quotations about pride
Vanity is a confounded donkey, very apt to put his head between his legs and chuck us over; but pride is a fine horse, that will carry us over the ground, and enable us to distance our fellow travelers.
FREDERICK MARRYAT
Peter Simple: Or, The Adventures of a Midshipman
Let pride go afore, shame will follow after.
GEORGE CHAPMAN
Eastward Ho!
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.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure; it has such a thorough possession of us, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may be talked of.
BLAISE PASCAL
Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
Pride, that invisible bone that keeps the neck stiff.
STEPHEN KING
The Gunslinger
Pride goes before destruction.
AESOP
"The Fighting Cocks and the Eagle", Aesop's Fables
There is a pride which belongs to every rightly-constituted mind, though it is scarcely to be called pride, but rather a proper estimate of self; it is, properly speaking, the elevation of mind which arises when we feel that we have mastered some noble idea and made it our own; man is proud of the idea only so far as he feels that it has become part of himself.
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
attributed, Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors
Where pride is insistent enough, memory prefers to give way.
CARL JUNG
attributed to Nietzsche, Man and His Symbols
As you desire the love of God and man, beware of Pride; it is a tumor in your mind, that breaks and poisons all your actions; it is a worm in your treasure, which eats and ruins your estate ... it is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the band of luxury, the sin of devils, the devil in mankind.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The pride of the heart is the attribute of honest men; pride of manners is that of fools; the pride of birth and rank is often the pride of dupes.
CHARLES PINEAU DUCLOS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Ever since our first fathers by infection took this morbum sathanicum, this devilish disease, pride, of the devil, such tinder is our nature, that every little spark sets us on fire; our nature hath grown so light, that every little thing puffeth us up, and sets us aloft in our altitudes presently.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
Ninety-six Sermons
Swallow your pride.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God overturns the thrones of the proud and enthrones the lowly in their place.
APOCRYPHA
Sirach 10:14
The same amount of pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely to those above him.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Pride has no intrinsic substance, being no more than the name given to the soul devouring itself.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Impostor
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
I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
The Count of Monte Cristo
To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for, when we fail, our pride supports us, when we succeed, it betrays us.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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