The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked.

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...

I was sorry for her; I was amazed, disgusted at her heartless vanity; I wondered why so much beauty should be given to those who made so bad a use of it, and denied to...

Trying to be offensive for the sole purpose of being offensive should always deem one the least offensive of offenders.

In irgendeinem abgelegenen Winkel des in zahllosen Sonnensystemen flimmernd ausgegossenen Weltalls, gab es einmal ein Gestirn, auf dem kluge Tiere das Erkennen erfanden. Es war die hochmütigste und verlogenste Minute der ‘Weltgeschichte’: aber doch nur...

Ainsi dans le faste ostenstatoire d’une dernière cérémonie, le bourgeois, laissant à ses fils un héritage plus riche que celui qu’il a reçu de son père, quite ce monde où il a conu au moins...

It’s always the ‘others’ who are deceived.

Then the cow asked:”What is a mirror?””It is a hole in the wall,” said the cat. “You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal...

I had only four hairs worth shaving, but I managed to inflict five cuts attempting to remove them.

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?

E un fenomen foarte des înt lnit. Dacă văd vreodată pe cineva care pare să aibă o părere foarte bună despre sine și se laudă fără încetare, știu de fiecare dată că undeva există un...

The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to ‘one-upping’ his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no...

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.

Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity.

Pampered vanity is a better thing perhaps than starved pride.

Im Grunde sind diese Gedanken ganz ohne Bedeutung. Die Dingen geschehen eben und ich suche, wie Millionen Menschen vor mir, in ihnen einen Sinn, weil meine Eitelkeit nicht gestatten will, zuzugeben, daß der ganze Sinn...

Life may be scaryBut it’s only temporary.And this is perhaps the most comforting conclusion to be reached if one discounts the possibility of meaning.

Who would you impress if the world was blind?

Smile is the vainest thing you can wear without costing you anything

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...

We named the bar The Bar. “People will think we’re ironic instead of creatively bankrupt,” my sister reasoned.Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers – that the name was a joke no one...

Vanity might be a “sin” according to some lights, but he thought in measured doses it was one of life’s allowable simple pleasures. It helped everyone get through their days.

I’m so pretty, it’s hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.

It can’t come down to a question of personal vanity.

Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?

Admiring and a little overwhelmed by the simple opulence of the limousine’s interior, she shook snowflakes from her scarf and tresses, hoping the rare effort she had put into doing her hair was not entirely...

He wil sooner lose his best friend, then his least jest.

What good is there in being blind, you ask? Well, maybe it’s to see the beauty on the inside without being vainly distracted, or superficially blinded, by the ugly on the outside.

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:...

Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Beware of that demon called ‘Changing The World’.

And in the sin of wantingalways to be right, the punishmentis knowing it isn’t possible.

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,...

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...

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...

But I feel vanity is a part of art and the non-vain are really non-artistic.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of “much cleverer” people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to...

We must remember that possession of physical beauty can easily weaken the moral faculty.

Vanity and superficiality, placed deliberately on display, can be a burden; take this nonsense overboard.

But how can anyone put a bridle on man’s vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud?

Agatha: “If you say anything smug or stuck-up or shallow, I’ll have Reaper follow you home.”Sophie: “But then I can’t talk!

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.

We all know you’re beautiful, Scott.

The vanity of Eve, that desire to exercise power, to seduce, to drag down!

Will you destroy something in order to make it beautiful?Will you avoid something in order to fall in love with it?Will you sacrifice something just so that you get it?Will you maintain distance from someone...

Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.

All is vanity, and discovering it – the greatest vanity

The stupidest people suddenly become a little cleverer when we learn that they think well of us

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.