Vanity has no sex. [ Colton ]
Vanity will prove vexation. [ Proverb ]
Not a vanity is given in vain. [ Pope ]
Vanity is often the unseen spur. [ Thackeray ]
Egotism is the tongue of vanity. [ Chamfort ]
Oh, frail estate of human things! [ Dryden ]
Vanity ruins more women than love. [ Mme. du Deffand ]
Vanity is the quicksand of reason. [ George Sand ]
One can never outlive one's vanity. [ Lady Montagu ]
Love is vanity,
Selfish in its beginning as its end. [ Byron ]
The soul of this man is in his clothes. [ William Shakespeare ]
Virtue brings honour, and honour vanity. [ Proverb ]
Too much is a vanity; enough is a feast. [ Quarles ]
Vain is the world, but only to the vain. [ Young ]
We say little if not egged on by vanity. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Men that hazard all
Do it in hope of fair advantages:
A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross. [ William Shakespeare ]
Vanity and rudeness are seldom seen together. [ Lavater ]
Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. [ B. Franklin ]
He that hunts after vanity shall take vexation. [ Proverb ]
Prosperity and vanity are often lodged together. [ Proverb ]
Whatever wants, pleasure and vanity must be had. [ Proverb ]
There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate. [ Ward Beecher ]
True comeliness, which nothing can impair,
Dwells in the mind; all else is vanity and glare. [ Thomson ]
Sufficiency is a compound of vanity and ignorance. [ Temple ]
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. [ Swift ]
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular;
but one must take it because it is right. [ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr ]
Vicious Men overvalue vanity; and undervalue vexation. [ Proverb ]
Vanity is the only intellectual enjoyment of many people.
Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity. [ Bible ]
A coxcomb is four-fifths affectation and one-fifth vanity. [ Haliburton ]
It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish. [ Vauvenargues ]
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding. [ Pope ]
Pampered vanity is a better thing perhaps than starved pride. [ Joanna Baillie ]
And yet, after all, what is posthumous fame? Altogether vanity. [ Antoninus ]
Men speak but little when vanity does not induce them to speak. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Virtue would not go far, if a little vanity walked not with it. [ Proverb ]
Prejudice, vanity, calculation: these are what govern the world. [ Chamfort ]
Flattery is a base coin, to which only our vanity gives currency. [ La Roche ]
Flattery is a sort of bad money, to which our vanity gives currency. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity. [ La Bruyere ]
Coquetry is a net laid by the vanity of woman to ensnare that of man. [ Bruis ]
Guard against that vanity which courts a compliment, or is fed by it. [ Chalmers ]
Where would the power of women be, were it not for the vanity of men? [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance. [ Samuel Butler ]
The most penitent anchorite has now and then a small flight of vanity. [ Proverb ]
Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots? [ Seneca ]
Pity it is that no vanity should be put into the composition of women-kind. [ Proverb ]
A woman by whom we are loved is a vanity; a woman whom we love is a religion. [ E. de Girardin ]
Those who live on vanity must not unreasonably expect to die of mortification. [ Mrs. Ellis ]
Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous. [ Sterne ]
Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich. [ Chamfort ]
Take from men ambition and vanity and you will have neither heroes nor patriots. [ Seneca ]
A coquette has no heart, she has only vanity: it is adorers she seeks, not love. [ Poincelot ]
Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity. [ Wilkie Collins ]
What renders the vanity of others unbearable to us is the wound it inflicts on ours. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, that I may see my shadow as I pass. [ William Shakespeare ]
A woman whose ruling passion is not vanity is superior to any man of equal capacity. [ Lavater ]
The fool of vanity; for her alone he lives, loves, writes, and dies but to be known. [ Canning ]
He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes. [ Walter Scott ]
Vanity and pride sustain so close an alliance as to be often mistaken for each other. [ Gladstone ]
There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity. [ Swift ]
In condemning the vanity of women, men complain of the fire they themselves have kindled. [ Lingrie ]
Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly. [ Johnson ]
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on. [ Pope ]
The change of fashions is the tax that the industry of the poor levies on the vanity of the rich. [ Chamfort ]
Vanity, shame, and, above all, temperament, often make the valor of men, and the virtue of women. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
There is no arena is which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation. [ Pascal ]
Whenever the good done to us does not touch and penetrate the heart, it wounds and irritates our vanity. [ E. de Girardin ]
That man has advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity. [ Chamfort ]
To what gods is sacrificed that rarest and sweetest thing upon earth, friendship? To vanity and to interest. [ Malesherbes ]
A ring is a circle of vanity, worn on the finger to show off your wealth, and excite the envy of your neighbor. [ E. P. Day ]
Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard. [ Hazlitt ]
If you would succeed in the world, it is necessary that, when entering a salon, your vanity should bow to that of others. [ Mme. de Genlis ]
It is a common vanity of the aged to believe that they have always been more exemplary than those who have come after them. [ A. de Musset ]
Good resolutions are a useless attempt to interfere with scientific laws; their origin pure vanity, their results absolutely nil. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Fickleness has its rise in the experience of the deceptiveness of present pleasures, and in ignorance of the vanity of absent ones. [ Pascal ]
Beauty is a great gift of heaven; not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved. [ Miss Edgeworth ]
Vanity is the fruit of ignorance. It thieves most in subterranean places, never reached by the air of heaven, and the light of the sun. [ Hoss ]
Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie; to be laid in the balance they are altogether lighter than vanity. [ Bible ]
Our understandings are always liable to error. Nature and certainty is very hard to come at; and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense. [ Marcus Antoninus ]
The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashions, and valuing ourselves by them, is one of the most childish pieces of folly that can be. [ Sir Matthew Hale ]
An honorable name or a good reputation is an excellent protection against wrong-doing: we fear to compromise it more through vanity than virtue.
Live on what you have; live if you can on less; do not borrow either for vanity or pleasure--the vanity will end in shame, and the pleasure in regret. [ Johnson ]
Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride. [ Emerson ]
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right. [ Dr. Johnson ]
This poor world, the object of so much insane attachment, we are about to leave; it is but misery, vanity, and folly; a phantom - the very fashion of which passeth away.
[ Fenelon ]
Friends should not be chosen to flatter. The quality we should prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth. Intimacies which increase vanity destroy friendship. [ William Ellery Channing ]
Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person. [ Jeremy Collier ]
We value the devotedness of friendship rather as an oblation to vanity, than as a free interchange of hearts; an endearing contract of sympathy, mutual forbearance, and respect. [ Jane Porter ]
There may often be less vanity in following the new modes than in adhering to the old ones. It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting, them. [ Joubert ]
Vanity is a confounded donkey, very apt to put his head between his legs, and chuck us over; but pride is a fine horse, that will carry us over the ground, and enable us to distance our fellow-travelers. [ Marryat ]
Resentment is, in every stage of the passion, painful, but it is not disagreeable, unless in excess; pity is always painful, yet always agreeable; vanity, on the contrary, is always pleasant, yet always disagreeable. [ Horne ]
Of all varieties of fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Title, indeed, may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid. [ Burton ]
Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself: but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day. [ Goethe ]
Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several - from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy. [ La Bruyere ]
The gracious and self-sacrificing and womanly women of our revolution wore dresses cut lower than those of their great-granddaughters, as any portrait gallery will show. The dress is indefensible, but let us not be too ready to condemn the wearer for worse sins than thoughtlessness and vanity. [ Mrs. L. G. Calhoun ]
The stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest, and the chariot wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets are bearing her to halls roofed in and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only vice and misery, to prowl or to moan like night birds, are abroad. [ Carlyle ]
It is a great mortification to the vanity of man that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of Nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the underworkman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces which come from the hand of the master. [ Hume ]
Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; hence women, wits, players, soldiers, are vain, owing to their presence, figure and dress. On the contrary, other excellences, which lie down like gold and are discovered with difficulty, leave their possessors modest and proud. [ Richter ]
It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be obtained or retained. [ Beaconsfield ]
There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. [ Hazlitt ]
Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. [ Colton ]
Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]