vanity

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
d82616b	Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.	vanity pride	Jane Austen
76da43b	Cliches so often befall vain people.	vain vanity	Ann Beattie
3677051	Lockhart'll sign anything if it stands still long enough.	vanity	J.K. Rowling
9f5bc08	Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.	romance love refusal folly blindness denial vanity	Jane Austen
0a55d2e	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.	feelings relationships people life respect vanity	F. Scott Fitzgerald
ab81fec	"The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus. The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. But this was not how the author of the book ended the story. He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. 'Why do you weep?' the goddesses asked. 'I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied. 'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,' they said, 'for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.' 'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked. 'Who better than you to know that?' the goddesses asked in wonder. 'After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!' The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: 'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.' 'What a lovely story,' the alchemist thought."	male-beauty perspective narcissus vanity	Paulo Coelho
27afe35	Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.	activist beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul fathers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community jealousy marine-life-conservation medical-missions motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action real-people rescuers search-and-rescue time true-beauty prayer writing compassion inspiration philosophy truth inspirational empathetic takers communicators perspectives inner-beauty tender givers loving charity mothers community friendships service reflection judgement vanity aging	Shannon L. Alder
2e6894f	Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!	humor vanity	Diana Wynne Jones
aa9a6a7	I'm amazing and studly, but I have limits.	vanity thomas-raith	Jim Butcher
f3bc003	He had the vanity to believe men did not like him - while men simply did not know him.	vanity	Gustave Flaubert
9be0866	But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.	personality wisdom vanity	Oscar Wilde
cf7ba1b	Vanity, thy name is vampire.	vanity thomas-raith vampires	Jim Butcher
ab9dac8	"I'm brilliant as well as skilled," he said modestly. "It's a great burden, all of that on top of my angelic good looks. But I try to soldier on as best I can."	humor vanity	Jim Butcher
7a76760	I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day--mock me horribly!	jealousy vanity	Oscar Wilde
40ce77e	"Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look?"	pretentiousness narcissism vanity	Haruki Murakami
1ee851a	guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.	vanity	Toni Morrison
f287852	Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous.	vanity thomas-raith	Jim Butcher
8069bea	Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.	witty vanity pride	George Eliot
adaf89b	Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.	virtue vanity	Richard Flanagan
9c3ff37	But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw)	vanity	Emily Brontë
3045f43	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.	vanity	Paulo Coelho
d9e216a	You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.	vanity wickedness	Günter Grass
d4b3a6e	"We named the bar The Bar. "People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt," my sister reasoned. Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers - that the name was a joke no one else would really get, like we did. Not meta-get ... But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, "I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat."	irony loss drinking audrey-hepburn breakfast-at-tiffany-s bar the-recession new-yorkers bars new-beginnings snobs cat vanity failure	Gillian Flynn
5f2d91a	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.	notes-from-the-underground vanity	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
dbf124d	But the vain man did not hear him. Vain men never hear anything but praise.	vanity	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
90973dd	"She trailed after him, admiring the line of his back. He began climbing the stairs, and she sighed with pleasure. Every bit of him was gorgeous. "Do you mind if I objectify you?" "Please do," he said over his shoulder. "Particularly my knees, as they are oft-neglected." "Maybe if you ever got your pants off, they wouldn't be." "It hardly matters, sweet; once they've come off, the attention isn't likely to center on my absurdly handsome knees."	beauty humor colin savi vanity	Meljean Brook
6cb37e8	If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary's right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.	truth falsehood vanity	Arthur Schopenhauer
8832d7a	Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.	materialism vanity	George Eliot
84ef879	There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.	grief futility depression hope dark-history falling-short haunted-past smoke-in-the-eyes why-the-world-needs-jesus unrest pointlessness bittersweet-memories sins heartache vanity disappointment expectations despair regrets nostalgia	Joseph Conrad
2b9f2f6	She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant, but because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.	jealousy popularity vanity	Edith Wharton
6bba440	"Doesn't matter how pretty you are. What's important is how pretty you feel. No one feels pretty when they hear "no" often enough."	pretty rejection vanity	Jim Butcher
58e0a9c	[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world.	understanding criticism poems humor life paintings self-understanding plays films gravity art novels vanity desire	Alain de Botton
087d203	"Were you there?" She shook her head. "No. I was here in Nain having a child." "Then why do you weep as though you had part in his crucifixion? You had no part in it." "I'd like nothing better than to think I would have remained faithful. But if those closest to him--his disciples, his own brothers--turned away, who am I to think I'm better than they and would have done differently? No, Marcus. We all wanted what we wanted, and when the Lord fulfilled his purpose rather than ours, we struck out against him. Like you. In anger. Like you. In disappointment. Yet, it is God's will that prevails." He looked away. "I don't understand any of this." "I know you don't. I see it in your face, Marcus. You don't want to see. You've hardened your heart against him." She started to walk again. "As should all who value their lives," he said, thinking of Hadassah's death. "It is God who has driven you here." He gave a derisive laugh. "I came here of my own accord and for my own purposes." "Did you?" Marcus' face became stony. Deborah pressed on. "We were all created incomplete and will find no rest until we satisfy the deepest hunger and thirst within us. You've tried to satisfy it in your own way. I see that in your eyes, too, as I've seen it in so many others. And yet, though you deny it with your last breath, your soul yearns for God, Marcus Lucianus Valerian." Her words angered him. "Gods aside, Rome shows the world that life is what man makes of it." "If that's so, what are you making of yours?" "I own a fleet of ships, as well as emporiums and houses. I have wealth." Yet, even as he told her, he knew it all meant nothing. His father had come to that realization just before he died. Vanity. It was all vanity. Meaningless. Empty. Old Deborah paused on the pathway. "Rome points the way to wealth and pleasure, power and knowledge. But Rome remains hungry. Just as you are hungry now. Search all you will for retribution or meaning to your life, but until you find God, you live in vain."	god vanity	Francine Rivers
7bdbe17	I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egoist... he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love... poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.	vanity	Truman Capote
2cd7942	How much vanity must be concealed - not too effectively at that - in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?	vanity	Christopher Hitchens
e48ceca	Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is.	vanity	Dennis Lehane
364e2cd	My intellect was my greatest vanity.	intellectualism intellectuals vanity	Dan Simmons
0fc53d5	"No-one loves another More than he loves whatever	love mistakes vanity	Fernando Pessoa
a29a890	We've already had , the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge--like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself.	humanism idealism lebedyev secular-humanism vanity	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
406133a	In an earlier age, it might have been possible to believe that goodness would prevail over pride, but not anymore. The proud could be proud with impunity, because there was nobody to contradict him in his pride and because narcissism was no longer considered a vice. That was what the whole cult of celebrity was about, she thought; and we feted these people and fed their vanity.	narcisissism vanity pride	Alexander McCall Smith
b11d297	In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride--or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation--takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we fare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions we know we would be mocked for, the secrets that keep our conversations with our so-called friends superficial and inert--all of these emerge as simply part of the human condition.	friendship human-condition masks vanity pride	Alain de Botton
e58bc64	In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.	vanity threat	David Hewson
d66dc87	But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word 'artificial.' Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.	vanity	G.K. Chesterton
17b4b13	Robert Ashford possessed one of the key character flaws necessary to a traitor. He thought he was smarter than everyone else. This allowed the overeducated career bureaucrat to sell out his own country, because he believed he knew what was best for his nation and its people.	traitors elite vanity	Brad Thor
252cbd7	Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity.	senior-citizens vanity	L.M. Montgomery
738f536	He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this. --from a Difference in Temperament	vanity	Daphne du Maurier
be6f941	Those who are vain have little ability to feel grateful.	vanity	Mark Helprin
7e8ba3c	Blacheville smiles with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity is tickled	vanity	Victor Hugo
71663f0	I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.	vanity thomas-raith	Jim Butcher
24ecb03	I won't tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman.	vanity	Larry McMurtry
a5dc056	The better you look, the more you see	model superficiality perspective perception inequality vanity	Bret Easton Ellis
a7e581d	You rely on your speed too much. A young man's vanity. An old man learns to absorb pain and wait for an opportunity.	vanity	Robert Ferrigno

d82616b

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.

vanity pride

Jane Austen

76da43b

Cliches so often befall vain people.

vain vanity

Ann Beattie

3677051

Lockhart'll sign anything if it stands still long enough.

vanity

J.K. Rowling

9f5bc08

Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.

romance love refusal folly blindness denial vanity

Jane Austen

0a55d2e

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.

feelings relationships people life respect vanity

F. Scott Fitzgerald

ab81fec

"The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus. The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. But this was not how the author of the book ended the story. He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. 'Why do you weep?' the goddesses asked. 'I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied. 'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,' they said, 'for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.' 'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked. 'Who better than you to know that?' the goddesses asked in wonder. 'After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!' The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: 'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.' 'What a lovely story,' the alchemist thought."

male-beauty perspective narcissus vanity

Paulo Coelho

27afe35

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.

activist beautiful-personatlity beautiful-soul fathers giving-heart helping-out homeless-tent-community jealousy marine-life-conservation medical-missions motivators openess outward-beauty people-of-action real-people rescuers search-and-rescue time true-beauty prayer writing compassion inspiration philosophy truth inspirational empathetic takers communicators perspectives inner-beauty tender givers loving charity mothers community friendships service reflection judgement vanity aging

Shannon L. Alder

2e6894f

Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!

humor vanity

Diana Wynne Jones

aa9a6a7

I'm amazing and studly, but I have limits.

vanity thomas-raith

Jim Butcher

f3bc003

He had the vanity to believe men did not like him - while men simply did not know him.

vanity

Gustave Flaubert

9be0866

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.

personality wisdom vanity

Oscar Wilde

cf7ba1b

Vanity, thy name is vampire.

vanity thomas-raith vampires

Jim Butcher

ab9dac8

"I'm brilliant as well as skilled," he said modestly. "It's a great burden, all of that on top of my angelic good looks. But I try to soldier on as best I can."

humor vanity

Jim Butcher

7a76760

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day--mock me horribly!

jealousy vanity

Oscar Wilde

40ce77e

"Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look?"

pretentiousness narcissism vanity

Haruki Murakami

1ee851a

guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.

vanity

Toni Morrison

f287852

Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous.

vanity thomas-raith

Jim Butcher

8069bea

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

witty vanity pride

George Eliot

adaf89b

Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.

virtue vanity

Richard Flanagan

9c3ff37

But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw)

vanity

Emily Brontë

3045f43

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.

vanity

Paulo Coelho

d9e216a

You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.

vanity wickedness

Günter Grass

d4b3a6e

"We named the bar The Bar. "People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt," my sister reasoned. Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers - that the name was a joke no one else would really get, like we did. Not meta-get ... But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, "I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat."

irony loss drinking audrey-hepburn breakfast-at-tiffany-s bar the-recession new-yorkers bars new-beginnings snobs cat vanity failure

Gillian Flynn

5f2d91a

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.

notes-from-the-underground vanity

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

dbf124d

But the vain man did not hear him. Vain men never hear anything but praise.

vanity

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

90973dd

"She trailed after him, admiring the line of his back. He began climbing the stairs, and she sighed with pleasure. Every bit of him was gorgeous. "Do you mind if I objectify you?" "Please do," he said over his shoulder. "Particularly my knees, as they are oft-neglected." "Maybe if you ever got your pants off, they wouldn't be." "It hardly matters, sweet; once they've come off, the attention isn't likely to center on my absurdly handsome knees."

beauty humor colin savi vanity

Meljean Brook

6cb37e8

If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary's right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.

truth falsehood vanity

Arthur Schopenhauer

8832d7a

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

materialism vanity

George Eliot

84ef879

There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.

grief futility depression hope dark-history falling-short haunted-past smoke-in-the-eyes why-the-world-needs-jesus unrest pointlessness bittersweet-memories sins heartache vanity disappointment expectations despair regrets nostalgia

Joseph Conrad

2b9f2f6

She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did not dislike Lily because the latter was brilliant and predominant, but because she thought that Lily disliked her. It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.

jealousy popularity vanity

Edith Wharton

6bba440

"Doesn't matter how pretty you are. What's important is how pretty you feel. No one feels pretty when they hear "no" often enough."

pretty rejection vanity

Jim Butcher

58e0a9c

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world.

understanding criticism poems humor life paintings self-understanding plays films gravity art novels vanity desire

Alain de Botton

087d203

"Were you there?" She shook her head. "No. I was here in Nain having a child." "Then why do you weep as though you had part in his crucifixion? You had no part in it." "I'd like nothing better than to think I would have remained faithful. But if those closest to him--his disciples, his own brothers--turned away, who am I to think I'm better than they and would have done differently? No, Marcus. We all wanted what we wanted, and when the Lord fulfilled his purpose rather than ours, we struck out against him. Like you. In anger. Like you. In disappointment. Yet, it is God's will that prevails." He looked away. "I don't understand any of this." "I know you don't. I see it in your face, Marcus. You don't want to see. You've hardened your heart against him." She started to walk again. "As should all who value their lives," he said, thinking of Hadassah's death. "It is God who has driven you here." He gave a derisive laugh. "I came here of my own accord and for my own purposes." "Did you?" Marcus' face became stony. Deborah pressed on. "We were all created incomplete and will find no rest until we satisfy the deepest hunger and thirst within us. You've tried to satisfy it in your own way. I see that in your eyes, too, as I've seen it in so many others. And yet, though you deny it with your last breath, your soul yearns for God, Marcus Lucianus Valerian." Her words angered him. "Gods aside, Rome shows the world that life is what man makes of it." "If that's so, what are you making of yours?" "I own a fleet of ships, as well as emporiums and houses. I have wealth." Yet, even as he told her, he knew it all meant nothing. His father had come to that realization just before he died. Vanity. It was all vanity. Meaningless. Empty. Old Deborah paused on the pathway. "Rome points the way to wealth and pleasure, power and knowledge. But Rome remains hungry. Just as you are hungry now. Search all you will for retribution or meaning to your life, but until you find God, you live in vain."

god vanity

Francine Rivers

7bdbe17

I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egoist... he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love... poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.

vanity

Truman Capote

2cd7942

How much vanity must be concealed - not too effectively at that - in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?

vanity

Christopher Hitchens

e48ceca

Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It's a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is.

vanity

Dennis Lehane

364e2cd

My intellect was my greatest vanity.

intellectualism intellectuals vanity

Dan Simmons

0fc53d5

"No-one loves another More than he loves whatever

love mistakes vanity

Fernando Pessoa

a29a890

We've already had , the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge--like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself.

humanism idealism lebedyev secular-humanism vanity

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

406133a

In an earlier age, it might have been possible to believe that goodness would prevail over pride, but not anymore. The proud could be proud with impunity, because there was nobody to contradict him in his pride and because narcissism was no longer considered a vice. That was what the whole cult of celebrity was about, she thought; and we feted these people and fed their vanity.

narcisissism vanity pride

Alexander McCall Smith

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In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride--or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation--takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we fare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions we know we would be mocked for, the secrets that keep our conversations with our so-called friends superficial and inert--all of these emerge as simply part of the human condition.

friendship human-condition masks vanity pride

Alain de Botton

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In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat.

vanity threat

David Hewson

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But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word 'artificial.' Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.

vanity

G.K. Chesterton

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Robert Ashford possessed one of the key character flaws necessary to a traitor. He thought he was smarter than everyone else. This allowed the overeducated career bureaucrat to sell out his own country, because he believed he knew what was best for his nation and its people.

traitors elite vanity

Brad Thor

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Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity.

senior-citizens vanity

L.M. Montgomery

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He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this. --from a Difference in Temperament

vanity