Popular quotes about Vanity! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 54
The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).
Dawn PowellVanity is easily forgiven, for we are all vain, and even as we laugh at the weakness of others we feel that their vanity has touched the responding chord of our own.
Arthur LynchIt's not vanity to know your own good points. It would just be stupidity if you didn't; It's only vanity when you get puffed up about them.
Lucy Maud MontgomeryVanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.
Jane AustenI just wanted to honor who Emily was. She's just a strong woman. Through my journey of playing her, I found a lot of strength, and I think that I've changed, as a female, in the way that I carry myself. To go through something traumatic, like getting your face scarred, it made me analyze vanity a lot. When you have a little pimple and you're like, "Oh, my god, there's an alien on my face!," you feel like it's magnified.
Tinsel KoreyIf any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William JamesCuriosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.
Blaise PascalKnow that it is good to work. Work with love, and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.
Brenda UelandWhat man needs is not philosophy or religion in the academic or formalistic sense of the term, but ability to think rightly. The malady of the age is not absence of philosophy or even irreligion but wrong thinking and a vanity which passes for knowledge. Though it is difficult to define right thinking, it cannot be denied that it is the goal of the aspirations of everyone.
Krishnananda SaraswatiIt's not vanity to feel you have a right to be beautiful. Women are taught to feel we're not good enough, that we must live up to someone else's standards. But my aim is to cherish myself as I am.
Elle MacphersonLet him who cannot be alone beware of community... Let him who is not in community beware of being alone... Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.
Dietrich BonhoefferEvery noble action is selfish. Some selfish actions are nobler than others. But they are all selfish. And as such there can be no action purely noble anyway. Even the nobility in God's great philosophical intentions is bounded by his vanity.
Kedar JoshiBoth learned and unlearned young men seldom go to church, and in general do not attend to their spiritual education, looking upon it as unnecessary and giving themselves up to worldly vanity. Attention must be paid to this. It is the fruit of pride... They consider attendance at church and Divine service as the business of the common people and women, forgetting that, in the temple, Angels officiate with trembling, together with men, and regard this as their highest bliss.
John of KronstadtWhat makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them.
Francois de La RochefoucauldThe a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief weare inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.
Charles Sanders PeirceIf 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.
James FrancoPride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSometimes when you do fight scenes you think, "Oh, I'll be hit in the face," because people get carried away with their vanity and want to look too cool to care, but we were all really careful with each other.
Benedict CumberbatchWhen we see the bankruptcy, slavery, and vanity of everything else, we can finally say, โTo die is gain.โ
Matt ChandlerThereโs just something unsettling about studying your reflection. Itโs not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe itโs that when you gaze into your own eyes, you donโt see what you wish to seeโor glimpse something that you wish werenโt there.
Dean KoontzIn some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.
William HazlittIt is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.
Arthur HelpsThe man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.
Thomas CarlylePeople think they can tame the earth. How absurd! The vanity of human wishes is endless. It is more fun to dance with life.
Frederick LenzYou 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.
Michael CrichtonFalse glory is the rock of vanity; it seduces men to affect esteem by things which they indeed possess, but which are frivolous, and which for a man to value himself on would be a scandalous error.
Jean de la BruyereBuilding intelligent machines can teach us about our minds - about who we are - and those lessons will make our world a better place. To win that knowledge, though, our species will have to trade in another piece of its vanity.
Astro Tellerwe look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray that there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading us to our destiny, but it's only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It's true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you'll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That's not a star worth following; it's just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.
Salman RushdieWith men, as with women, the main struggle is between vanity and comfort; but with men, comfort often wins.
Mignon McLaughlinLet a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain - at least in a poor country like Russia - and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.
Leon TrotskyThe hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.
Eric HofferWhatever littleness and vanity is to be observed in the minds of women, it is, like the cruelty of butchers, a temper that is wrought into them by that life which they are taught and accustomed to lead.
William LawWhen you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you - the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it's also a thrill. That's what I found weird.
Ethan HawkeThe vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashion, and placing value on ourselves by them is one of the most childish pieces of folly.
Matthew HaleMost times with vanity projects, publishers don't believe in the work; they just believe in the name.
Gerard Way[Vanity] is an unrecognised form of stupidity, you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that's a glaring form of stupidity.
Pascal MercierPride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit silent well contented with fine saloons. But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last; a long way leading nowhere.--Only one drawback; proud people are intolerably selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving.
Ralph Waldo EmersonNothing fans me into such a state of peaceful mental somnambulance as the intellectual antics of a person who displays his learning, not from vanity always, but frequently because it is all he has got; no real sense, no wisdom of his own, merely much good stuff he has learned from other sources. He spreads it like a garment as any other decent person would to hide the thinness of his shanks.
Corra May HarrisWhat do you believe? I believe that the last and the first suffer equally. Pari passu. Equally? It is not alone in the dark of death that all souls are one soul. Of what would you repent? Nothing. Nothing? One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.
Cormac McCarthy