pride
Great Standard
“I take some pride in . . . representing myself exactly how I would like to have my son remember me to his kids.”
**Robert Downey Jr.
Self-Repect
“I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”
**John Wayne
A Common Flaw
“He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.”
**Gustav Flaubert
Own Yourself
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
**Robert Frost
I’m So Uncouth
“I thought everyone must know that a short jacket is always worn with a silk hat at a private meeting in the morning.”
–Edward VII when a friend arrived in a long coat. He meant it just as condescendingly as it sounds too! 
So Humble it’s Nauseating
“In 1969, I published a small book on Humility. It was a pioneering work which has not, to my knowledge, been superseded.”
**Lord Longford
I Need No Companion
“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
**Charlotte Bronte
Archaeologists. . . A lot more earthly minded than you think
“I will tell you a little secret about archaeologists, dear Reader. They all pretend to be very high-minded. They claim that their sole aim in excavation is to uncover the mysteries of the past and add to the store of human knowledge. They lie. What they really want is a spectacular discovery, so they can get their names in the newspapers and inspire envy and hatred in the hearts of their rivals.”
The Most Romantic Passage in Literary History
“Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear-a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.”
**Baroness Orczy
