Vanity Quotes

...but doth not the person who expends vast sums in the furniture of his house or the ornaments of his person, who consumes much time and employs great pains in dressing himself, or who thinks himself paid for self-denial, labour, or even villany, by a title or a ribbon, sacrifice as much to vanity as the poor wit who is desirous to read you his poem or his play?

~ Henry Fielding

Life is how you brew it. Wake up, you have a story to tell. Don't chase vain glory, your story will tell it. You owe it to yourself to write the lines of your story in the ink of purpose!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.

~ Criss Jami

Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, ever ordered a man to be killed simply for making hair oil, or ointment? We are told in the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, that the Lord commanded Moses to take myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil, and make a holy ointment for the purpose of anointing the tabernacle, tables, candlesticks and other utensils, as well as Aaron and his sons; saying, at the same time, that whosoever compounded any like it, or whoever put any of it on a stranger, should be put to death. In the same chapter, the Lord furnishes Moses with a recipe for making a perfume, saying, that whoever should make any which smelled like it, should be cut off from his people. This, to me, sounds so unreasonable that I cannot believe it. Why should an infinite God care whether mankind made ointments and perfumes like his or not? Why should the Creator of all things threaten to kill a priest who approached his altar without having washed his hands and feet? These commandments and these penalties would disgrace the vainest tyrant that ever sat, by chance, upon a throne.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Professing not to care is a primordial defense mechanism. Whenever a person finds oneself mired in failure and despondency, rebelling is a viable option to preserve false personal pride.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.

~ Joseph Conrad

If we want to live perfectly happy lives...we must drive out selfish character tendencies such as pride, ego, vanity, jealousy, lusts, envy and worry. When we learn to live selflessly, putting others before ourselves, committing to what is noble, right and good; treating others with love and compassion...that's when true happiness is experienced. A genuine focus on selflessness cures all and creates an environment for true growth. It's the secret to every great relationship. We gain...when we give up self. Sacrificing one's selfish characteristics through diligent thought, meditation, prayer and action gives life to true love and abounding joy.~Jason Versey

~ Jason Versey

Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

No one looks or feels attractive when angry.

~ Allan Lokos

Very often inertia, selfishness, and vanity play the greatest role in our trust in others; inertia when we prefer to trust somebody else, in order not to investigate, be vigilant, or act ourselves; selfishness when the desire to speak about our own affairs tempts us to confide in someone else; vanity when it concers something that we are proud of.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Why do women waste their time trying to convince their insecure family members and girlfriends that they are beautiful? Self esteem is not a beauty cream that you can rub all over them and see instant results. Instead, convince them they are not stupid. Every intelligent woman knows outward beauty is a nip, tuck, chemical peel or diet away. If you don't like it, fix it.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Some friends are like sunny days, with false flames, oozing from afar, coming near without a dime.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman's face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons.

~ Albert Camus

But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are.

~ Thomas Hardy

Every self-respecting act of persuasion must find appeal to curiosity, then to vanity, and lastly to kindness or remorse. Isabella looked down and slowly nodded.

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Don't worry about what others think about you, worry about what they think of themselves when they're with you.

~ Hilary Weeks

The complexity of your earthly array is not a guarantee for a truimphant eternity. The fact is that you need a simple life to go to heaven; not an excessively glittering body, shiny lips and charming face.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

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.

~ Dean Koontz

No man voluntarily expresses his opinion without some intent to make a difference, and even if he does, he shouldn't.

~ Criss Jami

A part of me genuinely wanted to be the worst because I was so sick of everyone fighting to be the best.

~ Criss Jami

You have to understand that only the very worst end up here: the ones whose anger made them kill, and who felt no sorrow or guilt after the act; those so obsessed with themselves that they turned their backs on the sufferings of others, and left them in pain; those whose greed meant that others starved and died. Such souls belong here, because they would find no peace elsewhere. In this place, they are understood. In this place, their faults have meaning. In this place, they belong.

~ John Connolly

When you watch Olympic athletes in competition, does your self-esteem plummet? Of course not. On the contrary, you feel wonder and admiration; you're inspired that such exceptional individuals exist. So why can't we feels the same way about beauty?

~ Ted Chiang

Self-respect is the very cement of character, without which character will not form nor stand; a personal ideal is the only possible foundation for self-respect, without which self-respect degenerates into vanity or conceit, or is lost entirely, its place being taken by worthlessness and the consciousness of worthlessness; and that is the end of all character. It is often said that if we do not respect ourselves no one else will respect us; this is rather a dangerous way to put it; let us rather say that if we are not worthy of our own respect we cannot claim the respect of others. True self-respect is a matter of being and never of mere seeming. As Paulsen says, It is vanity that desires first of all to be seen and admired, and then, if possible, really to be something; whereas proper self esteem desires first of all to be something, and' then, if possible, to have its worth recognized.

~ Edward O. Sisson

Beauty is nothing without brains & heart.

~ Karen Salmansohn

Self-deception and vanity are grievous sin. The ego is the cause of all human suffering. We suffer from life only when we fail to examine the cause of our sorrow. Letting go of destructive illusions and freeing oneself from egotism of self-pity enables a person to sense the rich intertexture of their inner world, which is the only facet of reality that we exercise exclusive dominion and control.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Confidence cannot escalate to arrogance, it only happens if the blood of pride is running through your veins.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

You have people out here trying to tell you to accept imperfections and that nobody is perfect (except for a dead/make-believe entity?) but if you are telling yourself that you are not perfect, aren't you downgrading your own character? Why would you keep telling yourself you are less than what you are? Why destroy your pride? People, raise your heads and gain some vanity. If you are the best in the world at what you do, and the best in the world in who you are, you are certainly perfect. The only way you are not perfect, is if you let everyone fool you into believing you are not perfect; that you are the same as everyone else - less than what you are and could be.

~ Lionel Suggs

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

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?

~ Dan Garfat-Pratt

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't.

~ Rabih Alameddine

It is easy to identify a shallow person by the attention he gives to what will do him absolutely no good.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world.

~ Alain De Botton

Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.

~ Sophocles

Don't be vain. What you look like doesn't matter. It's the deed that matters.

~ Sarah Addison Allen

If lighthouse becomes a burning candle, flickered upon ocean's insanity.Your sailing heart there anchors to handle the obsessed breeze towards sand dune's vanity.

~ Munia Khan

Most insensible, corrupt, cheap, disrespectful young girls run after bad, rude, cocky, nonsensical boys, but a mature, educated, thoughtful, virtuos lady opts for a wise, well breed, experienced, humble, modest gentleman.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Things change as minds change. Egos and prides vanish in the darkness of night. The false mask of vanity burns in the natural propensity to be happy. Who wants to be sad, after all?

~ Girdhar Joshi

Social media has infected the world with a sickening virus called vanity.

~ Kellie Elmore