vanity

Vanity is a defensive quality. it contains an element of fear.

he talked until their food arrived, littering his chat with references to __inety k_ and __ quarter of a mill_, and every sentence was angled, like a mirror, to show him in the best possible light: his cleverness, his quick thinking, his besting of slower, stupider yet more senior colleagues...

But who bothers looking beyond the surface? Who even knows anything about Cinderella's Prince Charming - other than he's a handsome prince?

One quick glance in the mirror is enough for a lifetime.

The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

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 be original. But this class of person, as we have observed above, is far less happy than the first. The difficulty is that the intelligent "ordinary" man, even if he does imagine himself at times (and perhaps all his life) a person of genius and originality, nevertheless retains within his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes leads the intelligent man in the end to absolute despair. If he does yield in this belief, he is still completely poisoned with inward-driven vanity.

He [Old Mr. Turveydrop] was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear.

However anxious one is to reach one__ goal, one can excuse delays on the route when these are caused by ovations.

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.

How much vanity must be concealed _ not too effectively at that _ in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?

It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect _ a process which occurs in every dialectical victory _ you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one__ own advantage. _ Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such phrases as __eath before dishonour,_ and so on.

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.

If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary__ right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.

Every teacher are once a student, Every professional are once an amateur, Every rich are once a poor, Every motorist are once a learner, Every friend are once a stranger, Every ex are once a lover, Every today are once a tomorrow, Every emigrate are once a citizen, Every dead are once alive, Every house are once a land, Every super star are once an upcoming, Every winner are once a dreamer and every start always have an end. Stay humble and Positive, afterall life is vanity- Goals Rider

The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone. Instead of growing more sensible in death, the inhabitants of the cemetery were sillier than they had been in life.

If I really seem vain, it is that I am only vain in my ways__ot in my heart. The worst women are those vain in their hearts, and not in their ways.

But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word __rtificial._ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.