Pride - Another definition

Pride is inordinate self-­love, an exaltation of the conditional and relative self into an absolute.

It tries to gratify the thirst for the infinite by giving to one's own finitude a pretension to divinity.

In some, pride blinds the self to its weakness and becomes "hot" pride; in others, it recognizes its own weakness and overcomes it by a self-exaltation which becomes "cold" pride.

Pride kills docility and makes a man incapable of ever being helped by God. The limited knowledge of the puny mind pretends to be final and absolute.

In the face of other intellects it resorts to two tech­niques, either the technique of omniscience, by which it seeks to convince others how much it knows, or the technique of nescience, which tries to convince others how little they know.

When such pride is unconscious, it becomes almost incurable, for it identifies truth with its truth. Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.

It is rarely cured when the person himself is vertical - i.e., healthy and prosperous - but it can be cured when the patient is horizontal - sick and disillusioned. That is why catastrophes are necessary in an era of pride to bring men back again to God and the salvation of their souls.
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I read this is a new book, (actually an older book from 1949) and I felt it was one of those passages worth sharing. The title and author of this book? Later...