Vanity Quotes

• Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

  Jane Austen

  Inspiring, Weak, Produce

  Jane Austen (2008). “Jane Austen's Emma. Illustrated by Hugh Thomson.”, p.21, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• 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.

  Jane Austen

  Pride, Thinking, Mrs Bennet

  Jane Austen (2008). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.26, Waking Lion Press

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• I think people are naturally good, I see it every day. Look at this restaurant. No one's causing anybody any trouble in here. We're all sitting, respecting each other's space, we're keeping our voices down, we're saying "please" and "thank you" - those are acts of generosity that we commit on a second by second basis that we don't give ourselves enough credit for. There's a lot of kindness in this world, we're just such vain creatures; our vanity can be used against us so easily. We're like dogs, hairless dogs.

  Torquil Campbell

  Dog, Kindness, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Know that it is good to work. Work with love, and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

  Brenda Ueland

  Love, Work, Passion

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.137, Simon and Schuster

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• Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.

  Julian Casablancas

  Common Sense, Common

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• We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Life, Women, Conceited

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• The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions or dispositions which deserve praise is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which we eagerly snatch at every confirmation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Heart, Thinking, Bears

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.216

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• Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,--a long way leading nowhere.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Horse, Men, Long

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.375

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• The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

  George Santayana

  Reputation, Fame, Form

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.84, 谷月社

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• A knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Thee, Preserves, Thyself

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1867). “Don Quixote”, p.490

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• Vanity is the quicksand of reason.

  George Sand

  Inspirational, Reason, Quicksand

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• All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Inspirational, Success, Dream

  The Seven Pillars of Wisdom suppressed introductory chapter (1926).

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• The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.

  Tom Wolfe

  Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

  "The American Mercury", p. 467, "The Anatomy of Loneliness", October 1941.

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• Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Contempt, Behinds

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• Take away a painter's vanity, said a famous landscape painter, and he will never touch a pencil again.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Landscape, Said, Painter

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• Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

  Van Wyck Brooks

  Jealousy, People, Magnanimous

  Van Wyck Brooks (1941). “Opinions of Oliver Allston”, New York, Dutton

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• Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Men, Cases, Obstinate

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2016). “The Wrecker: Stevenson's Vol. 19”, p.56, VM eBooks

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• Vanitas vanitatum has rung in the ears Of gentle and simple for thousands of years; The wail still is heard, yet its notes never scare Either simple or gentle from Vanity Fair.

  Frederick Locker-Lampson

  Simple, Years, Scare

  Frederick Locker-Lampson (1874). “London Lyrics”, p.32

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• Guard against that vanity which courts a compliment, or is fed by it.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Compliment, Court, Feds

  William Hanna, Thomas Chalmers (1850). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D. LL.D.”, p.169

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• No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Sorrow

  Samuel Johnson (1851). “The beauties of Johnson: choice selections from his works”, p.94

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• 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.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, Mad, Cures

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2013). “Emile”, p.249, Courier Corporation

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

  Jane Austen

  Character, Persuasion, Ends

  1818 Persuasion, ch.1.

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• All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Looks, Preacher

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1872). “The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray”, p.264

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• The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.

  George Eliot

  Passion, Men, Her Beauty

  GEORGE ELIOT (1860). “ADAM BEDE”, p.129

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• There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

  Jonathan Swift

  Skills, Vices, Management

  Jonathan Swift, John Hawkesworth (1755). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: Accurately Revised in Six Volumes, Adorned with Copper-plates : with Some Account of the Author's Life and Notes Historical and Explanatory”

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