Vanity Quotes - Page 21

Vanity Fair has but two major articles in its editorial creed: first, to believe in the progress and promise of American life, and, second, to chronicle that progress cheerfully, truthfully, and entertainingly.

What is called liberality is often merely the vanity of giving.

Every man's vanity ought to be his greatest shame; and every man's folly ought to be his greatest secret.

There is no such flatterer as is a man's self.

Love of power more frequently originates in vanity than pride (two qualities, by the way, which are often confounded) and is, consequently, yet more peculiarly the sin of little than of great minds.

I have often thought how strange it is that men can at once and the same moment cheerfully consign our sex to lives either of narrowest toil or senseless luxury and vanity, and then sneer at the smallness of our aims, the pettiness of our thoughts, the puerility of our conversation!

We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans.

What egotism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it!

Irresponsibility, cowardice, personal vanity, whining and chaos are becoming the maxims of political action. There is a stink in Berlin - a huge one!

Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?

Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).

Vanity is so closely allied to virtue, and to love the fame of laudable actions approaches so near the love of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection; and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former.

When we are conscious of the least comparative merit in ourselves, we should take as much care to conceal the value we set upon it, as if it were a real defect; to be elated or vain upon it is showing your money before people in want.

It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.

What is called liberality is often no more than the vanity of giving, of which some persons are fonder than of what they give.

The Lord who cannot endure vain repetitions is equally weary of vain variations.

[The political mind] is a strange mixture of vanity and timidity, of an obsequious attitude at one time and a delusion of grandeurat another time. The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

No human pursuit achieves dignity unless it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, you see that the other things - the experiments, the irrelevant vocations, the vanities you used to hold - were false to you.

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

There is much money given to be laughed at, though the purchasers don't know it; witness A.'s fine horse, and B.'s fine house.

I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, "Without vanity I may say," etc., but some vain thing immediately followed.

It is sure that those are most desirous of honour or glory who cry out loudest of its abuse and the vanity of the world.

For it is a matter of daily observation that people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies their vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without comparison with others.