78 Vanity Quotes

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

That something so obvious as the vanity of the world should be so little recognized that people find it odd and surprising to be told that it is foolish to seek greatness; that is most remarkable.

Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.

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

It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where 't is kept is lighter than vanity.

Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind.

What rage for fame attends both great and small! Better be damned than mentioned not at all.

Let 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.

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

It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.

Perhaps the rhinos and she-crocodiles whose gyrations between Mortimer's and East Hampton gives us our vision of social eminence today are content to entrust their faces to Andy Warhol's mingily cosmetic Polaroidising, but one would bet they would rather go to Sargent.

No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: 'Great heavens, did I write as well as that then?' for the implication always is that one does not write any longer so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano.

It's a blessed thing to die daily. For what is there in this world to be accounted of! The best men according to the flesh, and things, are lighter than vanity. I find this only good, to love the Lord and his poor despised people, to do for them and to be ready to suffer with them....and he that is found worthy of this hath obtained great favour from the Lord; and he that is established in this shall ( being conformed to Christ and the rest of the Body) participate in the glory of a resurrection which will answer all.

I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, 'Without vanity I may say,' &c., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.

By mortifying vanity we do ourselves no good. It is the want of interest in our life which produces it; by filling up that want of interest in our life we can alone remedy it. And, did we even see this, how can we make the difference? How obtain the interest which society declares she does not want, and we cannot want?

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking.

Certes, they been lyk to houndes, for an hound whan he comth by the roser, or by other bushes, though he may nat pisse, yet wole he heve up his leg and make a contenaunce to pisse.

It is difficult to live up to one's posters:When I pass my name in such large letters I blush, but at the same time instinctively raise my hat.

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.

'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

Glorious men are the scorn of wise men, the admiration of fools, the idols of parasites, and the slaves of their own vaunts.

When I behold this I sighed, and said within myself, 'Surely mortal man is a broomstick!' Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!

They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen.

Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.

Mortuus in anima curam gero cutis.

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.

Curiosite n'est que vanite. Le plus souvent, on ne veut savoir que pour en parler. (152)

Vanity: 'Self-made men often worship their creator.'

Now kiss, and think that there are really those, My own high-bosom'd beauty, who increase Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way! Through many years they toil; then on a day They die not, - for their life was death, - but cease; And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

Kerrang : Who is the vainest person in the band? Everyone: (laughing) Davey! Davey: Probably me, but I do it on my own time. I'm vain, but punctual. Jade: He can't walk past a mirror without checking himself out. Davey: Not a chance. I spent a lot of my childhood with my cousin sat on our washing machine, just staring into the mirror. For hours, not even adjusting hair or anything, just staring. It's not that I like what I see, necessarily, I just have to see it all the time.

'The Schnlitzer-Murphys had diamonds as big as walnuts-' 'That's nothing.' Percy had leaned forward and dropped his voice to a low whisper. 'That's nothing at all. My father has a diamond bigger than the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.'

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.

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.

Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.

Everyone has his vanity, and each one's vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul.

On parle peu quand la vanite ne fait pas parler.

On aime mieux dire du mal de soi-meme que de n'en point parler.

Le refus des louanges est un desir d'etre loue deux fois.

Ce qui nous rend la vanite des autres insupportable, c'est qu'elle blesse la notre.

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself - in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity - is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see 'forms.'

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

I don't have a photograph. I'd give you my footprints, but they're upstairs in my socks.

My wife wanted her face lifted. They couldn't do that. But for $80, they lowered her body.

Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette - the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there smiling.

'My Lords and peacocks.'