Vanity Quotes - Page 40

• All is vanity, nothing is fair.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Fairs

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• in reference to Persepolis and all palaces, cities and temples of the past: could these wonders have come into being without that suffering? without the overseer's whip, the slave's fear, the ruler's vanity? was not the monumentality of past epochs created by that which is negative and evil in man?

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Past, Men, Cities

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• Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.' I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.

  George Eliot

  Girl, Falling In Love, Love You

  George Eliot (2017). “Middlemarch”, p.134, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth.

  Albert Einstein

  Happiness, Truth, Joy

  "Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb".

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• On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Life, Courage, Time

  "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution". Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech in Washington, D.C., kinginstitute.stanford.edu. March 31, 1968.

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• If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Teenage, Talking, People

  FaceBook post by Kurt Vonnegut from Nov 08, 2015

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• To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Writing, Men, Preoccupation

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• How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.

  Toni Morrison

  Giving Up, Tails, Stuff

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

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• It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Patriotic, Divorce

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.373, Wildside Press LLC

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• But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human illusions, an empty place reclaimed by the weather where a woman plays an organ to stop the wind's whining and an old man plays ball with a dog named Duke. I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody asked me to stay.

  Joan Didion

  Dog, Men, Wind

  Joan Didion (1968). “Slouching towards Bethlehem”

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• From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be - Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity - to feel these things and know them is to conquer them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Past, Men, Soul

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.52, Booklassic

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• --nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

  Philip Roth

  Fate, Fool, Shameless

  Philip Roth (2004). “The Plot Against America: A Novel”, p.213, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.

  Thomas Paine

  Vexation, Spirit, Impossible

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Collected Writings”, p.771, Library of America

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• 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

  Death, God, Spiritual

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.554, Psychology Press

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• A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists... that thier success is based on literary merit -- that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity.

  Stephen King

  Believe, Greatness, Ideas

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• When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death: "Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said. . . yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead. . . -Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair: "Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there". . . So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were Beauty for an afternoon.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Wise, Art, Eye

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “This Side of Paradise”, p.184, Xist Publishing

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• There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

  Mitch Albom

  Regret, Pride, Vengeance

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• Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  War, Kissing, First Love

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• It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.

  Jane Austen

  Mean, Men, Doe

  Jane Austen (1853). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.120

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• 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.

  Toni Morrison

  Skins, News, Dirt

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

  Jane Austen

  Affection, Blind, Pride And Prejudice Book

  Jane Austen (2005). “Jane Austen: 8 Books in 1”, p.150, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• If you know you're worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.

  Don DeLillo

  Gamble, Knows, Ifs

  Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.239, Pan Macmillan

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• Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.

  Edith Wharton

  Self, Missing, Secret

  Edith Wharton (2012). “The House of Mirth”, p.16, Courier Corporation

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• I was sorry for her; I was amazed, disgusted at her heartless vanity; I wondered why so much beauty should be given to those who made so bad a use of it, and denied to some who would make it a benefit to both themselves and others. But, God knows best, I concluded. There are, I suppose, some men as vain, as selfish, and as heartless as she is, and, perhaps, such women may be useful to punish them.

  Anne Bronte

  Sorry, Selfish, Men

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.691, Penguin

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• What do you believe? I believe that the last and the first suffer equally. Pari passu. Equally? It is not alone in the dark of death that all souls are one soul. Of what would you repent? Nothing. Nothing? One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Believe, Dark, Names

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