על המידות הטובות ל׳On the Virtues 30
א׳
1[161] With such instructions he tamed and softened the minds of the citizens of his commonwealth and set them out of the reach of pride and arrogance, evil qualities, grievous and noxious in the highest degree, though embraced as most excellent by the majority of men, particularly when riches and distinctions and high offices bestow their gifts in unstinted superabundance.
ב׳
2[162] For arrogance springs up in the insignificant and obscure, as does each of the other passions and diseases and distempers of the soul, though it does not increase to any extent and grows dull as fire does for want of its essential fuel. But it is conspicuous in the great, who as I have said are amply provided with the evil thing by riches and distinctions and high offices and so charged with these, like men who have drunk deep of strong wine, become intoxicated and vent their sottish rage on slave and free alike and sometimes on whole cities. For “satiety begets insolence,” as the ancients have said.
ג׳
3[163] And therefore Moses in his work as Revealer admirably exhorts them to abstain from all sins, but especially from pride. Then he reminds them of the causes which are wont to inflame this passion, unlimited means of satisfying the belly and unstinted superabundance of houses and land and cattle. For men at once lose their self-mastery, and are elated and puffed up, and the one hope of their cure is that they should never lose the remembrance of God.
ד׳
4[164] For as when the sun has risen the darkness disappears, and all things are filled with light, so when God, the spiritual sun, rises and shines upon the soul, the gloomy night of passions and vices is scattered, and virtue reveals the peerless brightness of her form in all its purity and loveliness.