Henry David Thoreau Humility Quotations

Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they have measured the strength of man. They will not boast; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them have the few poor comforts they can keep. Humility is still a very human virtue. They look back on life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present.

I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.

Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

We saw men haying far off in the meadow, their heads waving like the grass which they cut. In the distance the wind seemed to bend all alike.

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.