Pride

It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.

Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

Never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.

Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book.

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

I never was attached to that great sect,

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,

He who seeking asses found a kingdom.

Oft-times nothing profits more

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.

Is it not passing brave to be a king,

When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed,

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts, not to hurt others.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

I am two fools, I know,