Humiliation Quotes - page 7
Goethe, ... who lived through the struggle against Napoleon, was once asked how he had managed to exist during the days of shame, defeat, and humiliation. He replied: "I have nothing to complain of. Like one who, from the fastness of a cliff, gazes down on the raging sea, unable to help the ship-wrecked crew, but also out of the reach of the billows-according to Lucretius, a not unpleasant feeling-I have been standing in security, and have watched the fury of the storm passing by me.” ...
It was not only on the political combats and storms of his emasculate fellow-countrymen that Goethe looked down with indifference; to those troubles of the heart, which Rousseau's teaching had quickened, a philanthropic and educational enthusiasm, he was not merely apathetic ; he was positively hostile. ... "As of old Lutherdom, so now French ideals are forcing us away from a peaceful development of culture,” he used to say.
Oscar Levy
Actually we were brought up to ingratitude - a relentless training through which we were taught to find nothing whatever good in ourselves, whether natural or spiritual.. Conquering pride and conceit, they called it, practising humility, self-praise is no praise - all very well...Was pride really crushed by all this snubbing and humiliation? Was it not rather repressed...Worse still, we learnt this way to cultivate the devil's mirror eye of Hans Andersen's Snow Queen, over-vigilant, super-critical sight, sharpened to discover the worm in every bud, even the tiniest plant-louse! For if one practises this sort of discipline on oneself, day and night, it is asking too much - at any rate of a young girl - to judge one's neighbour by another yard-stick. All the time one's lynx-eyed consciousness remained on the alert, quick to pounce on everything negative - in you and in myself...Hans Andersen well knew how near this attitude is to blasphemy.
Ida Friederike Görres
Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a Boy feeding his Father's Sheep. The Boy was in very mean Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured Countenance, and as he sate by himself he sung. Hark, said Mr Greatheart, to what the Shepherd's boy saith. So they hearkened, and he said-
: He that is down needs fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble, ever shall
Have God to be his guide. I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such. Fulness to such a burthen is,
That go on pilgrimage;
HERE little, and HEREAFTER bliss,
Is best from age to age.
:* "The Shepherd Boy's Song", in Part II, Ch. VI : The Valley of Humiliation; comparable to: "I am not now in fortune's power: He that is down can fall no lower", Samuel Butler, Hudibras (1663), Part i, Canto iii, Line 877.
John Bunyan
In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.
Simone Weil
But in India, and in the countries which Islam has carved out of if, there is still a strong presence of an ideological drive to islamize India, and to make this clear by wresting all kinds of real and symbolical concessions from the Hindus, and by refusing them any concession whatsoever in return. The symbols of humiliation that have been inflicted on the Hindus, are being defended.
Koenraad Elst
He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven them.
G. K. Chesterton
If you are well off and can afford to spend ten or twenty-five dollars a day to hire some patient soul to listen to your troubles you can be readjusted to the crazy scheme of things and spare yourself the humiliation of becoming a Christian Scientist. You can have your ego trimmed or removed, as you wish, just like a wart or bunion.
Henry Miller
Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.
Paul Valéry
The admirers of Mr Pitt extol the reverberation he gave to our councils, the despondence he banished, the spirit he infused, the conquests he made, the security he affixed to our trade and plantations, the humiliation of France, the glory of Britain carried under his administration to a pitch at which it never had arrived-and all this is exactly true.
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
This minister is, as you know, the idol of the people, who regard him as the sole author of their success, and they do not have the same confidence in the other members of the council...Pitt joins to a reputation of superior spirit and talent, that of most exact honesty...with simple manners and dignity, he seeks neither display nor ostentation...He is very eloquent, specious, wheedling, and with all the chicanery of an experienced lawyer. He is courageous to the point of rashness, he supports his ideas in an impassioned fashion and with an invincible determination, seeking to have no other ambition than to elevate Britain to the highest point of glory and to abase France to the lowest degree of humiliation.
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
