quotations about pride
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
Pride ... is sometimes virtuous and sometimes vicious, according to the character in which it is found, and the object to which it is directed.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
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
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Traveller
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.
BIBLE
Jeremiah 13:15-17
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
Pride is a very unaccountable vice; many people fall into it unawares, and are often led into it by motives which, if they considered things rightly, would make them abhor the very thought of it.
SAMUEL CROXALL
Aesop's Fables
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
The proud man lives in the paradise of fools; and neither in what he thinks, or does, or looks for, or promises himself, is there anything sincere or true.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Pride, like cunning, is made offensive only by the manner in which it discovers itself.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Human pride is a strange thing; it cannot easily be suppressed, and if you stop up hole A will peep forth again in a twinkling from another hole B, and if this is closed it is ready to come out at hole C, and so on.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Reflections of Lichtenberg
Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up his dignity; in gluttons there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; it is not the eating, nor it is not the drinking, that is to be blamed, but the excess; so in pride.
JOHN SELDEN
Table-talk