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| 1874 Edition of the Imitation of Christ from France |
Why desirest If thou wilt know and learn anything with profit love to be thyself unknown and to be counted for nothing. That is the highest and most profitable lesson, when a man truly knowth and judgeth lowly of himself. To account nothing of one's self, and to think always kindly and highly of others, this is great and perfect wisdom. Even shouldest thou see thy neighbor sin openly or grievously, yet thou oughtest not to reckon thyself better than he, for thou knowest not how long thou shalt keep think integrity. All of us are weak and frail; hold thou no man more frail than thyself.I've found that in life that people who think they know everything can't learn anything new. They have closed minds. You can't learn unless you can admit that you don't know. Vanity is what causes people to be unable to admit that they don't know something. Many people I still meet can't reveal that they don't know something already and try to cover it up if something comes up that they don't know anything about. As though that is some kind of embarrassment. You can always tell what people know and don't know and if they are covering. Covering one's weaknesses is vanity. Vanity exists in proportion of how much ego one still has. People who have a large amount of vanity have large egos and lack spirituality. The ego must be outgrown and that is the purpose of religion.