pride

There may have been a time when pride was the very center of your life. You had ambitious thoughts of yourself, your powers, desires, and aims; but now that will begin to change . . . you have been born again.

Man has rejected the revelation of the Bible concerning the true and living God of his fathers, and he has substituted gods of his own making. In actuality modern man has decided to dethrone God and enthrone himself in all of his nuclear glory.

Pride always puts [self] above others__nd cuts [itself] off from them as a result. No one likes an arrogant, prideful person.

The destructive power of pride is that it countenances nothing higher than itself. Because of an inherent fault in our nature, man__ 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.

We must not build up ourselves at the expense of others.

Pride flees when we compare ourselves to God instead of [to] other people.

The thing is_ I was a very proud girl. I never wanted to take the chance I might get hurt. Isn__ that funny? I was game for any exciting adventure that came my way, but when it came to risking my heart, I was a coward.

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.

When everyone is poor you don't know you're poor. My father worked so some of the boys thought I was actually rich.

Back in Russia we were dirt-poor. Here in the West we are still poor but have risen above the dirt to tower alongside stalks of grass!

It is good practice to never fault someone for their birth name, being that it is always of far greater importance how men speak of you, than the name by which you are addressed.

...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.

Those who make hostility a daily manner are often left in the lurch at difficult times.

Act as if you don't know me, and i will make it seem as though you don't exist.

Nurtured by negative circumstances, braiding raging tornadoes in her hair, she held her head high, wearing her weathered poetry with pride.

Much of someone's real character lies in what they don't say about themselves.

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 am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.