"Vanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... i, 25. "Few languages are, in fact, more copious than the English."—Blair's Rhet., p. 87. "Our style is less compact than that of the ancients."—Ib., p. 88. "They are counted to him less than nothing and vanity."—Isaiah, xl, 17. As the comparatives in a long series are necessarily many, and some of them higher than others, it may be asked, "How can the comparative degree, in this case, be merely 'that which exceeds the positive?'" Or, as our common grammarians ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in my glass I try to keep down vanity about my long hair, my well-shaped head, and my good nose." Besides these good points of which she speaks so frankly, she was tall and graceful, with a heavy mass of glossy, chestnut-brown hair. Her complexion was clear and full of color, and her dark-blue eyes ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... suspecting me of such unconscionable vanity!" she said, properly offended. Then, "Anyhow, a man has no business to know about such things," she continued, with rising indignation. "I believe Felix Kennaston is as good a judge of chiffons as any woman. That's effeminate, I think, and catty ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... master had actually begun to build the lonely cottage, other feelings mixed with those I have described. Revenge, and calculations of interest, were added to flattered vanity and sincere gratitude for kindness. I knew nothing would enrage Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another, and it was something to triumph over my tyrant even in that small way. I thought he would revenge himself by selling me, and I was sure my friend, Mr. Sands, would ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... were cast down, this being the position most significant of her spirit. Her pace was equal, firm, and rapid: she made herself oblivious of the bustle of the streets, and she repented that her vanity had permitted her to wear white and lavender these making a combination in her dress which she had been told became her well. She had no right to embellish herself. Was she going to the races or a match, or a kettle-drum, that she must dandify herself with particular ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... ankles by knotted fringes of the doe-skin, with mocassins turned over with a band of squirrel fur, completed the novel but not very unbecoming costume; and many a glance of innocent satisfaction did our young damsels cast upon each other, when they walked forth in the pride of girlish vanity to display their dresses to Hector and Louis, who, for their parts, regarded them as most skilful dress-makers, and were never tired of admiring and commending their ingenuity in the cutting, making and fitting, considering what ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... I see many perfections in him; but you talk'd very differently just now;—Mr. Worthnought then was lighter than vanity; and now, it seems, he has more weight with you, than ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... dangers together. If, with a boy's vanity, I rather vaunted my family, I hope I did so as a kind of introduction of myself. It was very weak, and in very bad taste; but perhaps you know our English proverb, ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... I am informed that you have been engaged in a fight," he continued, in a tone a little less sharp than that with which he had pronounced my name; and I had the vanity to believe that the square tone in which I had uttered the single word I had been called upon to speak had produced ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... costly and degrading luxury; and in its place to establish a home—a model bourgeois home—where affection and virtue shall flourish. Clara, seeing the vast significance of such a step, is aglow with enthusiasm for its realization. It is not vanity, but a lofty faith in her mission to regenerate royalty, by discarding its senseless pomp and bringing it into accord with, and down to the level of, common citizenship—it is this, I say, which upholds her in the midst of opprobrium, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... therefore not without its troubles, and literary activity must have been almost his only consolation. His writings reveal him as the strangest character, fantastic, and full of a naive vanity, which, even at the time he was translating the genealogy of Gargantua—surely well calculated to cure any pondering on his own—caused him to trace his unbroken descent from Adam, and to state that his family name was ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in nearness of the evil," Agrippa will be as merry in the showing the Vanity of Science, as Erasmus was in the commending of Folly; {60} neither shall any man or matter escape some touch of these smiling railers. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... Propositions so well overthrown; and gives an account of her daily Discourses to her Brother, which were no less pleasing to him; and tho' Isabella went already dress'd as richly as her Quality deserv'd, yet her Father, to try the utmost that the World's Vanity could do, upon her young Heart, orders the most Glorious Clothes should be bought her, and that the Lady Abbess should suffer her to go abroad with those Ladies of Quality, that were her Relations, and her Mother's Acquaintance; that she should visit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Danube to separate him from the troops on the march from Italy, Charles moved on Landshut with some six thousand men, not much more than a tenth of the opposing force. He was determined, he wrote, to remain in Germany alive or dead, rejecting as idle vanity the notion that it was beneath his dignity to lead a small force. At Landshut he met papal auxiliaries under Ottavio Farnese and Alessandro Vitelli, with detachments of light horse sent by the Dukes of Florence and Ferrara. When the Spanish ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... flowers, the whisper of the winds, the warmth of the sunshine, and the depth of the sky. That, I felt, did not require great gifts or a fine education. We might all be that to each other. And there was no opportunity for vanity or pride in receiving a beautiful influence, and giving it ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... possibility of my being too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter prove of value to some among you.—When one of us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed of talent arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and blessed convictions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... commerce of the world flowed through its two harbours. The population consisted of Greeks, Jews, Italians, and a mixed multitude; it was excitable, pleasure loving, and mercurial. In this city was held a perpetual vanity fair. The vices of the east and west met and clasped hands in the work of human degradation. The Greek goddess Aphrodite had a magnificent temple in which a thousand priestesses ministered to a base worship. While it was a center of wealth and fashion it was a city of gilded vice. ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... with its manifold arts and usual results; (5) exaltation of the beloved's qualities; (6) the habit of writing the beloved's name everywhere; (7) absence of envy for the loved one's qualities; (8) the lover's abnegation in conquering all obstacles to the manifestations of her love; (9) the vanity with which some respond to 'flame' declarations; (10) the consciousness of doing a prohibited thing; (11) the pleasure of conquest, of which the trophies ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... mystery I can of it. People shall pay for their knowledge if I can make them. Henry heard P. and P. warmly praised in Scotland by Lady Robert Kerr and another lady; and what does he do, in the warmth of his brotherly vanity and love, but immediately tell them who wrote it? A thing once set going in that way—one knows how it spreads, and he, dear creature, has set it going so much more than once. I know it is all done ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Sir Giles, with a smile of gratified vanity. "Now, mark me, Sir Francis. I have a surprise for you. It is not enough for me to hurl this aspiring youth from his proud position, and cover him with disgrace—it is not enough to immure him in the Fleet; but ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... where reason receives and administers the supplications of the senses, is not in session. Reason is sick, suspends his office, abrogates his authority, withdraws to some deep fastness of the brain, and suffers the hall of judgment to be the house of license or of dreams: of dreams, as sleep, as vanity of reverie; of license when there is tumult in the body politic, as fever, as excesses of the passions, as great shock. Reason is sick, withdraws, and there is ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... my brother—as myself. The Journal was read aloud in our library: not a line or a word of it has been copied; and though some passages have, I know, sunk indelibly into the memories of those present, you may rest perfectly secure that they will never go out beyond ourselves. No vanity will ever tempt any one of us to boast of what we have been allowed to read; we shall strictly adhere to your terms, and never mention or allude to the book. It is delightful, most interesting, and entertaining. You may, perhaps, imagine, by conceiving yourself in my place, remote in ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... pessimism that underlies the religious motive of Brahmanic pantheism, but it is the same pessimism that pervades Christianity and even Hebraism. This world is a sorry place, living is suffering; do thou escape from it. The pleasures of life are vanity; do thou renounce them. "To die is gain," says the apostle; and the Preacher: "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit. He that increaseth knowledge ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... archer, instead of aiming at the rosette, would select an eye or some part of the head for a mark, in which case the result would be fatal. He was quite willing to incur the risk himself, trusting that the archer's vanity would impel him to aim at the right spot; but he had never contemplated the turn ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... hair and shaven skull as heathenish; but the Chinese, eating away with his to me ridiculous chopsticks, looks out from his quick, almond-shaped eyes and considers me still a foreign devil, although he is too cunning to tell me. His opinions of me are founded upon the narrow grounds of vanity and egotism; mine, although I do not admit it even to myself, from something very much ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... With her wit and vanity, poor French and fine clothes, good common sense and warm Irish heart, Lady Morgan was a most entertaining and original character—a spirited, versatile, spunky little woman, whose whole life was a grand social success. She was also ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... low. 'Two such ladies, in the snow, here! at Fort Washington! The charms of the surprise is manifold. What has procured it? mercy, or vanity? One or the other it must be. A sick friend?or a French mantua-maker? But you are never going to drive back to New York ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... gave their words a frowning attention, and now answered abruptly: "Humph! That looks tremendously modest in you, gentlemen,—what?... Well, then, in your whole command if it's their notion. But it's vanity at last, sirs, pure vanity. Kincaid's Battery 'doesn't want to parade its dinginess till it's done something'—pure vanity! 'Shortest way'—nonsense! The shortest way to the train isn't the point! The point is to ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... lips a feeble smile not lacking in a kind of vanity, as feeble. "Why?" he asked. "I suppose you think my department runs itself ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... happily exceeded those whom we seemed to imitate. But while I give these arguments against verse, I may seem faulty that I have not only written ill ones, but written any; but since it was the fashion, I was resolved, as in all indifferent things, not to appear singular—the danger of the vanity being greater than the error; and therefore I followed it as a fashion, though very far off." Sir Robert appears to have been in the sulks, for some cause not now known, with his great brother-in-law; and was pleased to punish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... with articles on railways, banks, free-trade, education, agriculture, communal institutions, local self-government, joint-stock companies, and with crushing philippics against personal and national vanity, inordinate luxury, administrative tyranny, and the habitual peculation of the officials. This last-named subject received special attention. During the preceding reign any attempt to criticise publicly the character or acts of an ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the son of Virtue and Honour; but that there was likewise a spurious child who usurped the name, and whose parents were Vanity and Impudence. That, at a distance, there was a great resemblance between them, and they were often mistaken for each other. That the bastard issue had a loud shrill voice, which was perpetually employed in cravings and complaints; while the other never spoke louder than a whisper, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... and order a drink or two. If Cleggett had a fault as a commander it lay in these occasional foolhardy impulses which he found it difficult to control. Julius Caesar had the same sort of pride, which, in Caesar's case, amounted to positive vanity. In fact, the character of Caesar and the character of Cleggett had many points in common, although Cleggett possessed a nicer ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... seeming grandeur and the outward cast of luxury and splendor invite the enemies' quest and fans into blood-red heat his latent ire, while pride, vanity, and hate surround the heart with the humor of death-breeding slime into which the corroding worm ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... opinions—to the continued extortions of a military chief, the most despotic who ever reigned in a European country, and whose acts of oppression are truly Asiatic; and who tamely bore all this oppression, supported by their national vanity, because they wish to bear the name of the great people: Great, because their ambition is unbounded; great as a nation of rapacious and blood-thirsty soldiers; great in every species of immorality ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Violetta's stipulation for the deferring of Carlo's marriage, and contrived to guess that Carlo was reserved and unfamiliar with his betrothed. Then she cried out, "Fool that he is! Is it ever possible to come to the end of the folly of men? She has inflamed his vanity. She met him when you were holding him waiting, and no doubt she commenced with lamentations over the country, followed by a sigh, a fixed look, a cheerful air, and the assurance to him that she knew it—uttered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but then he adds in effect it will lead to a wrong construction being put upon the omission. Well, there can be but one interpretation, and that not an unnatural one. Borrow had a very rough time during these eight years. His vanity was hurt, and no wonder. It seems a small matter to us now that Charles Dickens should have been ashamed of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood. Genius has a right to a penurious, and even to a sordid, boyhood. But genius has no right to a sordid manhood, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... as we view the juvenile works of a Milton, or the first manner of a Raphael or other celebrated painter." In a letter to Hutcheson, Hume merely speaks of this article as "somewhat abusive;" so that his vanity, being young and callow, seems to have been correspondingly ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... get by trying to be sensible, the sooner you become a drivelling idiot the better for your peace of mind—and your vanity." ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Jim, clumsily evading a direct reply. Clarence hesitated a moment, and then yielded. For an equal moment Jim Hooker was torn between secret jealousy of his old comrade's graces and a desire to present them as familiar associations of his own. But his vanity ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... must not forget to tell you that I have grown at least an inch since I saw you last, in consequence of having been mistaken for the captain of the Thunderer! That the mistake was made by a pretty, innocent, sweet, ignorant young girl, with intensely blue eyes, does not abate my vanity one jot. That such a mistake should be made by anybody was complimentary. It happened thus:—I was seated alone in the captain's cabin, writing for the Evergreen Isle, when a party of ladies and gentlemen ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... directly after my breakfast to hold animated receptions of Malays, Arabs, and half-castes. They did not clamour aloud for my attention. They came with a silent and irresistible appeal—and the appeal, I affirm here, was not to my self-love or my vanity. It seems now to have had a moral character, for why should the memory of these beings, seen in their obscure, sun-bathed existence, demand to express itself in the shape of a novel, except on the ground of that mysterious fellowship ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... inclinations. It is not innate love and goodness that make us social, but our passions and weaknesses (above all, fear); man is by nature self-seeking. All actions, including the so-called virtues, spring from vanity and egoism; thus it has always been, thus it is in every grade of society. In social life, indeed, we dare not display all these desires openly, nor satisfy them at will. Shrewd lawgivers have taught ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... story," she replied, "and it would greatly incense the king if he should find out that I had told you, for one of his chief pleasures is to note the surprise and admiration of new-comers over what they see here. But if you will promise to gratify his vanity in this particular I will ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... at last an audience and he knew no mercy. All the agitation of the last week came pouring forth—he lost all sense of time and place; he was at the end of the world addressing infinity on the subject of his woes, and it says a good deal for his vanity and not much for his sense of humour that he did not feel the lack of proportion ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... parts with elaborate interludes on drums tuned to different pitches. Indeed the music of the Dark Continent is rich in polyphonic as well as rhythmic suggestions for the European. Perhaps the war may help to prick some of the vanity of the white race, which, looking down with self-assumed superiority upon other races, is quick to condemn delinquencies as native characteristics, and to ascribe to its own influences anything worthy; whereas the reverse ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... write that she had not a friend in the whole country, that she was utterly destitute and desolate, and begged me for Heaven's mercy not to throw her letter aside, but to see her and give her a trial. She inclosed her photograph, not, as she wrote, from any vanity, but that I might see her face and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the interior of the room. It was larger than most parlors he had seen. There was a big double bed on each side of it. Plainly it was intended to accommodate a whole party, and Sinclair smiled at the vanity of the man who had insisted on taking "the best you have." No wonder Sour Creek knew ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... and vow three things in my name. First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the articles of the Christian faith. And thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... give it up; at which I very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly, and also that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... and preach to Nellie on the vanity and vexation of the human heart," replied the invalid, who seemed to be decidedly out of humour. "I am well aware of Judith's style, Debby: that is how she covers her stinginess," and Miss Margaret gave a little sarcastic laugh at ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... all the splendor of luxury—since they possessed the means of procuring it—than from a refined taste. Their superabundance of gold and silver had been employed in obtaining these splendid superfluities, which were of no value but to gratify the vanity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... portion of the earth has no cause for humiliation for the part it has performed in the march of civilization. It has not accomplished everything; far from it. It has simply done its best, and without vanity or boastfulness, and recognizing the manifold achievements of others it invites the friendly rivalry of all the powers in the peaceful pursuits of trade and commerce, and will cooperate with all in advancing the highest and best interests of humanity. The wisdom and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... computer system, used to identify it in UUCP mail, USENET, or other forms of electronic information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems from the creativity and humor they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... had such a proverb. They were as remarkable, it seems, in those days as they are now for their national self-importance and vanity. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... do not emigrate to new countries where their acquirements would be neither rewarded nor admired. Sir Walter Scott, Sir Humphry Davy, and Mr. Malthus, would not earn as much in this colony as three brawny experienced ploughmen; and though the inordinate vanity of a new people might be gratified by the possession of them, they would be considered as mere ornaments, and would often be wholly neglected for things ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... adieu to London for ever. We newspaper scribes are true galley-slaves. When the high winds of events blow loud and frequent then the sails are hoisted, or the ship drives on of itself. When all is calm and sunshine then to our oars. Yet it is not unflattering to a man's vanity to reflect that what he writes at twelve at night, will before twelve hours are over, have perhaps, five or six thousand readers! To trace a happy phrase, good image, or new argument, running through the town and sliding into all the papers. Few wine merchants can boast of creating more ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... to the whole company of actors, who will witness for me, that, in all the rehearsals, I never pretended to any one scene of Mr Lee's, but did him all imaginable right, in his title to the greater part of it. I hope I may, without vanity, affirm to the world, that I never stood in need of borrowing another man's reputation; and I have been as little guilty of the injustice, of laying claim to any thing which was not my own. Nay, I durst almost ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... The clothes were the same, the girl was the same, but there was no longer the immaculate neatness, the dainty care, the well-groomed look which had once characterised her. In her usual impetuous fashion, she had rushed from one extreme to the other; in discarding vanity, had run ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and when they failed to persuade her of the danger, they resorted to scheming. "We know why you do it," they said artfully. "You know you have pretty hair and like to display it uncovered, imagining that it gets its golden glint from the sun. Oh, vanity of vanities! Fancy a nice, quiet missionary being so vain!" Certainly no argument could have sent her more quickly to ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... a slave in the family of the Spanish governor, was so often absent on mysterious errands that the authorities at last fixed on her as the one most likely to betray her countrymen. She was won to their purpose through her vanity. Her mistress had a comb of elaborate and curious workmanship, and to have one like it was the principal object in her existence. The governor told her that she should have this priceless treasure itself ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... to estimate the {169} excellence of an action by the magnitude or the utility of its effects rather than the intrinsic good of its motive. Otherwise He would not have ranked the widow's mite above the gifts of vanity, nor esteemed the tribute of the penitent, not so much for the costliness of her offering, as for the sincerity of affection it revealed. Christ looked upon the heart alone, and the worth of an action lay essentially for Him in its ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... for conventions. Never can the conventions of the Occident become those of the Far East; and never will foreign missionaries be suffered in Japan to take the role of a police of morals. Already the most liberal of our churches, those of broadest culture, begin to recognize the vanity of missions. But it is not necessary to drop old dogmatisms in order to perceive the truth: thorough education should be enough to reveal it; and the most educated of nations, Germany, sends no missionaries to work ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... trade, was accumulated in the rich and fruitful province of Britain. A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest. From the age of Constantine to the Plantagenets, this rapacious spirit continued to instigate the poor and hardy Caledonians; but the same people, whose generous humanity seems to inspire the songs of Ossian, was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... folly all the consequences of guilt, that more than all else darkened his lonely decline with unavailing regrets and embittered it with remorseful self-contempt. Nothing could be more galling to a proud man than the feeling that he had been betrayed by his vanity. It is commonly assumed that pride is incompatible with its weaker congener. But pride, after all, is nothing more than a stiffened and congealed vanity, and melts back to its original ductility ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... 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 the top of ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... too; he liked their free ways and frank speech, accustomed as he was to the gay and easy manners of the studios and green-rooms he frequented. He went into the fashionable world for the glory of it, but his heart was not in it; he enjoyed it through his vanity, received congratulations and commissions, and played the gallant before charming ladies who flattered him, but never paid court to any. As he did not allow himself to indulge in daring pleasantries and spicy jests in their society, he thought them all prudes, and himself was considered ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... outside approval; his work is done in quiet and solitude. The Kaiser, on the contrary, conducts his foreign policy in the glaring limelight of publicity; and whenever he has been criticized by experts, his vanity has only too often been tempted to appeal to popular passion and to gain popular applause. For that reason, and entirely apart from his indiscretions, the bare fact that the Kaiser has become his own Foreign Secretary has lessened ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... seized him at his own cowardice. His egregious vanity, wounded by that laughter, egged him on. He tried to seize Esther by the waist. But she, quick as some panther on the defence, had jumped up, too, and pounced upon a knife—the very one she had been using for that happy ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... such as to encourage all my illusions, to heighten my boyish passion, and make me more and more dependent on her smiles. Looking back with my present wretched knowledge, I conclude that her vanity and love of power were intensely gratified by the belief that I had fainted on first seeing her purely from the strong impression her person had produced on me. The most prosaic woman likes to believe herself the object of a violent, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... thoughts and passions! What passions? you ask. First, his love of the frightfully marvellous, a passion common enough; the delight of feeling afraid; and also, if it must be said, the enjoyment of unseemly pleasures. Add to these a touch of vanity: the more dreadful and enraged those clever women show the Devil to be, the greater the pride taken by the judge in subduing so mighty an adversary. He arrays himself as it were in his victory, enthrones himself in his foolishness, triumphs ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... speculated with that ten thousand dollars from exactly the same motive—because you thought I wanted so much that I didn't have. But I bought that gown entirely to gratify my vanity—so you see, after all, I'm a great deal the worse sinner of us two. There, now, I must see about the baby. He was very fretful all the morning, and the doctor says it is the heat. I'm sure, Ben, that he ought to get out of the city. How can we ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... you mercy, fair sister!" said the Prioress, with an air of superiority. "We have no temptations in our blessed retreat. Our rule saveth us, and our seclusion from the vanity of the world—and I pray you, what other evil ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... story, with the concentration of a Greek tragedy, such as we find in the "Scarlet Letter" and in "Smoke," or an ampler and more leisurely movement more like that of the Elizabethan plays, such as we may see in "Vanity Fair" and in ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the ground-motives of human action, that he is most interesting; that he becomes the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius. Christianity uses language very liable to be misunderstood when it seems to tell men to do good, not, certainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but "that their Father which, seeth in secret may reward them openly." The motives of reward and punishment have come, from the misconception of language of this kind, to be strangely overpressed by many Christian ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... excellent opinion of her personal attractions, sinks her age a good six years, avers that when I was born she was only eighteen, when you, my dear sister, know as well as I know that she was of age when she married my father, and that I was not born for three years afterward. But vanity is the weakness of your sex—and these are mere foibles that I have related to you, and, provided she never molested me I should look upon them as foibles very excusable in a woman. But I am now coming to what must shock you as well ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... he is lost. The Inca has defeated all these generals again and again at manoeuvres; and yet he has to give place to them in the field because he would be blamed for every disaster—accused of sacrificing the country to his vanity. Vanity! Why do they call him vain? Just because he is one of the few men who are not afraid to live. Why do they call themselves brave? Because they have not sense enough to be afraid to die. Within the last year the world has produced millions of heroes. Has it produced more than ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... trouble) tho I have payed Thomas Crafurd 21 shiling.[50] What he stands in neid of during his abode I hope ye wil answer him, and upon your advertisment and eis receipt I sal either advance or pay the money upon sight. I most without vanity or flattery say hitherto he hes not bein inclined to any vice or evill way and I hope sall so continue. I know not positively what may defray his charges in his studies, diet, and otherwise, but I conceive about 7 or 8 hundred ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... been time for them to court their power: their fancies had not been fed to wantonness by ever-changing temptations: obstinacy in them would not have leagued itself with trivial opinions: petty hatreds had not accumulated to masses of strength conflicting perniciously with each other: vanity with them had not found leisure to flourish—nor presumption: they did not assume their authority,—it was given them,—it was thrust upon them. The perfidy and tyranny of Napoleon 'compelled,' says ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... as an austere recluse,— Still less as one who hates mankind—, Do I thy peaceful precincts choose; But as a student, who can find No joys in Vanity's gay Fair That for an instant can compare With those thou ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... more familiar with the working of the invention we are considering, we have visited Mr. Palmer's establishments in Philadelphia and Boston. The distinguished "Surgeon-Artist" is a man of fine person, as we have said. But if he has any personal vanity, it does not betray itself with regard to that portion of his organism which Nature furnished him. There is some reason to think that Mr. Palmer is a little ashamed of the lower limb which he brought into the world with him. At least, if he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... have been pleased to think that one so exalted as you are, one whose high position is so rife in the eyes of all men, should have taken pleasure in my company. I will confess to a foolish woman's silly vanity in having wished to be known to be the friend of the Duke of Omnium. I am like the other moths that flutter near the light and have their wings burned. But I am wiser than they in this, that having been scorched, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... and possessed with a new Passion; and which she promised herself, she would destroy as soon as she could find it out. She had a Spirit altogether proper for bold and hazardous Enterprizes; and the Credit of her Brother gave her so much Vanity, as all the Indifference of the Prince was not capable ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... crouching fear haunts the passing hours—that ineffable smile which plays around her mouth says plainly that life is good. And yet the circles about the eyes and the drooping lids hint of world-weariness, and speak the message of Koheleth and say, "Vanity of vanities, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... borrow two nasty chairs from the people below, who on the next Sunday borrowed my only decanter, in return, and, hang them, cracked it!—Curse me, say I, if this life is worth having! It's all the very vanity of vanities—as it's said somewhere in the Bible—and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and—what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and 'no advance!' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... am sensible I have presumed too far to entertain you with a rude discourse of that art, which you both know so well, and put into practice with so much happiness. Yet before I leave Virgil, I must own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my master in this poem: I have followed him everywhere, I know not with what success, but I am sure with diligence enough: my images are many of them copied from him, and the rest are imitations of him. My expressions also are as near as the idioms ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... that faith which no one has till he asks the Spirit of God to give it him, and which then makes him love God in spite of all difficulties; but we mean faith in the existence of God, which all have by nature, and which sin alone can extinguish; not only grosser sin, but sinful vanity of mind. ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... for the beginning student to find some way to see the first two of these three, or some other attempts to revamp the classic, for instance Mrs. Fiske's painstaking reproduction of Vanity Fair, bearing in mind the list of differences which this ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... authority had treated them, had irritated to the highest degree the people in and near Manchester, and they had also been excited to acts of desperation and violence, by some of those who professed to be their leaders. As for Johnson, the brush-maker, he was a composition of vanity, emptiness, and conceit, such as I never before saw concentrated in one person. It was the most ridiculous thing in the world to see him assuming the most pompous and lofty tone, while every one about him did not fail openly to express contempt for his insignificance and folly. In truth, even amidst ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... If the vanity so natural to a young heart, made Natura, on this information, pleased and proud of the consideration such a lady had for him while unknown, how much more cause had he to be so, when being shewn by the same peasant into the monastery, he was brought into a parlour, magnificently furnished, and ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... sapper who guided the column. Our odd little party reported themselves to the staff officer under the red lamp of Column A. 'Who are you?' he asked, and it tickled my vanity to think that we, the scouts, were for a moment the most vital organ of the whole machine. If anything miscarried with us, it would mean confusion, perhaps disaster. For in making a flank march round the enemy's position we were disregarding, with justifiable ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... standing by the mantel-piece, thinking of the scenes of his early 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 fire- place, and the little household fairy whose childish ministrations had give such a beauty to the scene when a very light step crossed the painted floor, and she was ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... may be dried, And where the orphan wanders sad and lone, Where poverty its grieving head may hide, Will breathe the music of her voice's tone; And if her face was blest with beauty rare 'Mid gilded sighs and worldly vanity, When heavenly peace has left its impress there Its loveliness from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and it is come to this: and all from the indulgence of his five senses, plus 'the sixth sense of vanity.' His only recreation save eating is being led about by the mulatto turnkey, the one human being with whom he, dimly understanding what is fit for him, will at all consort; and having wild pines thrown down to him from the Poui tree above by the spider monkey, whose ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... me to quit gambling, and if I had made that promise all would have been well, but I was stubborn and proud and refused to make any promise. I thought it was beneath my dignity. I really intended to never gamble after my wedding, but I would not tell her so; my vanity overruled my judgment. I said that if she had not confidence enough in me to take me as I was, without requiring me to give such a promise, I would never see her again until I came to ask her ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... diet than at present, is clear from the fact that market-gardening increases in the ratio of civilization. So we may safely assume that at some remote period Man subsisted upon an exclusively flesh diet. Our uniform vanity has given us the human mind as the ne plus ultra of intelligence, the human face and figure as the standard of beauty. Of course we cannot deny to human fat and lean an equal superiority over beef, mutton, and pork. It is plain that our meat-eating ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... to the accomplishment of this great, beneficent, and necessary work for civilization, that I find the greatest pleasure in accepting your election as a member of this Academy, and find cause for gratification beyond that of mere personal vanity ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... was afflicted by false pride and supported by true pride, that his intellect was still very bright, yet so dismally obscured on many sides as almost to justify people in saying that he was mad. She knew that he was almost a saint, and yet almost a castaway through vanity and hatred of those above him. But she did not know that he knew all this of himself also. She did not comprehend that he should be hourly telling himself that people were calling him mad and were so calling him with truth. It did not occur to her that he could see her insight into him. She ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Away. The Apostle Paul tells us of creation's curse, creation's groans and creation's deliverance: "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... warning to understand the meaning of this. O'Brien was setting his power to work, only this Manuel's restless vanity had taught me exactly how the thing was to be done. The friar had been exciting the minds of this rabble against me; awakening their suspicions, their ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... health; nor now, that by thy mercy I am brought to see that thy correction hath wrought medicinally upon me, presume I upon that spiritual strength I have; but as I acknowledge that my bodily strength is subject to every puff of wind, so is my spiritual strength to every blast of vanity. Keep me therefore still, O my gracious God, in such a proportion of both strengths, as I may still have something to thank thee for, which I have received, and still something to pray for and ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... Wolsey's place, became his own prime minister, and ruled with a vigour which was assuredly not less than the Cardinal's. Such transformations are not the work of a moment, and Henry's would have been impossible, had he in previous years been so completely the slave of Vanity Fair, as most people thought. In reality, there are indications that beneath the superficial gaiety of his life, Henry was beginning to use his own judgment, form his own conclusions, and take an interest in serious matters. He was only twenty-eight ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... had never before faced—his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked self. He saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn now turn to rags of folly. He shuddered at the thought that to others, before now, the garments of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare. Vanity and conceit? These were the joints in his armor. And how free from either she had ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... display of vanity, but as he could do nothing with the obdurate Kitty, he allowed her to have her own way, and made a virtue of necessity by calling her ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... to you that just then I perceived—in a new light, as it were—how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so—what shall I say?—so—unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse. I had often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other things—the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... their miserable episodes, with the wranglings of the lawyers and all the unhappiness that they revealed and which exposed the vanity of dreams, the tricks of women, the lowness of some minds, the foul animal that sits and slumbers in most hearts, attracted me like a delightful play, a piece which rivets one from the first to the last act. I listened greedily to passionate letters, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... bought and donned a new suit of "store clothes," and urged on his companion the necessity of at least a whole pair of breeches in honour of his entrance into the Klondyke. But the Boy's funds were low and his vanity chastened. Besides, he had ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... pulses beat faster, for to him a woman was ever the fountain of adventure, and an unmanageable heart sent him headlong to the oasis where he might loiter at the spring of feminine vanity, or truth, or impenitent gaiety, as the case might be. In proportion as his spirits had sunk into sour reflection, they now shot up rocket-high at the sight of a girl's joyous pose of body and the colour and form of the picture she made. In him the shrewdness of a strong intelligence ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is a Swinish vanity indeed. I will tell you another Story. {48e} {48f} There was a Gentleman that had a Drunkard to be his Groom, and coming home one night very much abused with Beer, his Master saw it. Well (quoth his Master ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... from company, and keep encroachers from me." Yet some may work best when there are others beside them. From the book the reader turns to the child that prattles near, and realizes how much more the child can ask than the book can answer. The presence of the young living soul corrects the vanity of the dead old pedant. Books are most solacing when the limitations of bookish wisdom are perceived. "Literature," said Matthew Arnold, "is a criticism of life." This is true, despite the objections of Saintsbury, but I venture to add that "life is ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Jerome Brown away from the scene of his unsuccessful but undiscouraged activities. But Brown was not a man who could be amused and kept out of mischief in Continental hotels. He had to be a figure, if only a "mark," in Wall street. Nothing else would gratify his peculiar vanity. The deeper he went in, the more affectionately he told Cressida that now all her cares and anxieties were over. To try to get related facts out of his optimism was like trying to find framework in a feather ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... events, Sarah did work, and studied with a steady perseverance which spoke of her faith in the promises of her old master, and of the influence he had obtained over her through her vanity. At first she had been deterred by the extreme difficulties which beset so late a beginning; but her amazing natural gifts had soon begun to show themselves, and in a short time ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... this important subject, Hendrik was kind enough to give him a chance by asking for it. The Bushman possessed to an extraordinary degree the not unusual accomplishment of saying a very little in a great many words. Fortunately, for the gratification of his vanity, the hunters were at supper, and had time to listen to ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... things impossible to me when I once set about them. Heaven has bestowed on me a fair enough share of genius for the making up of all those neat strokes of mother wit, for all those ingenious gallantries to which the ignorant and vulgar give the name of impostures; and I can boast, without vanity, that there have been very few men more skilful than I in expedients and intrigues, and who have acquired a greater reputation in the noble profession. But, to tell the truth, merit is too ill rewarded nowadays, and I have given up everything ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... Mons. de Mole, but especially the Marquis de Lauriston, who received me most kindly. He is personally like my cousin Colonel Russell. I learned that his brother, Louis Law,[398] my old friend, was alive, and the father of a large family. I was most kindly treated, and had my vanity much flattered by the men who had acted such important parts talking to me in the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... long she's been hanging upon the fellow! Such a promenading! To fair and dance parading! Everywhere as first she must shine, He was treating her always with tarts and wine; She began to think herself something fine, And let her vanity so degrade her That she even accepted the presents he made her. There was hugging and smacking, and so it went on— And lo! and behold! the flower ...
— Faust • Goethe
... holy 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 to the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... bath, my good fellow, and the evil things of this life shall not get hold of you. Water is like truth,—purifying, transparent; a tonic to those fouled and wearied with the dust and vanity of this transitional phenomenon called the world. Patronize it! be thy acquaintance with it constant and familiar! Remember, my dear Balder, that this slave of thine is the medium through which something better than he (thyself, namely) is filtered ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... those nobles whom from afar he had so heartily admired. However that may be, he retained with them not only his frankness of speech, but also his full freedom of action. One of them, a knight, had always held aloof from the others, out of vanity and bad temper. Francis, far from leaving him to himself, always showed him affection, and finally had the joy of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... and vanity; I had brought my misfortunes on myself. I had myself rendered my dungeon impenetrable. Death would have followed but for the dependence I placed in the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... very good reason for our admiration, for the craft was more than sightly, she was decidedly handsome, and we who had put her together were, after all, it must be remembered, only unskilled amateurs; and though I think I may, without undue vanity, say that we were all prime seamen, and knew perfectly well what constituted a handsome and wholesome craft, it is one thing to know this, and quite another to make your work correspond ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... and to pluck the flowers of happiness from the wayside where they grow. Singularity of character, therefore, was not calculated to win her love. She undoubtedly felt an interest in the solitary student, and perceiving, with no great exercise of vanity, that her society drew him from the destructive intensity of his studies, she perhaps felt it a duty to exert her influence. But it did not occur to her that her influence had been sufficiently strong to change the whole current of his ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the Spanish-American is the tendency to fulsome adulation of public or powerful personages in the hope of winning patronage. The tendency to pander to each other's vanity, however, shows up in marked contrast to the harshness and abuse of authority often employed in political matters. The Spanish character, amiable and courteous in friendship or equality, tends to become arbitrary when vested with some brief authority, and this has been at the bottom of much ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... more just To every claim of their yet speaking dust. Save me, good heaven! and all whom I regard, (Or hasty muse, or irritable bard,) Save us, good heaven! in mild and temperate age, From wounded vanity's vindictive rage! To genuine friendship pure delight is given, Next to the favor of approving heaven; And that delight is most sublimely felt. When nature in vain tears, has ceased to melt: When sorrow, quell'd by purer love's controul, To sweet reflection ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... did,—or if you definitely turned Monohan down; you see I'm rather in the dark,—he'd go to any length to play even with. Fyfe. When Monohan wants anything, he looks upon it as his own; and when you wound his vanity, you've stabbed him in his most vital part. He never rests then until he's paid the score. Father was always a little afraid of him. I think that's the chief reason for selling out his Roaring Lake interests to Monohan. He didn't want to be involved in ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... heaven are the pride of New York. It is upon them that the returning traveller gazes most eagerly, as he nears the shore. They hold a firmer place in his heart than even the Statue of Liberty, and the vague sentiment which it inspires. With a proper vanity he points out to the poor Briton, who shudders at five storeys, the size and grandeur of his imposing palaces. And his arrogance is just. The sky-scraper presents a new view of architecture. It is original, characteristic, and ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... I said, "a barrier against cant, and flummery, and coldness, and pride, and against—why, against your own vanity too." ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... he did not like the picture. He had appealed to what he had been led to believe was the most sacred instinct in a woman's nature. He received no response. Moreover, he saw the deeper love for personal vanity and finery absolutely dominate the mother-instinct. He was conscious that something had toppled off its pedestal ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... needed any more dresses. I made her three good, warm, serviceable ones this fall, and anything more is sheer extravagance. There's enough material in those sleeves alone to make a waist, I declare there is. You'll just pamper Anne's vanity, Matthew, and she's as vain as a peacock now. Well, I hope she'll be satisfied at last, for I know she's been hankering after those silly sleeves ever since they came in, although she never said a word after the first. The puffs have ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
