With regard to necessary or small matters
he is least of all me given to lamentation or the asking of favours;
for it is the part of one who takes such matters seriously to behave
so with respect to them. He is one who will possess beautiful and
profitless things rather than profitable and useful ones; for this
is more proper to a character that suffices to itself.
Further, a slow step is thought proper to the proud man, a deep
voice, and a level utterance; for the man who takes few things
seriously is not likely to be hurried, nor the man who thinks
nothing great to be excited, while a shrill voice and a rapid gait are
the results of hurry and excitement.
Such, then, is the proud man; the man who falls short of him is
unduly humble, and the man who goes beyond him is vain. Now even these
are not thought to be bad (for they are not malicious), but only
mistaken. For the unduly humble man, being worthy of good things, robs
himself of what he deserves, and to have something bad about him
from the fact that he does not think himself worthy of good things,
and seems also not to know himself; else he would have desired the
things he was worthy of, since these were good. Yet such people are
not thought to be fools, but rather unduly retiring.
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