I agree with kb for the most part. Arrogance can be exceeding your limits. It can also be reminding everyone around you that you are in fact hot shit and they're inferior. I had a conversation with someone recently about the use of "big words" in casual conversation and she said it can be considered rude. lolwut? Nope. She had a good point that you need to tailor your speech to your audience and it's off-putting for some people to hear words that aren't from the 8th grade-reading-level AP dictionary. So pomposity and arrogance are linked.

I don't fight back that hard against accusations that I'm a pompous ass depending on the context of the situation of when the pompous action I took took place. I got a BFA in studio art. Hipsters were hipstering in the art school before hipster became common derogatory parlance. And art school hipsters are some of the most insufferable you'll ever meet. So there's some overlap between how I act and how those people do, even though I was down the hill playing with fire, wearing steel-toed boots and not making conceptual art that had like a snake in a plexiglas cage next to a turntable playing Yoko One or whatever the fuck the digital media kids were doing.

Even if you are hot shit you gotta demonstrate some humility to ease back the arrogance. I know people hate me because they think I'm an arrogant asshole. I definitely can be. Arrogant, an asshole, and some combination thereof. But I'm not categorically a douchebag and if I like you for some reason and you can put up with me being prickly pretty often, you'll find out I'm an OK guy. Some people hear words like 'facetious' or 'pedantic' come out of my mouth and just tune out. I've done a lot of public or semi public speaking recently and I'm pretty fucking over dumbing down my vocabulary for the benefit of people I probably don't like to begin with.

(I think this is coming off pretty arrogant at this point. Don't know. But if you agree, I'm aware of the irony.)

I guess I'm trying to say (verbosely) that you can't control something that's entirely subjective and based on the perception of other people.

I think linking pride and dignity as a little separate pairing doesn't do much to relate pride to arrogance and confidence. Dignity is a pretty universal good. Pride gets a bum wrap from Judeo Christian traditions. I'm proud of plenty of shit I've done. Why is that bad? I'm 100% entitled to be proud of my objectively impressive achievements. Few and far between as they are. But pride can lead to arrogance and over confidence if the pride isn't squared with the reality of whatever you're proud of.

It's entirely up to an individual to decide what self-aware level of these qualities you want to put off. Like you could potentially carry yourself with too much dignity and put people off because you seem snotty or even weak maybe. It's a subjective thing that you can't control because the subjectivity is based on the perceptions of others. You can try to balance how you present yourself by being aware of when you seem arrogant or demonstrate false pride. But there will always be people who just plain don't like you. Fuck 'em. Do you as best you can, get feedback from people who's opinions you care about about how you're projecting. Just be confident that you're doing the best you can and that whatever you're doing is worth doing.