c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
God is the story nature tells to those who are listening.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
A brief, well-crafted story that is relevant to your topic is one of the most potent ways to maintain the attention of your audience. But the story must be kind. Benjamin Disraeli said: "Never tell unkind stories." Inconsiderate and insensitive stories do not bring grace to those who hear them, and may actually leave the audience dispirited.
— Bruna Martinuzzi, Presenting with Credibility
It is one of those stories that you just want to keep going and going - even after the last page has been reached. Kristie Leigh Maguire
— Vicki M. Taylor, Forever Until We Meet
She had not known how to tell him that his loving whispers were always in her ears, like a story she’d been told, the story of a thing she did not deserve. But he understood. He called those thoughts “the baby teeth of a snake,” and swore he would rip them out of her, and pledged to prove to her that the opposite was true. And he didn’t even have to explain to her what he meant by “the opposite”; she knew it was the opposite of her.
— David Grossman, Her Body Knows
The sleds accelerated quickly as they glided effortlessly over the smooth ice. We had never before experienced such a quick, easy slide. usually we wished we could push ourselves to make our sleds go faster. But not this time. The crystals of ice started flying past at an incredible rate of speed. No longer aware of where my sister and her sled were, all I could see was raw ice whizzing by ten inches under my chin at a rate of speed I never imagined I would experience on a sled. I felt like I was flying!
— Daniel Boerman, The Flying Farm Boy
If a story is w/out flaws or doubts, it is flattery or even brainwashing. You should read it as if drinking a glass of water. But be prepared - you would not remember its taste.
— Vinko Vrbanic
The story is uneven in its progression.
— ichtys, Superior Cross
Our own story is even more important for us to know than history.
— Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue
When you’re telling a story, you’re trying to connect to people in a particular way … The way in which you guys have inhabited this world, this universe, has made you part of it, part of the story. You are living in Firefly. When I see you guys, I don’t think the show is off the air. I don’t think there’s a show; I think that’s what the world is like. … The story is our lives.
— Joss Whedon
What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.
— Erich Segal
I know the resolution. I know the end of the story before it ever begins. I must choose love. And for this, I will surely die.
— Addison Moore, Ethereal
So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected.
— Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
Stories have a unique power, David. The Inuit believe they can capture souls.
— Chris d'Lacey, Icefire
A writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, silhouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the mud, uncles' and cousins' books, tablets and capsules and powders...and then one day you find yourself leaning here, writing on that round glass table salvaged from the Park View Pharmacy--writing this, an impossibility, a summary of who you came to be where you are now, and where, God knows, is that?
— Cynthia Ozick
Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy ending!""Well, that's no different from real life," remarked Elinor gloomily. "You never know if things will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like it's coming to a bad end.
— Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are.
— Jo Deurbrouck
Whatever they may say, your story is truly your own. You have a responsibility to it, the way a father has to a child
— Miguel Syjuco
The path you create then follow becomes the story of your life.
— Steven Redhead, The Solution
If we told every story from the middle, we would never appreciate happy endings.
— Jessica Brody, The Karma Club
Rewriting is the crucible where books are born.
— Cathryn Louis
And I feel like a real Dad when I read to her at night. She won't sleep without one story, at least.
— Steven Herrick, A Place Like This
The story I am going to tell has more than one beginning and without an end.
— T. Afsin Ilgar, Locked Lives
An author is like an incompetent bricklayer - doesn't use mortar and keeps rearranging the bricks until someone tells him to stop.
— Chris Everheart
It was just the human story again, flowing through me as it did through everyone else, and I'd mistaken it as my own.p 284
— Frank Huyler, Right of Thirst
...Tolstoy said, happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story - then what does that make us?...
— John Geddes
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
— Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
I'm so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that.
— John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized...I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?
— Margaret Cho
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
You wear your honor like a suit of armor... You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
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.
— Jon Foreman
Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.
— Emily Brontë
Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées
I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.
— Rudyard Kipling, The Cat That Walked By Himself
We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
We are rarely proud when we are alone.
— Voltaire
You need to take pride in what God has given you.
— Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
In a way, I was incrediibly proud of her (not that I had any intention of letting it show while I was beating the crap out of her).
— Meg Cabot
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.
— Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse
I said I fell down. Ah. The ground bloodied your nose, split yer lip, and punched ye in th' eye, all at once.I said I don't want to talk about it.
— Tamora Pierce, Alanna: The First Adventure
A session of boasting won't attract any real friends.  It will set you up on a pedestal, however, making you a clearer target.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself.
— Michael Crichton, The Lost World
Rowan considered for a moment, and then said, "I have known many kings in my life, Dorian Havilliard. And it was a rare man indeed who asked for help when he needed it, who would put aside pride.
— Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms
Jennifer Merrick had stored all her tears inside her, and her pride and courage would never permit her to break down and shed them.
— Judith McNaught, A Kingdom of Dreams
Foolishness is more than being stupid, that deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance.
— Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change
The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.
— Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom
And metaphors like cats behind your smile,Each one wound up to purr,each one a pride,Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside (...)
— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
The proud wish God would agree with them. They are not interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's.
— Ezra Taft Benson
Boys were so proud - you always had to let them think they were good at things.
— Diane Zahler, The Thirteenth Princess
No matter what has happened, you're not a pig-boy; you're an Assistant Pig Keeper!
— Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron
Fits of anger, vexation,and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect.
— Francis de Sales
One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.
— Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy
I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.
— Marcus Garvey
Pride is the mother of arrogance.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
— Thomas Jefferson
He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much
—  but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.
I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange.
— Charley Pride, Pride: The Charley Pride Story
The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ.
— A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.
— William Shakespeare
Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He'd have to—you'd not grant anyone else something you can't have for yourself—no love, no kindness, no respect!
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Pride is always a better lever against the nobility than reason.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
it is madness in al women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Pride slays thanksgiving ... A prideful man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart
—  and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive.
He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, "I shall win!"--the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men than it has ever saved.
— Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
Your arrogance doesn't cheapen me.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
I am incapable of mediocrity.
— Serge Gainsbourg
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.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
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.
— John Chrysostom
Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection
So, using his pride like a shield against despair, dejection, and-most important—self-pity, Raoden raised his head to stare damnation in the eyes.
— Brandon Sanderson, Elantris
Any pride or haughtiness, is displeasing to us, merely because it shocks our own pride, and leads us by sympathy into comparison, which causes the disagreeable passion of humility.
— David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
When you feel nervous, recall your pride.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Maybe the truly handicapped people are the ones that don't need God as much.
— Joni Eareckson Tada, The God I Love: A Lifetime of Walking with Jesus
The devil...the prowde spirite...cannot endure to be mocked.
— Thomas   Moore
We are to give (and take) true love without falling into the narcissistic habit of only trying to take it in.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One's life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic.
— Michael Ayrton, The Maze Maker
Regarding vengeance and arch-enemies, one must not only be timely but prideful, and pride exacts propriety.
— Adam Levin, The Instructions
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.
— Holly Cupala, Tell Me a Secret
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?
— Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
If you can cope the pride when winning,then you can confront despair when lose.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
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.
— Abiodun Oyewole
—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. 
— Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys
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
— Michael Stein, In the Age of Love
Pride and folly, they go together like two tightly grasping hands.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
Pride is the chalice into which all human sins are poured: it glitters and jingles and its arabesque lures your gaze, while your lips involuntarily touch the seductive beverage.
— Vladimir Odoyevsky
The privacy of pride.
— Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
I had a lot of hatred, but I realized that kind of hate didn't do much. I had to start fueling myself with pride. We owe the ancestors that. So many of the souls who died in bondage just want us to recognize their struggle.
— Marilyn Nelson, Pemba's Song: A Ghost Story
Your ego decides the humanity in you...Higher the ego lesser the humanity....
— Adil Adam Memon
I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.
— Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol.
— A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Often the contempt of vainglory becomes a source of even more vainglory, for it is not being scorned when the contempt is something one is proud of.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
A hedge knight must hold tight to his pride. Without it, he was no more than a sellsword
— George R.R. Martin, The Hedge Knight
Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.
— Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
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.
— Mary Wine, In Bed With A Stranger
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.
— Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears
Love with pride is like chasing the pavement. There'll be a long chasing until it ends.
— Dee Prathia
There ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and keep your dignity? The human frame just ain't built that way.
— Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
He [Bloch] was one of those touchy, highly-strung people who cannot bear to have made a blunder, will not admit it to themselves, and whose whole day is ruined by it.
— Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way
He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it." Pope Alexander
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march?
— John L. O'Sullivan
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.
— David Kinnaman, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters
Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
...women will show pride and honor about almost anything except love ...
— William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
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.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible
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
— Ouida
Your theology won't always work toward your obedience, because your use of theology is dictated by the condition of your heart. If your heart is not submitting to the plan of God, you will actually use your theology to justify things that should not be justified.
— Paul David Tripp
But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.
— Tahir Shah, In Search of King Solomon's Mines
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 up by eating one another, that's what I prophesy.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Pride of opinion has been responsible for the downfall of more men on Wall Street than any other factor.
— Charles Henry Dow
We used to languish when we walked, or sidle down the street like dogs that have just done something wrong. Now Rube walks upright, because he's on the attack.
— Markus Zusak
Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.
— E.M. Forster, Maurice
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.
— Ru Freeman, A Disobedient Girl
Today, it felt like time should be measured by how much of the future she had left, and needed to be counted forward. She felt proud listening, as if somehow Jonathan Parish's speech reflected on her, as if she could take credit for some part of it, for him.
— Michael Stein
[It's] long been known that making fun of oneself is only a way of taking oneself seriously slightly less crude than others. 97
— Marcel Benabou, Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books
Has he written to you?''He writes frequently.''Shew me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature.
— Stendhal, The Red and the Black
- Mr. Berg, Are you an Afrikaner?- Yes-And are you proud of it?-I am not ashamed of it, but I am not proud of it, for in fact I had nothing to do with it.
— Alan Paton, Ah But Your Land Is Beautiful
Pride and self-hate belong inseparably together
—  they are two expressions of one process.
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).
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
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?
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
You can be the most productive and most effective, but politics show up as ego, jealousy and sabotage from bosses who can’t perform.
— Richie Norton
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.
— Rose Lerner, True Pretenses
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.
— G.K. Chesterton
...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.
— Ashim Shanker
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.
— Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
No man is taller than his head, and there is no big brain that is bigger than the head!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
I was going to make him proud of the man I would become. I was finally going to chart my own course, rattle the stars, and then… Then I would deserve it.”“Deserve what?”“The way he used to look at me, like I was a hero, or something close to one.
— Emory R. Frie, Neverland
If you feel pride in what you wish to achieve. The desire to achieve more never remains a desire, it becomes a self-commitment to attain greater achievements.
— ShahenshahHK
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!
— Edward Cline, Hugh Kenrick
Pride is causing harm
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
I pride myself in being a kind, loving, caring and gentle person. But, that does not mean that I am weak or a “push over” and that I can be trampled underneath someone’s feet. No, most certainly not. I set my boundaries and no one, just no one is permitted to cross those lines.
— Latika Teotia
Like many who have no reason for pride, that very lack of reason for it made me the prouder.
— Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows
The pride in intellect, or rather in the supremacy of the mind, is not restricted to those engaged in intellectual pursuits but is a regular occurrence in all neurosis.
— Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization
Whether we forget something we are not proud of, or embellish it, or blame somebody else, we want to save face by not owning up to shortcomings.
— Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization
Pride in many diverse ways is the enemy of love.
— Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization
For some the proud roar is not about being in charge it is more about "hear me ,I miss you" yet those words fade,
— Bluenscottish
The words hurt my throat a little – probably because I was swallowing my pride, and it didn’t taste so great.
— Emma Winters, Equal Parts
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.
— Shawna Yang Ryan, Green Island
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.
— Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom
If somebody accepts you as you are, it doesn't mean that you're talented, it means they are generous enough to give you a chance to prove your worth. Stay humble!
— Ramana Pemmaraju
It takes just a little attitudinal slip to show a big pride.
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
It was one of the links between the ground-down poor and the wasteful rich. The girl felt that even if she had less than anybody in Williamsburg, somehow she had more. She was richer because she had something to waste.
— Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
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.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
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!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
The knowledge of God’s Word without love is a destructive force because it puffs us up with pride and legalism.
— John Bevere, The Bait Of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense
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.
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
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.
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
The well-meaning woman was in fact possessed by two devils--the one the stiff-necked devil of pride, the other the condescending devil of benevolence. She was kind, but she must have credit for it
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
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.
— Jinat Rehana Begum, First Fires
When people come to a conclusion that is contrary to popular opinion, there’s a calm resolution to them, for they are experiencing a short burst of pride. They have just captured an intellectual territory, and they will hold that territory.
— Mike Klepper
No good ever comes of pride, for it is the meanest of mean things, and no one but he who is full of it thinks it grand.
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
Pride doesn't go before a fall, it keeps you from falling.
— Shane Peacock, Vanishing Girl
Poor Mr. Smith, having been so rudely dragged from his high horse, was never able to mount it again, and completed the lecture in a manner not at all comfortable to himself.
— Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage
Focus on patience, loyalty, intelligence, greed, dissatisfaction and pride.
— Carlos Wallace, The Other 99 T.Y.M.E.S: Train Your Mind to Enjoy Serenity
The most regretful behavior always leaches from a wound to our sanctimonious pride.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
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.
— Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life
Always give everything 110 percent. It's the extra 10 percent that everyone remembers.
— Frank Sonnenberg, Follow Your Conscience: Make a Difference in Your Life & in the Lives of Others
... 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.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The President was in seventh heaven when he heard himself being teased like this; he strutted about and thrust his chest out; never did a man of the robe stick out his neck so far, not even one who has just hanged a man.
— Marquis de Sade, Betrayal
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.
— Ethan Hawke, Rules for a Knight
Mans vanity transgresses death
— Erik Christian Haugaard, The Samurai's Tale
Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book – I call that viciousness!
— Friedrich Nietzsche
A day came when all the rebel in me knew itself beaten, and then my whole nature bowed down in humble resignation in the dust. And then I saw... I saw that he was as incomparable in beauty as he was in terror. I was saved, I was rescued.
— Rabindranath Tagore, The King of the Dark Chamber
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)
— Jane Austen
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.
— Tony Hendra, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul
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.
— J. Grant Howard, Balancing Life's Demands: A New Perspective on Priorities
Love doesn't discriminate and nor should the law. Not in this country, not in this world, not in this lifetime.
— Liz Kessler, Read Me Like a Book
Only wise men can differentiate between what is a matter of pride and what is a principle of dignity.
— Sameh Elsayed
... I deny your right to put words into my mouth.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island