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 and abilities (vanity). Pride is considered a negative attribute by most major world religions, but some philosophies consider it positive. The opposite of pride is humility.

      Quotes

      • 'Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul:
        I think the Romans call it Stoicism.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • Let pride go afore, shame will follow after.
        • George Chapman, Eastward Ho (1605), Act III, scene 1 (written by Chapman, Jonson, and Marston).
      • Lord of human kind.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • Pryde will have a fall;
        For pryde goeth before and shame commeth after.
      • 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.
      • His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.
        • Job 41:15 (King James Version) (on the Leviathan).
      • 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 (King James Version).
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
        • Proverbs 16:18 (King James Version).
      • Why, who cries out on pride,
        That can therein tax any private party?
        Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • Free at last, they took your life - they could not take your pride.
      • Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
        With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
      • 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.

      Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

      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.
      • Zu strenge Ford'rung ist verborgner Stolz.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
        • Proverbs, XVI. 18.
      • 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.

      Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

      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.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy.
      • By ignorance is pride increased;
        They most assume who know the least.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • 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.
      • We rise in glory as we sink in pride.
      • 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.
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      Last modified on 25 May 2012, at 04:20