Pride Quotes - Quotes, The Old Man and the Sea | The Old Man and the Sea - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

"Thank you," the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride. (1.36)

In The Old Man and the Sea, we see that pride and humility are not mutually exclusive.

"Who gave this to you?" 

"Martin. The owner." "I must thank him." 

"I thanked him already," the boy said. "You don’t need to thank him." "I’ll give him the belly meat of a big fish," the old man said. "Has he done this for us more than once?" 

"I think so." 

"I must give him something more than the belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for us." (1.99-1.105)

The old man is not too proud to accept help from others.

"And the best fisherman is you." 

"No. I know others better." (1.134, 1.135)

The old man is humble about his abilities.

"I don’t think I can eat an entire one," he said and drew his knife across one of the strips. He could feel the steady hard pull of the line and his left hand was cramped. It drew up tight on the heavy cord and he looked at it in disgust.

"What kind of a hand is that," he said. "Cramp then if you want. Make yourself into a claw. It will do you no good." (3.31, 3.32)

The old man’s cramping hand hurts his pride, so he views it as an entity separate from himself.

I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one’s own body. It is humiliating before others to have a diarrhea from ptomaine poisoning or to vomit from it. But a cramp, he thought of it as a calambre, humiliates oneself especially when one is alone. (3.55)

The old man differentiates between pride before others and pride for oneself. He values the latter over the former.

"I told the boy I was a strange old man," he said. "Now is when I must prove it." 

The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it. 

I wish he’d sleep and I could sleep and dream about the lions, he thought. Why are the lions the main thing that is left? (3.3.76-3.78)

The old man remembers the lions because he admires them for their pride. In this way, they are similar.

For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match. After that he had a few matches and then no more. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing. He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand. But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do and he did not trust it. (3.91)

It is enough for the old man to know his abilities himself; he does not feel the need to prove them repeatedly to the rest of the world.

He took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and he put it against the fish’s agony and the fish came over onto his side and swam gently on his side, his bill almost touching the planking of the skiff and started to pass the boat, long, deep, wide, silver and barred with purple and interminable in the water. (4.64)

Although we are first told that the old man suffered no loss of pride, we later hear of his "lost gone pride."

"I need a pencil for that," he said. "My head is not that clear. But I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today. I had no bone spurs. But the hands and the back hurt truly." I wonder what a bone spur is, he thought. Maybe we have them without knowing of it. (4.77)

The old man is interested in his own sense of internal pride, but also the opinion that his hero would have of him.

Then his head started to become a little unclear and he thought, is he bringing me in or am I bringing him in? If I were towing him behind there would be no question. Nor if the fish were in the skiff, with all dignity gone, there would be no question either. But they were sailing together lashed side by side and the old man thought, let him bring me in if it pleases him. I am only better than him through trickery and he meant me no harm. (4.81)

The old man’s pride is called into question even after the fish is dead.

But I must think, he thought. Because it is all I have left. That and baseball. I wonder how the great DiMaggio would have liked the way I hit him in the brain? It was no great thing, he thought. Any man could do it. But do you think my hands were as great a handicap as the bone spurs? I cannot know. I never had anything wrong with my heel except the time the sting ray stung it when I stepped on him when swimming and paralyzed the lower leg and made the unbearable pain. (4.95)

The old man is proud of his own strength and actions, but he looks to others (in this case, DiMaggio, or his image of DiMaggio) for validation.

But he liked to think about all things that he was involved in and since there was nothing to read and he did not have a radio, he thought much and he kept on thinking about sin. You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more? (4.104)

The old man feels guilty at having killed a fish just for pride – but the question is whether or not this is really why he killed the marlin.

Besides, he thought, everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive. The boy keeps me alive, he thought. I must not deceive myself too much. (4.108)

The old man is not too proud to admit that he is dependent on the boy.

The old man could hardly breathe now and he felt a strange taste in his mouth. It was coppery and sweet and he was afraid of it for a moment. But there was not much of it. He spat into the ocean and said, "Eat that, galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man." (4.166, 4.167)

The old man is still proud, even after the fish has been taken from him by the sharks.

The wind is our friend, anyway, he thought. Then he added, sometimes. And the great sea with our friends and our enemies. And bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, he thought. 

"Nothing," he said aloud. "I went out too far." (4.171, 4.172)

The old man is at first too proud to admit that the sharks beat him.

The boy is not too proud to cry in front of others. He sees no shame in his feelings for the old man.

By ending on a note of resilience, it is suggested that the old man, having suffered defeat in one form or another, still maintains his pride.