Mere Christianity, Part 3: The Great Sin.

Normal pride.

“If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy” (123).

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others. If everyone became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest” (122).

“Real thorough-going pride may act as a check on vanity; for, as I said a moment ago, the devil loves curing a small fault by giving you a great one. We must try not to be vain, but we must never call in our pride to cure our vanity” (126-27).

Spiritual pride.

“It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly” (125).

“Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil” (124-5).

“An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons— marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning” (78-79).

The real cure for both vanity and pride; normal and spiritual:

“To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin; though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God” (127).

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins Publishers, 2001