Source: The Beautiful and Damned
“He was proud, like all lonely men. Lonely men must be proud or die.”
"The Arimaspin Legacy" (1987), first appeared as a Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains (2005)
Fiction
“Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud.”
Anti-Goeze (1778), as quoted in God Is Not Great (2007), by Christopher Hitchens , Ch. 19
Context: The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand, and say: Father, I will take this one—the pure Truth is for You alone.
Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, by Carlton Sherwood, 1991, Regnery Gateway, page 558, isbn 9780895265326
“Proud souls in the true sense are never humbled by adversity.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 43
“3968. Proud Men can't bear with Pride in others.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“There is no worse sickness for the soul,
O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.”
Rumi Daylight (1990)
Context: There is no worse sickness for the soul,
O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.
The heart and eyes must bleed a lot
before self-complacency falls away.
“I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
