Vanity quotes
952 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside vanity — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Humility, which Burke ranked high among the virtues, is the only effectual restraint upon this congenital vanity; yet our world has nearly forgotten the nature of humility. Submission to the dictates of humility formerly was made palatable to man by the doctrine of grace; that elaborate doctrine has been overwhelmed by modern presumption."
"Just as bones, tissues, intestines, and blood vessels are enclosed in a skin that makes it possible to bear the sight of a human being, so the agitations and passions of the soul are wrapped up in vanity: it is the soul's skin."
"Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory."
"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."
"Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom."
"I was really excited to get to shave my head - it's something I'd wanted to do for a while and now I had a good excuse. It was nice to shed that level of vanity."
"I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round."
"How are you to meet the swarm of foolish attachments, triflings, and undesirable inclinations which beset you? By turning sharply away, and thoroughly renouncing such vanities, flying to the Saviour's Cross, and clasping His Crown of thorns to your heart, so that these little foxes may not spoil your vines. Beware of entering into any manner of treaty with the Enemy; do not delude yourself by listening to him while intending to reject him."
"Vanity is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are in fact still human."
"If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made."
"Shine out fair sun, till I have bought a glass, That I may see my shadow as I pass."
"I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress."
"Censorship is the height of vanity."
"There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it."
"Madness designates the equinox between the vanity of night's hallucinations and the non-being of light's judgments."
"In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it."
"It is a disgrace to let ignorance and vanity do more with us than prudence and principle."
"The only cure for vanity is laughter. And the only fault that's laughable is vanity."
"I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself."
"How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?"
