quotations about vanity
I thought of what pride would look like, a jowly old guy in a smoking jacket. Vanity was a tall, beautiful woman with a face like a mask.
HOLLY CUPALA
Tell Me a Secret
Vanity is more stereotypically associated with a city like Los Angeles, even though obviously vain people are all around us, and vanity is relative.
ALICIA ELER
"Minnesota Vanity Plates: One man's trash is another man's #Instagrammable treasure", Star Tribune, April 10, 2017
When men will not be reasoned out of a vanity, they must be ridiculed out of it.
L'ESTRANGE
attributed, Laconics
Pride is an established conviction of one's own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life", Parerga and Paralipomena
I'm not cocky
I just love myself
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
"Vanity"
But what marvel that I was thus carried away to vanities, and went out from Thy presence, O my God, when men were set before me as models.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Vanity is often the consequence of a fragile self-esteem, a fear of falling short in the eyes of others that results in a constant demand for reassurance. As such, it is often a better target for sympathy or pity than for censure.
SIMON BLACKBURN
"I cut my hair every day: confessions of a (very) vain man", The Guardian, April 22, 2017
He that hath nothing to feed on but vanity and lies must needs lie down in the bed of sorrow.
ANNE BRADSTREET
Meditations Divine and Moral
Like a white washed tomb, regardless of how much we bleach, the only thing that reminds us that we are chasing vanity is the void that is in our hearts.
DANNISH ODONGO
"Nairobi's Middle Class Is Broke and Fake, Here Is Why!", allAfrica, April 5, 2017
Take from mankind their vanity and ambition, and where would be the heroes and patriots?
SENECA
attributed, Day's Collacon
Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.
JULIAN CASABLANCAS
attributed, Strange Creatures
Vanity is so closely allied to virtue, and to love the fame of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection; and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former.
DAVID HUME
Essays Moral, Political, and Literary
The most violent passions have their intermissions; vanity alone gives us no respite.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
attributed, Day's Collacon
What makes the vanity of others unsupportable is that it wounds our own.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Vanity slowly deforms the fragility of our souls and it introduces an alienation between ourselves and God since we're competing with him and a tension between ourselves and our neighbor since we think they're inferior to us.
JEFFREY F. KIRBY
"In Lent, beware of vanity that always tries to canonize itself", CRUX, March 19, 2017
Vanity is what makes the man in a rut think he's in the groove.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Human, All Too Human
To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself.
MAX BEERBOHM
Quia Imperfectum
It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflexions