Quotes About Vanity

Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like “I deserved a better life than this.

Vanity is a relative of Pride; Vanity is talkative, pride is silent. When Vanity and Pride get together, they could make monstrosities.

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.

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.

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

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more. If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.

Vanity is the poison of agreeableness; yet as poison, when artfully and properly applied, has a salutary effect in medicine, so has vanity in the commerce and society of the world.

... overconfidence in one's own ability is the root of much evil. Vanity, egoism, is the deadliest of all characteristics. This vanity, combined with extreme ignorance of conditions the knowledge of which is the very A B C of business and of life, produces more shipwrecks and heartaches than any other part of our mental make-up.

I do believe that as you write more and age, the arrogance and most of the vanity goes. Or it is a vanity met with vast gratitude, that you were hit by something as you stood in the way of it, that anybody is listening.

Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. I know this well... Vanity and dishonesty may be vices, but they're also the first forms of protection I ever knew.

Vanity 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.

Pride... is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or the other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

Vanity Fair magazine reports that former President Clinton and Al Gore haven't spoken to each other since George W. Bush's inauguration. Not only that, Bill and his wife, Hillary, haven't spoken since Richard Nixon's inauguration.

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise.

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty - excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable - should persist after the beauty is gone.

Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.

Men do not take to vanity, because they are taught at an early age that it is wrong to be vain.

After all, what does fame everlasting mean? Mere vanity.

The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity.

There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery.

Pride is a wound and vanity is the scab on it. One's life picks at the scab to open that wound again and again. Among men it seldom heals and often grows septic.

…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.

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.

I found during the course of my political career on the national scene there's a point where the vanity burns away and you've had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power. And for me that happened fairly quickly. And then you are really focused on: What am I going to get done with this strange privilege that's been granted to me? How do I make myself worthy of it?

He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom.

In judging our progress as individuals we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education... But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being. Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others - qualities which are within easy reach of every soul - are the foundation of one's spiritual life.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.

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.

Pride 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.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

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.

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.

Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.

If you want to succeed in the world it is necessary, when entering a salon, that your vanity should bow to that of others.

One of the great things about Parkinson's, in a superficial way, is it relieved me of vanity. I don't worry about what I look like, because it's literally out of my hands. But on a deeper level, it gives you a real humility, because you have to deal every day with the fact that you compromise.

Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish.

Honesty,sincer ity,simplicity, humility, pure generosity,abse nce of vanity,readines s to serve others -qualities which are within easy reach of every soul -are the foundation of one's spiritual life.

'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.

I was raised to be modest to the point of fanaticism. In my family, we don't talk about ourselves to each other. Vanity is considered the worst possible sin. I've gotten better about having to describe things. If you're going to make a record and people are going to write about you, it's your responsibility to answer questions. It's validating - I'm just very clumsy.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man's spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is a hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity.

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.