God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
–James 4:6 (KJV)–

Let the righteous smite me;
it shall be a kindness:
and let him reprove me;
it shall be an excellent oil,
which shall not break my head.
–Psalm 141:5 (KJV)–

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We are so tender—that a man can scarcely touch us but we are hurt. We are so high-minded, that a man who is not versed in complimenting and skilled in flattery, can scarcely tell how to speak to us, without us being offended at some word, which our proud hearts will fasten on and take as injurious to our honor…If we speak to ministers against their errors or their sins, if we do not honor them and reverence them, and speak as smoothly as we are able to speak, yes, if we mix not commendations with our reproofs, and if the applause is not predominant, so as to drown all the force of the reproof, they take it as almost an insufferable injury! –Richard Baxter

What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days. Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himself out of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bible itself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he finds there. –A. W. Tozer

Thomas C. Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity, p. 154.

Thomas Boys, The Suppressed Evidence, p. 125.

Bernard of Clairvaux, The Twelve Degrees of Humility and of Pride.