Vanity Quotes

Clichés so often befall vain people.

~ Ann Beattie

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I would have chosen any other than this for my prison. A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it is beautiful.

~ Peter S. Beagle

You'll forgive the flowery talk, won't you? Our family does so love to be told they are beautiful. Vanity is an old and venerable habit.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors æons ago.

~ Olaf Stapledon

I'm not good, of course; I wouldn't give a fig to be good. So it's not vanity. It's on a far grander scale; a splendid selfishness, - authorized, too; and papa and mamma brought me up to worship beauty, -and there's the fifth commandment, you know.

~ Harriet Prescott Spofford

All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you.

~ J.d. Salinger

I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.

~ Lionel Shriver

[He] didn’t like to think of himself as vain, but there were definitely times when he wished there was someone on hand to take his photograph.

~ David Nicholls

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

~ Jeff Lindsay

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it; for, however absurd it may be thought to boast an honour by an act which shows that it was conferred without merit, yet most men seem rather inclined to confess the want of virtue than of importance.

~ Samuel Johnson

What a situation!' cried Miss Squeers; '...What is the reason that men fall in love with me, whether I like it or not, and desert their chosen intendeds for my sake?' 'Because they can't help it, miss,' replied the girl; 'the reason's plain.' (If Miss Squeers were the reason, it was very plain.)

~ Charles Dickens

I hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to his portrait. Mr. Clive himself, let that painter be assured, will not be too well pleased if his countenance and figure do not receive proper attention.

~ William Makepeace Thackeray

One quick glance in the mirror is enough for a lifetime.

~ Marty Rubin

Cole was meticulous to a fault, office scuttlebut had it that he never went out in public without first having his shoelaces ironed.

~ Robert Littell

Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment

~ Michel De Montaigne

It is vanity to chase the whirlwind.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Blacheville smiles with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity is tickled

~ Victor Hugo

Of all the weaknesses that beset a man, vanity is the most deadly. For through vanity can a wise man turn to folly.

~ Raymond E. Feist

You can never see yourself the way you are to someone else - to a man looking at you, from behind, when you don't know - because in a mirror your own head is always cranked around over your shoulder. A coy, inviting pose. You can hold up another mirror to see the back view, but then what you see is what so many painters have loved to paint - Woman Looking In Mirror, said to be an allegory of vanity. Though it is unlikely to be vanity, but the reverse: a search for flaws. What is it about me? can so easily be construed as What is wrong with me?

~ Margaret Atwood

Vanity dulls the senses.

~ Nadja Sam

Vanity is a defensive quality. it contains an element of fear.

~ Don Delillo

Her eyes are shockingly black - shocking not because black eyes are particularly rare, but because she's wearing smoky gray eyeshadow and dark eyeliner to accentuate them further. Makeup, while the world is ending.

~ N.k. Jemisin

Those who are vain have little ability to feel grateful.

~ Mark Helprin

I just don't get it. You've been in love with this bloke since you were a kid, and he's never once got his hair cut short enough that it doesn't poke him in the damn eye.

~ Kristina Adams

The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone. Instead of growing more sensible in death, the inhabitants of the cemetery were sillier than they had been in life.

~ Milan Kundera

Sorry we’re late. Liam had to make sure his hair fell just right.

~ Kristina Adams

Why do you chase the wind?

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Everyone thinks they're living in end times. Everyone thinks their life is meaningless. It makes vanity easy.

~ Matt Spire

She [Mrs. Badger] was surrounded in the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little, playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little, reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little. She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed, and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there was any harm in it.

~ Charles Dickens

He [Old Mr. Turveydrop] was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear.

~ Charles Dickens

But that, in shutting out the light of day, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker, I knew equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?

~ Charles Dickens

Gertrude, behind her, again had just one... That one little feather she had as a starter. But now that's enough, because now she is smarter.

~ Dr. Seuss

he talked until their food arrived, littering his chat with references to ‘ninety k’ and ‘a quarter of a mill’, and every sentence was angled, like a mirror, to show him in the best possible light: his cleverness, his quick thinking, his besting of slower, stupider yet more senior colleagues...

~ Robert Galbraith

Vain until the bitter end.

~ Sarah J. Maas

Doesn't matter how pretty you are. What's important is how pretty you feel. No one feels pretty when they hear no often enough.

~ Jim Butcher

I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egoist… he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love… poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.

~ Truman Capote

Like all vain men, he had moments of unreasonable confidence.

~ Warren Eyster

He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this. --from a Difference in Temperament

~ Daphne Du Maurier

Every teacher are once a student, Every professional are once an amateur, Every rich are once a poor, Every motorist are once a learner, Every friend are once a stranger, Every ex are once a lover, Every today are once a tomorrow, Every emigrate are once a citizen, Every dead are once alive, Every house are once a land, Every super star are once an upcoming, Every winner are once a dreamer and every start always have an end. Stay humble and Positive, afterall life is vanity- Goals Rider

~ Goals Rider