quotations about vanity
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.
ALEXANDER POPE
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
Vanity is apt to inspire contempt, but that becomes immediately tempered by a gentler and more gracious feeling; for the vain man desires to win our approbation, and in this way he flatters us.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
Everywhere you find the man of thews and sinews who toils, and the lymphatic man who torments himself; and pleasures are everywhere the same, for when all sensations are exhausted, all that survives is Vanity--Vanity is the abiding substance of us, the I in us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
There is more jealousy between rival wits, than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Vanity is only to be satisfied by gold in floods.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Gobseck
Every present occasion will catch the senses of the vain main; and with that bridle and saddle you may ride him.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney
Vanity is often so excessive, that those who are compelled to walk on crutches would fain make us believe they are raised on stilts.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Wrecker
V is for vanity, every time I look at me
I turn myself on, yeah
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
"Vanity"
Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief.
JANE AUSTEN
Emma
To be a man's own fool is bad enough; but the vain man is everybody's.
WILLIAM PENN
Fruits of Solitude
In the age of Instagram, when every famous face is potentially subject to an iPhone ambush, extreme vanity is more necessity than sin.
GUY TREBAY
"Dermatologist to the famous: The doctor will see you now (if you're a star with a zit)", Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, April 30, 2017
False modesty is the last refinement of vanity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Everyone at the bottom of his heart cherishes vanity; even the toad thinks himself good-looking; "rather tawny perhaps, but look at his eye!"
J. WILSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
A man that is deeply in love with himself will probably succeed in his suit owing to a lack of rivals.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
If you spend your life sparing people's feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can't distinguish what should be respected in them.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
Everyone has his vanity, and each one's vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
Vanity's a confounded donkey, very apt to put his head between his legs and chuck us over; but Pride's a fine horse, who will carry us over the ground, and enable us to distance our fellow travelers.... How often have you read of people rising from nothing, and becoming great men? This was from talent, sure enough; but it was talent with pride to force it onward, not talent with vanity to check it.
FREDERICK MARRYAT
Peter Simple
Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays