Basil of Caesarea Quotes

I better be humble. I'm always checking myself.

I take very seriously this notion that my highest job is to live a better life, all the time and to the best of my ability. I need to monitor my own progress - take my own inventory - and clean my own closet. I am trying to do all that.

We live in a culture that encourages us to be big about ourselves, and I think the starting point of trying to build inner goodness is to be a little bit smaller about yourself.

I can talk about humility, but I'm not humble. I mean, if you say, I'm humble, you've just contradicted yourself. But I'm trying to be, man, I'm trying so hard.

There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world.

'What am I missing?' is a much more important question than 'How cool am I?'

If you are not egotistical, you will welcome the opportunity to learn more.

The key thing is you can be the only person, your own critic.

True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.

I can always see what I've done wrong. I'm always learning. I'm the perennial student.

I have to keep testing myself.

Everybody needs to lower his ego.

Improving, for me, is quite natural as I'm always critical of myself.

I don't see myself as a world-class player.

I'll never praise myself, because I think there's always improvement to be made.

If you desire to know or learn anything to your advantage, then take delight in being unknown and unregarded. A true understanding and humble estimate of oneself is the highest and most valuable of all lessons.

I guess I am conscious of my weaknesses, and I think pacing is probably my biggest. I don't know if I think the clarity thing is actually a weakness. It was a stylistic choice.

Force yourself to be humble, until it becomes second nature. Then it will be an unconscious activity.

Humility in this business [acting] isn't just a matter of being polite, it's kind of a matter of survival. You can't ever afford to think that you're the bee's knees, because you could always afford to be better. You have to always be searching for something better.

Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought.

If we can stop, listen, and think about what others are seeing in us, we have a great opportunity. We can compare the self that we want to be with the self that we are presenting to the rest of the world. We can then begin to make the real changes that are needed to close the gap between our stated values and our actual behavior.

People become concerned with being more humble than other people.

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.

One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.

There is no end to one's faults. To think of them makes one humble.