Love Quote by Francis Quarles

A velvet-gloved warning: humility isn’t presented as saintly self-erasure but as social technology. Quarles is writing from a 17th-century England where piety was public, reputation was currency, and moral instruction doubled as survival advice. His “If thou desire” frames humility less as a private virtue than as a tactic for belonging in two courts at once: heaven and the neighborhood.

The bite is in the symmetry. “The proud heart... loves none but itself” isn’t just a theological diagnosis; it’s an interpersonal one. Pride becomes emotional isolation dressed up as superiority, a closed loop where the only admirer available is the self. Quarles turns pride into its own punishment: not fire-and-brimstone, just loneliness. That cynicism feels almost modern. He’s not betting on people suddenly becoming good; he’s betting on them wanting to be liked.

Then comes the hard-nosed claim: “Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.” “Enforces” is an arresting verb for a religious poet, suggesting pressure, leverage, even coercion. Humility, in this view, doesn’t persuade by argument (“reason”) or awe (“strength”) or moral credentials (“virtue”). It disarms. It gets past defenses because it refuses the contest. In a culture of status jostling, the humble person opts out of the duel, and that refusal becomes power.

The subtext is bracing: righteousness alone won’t win hearts; neither will being correct. If you want communion - divine or human - you must become approachable. Humility isn’t weakness here. It’s the only form of strength that doesn’t provoke a counterattack.