Vanity Quotes

A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman.

Samuel Johnson

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

John Ruskin

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

Jane Austen

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Jonathan Swift

Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.

Samuel Johnson

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from which storms burst forth when one makes a puncture in it.

Source Unknown

Conceit is a queer disease -- it makes everyone Sick except the person who has it.

Source Unknown

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

What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it's easy to have glory without power.

Bertrand Russell

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Gracious Providence, to whom I owe all my powers, why didst thou not withhold some of those blessings I possess, and substitute in their place a feeling of self-confidence and contentment?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.

Thomas Szasz

Lockhart'll sign anything if it stands still long enough.

J.K. Rowling

The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny

Mark Twain

I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.

Ben Hecht

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

Elizabeth Bowen

Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.

Marcus Tullius Cicero