"Vanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poems; if they should imprudently do so, we find but little sequence, and nothing of that clear order, of that marvellous unity, which mark the works of the masters. Everything is sought to flatter that pretentious vanity of the limited understanding which piques itself on its stereotyped knowledge, always striving to usurp the higher empire of the divining soul. Such writing certainly requires subtlety of intellect, for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that odd strain for the mere joy of it, and there was in his voice the God-given vanity of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... to reflect on the staying powers of the race, I have not the remotest idea of pandering to conceit or vanity, to the contrary, I decry any disposition to extol and magnify whatever we are subjectively, and whatever we have achieved. The fierce conflicts we have undergone and the terrible crucible through which the cruel hand ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... indifferent to her, I may without vanity believe. I had a five minutes alone with her just before we parted, and I took that opportunity of saying how much pain it was to part with her, and for once I told the truth, for I was almost choking when ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... had a beautiful pair of hands, gentle yet as strong as steel. She had thought Patsy's anxiety about Mustapha's being ridden by any one but himself unnecessary, perhaps even with an unconscious spice of vanity underlying it. Patsy had conquered Mustapha. Perhaps he would not be altogether pleased that the horse should be amenable to some one else, yet Mustapha had taken a lump of sugar from her hand, only yesterday, as daintily as her own Chloe, his muzzle moving ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... fellows your last service 35 Did worthily perform; and I must use you In such another trick. Go bring the rabble, O'er whom I give thee power, here to this place: Incite them to quick motion; for I must Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple 40 Some vanity of mine art: it is my promise, And they expect it ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... his hand the arch rebel, who was yet to pay the penalty of his inordinate vanity and scheming with his life, dismissed the prisoner and her captors. He instructed an Irish renegade and member of his cabinet, called Nolin, to see to it that the prisoner was kept under close arrest until her fate was decided upon—which would probably be before morning. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... discreet and taciturn upon these subjects, still would he be highly offended were he supposed to have no voice in what is clearly to him a matter of "Taste"; and so he becomes of necessity the backer of the critic—the cause and result of his own ignorance and vanity! The fascination of this pose is too much for him, and he hails with delight its justification. Modesty and good sense are revolted at nothing, and the millennium ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... least, had not been lived. The glamor of the stage is found here where it should be, in the ambition of the young girl, in the fine enthusiasm of the manager. There is humor here, and pathos, friendship, loyalty, the vanity of which we ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... "If we are to do anything at all we will do the thing in which I excel. It feeds my vanity, which is good for me, for by disposition I ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... skin yellow. And among these merry revellers were some thus—but, I hope and believe, only temporarily—disfigured. The cheerfulness with which they are prepared to run these risks, not to mention others more perilous but less menacing to personal vanity, is not the least of the finenesses of character which the war has brought out; and the thought of that and of their hard work and their gay courage made the spectacle of the happy high spirits of this evening of ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... had not the strength to obey the warning voice of his heart; he was bound in gilded fetters, and, even if love were absent, pride and vanity prevented him from breaking these bonds. He was the favorite of the young empress, and the great of the empire bowed down before him, and felt themselves happy in his smile, and honored by the pressure of his hand. But every thing is changeable. Even the heart of the ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... great pity. I had gone through the whole campaign without any serious accident, and—But, after all, it was very natural: the two besetting evils of women are Vanity and Curiosity, and if you were to ascertain the truth, you would find that it is upon these two stumbling-blocks that most women are ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... States on which these modern States were built. It might equally well be maintained that the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilisation; being the sign of its more delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable vanity, or its greater dread of social disrepute. But whichever of the two views you take, you must concede that the essence of the duel is an armed equality. I should not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... he was happy and proud, and made the most of his wound, and went swaggering around in his bandages showing off like an innocent big-child—which was just what he was. He was prouder of being wounded than a really modest person would be of being killed. But there was no harm in his vanity, and nobody minded it. He said he was hit by a stone from a catapult—a stone the size of a man's head. But the stone grew, of course. Before he got through with it he was claiming that the enemy had flung a building ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The vanity of the ignorant knows no check except from without; under flattery, it is boundless, and the Cheap Jack's wife found no difficulty in fooling George to ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... wine with a merry heart; for God hath already accepted thy works. Let thy garments be always white, and let not thy head lack ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... it was a notable year for English letters. Charles Dickens had just published his famous stories "Dombey and Son" and "The Haunted Man." The success of these novels was surpassed by that of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair." Three writers now made their appearance. Anthony Trollope brought out his "MacDermotts of Ballycoran"; Emily Bronte published her first novel, "Wuthering Heights," while her sister, Charlotte Bronte, at the same time achieved an immense success with her story ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... had to struggle and plan and scheme to keep the Sofala afloat—and what did he get for it? Not even enough respect. They could not have given him enough of that if all their thoughts and all their actions had been directed to that end. The vanity of possession, the vainglory of power, had passed away by this time, and there remained only the material embarrassments, the fear of losing that position which had turned out not worth having, and an anxiety of thought which no abject subservience ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... reckoned his biographer, Hawkins, an attorney who was afterwards Chairman of the Middlesex Justices, and knighted on presenting an address to the King. Boswell regarded poor Sir John Hawkins with all the animosity of a rival author, and with some spice of wounded vanity. He was grievously offended, so at least says Sir John's daughter, on being described in the Life of Johnson as "Mr. James Boswell" without a solitary epithet such as celebrated or well-known. If that was really his feeling, he had his revenge; for no one book ever so suppressed ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Does a wise man prize the praise of fools? Does a strong man value the praise of the weak? Does any man of wisdom and power care for the applause of his inferiors? We make God into a puny man, a man full of vanity and "love of approbation," when we confer on Him the impertinence of our prayers ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... poetry was boasted of to everybody that would listen. Under the circumstances they really had no right to reap any fame from Walter's robber song; but this only showed what an important role vanity plays in the world. Of course he himself never heard anything of this; it was mentioned only when he was ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... she thought, with a whimsical sigh. "I mean never to marry, so men cannot interest me, and it would be the very irony of fate to make a favourable impression on a poet we wot of. So, it all comes to this: I look my best to gratify the vanity of my ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... change it, though, often afterward, men of clerkly attainments took me aside and kindly pointed out what they conceived to be a blunder. I have dwelt, perhaps tediously, upon this swap; my excuses are—first, that, having made few such good bargains during the days of my vanity, the memory is a pleasant one; and, second, that the horse will necessarily play a certain part in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the quickening of the subjective (psychical) faculties; and, personally, my own firm conviction is that there is nothing dangerous in mediumship. The mere dabbling in mediumship, as either the means of a new sensation, or for the gratification of personal vanity, is to be thoroughly deprecated, as a perversion of some of the most wonderful possibilities of our natures; while the prosecution of mediumship, or anything else, to the detriment of mind, nerves, or health, in any direction, is a sin ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... in your welfare," replied the nun evasively, "have consigned you to the care of persons devoted to the service of Heaven, that your eyes may be opened to the vanity of the path which you have been pursuing, but from which you ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... President of the Council. As Archbishop of Munich he had allowed himself and his diocese to be governed by the ablest of all the ultramontane divines. During his long residence in Rome he rose to high estimation, because he was reputed to possess the secret, and to have discovered the vanity, of German science. He had amused himself with Christian antiquities; and his friendship for the great explorer De' Rossi brought him for a time under suspicion of liberality. But later he became unrelenting in his ardour for the objects ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... think of a malignant blockhead who once taught me for a few months. I have been at various schools; and I spent six years at one venerable university (where my instructors were wise and worthy); and I am now so old, that I may say, without any great exhibition of vanity, that I have always kept well up among my school- and college-companions: but that blockhead kept me steadily at the bottom of my class, and kept a frightful dunce at the top of it, by his peculiar system. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the Refuge of Sinners was registered where it would return in benedictions when the soul weary of its wanderings, sought for forgiveness and peace—if it ever did. And, after all, ere sleep visited her eyelids, she was plunged again in plans of petty ambition, vanity, and the pride of life,—so impotent is the human heart, unsupported by ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... those ostensible, or whatever may be to the honour of myself or my House to be burked. I dare say you have noticed, my dear Rupert, that the compilers of family histories often, through jealousy, alter matter that they are allowed to use so as to suit their own purpose or minister to their own vanity. I think it right to tell you that I have had a certified copy made by Petter and Galpin, the law stationers, so that I shall be able to verify whether my stipulation has been honourably observed. I am having the book, which is naturally valuable, carefully packed, and shall have it forwarded ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... done this deed of blood and madness, was an unworthy member of the family of distinguished actors of that name. He was young, handsome, given to hard drinking, of inordinate vanity, and of small capacity in his profession; altogether, he was a disreputable fellow, though fitted to seem a hero in the eyes of the ignorant and dissipated classes. Betwixt the fumes of the brandy which he so freely drank and the folly of the melodramatic parts which ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... vanities, all is vanity! How can I make a record of what passed within me, without seeming to be satirical? But I speak plain, serious words. As people call me credulous for acknowledging Catholic claims, so they call me satirical for disowning Anglican pretensions; to them it is credulity, to them it is ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... quantity, that they may pursue their development unhampered in either body or mind. She must know the hygiene of childhood and the psychology of children's clothes. For the growing girls there must be a proper recognition of the growing interest in adornment, avoiding the Scylla of vanity on one hand and the Charybdis of unhappy consciousness of being "different from the other girls" on the other. For the sons there must be careful provision for the athletic life so dear to the boy, together with ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... purity of manners than perhaps any other. You possess among you several men and magistrates of large and cultivated understandings, fit for any employment in any sphere. I do, to the best of my power, act so as to make myself worthy of so honorable a choice. If I were ready, on any call of my own vanity or interest, or to answer any election purpose, to forsake principles (whatever they are) which I had formed at a mature age, on full reflection, and which had been confirmed by long experience, I should forfeit the only thing which makes you pardon ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... company that had attended him, and said to them, "All those whom you have observed at the several tables, had entertained the same imaginary ideas as yourselves, respecting the joys of heaven and eternal happiness; and it is with the intent that they may see the vanity of such ideas, and be withdrawn from them, that those festive representations were appointed and permitted by the Lord. Those who with so much dignity presided at the tables, were merely old people and feigned characters, many of them husbandmen ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... laughed at Halse's joke, not unkindly, yet I can hardly describe how much it wounded my vanity and how incensed I felt with the joker. Slowly the oxen moved away out of hearing. Even my instructor, Addison, lagged a little behind to indulge in a broad smile. Glancing backward, I detected his amused expression and was almost minded to fling away the goad-stick; and I did not feel much reassured ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... departure from Chaldea: his faith: its failure: Sarah and Abraham agree to prevaricate: the admonition which Sarah attracted: Abraham's dismissal from the country of Egypt: beauty and dress: importance of a proper education: parental vanity: source of real attraction: Sarah proposes to Abraham to take Hagar: unhappy consequencies: Hagar's flight and return: visit of three angels: Sarah's laughter at the subject of their commission: her subsequent character: general remarks: birth of Isaac: Ishmael's conduct, and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... meeting, sat reading her psalm book, only looking up occasionally to give an additional jerk to some shirt collar, or the fifteenth pull to Susan's frock, or to repress any straggling looks that might be wandering about, "beholding vanity." ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... circumstances which do not relate to national character, and which have little tendency to promote the welfare of mankind. Conquest, or great extent of territory, however peopled, and great wealth, however distributed or employed, are titles upon which we indulge our own, and the vanity of other nations, as we do that of private men on the score of their fortunes and honours. We even sometimes contend, whose capital is the most overgrown; whose king has the most absolute power; and at whose court the bread of the subject ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... adorned. Then past its glory, past attention. Then crumbling, then decaying. Now to be abandoned. It had known great stresses and abated them; sieges and withstood them; assaults and defeated them. O vanity! It had but temporised with conquest. Time's hosts had camped these many years about its walls, in ceaseless investment, with desultory attacks, but with each attack investing closer. Now a most terrible ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... sentiment of friendship for themselves instead of demonstrating the abstract superiority of their cause. They will make a haughty public demand, but will not scruple to support it with secret petition and appeal. They are adepts at playing upon the weakness and petty vanity of others; and they deal gently with the strong, but boldly with the weak. Both men and women possess an abundance of sexual jealousy, and have, in addition, the quick sensitiveness about rank, worldly possessions, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... of Boat-race day, and as usual that province of Vanity Fair whose centre is Piccadilly Circus was more or less completely given over to joyously boisterous troops of undergraduates and 'Varsity men of all academic ranks whom the great event of the year had brought together from all parts of the kingdom, and even from ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... white-walled chapel glistening near, The house of God, the homes of men, The fragrant hay, the ripening ear; There where there seemed nor sin nor crime, There in God's sweet and wholesome air— Strange book to read at such a time— We read of Vanity's false Fair. ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... between the bitter cynicism put into the lips of the son, and the calm cheerful godliness taught, according to our psalm, by the father! To Solomon, old age is represented as bringing the melancholy creed, 'All is vanity'; David believes, 'Delight thyself in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' Which style of old age is the nobler? what kind of life will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... CENTURY | DICTIONARY, VOL. 4) part.{48} It is true, that in two points | 48. Spedding's note: The words "that the curse is peremptory and not to be | is, man's miseries and necessities," removed; the one that vanity must be the | which followed in the transcript, have end in all human effects, eternity being | a line drawn through them. resumed, though the revolutions and | periods may he delayed{49}. The other that | 49. Melek Hasgn comments: the consent of the creature being now | ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... know Rachel can hem all the ruffles. And Cousin Elizabeth said ruffles were vanity. I'd like my frocks just as ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... when it is required to solve an insolvable problem; unceasing meditation upon an object, impossible to understand, but in which however he thinks himself much concerned, cannot but excite man, and produce a fever in his brain. Let interest, vanity, and ambition, co-operate ever so little with this unfortunate turn of mind, and society must necessarily be disturbed. This is the reason that so many nations have often been the scene of extravagances of senseless visionaries, who, believing their empty speculations to be eternal truths, and ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... shouldering the rocks with huge assault. Now Fergus's sermon, which he meant to use as a spade for the casting of the first turf of the first parallel in the siege of the pulpit of the North parish, was upon the vanity of human ambition, his text being the grand verse—And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy; there was no small amount of fine writing in the manuscript he had thrust into his pocket; and his ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... their mill, and make thee grind their grist; and fools that were not worth a moment of thy time while thou livedst will command thee by the hour; and Sludge the Medium will use thy great name to puff his obscene vanity and swell his obscener gains. This is the worst of all thy trials, for thou canst not defend thyself; and, in thy helplessness, fools and pigmies ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... had been dead these five years, and Turgot, too, was gone. Society offered the survivor no recompense. He found the great world tiresome and frivolous, and he described its pursuits in phrases that are still too faithful to the fact, as 'dissipation without pleasure, vanity without meaning, and idleness without repose.' It was perhaps to soften the oppression of these cruel and tender regrets that in ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... number in the world. With the symbolism of The Master-Builder no fault can be found. It is a legitimate and effective means of expressing a sense of reality. The theme is never lost. The artist who sacrifices his human relations, but dare not give all, dare not give his vanity or his life to the ideal, moves steadily to his inevitable doom. Whether he move in the form of Halvard Solness, the cowardly architect of genius, fearless of ideas but fearful of action, or in the form of the symbolical master-builder, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... could prevent our laughing at the present collection of absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, and the conceit which has published. What exaggerated notion must that man entertain of his talents, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... her with the new bag and she had been injudicious enough to have kept in the golden receptacle a dangerously compromising letter that he had enclosed. Injudicious, dear lady! Corsage or stockings, Mademoiselle; but vanity bags—never! ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... behind him Walters walked across the trunk. His step was firm and agile, his figure well-proportioned and athletic, and it was somehow obvious that he relished the opportunity of showing his powers. Afterwards, she hated him for his vanity. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... time. And I am doing nothing that I want to! For one does not choose one's subjects, they force themselves on one. Shall I ever find mine? Will an idea fall from Heaven suitable to my temperament? Can I write a book to which I shall give myself heart and soul? It seems to me in my moments of vanity, that I am beginning to catch a glimpse of what a novel ought to be. But I still have three or four of them to write before that one (which is, moreover, very vague), and at the rate I am going, if I write these ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... stands off and looks, and calculates by how much he has missed the picturesque, at which he aimed. Our new houses undoubtedly have greater comforts and conveniences than the old; and, if we could keep our pride and vanity in abeyance and forget that all the world is looking on, they might have ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... flowers, but I was set to polish the pewter and copper,—indeed, my mother had taught me that,—and he watched jealously lest any dimness come on them. I sometimes wondered at all this, as he had so lately counted these matters of adornment and prettiness and such as less than nothing, and vanity, as the preacher has it. But I think his great grief put a sacredness, as it were, over everything that had been hers, and all her ways seemed heavenly to him now, even though he had frowned at them (never at ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... His vanity stung, the lawyer sprang to his feet. "Very well, Mr. O'Brien. I'll show you a thing or two about what I ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... proved so refreshing to the latter, stilling her throbbing pulse, cooling her feverish brow, and subduing the wild look of her eyes, which had in them the clear light of reason. Edith was better. She would live, the physician said, feeling a glow of gratified vanity as he thought how that last dose of medicine, given as an experiment, and about which he had been so doubtful, had really saved her life. She would have died without it, he knew, just as Mrs. Matson, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... royal palace of Milan, he was surprised and offended at the sight of a picture which represented the Caesars seated on their throne, and the princes of Scythia prostrate at their feet. The revenge which Attila inflicted on this monument of Roman vanity, was harmless and ingenious. He commanded a painter to reverse the figures and the attitudes; and the emperors were delineated on the same canvas, approaching in a suppliant posture to empty their bags of tributary gold before the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... it, Edith! That's all bosh—vanity and nonsense. At any rate, I know I'm not. In fact, as I can't have you myself, I would really like you to be shut up. Very happy, very well, with everything in the world you like, even thinking of me a little, but absolutely shut up! And if you did go out, ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... in all their vagaries, and they seem to verify the beautiful fable of Undine. A new soul beams out in the gentleness and repose of their future lives. An indescribable softness and tenderness takes place of the wearying vanity of their former endeavours to attract admiration. Something of this sort took place in Nest Pritchard. If at first she had been anxious to attract the young Squire of Bodowen, long before her marriage this feeling had ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Maister Cauldsowans took hand o' him at the tent, wi' preachin' a sermon on booin' the knee to Baal. Aye, aye, its a' awa'—an' its mony the year I thocht on it, let alane thocht on wantin' back thae days o' vanity an' the pride ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... character to look at life. But it is the way in which the highest type of devotion and the truest goodness always look at it. There are people, old and young, who, whenever they look back, whether it be over a long tract of years or over a short one, have nothing to say about it except: 'Vanity of vanities! all is vanity and vexation of spirit'; a retrospect of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... true, not only of the expressman, but of the butcher and baker, and the "candlestick-maker," had there been so advanced a vocation at the cross roads. All were equally and curiously attracted by her picturesque novelty. Mrs. Rylands knew this herself, but without vanity or coquettishness. Possibly that was why the other woman told her. She only slightly deepened the lines of discontent in her cheek and said abstractedly, "Well, when ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to me, which, to show how little I regarded his enmity, I let him see, at least the most curious. But as I set as little value on his friendship, I did not grant another of his requests. Indeed, I have made more than one foe by not indulging the vanity of those who have made application to me; and I am obliged to them, when they augment my contempt by quarrelling with me for that refusal. It was the case of Mr. Masters, and is now of Lord Hardwicke. He solicited me to reprint his Boeotian volume of Sir Dudley Carleton's Papers, for which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... by some sudden revolution, to be equally divided among all, diamonds, for instance, would greatly decline in value, for the reason that it is dependent, in great part, on the wants generated by vanity, or by the desire of outshining others. Beer, tobacco etc., would rise in the scale as goods, because the circle of those to whose wants they minister would have been very greatly extended. On the whole, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... built again. Like Doubting Castle, they have been demolished many times by successive Greathearts, and rebuilt by Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, by Feeble Mind and Much Afraid, and by all the jurymen of Vanity Fair. Another generation of "secondary education" at our ancient public schools and the cheaper institutions that ape them will be quite sufficient to keep the two going until the next war. For the instruction of that generation I leave ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord." The emblem of American pride and power is the eagle, and on her banner she has mingled stars with its stripes. Her vanity, her treachery, her oppression, her self-exaltation, and her defiance of the Almighty, far surpass the madness and wickedness of Edom. What shall be her punishment? Truly, it may be affirmed of the American people, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... leaders, court officers and many persons of culture and influence. Nevertheless, the predominating influence at the Ki[o]to court was that of Buddhism; and as the cult that winks at polygamy was less opposed to Hideyoshi's sensualism and amazing vanity, the illustrious upstart was easily made hostile to the alien faith. According to the accounts of the Jesuits, he took umbrage because a Portuguese captain would not please him by risking his ship in coming out of deep water and nearer ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... if such a thing were, could not imply perfection except at the cost of one-half of human character. When the girl wore a dress that she saw pleased him more than another, there was a responsive pleasure in her eyes, which he could have called vanity if he would; and she had at times a wilfulness which he could have accused of being obstinacy. She showed a certain jealousy of any experiences of his apart from her own, not because they included others, but because they excluded her. He was aware of an involuntary vigilance in ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... have fancies fit only to be smil'd at, who will deny their Child a thing for no other reason, it may be, but because he has desir'd it: And who before he is trusted to go alone will check his Resentment, Impatience, Avarice, or Vanity, which they think becomes him so prettily; neither will suffer him to be rewarded for doing what they ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... donkey ever seen in the foot-hills. The legend that she was brought over in one of "Dan the Quartz Crusher's" boots required corroboration from that gentleman; but his denial being evidently based upon a masculine vanity regarding the size of his foot rather than a desire to be historically accurate, it went for nothing. It is certain that for the next two months she occupied the cabin of Dan, until, perhaps incensed at this and other scandals, she one night ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... perplexed. His vanity had all along only supposed one possible obstacle to his success with Raby, and that was a rival. That she would decline to have him for any other reason had been quite beyond his calculations, and he would not believe ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... We return, yet once again, on the following day. Worshippers and objects of worship, the sickly crowd and gilded angels, all are gone; and there, far in the apse, is seen the sad Madonna standing in her folded robe, lifting her hands in vanity of blessing. There is little else to draw away our thoughts from the solitary image. An old wooden tablet, carved into a rude effigy of San Donato, which occupies the central niche in the lower part of the tribune, has an interest of its own, but is unconnected ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... caressing voice was saying, "You look bewitching to-night, Fava mia!" He covered her with his glance, so that she preened herself. He laughed lightly at her vanity, and, leaning over, kissed her lovely shoulder. Quickly, with both hands she held him ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad: that ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold, And speckl'd vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould, And Hell it self will pass away And leave her dolorous mansions ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... often caviled at as false in Hamlet came to me then as the readiest interpretation of what I suffered, and thus proved its own fidelity and truth. "A sea of sorrow" did indeed seem to roll above me, against which I felt the vanity of "taking arms." ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... scrap of his writing would be revived against him to the injury of his future reputation; that his letters and verses written with unguarded and improper freedom, and which he earnestly wished to have buried in oblivion, would be handed about by idle vanity or malevolence, when no dread of his resentment would restrain them, or prevent the censures of shrill-tongued malice, or the insidious sarcasms of envy, from pouring forth all their venom to blast ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... what, in his own judgment, circumstances might require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country might render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another. In short, the scheme is nugatory and impracticable; the inaptness of the project is only equalled by the vanity of the attempt." This bill, however, passed into a law, and was adhered to in the numerous loans advanced during the whole of the revolutionary contest. About the same time Pitt brought another measure into the house, which indicated that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fair orf 'is top wiv love, When she 'as got 'im good an' 'ad 'er fun, She slings 'im over like a carst-orf glove, To let the other tarts see wot she's done. All vanity, deceit an' 'eartless kid! I orter known; an', spare me days, ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... acquaintance with the literatures of those countries, some Latin, a poor stock of Greek. I believe that I looked younger than my age, stronger than my forces, better than my virtues warranted. Women have praised me for good looks, which never did me any good that I know of; I may say without vanity that I had the carriage and person of a gentleman. I was then, as I have ever been, truly religious, though I have sometimes found myself at variance with the professional exponents of it. In later years I became, I believe, something of a mystic, apt to find the face of ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... introduction to that kitchen. It wore the same look it had done then; under Barby's rule it was precisely the same thing it had been under Cynthia's.—The passing years seemed a dream, and the passing generations of men a vanity, before the old house more abiding than they. He stood thinking of the people he had seen gathered by that fireplace and the little household fairy whose childish ministrations had given such a beauty to the scene,—when a very light step crossed ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... commonplace to me, and had discussed it very little with Marguerite, lest I might reveal an undue lack of wonder. But now as I thrilled once more beneath their holy light, the miracle of unnumbered far-flung flaming suns stifled again the vanity of human conceit and I stood with soul unbared and worshipful beneath the vista of incommensurate space wherein the birth and death of worlds marks the unending roll of time. And at my side a silent gazing woman stood, contrite and humble and the thrill and quiver of ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... myself competent to effect so much, and I am more conscious than my critics how far I fall short of my high aim; but the modest attempt, made with the resolution to accept all criticism offered with courtesy and good faith, does not imply culpable presumption nor excessive vanity. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... captains, as mark of honor and respect, of which there are several in a village. But, although they confer more honor upon one than upon others, yet he is not on that account to bear sway, nor esteem himself higher than his companions, unless he does so from vanity. They make no use of punishments nor arbitrary command, but accomplish everything by the entreaties of the seniors, and by means of addresses and remonstrances. Thus and not otherwise do they bring ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... been. Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. A person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... What vanity is envy! for I find I have been rich in dross of thought, and poor In that I was a fool, and lastly blind For never having seen ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... shall be rewarded to the full. 'No cross, no crown.' But there is a crown after the cross, and God will give it to us. We are passing through the baptism of fire—and verily we needed it, both South and North. The South had become mad with vanity and aristocracy; the North was, is still, corrupt and rotten beyond all healthy life, with such villainy in 'politics,' and such indifference to all that was noble and honorable through the greed of gold, that honest and able men were cast ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... His vanity was gratified with the almost religious devotion with which she unaffectedly regarded her sovereign, while at the same time she addressed him with a bold simplicity of utterance which astounded the courtiers and enthralled ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... willing, at so much a head, to tell what they do not know at the expense of the pale, tired needlewoman, who is in want of almost every comfort that money can buy in this world, together with the surplus gold of the fashionable devotees who minister to the vanity of the clergy, and give to the coffers of the Church that which would save thousands of young girls from degradation and crime, and put the roses of health on the cheek ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... may not be imputed to me as unpardonable vanity,—the recording of this incident. It gave me an intense pleasure when I heard it; and now, as I look back on it, it invests this story for myself with an interest which nothing else that I have written ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... magnate. She was a fairly educated young woman, passably good-looking; but her head was evidently turned by the attentions of which she was the recipient. Certainly, if mannerisms, affectation, vanity, and dress have anything to do with it, her claim to be called a lady was a ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... were starting he'd got all he wanted now. I thinks to myself at the time, thinks I, 'That's an unlucky thing to say.'" But who is to judge luck in this world? Poor little Lily Harrison was a helpless creature, and had almost 'nothing in her' except vanity. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... proofs from conversations at the time and letters since, confirming at least Cecilia's own belief that she had never loved the man, that it was all vanity on her part and deception on his: Lady Davenant listened, willing ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... area very nearly as large as that of the present City of Mexico, and the streets are as distinctly marked by the ruins of houses." And in another place Mr. Charney tells us "the city was of vast extent; and, without indulging in any stereotyped reflections on the vanity of human greatness, I will say that a more complete effacement is nowhere else to be seen. The whole ground, over a space five or six miles in diameter, is covered with heaps of ruins, which at first view, make no impression, so complete is ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... familiar with Washington, and it was difficult to adjust his feelings and perceptions to its peculiarities. Coming out of the sweet sanity of the Bolton household, this was by contrast the maddest Vanity Fair one could conceive. It seemed to him a feverish, unhealthy atmosphere in which lunacy would be easily developed. He fancied that everybody attached to himself an exaggerated importance, from the fact of being at the national ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... leafy bower, And roamed in sportive vein, Where Vanity had built a tower, For Fashion's sparkling train. The mistress to see he requested, Of one who attended the door: "Not home," said the page, who suggested That he'd leave ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... was only proper to keep the money well invested. And if at the end of the fifth year his securities had shrunken seriously in value, it was natural to wait another year for values to become normal. When the crash came, the injury to his vanity hurt him more than his wounded conscience; that he had learned to soothe, but his pride had never before been humbled. And so it was said that Henry Francis died ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... has been remarked as a noteworthy circumstance that popular English monarchs have been more exposed to such dangers than others who were cordially disliked. It is not hatred that has prompted these assassins so much as imbecile vanity and the passion for notoriety, misleading an ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... of subjecting ourselves to one another may seem to grate upon the pride and vanity of mankind, and may therefore be hard to be digested by those who value themselves upon their greatness or their wealth, yet it is really no more than what most men practise upon other occasions. For if our neighbour, who is our inferior, ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... Arthur and the odious little gatekeeper was at an end, and that she need have no further anxiety with respect to an imprudent attachment or a degrading marriage on Pen's part. And that young fellow's mind was also relieved (after he had recovered the shock to his vanity) by thinking that Miss Fanny was not going to die of love for him, and that no unpleasant consequences were to be apprehended from the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wanderer! O wealthy despoilers of humble innocence! splendid murderers of virtue; who make your vice your boast, and fancy female ruin a feather in your caps of vanity—single out a victim you have abandoned, and, in your hours of death, contemplate her!—view her, care-worn, friendless, pennyless;—hear her tale of sorrows, fraught with her remorse,—her want,—a hard world's scoffs, her parents' anguish;—then, if ye dare, look inward upon your own ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... would have been left out, others drawn, and all better finished. I should then have attempted more frequently to expose meanness to contempt, and treachery to abhorrence; should have lashed more severely incorrigible vice, and oftener held out to ridicule puerile vanity and outrageous ambition. In short, I should then have studied more to please than to instruct, by addressing myself seldomer to the reason than ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... whirl of life, its dim confusion, Its jarring discords and poor vanity, Breathing like music over troubled waters, What gentle voice, O ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Plimoth. A strang alteration ther was in him to such as had seen & known him in his former florishing condition; so uncertaine are y^e mutable things of this unstable world. And yet men set their harts upon them, though they dayly see y^e vanity therof. ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... in pain for his vanity, and paid in full. The Captain did not bind his arms—perhaps because of the crowd and a desire to seem merciful. But though he merely tied the prisoner's ankle after the usual manner, he knotted the small rope with a vicious yank, pulled ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... might have imagined myself some old field-marshal bedridden, who hears two grenadier sentinels at his door call, "Who goes there?" My honour, indeed, was still greater; for, during my last year's imprisonment, my door was guarded by no less than four. My vanity also might have been flattered: I might hence conclude how high was the value set upon my head, since all this trouble was taken to hold me in security. Certain it is that in my chains I thought more rationally, more nobly, reasoned ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... yourself the infinite"—"You are yourself God; you never were anything else"? If that reader was lacking in mental balance, he was likely to be swept off his feet by such a declaration, and to accept, with all its implications, a view so flattering to human vanity; if, on the other hand, he was a person of soberly religious outlook and experience, he inquired what was the doctrine in whose name such a proposition was offered to him for acceptance—and on learning that the name of that doctrine was the unfamiliar one of "immanence," ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Are deposited the remains of one Who possessed beauty without vanity, Strength without insolence, Courage without ferocity, And all the virtues of ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... up. "Oh, yes, don't let me forget to give you a communicator. A real gizmo. About as big as a woman's vanity case. Puts you in immediate contact with the nearest Section G office, no matter how near or far away it is. Or, if you wish, in contact with our offices here in the Octagon. ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... times they were When first it came to pass That on each shoulder I might bear A little star of brass. And when by reason of my zeal I was awarded twain, 'Twas not mere vanity to feel Almost as proud again. My warrior soul was filled with song In triumph's clearest key, When, feeling thrice as broad and strong, My shoulders shone with three. Yet these I'll gladly from their place Remove, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... swift vessels to hurry them up. At last they began to get into order. Barbarigo, the "left guide," hugged the coast with the left wing; Don John with the centre corps de bataille kept touch with him; but where was the "right guide"? Giovanni Doria, infected with the tactical vanity of his family, resolved to show these landsmen how a sailor can manoeuvre. Conceiving that Ochiali, on the Ottoman left, was trying to outflank the Christian fleet, he bore out to sea in order to turn ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... earnest conversation. Ferrari next proffered his request to his quondam friend De Hamal, who also declined to second him, as did every one among the company. He bit his lips in mortification and wounded vanity, and seemed hesitating what to do next, when the marquis approached him with frigid courtesy and appeared to offer him some suggestions in a low tone of voice—for after a few minutes' converse, Ferrari suddenly turned on his heel and abruptly left the room without ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... dean's religion, or had it ever been his own? Was there, after all, such a thing as religion? Might it not be merely a figment of the fertile imagination of man? He did not escape the terror of this thought when he paused to consider his labour of the past two years and the vanity of its results. And little by little the feeling grew upon him, such being the state of his mind, that he ought not to continue, for the present at least, to conduct the services. Should he resign, or go away for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... glance on the humble foot-passenger as he plodded by in a shabby cloak. And yet, here was one of these exquisite beings calling upon him: he was painting her portrait, and had received an invitation to dine with her. Intoxicated with vanity and delight, he treated himself to a splendid dinner, went to the theatre in the evening, and again, without the slightest occasion, drove about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... while I have been delighted in many instances with the display of pure and noble generosity, it was too evident that much of what was done was done in a spirit of self-glorification over a humbled and afflicted rival. It was a fine opportunity to feed the national vanity, and to deal hard blows to England. Not that I was sorry to see those blows, or to feel them. They drew no blood, and were a hundred times more efficacious than if they had. I felt that there was much in the conduct of England towards her unhappy sister-isle for which she ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... significant action, not by inflating themselves with a belief in the pre-eminent importance and greatness of their own times. They do not talk of their mission, nor of interpreting their age, nor of the coming Poet; all this, they know, is the mere delirium of vanity; their business is not to praise their age, but to afford to the men who live in it the highest pleasure which they are capable of feeling. If asked to afford this by means of subjects drawn from the age itself, they ask what special fitness ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... some adroitness in his father. Not only Lady Waverton, but Geoffrey too, succumbed to the paternal charms. That was the more surprising. Geoffrey, behind his vanity and his affectation, was no fool. He had also a temper apt to dislike any man who made a show of position or achievement beyond his own. Yet he hung upon the lips of Colonel Boyce. What they gave him was indeed a pleasing mixture—secrets about great ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... reputation seems to have attracted numerous pupils. But though the concurrent testimony of antiquity assigns to these physicians the merit of dissecting the human body, time, which wages endless war with the vanity and ambition of man, has dealt hardly with the monuments of their labours. As the works of neither have been preserved, great uncertainty prevails as to the respective merits of these ancient anatomists; and all that is now known of their anatomical researches ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... society of the home town and of a club which had been formed to keep its pleasures separate from those of the lower classes. In all the descriptions of bird and target shooting, concerts and balls of which he and his young wife appeared as the centre, shone the utmost gratification of the writer's vanity. Only in a postscript to the last letter did he mention the more serious fact that the town wanted to have repairs made to the tower and roof of St. George's, and that the work had been entrusted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... had occasion to make on the character and life of the inhabitants will be more to the purpose at the Hague. I will only mention that in Rotterdam, as in other Dutch cities, no one, in speaking of their country's affairs, showed the least national vanity. The expressions, "Isn't it beautiful?" "What do you think of that?"—which one hears every moment in other countries, are never heard in Holland, even when the inhabitants are speaking of things that are universally admired. Every time that ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... owner, they took possession of his hat, coat, shirt, boots, socks, trousers, and drawers, until the Hyde was completely bare, as naked, and, it is to be hoped, as innocent, as a new-born babe. His vanity, which was the major part of his personality, had vanished with his garments, and the remnant left of body and ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... by freckles is to your vanity. They and sunburn both, in fact, are protective actions on nature's part, filling the skin with coloring matter, or pigment, so as to protect it, and the tissues below, from the irritating effects of the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... man turned to his intellectual ruin. What was intended for the spread of true knowledge and faith became in the end the source of spiritual pride, the natural fosterer of doubt and negation. Modern science, so called, that incarnation of vanity, sophistry, error, and delusion, comes indirectly from those universities of the middle ages; and it was chiefly at the time of what is called the revival of learning, that the great revolution in science came about, which changed the intellectual gold into dross, the once divine ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Knaves, and scoundrel Tradesmen. It was Time to pull in, and keep a Hank in the Hand. She saw her Folly, and doffed her Gear. It was better go plain than run in Debt for Finery; and enough she had to do to pay the Debts she had contracted in her Fit of Vanity. ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... amongst the most important of the ancient ecclesiastical memorials. This eminent pastor has also left behind him several short treatises on topics which were then attracting public attention. Among these may be mentioned his tracts on "The Unity of the Church," "The Lord's Prayer," "The Vanity of Idols," "The Grace of God," "The Dress of Virgins," and ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... young lady, it seems to me that few women would consider it so great an evil to have the blood of a Harrington in her veins," said the General, stung in the inner depths of his vanity by her words, and losing all pity in ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens |
