The evolution of humility (G. K. Chesterton)

  Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man.  He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs… But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.  Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition.  Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be.  A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.  Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself.  The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason… For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Image source:  Sadao Watanabe, The Washing of the Feet of the Disciples, 
https://www.philipchircop.com/post/83010382490/washing-of-the-feet-it-has-been-said-that

Quotation source

Christ at work (Caryll Houselander)

  Sometimes it may seem to us that there is no purpose in our lives, that going day after day for years to this office or that school or factory is nothing else but waste and weariness. But it may be that God has sent us there because but for us, Christ would not be there.  If our being there means that Christ is there, that alone makes it worthwhile.

--Caryll Houselander,

The Reed of God

Image source:  Fritz Eichenberg, print, The Labor Cross, from The Catholic Worker (1954), http://sacredartpilgrim.com/collection/view/19

Quotation source

Anchored in the truth of who we are (Fr. Greg Boyle)

  If seen right, humility brings us to our true home.  It grounds us in putting first things recognizably first.  It anchors us in the truth of who we are.  We can acknowledge that it is good to be put in our place.  The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you’re smaller than yourself, Phillips Brooks writes, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature… Right-sizing is always easier said than done.

--Fr. Greg Boyle, Barking to the Choir

Image source:  https://justsinner.com/2017/06/21/anchored-in-truth/