quotations about vanity
Vanity is the poison of agreeableness; yet as poison, when artfully and properly applied, has a salutary effect in medicine, so has vanity in the commerce and society of the world.
LORD GREVILLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
There's just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It's not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it's that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don't see what you wish to see--or glimpse something that you wish weren't there.
DEAN KOONTZ
Deeply Odd
In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.
DAVID HEWSON
Macbeth: A Novel
What people regard as vanity--leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten--I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.
PAULO COELHO
The Pilgrimage
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
That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me.
ANDRE DUBUS
"The Judge and Other Snakes", Broken Vessels
To be a man's own fool is bad enough; but the vain man is everybody's.
WILLIAM PENN
Fruits of Solitude
There is nothing which so carries the mass of men along with it as that which flatters the vanity of the human mind. It may assume the lowliest air, but sinful man seeks his own honour and present exaltation.
WILLIAM KELLY
Lectures Introductory to the Study of the Minor Prophets
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
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
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
If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at least she makes them totter.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
False modesty is the last refinement of vanity.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus Rex
A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.
LISA KLEYPAS
Devil in Winter
A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Notes from Underground
Alas for human nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much longer than the wounds of affection!
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome
It is our own vanity that makes the vanity of others intolerable to us.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Maxims
Once scorned as an affliction of the overly self-involved, vanity is lately being embraced as a novel kind of positive reinforcement to encourage healthier lifestyles. Researchers are finding that healthy versions of vanity can help us adapt and adhere to better diets, more rigorous skin-care routines, and regular exercise--the kinds of preventive health measures that may have a lasting impact on one's life span.
VALLI HERMAN
"Why Vanity Is Good for You", Robb Report, February 23, 2017
Vanity (pictures in magazines, movie screens)
Vanity (there is a camera, so many beauty queens)
Vanity (it's so good to be)
Fabulous and glamourous, we love ourselves and no one else
Va-va-va-va-vanity va-vanity, va-va-va-vanity
LADY GAGA
"Vanity"