Vanity Quotes - Page 20

• My father loved biographies. He loved the true tales of interesting people that were shaping our culture. I get why he dug Vanity Fair. You feel smarter, somehow, for reading it.

  Abigail Spencer

  Father, Reading, People

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• He knows which fighters to steal, how to exploit anyone's vice, vanity or insecurity and make a profit for himself.

  Jack Newfield

  Boxing, Insecurity, Vices

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• Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish.

  Walter Raleigh

  Touching, Religion, Firsts

  Sir Walter Raleigh, William Oldys, Thomas Birch (1829). “Miscellaneous works”, p.563

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• The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

  Eric Hoffer

  Fear, Real, Persuasion

  Eric Hoffer (1955). “The passionate state of mind, and other aphorisms”

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• To his sister-in-law: What a contrast between us! You live a warm and glowing life, surrounded by loved ones whom you care for and who care for you; you are anchored in contentment. I drift about without rudder or compass, a wreck on the sea of life; I have no memories to cheer me, no pleasant illusions of the future to comfort me, or about me to satisfy my vanity. I have no family to furnish the only kind of survival that concerns us, no friends for the wholesome development of my affections, or enemies for my malice.

  Alfred Nobel

  Sister, Cheer, Memories

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• Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they altimately are as revealed in their poetry.

  Stephen Spender

  Ambition, Ambitious, World

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• It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Prayer, Odds, Praying

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2008). “Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928-1931”

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• To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.

  Emil Zatopek

  Stupid, Mean, Interesting

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• Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

  Florence Nightingale

  Nursing, Selfishness, Firsts

  "The Life of Florence Nightingale" by Edward Tyas Cook, (p. 369), 1913.

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• Wounded vanity knows when it is mortally hurt; and limps off the field, piteous, all disguises thrown away. But pride carries its banner to the last; and fast as it is driven from one field unfurls it in another, never admitting that there is a shade less honor in the second field than in the first, or in the third than in the second.

  Helen Hunt Jackson

  Hurt, Pride, Honor

  Helen Hunt Jackson (2010). “Ramona”, p.150, Modern Library

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• 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. I know this well... Vanity and dishonesty may be vices, but they're also the first forms of protection I ever knew.

  Dennis Lehane

  Self, Weakness, Vices

  "A Drink Before the War". Book by Dennis Lehane, November 1994.

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• How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world about them. People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding. But 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

  Motivational, People, Mind

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• I have this theory that people in Hollywood don't read. They read 'Vanity Fair' and then consider themselves terribly well read. I think I can basically write about anybody without getting caught.

  Jackie Collins

  Writing, Thinking, People

  "That storybook career isn't fiction" by Larry Keller, www.cnn.com. October 20, 2000.

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• Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sea, Curiosity, Wish

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• What egotism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it!

  Edwin Balmer

  Stupid, Statistics, Egotism

  Philip Wylie, Edwin Balmer (2016). “When Worlds Collide”, p.47, Macmillan

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• The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.

  John Calvin

  Heart, Hypocrisy, Dupes

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• Bhakti is the one essential thing.
  To be sure, God exists in all beings.
  Who, then is a devotee? He whose mind dwells on God.
  But this is not possible as long as one has egotism and vanity.
  The water of God's grace cannot collect
  on the high mound of egotism. It runs down.

  Ramakrishna

  Running, Long, Water

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• Those years, months, weeks, days, and hours, that are not filled up with God, with Christ, with grace, and with duty, will certainly be filled up with vanity and folly. The neglect of one day, of one duty, of one hour, would undo us, if we had not an Advocate with the Father.

  Thomas Brooks

  Father, Years, Filled Up

  Thomas Brooks (1820). “The privie key of heaven; or Twenty arguments for closet-prayer, in a select discourse”, p.144

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• And I have yet to find one single individual who has attained conspicuous success in bringing down enemy aeroplanes who can be said to be spoiled either by his successes or by the generous congratulations of his comrades. If he were capable of being spoiled he would not have had the character to have won continuous victories, for the smallest amount of vanity is fatal in aeroplane fighting. Self-distrust rather is the quality to which many a pilot owes his protracted existence.

  Eddie Rickenbacker

  Congratulations, Character, Fighting

  Eddie Rickenbacker (2012). “Fighting the Flying Circus”, p.48, Tales End Press

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• Nothing makes a man more aware of his capabilities and of his limitations than those moments when he must push aside all the familiar defenses of ego and vanity, and accept reality by staring, with the fear that is normal to a man in combat, into the face of Death.

  Robert S. Johnson

  Reality, Men, Ego

  Robert S. Johnson, Martin Caidin “Thunderbolt! The Extraordinary Story of a World War II Ace”, Lulu.com

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• The smallest amount of vanity is fatal in aeroplane fighting. Selfdistrust rather is the quality to which many a pilot owes his protracted existence.

  Eddie Rickenbacker

  Fighting, Quality, Pilots

  Eddie Rickenbacker (2012). “Fighting the Flying Circus”, p.48, Tales End Press

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• Vanity Fair has but two major articles in its editorial creed: first, to believe in the progress and promise of American life, and, second, to chronicle that progress cheerfully, truthfully, and entertainingly.

  Frank Crowninshield

  Believe, Two, Promise

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• The day when a sportsman stops thinking above all else of the happiness in his own effort and the intoxication of the power and physical balance he derives from it, the day when he lets considerations of vanity or interest take over, on this day his ideal will die.

  Pierre de Coubertin

  Thinking, Effort, Balance

  "The Real Problem in DC: Sportsmanship" by Michael Brick, www.esquire.com. October 11, 2013.

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• In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.

  James F. Cooper

  Christian, Lying, School

  "The American Democrat: The Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, p. 207, April 1, 2010.

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• Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary, sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge.

  Sri Yukteswar Giri

  Writing, Vocabulary, Understanding

  "Autobiography of a Yogi". Book by Yukteswar Giri, 1946.

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