VANITY QUOTES
quotations about vanity
This is vanity: living to pretend, living to seem, living to appear. And this makes the soul restless.
POPE FRANCIS
Vatican Radio, September 22, 2016
Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
"The Way to Wealth", The Life and Essays of Dr. Benjamin Franklin
There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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.
JANE AUSTEN
Pride and Prejudice
Vanity has many outlets in conversation, but great I is the front door.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Vanity plagues us all. From lowly selfie-takers pouting at their phones and zapping their images out into the cold infinity of cyberspace, all the way to those occupying the highest offices in the land. It's unseemly, this desperate campaign to control how we are seen by the world. But it's also deeply human, something that unifies us all, this lonely pettiness, this struggling against our forever-thwarted egos.
RICHARD LAWSON
"Donald Trump's Official Photographer Reportedly Obliges This Vain Request", Vanity Fair, April 4, 2017
I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.
LIONEL SHRIVER
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Vanity indeed is a venial error; for it usually carries its own punishment with it.
JUNIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Vanity is the quicksand of reason.
GEORGE SAND
attributed, Pearls of Thought
Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Cat's Eye
Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one's personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one's individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whim it befits.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Vanity is the fruit of ignorance; it thrives most in subterranean places, never reached by the air of heaven and the light of the sun.
J. W. ROSS
attributed, Day's Collacon
My vanity is excessive: wherever I sit is the head of the table.
H. L. MENCKEN
Letters of H. L. Mencken
There is no limit to the vanity of this world, each spoke in the wheel thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
You'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
In the Night Garden
The vain man is like a painter who continually draws but his own picture.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The House of the Seven Gables
Vanity is always running a campaign to canonize itself. It works tirelessly to prove its legitimacy and takes on the disguise of noble intentions or results. Beyond the games it plays, however, the reality is that vanity is a cancer within the human heart. It's a "nothing" that eats away the human soul, feeding on a failed attempt to self-heal insecurity on the one hand or nourish self-absorption on the other.
JEFFREY F. KIRBY
"In Lent, beware of vanity that always tries to canonize itself", CRUX, March 19, 2017
A vain man is a nauseous creature: he is so full of himself that he has no room for anything else, be it never so good or deserving.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude