In the great book, Out of Africa, written by author Karen Blixen under the penname of "Isak Denisen," there is a section called “From an Immigrant’s Notebook,” and a short piece within that notebook on pride. Here is an excerpt for your potential pondering.
The neighborhood of the Game Reserve and the presence, outside our boundary, of the big game, gave a particular character to the farm, as if we had been neighbors of a great king. Very proud things were about, and made their nearness felt.
The barbarian loves his own pride, and hates, or disbelieves in, the pride of others. I will be a civilized being, I will love the pride of my adversaries, of my servants, and my lover; and my house shall be, in all humility, in the wilderness a civilized place.
Pride is faith in the idea that God had, when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards happiness, or comfort, which may be irrelevant to God’s idea of him. His success is the idea of God, successfully carried through, and he is in love with his destiny. As the good citizen finds his happiness in the fulfillment of his duty to the community, so does the proud man find his happiness in the fulfillment of his fate.
People who have no pride are not aware of any idea of God in the making of them, and sometimes they make you doubt that there has ever been much of an idea, or else it has been lost, and who shall find it again? They have got to accept as success what others warrant to be so, and to take their happiness, and even their own selves, at the quotation of the day. They tremble, with reason, before their fate.
Love the pride of God beyond all things, and the pride of your neighbors as your own. The pride of lions: do not shut them up in Zoos. The pride of your dogs: let them not grow fat. Love the pride of your fellow-partisans, and allow them no self-pity.
Love the pride of the conquered nations, and leave them to honour their father and their mother.
