Vanity Quotes - Page 8

• The only cure for vanity is laughter. And the only fault that's laughable is vanity.

  Henri Bergson

  Laughter, Humble, Faults

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• Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Powerful, Heart, Self

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.144

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• Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.

  George Eliot

  Noses, Minutiae, Conceit

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.107, Penguin

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• Vanity is a natural object of temptation to a woman.

  Jonathan Swift

  Temptation, Natural, Objects

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• I would much rather fight pride than vanity, because pride has a stand-up way of fighting. You know where it is. It throws its black shadow on you, and you are not at a loss where to strike. But vanity is that delusive, that insectiferous, that multiplied feeling, and men that fight vanities are like men that fight midges and butterflies. It is easier to chase them than to hit them.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Butterfly, Fighting, Pride

  Henry Ward Beecher (1866). “Royal truths”, p.145

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• Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.

  Joseph Addison

  Character, Men, Secret

  Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd, Henry George Bohn (1872). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.158

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• O vanity, how little is thy force acknowledged or thy operations discerned! How wantonly dost thou deceive mankind under different disguises! Sometimes thou dost wear the face of pity; sometimes of generosity; nay, thou hast the assurance to put on those glorious ornaments which belong only to heroic virtue.

  Henry Fielding

  Generosity, Different, Ornaments

  Henry Fielding (1832). “The Adventures of Joseph Andrews”, p.52

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• All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

  Berthold Auerbach

  Selfish, Men, Lovers

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• Vanity prevents improvement

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Insightful, Improvement, Selling

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• With men, as with women, the main struggle is between vanity and comfort; but with men, comfort often wins.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Women, Struggle, Winning

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.53, BookBaby

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• hurt vanity is one of the cruelest of mortal wounds.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Hurt, Mortals, Wounds

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• There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.

  Storm Jameson

  Self, Self Justification, Justification

  Storm Jameson (2011). “The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell”, p.22, A&C Black

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• You have no idea what portrait painters suffer from the vanity of their sitters.

  Kenneth Clark

  Ideas, Suffering, Portraits

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• I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round.

  Muhammad Ali

  Sports, Self Confidence, Boxing

  Twitter post from Jul 15, 2010

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• Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.

  Jonathan Swift

  Believe, Character, Pride

  Jonathan Swift (1856). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.305

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• One who has given up any hope of winning a fight or has clearly lost it wants his style in fighting to be admired all the more.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Hope, Fighting, Winning

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• Vanity is often the unseen spur.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Unseen, Spurs

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• Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sin, Vain, Conscience

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (with an Essay by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly)”, p.65, Mondial

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• I have not the capability to give you my loyalty, nor do I have the vanity to appear as if I did.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Loyalty, Giving, Capability

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• The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

  Eric Hoffer

  Stupidity, Selfishness, Hardest

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• He who denies his own vanity usually possesses it in so brutal a form that he instinctively shuts his eyes to avoid the necessity of despising himself.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Eye, Deny, Form

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Giants, Vulnerable, Proportion

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2015). “A Book For Free Spirits 2: Human Book”, p.34, 谷月社

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• Self praise is no praise at all.

  Lord Byron

  Self, Praise, Self Praise

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• It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Thrones, Sitting, World

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• Imagine the vanity of thinking that your enemy can do you more damage than your enmity.

  Saint Augustine

  Thinking, Imagination, Enemy

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