Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against vanity want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it.

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.

Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.

Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them.

Most of man's trouble comes from his inability to be still.