#vanity

It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now ↗

— William Makepeace Thackeray

#life #vanity #death

I was good at being charming, one of my very few vanities. ↗

— Jeff Lindsay

#vanity #dreams

He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. (Nietzsche.) A vain person is always vain about something. He overestimates the importance of some quality or exaggerates the degree to which he possesses it, but the quality has some real importance and he does possess it to some degree. The fantasy of overestimation or exaggeration makes the vain person comic, but the fact that he cannot be vain about nothing makes his vanity a venial sin, because it is always open to correction by appeal to objective fact. A proud person, on the other hand, is not proud of anything, he is proud, he exists proudly. Pride is neither comic nor venial, but the most mortal of all sins because, lacking any basis in concrete particulars, it is both incorrigible and absolute: one cannot be more or less proud, only proud or humble. Thus, if a painter tries to portray the Seven Deadly Sins, his experience will furnish him readily enough with images symbolic of Gluttony, Lust, Sloth, Anger, Avarice, and Envy, for all these are qualities of a person’s relations to others and the world, but no experience can provide an image of Pride, for the relation it qualifies is the subjective relation of a person to himself. In the seventh frame, therefore, the painter can only place, in lieu of a canvas, a mirror. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#vanity #anger

We must remember that possession of physical beauty can easily weaken the moral faculty. ↗

— Frank Tallis

#morality #vanity #weakness #beauty

That which attracts the world must please and pander to the self-importance of man. The world itself is a vain show, and likes its own. Consequently there is nothing which so carries the mass of men along with it as that which flatters the vanity of the human mind. It may assume the lowliest air, but sinful man seeks his own honour and present exaltation. ↗

— William Kelly

#vanity #world #men

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us. ↗

— Jane Austen

#pride #vanity #think

What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten—I regard as the highest expression of human dignity. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#vanity #dignity

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#suicide #vanity #kill

A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference. ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#indifference #shyness #vanity #devil

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. ↗

— William Makepeace Thackeray

#vanity