The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.

Self - complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

For though men be ignorant, yet they are men

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.