The real reason for this was that I did not have the humility to care nothing about what people thought or said. I was afraid of their remarks, even kind ones, even approving ones. Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

We wish to attract praise to ourselves even as we seem to be praising others.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

"Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need."

Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change; and when we are right, make us easy to live with.

The true way to be humble is not to stoop till thou art smaller than thyself, but to stand at thy real height against some higher nature that will show thee what the real smallness of thy greatness is.

I have great faith in fools -self confidence my friends call it.

5. I will avoid the comparison trap. This commitment has a similar result to the numbers game since it can't lead you anywhere good. When you compare, you lose. Either you’re filled with pride because you’re better than another person, or you’re dejected because you don’t measure up. Both attitudes are wrong and destructive. Comparison places what you know about yourself (or your ministry) against what you don’t know about another youth worker (or her ministry). That's not a fair evaluation.

Pride is like a beard. It just keeps growing. The solution? Shave it every day.

Always obey your superiors -- if you have any." -- Mark Twain

A man is never so proud as when striking an attitude of humility! -- C. S. Lewis

Our worst sin is prayerlessness, because of what it says about who we really think is in charge of the church and the universe. God save us from the people who would renew the church and bring justice in the world without praying. Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power, they are more dangerous than the wrongs they would set right. They will replace old evils with new evils, themselves.

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. --

Few people have had as many natural endowments or achievements to feel proud of as Edwin Hubble, the astronomer for whom the Hubble Space Telescope was named. Hubble was a gifted athlete. As writer Bill Bryson recounts, "At a single high school track meet in 1906, he won the pole vault, shot put, discus, hammer throw, standing high jump, and running high jump, and was on the winning mile-relay team—that is seven first places in one meet—and came in third in the broad jump. In the same year, he set a state record for the high jump in Illinois. On top of his athletic gifts, Hubble was extremely good-looking. One person described him as "handsome almost to a fault." Another called him an "Adonis." If that weren't enough, Hubble was intellectually gifted. He studied physics and astronomy at the elite University of Chicago, and he was selected to be one of the first Rhodes scholars at Oxford. When Hubble began his career as an astronomer at Mount Wilson Observatory in California, in 1919, only one galaxy was known: the Milky Way. But Hubble showed in a landmark paper in 1924 that the universe contained many galaxies. Then Hubble proved that the universe was expanding, an idea no physicist or astronomer had conceived of before. Either one of these achievements would have guaranteed Hubble a place in history. Yet for Hubble all of this was not enough. Hubble claimed he spent most of his late 20's and early 30's as a prestigious lawyer in Kentucky. Actually, he spent those years as a high school teacher in Indiana. Hubble boasted that in World War I he had bravely led "frightened men to safety across the battlefields of France." The truth was, he arrived in France only one month before the Armistice and probably never heard one shot fired. Hubble told people how he had daringly rescued drowning swimmers. But that story never happened. Hubble bragged about how he had taken on an exhibition bout with a world-class boxer and surprised the champion with an amazing knockdown punch. That, also, was too good to be true. What is it in human nature that makes us willing to lie to enhance our image? Citation: Kevin A. Miller, Carol Stream, Illinois; source: Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (New York: Broadway Books, 2003)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2002144948_selfesteem08.html For years, building a child's self-esteem was considered one of parenting's highest goals. Now the phrase is so linked with the feel-good movement that "in some quarters, self-esteem has a negative connotation," said Robert Brooks, a psychology professor at Harvard Medical School. "Some people think self-esteem is about letting kids do whatever they want and never letting them face adversity," said Brooks, co-author of "Raising Resilient Children: Fostering Strength, Hope and Optimism in Your Child." He switched his emphasis from self-esteem to resiliency since that offers "less opportunity for distortion." Self-esteem can be an empty value if it's not tempered with a sense of responsibility and social awareness, experts say. "Drug dealers and violent criminals usually feel good about themselves because they control their environment," said Rich Catalano, director of the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington. "You probably know people with good self-esteem that you can't stand. That's not really the kind of person we want to encourage." A wide review of self-esteem studies, published in a 2003 edition of the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, found both the highest and lowest rates of cheating and bullying in different sub-categories of high self-esteem. "Self-esteem comes out to a zero if you include both kinds of [negative and positive] behavior," Catalano said. "It's really about how you get to feeling good about yourself." ... The review, led by Florida State University professor Roy Baumeister, concluded studies haven't shown good self-esteem improves academic, personal or professional achievement. Doing well in those areas, however, helps people value themselves more. Confusing cause-and-effect in this arena could backfire. ... The focus on "loving me because I'm me" ignored important values such as loyalty, honesty and compassion, Elliott said. He notes that people with low or very high self-esteem actually share a prominent trait: They're self-absorbed. Any attempt to boost these kids' self view just encourages more navel gazing, he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-baumeister25jan25,1,1775592.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions&ctrack=1&cset=true Roy F. Baumeister, a professor in the department of psychology at Florida State University, is the author of "The Cultural Animal," just published by Oxford University Press. Does low self-esteem lie at the root of all human suffering, failure and evil? When I ran my first research study on self-esteem in 1973, that certainly seemed to be the case. Psychologists everywhere were persuaded that if only we could help people to accept and love themselves more, their problems would gradually vanish and their lives would flourish. They would even treat each other better. Not surprisingly, California led the way, establishing a task force for exploring ways to boost healthy self-esteem to solve personal and social problems. The task force members — like many of us — were undeterred by the weakness and ambiguity of the evidence suggesting a benefit in boosting self-esteem; we all believed the data would come along in good time. Then-Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (and many other experts) predicted that self- esteem could solve, or at least help solve, such problems as crime, teen pregnancy, pollution, school failure and underachievement, drug abuse and domestic violence. (Vasconcellos even expressed the hope that higher self-esteem would one day help balance the state budget — a prospect predicated on the observation that people with high self-regard earn more than others and therefore pay more in taxes.) A generation — and many millions of dollars — later, it turns out we may have been mistaken. Five years ago, the American Psychological Society commissioned me and several other experts to wade with an open mind through the enormous amount of published research on the subject and to assess the benefits of high self-esteem. Here are some of our disappointing findings. High self- esteem in schoolchildren does not produce better grades. (Actually, kids with high self-esteem do have slightly better grades in most studies, but that's because getting good grades leads to higher self-esteem, not the other way around.) In fact, according to a study by Donald Forsyth at Virginia Commonwealth University, college students with mediocre grades who got regular self-esteem strokes from their professors ended up doing worse on final exams than students who were told to suck it up and try harder. Self-esteem doesn't make adults perform better at their jobs either. Sure, people with high self-esteem rate their own performance better — even declaring themselves smarter and more attractive than their low self-esteem peers — but neither objective tests nor impartial raters can detect any difference in the quality of work. Likewise, people with high self-esteem think they make better impressions, have stronger friendships and have better romantic lives than other people, but the data don't support their self-flattering views. If anything, people who love themselves too much sometimes annoy other people by their defensive or know-it-all attitudes. Self-esteem doesn't predict who will make a good leader, and some work (including that of psychologist Robert Hogan writing in the Harvard Business Review) has found humility rather than self-esteem to be a key trait of successful leaders. It was widely believed that low self-esteem could be a cause of violence, but in reality violent individuals, groups and nations think very well of themselves. They turn violent toward others who fail to give them the inflated respect they think they deserve. Nor does high self-esteem deter people from becoming bullies, according to most of the studies that have been done; it is simply untrue that beneath the surface of every obnoxious bully is an unhappy, self-hating child in need of sympathy and praise. High self-esteem doesn't prevent youngsters from cheating or stealing or experimenting with drugs and sex. (If anything, kids with high self-esteem may be more willing to try these things at a young age.) There were a few areas where higher self-esteem seemed to bring some benefits. For instance, people with high self- esteem are generally happier and less depressed than others, though we can't quite prove that high self-esteem prevents depression or causes happiness. Young women with high self- esteem seem less susceptible to eating disorders. In some studies (though not all), people with high self-esteem bounce back from misfortune and trauma faster than others. High self-esteem also promotes initiative. People who have it are more likely to speak up in a group, persist in the face of failure, resist other people's advice or pressure and strike up conversations with strangers. Of course, initiative can cut both ways: One study on bullying found that self-esteem was high among the bullies and among the people who intervened to resist them. Low self-esteem marked the victims of bullying. In short, despite the enthusiastic embrace of self-esteem, we found that it conferred only two benefits. It feels good and it supports initiative. Those are nice, but they are far less than we had once hoped for, and it is very questionable whether they justify the effort and expense that schools, parents and therapists have put into raising self-esteem. After all these years, I'm sorry to say, my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline. Recent work suggests this would be good for the individual and good for society — and might even be able to fill some of those promises that self-esteem once made but could not keep

<h2>Ozymandias</h2> I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed, And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

<table> <tr><td><b>Vice</b></td><td><b>Virtue against which it sins</b></td><td><b>Brief description</b></td></tr> <tr><td>Pride (1) </td><td>Humility </td><td>Seeing ourselves as we are and not comparing ourselves to others is humility. Pride and vanity are competitive. If someone else's pride really bothers you, you have a lot of pride.</td></tr> <tr><td>Avarice/Greed (5) </td><td>Generosity </td><td>This is about more than money. Generosity means letting others get the credit or praise. It is giving without having expectations of the other person. Greed wants to get its "fair share" or a bit more.</td></tr> <tr><td>Envy (2) </td><td>Love </td><td>"Love is patient, love is kind…" Love actively seeks the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the good others receive or even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable from pride at times.</td></tr> <tr><td>Wrath/Anger (3) </td><td>Kindness </td><td>Kindness means taking the tender approach, with patience and compassion. Anger is often our first reaction to the problems of others. Impatience with the faults of others is related to this.</td></tr> <tr><td>Lust (7) </td><td>Self control </td><td>Self control and self mastery prevent pleasure from killing the soul by suffocation. Legitimate pleasures are controlled in the same way an athlete's muscles are: for maximum efficiency without damage. Lust is the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but they tend to go out of control.</td></tr> <tr><td>Gluttony (6) </td><td>Faith and Temperance </td><td>Temperance accepts the natural limits of pleasures and preserves this natural balance. This does not pertain only to food, but to entertainment and other legitimate goods, and even the company of others.</td></tr> <tr><td>Sloth (4) </td><td>Zeal </td><td>Zeal is the energetic response of the heart to God's commands. The other sins work together to deaden the spiritual senses so we first become slow to respond to God and then drift completely into the sleep of complacency.</td></tr> </table>

<img src="http://glenandpaula.com/quotes/uploads/1106762257CanyonLegs.jpg" width="279" height="216"> http://www.legendsofamerica.com/TX-CadillacRanch2.htm Marsh's eccentric public art vision extends south, to the junction of I-27 and Sundown Lane, where a sculpture of a pair of disembodied legs greets passersby. Marsh commissioned sculptor Lightnin' McDuff to build two large, trunkless legs of concrete reinforced with steel, one 24 feet high and the other 34 feet high inspired by the poem:

<img src="http://glenandpaula.com/quotes/uploads/1106762257CanyonLegs.jpg" width="279" height="216"> http://www.legendsofamerica.com/TX-CadillacRanch2.htm Marsh's eccentric public art vision extends south, to the junction of I-27 and Sundown Lane, where a sculpture of a pair of disembodied legs greets passersby. Marsh commissioned sculptor Lightnin' McDuff to build two large, trunkless legs of concrete reinforced with steel, one 24 feet high and the other 34 feet high inspired by the poem:

<img src="http://glenandpaula.com/quotes/uploads/1106762437ozymandias.gif" width="300" height="205"> <i>The feet of the colossus of Rameses II on which Shelley's poem Ozymandias is based. From Art, Space and the City p. 68.</i> *Ozymandias, or Ramese II, was pharaoh of Egypt in the thirteenth century B.C. 1. The poem, as an Italian sonnet, can be divided into two parts: the first eight lines (octave) and the next six lines (sestet). If the octave part describes the fragments of a sculpture the traveler sees on an ancient ruin, the sestet goes further to record the words on the pedestal and then describe the surrounding emptiness. How are the words on the pedestal in contrast to both the octave and the last three lines (triplet) of the poem? In other words, what does Ozymandias want to achieve, as opposed to what is left behind him? http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/19th_c/Romantic_poetry/Romantic_poetry.htm

<img src="http://glenandpaula.com/quotes/uploads/1106762607ozymandias.jpg" width="378" height="504"> http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Alley/4888/images/ozymandias.jpg

There was one who thought himself above me, and he was above me until he had that thought.

Coinnosseurs of the deadly sins divide them into the warm-hearted or cold-blooded sins. Lust, anger, and gluttony in this reckoning are thought warm hearted, bodily sins, proceeding as they do from the physical passions; pride, greed, sloth, and envy are cold-blooded, proceeding as they do from states of mind. The cold-blooded sins are more rebukable, less forgivable, and (with the exception of sloth) inherently crueler. Envy, a case could easily enough be made, may be the cruelist of all.

Anger is aroused when a person suffers a real or perceived injury. ... Envy, pride, and high material and status expectations make one particularly susceptible to anger since they lower the threshold for real or perceived injuries.