly to reframe the argument, so that readers make the right choices. Never work from vanity. … What does Eliot say? ‘Humility is endless’ … We fail, and we fail again. We pick ourselves up. I’ve done it a thousand times, Guiseppe. Borges only deepens. 251

I arm myself once more with the precepts of my philosophy: The duration of a man’s life is merely a small point in time; the substance of it ever flowing away, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to decay. His soul is a restless vortex, good fortune is uncertain and fame is unreliable; in a word, as a rushing stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as vapor, are all those that belong to the soul. Life is warfare and a sojourn in a foreign land. Our reputation after life is nothing but oblivion. What is it then that will guide man? One thing alone: philosophy, the love of wisdom. And philosophy consists in this: for a man to preserve that inner genius or divine spark within him from violence and injuries, and above all from harmful pains or pleasures; never to do anything either without purpose, or falsely, or hypocritically, regardless of the actions or inaction of others; to contentedly embrace all things that happen to him, as coming from the same source from whom he came himself, and above all things, with humility and calm cheerfulness, to anticipate death as being nothing else but the dissolution of those elements of which every living being is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by this, their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution, and alteration, which is so common to them all, why should it be feared by any man? Is this not according to Nature? But nothing that is according to Nature can be evil.

The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring: I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colours of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder: I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or the sonnet, at the same time that I widened its range and enriched its characterisation: drama, novel, poem in rhyme, poem in prose, subtle or fantastic dialogue, whatever I touched I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty: to truth itself I gave what is false no less than what is true as its rightful province, and showed that the false and the true are merely forms of intellectual existence. I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram. Along with these things, I had things that were different. I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flâneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensations. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetops. I ceased to be Lord over myself. I was no longer the Captain of my Soul, and did not know it. I allowed you to dominate me, and your father to frighten me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute Humility: just as there is only one thing for you, absolute Humility also. You had better come down into the dust and learn it beside me.

Dear God, We have failed you, we have failed you miserably. From eating animals to becoming animals, from cutting trees to cutting our conscience we have failed you. Your Kindness saved us time and again and You out of your most benevolent mercy tried to show us that Humanity means Humility, that we Your dear creation is capable of so much of Love and Grace after all You made us with your Light, that this world can always come back to Love, that Fear can always be overcome by Kindness, that Strength is always embedded within, that Courage lies in Forgiveness, yet did we listen in with our hearts? Perhaps, perhaps not. You sent us a pandemic to teach us the value of lives and how You United this world and healed this Earth through suffering yet did we learn the value of lives? No, we failed. There is a war going on in a beautiful country, and an economic meltdown in another, and so many other nations are fighting their own unknown battles just like every human being, and yet we fail to tickle our conscience, we fail to see how we have literally ruined this world and made demons out of your beautiful creation of humankind succombing to greed, lust and anger, oh how we have failed! We have failed in absolute disgrace where we don't see the tears of children, the lost smiles of our fellow neighbours and the numb dreams of almost everyone because we have locked the doors of our heart in false pictures of camouflaged pleasures, we indeed have failed you, we have failed us. Yet Your kindness knows no bound, your Love is infinite and your Grace is eternal, forgive us, dear Father and grant us, this Humankind the knowledge and understanding to act as Humans again. Fill those angry hearts with healing, those hurt souls with the grace of forgiveness and above all let your world know your true Nature by giving the strength of Courage in those hearts who walk in your Light, to stand by what is right without the shackles of Fear. Oh, the Kindest of All, may You strengthen the Truth and lead the Light bearers of Love ahead through Your Mercy to win over a world that is slowly crawling into a deep cavern of Hate, a world that was once created to nourish and nurture the different faces of Love, a world that is failing and falling frail in every passing moment, You alone are our only Hope. We know we have failed you miserably and as we keep failing you, I know more than ever that Your Grace will find us through and once again You will save us, because we may fail as children but You won't fail your children as the most Loving Father. - a soul traveling through this beautiful Universe of your making.

Right now, it is in the worst shape of all. This happened on your watch. Even so, ‘where sin abounds grace does that much more abound.’ There is still grace available to change this if you repent.” “You are the one who prepares the way for the Lord. You are here to prepare us for Him. How can we make this great change? The fabric of Christianity in our time is very thin. We are as weak and unprepared as you say. What do we need to do?” I begged. “As I said, the next step is the next step on this path. This path will prepare you, and I will help you. I was with John the Baptist to do this in his time. It begins with repentance. You cannot stay long on this path without a strong foundation of repentance. You must be quick to see your sin—quick to see your mistakes and to correct them. You are quick to see your sin and mistakes. This is helpful, but you have not been quick to correct them, and that can be your doom. Repentance is more than feeling sorry for your sin, it is turning from the sin. “Only a foundation of repentance will keep you humble enough to walk in the grace of God. Humility is to be teachable and dependent on the Holy Spirit. This has not been a foundation that many have built upon in your time. You must start with preaching and teaching repentance. You must start praying for the Spirit to come to convict of sin. Your generation hardly even knows what sin is. “I prayed for the judgment of God to come upon my own nation. Then I had to challenge the false teachers and prophets of my time. This is a basic duty of the prophets. Where are your prophets? Where are your apostles? Where are the shepherds who will protect God’s people from the great deception of your time? Why are the wolves allowed to devour God’s people right in front of them and they do nothing?

To create motivation to change, you must first recognize your false definitions of yourself, and be willing to seek something different. But this requires an incredible amount of humility to seek out, and then allow feelings of vulnerability, unpredictability, and instability as you intentionally seek emotional strength

Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?” (1 Samuel 9:21). “But Lord,” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (Judges 6:15). But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). When God calls, you will probably be in the most unlikely circumstances to receive that call. You will be in the midst of a crisis, you will lack resources and you will not have the skills you think you need. This is the way of God. God works this way because He wants you to know that your call is based on His ability, not yours. When you think it is based on you, you possess a false humility, which is unbelief and disobedience on your part.

It can sound humble when people say that God lies “beyond” all language and logic. But it is a false humility. In fact, they are claiming to know more than (and other than) what God himself has undertaken to tell us in the Bible. That is arrogance. If they think that God is unknowable, they are producing for themselves a substitute for God

As a new creation, you have been liberated from the struggle of self-improvement. Absolutely flawless, our old fearful, sinful, blemished selves have been eradicated once and for all. Perfected once and for all by His sacrifice, we can drink daily from the fountain of our union with Him, no longer expecting defeat. As our mind changes regarding the truth of our identity, our outward lives bear corresponding fruit. No longer believing the false humility pop mantra of our times that we are “still sinners” bound to decay, poverty, disease or addiction. We are sons and daughters – our true identity shines from the inside out chock-full of inheritance. Right here. Right now.

By trying to please people and live up to their expectations, we can easily fall into a false form of spirituality. We find ourselves praying, reading Scripture, and worshipping not from the heart but from a secret motive to impress others. We become more interested in how we look to others than how we look to God. The more insecure we are, the more susceptible we become to the opinions of others. Humility frees us from this form of pride, allowing us to live to please the Lord.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” —CHEROKEE LEGEND

That brings us to the nub of the issue. The second reason for drawing lines even when drawing lines is not “cool” (as my daughter and son would say) is that the New Testament documents model the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, even if these terms are not deployed exactly in their English sense. Despite the faddish popularity of religious pluralism, despite the erroneous historical reconstructions of Walter Bauer and others, despite the common practice of treating other religions with more deference than a Christianity that tries to conform to the Bible, the fact remains that there is something disturbingly unfaithful about forms of expression that attempt to be more “broadminded” than the New Testament documents themselves. True, most who read these pages will want to avoid the kind of obscurantist “fundamentalism” that is less concerned with fundamentals than with fences. But most who read these pages will not be tempted down that path, and so they scarcely need to be warned against it. It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others. We are more likely to squirm when we read words like these: Do you agree with those who say that a spirit of love is incompatible with the negative and critical denunciation of blatant error, and that we must always be positive? The simple answer to such an attitude is that the Lord Jesus Christ denounced evil and denounced false teachers. I repeat that He denounced them as “ravening wolves” and “whited sepulchres,” and as “blind guides.” The Apostle Paul said of some of them, “whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame”. That is the language of the Scriptures. There can be little doubt but that the Church is as she is today because we do not follow New Testament teaching and its exhortations, and confine ourselves to the positive and the so-called “simple Gospel”, and fail to stress the negatives and the criticism. The result is that people do not reconize error when they meet it. It is not pleasant to be negative; it is not enjoyable to have to denounce and to expose error. But any pastor who feels in a little measure, and with humility, the responsibility which the Apostle Paul knew in an infinitely greater degree for the souls and the well-being spiritually of his people is compelled to utter these warnings. It is not liked and appreciated in this modern flabby generation.29

honoring your own needs is the highest form of love. Not at the expense of others, but along with them. We can better serve others after we honor ourselves as children of God and start acting like we are worthy of that reality. To dishonor ourselves, to live from false humility, and to not recognize our worth, I believe, is the ultimate insult to the creator and will keep us in a perpetual state of discontent and wanting.