Vanity Quotes

Trying to be offensive for the sole purpose of being offensive should always deem one the least offensive of offenders.

But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker, I knew equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?

How beautiful would it be if we could just see souls instead of bodies? To see love and compassion instead of curves.

The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.

Vanity is a defensive quality. it contains an element of fear.

He [Old Mr. Turveydrop] was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear.

There’s just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It’s not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it’s that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don’t see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren’t there.

It's all about vanity, isn't it? I think it says something about people if they can't do it

You must intercept the passing time well, hence it will fly away into vanity.

If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent.

Never trust someone that claims they care nothing of what society thinks of them. Instead of conquering obstacles, they simply pretend they don't exist.

True friends are not mirrors where we can always see ourselves reflected in a positive light.

I would have chosen any other than this for my prison. A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it is beautiful.

She [Mrs. Badger] was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it.

Jo, they have a baby grand piano, but no one in the family plays. They have shelves of books they've never read, and the tension between the couples was so thick it nearly choked us.""Let me tell you something 'bout those rich Uptown folk," said Cokie. "They got everything that money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain't happy. They ain't ever gone be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can't fix that, no sir. My friend Bix was poor. Lord, he had to blow that trumpet ten hours a day just to put a little taste in the pot. Died poor, too. You saw him, Jo, with that plate on his chest. But that man wasn't soul broke.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

When you build a fence around yourself, you'll wonder why people are afraid to approach you, because the pride in the fence is the cause of your blindness.

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word ‘artificial.’ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.

Then there is the cosmologist, who views himself as nothing but a manipulation of atoms; his mind configured out of randomness into the tool a vast, blind universe might use to perceive itself. If this is so then truly "all is vanity". What could be more pleasing to the cosmic narcissist than to gaze eternally with a billion eyes into the mirror that is himself? What fault, however, if certain eyes ultimately don’t like what they see?

Vain mistaken mortals, who, valuing themselves on names and titles, suppose that the virtues of the mind must be attached to an empty sound, when every day's experience proves that birth is disgraced, titles rendered contemptible, and riches a curse, by the vices, meanness, and dissipation of its possessors!

The true business of the philosopher, though not flattering to his vanity, is merely to ascertain, arrange and condense the facts.

Most people would rather eat inside a windowless room in which they have just defecated than eat inside one in which someone else has just farted, even if the room does not have a toilet.

The world is full of vanities

I just don't get it. You've been in love with this bloke since you were a kid, and he's never once got his hair cut short enough that it doesn't poke him in the damn eye.

I'm pretty much a goddess around here.

Only a demon would prevent a person from saving lives or fulfilling their life mission. There is no reasoning with the devil. Stand with pride because your heart is filled with the goodness of helping others, while theirs is filled with helping themselves.

The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt trips and mysticized by yoga.

Your time keeps flying away into vanity while you dine with your distractions.

Beware ! Discipline goes to two different directions : success and self glory. Self glory is the biggest failure of life.

There are times when Pride must transform into Vanity in order to reach the astray echo of the reflection of self.

You'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.

The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics,economics, and all the other branches of learning. Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings.

If only we studied the stars as much as we study our own reflections.

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.

I've loved many women...I'm not going to lie to you, but it never works...vanity always gets in the way.

All success in life comes to naught if it is laced with vanity.

What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.

Those who are vain have little ability to feel grateful.

False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit.

How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?

It is in the nature of man to want what he does not have. This modern concern for happiness seems a real testimony of its absence.

I felt how much better and more dignified it was for me to show off the finer side of my soul than of my body.

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

She raised herself up on an elbow, stroked my forehead & said in a hushed half-whisper, 'You will be famous.' "The seed was planted. Ambition fed on the compost of my vanity.

The vain woman spent fortunes seeking out astrologers, sorcerers, and magicians who would concoct spells and potions to preserve her beauty and help her remain looking young--but envy is hard to cover.

There is a code of behavior, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behooves the woman, whatever her own occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there smiling.

Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality - he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would sell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor.

She was a handsome woman of forty-five and would remain so for many years.

This world is all vanity. It is a tempest hurling us from one sorrow to another.

You don't know how shallow you are, or how narcissistic, until you acquire a facial scar. On the plus side, it's so situated as to make me look tough and worldly. On the downside, I'm never kissing my dog again.

What's the matter with you, Penny? You're not as good looking as you generally believe you are.

I had only four hairs worth shaving, but I managed to inflict five cuts attempting to remove them.

Women that can work a camera with ease often work men just as effortlessly for both require the same commitment to vanity and manipulation.

If I really seem vain, it is that I am only vain in my ways—not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in their hearts, and not in their ways.

I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.

Fame is vanity's bait.

Do not live for emptiness, do not waste your evaporating life pursuing the vanities of life.

The World will give you hopeless vanity, but what will you give the World?

Let us not believe that an external fast from visible food alone can possibly be sufficient for perfection of heart and purity of body unless with it there has also been united a fast of the soul. For the soul also has its foods that are harmful. Slander is its food and indeed one that is very dear to it. A burst of anger also supplies it with miserable food for an hour and destroys it as well with its deadly savor. Envy is food of the mind, corrupting it with its poisonous juices and never ceasing to make it wretched and miserable at the prosperity and success of another. Vanity is its food which gratifies the mind with a delicious meal for a time but afterward strips it clear and bare of all virtue. Then vanity dismisses it barren and void of all spiritual fruit. All lust and shift wanderings of heart are a sort of food for the soul, nourishing it on harmful meats but leaving it afterwards without a share of its heavenly bread and really solid food. If then, with all the powers we have, we abstain from these in a most holy fast our observance of the bodily fast will be both useful and profitable.