Vanity Quotations

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).

I left Gorbachev's office thinking that everything about him was outsized: his achievements, his mistakes, and, now, his vanity and bitterness.

I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.

The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim of superior sensitivity and morality.

Under all wrongdoing lies personal vanity or the feeling that we are endowed and privileged beyond our fellows.

So when I look in the mirror I'm driven by both vanity and fear.

When you have a lot of success you don't need vanity any more.

The harming of animals for any reason is shameful, but torturing them for mere vanity is senseless. Slaughtering animals for their fur or harming them for cosmetic purposes is disgusting and not worth the perfect shade of lipstick.

Vanity is a vital aid to nature: completely and absolutely necessary to life. It is one of nature's ways to bind you to the earth.

There's a little vanity chair that Charlie gave me the first Christmas we knew each other. I'll not be parting with that, nor our bed - the four-poster - I'll be needing that to die in.

I have vanity and greed enough for one person. But at the same time, I feel in my bones you lose a lot of life's value if you don't see yourself as a member of the family of man.

Samuel Johnson called it the vanity of human wishes, and Buddhists talk about the endless cycle of desire. Social psychologists say we get trapped on a hedonic treadmill. What they all mean is that we wish, plan and work for things that we think will make us happy, but when we finally get them, we aren't nearly as happy as we thought we'd be.

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

I was trying to be 27 at age 47, but God had to get rid of my vanity. I had trouble letting go of the old Lex physically. My human fleshly nature didn't want to let go of what had come to be billed as 'The Total Package.' I guess God had to help me get rid of the last remnant of that vanity and pride.

The whole vanity aspect of building up different muscles - I have no interest.

It's not vanity to feel you have a right to be beautiful. Women are taught to feel we're not good enough, that we must live up to someone else's standards. But my aim is to cherish myself as I am.

There's nothing like getting yourself into character and seeing a different person. It really wears on your vanity.

Theres nothing so unattractive as vanity... particularly male vanity.

Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

In the vanity of self-consciousness one feels at a long remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness of a simple and pure heart.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity.

Why is there such vanity about hair? I make a point to bathe. I worry about boogers in my nose, and I ask the makeup artist to cover up my pimples, but beyond that, I try not to be too vain.

She gave up beauty in her tender youth, gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways; she covered up her eyes lest they should gaze on vanity, and chose the bitter truth.

When you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you - the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it's also a thrill. That's what I found weird.

The same way that I know that I'll never do a movie as good or as celebrated as 'Forrest Gump,' I know that I'll never do a movie as bad as 'Bonfire of the Vanities.'

Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man's desire and vanity, will abound in those that will foment them.

There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.

Doing press is like eating at McDonald's: while it's going on it's vaguely enjoyable - you're seduced by your own vanity and taking yourself rather seriously - but immediately afterwards you feel sick.

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.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.

At my funeral, if one said, 'Nick was a generous person,' trust me I won't be doing cartwheels in my coffin. Recognition from people is never and never will be a goal. Some people strive for that respect or honor. Living a life to just reach for the position and status is vanity and sin.

My vanity is not remotely physical, it is cerebral. I suppose feeling self-conscious might be a form of vanity, though.

Vanity is not having facelifts if you're ugly. Those people who say: 'Oh, I'd never dream of having anything done!' That's rude. It's rude, to other people, to not try and look your best; to not try and stir things up, to not reinvent... or just invent... it's one's duty to not get stuffy.

It's obvious nonsense, but it makes nice people feel good about themselves to do their bit for the planet. It's vanity of a grotesque kind to believe that mankind, and our 'carbon footprint', has more impact on the future of Earth than Nature, which bends our planet to its will, as it sees fit.

The unforgivable political sin is vanity; the killer diet is sour grapes.

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.

Okay, sense of humor: plus one. Being able to laugh at yourself: plus one. Being able to laugh at other people without being mean: plus one. Vanity: minus one.

Vanity metrics are the numbers you want to publish on TechCrunch to make your competitors feel bad.

To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.

Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.

Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.

But, after all, we are a young nation, and vanity is a fault of youth.

The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead

My most treasured item is the brown leather bag that my mum bought me from a little Italian shop for my 21st. It's supposed to be a vanity bag, but I use it as a handbag.

Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.

My vanity is not dead. I laugh when I see pictures of myself as I am now-maybe so I won't cry, but just because it is really funny how much I've changed.

The love of one's own sex is precious, for it is neither provoked by vanity nor retained by flattery; it is genuine and sincere.

If I ever had any vanity, then I definitely lost it by being on television. It doesn't do you any favours in terms of showing you what you look like and what your emotions are.

My greatest vanity is my skin. It is the colour of gingerbread and, thanks to my mother's genes, smooth and mostly blemish-free.

I do think about aging. I have those moments of panic and vanity, but life keeps getting better, so you can't worry about it too much.

I think the industry is oblivious to the fact that most people listen to all kinds of stuff. I personally don't know of anyone who listens to only one genre of music. It's vanity because no one does.

Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that.

I'm not invited to the Vanity Fair dinner where they watch the Oscars - or even the Oscars themselves - so I sit at home and watch it with a bunch of close friends.

In our game, it's your vanity that keeps you in shape. I've got a little gym set up, and I ride a single-speed bike up the hills behind my house. Lately I've been kind of a slacker. Usually it's a film role that makes me start getting in shape. Between roles, I try to do a little maintenance, but I'm not a workout fanatic at all.

The whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it's total crap to pretend it's not.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.

It's very nice to be in a show where your vanity is completely out of the picture.

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

A brushstroke of vanity is good to add into the mix, to balance your timidity. We're all blessed with a lot of timidity and a lot of worry and anxiety, and vanity is a good antidote.

How vain, without the merit, is the name.

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.

There is something wrong about being photographed that has nothing to do with vanity.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?

They said this is Vanity Fair, and I said, Oh, I already take the magazine. They said Annie Leibovitz wants to take your picture and I thought, How nice!

If I have one vanity wish, it would be to direct. It's the only thing I haven't done yet that I would like to.

For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on the other. The choice is between the nullity and vanity of our first efforts, and the developing of a sense of idiom, form, structure, metre, rhythm, line - all the fundamental characteristics of this verbal art.

I believe firmly that it was the Almighty's goodness, to check my consummate vanity.

I am simply not such a slave to my vanity, and I don't want to be, because as you get older you really have to start accepting the inevitable.

I primarily have had my career in comedy, and that is something that I have never been too concerned about because I know there is really no room for vanity in comedy. Comedy comes from pain and it is a lot easier to empathize with somebody who is out of shape.

'Snow White' is an old fairy tale, so obviously the idea of vanity and obsession with youth is long-standing. With today's science, people have become crazy with trying to move their face around. It's bizarre.

My vanity is I'm terribly romantic! But being married is lovely.

Any fear of aging, I think, is simply vanity.

I think it's good that people value their bodies and take care of them. I think if you cross the line and begin using your body as an asset or as an extension of your vanity, you've gone too far.

My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.

If I ever had any vanity, then I definitely lost it by being on television.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

The knowledge of yourself will preserve you from vanity.

A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice.

Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington.

The day when a sportsman stops thinking above all else of the happiness in his own effort and the intoxication of the power and physical balance he derives from it, the day when he lets considerations of vanity or interest take over, on this day his ideal will die.

You know, at 35 or at 38 or 40 you really start to see what your body could look like if you just don't do anything all winter long. So that's another motivating factor, our vanity.

It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish.

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

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'

I was really excited to get to shave my head - it's something I'd wanted to do for a while and now I had a good excuse. It was nice to shed that level of vanity.

You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug store.

I imagine my children are going to save me from my vanity and be my passion and fill whatever fears I have of the amazing time I'm having right now being gone.

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

I think male actors get confused by their own vanity.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don't know how to manage it.

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

We really care about photography at Vanity Fair.

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own.

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.