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Pride Quotes

Shakespeare leads, with Pope, John Calvin, Nietzsche and Benjamin Franklin behind him. Samuel Johnson, in The Rambler (1750), is here for a different kind of pride: no place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. Wordsworth has two passages quoted in Bartlett’s, one on never blending our pleasure or our pride with the sorrow of the meanest thing that feels, the other on the fuming vanities of earth.

“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels” is credited to Augustine of Hippo and is disputed. The notes trace it to a medieval collection compiled around 1306 and to a Victorian anthology. It is the only entry on the page with a flag.

Random quote on Pride

Most quoted on pride:

[P]ride always entails intense awareness of an inferior other.

Brian Reynolds Myers

My pride fell with my fortunes.

William Shakespeare

Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.

Robert Burns

All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness—or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know.
Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.

Brian Aldiss Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

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

How many saucy airs we meet,
From Temple Bar to Aldgate Street!

John Gay

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

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

Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine."

John Greenleaf Whittier

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

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

There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.

J. William Fulbright The Arrogance of Power (1966)

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 (1613)

That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory.

John Calvin

Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

Arthur Schopenhauer Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

An awareness of our smallness may help to redeem us from the arrogance which is the besetting sin of the scientists.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Sinning upto necessity might be pardonable but for self-conceit and pride it is unpardonable since sin of Adam was the accomplishment of desire and sin of Satan self-conceit.

Sari al-Saqati

I'm very proud of my son and anyone who has someone on the spectrum in their family feels the exact same way.

Andrew Yang

With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.

Norman Mailer The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden (1968)

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