Vanity Quotes - Page 5

• Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Caring, Ideas, Affliction

  Miguel de Unamuno (2015). “Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno, Volume 3: Our Lord Don Quixote”, p.22, Princeton University Press

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• A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Men, Justice, Honor

  Walter Savage Landor (1876). “Dialogues of sovereigns and statesmen”, p.50

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• Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.

  William Hazlitt

  Admiration, Driven, Conceit

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1481, Delphi Classics

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• The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim of superior sensitivity and morality.

  Patricia Ann Meyer Spacks

  Men, Morality, Comeback

  Patricia Ann Meyer Spacks (1976). “The Female Imagination”

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• Those who live on vanity must, not unreasonably, expect to die of mortification.

  Alice Thomas Ellis

  Mortification, Dies

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• To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Mean, Principles, Philosopher

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• Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, Mad, Folly

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• As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Animal, Vices, Tails

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci: Complete & Illustrated”, p.939, eKitap Projesi via PublishDrive

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• Pride and vanity have built more hospitals than all the virtues together.

  Bernard de Mandeville

  Pride, Together, Virtue

  Bernard de Mandeville (1723). “The Fable of the Bees”, p.138, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Since the well-known victory over the hare by the tortoise, the descendants of the tortoise think themselves miracles of speed.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Time, Thinking, Miracle

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• There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Intelligent, Men, Firsts

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• A vain man finds his account in speaking good or evil of himself.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Evil, Vain

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• False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Real, Character, Men

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• Vanity is not half a bad principle, if it will but stick to legitimate business.

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton

  Principles, Half, Sticks

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• Scarcely have I ever heard or read the introductory phrase, "I may say without vanity," but some striking and characteristic instance of vanity has immediately followed.

  Benjamin Franklin

  May, Phrases, Characteristics

  Benjamin Franklin (1815). “Life of Doctor Benjamin Franklin”, p.10

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• If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost any attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin ‘freely’- as light preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have a heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.

  Jane Austen

  Encouragement, Gratitude, Believe

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• No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hope, Expectations, Library

  'The Rambler' no. 106 (23 March 1751)

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• If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Time, Ambition

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• Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

  Franz Kafka

  Literature, Complacency, Firsts

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

  William Shakespeare

  Glasses, Mouths, Made

  'King Lear' (1605-6) act 3, sc. 2, l. [35]

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• Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Writing, Cells, Scary

  Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). “Afterthoughts”

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• Man that is of woman born is apt to be as vain has his mother.

  Robert Frost

  Mother, Men, Vain

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• Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

  William Shakespeare

  Mean, Light, Prey

  William Shakespeare, George Steevens (1852). “The Works of William Shakespeare: Comprising His Dramatic and Poetical Works, Complete ; Accurately Printed from the Text of the Corrected Copy”, p.367

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• Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Pride, Wish, Doe

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• Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows That for oblivion take their daily birth From all the fuming vanities of earth.

  William Wordsworth

  Earth, Evening, Birth

  William Wordsworth (1847). “The Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.267

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