Humility.—It is from out the depths of our humility that the height of our destiny looks grandest. Let me truly feel that in myself I am nothing, and at once, through every inlet of my soul, God comes in, and is everything in me.—Mountford.
Should any ask me, What is the first thing in religion? I would reply, The first, second, and third thing therein, nay all, is humility.—St. Augustine.
Epaminondas, that heathen captain, finding himself lifted up in the day of his public triumph, the next day went drooping and hanging down his head; but being asked what was the reason of his so great dejection, made answer: "Yesterday I felt myself transported with vainglory, therefore I chastise myself for it to-day."—Plutarch.
In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.—Franklin.
Believe me, the much-praised lambs of humility would not bear themselves so meekly if they but possessed tigers' claws.—Heinrich Heine.
Trees that, like the poplar, lift upwards all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lowlier droop their bows.—Bulwer-Lytton.
If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with God and man, be very low in thine own eyes. Forgive thyself little and others much.—Archbishop Leighton.
Humor.—The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be humorous is merely witty.—Coleridge.
The oil and wine of merry meeting.—Washington Irving.
These poor gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for bedlam; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most boundless freedoms.—Addison.