Boasting

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. ~ Paul of Tarsus

A man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast. ~ Jonathan Swift

Boasting is to speak with excessive pride and self-satisfaction about one’s achievements, possessions, or abilities.

Quotes

• Αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ Ῥόδος καὶ πήδημα.
  • Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
    • Here is Rhodes, jump here!
      • Reply to an athlete boasting about a stupendous long jump on the island of Rhodes, in Aesop's "The Boastful Athlete".

• Forgetting that their pride of spirit,
  Their exultation in their trial,
  Detracts most largely from the merit
  Of all their boasted self-denial.
  • Byron, “Granta” (1806), Poetical Works, Volume 1

• Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
  or the strong boast of their strengthor the rich boast of their riches,
  but let the one who boasts boast about this:
  that they have the understanding to know me,
  that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
  justice and righteousness on earth,
  for in these I delight.
  • The Bible, Book of Jeremiah 9:23-24 NIV

• Enten, you should not boast about your superior strength after you have explained the grounds for your boasting. […] Don't speak with a gaping mouth of your superior strength -- I will make known its shape and essence.
  • Emesh, in Debate between Winter and Summer, mid to late 3rd millennium BCE. Text online at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

• Don't holla till you are out of the wood. This is a night for praying rather than boasting.
  • Charles Kingsley, Hereward the wake, 1866.

• A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never having fallen out of one.
  • Ludwig Klages, Rhythmen und Runen (Leipzig: 1944), p. 466

• If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
  • Paul of Tarsus, 2 Corinthains 11:30 NIV

• To those who are given to virtue, the boast of titles is wholly alien and distasteful.
  • Petrarch, “On the Various Academic Titles,” De remediis utriusque fortunae, C. Rawski, trans. (1967), p. 73

• As long as the boasters haven't departed, their mouths make me uneasy.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection III at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

• To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess that these honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told: whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast.
  • Jonathan Swift, “Thoughts on Various Subjects”

See also

• Arrogance
• Egotism
• Pride
• Vanity