Vanity Quotes - Page 40

• If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Teenage, Talking, People

  FaceBook post by Kurt Vonnegut from Nov 08, 2015

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• To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Writing, Men, Preoccupation

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• How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.

  Toni Morrison

  Giving Up, Tails, Stuff

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

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• It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Patriotic, Divorce

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.373, Wildside Press LLC

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• But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human illusions, an empty place reclaimed by the weather where a woman plays an organ to stop the wind's whining and an old man plays ball with a dog named Duke. I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody asked me to stay.

  Joan Didion

  Dog, Men, Wind

  Joan Didion (1968). “Slouching towards Bethlehem”

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• From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be - Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity - to feel these things and know them is to conquer them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Past, Men, Soul

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.52, Booklassic

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• --nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

  Philip Roth

  Fate, Fool, Shameless

  Philip Roth (2004). “The Plot Against America: A Novel”, p.213, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.

  Thomas Paine

  Vexation, Spirit, Impossible

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Collected Writings”, p.771, Library of America

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• And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence

  Bertrand Russell

  Death, God, Spiritual

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.554, Psychology Press

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• A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists... that thier success is based on literary merit -- that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity.

  Stephen King

  Believe, Greatness, Ideas

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• When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death: "Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said. . . yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead. . . -Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair: "Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there". . . So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were Beauty for an afternoon.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Wise, Art, Eye

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “This Side of Paradise”, p.184, Xist Publishing

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• There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do? Morrie Schwartz

  Mitch Albom

  Regret, Pride, Vengeance

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• Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  War, Kissing, First Love

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• It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.

  Jane Austen

  Mean, Men, Doe

  Jane Austen (1853). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.120

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• guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.

  Toni Morrison

  Skins, News, Dirt

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

  Jane Austen

  Affection, Blind, Pride And Prejudice Book

  Jane Austen (2005). “Jane Austen: 8 Books in 1”, p.150, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• Vanity is so superficial. It doesn't provide the grounds for progress.

  Ishmael Butler

  Progress, Superficial

  "Inhabiting Shabazz Palaces". Interview with Aly Comingore, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 29, 2014.

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• I've done films where you have to get in shape for purely vanity reasons, when you read a script, turn to page 87 and it says: "Rips his shirt off and casually throws it onto chair" - and you're going to go to the gym the next day because nobody wants to see your big fat arse out there taking your shirt off!

  Bruce Willis

  Rip, Next Day, Done

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Live according to the ethics of excellence, and you can always stand proud. Pride - not vanity, but dignity and self-respect - should carry a lot of weight in helping you make decisions. Let pride help you decide.

  Price Pritchett

  Pride, Self, Decision

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• Every sinew in my body came together in one perfect whole. But those who have ever experienced that feeling, and it doesn't happen very often, will tell you it's in a whole other place of experience from the usual ego or vanity that drives my game. So I'm not afraid to own it for what it was.

  Cooper Cronk

  Rugby League, Games, Perfect

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• You can't control how you are perceived, and you are a fool if you waste any energy trying to do so. Vanity will get you nowhere.

  Dave Schulthise

  Stupid, Trying, Energy

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• It is thus religion infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity and fanaticism: if he has a heated imagination it drives him on to fury; if he has activity, it makes him a madman, who is frequently as cruel to himself, as he is dangerous and incommodious to others: if, on the contrary, he be phlegmatic or of a slothful habit, he becomes melancholy and is useless to society.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Atheist, Men, Imagination

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• Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Girl, Passion, Heart

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.256

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• Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession.

  John Donne

  Men, Sin, Christ

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• Aside from my love of animation, as an actor I like the total lack of vanity in terms of not having to worry at all about your appearance. You don't have to deal with hair or makeup or wardrobe.

  Justin Long

  Makeup, Hair, Worry

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