Quotes About Vanity

It's the professional shame that hurts the most,' I said to him. I wheeled my bike as we walked along Fleet Street. 'Vanity really. As a neurosurgeon you have to come to terms with ruining people's lives and with making mistakes. But one still feels terrible about it and how much it will cost.

No estábamos angustiados, pues los tres sabíamos que iba a morir, pero supongo que lo que sentíamos era sencillamente un amor intenso, un amor sin segundas intenciones, sin la vanidad y el interés de los que tan a menudo es expresión ese sentimiento.

Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.

Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.

either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it...

It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.

Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It's all vanity, it's all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky.

If you once realize that to-morrow, if not to-day, you will die and nothing will be left of you, everything becomes insignificant!

But the princess had never seen the beautiful expression of her eyes; the expression that came into them when she was not thinking of herself. As is the case with everyone, her face assumed an affected, unnatural, ugly expression as soon as she looked in the looking glass.

Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity.

They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.

That debauchery was not a good thing in a married man did not even occur to him [Tsar Nicholas I], and he would have been very surprised if anyone had condemned him for it. But, even though he was convinced that he had acted as he ought, he was left with some sort of unpleasant aftertaste, and, to stifle that feeling, he began thinking about something that always soothed him: about what a great man he was.

This praise of his strategic abilities was especially pleasing to [Tsar] Nicholas, because, though he was proud of his strategic abilities, at the bottom of his heart he was aware that he had none. And now he wanted to to hear more detailed praise of himself.

I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it's all dust and ashes.

At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now before his eyes and turned into something trivial and often disgusting. And the further he was from childhood, the nearer he got to the present day, the more trivial and dubious his pleasures appeared.

How can it be that I've never seen that lofty sky before? Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It's all vanity, it's all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing – that's all there is. But there isn't even that. There's nothing but stillness and peace. Thank God for that!

When you've grasped the fact that today or tomorrow you will die and nothing will be left of you, everything becomes so insignificant.

Se?am se da sam u jednom od stotine romana koje sam to leto pro?itao našao jednog preterano strasnog junaka s gustim obrvama i toliko sam zaželeo da li?im na njega po spoljašnjosti (moralno sam se ose?ao sasvim isti on), da sam posmatraju?i svoje obrve pred ogledalom došao na misao da ih malo podšišam, da bi mi porasle guš?e.

Said He, whoever exalts himself, shall be humbled, and he who is humbled shall become exalted.

Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new life.

He was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and nothing else.

How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God! . . .

It is no good deceiving oneself. It is all -- vanity! Happy is he who has not been born: death is better than life, and one must free oneself from life.