c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It's too much to be trusted with someone else's heart. I don't think it ever ends well.
— Amy McNamara, Lovely, Dark and Deep
That's how it started: a series of small hurts and excuses between two people that built up slowly, widening over time to form a vast and yawning divide.
— Nenia Campbell, Terrorscape
Often, people hurt things on accident... No one plans on hurting anyone, but it happens.
— Nichole Chase, Suddenly Royal
I do my best to love everybody...I'm hard put,sometimes- baby,its never an insult o be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is,it doesn't hurt you.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
As far as I can figure, the way that it works is this: everyone has something that happened to them. The thing that we each carry. And you can see it in people, if you look. See it in the way someone walks, in the way someone takes a compliment, sometimes you can just see it in someone’s eyes. In one moment of desperation, of fear, in one quick moment you can see that thing that happened. Everyone has it. The thing that keeps you up at night, or makes you not trust people, or stops love. The thing that hurts. And to stop it, to stop the hurt, you have to turn it into a story. And not just a story you play over and over for yourself, but a story that you tell. A story’s not a story unless you tell it. And once you tell it, it’s not yours anymore. You give it away. And once you give it away, it’s not something that hurts you anymore, it’s something that helps everyone who hears it. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to explain. It’s probably best if we just show you how it works.
— Daniel MacIvor, How It Works
You don't stop loving someone just because they hurt you" he said. "It would certainly make things easier if you did.
— Brandon Sanderson
He is not coming back." And it hurt.It hurt until she was a mass of pain,worse than it had been when she thought he was dead. More all consuming. Ravaging her insides.
— Lora Leigh, Wild Card
Ingenuousness is skewed by the cracks in the mirrors of the eye caused by the blunders of the insincere
— T-anne Constable
I don't know is she loves me anymore, or if she hates me, or if she just don't care one way or the other, she ain't showing a thing to me since. Sooth, friendly, nothing. It's all I deserve after what I did to her.
— Lisa Reardon, Billy Dead
Some People Think That Only The Wounds That Appear On External Parts Of Body Cause PainBut they Don't Know That When Heart Gets Hurt That Won't Appear To The Outside World Only The Person Who Suffers The Pain Will Know about It !
— Nithin Kumar
One Sided Love is nothing but we can say its a one way hurt to yourself in any little moment while you see her
— Amardeep Singh
People not cry 'coztheir weak,It Beacaus They've been srong...GFor too long !!
— Reynilyn
People ask me how am I doing in life instead of how hurt am I by the life.
— Nadair Desmar
There’s no magical healing in this. I won’t wake up tomorrow fixed and joyful. I’ll still hurt and grieve. But moments like this, with Colton? They make it all bearable. He doesn't fix me, doesn't heal me. He just makes life worthwhile. He helps me remember to breathe, shows me how to smile again. He kisses me, and I can forget pain, forget the urges I still have to cut for the pain that erases the emotions.
— Jasinda Wilder, Falling into You
But there is one part of this that hurts. The carefree, normal part. The part of me that was lost when we first moved and that I'll never get back.
— Ashley Elston, The Rules for Disappearing
Some of the things he’s said over the past few days are starting to make sense, and I begin to feel more and more like the people I despise. He told me outright that he would answer anything if I just asked, yet I chose to believe the rumours about him instead. No wonder he was so irritated with me. I was treating him just like everyone else treats me.
— Colleen Hoover, Hopeless
I should have learned my lesson from Greek myths, really. It so doesn't pay to fall in love with a god. It’s either you get transformed – flower, bull, you name it, the gods can be that petty – or you just get…crushed.
— Marian Tee, Drawn: His Secret Toy
We will do anything to get away from our own pain. We will change our lives, rip people out, swallow a bottle of life-ending pills. When we hurt more than we can bear, when our lives get that dark, it's shocking what we will do to protect ourselves.
— Pamela Ribon, You Take It From Here
marriage is an arrangement between like-minded parties. It’s a partnership, not a love affair. I never lied to you or kept anything of importance from you.”She looked at him then, almost stunned, as if she didn’t recognize him. He didn’t like it. Not at all.
— Mira Lyn Kelly, Waking Up Married
The truth feels like it hurts, yet actually it builds. A lie feels like it builds, yet actually it hurts.
— Moffat Machingura
Those eyes had seen people weep, and had cared, and had hurt them again anyway. It’s a look that no human eyes should ever have.
— Orson Scott Card, Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card
Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
She didn't care about anything, or maybe she cared too much.
— Donna Lynn Hope, Willow
Each step is more difficult than the last
—  the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone.You must hurt or be hurt.
This is a touch game. There are times when you've got to play hurt when you've got to block out the pain.
— Sherry Argov, Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart
Because just for a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. For just a few seconds, I'm not alone.
— Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
Just remember that when nobody else was there for you I was.And when nobody else gave a damn I did.
— Lil Wayne
Free yourself from the poisonous and laborious burden of holding a grudge. When you hold a grudge, you want someone else's sorrow to reflect your level of hurt, but the two rarely meet. Let go… Sometimes, forgiveness is simply a reflection of loving yourself enough to move on.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
If you really want to hurt, find someone who loves you.
— C.J. Langenhoven
While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top,spreading his laugh across the water. Laughing at the girl,at the guys, at George,at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He know's there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved him well - too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes, would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it - I would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup.
— Charlotte Brontë, Villette
Yet I am not writing with ordinary ink, but with red blood that dripsfrom my heart. All its wounds long scarred over have opened and itthrobs and hurts, and now and then a tear falls on the paper.
— Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
I did answer. I said a little. I'm afraid of what you can do. I mean, I feel safe with you, though. I know you’d never hurt me.” I take her face in my hands. It’s too familiar, too affectionate, too soon. I can’t help it, though. “Just the opposite. I will protect you. From others and from yourself. Always.” “Why?” Barely audible. “Because I want to. Because…” I struggle to find the right words. “Because you deserve it, and you need it.” “No, I don’t.
— Jasinda Wilder, Falling into You
When you love someone deeply, you cannot stop it, because how much you try that much it hurts
— M.F. Moonzajer, A moment with God ; Poetry
Don’t blame if people are too harsh on you, maybe they have been hurt badly before.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Only someone you loved could make you wear that kind of expression. Someone who had once loved you knew how to get to the part of you where the pain lived.
— Dorothy Koomsoon
To go through hurt, you have to stumble on the rocks in order to walk on solid ground.
— Alyssa Tillmon
Walker and Timothy sat quietly for a very long time. “Why do so many people make it so hard for anyone to help them or to love them?” Walker asked finally. Timothy chuckled. “Ah, Walker—if I could explain all of humanity’s foibles, I’d be a rich man indeed, at least as far as money goes. I believe people are like that because of fear. They fear being loved because they fear that if they’re loved, they’ll have to love back. And if they love back, they may get hurt. And many people aren’t ready to put their hearts on the line like that. Mostly because they don’t have anything to fall back on. It’s quite a shame, really, because they hurt themselves by trying to avoid getting hurt. But we have to be willing to die many times if we’re ever going to get on with this business of living.
— Tom Walsh
Some people use their own hurt as an excuse for hurting others
— Roland Merullo, The Talk-Funny Girl
You have someone in your life whom you honor and revere so much that every hurt on them is inflicted on you as well. And the closer they are to you, the greater the pain.
— Masashi Kishimoto
I don't want anything to happen to you. You being hurt...that thought fills me with dread. I can't promise not to interfere, not if I think you'll come to harm." He pauses and takes a deep breath. "I love you, Anastasia. I will do everything in my power to protect you. I cann't imagine my life without you.
— E.L. James, Fifty Shades Darker
I thought about how love was always the thing that did that - smashed into you, left you raw. The deeper you loved, the deeper it hurt.
— Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone
Falling in love is like leaping from a cliff. Your brain screams that it’s not a good idea and that hurt and pain will inevitably come to you. But yourheart believes you can soar, glide and fly.
— Marie Coulson, Bound Together
Two days after my dad's funeral, my mom went on a mission. I never understood it until then--that sometimes a spy doesn't need a cover so much as she needs a shield.
— Ally Carter, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
But when a cut is deep, it’s still just flesh beneath.
— Veronica Rossi, Roar and Liv
You do know baby. You’re just scared and that’s okay. But don’t throw away yourchance for happiness because you’re afraid to take the leap or because you know someone ends up hurt. No matter what you choose, someonewas always going to end up heartbroken. But if there’s a chance two hearts can be blissfully happy together in love, then that’s worth the broken heart of one. They will mend. They will find love again and be happy. But if you do this, let them both walk away, the only heart that will break andstay broken is yours baby.
— Marie Coulson, Bound Together
I honestly don't think you do, at least not completely. Look, you will always hold a special place in my heart, but I can’t keep competing for a battle that’s already won.
— Rebecca Gober, Exposing ELE
You worry about hurting me, but you never seem to worry about me hurting you. And I’m the one with the killer touch.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Cursed
Judge no one until you know their circumstances. No matter how awful they seemed, sometimes there was a valid reason for their behaviour. Granted, some people were just mean and corrupt, but not always. Many people were just in pain, and by acting out, they were only trying to protect themselves from being hurt more.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dream Chaser
To Sara's practised eye, this latest episode looked something like a broken heart, even if she'd never seen the look on him before. Or even imagined it happening. She wondered if he'd noticed yet.
— Manna Francis, Playing with Fire
Sometimes you have to forgive the process, knowing that the outcome is for the best.
— Beth Ciotta, Jinxed
If I’m right,’ she said, ‘and you have all sorts of juicy information in that dossier of yours, you’ll know that I am an abnormally forgiving person, even of those who have used me and hurt me more than one person deserves to be hurt. But right this second, I am looking forward to the day you rot in hell.
— Ally Blake, Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue
He put his forehead against hers. “Alannah, my heart is yours.” He said softly.“And yet, I must hand it over to someone else for the keeping.” Her last words falling to a strained whisper.
— B.C. Morin, Blood of the Sorcerer
As long as it still hurts, it isn’t love yet.
— Silvia Hartmann
Rigor Mortis.” I say, almost as an apology. But he won’t have any of it. He locks onto my gaze. He doesn’t lean forward, but he doesn’t need to, suddenly the room feels like it’s filled with him. His presence floats in the air like a noxious gas, and I’m breathing it in. “Ike, you don’t get it. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Do you think I have the right to talk to anyone? Do you think its fun to have a ‘human’ brain in a pet’s body? Sure, I have Kamu. And that’s fugging great, but guess what? Kamu is queen to be, and emotionally unstable.” I've never heard Rig talk this powerfully before, but he doesn’t seem scary, just sad. “And then I get someone else I can actually talk to, Ike, I get you. And you don’t treat me like I’m a pet and you talk about Kamu like she needs to be protected and you are there. You are there, and you keep being there, and the only one who’s ever there is Kamu, but now there is Ike. And Ike is perfect, albeit a bit dense, but perfect.” “Rig, I’m really sorry bu-“ I start, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. With each sentence Rig loses some of his force, he sounds more pathetic and lost. “I’m not done.” He pronounces the words in such a voice that it makes me shut up more than the context of the sentence does. “And all I want is to be with this boy who is there, this boy who is my friend, this boy who isn’t always caught up in politics. All I want is to have my one good break.” He finishes. I keep holding his eye contact, and his eyes, they already reflect hurt and rejectment. I don’t know if from me…or from life.
— Ginny Albinson
Well, I don't care," said Bird out loud, said Bird, who cared so much that she couldn't bear to touch the hurt. "I don't care. I ran away from Summer, and I will make my own castle. I will be my own queen.
— Katherine Catmull, Summer and Bird
If you really care about Charlotte, don't be afraid to tell her. Believe me, it will hurt her a lot more not hearing the words than it will hurt you to say them.
— J.S. Goldstine, Charlotte's War
You can see when someone's been hurt the way I was. It's obvious. Something changes in their eyes; pain becomes their center, even when they try to hide it.
— Cheryl Rainfield, Scars
Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you. That you are capable of being hurt
— Veronica Roth
Please don’t go. Just stay, talk to me, we can work this out. I know we can. I would never cheat on you – I swear to you. Just believe me, please. I love you so much. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved. And I know I’ve screwed up with the drugs, but I would never cheat on you. You’re my best friend. You’re my everything.
— Samantha Towle, The Mighty Storm
I guess I just don't get the point. It's like, why should you bother getting attached to anything if,A: It's never gonna last, andB: It hurts like hell when it's over?
— Alyson Noel
Everyone gets broken. Everyone. Some grow stronger in those breaks. Others never recover.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m all right?” I say.“No, I’m pretty sure you’re not all right.”He shakes his head. “I’m going to ask you not to make any decisions until we’ve talkedabout it.
— Veronica Roth
So what do you have to confess now?"I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that is the truth. "I'm confessing that I don't know if I'm ready for this.""What is 'this'?""Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.
— David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
I have told myself you are not allowed to hurt me anymore. That's what hurts the most.
— pleasefindthis
I ache to hear her tell me she loves me, but forcing her to put words to how she feels pushes her further into the silence she seems comfortable calling home now. I tell myself to be patient and understanding, but inside there's a longing only those words will fill, and it hurts to ignore it.
— C.J. Redwine, Defiance
I thought that what I felt for you was right," Luce said. "I loved you until it hurt me, until our love was consumed by your pride and rage. The thing you called love made me disappear. So I had to stop loving." She Paused. "Our adoration never diminished the Throne, but your love diminished me. I never meant to hurt you. I only meant to stop you from hurting me.
— Lauren Kate, Rapture
Why was love such an addictive drug?Why did loving someone cause such suffering?
— Guillaume Musso, Que serais-je sans toi?
Because everything worth having hurts.
— Laurell K. Hamilton
Sometimes, instead of being hurt, you should look at betrayal as a gift. It makes it that much easier to sweep it up and toss it out with the rest of the trash. And why is that you ask? Because trash starts to stink...and when it does, it has no more value in your life.
— Donna Schoenrock
You can only really really hurt the ones that you really really love.
— Megan McCafferty, Fourth Comings
Love is like a pane of glass.. It can take harsh beatings from the weather around it... But if it gets hit in the right place it shatters.. And when you try to pick it up... You end up getting cut.
— Tyler Hoyt
Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white, lesbian, unattractive male bashers who hated all men. But after reading the work of these black feminists, I realized that this was far from the truth. After digging into their work, I came to really respect the intelligence, courage and honesty of these women.Feminists did not hate men. In fact, they loved men. But just as my father had silenced my mother during their arguments to avoid hearing her gripes, men silenced feminists by belittling them in order to dodge hearing the truth about who we are.
— Byron Hurt
It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damned article.And Rook.Her sharpest agony. She had invested in this guy. Waited for this guy. Felt something for this guy that went beyond the bedroom ... or wherever else they took each other. Nikki did not give herself easily to a man, and this betrayal by Rook was why. Heat reflected on her answer at the oral boards about her greatest flaw and admitted her reply was a mask. Yes, her identification with her job was total. But her greatest flaw wasn’t overinvestment in her career. It was her reticence to be vulnerable. Unarmed as she was-literally-she had been emotionally so with Rook.That was the gut shot that had blown clean through her soul.
— Richard Castle
Gravity hurts
— Viktor Alexandrov
He looked at me intently before speaking. “Why do you do that?”I frowned at him. “Do what?”“Push everyone away.” Danny told me simply.I was a little stunned and when I didn’t say anything, Danny continued on.“Darcie, what are you so afraid of? Why do you shut people out?” He looked at me searchingly.“Because it’s easier that way!” I yelled at him suddenly and he looked taken aback. I took a deep breath to calm down and added, “And I don’t like feeling vulnerable.” Danny stared at me. “Being vulnerable is nothing to be ashamed of Darcie …it’s what makes us human.”I shook my head furiously. “No! Being vulnerable makes you weak – just like every other emotion … if you allow yourself to care, you only end up getting hurt.”Danny threw me a consoling look. “But there’s nothing wrong with caring –”“No!” I interrupted angrily. “I don’t want to care! You only end up getting hurt … and it hurts so bad that you can’t breathe. I don’t want to feel like that. I don’t want to feel at all! It’s just easier to shut everyone out … if you don’t care about them – you won’t get hurt!
— Joanne McClean, Learning to Breathe
Everything I know, everything I put in my fiction, will hurt someone somewhere as surely as it will comfort and enlighten someone else. What then is my responsibility? What am I to restrain? What am I to fear and alter--my own nakedness or the grief of the reader? I want my stories to be so good they are unforgettable; to make my ideas live and my own terrors real for people I will never meet. It is a completely amoral writer's lust. If we begin to agree that some ideas are too dangerous, too bad to invite inside our heads, then we stop the storyteller completely. We silence everyone who would tell us something that might be painful in our vulnerable moments.
— Dorothy Allison
My eyes were stinging, my body shaking, and my heart seemed to be just aching deep in my chest. (...)I should have let myself smash down the rocks. It would have hurt a whole lot less
— Keri Arthur, Embraced by Darkness
This is what I will do from now
—  I will hurt you.
Hurt but do not harm?” Zach asked. “What’s the difference?” “Hurt is a bruise on the outside.” Nora sipped her mineral water delicately. “Harm is a bruise on the inside. If you’re a masochist, pain feels like love to you. Not being hurt is what hurts.
— Tiffany Reisz, The Siren
It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
They say it's the woman's prerogative to change her mind. But that's wrong. Guys are the one who get to say, "You know what? I don't want to be with you after all." They get to say it after they've sucked all the sweetness out of you, just like those cheap, liquid filled wax candy things we used to get for Halloween. They leave you dried up, empty piece of wax, and head off to find somebody else who still has some sweetness inside.
— Holly Schindler, A Blue So Dark
I think what hurts the most is that I just really want to belong. I want to stand inside the circle of other people and be noticed for the right things, but it seems like the wrong things are always bigger. And all the advie I've ever read --smile more, be yourself, dream big, stay positive--seems to have some darker side that's never mentioned.
— Jane Devin, Elephant Girl: A Human Story
I miss him so badly it hurts.
— Suzanne Collins
It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable tofind a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things. As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being hurt by them because we know that we are "deformed". That's whatdistinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wearfeathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one another.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
We may shine, we may shatter,We may be picking up the pieces here on after,We are fragile, we are human,And we are shaped by the light we let through us,We break fast, cause we are glass.We are glass.
— Thompson Square
Hi, I’m Jude Ryder Jamieson,” he began, extending his hand. I took it, shaking it. He held onto it when I tried to pull it back. “My mom left when I was thirteen. My dad’s serving a life sentence for killing a young kid. I spent the last five years in a boys’ home being bullied, beat, and abused by the kids, the staff, and even the goddamn dog. I sold drugs. I did drugs. I got arrested. A lot. I screwed a lot of faceless women.” He paused, sucking in a breath. “And then I met one whose face I couldn’t forget. I fell in love with her. I hurt her because I fell in love with her and was afraid she was going to leave me the way everyone else had.” He lifted his other hand, cradling mine between his. “I still love her.
— Nicole  Williams
How did we keep getting so lost in a midnight world? Why did we continue lamenting as we wounded our hearts and were cut apart?
— Mizuki Nomura, Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation
Things you might hear,Things you wanna believe,Things that aren't true,Things that people say,It's these THINGS that causes people to feel not wanted.
— James Allen
I'd rather have names to hurt me, than my bones broken with sticks and stones.
— Anthony Liccione
On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
True humility is not thinking less of yourself
—  it is thinking of yourself less.
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
— Winston S. Churchill
As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.
— Albert Einstein
In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
— Winston S. Churchill
Every person that you meet knows something you don't
—  learn from them.
Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
True humility does not know that it is humble. If it did, it would be proud from the contemplation of so fine a virtue.
— Martin Luther
Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.
— Madeleine L'Engle
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
— Ann Landers
There is a universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings irrespective of their social status.
— Nelson Mandela, Conversations With Myself
There is no such thing as a great man of God, only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God.
— Paul David Washer
Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.
— David Richo, The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling.
— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.
— William Shakespeare, The Complete Works
One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet
Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
...the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.
— Timothy J. Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness
You must know nothing before you can learn something, and be empty before you can be filled. Is not the emptiness of the bowl what makes it useful? As for laws, a parrot can repeat them word for word. Their spirit is something else again. As for governing, one must first be lowest before being highest.
— Lloyd Alexander, The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.
— T.S. Eliot
The humble person is open to being corrected, whereas the arrogant is clearly closed to it. Proud people are supremely confident in their own opinions and insights. No one can admonish them successfully: not a peer, not a local superior, not even the pope himself. They know - and that is the end of the matter. Filled as they are with their own views, the arrogant lack the capacity to see another view.
— Thomas Dubay
I am not concerned that I am not known
—  I seek to be worthy to be known.
I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.
— Bob Schieffer, This Just in: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV
See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.
— Pope John XXIII
Humility is the nearly impossible task of being more concerned with our own sins that we are with the sins of others.
— Trevor hammack
The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.
— C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters
Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
The humble listen to their brothers and sisters because they assume they have something to learn. They are open to correction, and they become wiser through it.
— Thomas Dubay
Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. Even "humble" attitudes can be masks of pride. Humility is that freedom from our self which enables us to be in positions in which we have neither recognition nor importance, neither power nor visibility, and even experience deprivation, and yet have joy and delight. It is the freedom of knowing that we are not in the center of the universe, not even in the center of our own private universe.
— David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue
Humility is, in a sense, admitting how egotistical you are.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Blushing is the color of virtue.
— Diogenes of Sinope
At some thoughts one stands perplexed - especially at the sight of men's sin - and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal.
— George MacDonald, Phantastes
It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.
— Publilius Syrus
Relativism poses as humble by saying: “We are not smart enough to know what the truth is—or if there is any universal truth.” It sounds humble. But look carefully at what is happening. It’s like a servant saying: I am not smart enough to know which person here is my master—or if I even have a master. The result is that I don’t have a master and I can be my own master. That is in reality what happens to relativists: In claiming to be too lowly to know the truth, they exalt themselves as supreme arbiter of what they can think and do. This is not humility. This is the essence of pride.
— John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God
The theology of littleness is a basic category of Christianity. After all, the tenor of our faith is that God's distinctive greatness is revealed precisely in powerlessness. That in the long run, the strength of history is precisely in those who love, which is to say, in a strength that, properly speaking, cannot be measured according to categories of power. So in order to show who he is, God consciously revealed himself in the powerlessness of Nazareth and Golgotha. Thus, it is not the one who can destroy the most who is the most powerful...but, on the contrary, the least power of love is already greater than the greatest power of destruction.
— Pope Benedict XVI
Our humility before God has no value, except that it prepares us to reveal the humility of Jesus to our fellow men.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.
— Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
The chief means of resisting manipulation is humility – knowing who we really are and facing it. You can only serve by love. You can only love by choice. True love cannot be the result of decree, force or manipulation. Jesus always kept his strength to make loving choices. He calls us to make loving choices necessary to be the servant of all." "Humility permits me to own my feelings – and to admit them. Now I'm free to say, ‘I'm angry’. I'm free to admit what I am reacting to. I am free to ask if anger is what the person wanted to produce in me, and to ask for help in changing if my reaction is inappropriate.
— Gayle D. Erwin, The Jesus Style
Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.
— Guru Nanak, Sri Guru Granth Sahib
For my own part, my constant prayer is that I may know the worst of my case, whatever the knowledge may cost me. I know that an accurate estimate of my own heart can never be otherwise than lowering to my self-esteem; but God forbid that I should be spared the humiliation which springs from the truth! The sweet red apples of self-esteem are deadly poison; who would wish to be destroyed thereby? The bitter fruits of self-knowledge are always healthful, especially if washed down with the waters of repentance, and sweetened with a draught from the wells of salvation; he who loves his own soul will not despise them.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Humility and How to Get It
The highest glory of the creature is in being only a vessel, to receive and enjoy and show forth the glory of God. It can do this only as it is willing to be nothing in itself, that God may be all. Water always fills first the lowest places. The lower, the emptier a man lies before God, the speedier and the fuller will be the inflow of the diving glory.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that he other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them.
— David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.
— Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, ... emergent, unfinished Christian
In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good.
— Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Great artists are a little too gifted to be bound by boxes and labels, and in saying that, the label 'artist' is to be used lightly.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
It is easier to move from failure to success in from excuses to success.
— John C. Maxwell, The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization
We try, when we wake, to lay the new day at God’s feet; before we have finished shaving, it becomes our day and God’s share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of ‘our own’ pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be ‘our own’. A man starts a new job with a sense of vocation and, perhaps, for the first week still keeps the discharge of the vocation as his end, taking the pleasures and pains from God’s hand, as they came, as ‘accidents’. But in the second week he is beginning to ‘know the ropes’: by the third, he has quarried out of the total job his own plan for himself within that job, and when he can pursue this he feels that he is getting no more than his rights, and when he cannot, that he is being interfered.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Oh, the stoop of the Redeemer's amazing love! Let us, henceforth, contend how low we can go side by side with Him, but remember when we have gone to the lowest He descends lower still, so that we can truly feel that the very lowest place is too high for us, because He has gone lower still.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Humility and How to Get It
The shape of evil is much more superficiality and blindness than the usual list of hot sins. God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
If you are anything other than humbled in the presence of love, you are not in the presence of love.
— Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas
Many times when we help we do not really serve. . . . Serving is also different from fixing. One of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement, Abraham Maslow, said, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment of life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time.
— Rachel Naomi Remen
If you desire to know or learn anything to your advantage, then take delight in being unknown and unregarded.A true understanding and humble estimate of oneself is the highest and most valuable of all lessons. To take no account of oneself, but always to think well and highly of others is the highest wisdom and perfection.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Inner Life
Humility is not a one time lesson that comes when you have lost everything. It is a daily reminder of how far we have come, yet still short of who we can be through HIS guidance. Blessed is the soul that can recognize that he isn’t moving mountains, but God is for him.
— Shannon L. Alder
With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.
— Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
St Thomas (Aqinas) loved books and lived on books... When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, ‘I have understood every page I ever read’.
— G.K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas
The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.
— C.S. Lewis
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody.Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The company owner doesn't need to win. The best idea does.
— John C. Maxwell, The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization
By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The Church has little idea how unorthodox it is at any given moment. If a church can't yet be perfectly orthodox, it can, with the Holy Spirit's help and by the grace of God, be perpetually reformable.
— Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, ... emergent, unfinished Christian
It is a long journey, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Take nothing and no one for granted, be humble always, be kind especially when it's difficult and never forget the place where you came from and the people that helped you get where you are. These things will live on in you and through you, long after the words have faded.
— C.K. Webb
Humility and pride will forever battle whenever or wherever love is concerned
— Jeremy Aldana
Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
We are not worthy to unloose the latchets of Jesus' shoes, because, if we do, we begin to say to ourselves, "What great folks are we; we have been allowed to loose the latchets of the Lord's sandals." If we do not tell somebody else about it with many an exultation, we at least tell ourselves about it, and feel that we are something after all, and ought to be held in no small repute.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Humility and How to Get It
I used to tell young preachers, in order to preach you've got to have the power of God on your life. Now I tell them, in order to tie your shoes you've got to have the power of God on your life.
— Paul David Washer
How sweet is that? I know I'm no boy expert, but I have heard entire lectures on reading body language, and I have to say that assuming that a person will have forgotten your name is way high on my "indicators of humbleness" list (not that I have one, but I totally have a starting point now).
— Ally Carter, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.
— David Foster Wallace, The Best American Essays 2007
When you're thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.
— Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth
If there is one single reason why good people turn evil, it is because they fail to recognize God’s ownership over their kingdom, their vocation, their resources, their abilities, and above all their lives.
— Erwin W. Lutzer, When You've Been Wronged: Moving From Bitterness to Forgiveness
That's an animal fable about humility. If you survive your mistake, you must learn from it. Accept that you're fragile, vulnerable, and sometimes stupid. Realize that you're not immortal and you've got to take care of yourself. And then laugh it off and fly away.
— Marc Maron, Attempting Normal
But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance.
— Stephen Mitchell, The Book of Job
The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked.
— Thomas More
Love the life you have been given. And be humbled by it. It is not to be despised.
— G. Willow Wilson
Mary-born Lord, humble us so that we also might say, "Let it be with me according to your word.
— Stanley Hauerwas, Prayers Plainly Spoken
Weel, ma´am' said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; 'when I ha´finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there´s now to be done wi´out tryin -cept laying down and dying.
— Charles Dickens, Hard Times
No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
In every family there is a murderer, a thief and a crazy person. And if you have a little Blue blood in the line, you can be sure there are more than one of each.
— Clark Jeffries
Too many non-achievers confuse humility with humiliation.
— Orrin Woodward, LIFE
It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.
— Epictetus
Humility is the displacement of self by the enthronement of God.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
Humility is simply the disposition which prepares the soul for living on trust.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
When you really have something to offer to the world, then you can become truly humble. A tree when it has no fruit to offer, remains erect. But when the tree is laden with fruit, it bends down. If you are all pride and ego, then nobody will be able to get anything worthwhile from you. When you have genuine humility, it is a sign that you have something to offer to mankind.
— Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy: Finding Your Path to Inner Peace
Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows Him as God to do all.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
Stand by; for I am holier than you!" What a parody on holiness! Jesus the Holy One is the humble One: the holiest will ever be the humblest. There is none holy but God: we have as much of holiness as we have of God.
— Andrew Murray, Humility
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.
— Kate Alcott, The Dressmaker