Andrew Murray Humility Quotes: The Best Lines, Chapter by Chapter
Andrew Murray's Humility: The Beauty of Holiness is a small book that people underline heavily. Below are the lines most worth knowing, quoted word for word from the text in TheWay Library, with the chapter each one comes from so you can read it in context. First, though, the idea that holds them all together.
The root of every virtue: what Murray means
Murray uses this phrase in the first chapter, and he means it plainly.
Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is, from the very nature of things, the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue.
Humility, chapter 1
Notice his definition. Humility is the place of entire dependence on God. It isn't a low opinion of yourself or a habit of putting yourself down. It is the creature's true position: receiving everything from God, moment by moment, and keeping nothing as its own. Murray calls it the root because every other grace grows out of that position. Faith, love, patience and joy all depend on letting God be God in us. Pride does the opposite, so in the very next paragraph he calls pride the root of every sin and evil.
He says the same thing a few paragraphs later, and again in the preface and in chapter 3.
Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure.
Humility, chapter 1
The root of all virtue and grace, of all faith and acceptable worship, is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and bow in deepest humility to wait upon God for it.
Humility, chapter 3
By the last chapter he gives humility another name.
Reckon humility to be indeed the mother-virtue, your very first duty before God, the one perpetual safeguard of the soul, and set your heart upon it as the source of all blessing.
Humility, chapter 12
That is why Murray grieves that the church gives humility so little attention. If it is the root, then a church that neglects it will see weak fruit everywhere else, however busy it is. For the whole argument chapter by chapter, see our summary of Humility, or read the book free.
Quotes on humility and God
It is simply the sense of entire nothingness, which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all.
Humility, chapter 1
His humility is our salvation. His salvation is our humility.
Humility, chapter 1
It is pride that made redemption needful; it is from our pride we need above everything to be redeemed.
Humility, chapter 2
Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature; the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness, to win and serve and save us.
Humility, chapter 2
He was nothing, that God might be all.
Humility, chapter 3
That last line is Murray's summary of the sayings in John's Gospel where Jesus says He does nothing of Himself. In Murray's view, the humility of Jesus is not mainly about His treatment of people. It is His total giving of Himself to the Father, and His humility toward people flows from that.
Quotes on the way down
Humiliation is the only ladder to honour in God's kingdom.
Humility, chapter 4
Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds the creature abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.
Humility, chapter 4
We have our pride from another, from Adam; we must have our humility from Another too.
Humility, chapter 5
Chapter 5 is honest about the disciples. They had left everything for Jesus and still argued about who was greatest. Murray says no teaching and no effort could fix that. Only Christ living in them, from Pentecost on, made them humble.
Quotes on humility in daily life
Humility before God is nothing if not proved in humility before men.
Humility, chapter 6
It is in our most unguarded moments that we really show and see what we are.
Humility, chapter 6
The humble man feels no jealousy or envy. He can praise God when others are preferred and blessed before him.
Humility, chapter 6
Let us look upon every brother who tries or vexes us, as God's means of grace, God's instrument for our purification, for our exercise of the humility Jesus our Life breathes within us.
Humility, chapter 6
Quotes on humility and holiness
Humility is the bloom and the beauty of holiness.
Humility, chapter 7
The chief mark of counterfeit holiness is its lack of humility.
Humility, chapter 7
There is no pride so dangerous, because none so subtle and insidious, as the pride of holiness.
Humility, chapter 7
Murray wrote these lines to people who were seeking a deeper Christian life. He never mocks that desire. He warns that it can quietly turn into a sense of being further along than others, and that the only sure sign of God's presence is the disappearance of self.
Quotes on sin, grace and faith
It is not sin, but grace, that will make me indeed know myself a sinner, and make the sinner's place of deepest self-abasement the place I never leave.
Humility, chapter 8
Being occupied with self, even amid the deepest self-abhorrence, can never free us from self.
Humility, chapter 8
Pride renders faith impossible.
Humility, chapter 9
We shall learn that faith and humility are at root one, and that we never can have more of true faith than we have of true humility …
Humility, chapter 9
Quotes on death to self, happiness and exaltation
The death to self is not your work, it is God's work.
Humility, chapter 10
Self can never cast out self, even in the regenerate man.
Humility, chapter 10
The highest lesson a believer has to learn is humility.
Humility, chapter 11
We shall find that the deepest humility is the secret of the truest happiness, of a joy that nothing can destroy.
Humility, chapter 11
The exaltation God promises is not, cannot be, any external thing apart from Himself: all that He has to give or can give is only more of Himself, Himself to take more complete possession.
Humility, chapter 12
Humility is the taking our place in God's presence to be nothing but a mote dwelling in the sunlight of His love.
Humility, chapter 12
How to use these quotes
New to Murray himself? Start with our short life of who Andrew Murray was.
These lines are strongest when you read them where they sit. Each chapter is short enough for one sitting, and Murray builds every one on a passage of Scripture printed at its head. A good way to read the book is one chapter a day for twelve days, praying the closing lines of each chapter back to God. Start with chapter 1 in the reader.
Murray didn't stop at humility. The same picture of the believer as an empty vessel for God to fill runs through his addresses on surrender. See our summary of Absolute Surrender and what Andrew Murray meant by absolute surrender. And when you're ready, read Humility: The Beauty of Holiness from start to finish.