"You are just as capable of making a mistake as anyone else. By insisting too eagerly upon a small right, you may turn it into a wrong against yourself and also against your neighbor"
About this Quote
Lawrence G. Lovasik urges a balance that many forget: the humility to recognize our own fallibility and the prudence to weigh the cost of being right. The opening reminder that you are as capable of error as anyone else strips away moral vanity. It asks for a posture of self-distrust, not to paralyze judgment, but to soften it with mercy. From that humility flows the main warning: when you push too hard to vindicate a trivial claim, the zeal itself can twist a right into a wrong.
The phrase small right matters. It points to correctness that is technically valid but morally minor: the urge to correct a trivial mistake, to assert a petty entitlement, to win an argument because the facts are on your side. Lovasik does not deny that truth and rights matter; he insists that the way and the why matter too. Moral goods have a hierarchy. Charity, peace, and the dignity of the other often outrank the satisfaction of being factually correct in a small instance. If your insistence humiliates your neighbor, hardens your own heart, or disrupts communal harmony, the net result is harm. In that sense you wrong yourself by nurturing pride and impatience, and you wrong your neighbor by placing your victory over their good.
This insight echoes Lovasik’s broader spiritual counsel on kindness and self-mastery. As a Catholic priest and author known for practical moral advice, he emphasizes that virtues come as a set: truth without charity easily becomes cruelty, justice without temperance lapses into vengeance. Prudence asks, What will this insistence produce in me and in the other? Proportionality asks, Is the issue significant enough to justify the friction it will cause?
The guidance fits daily life and modern discourse alike. Exercise rights with gentleness. Correct with humility. Measure not only whether you can press a point, but whether you should. Sometimes the highest fidelity to truth is to let a small matter pass for the sake of a greater good.
The phrase small right matters. It points to correctness that is technically valid but morally minor: the urge to correct a trivial mistake, to assert a petty entitlement, to win an argument because the facts are on your side. Lovasik does not deny that truth and rights matter; he insists that the way and the why matter too. Moral goods have a hierarchy. Charity, peace, and the dignity of the other often outrank the satisfaction of being factually correct in a small instance. If your insistence humiliates your neighbor, hardens your own heart, or disrupts communal harmony, the net result is harm. In that sense you wrong yourself by nurturing pride and impatience, and you wrong your neighbor by placing your victory over their good.
This insight echoes Lovasik’s broader spiritual counsel on kindness and self-mastery. As a Catholic priest and author known for practical moral advice, he emphasizes that virtues come as a set: truth without charity easily becomes cruelty, justice without temperance lapses into vengeance. Prudence asks, What will this insistence produce in me and in the other? Proportionality asks, Is the issue significant enough to justify the friction it will cause?
The guidance fits daily life and modern discourse alike. Exercise rights with gentleness. Correct with humility. Measure not only whether you can press a point, but whether you should. Sometimes the highest fidelity to truth is to let a small matter pass for the sake of a greater good.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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