PRIDE feels no cold (frost, pain)

Meaning & Analysis

Pride makes people oblivious to discomfort or hardship, such as cold or pain, often for the sake of maintaining appearances or fashion.

Insights

Power of Vanity

The proverb suggests that vanity or pride can make individuals disregard physical discomfort in pursuit of status, beauty, or social approval.

Emotional Numbness

Implicates that pride not only blocks physical sensation but can also render people numb to criticism, hardship, or emotional pain, insulating them in self-regard.

Self-Deception

Warns that pride can foster denial or self-delusion, causing individuals to ignore real problems or needs in favor of upholding a certain image.

Historical Symbolism

Historically invoked regarding impractical or revealing fashions—bare shoulders, open chests, extravagant dress—this proverb reflects the lengths to which people will go for fashion or pride, even at the expense of comfort and health.

Social Satire

The saying serves as gentle satire, mocking those so obsessed with appearance that they willingly endure cold or pain to stay fashionable, a critique that extends to both genders and all eras.

Psychological Insight

Explores the psychological mechanisms by which self-esteem and social comparison can override basic needs, sometimes leading to risky or self-defeating behavior.

Rhetorical Devices

Personification

Personifies 'pride' as capable of feeling (or not feeling), making the abstract vice vivid and memorable.

Irony

The proverb’s wry observation that pride feels 'no pain' is ironic, given that pride often leads to suffering—just not acknowledged by the proud.

Ellipsis

The phrase omits explicit subjects ('Those ruled by pride...'), making it pithy and universally applicable.

pridevanityfashiondenialsatireselfdeception

Analyzed with gpt-4.1 on July 10, 2025

Transcription

Quotations

Pride is neuer without her own paine, though shee will not feele it: be her garments what they will, yet she will neuer be too hot, nor too colde.

— 1614, T. ADAMS, Fatal Banquet II, Wks., p. 196

Thou must make shift with it. Pride feeles no pain.

— 1631, JONSON, New Inn, II i 5

Some may plead, Pride never feels pain.

— 1650, FULLER, Pisgah-Sight, IV vi, p. 114

— 1659, HOW., Eng. Prov., p. 14

— 1670, RAY, p. 133

— 1687, MIEGE, s.v. Pride

— 1721, KEL., p. 277

(Frost).

— 1732, FUL., no. 3935

Annotations

Spoken heretofore to young Women, when, in compliance with the Fashion, they went with their Breasts and Shoulders bare; and may now be apply'd to Beaus with their open Breasts, and Ladies with their extravagant Hoops.

Related Proverbs

H813 HUNGER drops out of his nose 90.6%F100 Our FATHERS won Boulogne, who never came within the report of the cannon 90.6%F535 FOOLS had never less wit in a year 90.5%G144 None sighs so sore as the GLUTTON that may no more 90.3%M1168 You pay MORE for your schooling than your learning is worth 90.2%B408 No BISHOP no king 90.2%A277 As proud as an APOTHECARY 90.1%P83 Praise at PARTING 90.0%K49 KINDNESS (Love, Kind) will creep where it cannot go 89.9%Y53 It is easy to cry YULE at other men's cost 89.8%D362 He is DISGUISED 89.8%W490 WINE wears no breeches 89.8%W510 WINTER eats that summer gets 89.7%C889 CUCKOLDS come by destiny 89.7%D526 All DOGS bark not (No dogs shall bark) at him 89.7%M1029 The MOB has many heads but no brains 89.7%P183 PENS may blot but they cannot blush 89.5%F183 All FELLOWS, Jock and the laird 89.5%M52 MALICE is mindful 89.5%H175 As blind as a HARPER 89.5%

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