Vanity

“Every day, I wake up and say, 'Good Morning, Jesus.'”

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

“It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is "lighter than vanity."”

“'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; No hollow aid; alone — man with his God must strive.”

“Ecclesiastes said that "all is vanity," In short, all know, or very soon may know it.”

“Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.”

“That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory.”

“Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.”

“Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain:And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.”

“That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me.”

“… when we place our hope in worldly vanities, in money, in success. Then the Word of God says to us: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”. Why are you searching there? That thing cannot give you life! Yes, perhaps it will cheer you up for a moment, for a day, for a week, for a month … and then?”

“Vanity not only distances us from God: it makes us look ridiculous.”

“Pride that dines on Vanity sups on Contempt.”

“There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.”

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

“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”

“Nothing deceives its possessor like vanity.”

“O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!”

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

“Pride and Vanity have built more Hospitals than all the Virtues together.”

“Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

“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.”

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

“Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality.”

“The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.”

“Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Here files of pins extend their shining rows,Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.”

“Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all.”

“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.”

“Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity—That is not quickly buzz'd into his ears?”

“Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.”

“Hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!”

“Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us And foolish notion.”

“Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.”

“How many saucy airs we meet,From Temple Bar to Aldgate street!”

“Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher,Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature.”

“"Vanitas vanitatum" has rung in the earsEither simple or gentle from Vanity Fair.”

“What is your sex's earliest, latest care,Your heart's supreme ambition? To be fair.”

“Every man at his best state is altogether vanity.”

“Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance they are altogether lighter than vanity.”

“Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!And praise and toast me at his wine."”

“Meek Nature's evening comment on the showsFrom all the fuming vanities of earth.”