The Cost of Pride   "For, on account of our pride, God appointed that tiny and contemptible creature [the fly] to torment us; so that, since man has become proud and has boasted himself against God,... he may be brought low by gnats. Why art thou inflated with human pride? Some one has censured thee, and thou art swollen with rage. Drive off the gnats, that thou mayest sleep: understand who thou art. For taming of our pride, these things were created to be troublesome to us. God could have humbled Pharaoh's proud people by bears, by lions, by serpents; He sent flies and frogs upon them, that their pride might be subdued by the meanest creatures."   -- Augustine (353-429)