Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.
It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.
For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey’s bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.
To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.
Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness.
God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong.
It is the philosophers, theologians, and evangelists who are said to be filled with pride and bigotry due to the strong convictions that they represent. On the contrary, teachings can be either taken or dismissed; whereas voting is the only thing the average person can do to force everyone to live how they would prefer. A simple vote is among the largest yet most acceptable forms of bigotry, and that is because people play the card only when they feel that in doing so it conveniences themselves.
I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began."And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all.""I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly."Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.
We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.
Accomplishments don’t erase shame, hatred, cruelty, silence, ignorance, discrimination, low self-esteem or immorality. It covers it up, with a creative version of pride and ego. Only restitution, forgiving yourself and others, compassion, repentance and living with dignity will ever erase the past.
Glory of the world makes life meaningless. Glory of God fulfills it.
I carry my adornments on my soul.I do not dress up like a popinjay;But inwardly, I keep my daintiness.I do not bear with me, by any chance,An insult not yet washed away- a conscienceYellow with unpurged bile- an honor frayedTo rags, a set of scruples badly worn.I go caparisoned in gems unseen,Trailing white plumes of freedom, garlandedWith my good name- no figure of a man,But a soul clothed in shining armor, hungWith deeds for decorations, twirling- thus-A bristling wit, and swinging at my sideCourage, and on the stones of this old townMaking the sharp truth ring, like golden spurs!
She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream,--and there was no answer one could make her--there seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression.And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion. And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.
My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, holiness must be in his blood: but a corrupted formula. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the greatest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.
Think outside the box? Indeed. But to add balance to that, one should not in the process forget what the inside of the box looks like as well. Those who are best at thinking outside the box do it not to puff themselves up, but to see how small they really are. As a contented fish in its fish tank appears to have a small, boring existence to us, imagine a larger, more perceptive kingdom (even by scientific taxonomy) to whom our contented existences may appear to be small and boring. This is where true creativity and massive perceptive abilities spawn a sense of intellectual humility; the kind which God adores.
Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ever heard of, and we shall treat you worse than the lowest lackey!' They strive for justice, they stand on their rights, and yet they've slandered him like infidels in their article. We demand, we don't ask, and you will get no gratitude from us, because you are acting for the satisfaction of your own conscience! Queer sort of reasoning!... He has not borrowed money from you, he doesn't owe you anything, so what are you reckoning on, if not his gratitude? So how can you repudiate it? Lunatics! They regard society as savage and inhuman, because it cries shame on the seduced girl; but if you think society inhuman, you must think that the girl suffers from the censure of society, and if she does, how is it you expose her to society in the newspapers and expect her not to suffer? Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end by eating up one another, that's what I prophesy. Isn't that topsy-turvydom, isn't it infamy?
Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position.
As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.
Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '. Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice.I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about.
I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,' said Diana, 'during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in the passage expecting you - he will make it up.'I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him - he stood at the foot of the stairs.
Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?
Beware ! Heart is too small to feel happy but soul is too big to take glory
Humility and Dignity had a daughter, called Arrogance, who was ashamed of her name and used to hide behind Pride. But Pride was in love with Truth, therefore arrogance married Illusion and forever despised Truth. Pride and Truth had a daughter, called Happiness, while Arrogance and Illusion had a son, called Despair. When both meet, one of them cries.
The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.
Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.
It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.
Wasting time is living in self glorification instead of glorifying God as God is time
Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.”~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive
From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life.”~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive
True friends don't come with conditions.
The high road of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.
The highway of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.
Be a team player, not a bandwagon jumper.
Religiousity is unself glory not purity
There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.
The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.
At some point, you just gotta forgive the past, your happiness hinges on it.
We love our partners for who they are, not for who they are not.
Explore, Experience, Then Push Beyond.
Travel is costly yes, but it pays dividends too.
If you didn't earn something, it's not worth flaunting.
Without struggle, success has no value.
There is no such thing as loving a child too much.
It’s the ‘everyday’ experiences we encounter along the journey to who we wanna be that will define who we are when we get there.
Successes are those highlights of life we look back on with a smile. But it's the day to day grind of getting them that defines the laugh lines etched until the end of time. Enjoy each moment along the way
There's more to a person than flesh. Judge others by the sum of their soul and you'll see that beauty is a force of light that radiates from the inside out.
Building bridges is the best defence against ignorance.
When we live holy we will glorify self but when we glorify God we will live holy
Biggest tragedy of life is when God ask us to glorify Him for our sakes but we choose to glorify self for satan's good.
What "wasting time" means? At the time we glorify self instead of glorify God, at that time we are wasting our time as... God is Time.
Greatest irony of life is living in self glory while glorifying God which is the ultimate joy is left behind.
Strong is the man who can pull apart his own pride and hopelessness; courageous is the man who then reaches in, near his most vital inner workings to pull out the slivers and shards of mortality that have worked their way in.It’s not about determining the shade of grey the white paint in the bucket has become, but finding where the black paint is dripping from, and stopping it.
This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.
Patriotism is the narcissism of countries.
Anger gets you into trouble, ego keeps you in trouble.
Passion makes you good, but pride stops you to get better.
In general, poor is polite and rich is rude.
Vita ya Shetani na Mungu inatuathiri zaidi sisi wanadamu – na hapo baadaye itamuathiri Shetani pia. Vita hii haiwezi kuisha hadi siku ya mwisho, Yesu Kristo atakaporudi kuwachukua wateule wake. Pambana kwa njia ya maombi hadi siku ya mwisho kwa sababu adui tunayepambana naye hana muda wa kupumzika. Pambana kujiombea na kuwaombea wengine waliohai, na hata wale ambao bado hawajazaliwa, kabla mafuta ya dunia hii hayajalipuka. Usiishi kama adui wa msalaba wa Yesu Kristo, badala yake, ishi kama rafiki wa msalaba wa Yesu Kristo. Kuishi kama rafiki wa msalaba wa Yesu Kristo ni kupinga majivuno yote ya Shetani kwa upendo uliotukuka wa kujishusha au kujidharirisha, kutokutetereka hata kidogo na tamaa za ulimwengu huu kwa upendo mkubwa wa umaskini, na kutokuyumba wakati wa matatizo kwa sababu wakati wa amani ulijilimbikizia imani.
Spiritual literature can be a great aid to an aspirant, or it can be a terrible hindrance. If it is used to inspire practice, motivate compassion, ad nourish devotion, it serves a very valuable purpose. If scriptural study is used for mere intellectual understanding, for pride of accomplishment, or as a substitute for actual practice, then one is taking in too much mental food, which is sure to result in intellectual indigestion. (152)
Some priests unfaithful to the "memory" of Jesus insist more on the festive aspect and the fraternal dimension of the Mass than on the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The importance of interior dispositions and the necessity of reconciling ourselves with God by agreeing to let ourselves be purified by the sacrament of confession are no longer in fashion today.
You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else's strength and greatness. He's proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.
There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA," though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk," given our level of ignorance.
The only sort of pride that may serve a man well on that rarest occasion is his hatred of being wrong. It keeps his mouth shut, his ears open, and his research extensive. And yet this is also the deadliest because when he is in fact proven wrong, he absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. It then keeps his mouth open, his ears shut, and his research inexistent.
So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.
Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.
As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.
Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality.
Beware ! Discipline goes to two different directions : success and self glory. Self glory is the biggest failure of life.
Kingdom of God will surely come upon someone if glory of man leaves him
It is not reputation, fame, success or religiosity that glorifies God, it's slavery.
I feel even more incapable of returning to Russia the same as when I left it. It's just one more of those legends in Russia, confirmed by Passek, Sleptsov and others, that one only has to come to the Caucasus to be showered with decorations. Everyone expects it of us, demands it of us. But I've been here two years, taken part in two expeditions and received nothing. For all that, I've so much pride that I won't leave this place until I'm a major, with an Anna or a Vladimir round my neck. I've reached the point where it really rankles when some Gnilokishkin is decorated and I'm not. What's more, how could I look my elder in the face again, or merchant Kotel'nikov to whom I sell grain, or my aunt in Moscow and all those fine gentlemen in Russia, if I return after two years in the Caucasus with nothing to show for it? No, I don't want to know those gentlemen and I'm sure that they couldn't care less about me. But such is man's nature that though I couldn't give a damn about them they're the reason why I'm ruining the best years of my life, my happiness and whole future.
A world full of "certainties"All the plans, all the vanities.Where black covers the whiteSuited in "confidence"- the constant fight.A million roads I dream to takeOne destination, knowing not I turn where.A green veil covers for two years, some two decades.But the "plan" awaits, new roads to make.I pant, I struggle, I do my best While they say,"You are, dear, but so inadequate".
This is a problem, how can we have a body of knowledge and understanding and resist the temptation to misread the interest of the people because we're looking for an opportunity to unload this great load of gold that we have stored up?
Not one thought entered my head that did not seem disloyal. I was ashamed, seeing their pride close up, as if for the first time, at how little I had accomplished, how much I had failed to do at St. Paul's. Somewhere in the last two years I had forgotten my mission. What had I done, I kept thinking, that was worthy of their faith? How had I helped my race? How had I prepared myself for a meaningful future? ... They were right: only a handful of us got this break. I wanted to shout at them that I had squandered it. Now that it's all over, hey, I'm not your girl! I couldn't do it.
It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.
Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.
Everyone should give their dream a chance. Don't give up before you've even started. Let your actions push you to your dreams and don't let the thought of failure be the thing that stops you. It may be hard and you may struggle, but in the end, you can have the pride in saying you tried your hardest to get what you wanted and let nothing stand in your way.
Chasing a person doesn’t give you value or build values in you. You earn your value by chasing morality and practicing dignity.
They hate you because you act like you're better than they are...." "[they are] Four that you humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I’ve watched you fight. It’s not training with you. Put a good edge on your sword, and they’d be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?
The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.
He shook his head in exasperation. “Are you sure you’re not a Succubus? You seem really obsessed with the sin of lust.”“It’s a good sin. I like gluttony an awful lot, too. Sloth has its moments, but I just don’t understand acedia at all. I mean, what the f**k is that anyway? Oh, and greed is good, to quote Gordon Gekko. Anger, envy and pride,” I ticked them off on my fingers. “I don’t often have much use for them. It’s a shortcoming that I’m hoping to correct in the next millennium or two. I’m not very old; I can’t be expected to have mastered them all yet.”“I think you’ve worked too hard on some of those,” he said dryly. “Maybe you should switch over to virtues instead. Give yourself a much needed break.”Virtues? Yeah, right.“Virtues are too difficult,” I told him, shaking my head. “Look how old you are and you’ve hardly made a dent in them. I’ll admit, you seem to have zeal nailed, as well as faith and temperance. Self control? I’ve got my doubts based on your recent actions. I’m not seeing the kindness, love or generosity, either. That humility thing seems to be pretty far beyond your reach, too. Really, really far. I’m sorry to tell you this, but from what I can see, the sin of pride is a major component of your character. Dude, you’re f**king old. You should have these things pretty well ticked off your shopping list by now. I’m seriously disappointed. Seriously.
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.
I’m not sure how old I was when I first tried looking in the mirror and telling myself, with a shiver of pride and a warning prickle of something like fear, ‘I am the most powerful person in the world.’ In a way, it was true. My hands and mind could do things no one else’s could, but I was too young then to understand that some power—the kind that really matters—comes from other people. And what good is being faster, or stronger, or smarter than everyone else when it leaves you all alone?
If his men could have seen his young face under his faceplate, or if they could have heard the silent curses rolling off his tongue, they would have realized to their astonishment that their captain, only twenty years of age but already famous and formidable, was crying. Astrias's tears were tears of burning fury. The rage he felt that hour he would never forget for his whole life thereafter.
Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes from hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be ‘much not many.
My strength is my pride. My pride is my heart. And my heart will always be mine and mine alone.
Sometimes we need to just brush away our pride, break down the walls around our hearts, and open up to those we truly care for.
Just because you have baggage doesn't mean you have to lug it around.
There is something about yourself that you don't know. Something that you will deny even exists until it's too late to do anything about it. It's the only reason you get up in the morning, the only reason you suffer the shitty boss, the blood, the sweat and the tears. This is because you want people to know how good, attractive, generous, funny, wild and clever you really are. "Fear or revere me, but please think I'm special." We share an addiction. We're approval junkies. We're all in it for the slap on the back and the gold watch. The "hip, hip, hoo-fucking-rah." Look at the clever boy with the badge, polishing his trophy. Shine on, you crazy diamond. Cos we're just monkeys wrapped in suits, begging for the approval of others.
See" Kayla links her arm through mine, leaving Blake to jostle and race the other guys. "I tell them I can handle my own stuff, but it's like a mark of pride or something. I'm surprised Blake doesn't just hoist me over his shoulder and try to carry me, too!"I laugh, starting to relax. "Is it bad I can actually picture that?
This is stupid.""Look. You think how stupid people are most of the time. Old men drink. Women at a village fair. Boys throwing stones at birds. Life. The foolishness and the vanity, the selfishness and the waste. The pettiness, the silliness. You think in war it must be different. Must be better. With death around the corner, men united against hardship, the cunning of the enemy, people must think harder, faster, be...better. Be heroic.Only it's just the same. In fact do you know, because of all that pressure, and worry, and fear, it's worse. There aren't many men who think clearest when the stakes are highest. So people are even stupider in war than the rest of the time. Thinking about how they'll dodge the blame, or grab the glory, or save their skins, rather than about what will actually work. There's no job that forgives stupidity more than soldiering. No job that encourages it more.
One question in my mind, which I hardly dare mention in public, is whether patriotism has, overall, been a force for good or evil in the world. Patriotism is rampant in war and there are some good things about it. Just as self-respect and pride bring out the best in an individual, pride in family, pride in teammates, pride in hometown bring out the best in groups of people. War brings out the kind of pride in country that encourages its citizens in the direction of excellence and it encourages them to be ready to die for it. At no time do people work so well together to achieve the same goal as they do in wartime. Maybe that's enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue. If only I could get out of my mind the most patriotic people who ever lived, the Nazi Germans.
Melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. [But we must face] the painful awareness that in all likelyhood one's own character would not have stood firm.
I don’t know why we fight.It takes much too effort to stay mad at you.To dodge your skin in the hallwayand leave the kitchen without bringing you a treat.It takes much too effort to stare at the sinkso my eyes don’t smile at you in the mirror.It takes much too effort to look away as we undressand lie apart in the now bigger bed.It takes much too effort to stiffen my bodybecause sleepy limbs forget fightsand pride is always lost in dreams.It takes much too effort to awaken every hour to make sure we are islands with a gulf of white sheets separating us.I dread the light peeking through the parted curtainsand empathise with your groans —I didn’t get any sleep either.I really don’t know why we fight.It takes much too effort to stay mad at one anotherwhen it’s so easy for us to love.
Of course, if one does not fully trust the promise of God's Kingdom, he will have a hard time taking risks and making sacrifices in this life. A gospel centered around the temporal self - fleeting happiness, earthly success, vain prosperity, things such as these - is the primary ambition of the half-hearted Christian; the one who somewhat believes he is subject to an eternal death; the one who just might believe in men before God, who morbidly fears seeming less than anyone else. The man of this school feels deeply that he has but one life to live, that this must be his only chance, and therefore must have it all in his favor - from glory to comfort to riches - and have it right this instant. He is but hinting that he is overcome because he insists always that he must overcome, that his judgment comes now and by the persons around him. The point is, however, in this sense, that by grace the Christian is indeed free, but only for as long as he wants to be free - the practicality of true freedom: that of God which offers not so much freedom to be like the world as it does freedom from the pressures of having to be like the world. For Divine Law is based solely on love and freedom; whereas secular law, pressure and imitation.
The body is doing the action, body’s spare-parts are doing the action and the egoism simply does the egoism of, ‘I did’! Subtle-pride of egoism is created from this doer-ship and one is living due entirely on this basis. He simply tastes the subtle-pride of doer-ship; ‘I did’, ‘I suffered this pain’, ‘I enjoyed that happiness’. The person who gets rid of this subtle-pride will get freedom. Why does one taste this sweetness of subtle-pride of doership from infinite lives? He does this because he has never before tasted the sweetness of the Soul.
Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind 'rears its head' as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice.
Why, there's the air, the sky, the morning, the evening, moonlight, my friends, women, the beautiful architecture of Paris to study, three big books to write and all sorts of other things. Anaxagoras used to say that he was in the world in order to admire the sun. And then I have the good fortune to be able to spend my days from morning to night in the company of a man of genius - myself - and it's very pleasant.
It was masturbation, not willpower, that made it possible for gazillions of women to walk down the aisle with their reputation and their hymen still intact.
First, create your ego. Then destroy it. This is all of life.
For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karna waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single world. That was why he turned on me when I refused to ask for his pity. That was why he incited Dussasan to an action that was against the code of honor by which he lived his life. He knew he would regret it—in his fierce smile there had already been a glint of pain.But was a woman's heart any purer, in the end?That was the final truth I learned. All this time I'd thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I'd thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn't resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed.Already I was storing these lessons inside me. I would use them over the long years of exile to gain what I wanted, no matter what its price.But Krishna, the slippery one, the one who had offered me a different solace, Krishna with his disappointed eyes—what was the lesson he'd tried to teach?
But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone conneced her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child.
Yesterday i was clever so i took the glory for me. Today HE makes me wise so i give the glory to HIM.
Big things in the glory of the world mean nothing. Small things in glory of God mean everything. Truly..., size doesn't matter in this world or in the world to come.
Sweet wine makes drunk, sour wine (insult) is "tetelestai". Life is not about what we have done and become, but how God to be fully glorified.
Whatever we have in the glory of man is "away". Those are just not enough before we go "home" to the glory of God.
Yesterday I was clever, so I took the glory for me. Today He makes me wise, so I give the glory to Thee
If we glorify God (not self) in everything we do then everything on earth will glorify God.
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. […] There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.[…]The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.
One subtle arena of attack is in the area of pride. Praying people can become prideful about their praying. Non-participants can become prideful in their resistance. The enemy seeks to divide and conquer every initiative of prayer.
Religion is not the place where the problem of man's egotism is automatically solved. Rather, it is there that the ultimate battle between human pride and God's grace takes place. Human pride may win the battle, and then religion can and does become one more instrument of human sin. But if there the self does meet God and His grace, and so surrenders to something beyond its self-interest, then Christian faith can prove to be the needed and rare release from human self-concern.
She's my pride, my winning prize, always a surprise, to look into her eyes, see her free soul, as soap that slips from the grip of control; a stroll through the park on a dark night with stars to spark the sky, heaven with no price tag I realize, love is the same: endless, priceless, full bliss; to have this princess I pinch myself thinking this is a dream, but to my reprise, I can only say I am now, at last, alive.
Let the brickwork of ignorance be thrown down, and let not spiritual sunshine be shut out from the self-deceived heart. Pride, Self-love, cowardly Mistrust of God’s wisdom and goodness, are natural to our fallen nature; but the entrance of His Word into the heart is as that of the glorious beams of the day,—joy, brightness, and holiness follow the admission into its deepest recesses of the pure, life-giving light of Heaven!
The first key to leadership was self-control, particularly the mastery of pride, which was something more difficult, he explained, to subdue than a wild lion and anger, which was more difficult to defeat than the greatest wrestler. He warned them that "if you can't swallow your pride, you can't lead.
Go the extra mile to do the undone, but work within your limits, and in doing so also, don’t be a coward to question things within your limit that are not all that right, and don’t be too arrogant or proud or be filled with excessive knowledge to do things which might though be within your limit, yet out of limit, for you must live and leave nothing, but distinctive and lasting footprints!
Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner.
Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.
Anger-pride-deceit-greed; they are the ones giving you pain and only they are your enemies. There is no other enemy out there. There is only a nimit (evidentiary doer) outside. Wrong vision makes you accuse the nimit. When you attain the right belief (samkit), know that you have found the solution.
If a person does five samayiks (introspective meditation) he will say, ‘I did five’- and this is how he will taste the sweetness of the subtle-pride of doership. Actually what he should say is, ‘it was due to God’s grace that I was able to do five samayik’. He should not taste the sweetness of subtle pride of doership.
Whatever activity one sees in this world, it is discharge of previously charged karma. Man has nothing to do with it. He only does egoism here of, ‘I did samayik (introspective meditation).’ He creates a karmic account! He becomes entrapped! He takes enjoyment from tasting sweetness of subtle pride of doer-ship.
The declining of responsibility for the self can also be hidden behind a pseudo-objectivity. A patient may make astute observations about himself and give a fairly accurate report of what he dislikes in himself. On the surface it seems as though he is perceptive and honest about himself. But "he" may be merely the intelligent observer of a fellow who is inhibited, fearful, or arrogantly demanding. Hence, since he is not responsible for the fellow he observes, the hurt to his pride is cushioned—all the moreso because the flashlight of his pride is focused on his faculty for keen observations.
Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.
Angels are good not simply because they see bad as bad, but also because they see bad as corny.
Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness.
Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.
But the Egotist is stuck somewhere between his hidden triad of pride, fear, and insecurity; he is forever fighting to prove himself, instigating battles the Humbleman has unwittingly conquered, already sealed some time ago. Yes, the day he finally accepts face-to-face such an irony as humility - the irony that humility is indeed the mother of giants, that great men, having life so large, as needed, can afford to appear small - the world will then know peace.
If you want to know how negative you are, pay attention to how much you hate negativity in other people. Fragile, artificial positivity needs always to be surrounded by more positivity in order to stay positive, but the ability to be positive, happy, and even, at times, appreciative around 'negative people' is the mark of real positivity.
No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles.
The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation.
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
The majority of people I've come across in life have treated me unfairly. I'd be a liar if I said it didn't hurt; I have this deep wound in my soul I feel all the time, but I still choose to love despite my moments of anger and selfishness. Love is the only true, everlasting thing we all live for and who am I to rob someone of experiencing that?
What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.
Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive," thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. "And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position".
Blessings Are Immeasurable"You can lose A child Or a parent,The love of your life,A good job,A game,A deal,A bet,An idea,Your favorite thing,Money,Your best friend,A moment,An opportunity,A chance,Your keys,Your mind,Your health,Your identity,Your virginity,Your religion,Your shirt,Your license,ID or Passport, Phone or phone number,Hope,Faith,Luck,Your pride,Or your house,And feel like You've lost everything,And keep on losing. Stop Counting your losses,And start counting your Blessings. Only then will you discover That losses are always easier to point out and count Than blessings. And that your blessings will always outnumber Your losses, For they are truly Immeasurable.It is only normal thatPeople count losses with Their minds,And ignoreTo count blessingsWith the graciousnessOf their hearts.
The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also...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 can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented in fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere. Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.
Violinists wear the imprint on their necks with prideFor they are the players of harmony.Pilgrims, too, wear the imprint on their foreheads with prideFor they are the conductors of unity.And Lovers? Why, they are made humble by the imprint on their heartsFor they are merely the instruments of rhapsody.
Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.
Abruptly, the sea of people parted . . . and then there they were. Bella, with Nalla in her arms, Z standing beside his girls. Beth broke down all over again as the female came forward. God, it was impossible not to remember how Nalla had started this, putting into motion the need that had become undeniable. Bella was tearing up, too, as she stopped. “We just want to say yay!” At that moment, Nalla reached out to Beth, a gummy smile on her face, pure joy radiating out. No turning that down, nope, not at all. Beth took the little girl out of her mother’s arms and positioned her on her chest, capturing one of the pinwheeling hands and giving kisses, kisses, kisses. “You ready to be a big . . .” Beth glanced at Z and then her husband. “. . . a big sister?” Yes, Beth thought. Because that’s what the Brotherhood and their families were. Close as siblings, tighter than blood because they were chosen. “Yes, she is,” Bella said as she wiped under her eyes and looked back at Z. “She is so ready.” “My brother.” Z shoved out his palm, his scarred face in a half smile, his yellow eyes warm. “Congratulations.” Instead of shaking anything, Wrath shoved that ultrasound picture into his Brother’s face. “Do you see him? See my son? He’s big, right, Beth?” She kissed Nalla’s supersoft hair. “Yes.” “Big and healthy, right?” Beth laughed some more. “Big and healthy. Absolutely perfect.” “Perfect!” Wrath bellowed. “And this is a doctor saying it—I mean, she went to medical school.” Even Z started laughing at that point. Beth gave Nalla back to her parents. “And Dr. Sam told me she’s delivered over fifteen thousand babies over the course of her career—” “See!” Wrath yelled. “She knows these things. My son is perfect! Where’s the champagne? Fritz! Get the fucking champagne!
Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend.
Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self.
Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.
Power and influence: things that should be obtained not for means of greed, nor pride, nor ego, but rather to ensure that in the right moment, when your wisdom and benevolence are required to keep humanity strong and united, you can deliver and orchestrate others toward the greater good.
During the flames of controversy, opinions, mass disputes, conflict, and world news, sometimes the most precious, refreshing, peaceful words to hear amidst all the chaos are simply and humbly 'I don't know.
September 11… I will never forget feeling scared and vulnerable… I will never forget feeling the deep sad loss of so many lives… I will never forget the smell of the smoke that reached across the water and delivered a deep feeling of doom into my gut… I will never forget feeling the boosted sense of unity and pride… I will never forget seeing the courageous actions of so many men and women… I will never forget seeing people of all backgrounds working together in community… I will never forget seeing what hate can destroy… I will never forget seeing what love can heal…
You have two choices in life when it comes to truthful observations by others that anger you: You can be ashamed and cover it up by letting your pride take you in the extreme opposite direction, in order to make the point that they are wrong. Or, you can break down the walls of pride by accepting vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness. As you walk through your vulnerability, you will meet humility on the way to courage. From here, courage allows us to let go of shame and rise higher into the person we are meant to be, not the person that needs to be right. This is the road to confidence and self worth.
Do not be afraid to color outside the lines. Take risks and do not be afraid to fail. Know that when the world knocks you down, the best revenge is to get up and continue forging ahead.Do not be afraid to be different or to stand up for what's right. Never quiet your voice to make someone else feel comfortable. No one remembers the person that fits in. It's the one who stands out that people will not be able to forget.
I do not believe it possible for one to genuinely love Truth more than people (or vice versa). One might fall into the snare of loving the search more than people, or the pride of having exposed something or someone, but not the truth itself. For if you love Truth you love people; because to love people at all and without illusion, you must also love the truth about them.
Reality. It is sometimes brought through foreign eyes; because if you do not know any better, you cannot see the worse (and vice versa).
THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
A suburban pastor maintained services appropriate for his respected, professional parish. His father, an excitable traveling evangelist, visited and challenged the congregation to confront pride and sing out loudly with the windows open. The next day, the pastor’s banker mentioned overhearing, and he was sheepish. The buttoned-up banker said, though, that the neighborhood had been WAITING TO HEAR the church live out the joy they claimed.
Dignity will only happen when you realize that having someone in your life doesn’t validate your worth.
You have given intelligence to find one solution, and imagination to find ten.
Self respect by definition is a confidence and pride in knowing that your behaviour is both honorable and dignified. When you harass or vilify someone, you not only disrespect them, but yourself also.Street harassment, sexual violence, sexual harassment, gender-based violence and racism, are all acts committed by a person who in fact has no self respect. -Respect yourself by respecting others.
The Elsinore's bow tilted skyward while her stern fell into a foaming valley. Not a man had gained his feet. Bridge and men swept back toward me and fetched up against the mizzen-shrouds. And then that prodigious, incredible old man appeared out of the water, on his two legs, upright, dragging with him, a man in each hand, the helpless forms of Nancy and the Faun. My heart leapt at beholding this mighty figure of a man-killer and slave-driver, it is true, but who sprang first into the teeth of danger so that his slaves might follow, and who emerged with a half-drowned slave in either hand.I knew augustness and pride as I gazed--pride that my eyes were blue, like his; that my skin was blond, like his; that my place was aft with him, and with the Samurai, in the high place of government and command. I nearly wept with the chill of pride that was akin to awe and that tingled and bristled along my spinal column and in my brain. As for the rest--the weaklings and the rejected, and the dark-pigmented things, the half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs of long-conquered races--how could they count? My heels were iron as I gazed on them in their peril and weakness. Lord! Lord! For ten thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces and enslaved them to the toil of our will.
Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision.
Admitting the need for help may also compound the survivor's sense of defeat. The therapists Inger Agger and Soren Jensen, who work with political refugees, describe the case of K, a torture survivor with severe post-traumatic symptoms who adamantly insisted that he had no psychological problems: "K...did not understand why he was to talk with a therapist. His problems were medical: the reason why he did not sleep at night was due to the pain in his legs and feet. He was asked by the therapist...about his political background, and K told him that he was a Marxist and that he had read about Freud and he did not believe in any of that stuff: how could his pain go away by talking to a therapist?
The prideful man qualifies himself by what people think of him, always looking for applause. There is another proud man; head bloodied by the world but eyes focused on what is good, never caring about spectators or the cost. He is proud that his wife can laugh, that his children can play, humbled by their love for him. His prayers say, "Please make me worthy of them" - In humility lies the foundation of strength.
When everyone believes they are the life coaches, who are the players?
...but doth not the person who expends vast sums in the furniture of his house or the ornaments of his person, who consumes much time and employs great pains in dressing himself, or who thinks himself paid for self-denial, labour, or even villany, by a title or a ribbon, sacrifice as much to vanity as the poor wit who is desirous to read you his poem or his play?
The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math.
I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume. But you must stubbornly walk into that room, regardless, and you must hold your head high. You made it; you get to put it out there. Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given. You were invited, and you showed up, and you simply cannot do more that that. They might throw you out - but then again, they might not. They probably won't throw you out, actually. The ballroom is often more welcoming and supportive than you could ever imagine. Somebody might even think you're brilliant and marvelous. You might end up dancing with royalty. Or you might just end up having to dance alone in the corner of the castle with your big, ungainly red foam claws waving in the empty air. that's fine, too. Sometimes it's like that. What you absolutely must not do is turn around and walk out. Otherwise, you will miss the party, and that would be a pity, because - please believe me - we did not come all this great distance, and make all this great effort, only to miss the party at the last moment.
One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find.
It ain't bragging if you've done it. There's nothing wrong with being proud of doing something well. In fact, if you intend to do something creative for a living, it's absolutely essential.[check for wording] Proper pride says, "I'm good at this." Improper pride says, "I'm better than you.
I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.
I don't purchase people with money, or hiss like a snake to attract their attention, all i do is to rest on my couch because i have the conviction that no human can progress with an exception without a power behind.
If we could visit Highsmith today, I would lead you down the silent corridors until we came to a striking seal on the floor, a blood-red H carved in stone. This hallowed seal represents the sacred Honor of every student who spends four years at Highsmith. The stone seal is indelible, consecrated by the generations of alumnae who have passed by, understanding and believing. No outsider, no matter how cunning, can ever steal that belief away.
The more you try to impress, the more you become depressed, and the more they get tired of your coercion. It doesn't make them love you, instead, they'll see you as a little child, trying to draw a senseless picture on a piece of paper, begging people to look at it and admire it by force. You can persuade someone to look at your face, but you can't persuade them to see the beauty therein.
Proshka was a man of self-esteem. He considered himself a cut above the rest, and had a degree of personal pride. His spell in prison was a humiliating experience for him. No longer could he strut with pride before his fellows, and his spirits sank at once.Proshka went home from prison embittered not so much against Pyotr Nikolayevich as against the whole world.Everyone said the same thing: after he came out of prison, Proshka went to pieces. He grew too lazy to work, took to drink, and was soon caught stealing clothes from the trademan's wife. Once again he ended up in prison.
O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the bible, acts of kindness and charity-they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have.
God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?
Prayer can be a tricky thing, because there are passages that say do not doubt and believe you have received whatever you ask for and you will, but then Jesus prayed 'Not my will by thy will be done.' Ultimately, we can't tell God what to do. He will accomplish, in our lives, whatever He wants to accomplish. God is God and we are not.
If we want to live perfectly happy lives...we must drive out selfish character tendencies such as pride, ego, vanity, jealousy, lusts, envy and worry. When we learn to live selflessly, putting others before ourselves, committing to what is noble, right and good; treating others with love and compassion...that's when true happiness is experienced. A genuine focus on selflessness cures all and creates an environment for true growth. It's the secret to every great relationship. We gain...when we give up self. Sacrificing one's selfish characteristics through diligent thought, meditation, prayer and action gives life to true love and abounding joy.~Jason Versey
Long, discursive, dry, and inane are the prayers in many pulpits. Without unction or heart, they fall like a killing frost on all the graces of worship. Death-dealing prayers they are. Every vestige of devotion has perished under their breath. The deader they are the longer they grow.
Cha-Cha favored short, earnest prayer, and he often wondered what took others so long., It had something to do with excess supplication, he suspected. He never presented a long list of specific requests to God, had always felt uncomfortable with the presumptuousness of "Ask and you shall receive." This might have been a result of pride, or his own middling ambition, but mostly Cha-Cha's prayers were a series of thank-yous and I'm sorrys.
It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.
We are like the moon. The moon shines anyway, but it does not produce its own light. It reflects the light illuminated onto its surface by the Sun and is never proud to say "I am the source of light". God shines through us, hence He deserves the glory; not us.
Even the richest of brands are robbed by poor character.
Why do women waste their time trying to convince their insecure family members and girlfriends that they are beautiful? Self esteem is not a beauty cream that you can rub all over them and see instant results. Instead, convince them they are not stupid. Every intelligent woman knows outward beauty is a nip, tuck, chemical peel or diet away. If you don't like it, fix it.
O, sir,' murmured Sheila, still on her knees, 'please forgive me.''Forgive you! 0, la, la, la!' cunningly cried the droll, and strutting like an actor. 'Forgiveness is easy, is it not? O, yes, it is nothing. You are a young woman full of pride. O. yes! - but that is nothing. And full of penitence, and that is nothing, too. Pride is nothing, penitence nothing, forgiveness nothing, but even a bargain in farthings must be paid to be made, and I am a plain business man. What costs nothing brings no balm, and you would not like that, you would not like that, now would you?' (“The Bogey Man”)
It had been well if he had been left with only a wounded heart, but in that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the keener in consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine, which no stranger could have suspected beneath the manner he wore. Under that bronzed countenance, with its firm-set mouth and powerful jaw--below that clear blue eye, and that upright easy carriage, lay a faithful heart haunted by a sense of wrong: he who is not perfect in forgiveness must be haunted thus; he only is free whose love for the human is so strong that he can pardon the individual sin; he alone can pray the prayer,"Forgive us our trespasses," out of a full heart. Forgiveness is the only cure of wrong. And hand in hand with Sense-of-injury walks ever the weak sister-demon Self-pity, so dear, so sweet to many--both of them the children of Philautos, not of Agape.
There is, however, a far more common ailment among us—and that is pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, such as faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, and murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous.
People that hold onto hate for so long do so because they want to avoid dealing with their pain. They falsely believe if they forgive they are letting their enemy believe they are a doormat. What they don’t understand is hatred can’t be isolated or turned off. It manifests in their health, choices and belief systems. Their values and religious beliefs make adjustments to justify their negative emotions. Not unlike malware infesting a hard drive, their spirit slowly becomes corrupted and they make choices that don’t make logical sense to others. Hatred left unaddressed will crash a person’s spirit. The only thing he or she can do is to reboot, by fixing him or herself, not others. This might require installing a firewall of boundaries or parental controls on their emotions. Regardless of the approach, we are all connected on this "network of life" and each of us is responsible for cleaning up our spiritual registry.
Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose," began the man. "You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between their desires and their pride. Just as all objects must have a center of gravity. This is something we can pinpoint. Only when it is gone do people realize it even existed.
...a guilty suffering spirit is more open to grace than an apathetic or smug soul. Therefore, an age without a sense of sin, in which people are not even sorry for not being sorry for their sins, is in a serious predicament. Likewise an age with a Christianity so eager to forgive that it denies the need for forgiveness. For such an age, therefore, Lent can scarcely be too long!
God doesn’t give us pain to make us strong. He gives us strength to look inside ourselves and realize we are not innocent victims. When you learn humility, you are no longer a victim because a humble man is not self-absorbed. He seeks to understand why people are hurting him and takes responsibility for his part in their grief. Humility doesn’t dwell with anger or pride, and neither does God.
You must always reserve a question for people who think you are proud when you talk about your dreams! The question is "how would they get to know that you are proud if you had not talked about your dreams?" How then should people get to know what you do if you take delight in hiding yourself?
Superiority complex does not mean "pride" although it appears to be so in the eyes of those who want to see it so. When you feel a higher esteem over the obstacles you desire to surmount, you highly overcome them and can still count a reserved energy to spare!
If you lose your integrity, you will also lose your identity, your sensitivity and your dignity. Integrity is honesty, modesty and security in all kinds of weather. It should be our priority!
There were dozens of theories about what it was, that dome. Every scientist in the world, it seemed, had made a pilgrimage to the site. Tests had been conducted, measurements taken.They had tried drilling through it. Under it. Had flown over it. Had dug beneath it. Had approached it by submarine.Nothing worked.Every species of doomsayer from Luddite to End Times nut had had his say. It was a judgment. On America’s technological obsession, on America’s moral failure. This. That. Something else.Then the twins had popped out. Just like that. First Emma. Then, a few minutes later, Anna. Alive and well at the exact moment of their fifteenth birthday.They told tales of life inside the bowl. What they called the FAYZ.Connie Temple’s heart had swelled with pride for what she had learned of her son, Sam. And crashed into despair with tales of her other son, her unacknowledged child, Caine.Then, nothing. No other kids arrived for a while.Black despair settled over the families as they realized that it would be only these two. Months passed. Many lost faith. How could kids survive alone?But then, the Prophetess had reached into their dreams.One night Connie Temple had a lurid, incredible dream. She’d never had such a detailed dream. It was terrifying. The power of it took her breath away. There was a girl in that
Stay Humble. Often anger comes from our own ego and pride. We don't get our own way and so we get angry. But remember, it's not all about you. :) There are other people on the planet that have wants and needs to. :) If what you want conflicts with what others want, sometime you will have to let them have what they want. Everyone is not here to meet your needs alone. They need to take care of themselves sometimes too. Sometimes anger is an ego trip. It's when we think everyone should cater to our needs and do things our own way. Our pride makes us start to think that it's our way or the highway. But you are not God. No one but God is God. :) You cannot run the universe and you are not perfect. These are all good things to remind ourselves of all the time. Paul says in Romans 12, "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment." Often times anger comes when we have a high opinion of ourselves and the way we think things SHOULD be done. But no one of is perfect. None of us has a perfect way of doing things. We need to allow for differences in other people and different opinions on things. It is never we are right and everyone else is wrong. We need to admit that sometimes we might be wrong too. Amen. So always remember to stay humble and not think of yourself as being perfect or better than you are. If you are able to see that you too make mistakes all the time, then you will have more grace for other people, and you will then become angry less. Amen.
The emphasis and the reason for a pure humility is to result in love for others; not always necessarily the belittlement of self. When there is pride and self-righteousness and being pretentiously too far above, generally, one has a difficult time reaching the compassionate side of love for others, the side that understands (or at least attempts to understand): 'I am aware that I am not so far from falling in the same way.' Humility seeks to understand, and sometimes even relate; and in result, the love lovingly, properly, effectively wills the removal of the destructive sins of another as from oneself.
But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude. -- Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister.
Listen to me. Forget all you saw. Leave it. Take your mind from it. It has nothing to do with you. But use it for experience. Now you know what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world. Remember, and make it up to your Mama and to all women...And another thing let it do. There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is not room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw today, so come Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. Let the memory direct your dealings with men and women. And be sure to take good care of Mama. Is it?
Every man on earth is sick with the fever of sin, with the blindness of sin and is overcome with its fury. As sins consist mostly of malice and pride, it is necessary to treat everyone who suffers from the malady of sin with kindness and love. This is an important truth, which we often forget. Very often we act in the opposite manner: we add malice to malice by our anger, we oppose pride with pride. Thus, evil grows within us and does not decrease; it is not cured – rather it spreads
The citizens of the land, the peoples of the nation must be made strong in their convictions of these values. These values and virtues must become the wealth of the people, they must become their pride. They must be reflected in their lifestyle, in their film and movie industries. This value system must be ingrained in their educational system. They must be proclaimed in their pulpits. Homes and families must be built on the wealth of these virtues.
Humility is hard when someone has things like wealth, knowledge, & recognition that may tempt him/her behave and act pridefully. Otherwise, worrying about pride without these factors that predispose you, it is just an illusion.
Whoever cannot survive without taking charity, such as an old, sick, or greatly suffering individual, but who stubbornly refuses to accept aid, is guilty of murdering himself…yet one who needs charity but postpones taking it and lives in deprivation so as to not trouble the community, shall live to provide for others." —Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488–1575), Shulkhan Arukh (The Code of Jewish Law), Yoreh Deah 255:2
It contained a sad, but too common story of the hard-heartedness of the wealthy, and the misery endured by the children of the highborn. Blood is not water, it is said, but gold with them is dearer far than the ties of nature; to keep and augment their possessions being the aim and end of their lives, the existence, and, more especially, the happiness of their children, appears to them a consideration at once trivial and impertinent, when it would compete with family views and family greatness. To this common and and iniquitous feeling these luckless beings were sacrificed; they had endured the worst, and could be injured no more; but their orphan child was a living victim, less thought of than the progeny of the meanest animal which might serve to augment their possessions.Mrs. Baker felt some complacency on reading this letter; with the common English respect for wealth and rank, she was glad to find that her humble roof had sheltered a man who was the son — she did not exactly know of whom, but of somebody, who had younger sons and elder sons, and possessed, through wealth, the power of behaving frightfully ill to a vast number of persons.
Whenever you should doubt your self-worth, remember the lotus flower.Even though it plunges to life from beneath the mud, it does not allow the dirt that surrounds it to affect its growth or beauty. Be that lotus flower always. Do not allow any negativity or ugliness in your surroundings destroy your confidence, affect your growth, or make you question your self-worth.
No matter how old I get, I keep running into people who are smarter, nobler, and kinder. I really ought to start listening to them and telling my pride to shut up. I had gods tell me not to go to Asgard. I had witches tell me not to go to Flagstaff. You told me this plan wouldn't work. But I barreled ahead anyway for my own reasons. I still have plenty of growing to do.
My body is a political battlefield.It is a place of war, of death and suffering, of triumph and victory, of damage and repair, of blood and tears and sweat.It is a place where memories go to find purpose for their existence.It is a place where humans cast all inhibitions aside to discover what exists at their very core.It is a place of growth wearing a mask of destruction.It is a challenge, not for the faint of heart, beckoning us to face it with eyes wide open.The only war is within. When you are ready to fight it, the field awaits.
I chase goals, not girls.
Much self-condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark, 'One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man'. In ancient Athens, when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by exclaiming, 'Your vanity shows forth from every whole in your coat'.
My dear friends, from the devil's standpoint there is not the slightest difference between being puffed up with pride in yourself or spending the whole of your time condemning yourself. Either way the devil is very well-pleased. Any concentration upon self in any shape or form is of the devil.
Self respect by definition is a confidence and pride in knowing that your behaviour is both honorable and dignified. Therefore when you harass or vilify another person, you not only disrespect them, but you also. -Respect yourself by respecting others.
My confidence is in the idea that I may be wrong on this or that. No man in this life should ever have to bear the burden of perfection.
It happens very often that those whom men esteem highly are more seriously endangered by their own excessive confidence. Hence, for many it is better not to be too free from temptations, but often to be tried lest they become too secure, too filled with pride, or even too eager to fall back upon external comforts.
...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.
Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.
The destructive power of pride is that it countenances nothing higher than itself. Because of an inherent fault in our nature, man’s bias is on the side of error. In our willful desire to live independently of God, we have severed the lifeline that flows from the source of all life.
What we fail to realize is we often become like Pharisees in our ruthless attempts to identify Pharisees (and impostors). While indeed some people use the old laws of religious pride to tear down men of God, others use the new laws of anti-religious anger to tear down men of God.
The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil.
Perhaps it is true that, by some definitions, Satan is more religious than God. Many of the particularly proud sinners are deceived into thinking that Satan is anti-religious, that he likes seeing people do immoral things simply because he likes immoral things. Doubtful; Satan likes for people to do immoral things so that he can blame them for doing immoral things. The Father of Lies laughs not with his teammates, but at them.
I've an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers. I am no longer capable of loosing my head in love, Ambition has been crushed in me by circumstances, but it has come out in another way, for ambition is nothing but a lust for power and my chief delight is to dominate those around me. To inspire in others love, devotion, fear - isn't that the first symptom and the supreme triumph of power? To cause another person suffering or joy, having no right to do so - isn't that the sweetest food of pride?
You have heard that evil is a perversion of the good. The greatest goods can be perverted into the greatest evils. The poor man has not the opportunities for covetousness and self-indulgence which the rich man enjoys. The unlettered man has not the opportunities for intellectual pride and arrogance which the scholar may succumb to. An irreligious man may prostitute the flesh; but it takes a 'religious' man to prostitute the things of the Spirit and the Church of God. Every gift, every insight, ever vision, every talent brings its demand for self-forgetfulness in sanctified service: each brings its opportunities for richer worship or for more damnable self-love. The slum labourer may pervert beer and steak to the sole end of abusing an indulged body. It takes a bishop to pervert episcopacy to the service of self-indulgence; it takes a monk to pervert the religious life to the service of pride.
The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal. Perhaps because of rising standards of living, children are being treated better worldwide. In only a few decades, sweeping global changes have begun to move in precisely the directions needed for human survival. A new consciousness is developing which recognizes that we are one species.
What humans want most of all, is to be right. Even if we're being right about our own doom. If we believe there are monsters around the next corner ready to tear us apart, we would literally prefer to be right about the monsters, than to be shown to be wrong in the eyes of others and made to look foolish.
The journey of life demands diligence; walk in diligence in your entire life endeavors, and don’t let your energy just go anywhere at all. Price yourself well! Price your energy well! Price your attention well! Price your time well! Prioritize your moments well! Be humble enough to understand the meaning of life and don't let excessive pride be your lens. Be assertive enough to know what to kowtow to and what never to give your time, attention, energy and emotions to. You were born great; be great!
I don’t want us to be ashamed anymore (we all were crying by this point) of being pregnant or gay or poor or having a crackhead dad! I want us to be fucking proud of ourselves. (...) So we have to be proud and always remember who we are and when we make it to college, who we were.
We will not read of that which hurts our pride or fears or 'feelings'. We forget, or gloss over, or excuse, an experience which injured the tentacles of our personality. We forget the pscyhiatrist's definition of a neurosis as 'refused pain'. In the same way we escape from mental pain. We refuse to believe what we do not like.
Speculation, movements having abandoned rational thought, echo chambers, projection, hypocrisy by little to no self-awareness, bewildering minds brainwashed and manipulative hearts manipulated - one is sure to find these à la people cock-sure in their biased and fanatical, immovable despising of persons. We would all do well to humbly re-think from time to time: 'Whom do I really hate? For what purpose?
Pride is not looked at as a weakness, though it is the epitome of it. You might hear 'oh that poor alcoholic probably had an awful upbringing' but you never hear any sympathy for a prideful person, 'poor thing is probably horribly insecure, maybe we should validate him as a person to help him out.' That's what you should hear, but you won’t. What I will say though, is that the key to curing pride is not so much in loving others more, but actually in loving yourself more. Loving your neighbor as yourself does no good if you don’t love yourself.
You will get closer to the truths only when you start thinking this way: My religion is not the best religion, my country is not the best country, my culture is not the best culture, and my life is not the best life! The more you move away from arrogance, pride and prejudice, the more you will get closer to the truth!
Self-acceptance should not be confused with an over-vaulting aggrandisement of self over others. That individual's exaggerated positive view of self relies upon a comparison with others - they sustain their own positive self-view, relatively, by maintaining a negative view of others.
No, I'm serious," Frankie insisted, fed up with being silenced. "Why didn't you just make me a normie?"Viktor sighed. "Because that's not who we are. We're special. And I'm very proud that. You should be, too.""Proud?" Frankie spat out the word as if it had been soaked in nail polish remover. "How can I be proud when everyone is telling me to hide?""I'm telling you to hide so you'll be safe. But you can still feel proud of who you are," he explained, like it really was that simple. "Pride has to come from within you and stay with you, no matter what people say."Huh?Frankie crossed her arms and looked away.
Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas had talked about ghosts and magic and woven a bit of a spell himself. He'd sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she'd found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong.
If what we want is God’s justice, coming to sort things out, we will do better to get entirely out of the way and let God do his own work, rather than supposing our burst of anger (which will most likely have all sorts of nasty bits to it, such as wounded pride, malice and envy) will somehow help God do what needs to be done.
We, the public, are easily, lethally offended. We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From this high ground we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities. We take pride in our short fuses. Our anger elevates, transcends.
Anyone can possess, anyone can profess, but it is an altogether different thing to confess.
Piety /pi•e•ty/ (modern definition)1. When you use Christ’s teachings to put someone in their place out of anger and self-righteousness. It is the number two reason people leave the faith. The first is pride.
Christianity, true Christianity, is experienced when we crucify the anger, pride, vanity and lust that dwells within ourselves and consciously replace it with the sacrificial love, humility, modesty and chasteness of the One who so many profess to believe in and follow. -Jason Neville Versey
It's fallacious reasoning for the atheist to hate all religion due to men who manipulate religion to fit their own agendas. They are counterparts, therefore, if Truth is true, partners in crime. To believers, the atheist and the religiously corrupt boil down to the same person, the self-righteous: one denies Truth to fit his own agenda; the other manipulates Truth to fit his own agenda.
Don't be carried away by beauty, for the faeces also stays in the rectum of ravishing faces, and their private life is not beautiful as their public life...fear beauty!
But what is it that drives haters crazy with rage? Many times, it's being ignored. To a person with pride, being ignored is often worse than out-and-out hate; it's that much more of an insult, that you're not even worth noticing.
The truly terrible thing about the war spirit, about the fear and hate hysteria it generates, is that it forces us to think and talk and feel in terms of abstractions—those "communists" this time, those "fascists" last time. But those we are fighting and killing are people—men, women and children—not political, geographic or economic abstractions. They are, in the main, as decent and fearful and confused as we are. And they regard us as abstractions as much as we do them.
If a man like that is killed, there is always another to take his place. That is not the important thing. But to act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are asking for the right to live, to act so that all of this will end, both here and elsewhere; that is what should be in your thoughts. That is what you must explain to others, so that you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also so that no one shall be forced to bow down before you. It was to tell you this that I asked you to come, because hatred must not dwell with you.
MacCaulay clutches his coat tightly and makes towards the elaborate iron gates of the park. He hurries past Apsley House: one time residence of the ‘hero of a hundred fights’ – the Duke of Wellington. His monument to his own great deeds stands yet in front of the drawing room windows. If he had, in modesty, forgotten his own greatness, he might have looked upon it, and been reminded.
Now then, Mr. Crab," said the zebra, "here are the people I told you about; and they know more than you do, who live in a pool, and more than I do, who live in a forest. For they have been travelers all over the world, and know every part of it.""There's more of the world than Oz," declared the crab, in a stubborn voice."That is true," said Dorothy; "but I used to live in Kansas, in the United States, and I've been to California and to Australia--and so has Uncle Henry.""For my part," added the Shaggy Man, "I've been to Mexico and Boston and many other foreign countries.""And I," said the Wizard, "have been to Europe and Ireland.""So you see," continued the zebra, addressing the crab, "here are people of real consequence, who know what they are talking about.
Considerable social science research has found that constant praise of children can backfire, because it so often consists of telling children how smart they are, not of praising children for the things they actually do. As a result, many children become protective of their image of being smart and are reluctant to take chances that might actually damage that image.
He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent... by exploiting his vanity. He can... enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a "deeper," "spiritual" world within him which they can not understand. You see the idea - the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all. Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of same, a continual under-current of self-satisfaction... and that to cease to do so would be "priggish," "intolerant," and... "Puritanical.
A man protects his fish from rats by keeping it under a cat's watch. How wise!Another buys a gun for security reasons, but decides to kill a ghost with it. How smart!One prays to God for safety, as he climbs a palm tree with sewing thread. How intelligent!Man does not want the truth, and God does not want lies, yet there is no third option.One pretends to be rich, yet has nothing. That's pride. Another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth. Humility!Not all that glitters is gold, and not all gold glitters. Watch, with the eyes, and also with the heart.Just because all things are lawful, don't make them expedient. And because a thing is right doesn't mean it edifies.With Faith, Wisdom comes highly recommended!
It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensible to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, ‘How will the work go on without me?’ As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, ‘How will the mails be carried without me?’ Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified.
There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs.
Explaining temptation by saying “God is testing me” or “Satan is attacking me” positions “me” either as the victim, if I am defeated, or the hero, if I prevail. But confessing that “My heart is desperately wicked” provides no such comforts. It heads off all attempts to shift blame, and cuts down all the pretensions of spiritual pride.
If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him.
Pride,’ observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, ‘is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.
Cortax: “Sometimes, life doesn't work out the way you wanted or expected, but that's fine. Keep your head up, chest out, emotions and morals in check and be proud of the person you are. Don't let those unexpected surprises keep you from reaching your goals. And again, be proud, like I am, proud to see my son grow up into a man.
Honor, More charged, 'is the religion of tragedy.' Emotions such as love, hate, ambition, pride, and jealousy, 'form a dazzling system of worldly morality,' which contradicts 'the spirit of that religion whose characteristics are charity, meekness, peaceableness, longsuffering, gentleness, forgiveness.
By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were....Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.
Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience.
Spiritual pride tends to speak of other persons’ sins with bitterness or with laughter and levity and an air of contempt. But pure Christian humility rather tends either to be silent about these problems or to speak of them with grief and pity. Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others, but a humble Christian is most guarded about himself. He is as suspicious of nothing in the world as he is of his own heart. The proud person is apt to find fault with other believers, that they are low in grace, and to be much in observing how cold and dead they are and to be quick to note their deficiencies. But the humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own heart and is so concerned about it that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts. He is apt to esteem others better than himself.
If I created a new depravity I would be a priestess, while my imitators would founder, after my reign, in abominable filth...Don't you think that proud men, copying Satan, are more guilty than the Satan of the Bible, who invented pride? Is Satan not respectable because of his unprecedented and divinely inspired sin?
Pride keeps you from dealing with truth. It distorts your vision. You never change when you think everything is fine. Pride hardens your heart and dims the eyes of your understanding. It keeps you from the change of heart--repentance--that will set you free.
I shouldn’t complain about God’s mercy to others while thanking Him for His mercy to me. I shouldn’t commit the sin of pride by justifying my rebellion or my running from God compared to other people’s sin. Who am I to be angry at what the angels in Heaven rejoice in?
Some of these beginners, too, make little of their faults, and at other times become over-sad when they see themselves fall into them, thinking themselves to have been saints already; and thus they become angry and impatient with themselves, which is another imperfection. Often they beseech God, with great yearnings, that He will take from them their imperfections and faults, but they do this that they may find themselves at peace, and may not be troubled by them, rather than for God's sake; not realizing that, if He should take their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still. They dislike praising others and love to be praised themselves; sometimes they seek out such praise. Herein they are like the foolish virgins, who, when their lamps could not be lit, sought oil from others.
We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.
The real difference in the believer who follows Christ and has mortified his will and died after the old man in Christ, is that he is more clearly aware than other men of the rebelliousness and perennial pride of the flesh, he is conscious of his sloth and self-indulgence and knows that his arrogance must be eradicated. Hence there is a need for daily self-discipline.
The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.
Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness seem all the more extraordinary, whose poverty can be tormented and exacerbated by a display of her wealth. This infernal serpent, pervading the human heart, keeps men from reforming their lives, holding them back like a suckfish.
In confession occurs the breakthrough of the Cross. The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride...In the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother - which means, before God - we experience the Cross of Jesus as our rescue and salvation. The old man dies, but it is God who has conquered him. Now we share in the resurrection of Christ and eternal life.
Relativism poses as humble by saying: “We are not smart enough to know what the truth is—or if there is any universal truth.” It sounds humble. But look carefully at what is happening. It’s like a servant saying: I am not smart enough to know which person here is my master—or if I even have a master. The result is that I don’t have a master and I can be my own master. That is in reality what happens to relativists: In claiming to be too lowly to know the truth, they exalt themselves as supreme arbiter of what they can think and do. This is not humility. This is the essence of pride.
In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good.
We are not worthy to unloose the latchets of Jesus' shoes, because, if we do, we begin to say to ourselves, "What great folks are we; we have been allowed to loose the latchets of the Lord's sandals." If we do not tell somebody else about it with many an exultation, we at least tell ourselves about it, and feel that we are something after all, and ought to be held in no small repute.
when the serpent breathed the poison of his pride, the desire to be as God, into the hearts of our first parents, that they too fell from their high estate into all the wretchedness in which man is now sunk. In heaven and earth, pride, self-exaltation, is the gate and the birth, and the curse, ofhell.
Humility carries less weight and it makes things float. Pride is weighty and it makes things sink! It takes humility then for a ‘ship’, regardless of how loaded it is, to float on the surface of the ‘sea’. And it takes pride for the ‘small stone’ to sink when dropped into the ‘sea’! Go with humility then!
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages a you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you may awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
Loving ourselves so much, we are naturally led to enlarge our own merits, to play down our transgressions, to judge others by different standards from those used to judge ourselves. Enlarged merits? They are described by your fellow-writer Trilussa:The little snail of VaingloryWho had crawled up an obeliskLooked at its slimy trail and said:I see I'll leave my mark on History.This is the way we are, dear Twain; even a bit of slime, if it is our own, and because it is our own, makes us boast, gives us a swelled head!
When I am paid a compliment, I must compare myself with the little donkey that carried Christ on Palm Sunday. And I say to myself: If that little creature, hearing the applause of the crowd, had become proud and had begun -- jackass that he was -- to bow his thanks left and right like a prima donna, how much hilarity he would have aroused! Don't act the same!
Do not just think about the destination when you start the journey or just mind the direction of your journey to the final destination; and do not be carried away by the serendipity and the joy you shall have as you move, for you may never know the vicissitude of life that will arise; be careful, however, of what it really takes to truly end the journey successfully regardless what you shall have or face as you journey so as to have a great journey and a true life story of noble footprints
Narcissistic pleasure seekers routinely avoid developing the humility required to manufacture a life of full measure. Shallow persons such as me hide their insecurities behind a false persona of bravado, boasting of their inconsequential deeds, pyrrhic victories, and adamant refusals to tackle any task that they fear.
Pity is unto the bird that takes refuge and stands on the tall tree with shallow roots to boast with their sweet melodies for they shall sing a harmonious dirge the day the strong storm will arrive. But the birds that shall build their nest on the tall tree deeply rooted in the soil shall smile and sing hallelujah when they see the storm coming from afar
We can choose to humble ourselves by receiving counsel and chastisement. We can choose to humble ourselves by forgiving those who have offended us. We can choose to humble ourselves by rendering selfless service. We can choose to humble ourselves by going on missions and preaching the word that can humble others. We can choose to humble ourselves by getting to the temple more frequently. We can choose to humble ourselves by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God. We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, submitting our will to His, and putting Him first in our lives. Let us choose to be humble. We can do it. I know we can.
Happiness was the responsibility you dreaded, it required the kind of rational discipline you did not value yourself enough to assume - and the anxious staleness of your days is the monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility - learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness - and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.
The more unworthy you feel yourself to be, the more evidence have you that nothing but unspeakable love could have led the Lord Jesus to save such a soul as yours. The more demerit you feel, the clearer is the display of the abounding love of God in having chosen you, and called you, and made you an heir of bliss.
One of the ladies asked about that awful Bobby Kennedy, and Goldwater responded by speaking about the attorney general with touching affection. (Mary) McGrory recalled how Jack Kennedy behaved at a similar stage in his campaign: spouting statistics, attacking carefully chosen enemies and puffing all the right friends, quoting dead Greeks, never cracking a joke lest he remind the voters how young he was.
In the name of "force protection," the military often rolls up windows, builds walls, and points rifles at the outside world. The best force protection, however, is to be surrounded by friends and allies.
Being big enough to know when you are small, makes you gigantic. Lack of humility is not necessarily the down fall of great relationships, it is the slippery slide ego and pride take you down that block communication, cause mis-communication and dissolution of trust, that kill a bond.--TAMMY WOOSTER 1/15
If we had not experienced our deep sinfulness and Jesus' deep forgiveness through the cross, we will not love others well in the midst of their struggles. If we do not see the beauty and glory of God in our own redemption, we will not be able to offer a compelling redemptive vision for those who are hopeless and who doubt God's love for them.
A partner's different perspective is valuable, but the very fact that it is different means that it will require work, humility, time, and resources to incorporate that perspective. At times, this will require checking one's pride at the door.
I had such a hard time giving all the glory to God when first accepting Him as Lord. Coming out of a theatre background where there were many applauds and accolades, I suffered from what I call "attention-itis" - the need for recognition. It took many years and much eating of crow before I became conscious of giving all praise to God for my accomplishments.
Alex Rodriguez seemed not to fit in with the rest of his Yankee teammates. For instance, he wanted a clubhouse attendant personally assigned to him, when there were four or five for the whole team. Seeing the rift between him and the rest of the team and how Rodriguez's major focus on how HE was perceived, Joe Torre suggested in the individual meeting that Rodriguez at least get his own coffee rather than send someone to get it for him. Later that day, Alex Rodriguez made a point of telling the manager that he got his own coffee – drawing attention to himself, even in what was meant to be just an example of how he could fit in with normal behavior.
On Alex Rodriguez's difficulty performing in clutch situations, Joe Torre writes, "In key situations, he can't get himself to concern himself with getting the job done instead of how it looks. There's a certain freefall you go through when you commit yourself without a guarantee that it's always going to be good. There's a trust and commitment thing that has to allow yourself fail, allow yourself to be embarrassed, allow yourself to be vulnerable
In other words, we are only proud of being more successful, more intelligent or more good-looking than the next person, and we are in the presence of someone who is more successful, intelligent and good-looking than we are, we lose all pleasure in what we had. That is because we really had no pleasure in it. We were proud of it.
We need more worship wars, not fewer. What if the war looked like this in your congregation--the young singles petitioning the church to play more of the old classics for the sake of the elderly people, and the elderly people calling on the leadership to contemporize for the sake of the young new believers? This would signal a counting of others more important than ourselves (Phil 2:3), which comes from the spirit of the humiliated, exalted King, Christ (Phil 2:5-11).
It was easier to be the headstrong monk, a boy on a long-shot mission, before he actually won anything. With the prize in hand, he realized his single-minded drive came across as aloof cockiness; his painful martyrdom certainly looked like self-nomination for sainthood. He's not sure he can keep up this exhausting, aw-shucks façade for much longer.
How quickly self rises to the surface, and the instrument is ready to believe he is something more than an instrument! How sadly easy it is to make of the very service God entrusts us with a pedestal on which to display ourselves. But God will not share His glory with another, and therefore does He "hide" those who may be tempted to take some of it unto themselves. It is only by retiring from public view and getting alone with God that we can learn our own nothingness.
Henry flopped onto his bed, and his steam leaked slowly out. He began telling himself a story in his head. It was about how just and kind and understanding he was. It was about right he had been, how necessary his tone and word choice. It was about a girl who just didn't understand, who was completely ignorant. Then, for some reason, the narrator of the story included an incident in which Henry ha pushed an envelope into a strange place just to see what would happen. It hadn't even been an accident. The incident did not fit with the rest of the story, so Henry tried to ignored it. He couldn't ignore it, so he tried to explain it. Completely different things. The post office was obviously not dangerous. It was yellow. I just wanted to see what the mailman would do. The flashlight was stupid. I didn't shine a flashlight into the post office. She didn't even act sorry. I would have acted sorry. I always act sorry when people get upset. She didn't even care that I probably saved her life. She didn't know. She was unconscious. Oh, shut up.
Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.
I can't - Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize - my prize - it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won't harm you, I swear that he won't, but you must...hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you're not better off dead. Swallow your pride.""Maybe it's not as easy for me as it is for you."He wheeled on her. "It's not easy for me," "You know that it's not. What do you think I have had to swallow these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?""Truly," she said, "I haven't the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else."He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: "You can make people feel so small.
He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so hard to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself - was a great fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him.
I do not know whether anyone has ever succeeded in not enjoying praise. And, if he enjoys it, he naturally wants to receive it. And if he wants to receive it, he cannot help but being distraught at losing it. Those who are in love with applause have their spirits starved not only when they are blamed off-hand, but even when they fail to be constantly praised.
I thought of what pride would look like, a jowly old guy in a smoking jacket. Vanity was a tall, beautiful woman with a face like a mask. Envy was a treasure-hoarding dragon, dainty and diabolical. As I sketched in the dragon's face, I gave her eyebrows like mine, my turtle necklace around its scaly neck. Xanda drew them as cliffs and valleys, irrevocably linked pride as a mountain, envy as a valley, hating its lowness and longing to reach, overtake, conquer. She drew vanity as a volcano with an abyss at its core.
But if we reason it out simply and not try to be one bit fancy, then what sort of pride can you possibly take or what's the sense of ever having it, if man is poorly put together as a physiological type and if the enormous majority of the human race is brutal, stupid, and profoundly unhappy?
—Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder the literatures for words they can speak. And should you encounter an ancient tribe whose customs, however dimly, cast light on their hearts, tell them that tale; and you shall name the unspeakable names of your kind, and in that naming, in each such telling, they will falter a step to the light."—For only with pride may a man prosper. With pride, all things follow. Without he have pride he is a shadowy skulk whose season is night.
He was proud of her, he admired her, and at that moment he was conscious of life as something good and he fell in love with her all over again. This consciousness of love took the form of a deep patience inhabiting him, rather than a feeling of cheer or even hope
On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there.
Arrogance is perhaps the most socially acceptable form of sin in the church today. In this culture of abundance, one of the only ways Satan can keep Christians neutralized is to wrap us up in pride. Conceit slips in like drafts of cold air in the winter. We don't see it, but outsiders can sense it.
God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly.
She was like a queen who beholds the virgin soil of her kingdom invaded and wasted by a traitor.Any other thing she would have pardoned: infidelity, indifference, cruelty, any sins of manhood's caprice or passion, but who should pardon this? The sin was not alone against herself; it was against every law of decency and truth that ever she had been taught to hold sacred; it was against all those great dead, who lay with the cross on their breasts and their swords by their side, from whom she had received and treasured the traditions of honor and purity of race.It was those dead knights whom he had smote upon the mouth and mocked, crying to them: 'Lo! your place is mine; my sons will reign in your stead. I have tainted your race forever; for every my blood flows with yours!'The greatness of a race is a thing far higher than mere pride. Its instincts are noble and supreme. Its obligations are no less than its privileges; it is a great light which streams backward through the darkness of the ages, and if by that light you guide not your footsteps, then are you thrice accursed, holding as you do that lamp of honor in your hands.So she had always thought, and now he had dashed the lamp in the dust.--"Wanda
And after that until the end, there was no relief from being a girl with chores that she wasn’t being paid for, a girl with no new sandals and a friend who wasn’t a friend but a mistress, and a family that wasn’t but people who owned her and ordered her about, and nothing at all but her pretty breasts and her round bottom and her misbehaving hair to help her feel any different.
There are so many priests who enter triumphantly and walk up toward the altar, greeting people left and right, so as to appear sympathetic. Just look at the sad spectacle of some Eucharistic celebrations. ... Why so much frivolousness and worldliness at the moment of the Holy Sacrifice? Why so much profanation and superficiality, given the extraordinary priestly grace that renders us able to make the Body and Blood of Christ substantially present by the invocation of the Spirit? Why do some think that they are obliged to improvise or invent Eucharistic Prayers that conceal the sacred prayers in a wash of petty, human fervor? Are Christ's words insufficient, making it necessary to multiply merely human words? In such a unique and essential sacrifice, is there any need for such a display of imagination and subjective creativity? "In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words", Jesus warns us (Mt 6:7).
Words often bring with them the illusion of transparency, as though they allowed us to understand everything, control everything, put everything in order. Modernity is talkative because it is proud, unless the converse is true. Is our incessant talking perhaps what makes us proud?
Learning that he was a professional swindler should have made her shame a hundred times worse. Instead, it took the sting out of it. The whole affair was disgusting, and she was unwise to have trusted him, but she had been one of many victims. She wouldn't stand out in his mind as more foolish than other women. What a strange, vain thing the mind was.
Let me take once again a rough parable. Suppose I advertised in the papers that I had a place for any one who was too stupid to be a clerk. Probably I should receive no replies; possibly one. Possibly also (nay, probably) it would be from the one man who was not stupid at all. But suppose I had advertised that I had a place for any one who was too clever to be a clerk. My office would be instantly besieged by all the most hopeless fools in the four kingdoms. To advertise for exceptions is simply to advertise for egoists. To advertise for egoists is to advertise for idiots. It is exactly the bore who does think that his case is interesting. It is precisely the really common person who does think that his case is uncommon. It is always the dull man who does think himself rather wild. To ask solely for strange experiences of the soul is simply to let loose all the imbecile asylums about one's ears.
...imagine that you hold in one hand an oddly shaped stone. You keep this hand closed into a fist, but still you can feel the stone’s curvature and the pointed edges, the roughness—of course, you know the relative size and weight and might even have a mental image of the color of this stone, even if you have not yet laid eyes upon it. Imagine that stone in your hand. Imagine what it is like to know everything about the way it feels, but nothing of how it looks. Hold that in mind for a moment.Now, imagine that there is a person standing next to you who tells you that she also holds a stone in her hand. You look down and see the clenched fist and she sees yours and you confess the same. Neither of you, it seems, has yet opened the hand and seen the stone. Still, you can only trust each other’s proclamations. Standing together with your stones in hand, the two of you theorize about whether or not your respective stones are similar to one another. You discuss mundane details about your stones (not the special ones—you hesitate to make mention of the sharp point in the northern hemisphere or the flat area on the bottom). Your neighbor finally notes similarities between her stone and yours and you nod with relief and acknowledge that your stones indeed share reasonable commonalities. Over the course of your discussion, you and your neighbor finally conclude, without bothering to open your hands, that the stones you hold must indeed be quite similar.Are they? It is only suitable to say that they are. At the same time, and in spite of your desire not to offend, there is no doubt in your mind that the stone you hold bespeaks a greater prominence than that of your neighbor. You are not sure how you know this to be true, but it must be so! And I do not mean that this stone simply holds a greater subjective prominence. It has something of the universal, for it is, indeed, an auspicious stone! Silently, you hypothesize in what ways it must be special. It is possibly different in shape, color, weight, size and texture from the other, but you cannot confirm this. Perhaps, it is special by substance? Still, you are unsure. The very fact of your uncertainty begins to bother you and unleashes within you a deep insecurity. What if you are wrong and your stone is actually inferior to the other…or inferior even to some third stone not yet encountered? Meanwhile, your neighbor is silently suffering in the same agony. Both of you tacitly understand that, without comparing the two visually, it is absurd to proclaim the two stones similar. Yet, your fist remains clenched, as does your neighbor’s and so you find yourselves unable to hold out the stones before you and compare them side-by-side. Of course, this is possible, but the mutual curiosity is outstripped by an inveterate pride, and so you both become afraid of showing (and even seeing) what you have, for fear that your respective stones will be different in appearance from the model that you have each conceptualized in mind. Meekly your eyes meet and you smile to one another at your new comradeship, but, all the while, remain paralyzed by a simultaneous shame and vanity.
There could be something wrong with me because I see Negroes neither better nor worse than any other race. Race pride is a luxury I cannot afford. There are too many implications bend the term. Now, suppose a Negro does something really magnificent, and I glory, not in the benefit to mankind, but the fact that the doer was a Negro. Must I not also go hang my head in shame when a member of my race does something execrable? If I glory, then the obligation is laid upon me to blush also. I do glory when a Negro does something fine, I gloat because he or she has done a fine thing, but not because he was a Negro. That is incidental and accidental. It is the human achievement which I honor. I execrate a foul act of a Negro but again not on the grounds that the doer was a Negro, but because it was foul. A member of my race just happened to be the fouler of humanity. In other words, I know that I cannot accept responsibility for thirteen million people. Every tub must sit on its own bottom regardless. So 'Race Pride' in me had to go. And anyway, why should I be proud to be Negro? Why should anyone be proud to be white? Or yellow? Or red? After all, the word 'race' is a loose classification of physical characteristics. I tells nothing about the insides of people. Pointing a achievements tells nothing either. Races have never done anything. What seems race achievement is the work of individuals. The white race did not go into a laboratory and invent incandescent light. That was Edison. The Jews did not work out Relativity. That was Einstein. The Negros did not find out the inner secrets of peanuts and sweet potatoes, nor the secret of the development of the egg. That wad Carver and Just. If you are under the impression that every white man is Edison, just look around a bit. If you have the idea that every Negro is a Carver, you had better take off plenty of time to do your searching.
It was flawless, correct, and beautiful. 'This is mine,' he said to himself. He felt tears well up in his eyes, tears of joy. Oh, what a blessing it was to be a man, to create, to labor and produce such a great thing - to be alive! It was a splendid thing he had done! He rose from his desk and looked down on the neat pile of paper before him with a smile and eyes narrowed in fierce, immaculate greed. He raised his arms in triumph, fists clenched, and laughed once. What a glorious thing is pride! It is almost an end in itself! No wonder churchmen preached against it! A truly proud man is not to be found in their flocks of souls humbled by the rumor of a great invisible wizard and the inexplicable! If it is a sin to feel such pride, then it is a sin to be a man!
The war was between the Danes and Wessex. My war was with Odda the Younger, and I knew I was driven by pride. The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him. It’s the shield wall around his reputation and the Danes understood that. Men die they said, but reputation does not die. What do we look for in a lord? Strength, generosity, hardness, and success. And why should a man not be proud of those things? Show me a humble warrior and I’ll see a corpse. Alfred preached humility, he even pretended to it, loving to appear in church with bare feet and prostrating himself in-front the alter, but he never possessed true humility. He was proud, and men feared him because of it, and men should fear a lord. They should fear his displeasure and fear his generosity will cease. Reputation makes fear, and pride protects reputation, and I marched North because my pride was endangered.
Pride is not your friend. He would have you think he is, that he affords you strength and courage, but in truth he robs you of your health and by slow, diluted degrees steals your might. He is a crafty and cunning liar who would have you think that stubborn, unapologetic, superior, boastful, and popular are admirable traits. Pride would convince you that being right is more crucial than being kind. He would have you sever relationships, even turn your back on family and friends rather than utter a humble apology. To do so is beneath you, pride would say. He would have you fight like a raptor and gnash your teeth while jutting out an inflexible jaw to defend and protect him, regardless of who is hurt in the process. He would use and demean you in order to puff up and fortify himself. He would destroy your life and every meaningful association before casting you aside without a hint of remorse. Again, Pride is not your friend.
Let us know our differences! Let us understand our differences! Let us know and understand that we are all different people with different differences! We all have different differences that are not all that different! Understanding is the matter! When we get to know and understand our differences well, we shall least spit on each other just because of our differences!
To be unable to bear disapproval was an unworthy weakness. But in her case it came nowise of the pride which blame stirs to resentment, but altogether of the self-depreciation which disapproval rouses to yet greater dispiriting. Praise was to her a precious thing, in part because it made her feel as if she could go on; blame, a misery, in part because it made her feel as if all was of no use, she never could do anything right. She had not yet learned that the right is the right, come of praise or blame what may. The right will produce more right and be its own reward--in the end a reward altogether infinite, for God will meet it with what is deeper than all right, namely, perfect love.
He had the fault of thinking too well of himself--which who has not who thinks of himself at all, apart from his relation to the holy force of life, within yet beyond him? It was the almost unconscious, assuredly the undetected, self-approbation of the ordinarily righteous man, the defect of whose righteousness makes him regard himself as upright, but the virtue of whose uprightness will at length disclose to his astonished view how immeasurably short of rectitude he comes. At the age of thirty, Godfrey Wardour had not yet become so displeased with himself as to turn self-roused energy upon betterment; and until then all growth must be of doubtful result. … His friends notwithstanding gave him credit for great imperturbability; but in such willfully undemonstrative men the evil burrows the more insidiously that it is masked by a constrained exterior.
Pride. The worst kind of fire. It starts somewhere below the gut, creeps through the liver, climbs quietly up the heart, and moves into the lungs. You never notice it until it’s too late. It’s uncontrollable by the time it gets to the head. There it rages, blowing hot air through the ears. It’s a spiteful hissing above the echoing vacuum between the ears. All thoughts get evicted or burnt. When the fire ceases, only black ashes remain. Imagine. Ashes in your head.
Pride is a by-product of insecurity. And the more insecure a person is, the more monuments they need to build.There is a fine line between 'Thy kingdom come' and 'my kingdom come.' If you cross the line, your relationship with God is self-serving.You aren't serving God. You are using God.You aren't building altars to God. You are building monuments to yourself.
... A man is not usually called upon to have an opinion of his own talents at all, since he can very well go on improving them to the best of his ability without deciding on his own precise niche in the temple of Fame... [Man] did not create themselves... their talents were given them, and they might as well be proud of the colour of their hair.
Arrogance is born of insecurity. Pride is different. It is born of dignity, self-worth, and self-respect. We all see the world through the prism of our identity. If our self-worth is low, it affects everything we do. The point of life is to contribute to others, but without a certain self-regard, it is sometimes difficult to make breakfast.
But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. (6.12)
Needing attention is a p-p-powerful force in the world, isn't it?""Absolutely. Most people would think of it as a very natural need. Almost a right.""By 'natural' you mean 'm-m-morally neutral'?""Touché.""Without God, people find it very hard to know who they are or why they exist. But if others pay attention to them, praise them, write about them, discuss them, they think they've found the answers to both questions.""If they don't believe in God, you can't blame them.""True, dear. But it still makes for an empty, unhappy person."..."Are you saying, Father Joe, that in the matter of motives, or even morally, there's not ultimately much difference between me and my targets?""I'm afraid not, dear. If the result is that you only have a personality other people shape. If you really exist only in other people's minds.""I think you've just described celebrity.""I've just described pride, dear.
Find out what faith is and how you can put it into practice.Learn how to pray, and do it.Discover what pride is, and get rid of it.Develop a self-concept that is adequate and accurate.Clarify your values.Identify your talents.Probe the fact, meaning, and use of your sexuality. Face the fact that you engage in self-deception. Reflect on truth that you are made in the image of God. Use your spiritual gift. Clear your conscience. Feel deeply.Enjoy life. Face death.Treat your body right.Conquer the flesh. Depend on the Holy Spirit. Be humble.
Ambiades, I realized, was the kind of person who liked to put people in a hierarchy, and he wanted me to understand that I was at the bottom of his. He was supposed to treat me politely in spite of my subservient position, and I was supposed to be grateful.For my part, I wanted Ambiades to understand that I considered myself a hierarchy of one. I might bow to the superior force of the magus and Pol, but I wasn't going to bow to him. Neither of us moved.
You are strong, tempered like steel in the fire and by the blows of the hammer of life. Nothing will break you again, only make you stronger and more whole. Perfection is the pride of those who have not lived, who know not these things in their arrogance. They remain the same - raw and without form. The hammer never touches them, and they lie on the shelf, gathering dust, slowly tarnishing and fading and crumbling. the blows of the hammer in the fire refine us into bright shining glory for the roles we play in life - until we are one with the anvil, becoming immune to the hammer's little knocks, and smile at it.
There may not be an emotion more complex than the dual stations of pride. The positive connation of pride – the telluric current resulting from both natural causes and interactions of human beings – flows from the conception of applying a person’s best effort to accomplish worthwhile tasks. The negative connotation of pride refers to an inflated sense of one’s personal status or accomplishments.
The Congresswoman was depressed by the fact that a woman of her standing could no longer count on making it to the rest room "in time" during the extensive rehabilitation that followed her shooting. Her husband, commander of a space shuttle crew, encouraged her by identifying with her limitation. Even revered astronauts, he revealed, have bodily limits and have to rely on Huggies during extended launch exercises.
America is a young dumb country and it needs all kinds of help. America is a dumb puppy with big teeth that bite and hurt. And we take care of America. We hold America to our bosom; we feed America, we make love to America. There wouldn't be an America if it wasn't for black people. So you have some dedicated black Americans who will die a million deaths to save America. And this is home for us. We don't know really about Africa. We talk it in a romantic sense, but America is it. And so, America is always going to be okay as long as black people don't totally lose their mind, cause we'll pick up the pieces and turn it into a new dance.
That will solve nothing, my lord.” His wife strode into the kitchen, stiff pride shining in her eyes. “I told you to keep her in hand.” Brodick glared at his cousin, wondering just when his life had turned inside out. Druce scowled at the sweet smile Brodrick’s wife cast toward him. He lifted his finger and pointed at her. “She bit me.
I understand,” she says, and then she quotes Du Fu: “The country is broken, but the mountains and rivers remain.” Her eyes flash; he catches sight of the fire in this modest woman. “We are the mountains and rivers,” he says, impressed. “No matter what the country is called.
But the arrogance of old age can cloak itself in the authority of past accomplishments, which can serve to confirm the belief that one’s arrogance is justly held. It can shield a man from the realization that his beliefs have calcified, that he can no longer assess a situation accurately at first glance, that the world has changed around him and left him behind. Guarded from this knowledge, he remains content.
If your vocation be shoeing horses, or painting pictures, and you can do one or the other better than your fellows, then you are a fool if you are not proud of your ability. And so I am very proud that upon two planets no greater fighter has ever lived than John Carter, Prince of Helium.
The ways of the world exalt themselves against God. They sometimes look rational and appealing to the most ernest disciple but Christ says to us then what He said to His disciples long ago, when many of them had given u pin disgust, "Do you also want to leave me?" If we answer as PEter did, "Lord to whom else shall we go? Your words are words of eternal life," our rebel thoughts are captured once more. The way of holiness is again visible.
So she prayed, Lord, give me patience. She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it....it cost her tears to think that her situation might actually be that desolate, so she prayed again for patience, for tact, for understanding--for every virtue that might keep her safe from conflicts that would be sure to leave her wounded, every virtue that might at least help her to preserve an appearance of dignity, for heaven's sake.
Pride adversely affects all our relationships—our relationship with God and His servants, between husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student, and all mankind. Our degree of pride determines how we treat our God and our brothers and sisters. Christ wants to lift us to where He is. Do we desire to do the same for others?
I wished to test your love for me, and it did not bear the test. You used to tell me that you drew the very breath of life but for me and love of me." "And to prove that love, you demanded that I should forfeit mine honor," he said..."that I should accept without murmur of question, as a dumb and submissive slave, every action of my mistress. My hear overflowing with love and passion, I asked for no explanation-I waited for one, not doubting, only hoping.
For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off!
I pretend to reach for them, but before he can guess my intentions, I catch one of his wings instead. He flutters, trying to break loose, his one free wing batting my hand.I draw out the decanter and stuff him into it, careful to fold his wings. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to better him.Once he’s settled inside, I shove a paper towel into the bottle’s neck. No need to worry that he’ll smother. After all, he spent that night in a bug trap last year and sur
However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.
The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered over the question whether he might have a better man under better circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape.It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I never knew him complain.
One of the thousand objections to the sin of pride lies precisely in this, that self-consciousness of necessity destroys sel-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 encyclopedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism.
IF I had only one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against Pride. The more I see of existence, and especially of modern practical and experimental existence, the more I am convinced of the reality of the old religious thesis; that all evil began with some attempt at superiority; some moment when, as we might say, the very skies were cracked across like a mirror, because there was a sneer in Heaven.
... there are other proud people who have low self-esteem. They feel they haven't lived up to their potential. They feel unworthy. They want to hide and disappear, to fade into the background and nurse their own hurts. We don't associate them with pride, but they are still, at root, suffering from the same disease. They are still yoking happiness to accomplishment; it's just that they are giving themselves a D- rather than an A+. They tend to be just as solipsistic, and in their own way as self-centered, only in a self-pitying and isolating way rather than in an assertive and bragging way.
The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell.
You're seeing yourself as having missed the target already. That's your fear. That's hurting you. But then you got yourself seeing all your shots being bulls eyes. That's your confidence. It's making you cocky. It's making you think you're infallible. See? That's hurting you too. Don't think of yourself as already defeated. Don't think of yourself as already won. Just concentrate on what you're doing. Think about now.
In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we fare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions we know we would be mocked for, the secrets that keep our conversations with our so-called friends superficial and inert—all of these emerge as simply part of the human condition.
Their message is conveyed in that hortatory tone and declamatory voice used by politicians when starting a condition contrary to fact. People who aren't cowed don't spend a lot of time proclaiming they won't be cowed. Leaders who really have strengthened the voice of freedom don't don't need to reassure there electorates that they're committed to doing so.
We don't need to pray to prove that we're properly pious or really serious. Instead, we pray because we are completely assured, and because the Father hears our prayers because they come to Him through the lips of His dear Son.
Being indie means being artistic and finding your own eccentric identity. The name of the game for being an indie kid is to never admit you are one. If you do, it goes against your beliefs against labeling, thus making you a hypocrite.
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall In company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first water diamond, an empty spool bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. in your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held so much like the jumble in the bags could they be emptied that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place, who knows?
Most counseling cases today involve good desires that have become overgrown. In these cases most relevant passages of Scripture may not be those that rebut particular manifestations of sin, but those that remind us to love God with all our hearts.
Your trouble has been what old poets call Daungier. We call it Pride. You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud, irruptive, possessive thing-the gold lion, the bearded bull—which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness. . . . The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.
I am Edema Ruh to my bones. That means my blood is red. It means I breathe the free air and walk where my feet take me. I do not cringe and fawn like a dog at a man's title. That looks like pride to people who have spent their lives cultivating supple spines.
She pulled her lips away again. "Wait!"He stopped and stared at her."I'm relatively positive we're not supposed to be doing this.""Who says?""The laws of nature and God.""Laws are made to be broken and God just wants us to be happy." Fucking this woman would make him so damn happy. "Come on. Let's go break some laws.
Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged.
Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely—taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous reticences to some physical discomfort—of these she never complained until they were over—or to some carelessness or presumption in him, or to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of unwavering pride.
All right, shadow-priest, you've been spying — on what? What state secrets have you learned watching me groom these horses?''Only that they hate you, Daru. Every time your back was turned, they got ready to nip you — only you always seemed to step away at precisely the right moment-''Yes, I did, since I knew what they were intending. Each time.''Is this pride I hear? That you outwitted two horses?
Charles Wallace, the danger here is greatest for you." "Why?""Because of what you are. Just exactly because of what you are you will be by far the most vulnerable. You must stay with Meg and Calvin. You must not go off on your own. Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you.
He's not wanting to fight," she assured the captain."He is driven by curiosity?" Deudermont asked."By loyalty," Catti-brie answered. "And nothing more. Drizzt is bound by friendship to ye and to the crew, and if a simple contest against the man will make for an easier sail, then he's up to the fight. But there is no curiosity in Drizzt. No stupid pride. He's not for caring who's the better at swordplay."Deudermont nodded and his expression brightened. The young woman's words confirmed his belief in his friend.
To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge must always be right. Yet wherever pride has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner.
Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.
You are unmannerly,sharp-tounged, and show no respect for your betters,which is practically everyone given your lowly ravel birth.""I am Edema Ruh to my bones.That means my blood is red.It means I breathe the free air and walk where my feet take me.I do not cringe and fawn like a dog at a man's title.That looks like pride to people who have spent their lives cultivating supple spines"-Kvothe
The recurrence of a phenomenon like [Thomas] Edison is not very likely. The profound change of conditions and the ever increasing necessity of theoretical training would seem to make it impossible. He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity.
In a sermon entitled “God’s Providence,” C. H. Spurgeon said, “Napoleon once heard it said, that man proposes and God disposes. ‘Ah,’ said Napoleon, ‘but I propose and dispose too.’ How do you think he proposed and disposed? He proposed to go and take Russia; he proposed to make all Europe his. He proposed to destroy that power, and how did he come back again? How had he disposed it? He came back solitary and alone, his mighty army perished and wasted, having well-nigh eaten and devoured one another through hunger. Man proposes and God disposes.
When you take all three categories of temptation to self-reliance – wisdom, might and riches – they form a powerful inducement toward the ultimate form of pride, namely, atheism. The safest way to stay supreme in our own estimation is to deny anything above us. This is why the proud preoccupy themselves with looking down on others. A proud man is always looking down on things and people and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. But to preserve pride it may be simpler to proclaim that there is nothing above to look at (Psalm 10:4). Ultimately, the proud must persuade themselves that there is no God.
Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight pang of possessiveness sharing it with others. Overriding that feeling was the joy of seeing Robert's face, suffused with confirmation, as he glimpsed the future he had so resolutely sought and had worked so hard to achieve.
It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip off down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; because how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or tritest of fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you’d shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher.
Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.
Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful.And if not the butterflies– and the caterpillars– who will call upon me? You will be far away. . . as for the large animals– I am not at all afraid of any of them. I have my claws.”And, navely, she showed her four thorns. Then she added:“Don’t linger like this. You have decided to go away. Now go!”For she did not want him to see her crying. She was such a proud flower. . .
one primary enemy of the Gospel—legalism—comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”).
We have invented a moral sense which is rotting now that we can't give it employment, and when a moral sense begins to rot, it is worse than when you had none. I suppose that all endeavors which are directed to a purely worldly end, as my precious civilization was, contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.
Their song reminds me of a child’s neighborhood rallying cry—ee-ock-ee—with a heartfelt warble at the end. But it is their call that is especially endearing. The towhee has the brass and grace to call, simply and clearly, "tweet". I know of no other bird that stoops to literal tweeting.
One of the most difficult defilements of the spirit to deal with is the critical spirit. A critical spirit has its root in pride. Because of the 'plank' of pride in our own eye we are not capable of dealing with the 'speck' of need in someone else. We are often like the Pharisee who, completely unconscious of his own need prayed "God, I thank you that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11). We are quick to see - and to speak of - the faults of others, but slow to see our own needs. How sweetly we relish the opportunity to speak critically of someone else - even when we are unsure of the facts. We forge that "a man who stirs up dissension among brothers" by criticizing one to another is one of the "six thing which the Lord hates" (Proverbs 6:16-19)
Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think me in forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you!
In an earlier age, it might have been possible to believe that goodness would prevail over pride, but not anymore. The proud could be proud with impunity, because there was nobody to contradict him in his pride and because narcissism was no longer considered a vice. That was what the whole cult of celebrity was about, she thought; and we fêted these people and fed their vanity.
The poet who sees himself as a hero or a prophet, or a priest of the socio-political forces to which he is loyal, which he believes are the historical necessities of his times, too easily becomes a puppet. He has no external measure with which to assess reality. Whether he submits to the forces or rejects them, he becomes a parody of himself, and then without knowing it submits his gifts to the demons of his era. He loses his place in the continuity of time. He becomes dependent on social affirmation and the drug of exalted feelings common to all revolutionaries. He destroys, even as he thinks he creates.
Cecelia, as with every look and gesture she let us know, was entirely at ease only in the company of her equals – a company that included, besides herself, only her sister. And of course Cecelia held some secret doubts about herself; you can’t dislike nearly everybody and be quite certain that you have exempted yourself.
My friend opened a small box which Lestrade had produced. Inside lay a beautiful silver cigarette case monogrammed with Holmes's initials, underneath which ran the words, "With the Respects of Scotland Yard, November 1888."Sherlock Holmes sat with his lips parted, but no sound emerged."Thank you," he managed at length.
Take these things to heart, my son, I warn you.All men make mistakes, it is only human.But once the wrong is done, a mancan turn his back on folly, misfortune too,if he tries to make amends, however low he's fallen,and stops his bullnecked ways. Stubbornnessbrands you for stupidity - pride is a crime.
He is not truly patient who will only suffer as far as seems right to him and from whom he pleases. The truly patient man considers not by whom he is tried, one above him, or by an equal, or by an inferior, whether by a good and holy man or by a perverse and unworthy, but from every creature. He gratefully accepts all from the hand of God and counts it gain.
There's blood pounding through the Duke's head.Knighthood is glory, he's thinking, not just grace in the saddle and at swordplay, but courage enough to give your life to defend what you hold dear. A noble reward, for noble men. A badge of honour.He'd never ennoble a merchant. Even Chaucer, whom he admires, but knows to be a fool on a battlefield. Not Chaucer's fault, that; just his merchant blood.Knighthood's not for the likes of these people; for Madame Perrers' brood. He thought she knew her place. But she's overreached herself; she's as grasping as the rest of them, after all. Do these people think they can buy or steal everything?
Nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honour and recognition. It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered. If we stoutly refuse to give in to this lust of the flesh, we crucify it. Every time we crucify the flesh, we crucify our pride and arrogance.
I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.This god, this one word:"I.
The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion they begin to care more for ambition than for education. It is no longer a world in which the souls of all are equal before heaven, but a world in which the mind of each is bent on achieving unequal advantage over the other. There begins to be a mere vanity in being educated whether it be self-educated or merely state-educated. Education ought to be a searchlight given to a man to explore everything, but very specially the things most distant from himself. Education tends to be a spotlight; which is centered entirely on himself. Some improvement may be made by turning equally vivid and perhaps vulgar spotlights upon a large number of other people as well. But the only final cure is to turn off the limelight and let him realize the stars.
I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he is, you love him insulting you. If he reformed, you would drop him at once and stop loving him altogether. But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there is much humility and humiliation in it, but all of it comes from pride.
For our face and body were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt not pity when looking upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straigth and thin and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear with this being.
It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.
I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command not obey.
Because he had been- and in many ways still was- such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world.
Reason is God's crowning gift to man, and you are rightTo warn me against losing mine. I cannot say—I hope that I shall never want to say!— that youHave reasoned badly. Yet there are other menWho can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful.You are not in a position to know everythingThat people say or do, or what they feel:Your temper terrifies them—everyoneWill tell you only what you like to hear.
I don't know why people are so shy about expressing openly in front of the world their longing for each other, the most powerful and tender natural attraction, but they pretend to be proud or indifferent and they don't consider, especially if they're young, that the sands of our life have been measured by God unto the last grain and that every carelessly wasted second of love sinks irreversibly into eternity.
For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.
What I love about being queer is... Everything. I like that it makes me different, and I like that it makes people uncomfortable sometimes. I like that it makes people ask me lots of questions about things they probably would not normally ask people about their relationships or lifestyles. And most of all I love being queer because i get to have a girlfriend.
Pride is all about selfishness. Valuing and preferring ourselves, our agendas, our perspectives over anything or anyone else. Pride is easily o ended (“How dare he say that!”). Pride is easily irritated (“ at’s not what I said!”). Pride is easily embittered (“I am never speaking to her again!”). Pride has no problem breaking up relationship based on misunderstanding.
You have seen what Eblis the accursed has seen, when he said "I am of fire, while Adam is of clay."Cover up the Eblis-like eye for just a moment; how long will you see just the form? How long, indeed, how long?Alas for that eye that's blind and bruised! Within it the sun seemed like an atomOf an Adam who had no like. He saw nothing but a lump of
I always apologized for my home to protect myself so people wouldn't think I was a slob, or at least so they would know that I acknowledge I can be a slob and that I'm not okay with it and that really I have much higher standards. . . . When I apologize for my home, I'm declaring to all within earshot that I'm not content. That I'm silently keeping score.
The word bisexual had stood out so bright and clear in my head that all else had ceased to exist. Bisexual. I had a word. I understood; it was me… a nice clear label that said it all. I didn't have to choose. I didn’t have to be not attracted to either guys or girls — a prospect I had found utterly absurd and likely impossible, but had thought was perhaps necessary. Now it wasn’t necessary. Now it was okay to be me. I was not unheard of. Bisexual.
In many ways, the steamships of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries had become the secular equivalent of medieval cathedrals. They were the source of endless pride to the communities and nations that built them, and were just as much an expression of men's hopes and dreams of technical perfection as the great churches had once been of hopes for spiritual purity.
Without discursive thought it is just dharma practice. Hope together with aim obscures. One does not cut through pride by meditatively cultivating the desire for happiness. If there is hope, even the hope for buddhas, it is a negative force. If there is apprehension, even apprehension about hells, it is a negative force.
Unchecked pride evolves into swagger, a hypnotizing mask of insecurity that can and does compromise our ability to make progress and attain power. Pride stands in the way of forgiveness and a strategic approach to navigating a chessboard rigged to prevent pawns from becoming kings and queens.
His ability to evoke Celtic pride was incredible. He would always talk about how all the old players called him up after an embarrasing performance and wanted to disassociate themselves from the Celtics. They wanted to mail in their championship rings, wanted their numbers removed from the rafters, and by this point there would be tears rolling down our cheeks and we'd want to kill.
Do you have still the dye with which to turn your tunic red?’‘The madder? Yes, I do.’‘Enough of it for a century?’‘Enough for the entire cohort, if you want it.’He twitched a smile then; I was coming to know it, and to revel in the sight of it. I was his then, part of the XIIth, and he knew it.‘Not the entire cohort yet, Demalion. The century will do. Henceforth we are the Bloody First. And I fancy we might have a mule’s tail on our standard. See to it on our return.
I love you, Maddie, and I am devoted to making your life full of happiness and accomplishments, nurturing your creativity, encouraging your independence and making sure you always know what a gift you are to this world.” He kisses her forehead and she smiles up at him happily before admiring her pretty new necklace.
When we let go of our pride, we give ourselves permission to be human. We give ourselves permission to slip up and hurt and to grow without ridiculous standards of perfection constantly looming over our heads. We give ourselves a chance to face conflicts, to face ourselves, and to heal. And, in this healing process, we give others a chance to follow our lead.
We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. It’s far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won’t be impressed. We can’t let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: ‘peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.’ With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It’s on us.