Those who merely possess the goods of fortune may be haughty and insolent; . . . they try to imitate the great-souled man without being really like him, and only copy him in what they can, reproducing his contempt for others but not his virtuous conduct. For the great-souled man is justified in despising other people - his estimates are correct; but most proud men have no good ground for their pride.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
One who is publicly honest about himself ends up by priding himself somewhat on this honesty: for he knows only too well why he is honest-for the same reasons another person prefers illusion and dissimulation.
What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
The causes that govern the heart appear to be wholly alien to the results achieved. Are the forces that moved a desperate criminal the same that fill a martyr with pride, as both mount the scaffold?
There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen, slovenly fellow, who works doggedly on, regardless of his own clothing and that of his wife and children, and seeming to take pleasure or pride in nothing.
Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought conceived in an instant: non serviam: I will not serve. That instant was his [Lucifer's] ruin.