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~ (n): An office or position that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue.

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Tag Archives: Pride

C. S. Lewis: How to Spot a Truly Humble Person

06 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Religion

≈ Comments Off on C. S. Lewis: How to Spot a Truly Humble Person

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C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Humility, Mere Christianity, Pride, religion, sin

C.S. Lewis

“Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably, all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too.  At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed. […]

Pleasure in being praised is not Pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says, ‘Well done,’ are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, ‘I have pleased him; all is well,’ to thinking, ‘What a fine person I must be to have done it.’ The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom.”

__________

Excerpted from chapter 8 of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.

More on the subject:

  • What Kipling’s “Recessional” can teach us about national hubris
  • A 79-year-old Ben Franklin summarizes his life advice: “Watch your head.”
  • Einstein’s eccentric and humble daily routine

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Watch Your Head: Wisdom from a 79-Year-Old Ben Franklin

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in History

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Aging, America, American Founding, American History, Ben Franklin, Cotton Mather, founding fathers, Humility, letter, letters, Maturity, Old Age, Pride, Samuel Mather, Wisdom, Youth

Ben Franklin

“You mention your being in your seventy-eighth year; I am in my seventy-ninth; we are grown old together. It is now more than sixty years since I left Boston, but I remember well both your father and grandfather, having heard them both in the pulpit and seen them in their houses.

The last time I saw your father [Cotton Mather] was in the beginning of 1724, when I visited him after my first trip to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library, and on my taking leave showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage, which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly towards him, when he said hastily, ‘Stoop, stoop!’ I did not understand him, till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed any occasion of giving instruction, and upon this he said to me, ‘You are young, and have the world before you; STOOP as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps.’ This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it, when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by their carrying their heads too high.”

__________

Benjamin Franklin, writing in a letter to his friend Samuel Mather on May 12th, 1784. (Thank you, Mary, for bringing this to my attention.)

The above section is rightly one of the most cited bits of personal writing from Franklin, though the conclusion of this same note is also worth parsing. It reads:

“Let us preserve our reputation, by performing our engagements; our credit, by fulfilling our contracts; and our friends, by gratitude and kindness: for we know not how soon we may again have occasion for all of them.

With great and sincere esteem,
I have the honour to be,
REV. SIR,
Your most obedient and
Most humble servant,
B. FRANKLIN”

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