Vanity is the excessive belief in one’s own abilities or attractiveness to others. Profoundly inspirational vanity quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Vanity Quotes
A big tree attracts the gale. ― Chinese Proverb
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us. ― Jane Austen
The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity. ― Miguel de Cervantes
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretense to make it live. ― Joseph Conrad
Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,–a long way leading nowhere. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Silly talk is a sign of shallowness. Foolish vanity is a mark of stupidity. ― Dr T.P.Chia
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this. ― Blaise Pascal
All that glitters is not gold. ― Latin Proverb
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
Vanity is the quicksand of reason. ― George Sand
Clean your finger before you point at my spots. ― Ben Franklin
Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see …each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition– all such distortions within our own egos– condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other’s naked hearts. ― Tennessee Williams
The surest cure for vanity is loneliness. ― Thomas Wolfe
Clothes don’t make the man. ― Unknown
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity. ― Dale Carnegie
Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. ― Benjamin Franklin
Clouds that thunder, do not always rain. ― Armenian
Lockhart’ll sign anything if it stands still long enough. ― J.K. Rowling
Empty vessels make the most sound. ― John Lydgate
Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. ― Jane Austen
Without this ridiculous vanity that takes the form of self-display, and is part of everything and everyone, we would see nothing, and nothing would exist. ― Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
Every ass loves to hear himself bray. ― English
A man’s vanity is more fragile that you might think. It’s easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference. ― Lisa Kleypas
Beauty’s sister is vanity, and its daughter lust. ― Author Unknown
His bark is worse than his bite. ― George Herbert
If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them. ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pride does not wish to owe, and vanity does not wish to pay. ― François de la Rochefoucauld
If someone gives you advice, it is in his own interest. ― Tunisian Proverb
Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you. ― Shannon L. Alder
Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it. ― John Adams
Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? ― William Makepeace Thackeray
There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth. ― Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. ― Chinese Proverb
Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it. ― Blaise Pascal
Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you. ― Miguel De Unamuno
No one can make us feel inferior without our consent. ― Eleanor Roosevelt
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain. ― Rousseau Jean-Jacques
To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life. ― Lord Chesterfield
Nobody’s perfect. ― Unknown
Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs! ― Diana Wynne Jones
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory. ― Joseph Conrad
The cat would eat fish but would not get her feet wet. ― Chaucer
Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I’m not ready for that yet. ― Margaret Atwood
She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance – a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. ― Jane Austen
We speak little if not egged on by vanity. ― François de la Rochefoucauld
The drum makes a great fuss because it is empty. ― Trinidadian
There’s something ugly about a pretty boy who knows he’s pretty and assumes everyone else knows it too. ― Nova Ren Suma
Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself. ― Blaise Pascal
The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity. ― Henri Bergson
The fly on the water buffalo’s back thinks he is taller than the water buffalo. ― Tagalog
I’m so pretty, it’s hard for me to think of myself as intelligent. ― Jim Butcher
If vanity does not overthrow all our virtues, at least she makes them totter. ― François de la Rochefoucauld
The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool. ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. ― Oscar Wilde
The way you think about yourself determines your reality. You are not being hurt by the way people think about you. Many of those people are a reflection of how you think about yourself. ― Shannon L. Alder
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty. ― Louis Kronenberger
Vanity blossoms but bares no fruit. ― Nepalese
I’m amazing and studly, but I have limits. ― Jim Butcher
But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality. ― Oscar Wilde
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast. ― Logan Pearsall Smith
Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself. ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
Vanity, thy name is vampire. ― Jim Butcher
Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man. ― Robert Louis Stevenson
We all know you’re beautiful, Scott. ― Becca Fitzpatrick
In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates. ― William Hazlit
What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own. ― François de la Rochefoucauld
There was never yet fair woman, but she made mouths in a glass. ― William Shakespeare
Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband’s. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn’t have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people’s standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question “How do I look? ― Haruki Murakami
In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity; On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools – that’s vanity. ― Robert Browning
They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid. ― Ambrose Bierce
Killing animals to make a fashion statement = a sickening + cold-blooded vanity. ― Jess C. Scott
He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him. ― Gustave Flaubert
Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company. ― François de la Rochefoucauld
Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity. ― Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine
You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. ― Ambrose Bierce
Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter, wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action: and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life. ― Benjamin Franklin
We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don’t care for. ― Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
Women that can work a camera with ease often work men just as effortlessly for both require the same commitment to vanity and manipulation. ― Tiffany Madison
“I’m brilliant as well as skilled,” he said modestly. “It’s a great burden, all of that on top of my angelic good looks. But I try to soldier on as best I can.” ― Jim Butcher
There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it. ― Mark Twain
She also considered very seriously what she would look like in a little cottage in the middle of the forest, dressed in a melancholy gray and holding communion only with the birds and trees; a life of retirement away from the vain world; a life into which no man came. It had its attractions, but she decided that gray did not suit her. ― A.A. Milne
I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly! ― Oscar Wilde
Vanity is often the unseen spur. ― William Makepeace Thackeray
Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous. ― Jim Butcher
We think we are being interesting to others when we are being interesting to ourselves. ― Jack Gardner
The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray, and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do? ― William Makepeace Thackeray
Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so; any more than vanity makes us witty. ― George Eliot
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired – even I who write this, and you who read this. ― Blaise Pascal
But who bothers looking beyond the surface? Who even knows anything about Cinderella’s Prince Charming – other than he’s a handsome prince? ― Mandy Hubbard
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one. ― Jerome K. Jerome
But I begin to fancy you don’t like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. ― Emily Brontë
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. ― Paulo Coelho
No matter what the circumstances, no man can completely escape from vanity. ― Shūsaku Endō
It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts. ― Nathaniel Hawthorne
What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own. ― Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity. ― George Eliot
Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone by displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: ‘I see your vanity through the hole in your mantle.’ Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty. ― Milan Kundera
One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about. ― Bertrand Russell
A woman who holds her head up too high, is trying to breathe from her own pollution. ― Suzy Kassem
The luxury of age was the giving up of vanity. ― Colum McCann
Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity. ― J. P. Vinluca
The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity. ― Friedrich Nietzsche
Never trust someone that claims they care nothing of what society thinks of them. Instead of conquering obstacles, they simply pretend they don’t exist. ― Tiffany Madison
One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity. ― Friedrich Nietzsche
Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense. ― Julian Casablancas
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
I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round. ― Muhammad Ali
You are vain and wicked- as a genius should be. ― Günter Grass
It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best. ― Thomas More
It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. ― Edith Wharton
We say little if not egged on by vanity. ― Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Who would you impress if the world was blind? ― Shannon L. Alder
La vanidad se encuentra en los lugares más inesperados: al lado de la bondad, de la abnegación, de la generosidad. ― Ernesto Sábato
Every men wanted to be his friend and every woman wanted to be in his bed ― Dee Remy
It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish. ― Luc de Clapier de Vauvanargues
The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked. ― Thomas More
As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate. ― Criss Jami
Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One’s life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic. ― Michael Ayrton
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers. ― Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. ― Oscar Wilde
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself. ― Anthony Trollope
But if we reason it out simply and not try to be one bit fancy, then what sort of pride can you possibly take or what’s the sense of ever having it, if man is poorly put together as a physiological type and if the enormous majority of the human race is brutal, stupid, and profoundly unhappy? ― Anton Chekhov
You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing— your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal. ― David Foster Wallace
If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity. But I mean by ‘vanity’ only that they appreciate their own worth. Without this kind of vanity, they would not be great. And with vanity alone, of course, a man is nothing. ― Yousef Karsh
Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies. ― Dejan Stojanovic
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
It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts. ― Nathaniel Hawthorne
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
Mirrors are dangerous things. They can just as easily tell us what we don’t like as what we do. Yet in truth you can’t tell anything from a reflection, as a reflection is actually empty. ― Susie Staplehurst
You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods. ― Robert Schumann
Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It’s a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is. ― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War
I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself. ― Oscar Wilde
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
The stupidest people suddenly become a little cleverer when we learn that they think well of us. ― Jude Morgan
Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others. ― Hugh Blair
I never met a woman that didn’t know if she was good-looking or not without being told, and some of them give themselves credit for more than they’ve got. ― Tennessee Williams
However anxious one is to reach one’s goal, one can excuse delays on the route when these are caused by ovations. ― Alexandre Dumas
When you are in a room with Kurtis, whether its one or a hundred he is the only person that matters. ― Dee Remy
Quotes About Vanity And Narcissism
What’s so wrong with vanity? It’s different from narcissism, you know? It’s not about admiring yourself-it’s about taking pride in your appearance. Tom Ford
But that’s the thing about narcissists. They can try to fool you, with all their heart, but in the end, they’re just fooling themselves. Ellie Fox
Bodybuilding is men on a stage in their underwear wearing brown paint showing other men their muscles. It is training for appearance only, and at the contest level requires a degree of vanity, narcissism, and self-absorption that I find distasteful and odd. Mark Rippetoe
When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you. The misinformation will feel unfair, but you stay above it, trusting that other people will eventually see the truth just like you did.” – Jill Blakeway
Culture of life is really important for a country to have if it’s going to be a hospitable society. George W. Bush
When we meet and fall into the gravitational pull of a narcissist, we are entering a significant life lesson that involves learning how to create boundaries, self-respect, and resilience. Through trial and error (and a lot of pain), our connection with narcissists teaches us the necessary lessons we need to become mature empaths. Mateo Sol
In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it-all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27). Albert C. Barnes
Narcissistic love is riding on the rollercoaster of disaster filled with a heart full of tears. Sheree Griffin
My vanity and narcissism will never let me go too far. Jay Baruchel
Since narcissists deep down feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. M. Scott Peck
Social Media is a shared delusion of grandeur. Michael P. Naughton
A man who loves others based solely on how they make him feel, or what they do for him, is really not loving others at all — but loving only himself. Criss Jami
Grandiosity is when we are wrapped up in winning life’s false contest. This happens only when we live to impress the abusive parents in our heads, not when we are soberly and philosophically working to advance civilization. Steven Franssen
Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own. Rollo May
