The Pleasure of Pride

Yes, I know one doesn’t even want to be cured of one’s pride because it gives pleasure. But the pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch: but it is much nicer to nave neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval: but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither, but have everything else (God, our fellow-humans, animals, the garden & the sky) instead.

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“Letter to Mrs Johnson, 18 Feb. 1954,” in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. III, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), 428.