Conceited quotes
133 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means that you are very conceited indeed."
"It may seem to your conceited to suppose that you can do anything important toward improving the lot of mankind. But this is a fallacy. You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery."
"Conceit is God's gift to little men."
"Conceit causes more conversation than wit."
"God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain puerile vanity more like senility than anything."
""Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior"
"If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."
"Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful."
"I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them."
"You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long, and the great charm of all power is modesty."
"Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?""
"I will spark a generation of thinkers who will question traditional thought until they find the absolute truth."
"How narrow we selfish conceited creatures are in our sympathies! How blind to the rights of all the rest of creation!"
"If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed."
"Everything I have written up to now is trifling compared to that which I would like to write and would write with great pleasureEither I am a fool and a self-conceited person, or I am a being capable of becoming a good writer; I am displeased and bored with everything now being written, while everything in my head interests, moves, and excites me-whence I draw the conclusion that no one is doing what is needed, and I alone know the secret of how it should be done. In all likelihood everyone who writes thinks that. In fact, the devil himself will be brought to his knees by these questions."
"Conceit in weakest bodies works the strongest."
"People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune."
"It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care."
"Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit."
"We have all heard of Young America. He is the most current youth of the age. Some think him conceited, and arrogant; but has he not reason to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself? Is he not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future?"
