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Vanity Quotes

Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It’s a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks ...

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Picture of Dennis Lehane
Dennis LehaneA Drink Before the War

Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs!

Vanity is a defensive quality. it contains an element of fear.

The vanity of Eve, that desire to exercise power, to seduce, to drag down!

Gertrude, behind her, again had just one... That one little feather she had as a starter. But now th...

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Picture of Dr. Seuss
Dr. SeussYertle the Turtle and other Stories-Bartholomew and the Oobleck

It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assu...

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She had in truth no abstract propensity to malice: she did not dislike Lily because the latter was b...

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She seemed to be lovely still to herself, as if no amount of looking into mirrors could ruin her ill...

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But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised ...

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Weak and narrow are the powers implanted in the limbs of men; many the woes that fall on them and bl...

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The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

Picture of Eric Hoffer
Eric HofferThe True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

I didn't hit other people or hit purposefully, I just hit. Some object would be at fault. My anger w...

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There will always be those little minds who, out of vanity or intellectual display, will attempt to ...

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Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality - he loathed know...

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If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t dist...

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Picture of F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott FitzgeraldTender is the Night & The Last Tycoon

No-one loves another More than he loves whatever another within may haveThat is part of one's self

The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glo...

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Picture of François Fénelon
François FénelonLes aventures de Télémaque suivies des aventures d'Aritonoüs

What makes the pain we feel from shame and jealousy so cutting is that vanity can give us no assista...

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Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another beca...

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Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasrue a humanity would nev...

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Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but ...

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If I'd been born ugly, you'd never have heard of Pelé.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.

You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be.

Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borro...

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...the pleasures of the world are chiefly folly, and the business of it mostly knavery, and both not...

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...but doth not the person who expends vast sums in the furniture of his house or the ornaments of h...

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The writer of this legend then recordsIts ghostly application in these words:The image is the Advers...

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Picture of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowThe Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true — not true, ...

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Man is the vainest of allcreatures that have their being upon earth. As long as heavenvouchsafes him...

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She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on y...

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Picture of J. D. Salinger
J. D. SalingerThe Catcher in the Rye

Lockhart'll sign anything if it stands still long enough.

Picture of J. K. Rowling
J. K. RowlingHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to...

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Let him have all the perfections in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a...

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Picture of Jane Austen
Jane AustenMansfield Park

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they sho...

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Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situa...

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

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Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be...

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To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its h...

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Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. W...

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Picture of Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. JeromeIdle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

I'm brilliant as well as skilled," he said modestly. "It's a great burden, all of that on top of my ...

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I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.

Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous.

I'm amazing and studly, but I have limits.

Doesn't matter how pretty you are. What's important is how pretty you feel. No one feels pretty when...

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Gracious Providence, to whom I owe all my powers, why didst thou not withhold some of those blessing...

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You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, an...

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The problem is hedonism. The problem is the preening vanity and selfishness of 'coming out,' of para...

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Picture of John Derbyshire
John DerbyshireWe Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

I believe the secret of the success of psychoanalysis resides in people's vanity.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to mak...

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There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportuniti...

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I won't tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman.

I felt how much better and more dignified it was for me to show off the finer side of my soul than o...

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Nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame.

How good it is when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that t...

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Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for tha...

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You can never see yourself the way you are to someone else - to a man looking at you, from behind, w...

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Picture of Margaret Atwood
Margaret AtwoodThe Blind Assassin

Those who are vain have little ability to feel grateful.

Then the cow asked:"What is a mirror?""It is a hole in the wall," said the cat. "You look in it, and...

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Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to b...

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Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies ...

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Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the h...

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The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.

Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to ma...

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Picture of Milan Kundera
Milan KunderaFarewell Waltz

The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone. Instead of growing more sensible in death, the in...

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Picture of Milan Kundera
Milan KunderaThe Unbearable Lightness of Being

Her eyes are shockingly black - shocking not because black eyes are particularly rare, but because s...

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It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, o...

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Picture of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel HawthorneThe House of the Seven Gables

The unforgivable political sin is vanity the killer diet is sour grapes.

But how can anyone put a bridle on man's vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth wit...

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So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dra...

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All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemi...

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The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosoph...

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

I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long wil...

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Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted ...

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Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of ...

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Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray

Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?

Picture of Oscar Wilde
Oscar WildeThe Picture of Dorian Gray

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They ar...

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She was not vain enough to work her will against the world. But she could use the things the world h...

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Picture of Patrick Rothfuss
Patrick RothfussThe Slow Regard of Silent Things

The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, h...

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What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to preven...

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Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals its...

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Picture of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe ShelleyThe Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

I would have chosen any other than this for my prison. A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and...

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Picture of Peter S. Beagle
Peter S. BeagleThe Last Unicorn

Vanity, showing off, is an attitude that reduces spirituality to a worldly thing, which is the worst...

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There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to b...

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The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also...Pride is handsome, economical; pride er...

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Vanity dies hard, in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hea...

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Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken, themselves to errour. T...

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Picture of Samuel Johnson
Samuel JohnsonLife and Conversations of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Founded Chiefly Upon Boswell.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to discl...

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