L'anglais a les prejuges de l'orgueil, et les francais ceux de la vanite=--The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.
Every man at his best state is altogether vanity.
Near this spot Are deposited the Remains of one Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of BOATSWAIN, a DOG
The knowledge of thyself will preserve thee from vanity.
~Discourtesy.~--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 Bruyère._
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.
Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; whereas other excellences, which lie deep like gold and are discovered with difficulty, leave their possessors modest and proud.
Their vanity tends to grow out of their errors.
Sufficiency is a compound of vanity and ignorance.
Pride is the source of a thousand virtues; vanity is that of nearly all vices and all perversities.
Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.
Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas=--Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company; I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present. "To conclude historically with my own character, I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself); I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men any wise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched or even attacked by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by makebelieve.
_The arrangement._--I might well have taken this discourse in some such order as the following: To show the vanity of every state of life, to show the vanity of ordinary lives, and then the vanity of philosophic lives, sceptics, stoics; but the order would not have been kept. I know a little what it is, and how few people know it. No human science can keep it. Saint Thomas did not keep it. Mathematics keep it, but these are useless by reason of their depth.
Pride adds to a man's stature; vanity only puffs him out.
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.
Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost a good captain to make him an ill general."
Let vain men pursue vanity; leave them to their own methods.
A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.
Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn; And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born.
It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live, than to be loved by them. And this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.--_Arthur Helps._
The world is so busied with selfish pursuits, ambition, vanity, interest, or pleasure, that very few think it worth their while to make any observation on what passes around them, except where that observation is a sucker, or branch of the darling plant they are rearing in their fancy.
Solitude can be well applied and sit right upon but very few persons. They must have knowledge of the world to see the follies of it, and virtue enough to despise all the vanity.
All is vanity and vexation of spirit.
Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skilful 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.
There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity.
~Modesty.~--False modesty is the last refinement of vanity. It is a lie.--_Bruyère._
~Vanity.~--Verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.--_Bible._
If its colors were but fast colors, self-conceit would be a most comfortable quality. But life is so humbling, mortifying, disappointing to vanity, that a man's great idea of himself gets washed out of him by the time he is forty.--_Charles Buxton._
Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.
_Search for the true good._--Ordinary men place their good in fortune and external goods, or at least in amusement. Philosophers have shown the vanity of all this, and have placed it where best they could.
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Not because Socrates said so, . . . I look upon all men as my compatriots.
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.
What a vanity is painting, which attracts admiration by the resemblance of things that in the original we do not admire!
Abra was ready ere I called her name; And though I called another, Abra came.
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.
_Misery._--Solomon and Job best knew, and have best spoken of human misery; the former the most fortunate, the latter the most unfortunate of men; the one knowing by experience the vanity of pleasure, the other the reality of evil.
The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity, the rest is crime.
One of the few things I have always most wondered at is, that there should be any such thing as human vanity. If I had any, I had enough to mortify it a few days ago; for I lost my mind for a whole day.--_Pope._
Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see... On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages. \x85 Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king's torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street.
False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity.
On parle peu quand la vanite ne fait pas parler=--People speak little when vanity does not prompt them.
Une once de vanite gate un quintal de merite=--An ounce of vanity spoils a hundredweight of merit.
No man can ever want this mortification of his vanity, that what he knows is but a very little, in comparison of what he still continues ignorant of. Consider this, and, instead of boasting thy knowledge of a few things, confess and be out of countenance for the many more which thou dost not understand.--_Thomas à Kempis._
Speaking much is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words is a niggard in deed.
Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.
There is no object of desire the supreme vanity of which we do not recognise and confess when once we have embraced it.
I see thy vanity through the holes of thy coat.
Flattery is a base coin, to which only our vanity gives currency.
What makes vanity so insufferable to us is that it wounds our own.
Pride is lofty, calm, immovable; vanity is uncertain, capricious, and unjust.
My God! what trash is all this talk: "Has God made the world but to condemn it? will he ask so much of creatures so weak?" etc. Scepticism is the remedy for this evil, and will lower this vanity.
[ Death scene of Cyrano ] It is coming... I feel Already shod with marble... gloved with lead... Let the old fellow come now! He shall find me On my feet sword in hand [ He draws his sword. ] I can see him there he grins He is looking at my nose that skeleton What's that you say? Hopeless? Why, very well! But a man does not fight merely to win! No no better to know one fights in vain! ... You there Who are you? A hundred against one I know them now, my ancient enemies [ He lunges at the empty air. ] Falsehood! ... There! There! Prejudice Compromise Cowardice [ Thrusting ] What's that? No! Surrender? No! Never never! ... Ah, you too, Vanity! I know you would overthrow me in the end No! I fight on! I fight on! I fight on!
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 sense of falseness in present pleasures, and our ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, are the causes of inconstancy.
The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death.
Not a vanity is given in vain.
La vertu n'iroit pas si loin, si la vanite ne lui tenait compagnie=--Virtue would not go so far if vanity did not bear her company.
The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.
The pious vanity of man makes him adore his own qualities under the pretense of worshiping those of God.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
They sin who tell us love can die; With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity. Love is indestructible, Its holy flame forever burneth; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth. It soweth here with toil and care, But the harvest-time of love is there.
We need no great elevation of soul to understand that here is no true and solid satisfaction, that all our pleasures are but vanity, our evils infinite, and lastly that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly and within a few years place us in the dread alternative of being for ever either annihilated or wretched.
Fickleness has its rise in the experience of the deceptiveness of present pleasures, and in ignorance of the vanity of absent ones.
I am an individual \x85 a circle touching and intersecting my neighbours at certain points, but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending. \x85 But my individuality, however all-sufficient for myself, is an infinitesimal point, an atom subject in all things to the Law of Storms called Life. I feel, I know that Fate is. But I cannot know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the "I" being duly blended with the "We." \x85 I am bound to take careful thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve or to repent over that which was decreed by universal Law.
There is a kind of pride in which are included all the commandments of God, and a kind of vanity which contains the seven mortal sins.
False glory is the rock of vanity.
There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.
Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.
Men speak but little when vanity does not induce them to speak.
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
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._
_The Vanity of Knowledge._--The knowledge of external things will not console me for my ignorance of ethics in time of affliction, but the science of morals will always console me for my ignorance of external knowledge.
We know that the wind listeth to blow where there is a vacuum. If you find a tremendous rush of wind, you know that somewhere there is an empty space. I am perfectly sure about this fact: if we could expel all pride, vanity, self-righteousness, self-seeking, desire for applause, honor, and promotion--if by some divine power we should be utterly emptied of all that, the Spirit would come as a rushing mighty wind to fill us.--_A. J. Gordon._
That reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years.
There is nothing so agonising to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.
The pomps and vanity of this wicked world.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity — but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
Knowledge may not be as a courtesan for pleasure and vanity only; or as a bond-woman, to acquire and gain for her master's use; but as a spouse, for generation, fruit, and comfort.
Ask thy director, when my own words are to thee occasion of evil, or vanity, or curiosity.
Greater mischiefs happen often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.--_Burke._
Whoever will know fully the vanity of man has but to consider the causes and the effects of love. The cause is an unknown quantity, and the effects are terrible. This unknown quantity, so small a matter that we cannot recognise it, moves a whole country, princes, armies, and all the world.
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where 't is kept is lighter than vanity.
Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished; but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.
Love is vanity, / Selfish in its beginning as its end.
There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit.
That man has advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.
Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue.
Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and 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 he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
True comeliness, which nothing can impair, / Dwells in the mind; all else is vanity and glare.
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.
My appetite comes to me while eating.
It is vanity which makes the rake at twenty, the worldly man at forty, and the retired man at sixty. We are apt to think that best in general for which we find ourselves best fitted in particular.--_Pope._
For hope is but the dream of those that wake.
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.
Amour propre=--Vanity; self-love.
Egotism is the tongue of vanity.
To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honors have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess that these honors 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 honors below his merits, 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.--_Swift._
~Luxury.~--Whenever vanity and gayety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.--_John Adams._
The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words.
A sense of desolation and uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavor, and a thirst for a life giving water which seems suddenly to have failed, are the signs in conciousness of this necessary reorganization of our lives. It is difficult to believe that this state of mind can be produced by the recognition of such facts as that unsupported stones always fall to the ground. -- J. W. N. Sullivan
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company. -- La Rochefoucauld
"No, excuse me," Fyodor Pavlovitch broke in shrilly, taking another step into the room. "Allow me to finish. There in the cell you blamed me for behaving disrespectfully just because I spoke of eating gudgeon, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. Miüsov, my relation, prefers to have _plus de noblesse que de sincérité_ in his words, but I prefer in mine _plus de sincérité que de noblesse_, and--damn the _noblesse_! That's right, isn't it, von Sohn? Allow me, Father Superior, though I am a buffoon and play the buffoon, yet I am the soul of honor, and I want to speak my mind. Yes, I am the soul of honor, while in Pyotr Alexandrovitch there is wounded vanity and nothing else. I came here perhaps to have a look and speak my mind. My son, Alexey, is here, being saved. I am his father; I care for his welfare, and it is my duty to care. While I've been playing the fool, I have been listening and having a look on the sly; and now I want to give you the last act of the performance. You know how things are with us? As a thing falls, so it lies. As a thing once has fallen, so it must lie for ever. Not a bit of it! I want to get up again. Holy Father, I am indignant with you. Confession is a great sacrament, before which I am ready to bow down reverently; but there in the cell, they all kneel down and confess aloud. Can it be right to confess aloud? It was ordained by the holy Fathers to confess in secret: then only your confession will be a mystery, and so it was of old. But how can I explain to him before every one that I did this and that ... well, you understand what--sometimes it would not be proper to talk about it--so it is really a scandal! No, Fathers, one might be carried along with you to the Flagellants, I dare say ... at the first opportunity I shall write to the Synod, and I shall take my son, Alexey, home."