Vanity Quotes - Page 35

Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence.

I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man.

Vanity is the most despotic and iniquitous of masters, and I can never be the slave of my own vices.

Gray hairs are death's blossoms.

Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).

For some natures, changing their opinions is just as much a requirement of cleanliness as changing their clothes: for others, however, it is merely a requirement of vanity.

Whether a man hides his bad qualities and vices or confesses them openly, his vanity wants to gain an advantage by it in both cases: just note how subtly he distinguishes between those he will hide his bad qualities from and those he will face honestly and candidly.

Oh God, God, please come to me, please illumine me, please act in me and through me. I don't know what's right and what's wrong. I can't tell anymore. I could be doing what I feel is right and perhaps I'm deceiving myself. Perhaps it's all my ego and my vanity. Please show me what's right or don't even show me. Please just do it, whether it brings me happiness or unhappiness, riches or poverty, sorrow or joy. Please act in and through me. I love only you.

For me the motley and the bauble, yea, Though all be vanity, as the Preacher saith, The mirth of love be mine for one brief breath!

If we were faultless, we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neighbor's weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, and this alarms our vanity.

Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity.

Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.

Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.

Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.

Flattery is false money, which would not be current were it not for our vanity.

Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.

Generosity is the vanity of giving.

We often brag that we are never bored with ourselves, and are so vain as never to think ourselves bad company.

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.

If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.

The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

Whatever pretended causes we may blame our afflictions upon, it is often nothing but self-interest and vanity that produce them.

The exceeding delight we take in talking about ourselves should give us cause to fear that we are giving but very little pleasureto our listeners.

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.