Humility Quotes, Sayings
This article explores some of the best humility quotes and sayings spoken by famous authors, philosophers, scientists and more.
These quotes can help us to understand the importance of humility and to cultivate this virtue in our own lives.
Best humility quotes
These quotes describe why humility is an important quality to cultivate in our lives. Attaining humility can lead to a number of positive outcomes, including:
- Making us more open to learning, growing, and more willing to admit mistakes.
- Helping us to be more effective leaders because we are seen as approachable and trustworthy.
- Making us happier. Contentment helps us to avoid the negative emotions of envy, pride, and resentment.
Here are some of the best quotes about humility and being humble.
1. Humility quotes about life
Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
Ernest Holmes
True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.
Rick Warren
It is not for me to judge another man’s life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.
Herman Hesse
Being humble means recognizing that we are not on earth to see how important we can become, but to see how much difference we can make in the lives of others.
Gordon B. Hinckley
By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility.
Richard Louv
Humility is the most beautiful virtue that we can develop.
Joyce Meyer
Self-confidence is very important. But without compassion and humility, it’s just arrogance.
Anonymous
About happiness
A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It is a foundation for the development of such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being.
James E. Faust
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
Ernest Hemingway
About love
Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.
Oscar Wilde
Humility is the essence of love and intelligence; it is not an achievement.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Shine your soul with the same
egoless humility as the rainbow
and no matter where you go
in this world or the next,
love will find you, attend you, and bless you.
Aberjhani
2. Humility quotes for students
Every person that you meet knows something you don’t; learn from them.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
Helen Keller
Stay hungry, stay young, stay foolish, stay curious, and above all, stay humble because just when you think you got all the answers, is the moment when some bitter twist of fate in the universe will remind you that you very much don’t.
Tom Hiddleston
To me, having the courage to tell your own story goes hand in hand with having the curiosity and humility to listen to others’ stories.
Sarah Kay
A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility.
Lawrence G. Lovasik
3. Humility quotes for work
Humility will open more doors than arrogance ever will.
Zig Ziglar
Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.
Patrick Süskind
The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.
John Ruskin
About success
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
Alexander Pope
Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.
David Richo
To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.
Criss Jami
To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.
Ursula K. Le Guin
About leadership
Avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.
Lao Tzu
Great leaders don’t need to act tough. Their confidence and humility serve to underscore their toughness.
Simon Sinek
4. Funny humility quotes
Humility is no substitute for a good personality.
Fran Lebowitz
It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.
Yogi Berra
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 Churchill
The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.
Mignon McLaughlin
Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
Ann Landers
On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
Michel de Montaigne
5. Short humility quotes
A great man is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.
Albert Einstein
Life is a long lesson in humility.
J.M. Barrie
Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself.
Charles H. Spurgeon
Humility is royalty without a crown.
Spencer W. Kimball
Humility is the proper estimate of oneself.
Charles Spurgeon
He is as full of valor as of kindness. Princely in both.
William Shakespeare
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
Thomas Merton
Humility quotes for Instagram
- Humility is strength.
- Work hard, stay humble.
- Kindness. Humility. Happiness.
- Humility is the ladder to divine understanding.
- Empathy. Compassion. Humility.
- Hard work and humility.
- Humility comes before honor.
- From humble beginnings come great things.
- Be humble or be humbled.
- Extraordinarily humble.
- Always stay humble and kind.
6. Inspirational humility quotes
Pride is the problem, humility is the answer.
Joyce Meyer
Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.
Madeleine L’Engle
“Thank you” is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.
Alice Walker
There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.
Robert Louis Stevenson
7. Humility wisdom quotes
The greatest wisdom consists in knowing one’s own follies.
Madeleine De Souvre Sable
It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Mahatma Gandhi
Never curse a fall. The ground is where humility lives.
Yasmin Mogahed
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
Robert Hughes
Humility is the ability to give up your pride and still retain your dignity.
Vanna Bonta
Deep sayings
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
Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.
Ezra T. Benson
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
Simone Weil
The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
Charles Caleb Colton
Spiritual quotes
Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all.
Andrew Murray
A humble knowledge of myself is a surer way to God than a search after learning.
Thomas A. Kempis
True humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit; it is but a right estimate of ourselves as God sees us.
Tryon Edwards
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
Zen sayings
All streams flow to the ocean because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.
Lao Tzu
I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known.
Confucius
8. Humble humility quotes
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
If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.
Mother Teresa
You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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
Modesty sayings
Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.
Paulo Coelho
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare
In reality, humility means nothing other than complete honesty about yourself.
William Countryman
9. Famous humility quotes
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
Winston S. Churchill
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.
Abraham Lincoln
I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.
Albert Einstein
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
Carl Sagan
By philosophers
If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
Epictetus
Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.
Confucius
By saints
Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.
Saint Augustine
Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying.
St. Vincent de Paul
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
Augustine of Hippo
By famous authors
Humility, like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.
Henry David Thoreau
“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”
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
Ernest Hemingway
As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don’t think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, ‘I’m probably no better than you, but I’m certainly your equal.’
Harper Lee
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility.
William Shakespeare
There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
Victor Hugo
From the Bible
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, in humility consider others better than yourselves.
Philippians 2:3
Your heart will always be where your riches are.
Luke 12:34
Thank you for reading these humility quotes and sayings. You’ll find more inspirational quotes here:
By Greg Johnson | Published 8/2/2023
