Quotation.Cloud - A repository of notable quotations from across time and space

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; whereas other excellences, which lie deep like gold and are discovered with difficulty, leave their possessors modest and proud.

 - Jean Paul

Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.

 - Joseph Addison

Authority intoxicates,
And makes mere sots of magistrates;
The fumes of it invade the brain,
And make men giddy, proud, and vain;
By this the fool commands the wise,
The noble with the base complies,
The sot assumes the rule of wit,
And cowards make the base submit.


 - Samuel Butler (1612)

When men will not be reasoned out of a vanity, they must be ridiculed out of it.

 - Roger L'Estrange

The King of France's picture set with four hundred and eight diamonds, I give to my daughter Sarah Bache requesting however that she would not form any of those diamonds into ornaments either for herself or daughters and thereby introduce or countenance the expensive, vain, and useless fashion of wearing jewels in this country.

 - Benjamin Franklin

In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it.

 - David Hume

Vanity is so closely allied to virtue, and to love the fame of laudable actions approaches so near the love of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection; and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former.

 - David Hume

There is no arena is which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation.

 - Blaise Pascal

We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even to those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.

 - Blaise Pascal