Quotes About Vanity

The continual emotion that is felt in the theater excites us, enervates us, enfeebles us, and makes us less able to resist our passions. And the sterile interest taken in virtue serves only to satisfy our vanity without obliging us to practice it.

le luxe est l'effet des richesses, ou il les rend nécessaires; il corrompt à la fois le riche et le pauvre, l'un par la possession, l'autre par la convoitise; il vend la patrie à la mollesse, à la vanité; il ôte à l'Etat tous ses citoyens pour les asservir les uns aux autres, et tous à l'opinion.

Could integrity be the daughter of ignorance? Could knowledge and virtue be incompatible? What consequences could we not draw from these opinions? But to reconcile these apparent contradictions, it is necessary only to examine closely the vanity and the emptiness of those proud titles which dazzle us and which we hand out so gratuitously to human learning.

Anny hasn't changed her letter paper, I wonder if she still buys it at the little stationer's in Piccadilly. I think that she has also kept her coiffure, her heavy blonde locks she didn't want to cut. She must struggle patiently in front of mirrors to save her face: it isn't vanity or fear of growing old; she wants to stay as she is, just as she is. Perhaps this is what I liked best in her, this austere loyalty to her most insignificant features.

Just looking at all the faces here reminds me of some of the great work that was done this year . . . by cosmetic surgeons.

I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

People in the land of LaLa look like expensive wax fruit. And they work hard to achieve that look.

A recurring image in the work of the Rossetti circle was that of a woman absorbed in self-contemplation, gazing into a mirror or combing her hair.

Most times with vanity projects, publishers don't believe in the work; they just believe in the name.

Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.

My body looks like 30 but my face looks like 50. But I cannot walk bare-chested in the streets. I like to do these movies to challenge myself physically.

Working out has always been a stress reliever for me. I don't know if it's so much vanity as it more just keeps my mind from going crazy.

Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.

Strip makeup lights just don't give you a fighting chance no matter how good looking you are. Light sconces that flank the mirror illuminate your entire face evenly.

One day I'll do a Dorian Gray, and there will be a picture in the attic. I'll look like Helen Daniels from 'Neighbours' after her stroke.

Award shows in general are just lame excuses to stroke the egos of millionaires, but the 'ESPY's' are an especially embarrassing example.

I feel old when I see mousse in my opponent's hair.

Somebody ought to tell him his ambition is showing.

Get rid of pride, and riches will do no harm.

Roy: The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through whatever we might become. All else is vanity.

Her mouth was smeared with lipstick and her throat swung bagged and cross-hatched from a wrinkled knob of chin flanked by rouged jowls loosely depending from lumpy cheekbones. Powerful gusts of stale scent emanated from the crannies of her person; the little dog was curled in her lap like a hairy tumor.

We are a vain, greedy, and foolish people. We squander and spoil, befoul and defile. We take for granted the beauties and bounties of nature, but in the end nature will out. We will dry up or smoke out or choke on our own waste. In the end we will pay the ultimate price.

Who cares for your fashions and your wars and your causes? I will shortly be gone and I have seen many fashions come and go and many causes so passionately defended only to be forgotten.

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.