Quotes About Vanity

For Albuquerque, everything was at stake. All the principal figures of the Indian administration were besieged in the Mandovi in the rain, with the shots of the enemy crashing in; the men and their captains cursed him for the lack of food, for his obstinacy, his obsessiveness, his vanity. All he had was his belief in a certain strategic vision, encouraging words, and the severities of discipline. It was perhaps his supreme moment of crisis.

Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to foretell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no foresight in what concerns themselves.

Much self-condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark, 'One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man'. In ancient Athens, when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by exclaiming, 'Your vanity shows forth from every whole in your coat'.

The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted.

I knew I was going bald when it was taking longer and longer to wash my face.

The best way to make a sort of peace, a fragile armistice to be sure, but precious all the same, with men, officers or not, is to let them bask and wallow in childish self-glorification. There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and formenost vain. The role of admiring doormat is about the only one that one man is glad to tolerate in another. With these soldiers I had no need to tax my imagination.

The soul is the body's vanity and pleasure as long as the body's in good health, but it's also the urge to escape from the body as soon as the body is sick or things go badly.

Even memories have their youth … When you let them grow old, they turn into revolting phantoms dripping with selfishness, vanity, and lies … They rot like apples

After conscientiously tasting fritters every day for a month Lola had put on two pounds! Her little belt bore witness to the disaster, she found herself obliged to move on to the next notch. She burst into tears.

Invoking posterity is like making speeches to worms.

The soul is the body's vanity and pleasure as long as the body's in good health, but it's also the urge to escape from the body as soon as the body is sick or things are going badly.

Il n'y a pas de vanité intelligente.

There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.

L'âme, c'est la vanité et le plaisir du corps tant qu'il est bien portant, mais c'est aussi l'envie d'en sortir, du corps, dès qu'il est malade ou que les choses tournent mal.

N'importe quoi dans la vanité c'est mieux que rien

This singularity of meaning--I was my face, I was ugliness--though sometimes unbearable, also offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life. Everything led to it, everything receded from it--my face as personal vanishing point.

It's not vanity to know your own good points. It would just be stupidity if you didn't; It's only vanity when you get puffed up about them.

El orgullo va delante de la destrucción, y un espíritu altanero, delante de una caída»

We all grasp on to a single idea of ourselves, the way aging people dye their hair. It's no matter that this dye doesn't fool you. My lady, you don't dye your hair to decieve other people, or to fool yourself, but rather to cheat your image in your mirror a little.

haven't you yet perceived that it isn't possible to live in front of a mirror which not only freezes us with the image of ourselves, but throws our likeness back at us with a horrible grimace?

For you can only know yourself when you strike an attitude: a statue: not alive. When one is alive, one lives and does not see himself. To know one's self is to die. The reason you spend so much time looking at yourself in that mirror, in all mirrors, is that you are not alive; you do not know how to live, you cannot or do not want to live. You want too much to know yourself; and meanwhile, you are not living.

Ed ecco perché lui se ne stava tutto il giorno in campagna. Solo, tra gli alberi e con la distesa sterminata del mare sotto gli occhi, come da un'infinita lontananza, nel fruscio lungo e lieve di quegli alberi, nel borboglio cupo e lento di quel mare s'era abituato a sentire la vanità di tutto e il tedio angoscioso della vita.

se un rosignolo dà via le penne della coda, può dire: mi resta il dono del canto; ma se le fate dar via a un pavone, le penne della coda, che gli resta?

But this is what makes us lords of the earth, it is this power to restore the past, to touch the instability of our impressions and the vanity of our affections.