Kenneth Grahame on pride

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing⁠—absolute nothing⁠—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you’re looking down, you can’t see something that’s above you.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963Mere Christianity (1952), Book III, Chapter 8, “The Great Sin”

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Upon proclaiming a National Fast Day (30 March 1863)

• God

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963