Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.
-- Proverbs 27:1-2 (ESV)
Augustine, Confessions X.38.63:
I am poor and needy, yet better am I while in secret groanings I displease myself, and seek for Your mercy, until what is lacking in me be renewed and made complete, even up to that peace of which the eye of the proud is ignorant. Yet the word which proceeds out of the mouth, and actions known to men, have a most dangerous temptation from the love of praise, which, for the establishing of a certain excellency of our own, gathers together solicited suffrages. It tempts, even when within I reprove myself for it, on the very ground that it is reproved; and often man glories more vainly of the very scorn of vain-glory.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity:
Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
Reflection from the desert tradition:
The Desert Fathers understood that the moment a man believes he has attained humility, he has lost it. Abba Moses said, "Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." Not because the cell contains knowledge, but because solitude strips away every mask a man hides behind -- his competence, his reputation, his plans for tomorrow. What remains when all that is taken is what is real. The man who cannot sit alone with God has not yet begun to know himself. And the man who boasts of what tomorrow will bring has already forgotten who holds tomorrow.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, I.1.3:
What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity? For verily it is not deep words that make a man holy and upright; it is a good life which maketh a man dear to God. I had rather feel contrition than be skilful in the definition thereof. If thou knewest the whole Bible, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what should all this profit thee without the love and grace of God? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, save to love God, and Him only to serve.
What have you been building in your own strength today -- and when will you admit it is dust?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.32:
The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow? Only one thing, philosophy.
St. Clair, MI -- Thursday, July 23
Sunny, high near 77°F, low around 55°F. North northwest wind around 5 mph. Tonight: mostly clear, southeast wind 2 mph. A dry, bright day -- no rain in the forecast.