Quotessence
Home / Topics / Vanity Quotes

Vanity Quotes

Browse 1425 quotes about Vanity.

Related topics

MenIfsPeopleThinkingPrideVainWorldKnowsSelfGivingWantMayDesireHumansWayFeelsMindShouldFairsLooksPersonsMeanWritingAmbitionFollyVanity FairDoeFormLittlesVirtueBelievePassionWellsWishHeartMadeKindAgeEgoLifeNamesPleasureFirstsGlorySoulEnoughFeelingsHas BeensInterestLyingOpinionSinVanity And PrideVicesArtChildrenDiesEvilFashionHumilityQualityRealReasonSaidWeaknessCareDisplayNeedsShowsStillsTryingValuesEarthEyeFoolPraiseDifferentFameHandsIgnoranceLiteratureSecretStupidityWould BeCasesConceitCuriosityDoneGivenLongYearsArroganceBeautifulCertainCharacterCompanyDifficultEgotismFacesFactsmore

Vanity Quotes

“Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand,the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.”

NeedsArtHandsGovernmentCertainEvilNationsResultsPovertyFashionDangerousPrideIndustryTasteBenefitsSpringInfiniteConvincedVanityNeglectLazinessPoliteness
Author:Baron de Montesquieu
Create image

“There are those to whom a sense of religion has come in storm and tempest; there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity; there are those, too, who have heard its "still small voice" amid rural leisure and placid retirement. But perhaps the knowledge which causeth not to err is most frequently impressed upon the mind during the season of affliction.”

MindStillsReligionVoiceHeardSceneSeasonsStormVanityRetirementLeisureImpressedIdleAfflictionTempestSmall VoicePlacidRevelry
Book:Waverley novels. (Abbotsford ed.).
Create image

“He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes.”

SorrowArguingVanityDeceitful
Book:The Complete Novels of Sir Walter Scott: Waverly, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, The Pirate, Old Mortality, The Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, The Heart of Midlothian and many more (Illustrated): The Betrothed, The Talisman, Black Dwarf, The Monastery, The Abbot, Kenilworth, Peveril of the Peak, A Legend of Montrose, The Fortunes of Nigel, Tales from Benedictine Sources…
Create image

“A good deal of philanthropy arises in general from mere vanity and love of distinction gilded over to others and to themselves with some show of benevolent sentiment.”

ShowsDealsAnd LoveMereAriseVanityDistinctionSentimentsPhilanthropyBenevolentGilded
Book:The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott: With a Biography, and His Last Additions and Illustrations
Create image

“Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of humanactions.... Where that desire is wanting, we are apt to be indifferent, listless, indolent, and inert.... I will own to you, under the secrecy of confession, that my vanity has very often made me take great pains to make many a woman in love with me, if I could, for whose person I would not have given a pinch of snuff.”

IfsPersonsMadePainDesireNamesGivenPrinciplesUniversalPraiseVanityIf I CouldAdmirationConfessionIndifferentSecrecyApplauseSnuff
Author:Lord Chesterfield
Create image

“Birds sing in vain to the ear, flowers bloom in vain to the eye, of mortified vanity and galled ambition. He who would know repose in retirement must carry into retirement his destiny, integral and serene, as the Caesars transported the statue of Fortune into the chamber they chose for their sleep.”

KnowsEyeSleepDestinyFlowerSolitudeAmbitionBirdEarsFortuneVanityVainRetirementStatuesChamberReposeSereneBlooming Flower
Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Create image

“Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!”

WarMomentsEyeHumanityTurnsInterestPoorExistenceStruggleThousandEternalDrawsDefeatMiserableVanityTriumphBitternessWoundedStrifePettySpectatorsCrushedMorrowHumiliatedCollisionNonentity
Author:Nicolas Chamfort
Create image

“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.”

MenWayFeelsArtMomentsCharacterActionFoundBusinessMovementPoetSaintEnthusiasmVanityExcellentMartyrExquisiteTactGreat PoetRight MomentThoughts And ActionsDiscreetGreat Knowledge
Author:Arthur Helps
Create image

“Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business, or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation reach, have from that time not only ceased to advance, and improve in their performances, but have gone backward. They may be compared to men who have lived upon their principal, till they are reduced to beggary, and left without resources.”

MenMayLeftGoneResourcesPerformancesObservationVanityEngagementPrincipalNeglectedConceitIndolenceBeggary
Author:Joshua Reynolds
Create image

“It has been remarked that when one passes among the patients of the psychiatric ward, he encounters among the several sufferers every aspect of normal personality in morbid exaggeration. ... As one passes through the modern centers of enterprise and of higher learning, he is met with similar autonomies of development. ... The scientist, the technician, the scholar, who have left the One for the Many are puffed up with vanity over their ability to describe precisely some minute portion of the world. Men so obsessed with fragments can no more be reasoned with than other psychotics.”

MenWorldHas BeensLeftAbilityModernMinutesPersonalityDevelopmentHigherMetsNormalAspectScientistPatientVanityObsessedEncountersEnterprisePortionsScholarAutonomyFragmentsExaggerationMorbidSufferersTechniciansPsychiatricHigher Learning
Author:Richard M. Weaver
Create image