Vanity Quotes - page 9

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man - be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper - gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man's untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible. (Albert Jay Nock)
There is something wrong about being photographed that has nothing to do with vanity. View quote
Nigella Lawson
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assistance in bearing them. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
When not prompted by vanity, we say little. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. (Edith Wharton)
He could see naught but vanity in beauty And naught but weakness in a fond caress And pitied men whose views of Christian duty Allowed indulgence in such foolishness. View quote
Josiah Gilbert Holland
Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we. View quote
Jean Rostand
As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan's eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practised but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes. View quote
Maggie Stiefvater
Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We woman have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance. View quote
Oscar Wilde
Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day. View quote
Oscar Wilde
Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God. Perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity. View quote
Brother Lawrence
I manage because I have to. Because I've no other way out. Because I've overcome the vanity and pride of being different, I've understood that they are a pitiful defense against being different. Because I've understood that the sun shines differently when something changes. The sun shines differently, but it will continue to shine, and jumping at it with a hoe isn't going to do anything. View quote
Andrzej Sapkowski
Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding? View quote
Jack Vance
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
You that trust in your own righteousness, arrogate to yourselves the honor of the greatest thing that even God Himself ever did. You seem not only sufficient to perform Divine works, but such is your pride and vanity, that you are not content without taking upon you to do the very greatest work that ever God Himself wrought. God's works of providence are greater than those of creation. To take on yourself to work out redemption, is a greater thing than if you had taken it upon you to create a world. (Jonathan Edwards (theologian))
So much about today's adult industry seems like an undeft parody of Hollywood and the nation writ large. The top performers are comic-book caricatures of sexual allure. The prosthetic breasts and lifted buttocks and (no kidding) artificial cheekbones are nothing more than accentuations of a mentality that yields huge liposuction and collagen industries. The gynecologically explicit sexuality of Jenna, Jasmin, et al. seems more than anything like a Mad magazine spoof of the "smoldering” sexuality of Sharon Stone and Madonna and so many other mainstream iconettes.Not to mention the fact that the adult industry takes many of the psychological deformities that Hollywood is famous for-the vanity, the vulgarity, the rank commercialism-and not only makes them overt and grotesque but seems then to revel in that grotesquerie. View quote
David Foster Wallace
'No, not one little song,' replied the Rat firmly, though his heart bled as he noticed the trembling lip of the poor disappointed Toad. 'It's no good, Toady; you know well that your songs are all conceit and boasting and vanity; and your speeches are all self-praise and - and - well, and gross exaggeration and - and - ' 'And gas,' put in the Badger, in his common way. View quote
Kenneth Grahame
A pretty wife is something for the fastidious vanity of a rougue to retire upon. View quote
Thomas Moore
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast. View quote
Logan Pearsall Smith