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 was gone.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

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

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…

I have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired by women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics.