- Choosing poverty
Nothing can ever so humble the soul as destitution and the subsistence of a beggar.
(p. 228)
- Choosing exile
There is such a thing as exile, an irrevocable renunciation of everything in one's familiar surroundings that hinders one from attaining the ideal of holiness. Exile is a disciplined heart, unheralded wisdom, an unpublicized understanding, a hidden life, masked ideals. It it unseen meditation, the striving to be humble, a wish for poverty, the longing for what is divine. It is an outpouring of love, a denial of vainglory, a depth of silence.
(p. 85)
- Practicing obedience
I once asked a very experienced father how humility is achieved through obedience. This was his answer: "A wisely obedient man, even if he is able to raise the dead, to have the gift of tears, to be free from conflict, will nevertheless judge that this happened through the prayer of his spiritual director; and so he remains a stranger and an alien to empty presumption. For how could he take pride in something that, by his reckoning, is due to the effort not of himself but of his director?"
(p. 107)
- Accepting humiliation
... he who refuses to accept a criticism, just or not, renounces his own salvation, while he who accepts it, hard or not though it may be, will soon have his sins forgiven.
(p. 106)
The Lord often humbles the vainglorious by causing some dishonor to befall them. And indeed the first step in overcoming vainglory is to remain silent and to accept dishonor gladly. The middle stage is to check every act of vainglory while it is still in thought. The end -- insofar as one may talk of an end to an abyss -- is to be able to accept humiliation before others without actually feeling it.
(p. 205)
- Rejecting the desire for public recognition
We will show ourselves true lovers of wisdom and of God if we stubbornly run away from all possibility of aggrandizement.
(p. 228)
- Rejecting a sense of personal achievement
It is sheer lunacy to imagine that one has deserved the gifts of God. You may be proud only of the achievements you had before the time of your birth. But anything after that, indeed the birth itself, is a gift from God. You may claim only those virtues in you that are there independently of your mind, for your mind was bestowed on you by God. And you may claim only those victories you achieved independently of the body, for the body too is not yours but a work of God.
(p. 209)
... we must be ever on guard against yielding to the mere thought that we have achieved any sort of good. We have to be really careful about this, in case it should be a trait within us, for if it is, then we have certainly failed.
(p. 252)
- Regarding others as superior to self
Those of us who wish to gain understanding must never stop examining ourselves and if in the perception of your soul you realize that your neighbor is superior to you in all respects, then the mercy of God is surely near at hand.
(p. 223)
Holy humility had this to say: "The one who loves me will not condemn someone, or pass judgment on anyone, or lord it over someone else, or show off his wisdom until he has been united with me..."
(p. 222)
- Acquiring self-knowledge
The man who has come to know himself with the full awareness of his soul has sown in good ground. However, anyone who has not sown in this way cannot expect humility to flower within him. And anyone who has acquired knowledge of self has come to understand the fear of the Lord, and walking with the help of this fear, he has arrived at the doorway of love. For humility is the door to the kingdom, opening up to those who come near.
(p. 223)
... the fruit of arrogance is a fall; but a fall is often an occasion of humility for those willing to profit by it.
(p. 176)
... full of passions and weakness as we are, let us take heart and let us in total confidence... confess to {Christ} our helplessness and our fragility. We will carry away more help than we deserve, if only we constantly push ourselves down into the depths of humility.
(p. 76)
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