The Humbling Quotes

#1. One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.

John Irving

#2. The only time I ever believed that I knew all there was to know about beekeeping was the first year I was keeping them. Every year since I've known less and less and have accepted the humbling truth that bees know more about making honey than I do.

Sue Hubbell

#3. 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

#4. Through the humbling dispensations of Divine Providence, men are sometimes fitted for his service.

John Woolman

#5. I think the one thing that athletics prepared me for that's been more beneficial than anything has been the humbling times.

Geoff Stults

#6. We should've been better, more disciplined. We made untimely mistakes defensively, as a group. This is really humbling for us. After winning the Stanley Cup, we got brought back down to earth, hard. Maybe the humbling is good for us in the long run.

Steve Yzerman

#7. Submission is not in the bowing of heads or knees but in the humbling of your whole being (spirit, soul and body)

Ikechukwu Izuakor

#8. Again and again, I've undergone the humbling experience of first
lamenting how badly something sucks, then only much later having the
crucial insight that its not sucking wouldn't have been a Nash
equilibrium.

Scott Aaronson

#9. 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

#10. It was the hardest year of my life. It was humbling. I was a fish out of water.

Warren Sapp

#11. Hiestand from Lead User Concepts. Thank you so much for the huge (and often humbling) insights that your and our field experimentation has provided! I am also eager to acknowledge and thank my family for the

Eric Von Hippel

#12. The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.

Wendell Berry

#13. Why do we procrastinate leaving? The denial phase is a humbling one. It takes a while to come to terms with our miserable luck. Rowley puts it this way: 'Fires only happen to other people.' We have a tendency to believe that everything is OK because, well, it almost always has been before.

Amanda Ripley

#14. Life experiences can, at times, be quite humbling, but you learn from them. But I like the changes in my life and what kind of person they've made me into. I'm very open, not as judgmental as I was in my twenties, and a lot more compassionate.

Donna Air

#15. But the world had its layers. To the simple it offered simplicity. To the wise it offered profundity. And the only measure of courage worth acknowledging was found in accepting where one stood in that scheme - in hard, unwavering honesty, no matter how humbling.

Steven Erikson

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. On behalf of the entire Lionsgate team, it is a tremendous honor and deeply humbling to join the elite group of recipients previously honored with the Milestone Award.

Jon Feltheimer

#19. Each of us is accountable to God for our personal holiness. Humbling yourself by letting others into your life and allowing them to help you and hold you accountable will release the sanctifying, transforming grace of God in your life.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

#20. 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.

Michael Emerson

#21. I'd get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It's a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.

Sara Blakely

#22. It is radically humbling to confess that the source of all our joy resides outside ourselves.

John Piper

#23. Very bad things follow when we kid ourselves that we're naturally rational, rather than the more humbling truth: naturally emotional.

Robert Webb

#24. There is something humbling about knowing that an entity capable of moving mountains and reshaping continents still takes the time to tend to the smallest patch of dirt. Little things matter. Footsteps matter.

William Ritter

#25. Being grateful is humbling. If we appreciate the simple things as well as our achievements and a simple hello from someone else and show courtesy to others, we will certainly express our gratitude to God.

Ellen J. Barrier

#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.

Hugh Shelton

#27. It makes you crazy. Waiting for someone to love you, to come to you and only you, to choose you like you've already chosen, is the most degrading, debasing, demoralising ... and yet, sweet, sweet pain there is. It's as humbling aas it is humiliating. But yes, there is a sweet side.

Pamela Ribon

#28. After thinking carefully about how I can best help my fellow Minnesotans, I have decided to not seek election for a different office in 2014. The warm encouragement from many people to run for U.S. senator or the governorship was deeply humbling.

Erik Paulsen

#29. 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

#30. 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.

Amy Robach

#31. God is more concerned with conforming me to the likeness of His Son than leaving me in my comfort zones. God is more interested in inward qualities than outward circumstances - things like refining my faith, humbling my heart, cleaning up my thought life and strengthening my character.

Joni Eareckson Tada

#32. 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

#33. To do even the most humbling tasks to the glory of God takes the Almighty God Incarnate working in us. Oswald Chambers

Oswald Chambers

#34. 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

#35. In the inconceivably vast and humbling unknown called "everything", is a supreme inter-communication called, spirituality.

Bryant McGill

#36. The bravery shown by Azza Suleiman who dared to stand up for another woman who was being beaten, and paid a heavy price in doing so, is both awe-inspiring and humbling.

Vivienne Westwood

#37. 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

#38. You don't like to see your guys take the field without you because it makes you feel like, man, maybe they really don't need me out there, which is kind of humbling.

Tom Brady

#39. 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

#40. I'm so thrilled to have won the RITA. The award is particularly special because it is given by other romance authors. It's deeply rewarding and not a little humbling to be honored by such a talented tribe of writers.

Sarah MacLean

#41. 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

#42. I have been a fan of Jesse Terry since the first time I heard him. He's a humble - and humbling - talent.

Tony Arata

#43. Now I have a tiny bit of knowledge, but more interestingly, a bit of an awareness of my vast ignorance. This is humbling, and at the same time exciting, because it shows how amazing this world is.

Leo Babauta

#44. 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

#45. I loved acting when I was doing it, but getting the jobs I didn't understand because I'd never had to do it. That was a difficult lesson for me. It was very humbling and very bizarre.

Mariel Hemingway

#46. Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action ...

Aristotle.

#47. 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.

James Harden

#48. Humbling was a nice word, Rahel thought. Humbling along without a care in the world

Arundhati Roy

#49. Do you really want happiness? Then you will have to pay the price of humbling yourself at the foot of the cross and receiving Christ as Savior.

Billy Graham

#50. Writing is an extremely rewarding and humbling process, and I've learned to go with it, that even if it feels absolutely impossible, I will find a way to tell the next story.

Marie Lu

#51. The implied trust was humbling. He didn't deserve it, but then again, he wouldn't betray it either.

Emma Wildes

#52. 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

#53. I have found the study of organisms to be a truly exciting experience, always interesting and sometimes humbling.

Edward T. Hall

#54. I was very excited to meet Amanda Seyfried. She is one of the most humbling human beings you will ever meet. She deserves success.

Cory Hardrict

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. As far as being a 'player's player,' you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it ... it's a humbling experience ...

Mark Knopfler

#58. Parents have subtle ways of humbling you, of reminding you of your origins, perhaps by showing up at the moment of your greatest glory and reminding you where you came from and demonstrating that you still have some of it between your toes.

Frank Pittman

#59. 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.

Patrick Rothfuss

#60. All his reckless, whimsical, sensual testing of the world throughout the years had been a search for what he knew with her. Passion and peace. Laughter and combat and friendship. God, but he loved her. It was an immensely humbling, enormous, radiant thing.

Julie Anne Long

#61. 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.

Michael Giles

#62. Motherhood is a hallowed place because children aren't commonplace. Co-laboring over the sculpting of souls is a sacred vocation, a humbling privilege. Never forget.

Ann Voskamp

#63. 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

#64. Forgiveness requires a sacrifice of pride. A humbling of the spirit. An increase of selfless love. A time when you allow others' feelings to be more important than your own.

Ann H. Gabhart

#65. Our humbling experience of sin is a mark of maturity. To be humbled by sin is to be marked by grace. Christian holiness is not the eradication of the sin nature, at least not on this side of eternity.

Tony Reinke

#66. 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

#67. It's great being your own boss, but then, you know, you make your own mistakes, you know, and you own them. You know, so it's empowering, and it's also humbling along the way.

Ani DiFranco

#68. It was a humbling thought, to realize the weight of the world could not break him, but the loss of her could have.

Joey W. Hill

#69. Fashion is a humbling topic. Because it is aesthetically complex and economically challenging, the recipe for successful designs is never guaranteed.

Frederic Godart

#70. It's not the act of arrogance to draw, it's humbling - you must use your God-given talent. And of all the people I sketch, in most cases I feel I have to measure up to the subject.

LeRoy Neiman

#71. The fact that I am still alive, when so many friends and others climbing the 8000ers have died is humbling ... It is only death that has stopped many mountaineers from achieving the full tally of 14.

Alan Hinkes

#72. I feel persecuted by the power of mother nature, who dwarfs my farm with her unpredictable character. Yet I cling to a spirit of survival. I observe others, my family and neighbors, as we brace for the storm with a humbling humility.

David Mas Masumoto

#73. 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

#74. We readily acknowledge that it is very humbling to the proud heart of the creature to behold all mankind in the hand of God as the clay in the potter's hand, yet this is precisely how the Scriptures of truth represent the case.

Arthur W. Pink

#75. CENTER-OF-THE-UNIVERSE, that was me entering the workplace. And I woke up one day soon after that, struggling at the bottom of a vast ocean. But I needed that. Humbling experiences are part of growing - they help shape us and mold our character. Welcome to life.

Yay Padua-Olmedo

#76. 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

#77. I held the power to crush him right at this moment. The knowledge was humbling and terrifying. Didn't he know I'd rather drown myself in the ocean than use that power?

Natasha Boyd

#78. Life is so humbling, when we slow down and witness the gifts.

Bryant McGill

#79. The soul's true greatness is in loving God and in humbling oneself in His presence, completely forgetting oneself and believing oneself to be nothing; because the Lord is great, but He is well-pleased only with the humble; He always opposes the proud.

Mary Faustina Kowalska

#80. When I go home, the first thing I do is wash the dishes. It feels real and it feels like home and it's humbling, it's something you don't do when you're living in a hotel, everyone cleaning up after you.

V V Brown

#81. The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don't create the new life, they only bear it. This is why birth is such a humbling experience. The new mom weeps in awe at the little miracle in her arms. She knows it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her.

Steven Pressfield

#82. VARANASI TRAFFIC is shambolic. It's a humbling reminder that the British drive on the left side of the road and we (Indians) drive on what's left of the road. "The traffic is not terrible at all," wrote novelist Geoff Dyer. "It is beyond any idea of terribleness. It is beyond any idea of traffic.

Guru Madhavan

#83. 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

#84. 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

#85. Like life, golf can be humbling. However, little good comes from brooding about mistakes we've made. The next shot, in golf or in life, is the big one.

Grantland Rice

#86. It's humbling to think that all animals, including human beings, are parasites of the plant world.

Isaac Asimov

#87. Humbling as it may be, for all our vaunted brain power, humans emerge as nothing special in the sensory sweepstakes. Our senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are middling, at best.

Jonathan Balcombe

#88. Making movies is really hard, and it can be humbling. And once you put them out into the world, you can't control how people will respond to it.

James Ponsoldt

#89. We put out press releases to tell people what had happened to me and that I had a large weight gain but a lot of people still didn't know. The ones that didn't know were floored. That was a real humbling experience for me.

Lou Gramm

#90. Photography is humbling, it really is, and it really allows for me to atone for some of the missteps I've made throughout the course of my life.

Jamel Shabazz

#91. 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

#92. The immensity of the universe with the vastness of space and uncountable heavenly bodies is so outside our control and power. What is man compared to such awesome magnificence? It is a humbling experience to note one's insignificance.

Sharon Lathan

#93. It's humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked.

Gillian Flynn

#94. 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

#95. At every show, people I've never seen approach me with the same story: how experiencing my work changed their lives and made them artists or writers or law enforcers or attorneys, believe it or not. It's very humbling and gratifying.

Jim Steranko

#96. 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

#97. 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.

Oswald Chambers

#98. Would that not be the final humbling of the human condition? That the trees and birds, the fox and the rabbit, the wolf and the deer ... reach a point at which they do not even notice us, as we are transformed.

Jeff VanderMeer

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

Michael Holbrook

#100. 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