Other related topics at: Virtue and Vice 437. Envy; Pride "Pride ... is seldom delicate, it will please itself with very mean advantages; and envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of others." Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac] Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from Rasselas. Link 527. Anger; Pride "Pride is undoubtedly the original of anger; but pride, like every other passion, if it once breaks loose from reason, counteracts its own purposes. A passionate man,* upon the review of his day, will have very few gratifications to offer to his pride, when he has considered how his outrages were caused, why they were borne, and in what they are likely to end at last." Johnson: Rambler #11 (April 24, 1750) *"Passionate man": those easily and regularly angered. (See #526, then use your browser's back button to return here.) Link 598. Fallibility; Offense; Pride "The resentment which the discovery of a fault or folly produces must bear a certain proportion to our pride, and will regularly be more acrimonious as pride is more immediately the principle of action." Johnson: Rambler #40 (August 4, 1750) Link 599. Fallibility; Offense; Pride; Vanity "In whatever ... we wish or imagine ourselves to excel, we shall always be displeased to have our claims to reputation be disputed, and more displeased, if the accomplishment be such as can expect reputation only for its reward." Johnson: Rambler #40 (August 4, 1750) Link 1,113. Audacity; Pride; Youth "It is one of the innumerable absurdities of pride, that we are never more impatient of direction than in the part of life when we need it most; we are in haste to meet enemies whom we have not strength to overcome, and to undertake tasks which we cannot perform." Johnson: Rambler #111 (April 9, 1751) Link 1,367. Pride; Success "It is certain that success naturally confirms in us a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit." Johnson: Rambler #172 (November 9, 1751) Link 1,423. Forgiveness; Pride; Revenge "No vicious dispositions of the mind more obstinately resist both the counsels of philosophy and the injunctions of religion than those which are complicated with an opinion of dignity; and which we cannot dismiss without leaving in the hands of opposition some advantage iniquitously obtained, or suffering from our own prejudices some imputation of pusillanimity. "For this reason scarcely any law of our Redeemer is more openly transgressed, or more industriously evaded, than that by which he commands his followers to forgive injuries, and prohibits, under the sanction of eternal misery, the gratification of the desire which every man feels to return pain upon him that inflicts it. Many who could have conquered their anger are unable to combat pride, and pursue offences to the extremity of vengeance, lest they should be insulted by the triumph of an enemy." Johnson: Rambler #185 (December 24, 1751) Link 1,427. Pride It may be laid down as an unfailing and universal axiom, that "all pride is object and mean." It is always an ignorant, lazy, or cowardly acquiescence in a false appearance of excellence, and proceeds not from consciousness of our attainments, but insensibility of our wants. Johnson: Rambler #185 (December 24, 1751) Link 1,429. Faith; Perseverance; Pride; Virtue The utmost excellence at which humanity can arrive is a constant and determinate pursuit of virtue, without regard to present dangers or advantages; a continual reference of every action to the divine will; an habitual appeal to everlasting justice; and an unvaried elevation of the intellectual eye to the reward which perseverance only can obtain. But that pride which many, who presume to boast of generous sentiments, allow to regulate their measures has nothing nobler in view than the approbation of men, of beings whose superiority we are under no obligation to acknowledge, and who, when we have courted them with the utmost assiduity, can confer no valuable or permanent reward. Johnson: Rambler #185 (December 24, 1751) Link