Vanity Quotes

You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.

Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of earth.

The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead.

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.

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.

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

It would be next to impossible to discover a handsome woman who was not also a vain woman.

A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.

Every man's vanity ought to be his greatest shame; and every man's folly ought to be his greatest secret.

My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.

Too much is a vanity; enough is a feast.

He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.

And yet, after all, what is posthumous fame? Altogether vanity.

There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

Love of power more frequently originates in vanity than pride (two qualities, by the way, which are often confounded) and is, consequently, yet more peculiarly the sin of little than of great minds.

O vanity, mislead no more!

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

We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans.

What is called liberality is often merely the vanity of giving.

There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.

When we live our lives not for vanity, but for the sake of God and the betterment of humanity, that's what gives us immortality.

The happy story right now is the full page in Vanity Fair, which gives me a great deal of exposure.

What egotism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it!

Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous.

We really care about photography at Vanity Fair.

To what gods is sacrificed that rarest and sweetest thing upon earth, friendship? To vanity and to interest.

The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.

I'm hoping my children will save me from my vanity. If it doesn't, plastic surgery is an option... It sucks to have to grow older. We all have to accept it.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

The worst of lusts is vanity.

The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

Why seek to embarrass [the artist] with vanities foreign to his quietness? Know you not that certain sciences require the whole man, leaving no part of him at leisure for your trifles?

A man should fear when he only enjoys what good he does publicly. Is it not the publicity rather than the charity he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities?

When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done, he is dead,--dead in trespasses and sin of blear-eyed vanity.

Where would the power of women be, were it not for the vanity of men?

Irresponsibility, cowardice, personal vanity, whining and chaos are becoming the maxims of political action. There is a stink in Berlin - a huge one!

... many a heart is caught in the rebound ... Pride may be soothed by the ready devotion of another; vanity may be excited the more keenly by recent mortification.

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation.

I left Gorbachev's office thinking that everything about him was outsized: his achievements, his mistakes, and, now, his vanity and bitterness.

To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.

My vanity and narcissism will never let me go too far.

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).

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

Vanitas vanitatum has rung in the ears Of gentle and simple for thousands of years; The wail still is heard, yet its notes never scare Either simple or gentle from Vanity Fair.

Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?

The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.