Vanity - Quotes

A vain man is a nauseous creature: he is so full of himself that he has no room for anything else, be it never so good or deserving. - William Penn

Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding. - Alexander Pope

Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity. - J. P. Vinluca

He that hath nothing to feed on but vanity and lies must needs lie down in the bed of sorrow. - Anne Bradstreet

If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity. But I mean by 'vanity' only that they appreciate their own worth. Without this kind of vanity they would not be great. And with vanity alone, of course, a man is nothing. - Yousef Karsh

If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at least she makes them totter. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

If you spend your life sparing people's feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can't distinguish what should be respected in them. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

In their vanity men focus on what they wish to hear and miss the hidden meaning, the lurking threat. - David Hewson

It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish. - Luc de Clapiers

It is our own vanity that makes the vanity of others intolerable to us. - La Rochefoucauld

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Many a man could easily support a wife if he didn't also have to feed her vanity. - Evan Esar

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty. - Louis Kronenberger

One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about. - Bertrand Russell

Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity. - Madame Swetchine

Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One's life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic. - Michael Ayrton

Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others. - Hugh Blair

Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. - Benjamin Franklin

Take from mankind their vanity and ambition, and where would be the heroes and patriots? - Seneca

That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me. - Andre Dubus

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness. - Alexander von Humboldt

The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity. - Miguel de Cervantes

The most violent passions have their intermissions; vanity alone gives us no respite. - La Rochefoucauld

The surest cure for vanity is loneliness. - Thomas Wolfe

The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity. - Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it. - Mark Twain

There is no limit to the vanity of this world, each spoke in the wheel thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it. - H. W. Shaw

There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth. - Edward Bulwer

There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate. - Henry Ward Beecher

To be a man's own fool is bad enough; but the vain man is everybody's. - William Penn

To feel vanity on account of anything, is proving that we are not accustomed to it. - Pierre Claude Victoire Boiste

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself. - Max Beerbohm

Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is. - Chamfort

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us. - Jane Austen

Vanity blossoms but bares no fruit. - Nepalese Proverb

Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense. - Julian Casablancas

Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him. - William Hazlitt

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one's personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one's individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whim it befits. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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. - Dennis Lehane

Vanity is apt to inspire contempt, but that becomes immediately tempered by a gentler and more gracious feeling; for the vain man desires to win our approbation, and in this way he flatters us. - Arthur Lynch

Vanity is often so excessive, that those who are compelled to walk on crutches would fain make us believe they are raised on stilts. - Eliza Cook

Vanity is often the unseen spur. - William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired – even I who write this, and you who read this. - Blaise Pascal

Vanity is the poison of agreeableness; yet as poison, when artfully and properly applied, has a salutary effect in medicine, so has vanity in the commerce and society of the world. - Lord Greville

Vanity is the quicksand of reason. - George Sand

Vanity is what makes the man in a rut think he's in the groove. - Evan Esar

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory. - Joseph Conrad

Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. - Jane Austen

Vanity's a confounded donkey, very apt to put his head between his legs and chuck us over; but Pride's a fine horse, who will carry us over the ground, and enable us to distance our fellow travelers.... How often have you read of people rising from nothing, and becoming great men? This was from talent, sure enough; but it was talent with pride to force it onward, not talent with vanity to check it. - Frederick Marryat

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. - Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

We say little if not egged on by vanity. - Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

We think we are being interesting to others when we are being interesting to ourselves. - Jack Gardner

What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

When men will not be reasoned out of a vanity, they must be ridiculed out of it. - L'estrange