Pride

Pride

Pride is an inwardly directed emotion that carries two common meanings. With a negative connotation, pride refers to an inflated sense of one's personal status or accomplishments, often used synonymously with hubris. With a positive connotation, pride refers to a satisfied sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, or a fulfilled feeling of belonging. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g., that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others. Some social psychologists identify it as linked to a signal of high social status. In contrast pride could also be defined as a disagreement with the truth. One definition of pride in the first sense comes from St. Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence". In this sense, the opposite of pride is either humility or guilt; the latter in particular being a sense of one's own failure in contrast to Augustine's notion of excellence.

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Famous quotes containing the word pride:

    Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I,
    To mourn, and murmur and repine,
    To see the wicked placed on high,
    In pride and robes of honor shine.
    But oh, their end, their dreadful end,
    Thy sanctuary taught me so,
    On slipp’ry rocks I see them stand,
    And fiery billows roll below.
    Isaac Watts (1674–1748)

    How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.
    Abigail Adams (1744–1818)

    We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal.
    Edmund Burke (1729–1797)