Humbling Quotes

1. "It was all he could do. To make her see what she was doing, what she was ending, and to punish her if she did so. Nobody would blame him. There might be finagling, there might be bargaining, there would certainly be humbling of herself, but there it was, like a round cold stone in her gullet, like a cannonball. And it would remain there unless she changed her mind entirely. The children stay,"
Author: Alice Munro

2. "My husband, Andrew Shue, is the co-founder of Do Something, and we both speak and present at awards ceremonies. It's absolutely amazing and humbling to see all the work so many young people are contributing to better their communities on both a local and global front."
Author: Amy Robach

3. "Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-men as a help to abide humble before God."
Author: Andrew Murray

4. "…imagine that the earth—four thousand six hundred million years old—[were] a forty-six-year-old woman…. It had taken the whole of the Earth Woman's life for the earth to become what it was. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise. The Earth Woman was eleven years old…when the first single-celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only when she was forty. She was over forty-five—just eight months ago—when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole of human civilization as we know it began only two hours ago in the Earth Woman's life…. It was an awe-inspiring and humbling thought…that the whole of contemporary history, the World Wars, the War of Dreams, the Man on the Moon, science, literature, philosophy, the pursuit of knowledge—was no more than a blink of the Earth Woman's eye."
Author: Arundhati Roy

5. "And it blew my mind when I started to get wind of the fact that they actually liked me being around. That was humbling, because Kentucky basketball is a big deal, and I am not the biggest fan - I am just the most notorious one."
Author: Ashley Judd

6. "The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air."
Author: Augusten Burroughs

7. "After I slid down the wall for the third time, breaking every single fingernail in the process, I finally figured out that Thor was hollering at me. I turned to see him standing in the bed of the truck. Which, of course, made much more sense, than pretending to be Spiderman.It's a humbling moment when you realize your dog is smarter than you."
Author: Barbra Annino

8. "When we came to Christ, it was humility to honestly assess ourselves as sinners. To go back and say that's still who we are is to deny what Christ did for us. Doing that is no longer humbling ourselves, it's undercutting the resurrection power God has given us to live like Him."
Author: Bill Johnson

9. "Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions."
Author: Bodhidharma

10. "The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit? Yes. Settle? Not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. ... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve, and cherish, the pale blue dot; the only home we've ever known."
Author: Carl Sagan

11. "If you aren't vigilant, if you aren't daily humbling yourself before Him, seeking His face, discerning His timing, operating under the Spirit's control, you may push and shove and force your way prematurely into that place where God wanted you, but you will not have arrived in His own time."
Author: Charles R. Swindoll

12. "I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots—written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements—and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or—it sounded just as bad in English—'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

13. "Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked."
Author: Christopher McDougall

14. "When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences."
Author: Criss Jami

15. "I love surfing, rock climbing, cycling - all that stuff. But it's just amazing that I can inspire people with my running. It's humbling, really."
Author: Dean Karnazes

16. "... next time you say, «I have nothing in common with this person,» remember that you have a great deal in common: A few years from now - two years or seventy years, it doesn't make much difference - both of you will have become rotting corpses, then piles of dust, then nothing at all. This is a sobering and humbling realization that leaves little room for pride. [... ] In that sense , there is total equality between you and every other creature."
Author: Eckhart Tolle

17. "Amd I am not blind to the fact that I have been given gifts you never had. Living a godly life was expected on me, and it was an easy path for me to follow. No one ever had such expectations of you. For you to embrace the Lord at this point in your life would be nothing short of heroic, Alex. It would take an act of such strength and courage that it would be humbling for all who have ever know you. You can begin building a life of valor today."
Author: Elizabeth Camden

18. "The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit the earth and the kingdom of heaven too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen will perish."
Author: Eric Hoffer

19. "We don't like to think of ourselves as prey—it is a lessening thought—but the truth is that in our arrogance and so-called knowledge we forget that we are not unique. We are part of nature as much as other animals, and some animals—sharks, fever-bearing mosquitoes, wolves and bear, to name but a few—perceive us as a food source, a meat supply, and simply did not get the memo about how humans are superior.It can be shocking, humbling, painful, very edifying and sometimes downright fatal to run into such an animal."
Author: Gary Paulsen

20. "It was a sickening, humbling, maddeningly powerless sensation this watching them and waiting for them to come to him. For the time they could be a family again. But Mickey did it like one's tongue pointlessly finds a mouth sore over and over again, half to see if it was still there, half to see if it still hurt."
Author: Genevieve Dewey

21. "It's always healthy to be taken down a notch, even though it's humbling."
Author: Geoffrey S. Fletcher

22. "It's humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked."
Author: Gillian Flynn

23. "Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless it is the same everywhere. There are businessmen, police up there; people trade, fight, dethrone their kings. Some shooting stars suddenly slid past, describing a course in the sky like the parabola of a monstrous rocket. ‘My Word,' said Bouvard, ‘look at those worlds disappearing.' Pecuchet replied: ‘If our world in its turn danced about, the citizens of the stars would be no more impressed than we are now. Ideas like that are rather humbling.' ‘What is the point of it all?' ‘Perhaps there isn't a point.' ‘Yet…' and Pecuchet repeated the word two or three times, without finding anything more to say."
Author: Gustave Flaubert

24. "Being branded number one restaurant in the world is actually very humbling."
Author: Heston Blumenthal

25. "It was a sad loss, this illusion of importance, a humbling blow."
Author: Hugh Howey

26. "But it's been a great, humbling - and I've been very honored to have the opportunity to serve and to lead and to be the representative of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in Washington. And it's been the greatest honor of my life."
Author: Hugh Shelton

27. "Being named as a finalist for the USA Basketball National Team is an unbelievable feeling and an opportunity that is truly humbling. It is an honor to be included with such talented players and I look forward to the chance to represent my country this summer."
Author: James Harden

28. "It's humbling to start fresh. It takes a lot of courage. But it can be reinvigorating. You just have to put your ego on a shelf & tell it to be quiet."
Author: Jennifer Ritchie Payette

29. "I was the first critic ever to win a Tony - for co-authoring 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty.' Criticism is a life without risk; the critic is risking his opinion, the maker is risking his life. It's a humbling thought but important for the critic to keep it in mind - a thought he can only know if he's made something himself."
Author: John Lahr

30. "To err is to wander and wandering is the way we discover the world and lost in thought it is the also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying but in the end it is static a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling and sometimes even dangerous but in the end it is a journey and a story. Who really wants to stay at home and be right when you can don your armor spring up on your steed and go forth to explore the world True you might get lost along get stranded in a swamp have a scare at the edge of a cliff thieves might steal your gold brigands might imprison you in a cave sorcerers might turn you into a toad but what of what To fuck up is to find adventure: it is in the spirit that this book is written."
Author: Kathryn Schulz

31. "He could do anything to her, anything, and she'd let him. Maybe even love it, as long as it got him off. It was ridiculous. It was humbling. It was the hottest fucking realization of his life."
Author: Kit Rocha

32. "We live in a bubble sometimes, and you can get out of touch with your fans. You go to the studio, you come home. But coming to Comic-Con is a real opportunity to connect with the people that made your show happen and are responsible for its continued success. It's really humbling."
Author: Kunal Nayyar

33. "Ah, in how many rooms, upon how many studio couches, among how many books, had they found their own love, their marriage, their life together, a life which, in spite of its many disasters, its total calamity indeed -- and in spite too of any slight element of falsehood in its inception on her side, her marriage partly into the past, into her Anglo-Scottish ancestry, into the visioned empty ghost-whistling castles in Sutherland, into an emanation of gaunt lowland uncles chumbling shortbread at six o'clock in the morning -- had not been without triumph. (p.210)"
Author: Malcolm Lowry

34. "Author wonders whether God's proclamation of His natural mastery when appearing to Job might be about restoring a sense of wonder to world-weary man as much as humbling him."
Author: Mark Buchanan

35. "But why, she thought wryly, did a man seem more attractive as he became less available? How humbling to think one had so much in common with a cow stretching its neck through a gate for better grass."
Author: Mary Jo Putney

36. "We are a vibrant first-world country, but we have a humbling third-world memory."
Author: Mary McAleese

37. "It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in 'The Practice' than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both."
Author: Michael Emerson

38. "Yes, there was a sort of underground cult following, which came from nowhere, and grew, and grew. It was quite surprising to us all, because all of us had spent probably the previous five to ten years without it. So it was quite overwhelming. Overwhelming and humbling."
Author: Michael Giles

39. "So I was just thinking about how something happened today and it was quite insightful, humbling and puts things into perspective. If you look at anything, everything has it's 'story' so to speak. For instance, for me to even write this status requires an obscene amount of processes (essentially limitless). Just the biological processes that have to take place are in the trillions. Then you add the technological component, the psychology behind it(self-awareness/consciousness). Then you start looking at the macro factors behind it which include how I came into existence, how life came to be for that to occur, how earth came to be, the sun, the solar system, the galaxy, universe...etc. So the odds for all those things to occur for me to write a simple (or not so simply) status like this....is pretty fucking incredible to say the least."
Author: Michael R. Kitay

40. "Humble yourself"--it is a humbling experience to knock at God's door--you have to knock with the crucified thief. "To him that knocketh, it shall be opened."
Author: Oswald Chambers

41. "My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day."
Author: Patrick Rothfuss

42. "Each book is a new book. I've never written it before and I have to teach myself how to write it as I go along. The fact that I've written books in the past seems to play no part in it. I always feel like a beginner and I'm continually running into the same difficulties, the same blocks, the same despairs. You make so many mistakes as a writer, cross out so many bad sentences and ideas, discard so many worthless pages, that finally what you learn is how stupid you are. It's a humbling occupation."
Author: Paul Auster

43. "We just never know. We think we do. We think we have life figured out, and in our arrogance we become hard. But life has a way of humbling us, of softening us."
Author: Philip Gulley

44. "I'm in a hallowed league of artists. Whether it's Billie Holiday or Rakim or Jimmy Hendrix or... I don't know, MGMT, we're all blessed to be able to create. It's a lineage that extends a long time. And to be able to be active in it and have made a difference in it, it's humbling. To know I had a place in all of this; that's the rewarding part."
Author: Q Tip

45. "In AA we don't come to God through theology but through experience, mostly of the humbling and humiliating variety, often reluctantly, and sometimes even kicking and screaming. – p. 179"
Author: Ray A.

46. "A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others."
Author: Robert E. Lee

47. "There's a lot of kids who look up to me, and that's humbling. Because being human, I don't want to fail them. But being human, I will. That's why it's so important to have your faith put in something that won't fail you. And that means the Son of God's kingdom."
Author: Si Robertson

48. "Dignity is treasure one should never lose. When humbling yourself, Don't bow down to any man. For he is no greator than you"
Author: Sonny Cele

49. "The ability to be good is not the ability to do nothing. It is not negative or passive. It is the ability to do something well--to do good work for good reasons. In order to be good you have to know how--and this knowing is vast, complex, humble and humbling; it is of the mind and of the hands, of neither alone."
Author: Wendell Berry

50. "And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home."
Author: Wendell Berry

Humbling Quotes Pictures