Quotes About Vanity

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes,--vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.

Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand,the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.

I'd known the people at Rolling Stone for a while. I'd gone to them with a piece I'd done on Beirut for Vanity Fair that Vanity Fair didn't want to publish, because they said I was making fun of death... This was Tina Brown.But they paid me for it. So I've got this big chunk of a piece, and Rolling Stone liked it, but they thought it was a little dated. But then they called me back and asked me to do a similar piece about the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the whole government had been arrested for dope smuggling. That was fun.

Healthy vanity sweeps through life. Sickly vanity lies in bed.

Vanity is a natural object of temptation to a woman.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

We say little, when vanity does not make us speak.

I see a funny guy who's imperfect, but has a great heart and no vanity when it comes to what he'll do to get a laugh. I see a guy who loves his art and loves his family, and who is willing to live and die for both.

The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

When we stay close to the wisdom of our knowing, seeking solutions to our problems in the sanctuary of the heart and not in the vanity of the mind, then we can pretty much trust in the unfolding, mysterious wisdom of life.

The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim of superior sensitivity and morality.

You know, at 35 or at 38 or 40 you really start to see what your body could look like if you just don't do anything all winter long. So that's another motivating factor, our vanity.

I feel like all comedy does require a lack of vanity, but multi-cam, especially.

Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it.

I have often thought how strange it is that men can at once and the same moment cheerfully consign our sex to lives either of narrowest toil or senseless luxury and vanity, and then sneer at the smallness of our aims, the pettiness of our thoughts, the puerility of our conversation!

If you have a profession that depends on what you look like, you can't blame somebody for caring about that. It's part of their job. So it's vanity but it's also not in a lot of cases. It's being professional.

What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?

It was this feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land where men were contented, uncontradicted ans safe in possession of unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very pleasant place for women to live. So, from the cradle to the grave, women strove to make men pleased with themselves, and the satisfied men repaid lavishly with gallantry and adoration. In fact, men willingly gave ladies everything in the world except credit for having intelligence.

Beauty is a great gift of heaven; not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved.

When we see the bankruptcy, slavery, and vanity of everything else, we can finally say, ‘To die is gain.’

I grew up in a makeup chair, to see! the women around me getting ready was so aspirational, It is about mothers and daughters, a girl watching her mom at a vanity table.

Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.

I think a lot of female actors have a real fear of not looking their best. They learn to prize their vanity over a role in which they have to look like a moron. They're worried they'll damage their sex appeal. Thankfully, I have no problem looking like a moron!

Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.

Egotism is the tongue of vanity.

It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.

The desire to be the object of public attention is weak, but the excessive dread of it is but a form of vanity and over-self-contemplativeness.

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give, No hollow aid; alone - man with God must strive.

The individual feels the vanity of human desires and aims, and the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought. He feels the individual destiny as an imprisonment and seeks to experience the totality of existence as a unity full of significance.

If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbor's weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity.

Honor is decency without vanity.

I am sensible that my keenness of temper, and a vanity to be distinguished for the day, make me too often splash in life.... I amresolved to restrain myself and attend more to decorum.

The war was about vanity, he said. It was about old men who couldn't look in the mirror anymore and so they sent the young out to die. Was was a get-together of the vain. They wanted it simple--hate your enemy, know nothing of him.

The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashion, and placing value on ourselves by them is one of the most childish pieces of folly.

I try--without success--to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority.

I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man.

Ibn Ata' Allah said: "God may open up for you the gates of obedience, but without opening up for you the gates of acceptance. On the other hand, He may Allow you to fall into disobedience which happens to lead you to the right path. DISOBEDIENCE that teaches you HUMILITY is better than PIETY that fills you with VANITY and ARROGANCE.

[The political mind] is a strange mixture of vanity and timidity, of an obsequious attitude at one time and a delusion of grandeurat another time. The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse.

Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food--and a spaniel, that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another. But it is in love as in war, we are often more indebted for our success to the weakness of the defence than to the energy of the attack; for mere idleness has ruined more women than passion; vanity more than idleness, and credulity more than either.

moral vanity is the snare of good people.

Just as a warrior must anticipate his enemy’s behavior and reactions and understand the dangers, and just as a hunter must know the behavior patterns of animals that he hunts, in order for us to heal, to achieve and maintain a state of mental and physical health,we must be in touch with our body and be aware of the symptoms of illness. Our ability to heal, and the healing process itself, should never be taken for granted. Vanity often keeps us from accepting that we’ll all inevitably face cycles of being weaker and stronger,sicker and healthier.

The mother of creation is vanity.

When the father is going on in his journey, if the child will not goe on, but stands gaping upon vanity, and when the father calls, he comes not, the onely way is this: the father steps aside behind a bush, and then the child runs and cries, and if he gets his father againe, he forsakes all his trifles, and walkes on more faster and more cheerefully with his father than ever.

I have a healthy sense of vanity. I like to look good for myself, which is what a lot of women say. I want to stay fit.

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.