Quotes about pride

"Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached."

Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,

The lowest of your throng.

Under what torments inwardly I groane;

While they adore me on the Throne of Hell,

With Diadem and Scepter high advanc’d

The lower still I fall, onely Supream

In miserie; such joy Ambition findes.

But say I could repent and could obtaine

By Act of Grace my former state; how soon

Would highth recal high thoughts, how soon unsay

What feign’d submission swore: ease would recant

Vows made in pain, as violent and void.

For never can true reconcilement grow

Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc’d so deep:

Which would but lead me to a worse relapse

And heavier fall: so should I purchase deare

Short intermission bought with double smart.

This knows my punisher; therefore as farr

From granting hee, as I from begging peace:

All hope excluded thus, behold in stead

Of us out-cast, exil'd, his new delight,

Mankind created, and for him this World.

Rather than be less

Cared not to be at all.

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

High on a throne of royal state, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,

Satan exalted sat, by merit raised

To that bad eminence; and from despair

Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires

Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue

Vain war with heav'n.

His rash ambition had climbed a height where it was difficult to stand with firmness, and impossible to fall without instant destruction.

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.

He was one of those people who live up to their emotional incomes, who are always taut and tingling with vanity. Hence he had no strength to spare; hence he had no kindness, no geniality; for geniality is almost definable as strength to spare. He had no god-like carelessness; he never forgot himself; his whole life was, to use his own expression, an arrangement. He went in for "the art of living"—a miserable trick.

One of the thousand objections to the sin of pride lies precisely in this, that self-consciousness of necessity destroys self-revelation. A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopaedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism. Thinking about himself will lead to trying to be the universe; trying to be the universe will lead to ceasing to be anything. If, on the other hand, a man is sensible enough to think only about the universe; he will think about it in his own individual way. He will keep virgin the secret of God; he will see the grass as no other man can see it, and look at a sun that no man has ever known.

Of course, this shrinking from the brutal vivacity and brutal variety of common men is a perfectly reasonable and excusable thing as long as it does not pretend to any point of superiority. It is when it calls itself aristocracy or aestheticism or a superiority to the bourgeoisie that its inherent weakness has in justice to be pointed out.