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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"Methinks I am a prophet new inspired And thus, expiring, do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small show'rs last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding doth choke the feeder; Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself."
"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."
"A certain amount of distrust is wholesome, but not so much of others as of ourselves; neither vanity not conceit can exist in the same atmosphere with it."
"Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it."
"The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need."
"Vanity is the healthiest thing in life."
"Everyone has his vanity, and each one's vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul."
"I have a lot of vanity."
"What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given."
"What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own."
"Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company."
"Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return."
"The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity."
"Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain."
"Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness. Jealousy we understood and thought natural--a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy was a strange, new feeling for us."
"The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain."
"The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity."
"For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better."
"Scarcely have I ever heard or read the introductory phrase, "I may say without vanity," but some striking and characteristic instance of vanity has immediately followed."
"Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter, wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action: and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life."
