Character Defects Pride

Character Defects Pride:

http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.com/character-defects-pride_379.html

humility is the corrective virtue, (connective) 

and recovery a lifelong process of 

 surrendering 

the one & 

growing in the other. 

12 Steps deflate our egos/ we are being asked to act contrary to our natural desires 

sense of control power and superiority: 

We are also being asked to buck the culture. For if pride was for most of human history a vice to which few would willingly admit, it is now celebrated as the equivalent of a virtue by growing segments of society— 

Pride & humility are 

de facto switching places, the latter  to be seen as weakness if not an outright flaw. 

peculiar feature of pride

pride is the hardest defect to recognize in ourselves. This is so for two reasons. 

First, pride makes us 
think too highly of ourselves, 
making it more difficult to see our flaws.

 Second, pride hides behind those flaws, making it harder to detect its presence. 

historically, pride has not been considered just one more character defect. 

It is the 

deadliest of them,

 Pride is 

 “soul-sickness”

 [it lies] at the heart of our spiritual disease, which values and measures our self over and against other selves, It is what makes us “play God.” 

humility: the nourishing soil of all the virtues. 

humility is practiced and acquired in the process of practicing and acquiring every other virtue, for in some measure each requires that we humble ourselves.

 We can move toward these goals as we make a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves ❤️🔎🍀🌱🌿🌏🍒🥝🐢💚🐙🎨♻️⛩️👨‍🌾🐦🐍🐊🐸🌲🌳🍁🍀☘️🍃🍂🌾🍃

 “The prideful righteousness of ‘good people’ may  be as destructive as the glaring sins of those who are supposedly not so good.” – 

“There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, 
the confession of shortcomings 

 which the process requires for its 

 successful consummation.” 

– Big Book 

“[P]ride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious 

fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress." –12&12

 “It would be a product of false 
 pride to claim that 

A.A. is a cure-all, even for alcoholism.” – A.A.

 Comes of Age

 “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” – Proverbs 16:18 

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” – James 4:6 

“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”

– Sophocles, Antigone

 “It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.” – St. Augustine 

“We are rarely proud when we are alone.” – Voltaire “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” – Satan, in Milton’s Paradise Lost 

"Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does 

not wish to pay.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld 

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. 

Pride relates to our opinion of ourselves; vanity to what we would have others think of us.” – Jane Austen 

 “Pride leaves the heart the moment love enters it.” – Théophile Gautier 

"Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself.” – Samuel Johnson

 “Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.” – Emily Brontë  

“Shame is pride’s cloak.” – William Blake 

“Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.”  ~Baruch Spinoza 

 “The proud hate pride—in others.” – Benjamin Franklin 

At every trifle 
 take offense, 
 that always 
 shows great 
pride or little sense.” – Alexander Pope 

“A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.”– Henry Ward Beecher 

 “The intelligent man 

 who, proud 

 of his 

intelligence, 

 is like the 

condemned man who is proud of his large cell.” – Simone Weil 

"It is better to lose 

your pride with someone you

  love rather than lose that someone

 you love with your uselesspride.” John Ruskin 

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 

“Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.” – Andrew Murray Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.” – T.S. Eliot 

If you see anything in yourself which may make you proud, look a little further, and you will find enough 

 to make you humble.” – Wellins Calcott 

Perceiving humility 

honorable, pride often borrows her cloak.” – Thomas Fuller 

The ego is a self-justifying 

 historian which seeks only that 

 information that agrees with it, rewrites history when it needs to, and does not even see the evidence that threatens it.” – Anthony G. Greenwald 

  Temper gets you into trouble. Pride keeps    you there.” – Anonymous 

God sends no one 

away empty, except those

 who are full of themselves.” – D. L. Moody 

 “The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.” – George Santayana

 The proud are ever most provoked by pride.” 

– William Cowper 

Never

 underestimate a man who overestimates 

himself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt 

 The proud man sets himself up and, in doing so, sets himself apart." – Henry Fairlie 

Pride in the spiritual sense is the refusal to let God be God. It’s to grab God’s status for oneself. It’s turning down God’s invitation to join the dance of life as a creature in his world, and wishing instead to be the creator, independent, reliant on one’s resources—and that is the great illusion.” – Lewis B. Smedes

 Pride is that which 

claims to be the author of what is really a 

gift.” – Tim Keller 

 Pride stands 

 sentinel at the 

door of the heart and shuts out the love of God.” – Twenty-Four Hours a Day 

 There is an order to reality and my place in the universe, and when, out of pride I think I can make up my own rules and fail to conduct myself in accordance with that order, reality will sooner or later set in and forcibly conform me to itself.” – PTP