John C. Danforth Quotes

However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction. He ought rather to be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of.

Our awareness of God starts where self-sufficiency ends.

our quarrels with the world are like our quarrels with God: no matter how right we are, we are wrong.

He that neither knows himself nor thinks he can learn of others is not fit for company.

The favor of God does not bless self-promotion

The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world.

What will it cost [a person] to be a true Christian? It will cost him his self-righteousn ess. He must cast away all pride and high thoughts, and conceit of his own goodness. He must be content to go to heaven as a poor sinner, saved only by free grace, and owing all to the merit and righteousness of another.

If we must live with a perpetual sense that the world and the men in it are greater than we and too much for us, let it be the measure of our virtue that we know this and seek no comfort.

People who parade their holiness are operating dangerously close to the sin of pride.

My temperament is not inclined toward more self-promotion than is absolutely necessary for my professional well-being.

Truly, this world can go on without us, if we would but think so.

Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.

What is the vanity of the vainest man compared with the vanity which the most modest possesses when, in the midst of nature and the world, he feels himself to be man!

When it comes to understanding and appreciating grace, our biggest problem is our so-called goodness...not our self-perceived badness.

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

I am able to stay humble because I recognize that God has truly blessed me; I can't say that enough. I also understand without Him, all of this wouldn't be possible.

Some one called Sir Richard Steele the "vilest of mankind," and he retorted with proud humility, "It would be a glorious world if I were.

When you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble.

There is always the fear of self-righteousness possessing us, the fear of arrogating to ourselves a superiority that we do not possess.

My intentions were not to fascinate the world with my personality.

I ask permission to be like everybody else,like the rest of the world and what's more, like anybody else:I beg you, with all my heart,if we are talking about me, since we are talking about me,please resist blasting the trumpet during my visitand resign yourselves to my quiet absence.

As long as a man is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God. Such a man plans out for himself a position, an occasion, a work, which shall bring him final salvation, but which will not.

...but I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so--modesty--are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.

I know the world expects me to have superpowers, and it'll be quite a disappointment. But I just play myself.

Keep it, keep it!" I answered. "You are very welcome to it! It is only a couple of small things, doesn't amount to anything—about everything I own in the world.