Humbling Quotes

The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity. ~ Twyla Tharp

When a million little things go right, that's called success. Failure functions as the great leveler. When things don't go as planned, it's humbling. It's important to make mistakes along the way, or we would be impossible to live with. ~ Judy Frankel

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. ~ Q-Tip

There's something about dinosaurs that should be very humbling to human beings. ~ Colin Trevorrow

There is nothing to hide anymore. When love looks at you, when it truly pins you down and stares into your soul, it renders you defenseless. And in that moment, in that state of humbling nakedness, it makes you completely invincible. ~ Leylah Attar

Sorrow is humbling. I want my pain to be fabulous. I don't need my pain to be worse than anyone else's; I just want it to be strangely, uniquely mine. Art to someone else's breakdown.
- Thea Hillman, "Dear Kath After"
from the anthology Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache ~ Clint Catalyst

And suddenly the miracle happens. I look across at the woman who has just made some coffee and is now reading the newspaper, whose eyes look tired and desperate, who is her usual silent self, who does not always show her affection in gestures, the woman who made me say yes when i wanted to say no, who forced me to fight for what she, quiet rightly, believed was my reason for living, who let me set off alone because her love for me was greater even than her love for herself, who made me go in serch of my dream,; and suddenly, seeing that small, quiet woman, whose eyes said more than words, who was often terrified inside, but always courageous in her actions, who could love someone without humbling herself and who never ever apologized for fighting for her man - suddenly. my fingers press down on the keys. ~ Paulo Coelho

It's deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth. ~ Andrew Solomon

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, ~ Alice Munro

Suffering related to circumstances beyond my control, suffering related to consequences of my besetting sin, and suffering caused by others who refused to see their own sin. In all these instances, the Lord has been at work, refining my focus upon personal holiness, amplifying my ministry through very humbling experiences, and reminding me repeatedly to extend grace not just to the gracious but to those who lack a grace I took too long to come to myself. ~ James MacDonald

One day, you're a nobody, and the next, you're in a movie that everybody is talking about. But Hollywood has a way of knocking you back down to Earth. ~ Patrick Fugit

Being branded number one restaurant in the world is actually very humbling. ~ Heston Blumenthal

It's a joyful, humbling feeling to be in different places around the planet, and people have seen shows that I'm proud of being a part of, that do have things to say about the human condition, the planet, and who we are and where we've come from, that will sustain. ~ Scott Bakula

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. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

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. ~ Elizabeth Camden

Golf is said to be an humbling game, but it is surprising how many people are either not aware of their weaknesses of else reckless of consequences. ~ Bobby Jones

The sine qua non for obtaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit that you must submit to the experience of the plant or the drug. This act of surrender is the major technical function you will be called upon to perform during the psychedelic trip. ~ Terence McKenna

In the tide of these wild thoughts we checked our fancy, remembering that only on the rare grains called planets can life gain foothold, and that all this wealth of restless jewels was but a waste of fire. ~ Olaf Stapledon

Far more humbling to me was a letter I received years later from Sergeant Talbert. Referring to the attack at the intersection, he wrote, "Seeing you in the middle of that road, wanting to move, was too much. You were my total inspiration. All my boys felt the same way." "Tab" was far too generous with his compliments. His own action at Carentan personified his excellence as both a soldier and a leader. He helped clear that intersection and carried a wounded Lipton to safety. Later when the Germans finally counterattacked, Talbert was everywhere, directing his men to the right place, supervising their fire, before he himself was wounded and evacuated. ~ Dick Winters

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. ~ Ashley Judd

And there is something profoundly humbling about knowing God. I'm not talking about the trinket God or the genie-in-a-lamp God. I mean the God who invented the tree in my front yard, the beauty of my sweetheart, the taste of a blueberry, the violence of a river at flood. There are a lot of religious trends that would have us controlling God, telling us that if we do this that and the other, God will jump through our hoops like a monkey. But this other God, this real God, is awesome and strong, all-encompassing and passionate, and for reasons I will never understand, he wants to father us. ~ Donald Miller

Our work calls on us to confront, with our patients and within ourselves, extraordinary human experiences. This confrontation is profoundly humbling in that at all times these experiences challenge the limits of our humanity and our view of the world... ~ John P. Wilson

Living with real children can be humbling. ~ Adele Faber

We must humble ourselves before [others] so we may learn from what others have lived. It is only when we have added their expertise to our own that we can truly excel towards our most ambitious goals and reach our fullest potential. ~ A.J. Darkholme

Injury in general teaches you to appreciate every moment. I've had my share of injuries throughout my career. It's humbling. It gives you perspective. No matter how many times I've been hurt, I've learned from that injury and come back even more humble. ~ Troy Polamalu

I knew that (job) had to be a humbling role for my dad, but he never allowed it to become humiliating work. ~ Jeremy Camp

Beauty is the only human aspect which cannot be captured on any canvas howsoever hard an artist tries. At the most, the undaunted artist can replicate the beauty on paper but what is a replica in comparison to the original! The humbling resemblance can only be respected, not truly adored.
Beauty cannot be imprisoned in the lens of a camera. The images of beauty are a moment of its essence. Beauty cannot be displayed to evoke pleasure for all on a cinema screen. Those are just its imprints, mere illusions of its existence. Beauty cannot be described by words; it cannot be written or read about. There are no suitable words in all the languages of the world, ancient or modern to hold it between a paper and a pen or a script and an eye. Beauty can only be experienced from far, its delightful aroma can only be tasted through one's eyes and its pleasurable sight can only be felt from the soul.
Beauty can only be best described at its origin through a befuddling silence, the kind that leaves one almost on the verge of a pleasurable death, just because one chooses beauty over life. There is nothing in this world to hold something so pure, so divine except a loving heart. And it is the only manner through which love recognises love; the language of love has no alphabet, no words. ~ Faraaz Kazi

Poem from Rev. Jim Cotter, as listed on the opening pages of "Anatomy of the Spirit" by Caroline Myss:

~ God be in my head and in my understanding.

God be in my eyes and in my looking.

God be in my mouth and in my speaking.

God be in my tongue and in my tasting.

God be in my lips and in my greeting.

~ God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling.

God be in my ears and in my hearing.

God be in my neck and in my humbling.

God be in my shoulders and in my bearing.

God be in my back and in my standing.

~ God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving.

God be in my hands and in my working.

God be in my legs and in my walking.

God be in my feet and in my grounding.

God be in my knees and in my relating.

~ God be in my gut and in my feeling.

God be in my bowels and in my forgiving.

God be in my loins and in my swiving.

God be in my lungs and in my breathing.

God be in my heart and in my loving.

~ God be in my skin and in my touching.

God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining.

God be in my blood and in my living.

God be in my bones and in my dying.

God be at my end and at my reviving. ~ Caroline Myss

The catechisms also tell the truth about who I am, what I want and how I feel, and it can be unsettling to hear yourself described as you have thought of yourself in your most honest and abject moods, just as it is humbling to hear what you have thought about in your most hopeful and unrealistic moments. ~ Iain Banks

You buy a house and you get it checked out and you feel like you've kind of made your mark here in some way. And then an act of God just comes up the coast and has the potential to just completely wipe it clean. Weather like that is certainly humbling. ~ James Van Der Beek

What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience. ~ Pete Hamill

Men are easily threatened. And whenever a man is threatened, when he becomes uncomfortable in places within himself that he does not understand, he naturally retreats into an arena of comfort or competence, or he dominates someone or something in order to feel powerful. Men refuse to feel the paralyzing and humbling horror of uncertainty, a horror that could drive them to trust, a horror that could release in them the power to deeply give themselves in relationship. As a result, most men feel close to no one, especially not to God, and no one feels close to them. Something good in men is stopped and needs to get moving. When good movement stops, bad movement (retreat or domination) reliably develops. ~ Larry Crabb

The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution. ~ E. O. Wilson

She considered herself fortunate to count enough in his eyes for him to derive pleasure from offending her, as believers give thanks to God for humbling them. But, ~ Pauline Reage

When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks ... that's just rewarding and humbling. ~ Sara Zarr

I fell so many times and got back up. I been through the toughest times with my family, but I'm still standing. ~ Kevin Durant

If we never leave our house except to drive to work, do we need to be even remotely aware of this powerful, humbling, extraordinary and eternal life force that surges and ebbs around us all the time? Apparently not. Because we have stopped paying attention. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

First of all, I wish everyone who loved football could stand in the quarterback's shoes just for a play, because I think it would be tremendously humbling to anyone who loved the game to say, "I didn't
I had no idea." You can think about what it would be like, and the cameras are getting better at giving that perspective, that one that the skycam comes down and you get a sense of it, but you just
you don't know. ~ Steve Young

It's a humbling thing, having kids. One of my sons came to rehearsals, and now he says Daddy's job is 'go play loud music.' ~ Trent Reznor

I've never directed, but it must be humbling. ~ Holly Hunter

People like to say how much they like stuff, but with 'The Sunset Tree,' people shared stories about what it meant for them. And that stuff's so humbling and amazing. ~ John Darnielle

It's a humbling experience for me to be in this position. ~ LeBron James

Isn't it interesting that in Acts 11, at the end of verse 26, it says, "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." What I find interesting is the simple thought that the Christians didn't name themselves. But rather, they were called (or named) "Christians" by those watching their lives. I wonder if it would be the same today. Could someone look at your life or look at my life and name me a Christian? A humbling thought for sure. ~ Chris Tomlin

To those who live in the narrow circle of human interests and human feelings, there ever exists, unheeded, almost unnoticed, before their very eyes, the most humbling proofs of their own comparative insignificance in the scale of creation, which, in the midst of their admitted mastery over the earth and all it contains, it would be well for them to consider, if they would obtain just views of what they are and what they were intended to be. ~ James Fenimore Cooper

It's humbling and enthralling to know your legacy when you're alive. ~ Laura Schlessinger

As for me, I've chosen to follow a simple course: Come clean. And wherever possible, live your life in a way that won't leave you tempted to lie. Failing that, I'd rather be disliked for who I truly am than loved for who I am not. So, I tell my story. I write it down. I even publish it. Sometimes this is a humbling experience. Sometimes it's embarrassing. But I haul around no terrible secrets. ~ Joyce Maynard

For all we know, the aliens have already done this and unwittingly concluded that there was no intelligent life on Earth. They would now be looking elsewhere. A more humbling possibility would be if aliens had become aware of the technologically proficient species that now inhabits Earth, yet they had drawn the same conclusion. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Travel, for me, is a breathtaking experience. A humbling for the soul and the realization that we are all in this together. ~ Michael Holbrook

Working up these mountains is as good as it gets, at least as long as you are not freezing or sodden (though even then you feel alive in ways that I don't in modern life behind glass). There is a thrill in the timelessness up there. I have always liked the feeling of carrying on something bigger than me, something that stretches back through other hands and other eyes into the depths of time. To work there is a humbling thing, the opposite of conquering a mountain, if you like; it liberates you from any illusion of self-importance. ~ James Rebanks

I've met a lot of really friendly people who are incredibly happy for me, which is really flattering and humbling. ~ Allison Tolman

Any time you have someone come up and say they love what you do and they get great joy from it is a very humbling experience. ~ Chris Hemsworth

It [spiritual authority and leadership] is not won by promotion, but my many prayers and tears. It is attained by confession of sin, and much heart-searching and humbling before God; by self-surrender, a courageous sacrifice of every idol, a bold uncomplaining embrace of the cross, and by eternally looking unto Jesus crucified. It is not gained by seeking great things for ourselves, but like Paul, by counting those things that are gain to us as loss for Christ. This is a great price, but it must be paid by the leader whose power is recognized and felt in heaven, on earth, and in hell. ~ Samuel Brengle

Bringing a novel to light - revealing the form and cadence, shadows and demeanor of a protagonist constructed from thin air - linking scenes and synchronicity across translucent time - holding up a glass brimming with chilled, never-tasted liquid, then sipping from it with intoxicated focus - allowing lovers to make a perilous mess of things, fall apart and nakedly come back together again - looking through conjured windows deep into someone else's snow-bound solitude, feeling utterly alone yet being all-connected: this is not writing. It's world-creating.

It's raw, exposed dreaming. It's humbling. At first too personal and intimate to share, it evolves like a child into a life of its own until I have no say in what comes next.

It's what I wake at 4am to say Yes to, the spinning possibility of a new story relentlessly commanding me to write it down so it can whirl in your experience. ~ Laurie Perez

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. ~ Barbra Annino

One thing was unusual and very humbling; the streets were lined with people as if for a parade all the way to the Waldorf. They cheered & clapped and I wore my arms out waving back to them. I keep thinking this can't continue and yet their warmth & affection seems so genuine I get a lump in my throat. I pray constantly that I won't let them down. ~ Ronald Reagan

Our eyes contain two types of photoreceptors for vision - rods, which help us see in dim conditions but provide no color, and cones, which work when the light is bright and divide the world up into three colors: blue, green, and red. People who are "color-blind" normally lack one of the three types of cones, so they don't see all the colors, just some of them. People who have no cones at all, and are genuinely color-blind, are called achromatopes. Their main problem isn't that their world is pallid but that they really struggle to cope with bright light and can be literally blinded by daylight. Because we were once nocturnal, our ancestors gave up some color acuity - that is, sacrificed cones for rods - to gain better night vision. Much later, primates re-evolved the ability to see reds and oranges, the better to identify ripe fruit, but we still have just three kinds of color receptors compared with four for birds, fish, and reptiles. It's a humbling fact, but virtually all nonmammalian creatures live in a visually richer world than we do. ~ Bill Bryson

It's continuously humbling to work hard, you know? As long as you've got a good work ethic and a sense of humor, I don't think anybody can become too much of an egoist under those circumstances. ~ Rachael Ray

Each child with special needs such as this does not come into the world in order to make our lives difficult and make us suffer. They each come into this world for a reason and have their secret inner voice. It remains to us to offer our love; to 'bear one another's burdens'; to experience a collective humbling - to realize, that is, that we are not as powerful and important as we think; and to try to lighten that person's burden and understand their language. These children are better at speaking the language of God. ~ Metropolitan Nikolaos Of Mesogaia

As the leader of the international Human Genome Project, which had labored mightily over more than a decade to reveal this DNA sequence, I stood beside President Bill Clinton in the East Room of the White House...

Clinton's speech began by comparing this human sequence map to the map that Meriwether Lewis had unfolded in front of President Thomas Jefferson in that very room nearly two hundred years earlier.

Clinton said, "Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind." But the part of his speech that most attracted public attention jumped from the scientific perspective to the spiritual. "Today," he said, "we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift."

Was I, a rigorously trained scientist, taken aback at such a blatantly religious reference by the leader of the free world at a moment such as this? Was I tempted to scowl or look at the floor in embarrassment? No, not at all. In fact I had worked closely with the president's speechwriter in the frantic days just prior to this announcement, and had strongly endorsed the inclusion of this paragraph.

When it came time for me to add a few words of my own, I echoed this sentiment: "It's a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruct ~ Francis S. Collins

It's humbling to realise that the developmental gulf between a miniscule ant colony and our modern human civilisation is only a tiny fraction of the distance between a Type 0 and a Type III civilisation - a factor of 100 billion billion, in fact. Yet we have such a highly regarded view of ourselves, we believe a Type III civilisation would find us irresistible and would rush to make contact with us. The truth is, however, they may be as interested in communicating with humans as we are keen to communicate with ants. ~ Michio Kaku

The acting world is a humbling experience, I find. ~ Sharlto Copley

I never saw it coming," I said bleakly. "I thought I was so smart. And each time I talked to her, I dismissed her as some dumb, scattered girl. Meanwhile, she was laughing and countering my moves every step of the way. It's humbling. I don't meet many people like that. ~ Richelle Mead

Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked. ~ Christopher McDougall

There are definitely some songs you sing and you just know there's something about it - there's kind of a touch on it that's different. But there are no rules to that. Every time, it's a surprise and it's humbling to hear that people are singing the songs in different places and different parts of the world. We're always amazed by that. ~ Reuben Morgan

For me, personally, it has been humbling since I became First Minister to speak to women and girls and have them tell me how much it means to them to have a woman in the top job in politics in Scotland. ~ Nicola Sturgeon

It was humbling to admit that I wasn't living the simple life because I was spiritually committed to it. I was living the simple life because I was poor. ~ Paul David Tripp

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

If we judge our lives by what we know or by what we say, we can easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we are something we are not; it is wiser to evaluate ourselves by the amount of truth we actually live. This is very humbling. ~ Paul Washer

In the inconceivably vast and humbling unknown called "everything", is a supreme inter-communication called, spirituality. ~ Bryant McGill

I really wanted to make 'Everest' visceral, real. One thing that amazed me when I was scouting in base camp is the volume of Everest: It's humbling. I wanted to find a way to bring that to the screen. One way was 3D. ~ Baltasar Kormakur

It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo. ~ Angela Davis

Play the moment, play whatever plays for you in that moment, and then go to the next moment. It doesn't matter where you're going. Don't worry about that. Just take it moment, moment, moment, moment. ~ Philip Roth

Grace is humbling and restorative. It pulls you down because Christ had to die for you, but also lifts you up because he wanted to die for you. ~ Timothy Keller

It was both terrible and oddly humbling to realize how easily physical discomfort could take control, expanding like poison gas until it owned all the floor-space, took over the entire playing field. Grief? Loss? What were those things when you could feel cold on the march, moving in from your fingers and toes, crawling up your motherfucking nose, and moving where? Toward the brain, do it please ya. And toward the heart. In the grip of cold like that, grief and loss were nothing but words. No, not even that. Only sounds. So much meaningless quack as you sat shuddering under the stars, waiting for a morning that would never come. ~ Stephen King

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. ~ Wendell Berry

Why do people say trees are majestic?" --- "Because they've earned it. After a sapling's roots take hold, they spread out to give it strength. Then, unstoppable, those roots continue to grow, and after years of withstanding rain, hail, snow and every other environmental disaster you can imagine, it has a root system stretching as wide as the tree is tall in every direction. Take this one," he said tilting his head back & gazing up at her penny tree. "If you could dig up all the roots, they'd probably fill our town's swimming pool. These trees are humbling because we're so much weaker as human beings, so flawed in comparison. ~ Holly Kennedy

However tortured the rationalizations we prefer, the thirst of one human being for another can be so--humbling--but I preferred to think of it as fate. And then mad desire. Anything but a fortress built on the back of a whim...How much easier to say there is no coincidence, and certainly no mistakes, and carry on to our destruction in defense of...how shall I put it? My idea of myself. One will sacrifice anything for that. ~ Laura Dietz

Six years is a long time. To leave the fans with their hands in the air and to come back six years later, and the people still have their hands in the air, that's nothing but God. I'm standing in a position that's so humbling. ~ Mystikal

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. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history progressed, they came to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs. In one humbling experiment, people were asked to evaluate how well they understood the workings of an ordinary zip. Most people confidently replied that they understood them very well – after all, they use zips all the time. They were then asked to describe in as much detail as possible all the steps involved in the zip's operation. Most had no idea.2 This is what Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach have termed 'the knowledge illusion'. We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

To go to hospitals and see people fight and overcome cystic fibrosis or cancer or any number of illnesses is to see courage that is humbling. And athletes constantly need to be humbled. ~ Dale Murphy

It is very humbling to see my own character defects in someone who annoys me. At the end of the day, I realize they have actually prompted positive change in me. ~ Auliq Ice

In my own book-signings, I find humility. It's always humbling when people go out of their way to come visit with me and by some of my books. ~ Nicholas Trandahl

The Human tendency, largely driven by ego, is to believe we can do it all ... It maybe humbling to admit there are only a few things you do really well ... you will free yourself to focus on those things which will lead to greater personal success and significance. ~ Bob Buford

When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain. Put the time in. Hear your mistakes. Yeah, it sucks, it's humbling, it makes you want to throw the guitar out the window. But if you work on your mistakes, they'll eventually go away, and you'll become a strong player. ~ John Petrucci

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. ~ Criss Jami

In short, chronological connectivity puts us in touch with the holy. It is at once humbling and exhilarating. I say this as someone who has never followed any formal religious practice. Connection with the past and the future is a pathway that charms us in the direction of sanity and grace. ~ James Howard Kunstler

Sometimes you give birth to something or you're part of a team that gives birth to an idea, and it grows and has a whole life of its own, and you feel grateful. It's just so humbling. ~ Glen Hansard

Rows and rows of books lined the shelves and I let my eyes linger on the sturdy spines, thinking how human books were, so full of ideas and images, worlds imagined, worlds perceived; full of fingerprints and sudden laughter and the sighs of readers, too. It was humbling to consider all these authors, struggling with this word or that phrase, recording their thoughts for people they'd never meet. In that same way, the detritus of the boxes was humbling - receipts, jotted notes, photos with no inscriptions, all of it once held together by the fabric of lives now finished, gone. ~ Kim Edwards

We are a vibrant first-world country, but we have a humbling third-world memory. ~ Mary McAleese

Marriage is one of the most humbling, sanctifying journeys you will ever be a part of. It forces us to wrestle with our selfishness and pride. But it also gives us a platform to display love and commitment. ~ Francis Chan

If spirituality is the sense of awe and humility in the face of the creation, what could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble and the cosmologists, and the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists. ~ Michael Shermer

It is humbling to realize that what you hate (the most) about someone is actually what they love (the most) about themselves. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Nature's arena has a way of humbling and energizing us. ~ Scott Jurek

Submission is not in the bowing of heads or knees but in the humbling of your whole being (spirit, soul and body) ~ Ikechukwu Izuakor

The one thing she'd been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices. ~ Julie Anne Long

Playwriting, like begging in India, is an honorable but humbling profession. ~ Moss Hart

nine of every ten cells in our bodies belong not to us, but to these microbial species (most of them residents of our gut), and that 99 percent of the DNA we're carrying around belongs to those microbes. Some scientists, trained in evolutionary biology, began looking at the human individual in a humbling new light: as a kind of superorganism, a community of several hundred coevolved and interdependent species. ~ Michael Pollan

Rahab pondered the thought. "I don't suppose a pomegranate or a fig as an offering would have the same effect on our hearts. To see an innocent life taken in our place is much more humbling than offering Adonai fruit. ~ Jill Eileen Smith

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. ~ Si Robertson