Pride

Pride is a lofty view of one's self or one's own. Pride often manifests itself as a high opinion of one's nation (national pride), ethnicity (ethnic pride), or appearance (vanity). Pride is considered a negative attribute by most philosophies and major world religions, but some philosophies consider it positive. The opposite of pride is humility.

• 'Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul:
  I think the Romans call it Stoicism.
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act I, sc. iv.

• Humilitas homines sanctis angelis similes facit, et superbia ex angelis demones facit.
  • It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.
  • Augustine of Hippo, as quoted in Superbia i in Thomas of Ireland's Manipulus florum (c. 1306).

• Pride leads us into traps. But patience... Patience brings great rewards.
  • Spoken by the character Krinn (played by Kirk Acevedo, in Star Trek: Picard episode "Imposters" (March 16, 2023) written by Cindy Appel & Chris Derrick

• As proud as Lucifer.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Country Town.

• Pride, when permitted full sway, is the great undying cankerworm which gnaws the very vitals of a man's worldly possessions, let them be small or great, hundreds or millions.
  • P. T. Barnum. 'Sundry Business Enterprises', Ch XIV, The Life of P. T. Barnum (1855).

• Ay, do despise me, I'm the prouder for it;
  I like to be despised.
  • Isaac Bickerstaffe, The Hypocrite (1768), Act V, scene 1.

• Evil does not approach us as pride any more, but on the contrary as slumber, lassitude, concealment of the "I." … It may make us so quickly contented, that any definitive fire will die down. The venomous, breathtaking frigid mist seems able … to harden hearts and fill them with envy, obduracy and resentment, with bloody scorn for the divine image and light, with all the causes of the only true original sin, which is not wanting to be like God.
  • Ernst Bloch, Man on His Own (1959), B. Ashton, trans. (1970), p. 62.

• As if true pride
  Were not also humble!
  • Robert Browning, In an Album.

• Raalt looked as if he were swallowing something that went down hard and tasted bad. He was; it was his pride.
  • Stephen L. Burns, Taking Heart, in Marion Zimmer Bradley (ed.) Sword and Sorceress (1984), p. 74

• They are proud in humility, proud in that they are not proud.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 3. Subsect. 14.

• The one condition for spiritual progress is that we remain sincere and humble. Let us keep our end in view, let us press forward to our goal. Let us not indulge in pride, nor give in to our sinful passions. Let us steadily exert ourselves to reach a higher degree of holiness till we shall finally arrive at a perfection of goodness which we seek and pursue as long as we live, but which we shall attain then only, when, freed from all earthly infirmity, we shall be admitted by God into his full communion.
  • John Calvin Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, Page 23

• If God has bestowed on us any excellent gift, we imagine it to be our own achievement; and we swell and even burst with pride.
  • John Calvin Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, Page 32

• There are people who are known to be very liberal, yet they never give without scolding or pride or even insolence.'
  • John Calvin Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, Page 39

• Let pride go afore, shame will follow after.
  • George Chapman, Eastward Ho (1605), Act III, scene 1 (written by Chapman, Jonson, and Marston).

• An lifted his head in pride and brought forth a good day.
  • Debate between Winter and Summer (mid to late 3rd millennium BCE).

• Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.
  • Jonathan Edwards, To Deborah Hatheway, Letters and Personal Writings (Works of Jonathan Edwards Online Vol. 16) , Ed. George S. Claghorn.

• Man is the proudest of God's creatures, the eagle is the haughtiest amongst the birds, the ox amongst the cattle, and the lion amongst the beasts of the field. Hence it was the image of these four which Ezekiel saw in his vision on the throne of God.
  • Exodus Rabbah 23, Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 101

• Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Letter on the Stamp Act, July 1, 1765, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• In reality there is, perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history. For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.
  • Benjamin Franklin, in The Autobiography, Ch. VI, in a statement written in Passy (1784).

• Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
  I see the lords of humankind pass by.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (1764), line 327.

• I have learned that pride blinds almost as much as ignorance.
  • Ed Greenwood, The Dragon & the Mouse, in Robin D. Laws (ed.) The Lion and the Aardvark (2013), ISBN 978-1-908983-02-2, p. 122

• He who is mounted on pride does not know how to sit still.
  • Guigo II, Twelve Meditations, as translated by Edmund Colledge, OSA and James Walsh, SJ (Cistercian Publications: 1979), p. 90

• "What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should be answered. "It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims!
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Ethan Brand" (1850) originally titled "The Unpardonable Sin" in The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales

• Pryde will have a fall;
  For pryde goeth before and shame commeth after.
  • John Heywood, Proverbes, Part i, Chapter x.

• Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for the LORD hath spoken...But if you will not hear, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride.
  • Jeremiah 13:15-17.

• His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
  • Job 41:15 (King James Version) (on the Leviathan).

• The same pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely to those above him. It is the very nature of this vice, which is neither based on personal merit nor on virtue, but on riches, posts, influence, and useless knowledge, to render a man as supercilious to those who are below him as to over-value those who are above.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, Characters, H. Van Laun, trans. (London: 1885) “Of The Gifts of Fortune,” #57

• And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass.
  • Leviticus 26:19 (KJV).

• Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble", and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear.
  • C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942), page 69 in the Harper Collins 2001 edition, ISBN 0-06-065293-4.

• Prayer must be humble: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Here St. James tells us that God does not listen to the prayers of the proud, but resists them; while, on the other hand, he is always ready to hear the prayers of the humble.
  • Alphonsus Maria de Liguori The Conditions Requisite for the Due Performance of Prayer in: The complete works of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori: the ascetical works, Volume 2. Redemptorist Fathers, 1926. p. 435.

• Intellectual pride inflicts itself upon everybody. Where it dwells there can be no other opinion in the house.
  • Henry Edward Manning, Pastime Papers (London: Burns and Oates, 1892), p. 27.

• Pride and resentment are not indigenous in the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive.
  • Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist (1926).

• Never think of anyone as inferior to you. Open the inner Eye and you will see the One Glory shining in all creatures.
  • Dhul-Nun al-Misri quoted in Ellen Kei Hua, ed., Meditations of the Masters, cited in Andrea Wiebers and David Wiebers, Souls Like Ourselves (Rochester, MN: Sojourn Press, 2000), p. 42.

• [P]ride always entails intense awareness of an inferior other.
  • Brian Reynolds Myers, "North Korea's Race Problem" (11 February 2010), Foreign Policy

• L'orgueil est l'ennemi constant de l'amour.
  • Translation: Pride is the constant enemy of love.
  • Anna de Noailles, Poéme de l'amour (1924), CXX.

• Pride: ignorant presumption that the qualities and status of the organism are due to merit.
  • A. R. Orage, On Love, with Some Aphorisms and Other Essays (London: The Janus Press, 1957), "Aphorisms", p. 60.

• What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
  Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 203.

• Whatever Nature has in worth denied,
  She gives in large recruits of needful Pride.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 205.

• Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our defence,
  And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 209.

• In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;
  All quit their spere, and rush into the skies!
  Pride still is aiming at the blessed abodes,
  Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
  Aspiring to be Gods if Angels fell,
  Aspiring to be Angels men rebel.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 123-124.

• Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
  • Proverbs 16:18 (King James Version).

• Pride is the devil, think it got a hold on me.
  • J. Cole, p r i d e . i s . t h e . d e v i l

• In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
  • John Ruskin, Modern Painters (1856), Volume IV, part V, chapter III, section 22.

• My pride fell with my fortunes.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599-1600), Act I, scene 2.

• Why, who cries out on pride,
  That can therein tax any private party?
  Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 7, line 70.

• Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act III, scene 3, line 24.

• She bears a duke's revenues on her back,
  And in her heart she scorns our poverty.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II (c. 1590-91), Act I, scene 3, line 83.

• I have ventur'd,
  Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
  This many summers in a sea of glory,
  But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
  At length broke under me.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act III, scene 2, line 358.

• He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act II, scene 3, line 164.

• I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act II, scene 3, line 169.

• He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it
  Cry "No recovery."
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act II, scene 3, line 187.

• Pride hath no other glass
  To show itself but pride, for supple knees
  Feed arrogance and are the proud man's fees.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act III, scene 3, line 47.

• O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act III, scene 1, line 138.

• Man's highest blessedness
  In wisdom chiefly stands;
  And in the things that touch upon the Gods,
  Tis best in word of deed
  To shun unholy pride;
  Great words of boasting bring great punishments;
  And so to gray-haired age
  Comes wisdom at the last.
  • Sophocles, "Antigone", lines 1531-1538,Translation by Edward H. Plumptre.

• Instead of supposing that a work of art must be something that all can behold—a poem, a painting, a book, a great building—consider making your own life a work of art. You have yourself to begin with, and a time of uncertain duration to work on it. You do not have to be what you are, and even though you may be quite content with who you are, it will not be hard for you to think of something much greater that you might become. It need not be something spectacular or even something that will attract notice from others. What it will be is a kind of excellence that you project for yourself, and then attain—something that you can take a look at, with honest self-appraisal, and be proud of.
  • Richard Taylor, Restoring Pride: The Lost Virtue of Our Age (1995), p. 64.

• Free at last, they took your life - they could not take your pride.
  • U2, "Pride (In the Name of Love)", The Unforgettable Fire (1984).

• There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one’s intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.
  • Simone Weil, Simone Weil: An Anthology (1986), p. 35

• Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
  With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
  • William Wordsworth, Hart-leap Well, Part ii.

• Pride, like hooded hawks, in darkness soars
  From blindness bold, and towering to the skies.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VI, line 324.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 632-33.

• Pride (of all others the most dang'rous fault)
  Proceeds from want of sense, or want of thought.
  • Wentworth Dillon, Essay on Translated Verse, line 161.

• Zu strenge Ford'rung ist verborgner Stolz.
  • Too rigid scruples are concealed pride.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia auf Tauris, IV. 4. 120.

• Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
  Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud,
  A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
  Man passes from life to his rest in the grave.
  • William Knox, Mortality (Lincoln's favorite hymn).

• Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
  The gaze of fools and pageant of a day;
  So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
  For others' good, or melt at others' woe.
  • Alexander Pope, Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717), line 4.

• Is this that haughty, gallant, gay Lothario?
  • Nicholas Rowe, The Fair Penitent (1703), Act V, scene 1, line 37. Taken from Massinger's Fatal Dowry.

• In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
  • John Ruskin, True and Beautiful, Morals and Religion, Conception of God, p. 426.

• The Lords of creation men we call.
  • Lords of Creation; attributed by Hoyt's to Emily Anne Shuldham; reported as a folk song of unknown authorship in Songs of Ireland and Other Lands (1847), volume 2, p. 253.

• Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
  • Solomon, Proverbs, XVI. 18.

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• There is no passion that steals into the heart more imperceptibly and covers itself under more disguises than pride.
  • Joseph Addison, p. 484.

• Sinners, remember this: It is not so much the sense of your unworthiness as your pride that keeps you from a blessed closing with the Saviour.
  • Thomas Brooks, p. 486.

• Pride is the master sin of the devil.
  • Edwin Hubbell Chapin, p. 484.

• It is with men as with wheat; the light heads are erect even in the presence of Omnipotence, but the full heads bow in reverence before Him.
  • Joseph Cook, p. 484.

• Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps there is nothing that angels behold with such astonishment as a proud man.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, p. 486.

• Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy.
  • Benjamin Franklin, p. 485.

• By ignorance is pride increased;
  They most assume who know the least.
  • John Gay, p. 486.

• Pride looks back upon its past deeds, and calculating with nicety what it has done, it commits itself to rest; whereas humility looks to that which is before, and discovering how much ground remains to be trodden, it is active and vigilant. Having gained one height, pride looks down with complacency on that which is beneath it; humility looks up to a higher and yet higher elevation. The one keeps us on this earth, which is congenial to its nature; the other directs our eye, and tends to lift us up to heaven.
  • James McCosh, p. 485.

• If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble; for the proud heart as it loves none but itself, so it is beloved of none but itself. The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric. Humility enforces where neither virtue nor strength can prevail, nor reason.
  • Francis Quarles, p. 485.

• He who thinks his place below him will certainly be below his place.
  • Sir Henry Savile, p. 486.

• Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection.
  • Sydney Smith, p. 484.

• Spiritual pride is the worst of all pride, if it is not the worst snare of the devil. The heart is peculiarly deceitful on just this one thing.
  • Ichabod Spencer, p. 485.

• We rise in glory as we sink in pride.
  • Edward Young, p. 485.

• Pride is the growth of blindness and darkness; humility, the product of light and knowledge; and whilst pride has its origin in a mistaken or delusive estimate of things, humility is as much the offspring of truth as the parent of virtue.
  • Author unidentified, p. 485.

• Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.
  • Author unidentified, p. 485.