Conceit Quotes - Page 4

• It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

  Augustus William Hare

  Mother, Baby, Tired

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• Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

  Tennessee Williams

  Success, Congratulations, Artist

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• If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Believe, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.32, Ballantine Books

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• Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.

  Emma Goldman

  Patriotic, Arrogance, Patriotism

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.97, Library of Alexandria

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• It is the utterly destructive quality. When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in mirrors and buys things to deck itself out in. But that is merely personal conceit. Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable.

  Josephine Tey

  Real, Thinking, Vanity

  Josephine Tey (1952). “The singing sands”, Vintage

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• Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Law, Broken, Sake

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• The empty vessel giveth a greater sound than the full barrel.

  John Lyly

  Ignorance, Empty Vessels, Sound

  John Lyly, Leah Scragg (2003). “John Lyly 'Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit' and 'Euphues and His England': An Annotated, Modern-Spelling Edition”, p.42, Manchester University Press

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• The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.

  Aesop

  Wisdom, Bullying, Conceited

  Aesop (2009). “Aesop's Fables”, p.251, The Floating Press

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• It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.

  Aristotle

  Ignorance, Men, Self

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• [Repentance] means unlearning all the self-conceit and self -will that we have been training ourselves into... It means killing part of yourself, under-going a kind of death.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Self, Training

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• Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing. The central feature of pride is enmity - enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Heart, Pride, Thinking

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• Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Forfeit, Ability, Awe

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”, p.78, Macmillan

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• Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd.

  Alexander Pope

  Expression, Purple, Style

  Alexander Pope (1873). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope Edited with Notes and Introductory Memoir by Adolphus William Ward”, p.57

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• We would seldom be deceived by flattery, did our own conceit not promote the delusion.

  Norm MacDonald

  Flattery, Delusion, Deceived

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• We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

  William Hazlitt

  Conceited, Self, Bears

  William Hazlitt, William Ernest Henley (1902). “The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft. Liber amoris. Characteristics”

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• Above all, you must fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart.

  Abraham Cahan

  Heart, Fighting, Envy

  Abraham Cahan (2013). “The Rise of David Levinsky”, p.43, Courier Corporation

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• Some who are far from atheists, may make themselves merry with that conceit of thousands of spirits dancing at once upon a needle's point.

  Ralph Cudworth

  Atheist, Dancing, May

  Ralph Cudworth (1845). “The True Intellectual System of the Universe: Wherein All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted, and Its Impossibility Demonstrated : with a Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality”, p.251

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• Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.

  Willa Cather

  Forgiveness, Fall, Dark

  Willa Cather (1938). “The novels and stories of Willa Cather ...”

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• What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

  Epictetus

  Business, Philosophy, Learning

  "Discourses". Book by Epictetus. Book II, Chapter 17,

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• Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Philosophical, Frivolity

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• The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit.

  William H. Seward

  Class, Southern, Slave

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• Self-esteem is different than conceit. Conceit is the weirdest disease in the world. It makes everyone sick except the one who has it.

  Hartman Rector, Jr.

  Self Esteem, Sick, Different

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• Self-conceit may lead to self destruction.

  Aesop

  Fear, Conceited, Self

  Aesop (2015). “Aesop's Fables”, p.23, Pelekanos Books

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• It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life.

  Augustus Hare

  Inspiring, Mothers Day, Baby

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• Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

  Francis Bacon

  Real, Conceited, Use

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