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:

    ... pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    A man’s true merit ‘tis not hard to find;
    But each man’s secret standard in his mind,
    That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,
    This, who can gratify, for who can guess?
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    The soldier takes pride in saluting his Captain,
    The devotee proffers a knee to his Lord,
    Some back a mare thrown from a thoroughbred,
    Troy backed its Helen, Troy died and adored;
    Great nations blossom above,
    A slave bows down to a slave.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)