"Pride does not go before a fall. Pride is a fall..."

...Is it not true that pride gives to every other vice the extra touch of the intolerable? Whether or no it be the one thing that is unpardonable, is it not, in practice, the one thing that is unpardoned? I think the instinct of mankind against pride, as the ultimate human evil, can be proved from the most prosaic details or the most babyish beginnings. We do not specially resent a schoolboy being in love with a different girl every week, nor even his being in love with all of them in the course of the same week. Our dim yet divine desire to kick him only comes when he says that they are all in love with him...

...Gluttony is a great fault; but we do not necessarily dislike a glutton. We only dislike the glutton when he becomes the gourmet- that is, we only dislike him when he not only wants the best for himself, but knows what is best for other people. It is the poison of pride that has made the difference...Passions that can be respected as passions, weaknesses that can be reverenced as weaknesses, can all be suddenly distorted into devilish shapes, and made to dance to devilish tunes, at the first note of this shrill and hollow reed...

...It is this element that makes the position of the merely insolent impossible even for their own purposes. Pride does not go before a fall. Pride is a fall, in the instant understanding of all the intelligent who see it.

-August 22, 1914, Illustrated London News