Warren Wiersbe

Meekness is not to be confused with weakness: the meek are not simply submissive because they lack the resources to be anything else. Meekness is quite compatible with great strength and ability as humans measure strength, but whatever strength or weakness the meek person has is accompanied by humility and a genuine dependence on God. True meekness may be a quality of the strong, those who could assert themselves but choose not to do so.

Leon Morris
Matthew, Eerdmans, 1992, p. 98.

The man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests. He is not always on the defensive... To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending... The man who is truly meek never pities himself, he is never sorry for himself. He never talks to himself and says, “You are having a hard time, how unkind these people are not to understand you.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, IVP, 200, p. 69.

The higher people are in the favor of God, the more tender they are.

Martin Luther

Leadership, v. 8, n. 2

The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto.

A.W. Tozer

Rudeness, yelling, anger, and swearing are a weak man’s imitation of strength.

Author Unknown

Perhaps no grace is less prayed for, or less cultivated than gentleness. Indeed it is considered rather as belonging to natural disposition or external manners, than as a Christian virtue; and seldom do we reflect that not to be gentle is sin.

Bethune

The Fruit of the Spirit, 1839, p. 100.

Gentleness is an active trait, describing the manner in which we should treat others. Meekness is a passive trait, describing the proper Christian response when others mistreat us.

Jerry Bridges

Both gentleness and meekness are born of power, not weakness. There is a pseudo-gentleness that is effeminate, and there is a pseudo-meekness that is cowardly. But a Christian is to be gentle and meek because those are Godlike virtues… We should never be afraid, therefore, that the gentleness of the Spirit means weakness of character. It takes strength, God’s strength, to be truly gentle.

Jerry Bridges

Tenderness will win hearts so hardened that nothing else can move them. Truth spoken in love goes directly to the heart of the hearer and calls forth a kind response… It overcomes prejudice and hardness… It melts and wins where the most logical argument, the most terrible warning, and the severest threatening would produce no more impression than the falling of dew upon a block of granite.

Wilson T. Hogg

A Hand-Book of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, Free Methodist Publishing House, 1919, p. 342-343.

The meek are those who quietly submit themselves to God, to His Word and to His rod, who follow His directions, and comply with His designs, and are gentle toward all men.

Matthew Henry