Pride often keeps us from having healthy relationships. It prevents us from asking for help when we need it. Turning to God is difficult to do when we have too much pride.
The saints can help us know when pride is detrimental and how to conquer it. The following quotes from the saints can inspire us to be humble of heart.
1. It was pride that changed angels into devils. It is humility that make men as angels.
2. The chief object of the devil’s work on earth is to fill us with pride.
3. Do you know where the tree of death is rooted? In the height of pride, which is nourished by their sensual selfishness. Its core is impatience and its offshoot is the lack of any discernment. These are the four chief vices, which together tell the souls of those I have called trees of death, since they have failed to feed on the life of grace. (Pride, selfishness, lack of discernment, impatience)
4. If the poison of pride is swelling up in you, turn to the Eucharist.
St. Cyril of Alexandria
5. Virtues are formed by prayer. Prayer preserves temperance. Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of Pride and anger. Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit and raises man to Heaven.
6. You must ask God to give you power to fight against the sin of pride which is your greatest enemy – the root of all that is evil, and the failure of all that is good… for God resists the proud.
7. Reject pride and consider everyone more righteous than yourself.
8. As pride is the beginning of all sin, so humility is the foundation of all virtue. Learn to be really humble, and not, as the hypocrite, humble in only appearance.
9. The vice is treated with opposite virtues: hatred – with love, pride – with calm, insensitivity with compassion, laziness with love for labor.
10. Pride dies 20 minutes after death.
11. The proud person is like a grain of wheat thrown into water – it swells, it gets big. Expose that grain to the fire – it dries up – it burns. The humble soul is like a grain of wheat, thrown into the earth – it descends, it hides itself, it disappears, it dies but to revive in heaven.
St. Mary of Jesus Crucified
12. For what else is pride but, as a saint has defined it, the love of one’s own excellence.
13. Not to follow the advice of our confessor is pride and a want of faith
14. If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers. Your self-suffering, your selfishness, and your intellectual pride will inhibit His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full. It is as simple as that.
U.S. Stamp
15. Be demanding of the world around you; be demanding first of all with yourselves. Be children of God; take pride in it!
16. We must all be on our guard against pride and empty boasting and beware of worldly or natural wisdom. A worldly spirit lives to talk a lot, but do nothing, striving for the exterior signs of holiness that people see, with no desire for true piety, and interior holiness of spirit.
17. Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying.
18. Love is patient, Love is kind. It does not envy. it does not boast. It is not proud.
1 Corinthians 13 St. Paul, Apostle
19. How can one be pleasing to God when one is inflated with pride and self-love under the pretense of striving for God’s glory wile in fact one is seeking one’s own glory?
20. The proud always do damage because the grace of heaven cannot fall on them.
21. We put pride into everything like salt. We like to see that our good works are known. If our virtues are seen, we are pleased; if our faults are perceived, we are sad. I remark that in a great many people, if one says anything to them, it disturbs them, it annoys them. The saints were not like that- they were vexed if their virtues were known, and pleased that their imperfections should be seen.
22. Pride causes us to use our gifts as though they came from ourselves, not benefits received from God, and to usurp our benefactor’s glory.
23. We must observe also that among the heathen the names of the poor men are more likely to be known than of the rich. Now our Lord mentions the names of the poor, but not the names of the rich, because God knows and approves the humble, but not the proud.
24. Learn to love humility, for it will cover all your sins. All sins are repulsive before God, but the most repulsive of all is pride of the heart. Do not consider yourself learned and wise; otherwise, all your efforts will be destroyed, and your boat will reach the harbor empty. If you have great authority, do not threaten anyone with death. Know that, according to nature, you are susceptible to death, and that every soul sheds its body as its final garment.
25. Lord, free me from every pride, which is the source of all sins. Give me the grace to recognize sick and unbridled ambitions, that make me choose false greatness, or they cause complexes. Jesus, martyred on the cross, obedient to everything to the Father, I am asking for a humble heart like Your Heart. I am asking for humble eyes, who see themselves and others in truth.
Amen
When Pride Comes, then comes disgrace,
but with humility comes wisdom.
Proverbs 11.2