43 Vanity-Inspired Quotes

Vanity, often misunderstood, can be seen as both a flaw and a spark of self-love. It’s a human trait that has sparked debates among philosophers, writers, and artists for centuries. Whether empowering or cautionary, reflections on vanity provide a fascinating glimpse into our understanding of self-worth and personal pride. In this post, we've gathered an array of quotes that delve into the nuances of vanity—from its role in shaping our identities to its potential pitfalls. Join us as we explore these 43 thought-provoking vanity-inspired quotes, each offering a unique perspective on this complex human inclination.

1. “Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.” - Margaret Atwood

2. “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?” - William Makepeace Thackeray

3. “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.” - Jane Austen

4. “...It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself, you could have made her blush any day of the year, by telling her she was selfish. She was always planning out her own development, desiring her own perfection, observing her own progress. Her nature had for her own imagination a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring bows, of shady bowers and of lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one’s mind was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses.” - Henry James

5. “Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ever heard of, and we shall treat you worse than the lowest lackey!' They strive for justice, they stand on their rights, and yet they've slandered him like infidels in their article. We demand, we don't ask, and you will get no gratitude from us, because you are acting for the satisfaction of your own conscience! Queer sort of reasoning!... He has not borrowed money from you, he doesn't owe you anything, so what are you reckoning on, if not his gratitude? So how can you repudiate it? Lunatics! They regard society as savage and inhuman, because it cries shame on the seduced girl; but if you think society inhuman, you must think that the girl suffers from the censure of society, and if she does, how is it you expose her to society in the newspapers and expect her not to suffer? Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end by eating up one another, that's what I prophesy. Isn't that topsy-turvydom, isn't it infamy?” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

7. “I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.” - Jim Butcher

8. “He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.” - Gustave Flaubert

9. “The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?” - William Makepeace Thackeray

10. “What people regard as vanity—leaving great works, having children, acting in such a way as to prevent one's name from being forgotten—I regard as the highest expression of human dignity.” - Paulo Coelho

11. “Lockhart'll sign anything if it stands still long enough.” - J.K. Rowling

12. “We think we are being interesting to others when we are being interesting to ourselves.” - Jack Gardner

13. “A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.” - Lisa Kleypas

14. “I'm amazing and studly, but I have limits.” - Jim Butcher

15. “Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.” - Rousseau Jean - Jacques

16. “If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

17. “I was good at being charming, one of my very few vanities.” - Jeff Lindsay

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

19. “Killing animals to make a fashion statement = a sickening + cold-blooded vanity.” - Jess C. Scott

20. “I would have chosen any other than this for my prison. A rhinoceros is as ugly as a human being, and it too is going to die, but at least it never thinks that it is beautiful.” - Peter S. Beagle

21. “I had only four hairs worth shaving, but I managed to inflict five cuts attempting to remove them.” - Troy Soos

22. “Every men wanted to be his friend and every woman wanted to be in his bed” - Dee Remy

23. “The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it; for, however absurd it may be thought to boast an honour by an act which shows that it was conferred without merit, yet most men seem rather inclined to confess the want of virtue than of importance.” - Samuel Johnson

24. “The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked.” - Thomas More

25. “As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.” - Criss Jami

26. “I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.” - Lionel Shriver

27. “So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors æons ago.” - Olaf Stapledon

28. “The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.” - Sophocles

29. “Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity.” - J. P. Vinluca

30. “Vanity is my favourite sin.” - Al Pacino

31. “Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.” - Blaise Pascal

32. “You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing— your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal.” - David Foster Wallace

33. “Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley

34. “He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. (Nietzsche.)A vain person is always vain about something. He overestimates the importance of some quality or exaggerates the degree to which he possesses it, but the quality has some real importance and he does possess it to some degree. The fantasy of overestimation or exaggeration makes the vain person comic, but the fact that he cannot be vain about nothing makes his vanity a venial sin, because it is always open to correction by appeal to objective fact.A proud person, on the other hand, is not proud of anything, he is proud, he exists proudly. Pride is neither comic nor venial, but the most mortal of all sins because, lacking any basis in concrete particulars, it is both incorrigible and absolute: one cannot be more or less proud, only proud or humble.Thus, if a painter tries to portray the Seven Deadly Sins, his experience will furnish him readily enough with images symbolic of Gluttony, Lust, Sloth, Anger, Avarice, and Envy, for all these are qualities of a person’s relations to others and the world, but no experience can provide an image of Pride, for the relation it qualifies is the subjective relation of a person to himself. In the seventh frame, therefore, the painter can only place, in lieu of a canvas, a mirror.” - W.H. Auden

35. “Vanity breeds insanity; humility leads to utility.” - T. William Watts

36. “I cried because I was so beautiful.” - Victoria Kann

37. “At the end of the day, if pride is your greatest strength, turn it into vanity.” - Lionel Suggs

38. “Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.” - Dejan Stojanovic

39. “But I feel vanity is a part of art and the non-vain are really non-artistic.” - Barry Webster

40. “Who would you impress if the world was blind?” - Shannon L. Alder

41. “The Rose does not preen herself to catch my eye. She blooms because she blooms. A saint is a saint until he knows he is one.” - Anthony de Mello

42. “Vanity, right?" Nash reappeared in the living room with an open bag of potato chips. "I nominate my venerable brother. He likes to play hero, and one look at him should establish the vanity angle.""Nash!" I really shouldn't have been surprised by the dig. But I was."What?" He raised one brow at me in challenge. "It's okay to call me jealous, but not to call him vain?""Awareness of one's obvious advantages doesn't imply vanity," Tod insisted calmly.Nash turned on him. "Does it imply narcissism?"Tod huffed. "This coming from the guy who owns more hair products than his girlfriend.” - Rachel Vincent

43. “Don't be vain. What you look like doesn't matter. It's the deed that matters.” - Sarah Addison Allen