- “The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt trips and mysticized by yoga.” ― Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
- “By aggrandizing one’s own abilities and achievements, the grandiose person remains out of touch with who they truly are and as such, remains prone to crossing the boundaries of others.” ― Steven Franssen, Make Self-Knowledge Great Again
- “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, Both Flesh and Not: Essays
- “Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights they die.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Volume 2
- “The problem with imagining you are smarter than everyone else is you always discover you were wrong.” ― C.A.A. Savastano
- “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, The Picture of Dorian Gray
- “An arrogant man forever thinks he can do much more than he can.” ― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
- “No matter how beautiful a house is, without a solid foundation, it is all in vain.” ― Gift Gugu Mona
- “Social media has infected the world with a sickening virus called vanity.” ― Kellie Elmore
- “It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.” ― Sir Thomas More
- “Things change as minds change. Egos and prides vanish in the darkness of night. The false mask of vanity burns in the natural propensity to be happy. Who wants to be sad, after all?” ― Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
- “Nature wants to propogate our race. What else would it want. We, however, are vain and gullible enough to convince ourselves that it has our happiness in mind.” ― Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Love. The Legacy of Cain
- “If only we studied the stars as much as we study our own reflections.” ― Kamand Kojouri
- “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?” ― Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis
- “…most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.” ― Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way
- “If You Think that Everyone Swindles You, You are a Selfish Person” ― Vineet Raj Kapoor
- “Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasrue a humanity would never have come into existence–whose fundamental feeling is and remains that man is the free being in a world of unfreedom, the external miracle worker whether he does good or ill, the astonishing exception, the superbeast and almost-god, the meaning of creation which cannot be thought away, the solution of the cosmic riddle, the mighty ruler over nature and the despiser of it, the creature which calls its history world history!–Vanitas vanitatum homo.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader
- “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, A Streetcar Named Desire
- “Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
- “If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent.” ― Albert Camus, The Fall
- “That which attracts the world must please and pander to the self-importance of man. The world itself is a vain show, and likes its own. Consequently there is nothing which so carries the mass of men along with it as that which flatters the vanity of the human mind. It may assume the lowliest air, but sinful man seeks his own honour and present exaltation.” ― William Kelly
- “When you are in a room with Kurtis, whether its one or a hundred he is the only person that matters.” ― Dee Remy, There Once Was A Boy
- “Let nothing human be considered divine.” ― Marty Rubin
- “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, Both Flesh and Not: Essays
- “Most insensible, corrupt, cheap, disrespectful young girls run after bad, rude, cocky, nonsensical boys, but a mature, educated, thoughtful, virtuos lady opts for a wise, well breed, experienced, humble, modest gentleman.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
- “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, Tender is the Night & The Last Tycoon
- “No man voluntarily expresses his opinion without some intent to make a difference, and even if he does, he shouldn’t.” ― Criss Jami, Healology
- “Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.” ― Rousseau Jean-Jacques
- “Don’t try to create the world in your image-that was God’s mistake.” ― Marty Rubin
- “I am philosophical Christ; crucified on the cross of ignorance for the sake ofdivine vanity.” ― Kedar Joshi