Pride limits intelligence, which amounts to saying that in the last analysis it slays it: it destroys its essential functions, while allowing the surface mechanism to remain incidentally, as if in mockery. [GTUFS: HaveCenter, To Have a Center]

A symbolic notion which includes everything that imprisons the soul in outwardness and keeps it away from the Divine Life. [GTUFS: TransfMan, The Impossible Convergence] Pride: that ‘something’ which prevents man from ‘losing his life’ for God. [GTUFS: SPHF, The Spiritual Virtues]

Pride / Cynicism / Hypocrisy: Both cynicism and hypocrisy are forms of pride; cynicism is the caricature of sincerity or frankness, whilst hypocrisy is the caricature of scrupulousness or self-discipline or of virtue in general. Cynics believe that sincerity consists in exhibiting shortcomings and passions and that to hide them is to be a hypocrite; they do not master themselves and still less do they seek to transcend themselves; and the fact that they take their faults for a virtue is the clear proof of their pride. Hypocrites believe, on the other hand, that it is virtuous to make a display of virtuous attitudes or that the appearances of faith suffice for faith itself; their vice lies, not in manifesting the forms of virtue – which is a rule that must apply to everyone – but in believing that the manifestation is virtue itself and, above all, in aping virtue in the hope of being admired: this is pride, because it is individualism and ostentation. Pride is to overestimate oneself and to underestimate others; and this is what the cynic does just as much as the hypocrite, in a blatant or a subtle way as the case may be. All this amounts to saying that in cynicism as in hypocrisy, the self-willed and therefore tenebrous ego takes the place of the spirit and of light; these two vices are acts of theft by which the passional and egoistic soul appropriates what belongs to the spiritual soul. Moreover, to present a vice as a virtue and, correspondingly, to accuse virtues of being vices, as is done by cynicism posing as sincerity, is nothing but hypocrisy, and it is a particularly perverse hypocrisy. As for pride, it was defined very well by Boethius  : “All the other vices flee from God, and only pride sets itself up against Him”; and by Saint Augustine  : “Other vices attach themselves to evil, that evil may be accomplished; pride alone attaches itself to good, that good may perish.” When God is absent, pride necessarily fills the emptiness: it cannot but appear in the soul when there is nothing there to relate to the Sovereign Good. Beyond doubt, the virtues of worldly men or of unbelievers have their own relative worth, but the same is true of physical qualities at their own level: the only qualities that contribute to the soul’s salvation are those that are quickened by the Truth and by the Way; no virtue cut off from these bases has power to save, and this proves the relativeness, and the indirectness, of purely natural virtues. A spiritual man does not feel that he owns his virtues; he renounces vices and extinguishes himself – actively and passively – in the Divine Virtues themselves. Virtue is that which is. [GTUFS: EsoterismPW, Sincerity: What It Is and What It Is Not]

Pride / Egoism / Stupidity / Wickedness / Hypocrisy: Life in human society favors the emergence of social vices, but this is not a reason for not resisting them, quite the contrary. Victory over the vices is owed to the people around us as well as to God who observes us and who will judge us. First of all there is pride: it is to overestimate oneself while underestimating others; it is the refusal to accept humiliation when the nature of things requires it; and it is ipso facto to take for a humiliation every attitude that simply reveals our limits. Next there is egoism: it is to think only of one’s own interest and thus to forget that of others. It is in this sector that egocentrism and narcissism are situated, without forgetting touchiness. Then stupidity: it is the lack of discernment between the essential and the secondary and, as a result, that moral ugliness which is pettiness; it is also the lack of sense of proportions, hence of priorities. As for wickedness, it is the will to harm others, in one fashion or another; it is especially slander, calumny and spite. And finally hypocrisy: it consists in practicing all the vices while practicing spiritual exercises which, in this context, become sacrilegious. [GTUFS: EchPW, 74]

Pride / Humility: According to Saint Augustine, “all the other vices attach themselves to evil, that it may be done; only pride attaches itself to good, that it may perish.” And likewise the Cure d’Ars: “Humility is to the virtues what the string is to the rosary; remove the string and all the beads scatter; remove humility and all the virtues disappear.” In other words, pride consists in glorying in one’s virtues, either before others or before oneself. And this destroys the virtues for two reasons: first of all because one takes them away from God, to whom they belong in reality, thus putting oneself – like Lucifer – in place of the Divine Source; and secondly because one attributes de facto a disproportionate value to a phenomenon which is necessarily relative. “When thou givest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” [GTUFS: SurveyME, Anonymity of the Virtues]