Milton’s devils, by their grandeur and high poetry, have done great harm, and his angels owe too much to Homer and Raphael. But the really pernicious image is Goethe’s Mephistopheles. It is Faust, not he, who really exhibits the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of hell. The humorous, civilized, sensible, adaptable Mephistopheles has helped to strengthen the illusion that evil is liberating.

-C.S. Lewis, from the original preface to The Screwtape Letters

And that’s as good a definition of pride as I’ve seen: “…the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self…”

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