Before We Can Be Cured, We Must

Catch {a Man} At The Moment When He Is Really Poor In Spirit And Smuggle Into His Mind The Gratifying Reflection, "by Jove, I'm Being Humble," And Almost Immediately Pride - Pride At His Own Humility - Will Appear.

If You Find That The Reader Of Popular Romances--however Uneducated A Reader, However Bad The Romances--goes Back To His Old Favourites Again And Again, Then You Have Pretty Good Evidence That They Are To Him A Sort Of Poetry.

Surely What A Man Does When He Is Taken Off Guard Is The Best Evidence For What Sort Of Man He Is. If There Are Rats In A Cellar, You Are Most Likely To See Them If You Go In Very Suddenly. But The Suddenness Does Not Create The Rats; It Only Prevents Them From Hiding. In The Same Way The Suddenness Of The Provocation Does Not Make Me Ill Tempered; It Only Shows Me What An Ill-tempered Man I Am.

But Pride Always Means Enmity -- It Is Enmity. And Not Only Enmity Between Man And Man, But Enmity To God.

Men Propound Mathematical Theorems In Besieged Cities, Conduct Metaphysical Arguments In Condemned Cells, Make Jokes On The Scaffold, Discuss A New Poem While Advancing To The Walls Of Quebec, And Comb Their Hair At Thermopylae. This Is Not Panache; It Is Our Nature.