Only God is able to humble us without humiliating us and to exalt us without flattering us.
Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.
Using every means possible to show that, although you're just an ordinary human being, you're far above other mortals.
Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation.
Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a morecalculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.
Krishna exalts those who are humble and humbles those who exalt themselves.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.
At the deepest level, pride is the choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts. Jesus said the essence of the spiritual life is to love God and to love people. Pride destroys our capacity to love.
You are not mature if you have a high esteem of yourself. He who boasts in himself is but a babe in Christ, if indeed he be in Christ at all. Young Christians may think much of themselves. Growing Christians think themselves nothing. Mature Christians know that they are less than nothing. The more holy we are, the more we mourn our infirmities, and the humbler is our estimate of ourselves.
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
I make bold to say that it is profitable for the proud to fall, in order that they may be humbled in that for which they have exalted themselves.
God exalts the man who humbles himself.
Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him.
If you meet with a system of theology which magnifies man, flee from it as far as you can.
Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.
You cannot exalt God and yourself at the same time.
For pride, which is the inordinate attribution of goods and values and glories to one's own contingent self, cannot exist where there is no contingent self to which anything can be attributed.
Pride does not look up to God and care about what is right. It looks sideways to man and argues who is right. Pride is manifest in the spirit of contention. Was it not through pride that the devil became the devil? Christ wanted to serve. The devil wanted to rule. Christ wanted to bring men to where He was. The devil wanted to be above men. Christ removed self as the force in His perfect life. It was not my will, but thine be done
If we continue to seek learning to serve God and His children better, it is a blessing of great worth. If we begin to seek learning to exalt ourselves alone, it leads to selfishness and pride, which will take us away from eternal life.
Pride takes innumerable forms but has only one end: self-glorification. That’s the motive and ultimate purpose of pride—to rob God of legitimate glory and to pursue self-glorification, contending for supremacy with Him. The proud person seeks to glorify himself and not God, thereby attempting in effect to deprive God of something only He is worthy to receive
My witness is, that those who are honoured of their Lord in public, have usually to endure a secret chastening, or to carry a peculiar cross, lest by any means they exalt themselves, and fall into the snare of the devil.
Pride is a terrible and dangerous thing. It can take so many forms; it can even assume the appearance of humility. Pride can lead not only to self-exaltation, but also to self-abasement. The key to battling pride is not found in struggling against thinking too highly of ourselves or in striving to think of ourselves as lowly. The key is found in simply not thinking about ourselves at all, but setting our minds on Christ and the needs of others.
God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?
When one becomes conscious of his great humility, he has already lost it. When one begins boasting of his humility, it has already become pride-the antithesis of humility.
Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,--compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.
