Vanity Quotes - Page 16

• Anyone can battle for pride, power, vanity, greed, or hate, but war should always be approached with an equal measure of wisdom and strength. It's not just enough to know when to fight, but to know when to lay down the sword and negotiate. Not everything in the world is worth fighting for.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Hate, War, Fighting

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2013). “Styxx”, p.104, Macmillan

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• Consider him in his highest incarnation: the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and, in large part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, i.e., a committee of soap-boilers, nail manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Running, Thinking

  "Minority Report".

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• The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead.

  George Saville

  Education, Teaching, Men

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• Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.

  Stendhal

  Life, Men, Ignorant

  Stendhal, Richard Howard, Michel Deon (1988). “The Pink & The Green: Followed by Mina De Vanghel”, p.89, New Directions Publishing

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• They sin who tell us Love can die:
  With life all other passions fly,
  All others are but vanity,
  In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
  Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.

  Robert Southey

  Life, Passion, Ambition

  Robert Southey (1853). “The Poetical Works of Robert Southey: Complete in One Volume”, p.583

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• The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

  James Madison

  Peace, War, Passion

  "The Cost of America's Secret Wars, Then and Now" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. December 6, 2011.

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• Men have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence.

  Camille Flammarion

  Reality, Men, Religion

  Camille Flammarion (1871). “The Wonders of the Heavens”, p.195

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• Are you never afraid of God's judgement in denying him? Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Thinking, Odin

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• It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.

  Mark Twain

  Sad, Death, Past

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.1257, GENERAL PRESS

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• When blessed with wealth, let them withdraw from the competition of vanity and be modest, retiring from ostentation, and not be the slaves of fashion.

  William Wilberforce

  Fashion, Blessed, Competition

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• Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

  Richard Dawkins

  Distance, Science, Perfection

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.58, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognisable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile and vain.

  Henri Poincare

  Eye, Science, Past

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.328, Modern Library

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• There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Ignorance, Pay, Youth

  Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1837). “The Letters and Works: In Three Volumes”, p.197

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• Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

  Janet Malcolm

  Trust, Betrayal, Loneliness

  The Journalist and the Murderer pt. 1 (1990)

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• The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Opponents, Free Will, Strongest

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• Above all you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mean, Carpe Diem, Generosity

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.618, Wordsworth Editions

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• Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion. This is a truth well understood by our adversaries who have practised upon it with no small benefit to their cause. For at the very moment they are eulogizing the reason of men & professing to appeal only to that faculty, they are courting the strongest & most active passion of the human heart - VANITY!

  Alexander Hamilton

  Passion, Heart, Animal

  Alexander Hamilton, John Church Hamilton (1851). “The Works of Alexander Hamilton: Correspondence [contin.] 1795-1804; 1777; 1791. Letters of H.G. 1789. Address to public creditors. 1790. Vindication of funding system. 1791”, p.541

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• The object of geometry in all its measuring and computing, is to ascertain with exactness the plan of the great Geometer, to penetrate the veil of material forms, and disclose the thoughts which lie beneath them? When our researches are successful, and when a generous and heaven-eyed inspiration has elevated us above humanity, and raised us triumphantly into the very presence, as it were, of the divine intellect, how instantly and entirely are human pride and vanity repressed, and, by a single glance at the glories of the infinite mind, are we humbled to the dust.

  Benjamin Peirce

  Lying, Inspiration, Science

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• Take me. I'm an ordinary player in the key of C.
  And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity.
  Who's gonna love you when you're looks are gone?
  God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.

  Paul Simon

  Life, Flower, Love You

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• There are a thousand flowers blossoming in spring, The magical light of the full moon in autumn; There is a breeze in summer, And snow in winter; And if vanities don't hang in my mind, I shall rejoice at any time and place.

  Wumen Huikai

  Summer, Spiritual, Spring

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• Humility counts for much, but it may be that vanity does not dispossess that admirable quality.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Humility, Pride, Quality

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• What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, or uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.

  Victor Cherbuliez

  Love, Motivational, Sacrifice

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• In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin

  Agnes Repplier

  Life, Stress, Fall

  Agnes Repplier (1888). “Books and Men”

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• Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

  Eric Hoffer

  Ignorance, Stupidity, Ignorant

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• The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession.

  Iris Murdoch

  Life, Hurt, Pride

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