SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: PRIDE

  • The thoughts that encompass all evil are eight in number: those of gluttony, unchastity, avarice, anger, dejection, listlessness, self-esteem and pride. It does not lie within our power to decide whether or not these eight thoughts are going to arise and disturb us. But to dwell on them or not to dwell on them, to excite the passions or not to excite them, does lie within our power. 

    —St John of Damaskos

  • Galatians 6:4

    But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

    Let go of comparison. Spiritual comparison is the enemy of joy and fruitfulness. We look at other spiritual lives and feel I’m less or I’m better. St John Climacus says this: “Do not compare yourself with the strong lest you become discouraged, nor with the weak lest you become proud.”

    What’s the worst word that we say as Egyptians comparison? Ishmahna.

    I don’t know how many times you would say ishmahna, like, how come this person gets to do this? And I’m comparing. Because God wants them to do this and God wants you to do another thing.

    You feel that you’re being measured and that’s why ishmahna this person gets this. Be careful of this. Your value is not based on what you’ve been chosen to do. Everybody has their calling.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • Despair is the firstborn child of pride. Those who despair cannot make any progress because despair is the murderer of hope. 

    THE TEACHINGS OF ABBA PHILEMON

  • CHAPTER XXVIII.  — A VIRGIN WHO FELL

    AGAIN, I knew a virgin in Jerusalem who wore sackcloth for six years and shut herself up in a cell, taking none of the things that bestow pleasure. In the end she fell, abandoned (by God) because of her excessive arrogance. She opened the window and admitted the man who waited on her and sinned with him, because she had practised asceticism not with a religious motive and for the love of God, but with human ostentation, which springs from vain-glory and corrupt intention. For, her thoughts being engrossed in condemning others, the guardian of her chastity was absent.

    Palladius, The Lausiac History (1918) pp. 35-180

  • Maybe you think that you are more tempted by arrogance than by self-rejection. But isn’t arrogance, in fact, the other side of self-rejection? Isn’t arrogance putting yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as you see yourself? Isn’t arrogance, in the final analysis, just another way of dealing with the feelings of worthlessness? Both self-rejection and arrogance pull us out of the common reality of existence and make a gentle community of people extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attain. I know too well that beneath my arrogance there lies much self-doubt, just as there is a great mount of pride hidden in my self-rejection. Whether I am inflated or deflated, I lose touch with my truth and distort my vision of reality.

    —Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

  • “It is equally difficult to preserve one’s soul from despair in hard times, and to prevent it from becoming arrogant in prosperous circumstances.”

    —St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

  • “Very few people can resist saying malicious things about their acquaintances, and even on occasion about their friends; yet when people hear that anything has been said against themselves, they are filled with indignant amazement.”

    —Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

  • On the other hand, the cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs. In this he finds compensation and is now ready and thankful to defend, … all the faults and follies peculiar to it.

    —Arthur Schopenhauer

  • Even if I hold the ‘correct’ opinion, even the opinion of a saint or of all of the saints, even the clear opinion of the Holy Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, if I hold such a correct opinion and I harbour in my heart conceit or selfish ambition or I look out mostly for my own interests rather than for the interests of others, then I am not of the same mind with any saint or with the Church—no matter how correct my opinion is or isn’t.

    Being of One Mind: What It Is and Isn’t
    ARCHPRIEST MICHAEL GILLIS | 27 FEBRUARY 2021

  • The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else.

    —Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet