Quotes About Vanity

Vanity, right?" Nash reappeared in the living room with an open bag of potato chips. "I nominate my venerable brother. He likes to play hero, and one look at him should establish the vanity angle." "Nash!" I really shouldn't have been surprised by the dig. But I was. "What?" He raised one brow at me in challenge. "It's okay to call me jealous, but not to call him vain?" "Awareness of one's obvious advantages doesn't imply vanity," Tod insisted calmly. Nash turned on him. "Does it imply narcissism?" Tod huffed. "This coming from the guy who owns more hair products than his girlfriend.

I think that magazines like Vanity Fair are still operating under the old rules, and that if you come to work for a magazine like Vanity Fair, even today, you're certainly expected to treat people like Peggy Siegal very deferentially.

When a thing is bought not for its use but for its costliness, cheapness is no recommendation. As Sismondi remarks, the consequence of cheapening articles of vanity, is not that less is expended on such things, but that the buyers substitute for the cheapened article some other which is more costly, or a more elaborate quality of the same thing; and as the inferior quality answered the purpose of vanity equally well when it was equally expensive, a tax on the article is really paid by nobody: it is a creation of public revenue by which nobody loses.

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.

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty.

I'm not only uninterested in having children. I am opposed to having children. Having a purebred human baby is like having a purebred dog; it is nothing but vanity, human vanity.

I think what kind of destroyed the franchise, in some ways, was ego and vanity. When that element of ego and vanity that's sitting there in the franchise right now gets pushed aside, I think the whole thing could be re-tooled. I think it's the type of franchise that has years in it, and has lots of legs.

Since the time of the cavemen, man has glorified himself, has made himself divine, and his monstrous vanity has caused human catastrophe. Art has collaborated in this false development. I find this concept of art which has sustained man's vanity to be loathsome.

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

The purpose of writing is to hold a mirror to nature, but too much today is written from small mirrors in vanity cases.

To his sister-in-law: What a contrast between us! You live a warm and glowing life, surrounded by loved ones whom you care for and who care for you; you are anchored in contentment. I drift about without rudder or compass, a wreck on the sea of life; I have no memories to cheer me, no pleasant illusions of the future to comfort me, or about me to satisfy my vanity. I have no family to furnish the only kind of survival that concerns us, no friends for the wholesome development of my affections, or enemies for my malice.

Talking about your hair becomes a framework for talking about your vanity, your self-esteem, your relationships with your family, your mortality.

Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.

We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.

Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.

I write a lot, poems and such, and when I look at it the next day, I can analyze what the problem is and find the solution. It's the same when I watch myself on the big screen, but first, my vanity has to go away and so I have to watch it ten times. But when it has gone, and I don't think my nose is too big and everything else, then I start analyzing, and I think it helps me to become a better person.

The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day.

…the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality.

Many people ask why a writer commits suicide. But I think that people who ask don't know the vanity and the nothingness of writing. I think it is very usual and natural for a writer to commit suicide, because in order to keep on writing he must be a very strong person.

We are so presumptuous that we should like to be known all over the world, even by people who will only come when we are no more. Such is our vanity that the good opinion of half a dozen of the people around us gives us pleasure and satisfaction.

Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.

Every actress has to face the facts there are younger, more beautiful girls right behind you. Once you've gone beyond the vanity of the business, you'll take on the tough roles.

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!

I enjoy vanity . But I can't stick to any of that lifestyle for too long because, when its true colors come out, it's empty and cold and soulless.

Whatsoever we have over-loved, idolized, and leaned upon, God has from time to time broken it, and made us to see the vanity of it; so that we find the readiest course to be rid of our comforts is to set our hearts inordinately upon them.

For some natures, changing their opinions is just as much a requirement of cleanliness as changing their clothes: for others, however, it is merely a requirement of vanity.

There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

Vanity and dignity are incompatible with each other; vain women are almost sure to be vulnerable.

The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered they lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display.

All is vanity but to love God and serve Him.

Luxury is the income tax of vanity. But it is so pleasant.

The greatest thing that prepared me for editing Vanity Fair was having four kids because you just learn to subjugate your ego with the greater interest in mind.

You think you can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. . . . . We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be pretensions, or there will be no jealousy.

It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things.

I don't read a lot of magazines, but when I'm traveling, I'll pick up a copy of 'Vanity Fair' to read on the plane - it's like a full meal! The articles are so good, especially the crime stories. Browsing the Web is more like snacking - but I live on snacks.

It's very nice to be in a show where your vanity is completely out of the picture.

I'm not invited to the Vanity Fair dinner where they watch the Oscars - or even the Oscars themselves - so I sit at home and watch it with a bunch of close friends.

It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.

Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.

He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself.

A man who is not a fool can rid himself of every folly except vanity.

A knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity.

The pain others give passes away in their later kindness, but that of our own blunders, especially when they hurt our vanity, never passes away