C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Pride
The never-failing vice of fools.
The proud man is forsaken of God.
Pride eradicates all vices but itself.
All pride in willing pride.
Pride is both a virtue and a vice.
O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!
We rise in glory as we sink in pride.
Pride, the first peer and president of hell.
Some people are proud of their humility.
The proud are ever most provoked by pride.
When pride thaws, look for floods.
Nothing is more short-lived than pride.
In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.
Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.
Pride goeth before destruction, and haughty spirit before a fall.
As for environments, the kingliest being ever born in the flesh lay in a manger.
They are proud in humility, proud in that they are not proud.
Fancy and pride seek things at vast expense.
Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.
How pomp is followed!
Where pride begins, love ceases.
An avenging God closely follows the haughty.
How can there be pride in a contrite heart? Humility is the earliest fruit of religion.
There is a certain noble pride through which merits shine brighter than through modesty.
When pride and presumption walk before, shame and loss follow very closely.
Pride requires very costly food—its keeper’s happiness.
A proud man never shows his pride so much as when he is civil.
Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, serves also to moderate it.
Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself.
Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy.
There is none so homely but loves a looking-glass.
The best manners are stained by the addition of pride.
I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.
Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
There is much proud humility and humble pride in the world.
’Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul: I think the Romans call it stoicism.
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.
Pride is increased by ignorance; those assume the most who know the least.
When a proud man thinks best of himself, then God and man think worst of him.
Spiritual pride is the most dangerous and the most arrogant of all sorts of pride.
The pride of woman, natural to her, never sleeps until modesty is gone.
All that the wisdom of the proud can teach is to be stubborn or sullen under misfortune.
There is no pride on earth like the pride of intellect and science.
Pride hath no other glass to show itself but pride.
Dignity and pride are of too near relationship for intermarriage.
Pride goes hated, cursed and abominated by all.
Family pride entertains many unsocial opinions.
Earthly pride is like the passing flower, that springs to fall, and blossoms but to die.
He whose pride oppresses the humble may perhaps be humbled, but will never be humble.
To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak.
The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
Vanity and pride sustain so close an alliance as to be often mistaken for each other.
There is no passion which steals into the heart more imperceptibly, and covers itself under more disguises, than pride.
All other passions do occasional good; but when pride puts in its word everything goes wrong.
Who cries out on pride that can therein tax any private party? Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea?
Pride seems to be equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem to have it just alike.
The sin of pride is the sin of sins, in which all subsequent sins are included, as in their germ; they are but the unfolding of this one.
Pride, in some particular disguise or other—often a secret to be proud himself—is the most ordinary spring of action among men.
Men very rarely put off the trappings of pride till they who are about them put on their winding-sheet.
Ay, do despise me, I’m the prouder for it; I like to be despised.
The most ridiculous of all animals is a proud priest; he cannot use his own tools without cutting his own fingers.
Men say, “By pride the angels fell from heaven.” By pride they reached a place from which they fell.
There are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it.
There are no friends more inseparable than pride and hardness of heart, humility and love, falsehood and impudence.
There is this paradox in pride—it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.
If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.
The seat of pride is in the heart, and only there; and if it be not there, it is neither in the look nor in the clothes.
When a beautiful woman yields to temptation, let her consult her pride, though she forgets her virtue.
Pride, though it cannot prevent the holy affections of nature from being felt, may prevent them from being shown.
Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self; but, unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.
It is pride which fills the world with so much harshness and severity. We are rigorous to offenses as if we had never offended.
Haughty people seem to me to have, like the dwarfs, the stature of a child and the face of a man.
If he could only see how small a vacancy his death would leave, the proud man would think less of the place he occupies in his lifetime.
The haughty woman who can stand alone, and requires no leaning-place in our hearts, loses the spell of her sex.
Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.
Deep is the sea, and deep is hell, but pride mineth deeper; it is coiled as a poisonous worm about the foundations of the soul.
You who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your wealth.
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.
If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
The disesteem and contempt of others is inseparable from pride. It is hardly possible to overvalue ourselves but by undervaluing our neighbors.
Charity feeds the poor, so does pride; charity builds an hospital, so does pride. In this they differ: charity gives her glory to God; pride takes her glory from man.
The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about.
Pride is like the beautiful acacia, that lifts its head proudly above its neighbor plants—forgetting that it too, like them, has its roots in the dirt.
Of all the marvelous works of the Deity, perhaps there is nothing that angels behold with such supreme astonishment as a proud man.
When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, they always hang their heads; but men hold theirs the higher the more they receive, getting proud as they get full.
Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride.
Pride is a vice not only dreadfully mischievous in human society, but perhaps of all others, the most insuperable bar to real inward improvement.
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.
Of all human actions, pride seldomest obtains its end; for, aiming at honor and reputation, it reaps contempt and derision.
Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave; and reckon thyself above the earth by the line thou must be contented with under it.
Pride’s chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear. They eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market.
The lofty pine is oftenest agitated by the winds—high towers rush to the earth with a heavier fall—and the lightning most frequently strikes the highest mountains.
Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato.
Pride is of such intimate connection with ingratitude that the actions of ingratitude seem directly resolvable into pride as the principal reason of them.
A proud woman who has learned to submit carries all her pride to the reinforcement of her submission, and looks down with severe superiority on all feminine assumption as unbecoming.
The sordid meal of the Cynics contributed neither to their tranquillity nor to their modesty. Pride went with Diogenes into his tub; and there he had the presumption to command Alexander the haughtiest of all men.
To acknowledge our faults when we are blamed is modesty; to discover them to one’s friends in ingenuousness, is confidence; but to preach them to all the world, if one does not take care, is pride.
Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others.
It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.
It seems that nature, which has so wisely disposed our bodily organs with a view to our happiness, has also bestowed on us pride, to spare us the pain of being aware of our imperfections.
Pride is the common forerunner of a fall. It was the devil’s sin, and the devil’s ruin; and has been, ever since, the devil’s stratagem, who, like an expert wrestler, usually gives a man a lift before he gives him a throw.
When a man’s pride is subdued it is like the sides of Mount Ætna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive trees which grow up to the top.
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.
In reality, there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as you please, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself.
In beginning the world, if you don’t wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin.
Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.
I think half the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears, and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts, not to hurt others.
John Bunyan had a great dread of spiritual pride; and once, after he had preached a very fine sermon, and his friends crowded round to shake him by the hand, while they expressed the utmost admiration of his eloquence, he interrupted them, saying: “Ay! you need not remind me of that, for the devil told me of it before I was out of the pulpit!”
Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of.
As Plato entertained some friends in a room where there was a couch richly ornamented, Diogenes came in very dirty, as usual, and getting upon the couch, and trampling on it, said, “I trample upon the pride of Plato.” Plato mildly answered, “But with greater pride, Diogenes!”
There is no one passion which all mankind so naturally give in to as pride, nor any other passion which appears in such different disguises. It is to be found in all habits and all complexions. Is it not a question whether it does more harm or good in the world, and if there be not such a thing as what we may call a virtuous and laudable pride?
There are so many things to lower a man’s top-sails—he is such a dependent creature—he is to pay such court to his stomach, his food, his sleep, his exercise—that, in truth, a hero is an idle word. Man seems formed to be a hero in suffering, not a hero in action. Men err in nothing more than in the estimate which they make of human labor.
Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary.
What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise.
It is the nature of man to be proud, when man by nature hath nothing to be proud of. He more adorneth the creature than he adoreth the Creator; and makes not only his belly his god, but his body. I am ashamed of their glory whose glory is their shame. If nature will needs have me to be proud of something, I will be proud only of this, that I am proud of nothing.
Pride looks back upon its past deeds, and calculating with nicety what it has done, it commits itself to rest; whereas humility looks to that which is before, and discovering how much ground remains to be trodden, it is active and vigilant. Having gained one height, pride looks down with complacency on that which is beneath it; humility looks up to a higher and yet higher elevation. The one keeps us on this earth, which is congenial to its nature; the other directs our eye, and tends to lift us up to heaven.