Quotes about pride and vanity

Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty and supped with Infamy.

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.

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Self-love is the greatest of flatterers.

If we had no pride we should not complain of that of others.

Everyone praises his heart, none dare praise their understanding.

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.

When not prompted by vanity we say little.

Usually we only praise to be praised.

Some reproaches praise; some praises reproach.

The refusal of praise is only the wish to be praised twice.

Flattery is base coin to which only our vanity gives currency.

Virtue would not go far did not vanity escort her.

Pride will not owe, self-love will not pay.

Pride, which inspires, often serves to moderate envy.

There is more self-love than love in jealousy.

We only appreciate our good or evil in proportion to our self-love.

Usually we only praise heartily those who admire us.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

Vanity makes us sin more against our taste than reason.

Usually we are more satirical from vanity than malice.

More persons exist without self-love than without envy.

Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye—and calls it his pride.

The disappointed one SPEAKS—“I listened for the echo and I heard only praise.”

Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity.

Contradiction and flattery make, both of them, bad conversation.

To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.

“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

Shame is Pride’s cloak.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

Prayers plough not; praises reap not; joys laugh not; sorrows weep not.

EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

NOMINEE, n. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.

SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.

VALOR, n. A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler’s hope.

VANITY, n. The tribute of a fool to the worth of the nearest ass.

WORSHIP, n. Homo Creator’s testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.

Whatever discoveries have been made in the region of self-love, there remain many unexplored territories there.

This clemency of which they make a merit, arises oftentimes from vanity, sometimes from idleness, oftentimes from fear, and almost always from all three combined.

When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like other men.

People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.

Pride indemnifies itself and loses nothing even when it casts away vanity.

Pride is much the same in all men, the only difference is the method and manner of showing it.

It would seem that nature, which has so wisely ordered the organs of our body for our happiness, has also given us pride to spare us the mortification of knowing our imperfections.

Pride has a larger part than goodness in our remonstrances with those who commit faults, and we reprove them not so much to correct as to persuade them that we ourselves are free from faults.

Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance.

It would seem that our actions have lucky or unlucky stars to which they owe a great part of the blame or praise which is given them.

There is no praise we have not lavished upon Prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.

The test of extraordinary merit is to see those who envy it the most yet obliged to praise it.

We often boast that we are never bored, but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others.

It is oftener by the estimation of our own feelings that we exaggerate the good qualities of others than by their merit, and when we praise them we wish to attract their praise.

We do not like to praise, and we never praise without a motive. Praise is flattery, artful, hidden, delicate, which gratifies differently him who praises and him who is praised. The one takes it as the reward of merit, the other bestows it to show his impartiality and knowledge.

We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.

Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to praise which is treacherous.

The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.

If we never flattered ourselves the flattery of others would not hurt us.

The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than real brilliancy.

Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.

There are different kinds of curiosity: one springs from interest, which makes us desire to know everything that may be profitable to us; another from pride, which springs from a desire of knowing what others are ignorant of.

Perseverance is not deserving of blame or praise, as it is merely the continuance of tastes and feelings which we can neither create or destroy.

When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have left them.

We exaggerate the glory of some men to detract from that of others, and we should praise Prince Conde and Marshal Turenne much less if we did not want to blame them both.

There are people who are like farces, which are praised but for a time (however foolish and distasteful they may be).

All those who pay the debts of gratitude cannot thereby flatter themselves that they are grateful.

What makes false reckoning, as regards gratitude, is that the pride of the giver and the receiver cannot agree as to the value of the benefit.

Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it is always interest or vanity that causes them.

It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last.

It would seem that even self-love may be the dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of giving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle and delicate manner.

No one should be praised for his goodness if he has not strength enough to be wicked. All other goodness is but too often an idleness or powerlessness of will.

Nothing flatters our pride so much as the confidence of the great, because we regard it as the result of our worth, without remembering that generally ‘tis but vanity, or the inability to keep a secret.

The fidelity of most men is merely an invention of self-love to win confidence; a method to place us above others and to render us depositaries of the most important matters.

The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love.

There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own.

What we call liberality is often but the vanity of giving, which we like more than that we give away.

A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.

Nothing should so humiliate men who have deserved great praise, as the care they have taken to acquire it by the smallest means.

The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established.

Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

Interest which is accused of all our misdeeds often should be praised for our good deeds.

To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is but to reproach them with impunity.

We believe, sometimes, that we hate flattery—we only dislike the method.

Humility is the true proof of Christian virtues; without it we retain all our faults, and they are only covered by pride to hide them from others, and often from ourselves.

If vanity does not overthrow all virtues, at least she makes them totter.

What makes the vanity of others unsupportable is that it wounds our own.

Penetration has a spice of divination in it which tickles our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.

To praise good actions heartily is in some measure to take part in them.

The most violent passions give some respite, but vanity always disturbs us.

What makes the grief of shame and jealousy so acute is that vanity cannot aid us in enduring them.

Our pride is often increased by what we retrench from our other faults.

The same pride which makes us blame faults from which we believe ourselves free causes us to despise the good qualities we have not.

There is often more pride than goodness in our grief for our enemies’ miseries; it is to show how superior we are to them, that we bestow on them the sign of our compassion.

Pride as the other passions has its follies. We are ashamed to own we are jealous, and yet we plume ourselves in having been and being able to be so.

“I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—the memory yields.

Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with regard to the beloved. “What! She is modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or—or—-“

To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness of heart—and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.

Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the origin of many systems of morals.

General ideas and great conceit are always in a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune.

Generosity wins favour for every one, especially when it is accompanied by modesty.

It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all.

I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity: are we not here to make the transitory permanent? This we can do only if we know how to value both.

We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not been quite in vain.

If a man feels no love, he must learn how to flatter; otherwise he will not succeed.

It is all one whether you are of high or of humble origin. You will always have to pay for your humanity.

Truth is at variance with our natures, but not so error; and for a very simple reason. Truth requires us to recognise ourselves as limited, but error flatters us with the belief that in one way or another we are subject to no bounds at all.

To make a long speech in the presence of others without flattering your audience, is to rouse dislike.

What kind of faults in ourselves should we retain, nay, even cultivate? Those which rather flatter other people than offend them.

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one’s personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one’s individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whom it befits.

With those who are really of like disposition with himself a man cannot long be at variance; he will always come to an agreement again. With those who are really of adverse disposition, he may in vain try to preserve harmony; he will always come to a separation again.

Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

The Greeks, whose poetry and rhetoric was of a simple and positive character, express approval more often than disapproval. With the Latin writers it is the contrary; and the more poetry and the arts of speech decay, the more will blame swell and praise shrink.

Flattery cannot be too strong for them; drunk with it from their infancy, like old drinkers, they require drams.

They prefer a personal attachment to a public service, and reward it better. They are vain and weak enough to look upon it as a free-will offering to their merit, and not as a burnt sacrifice to their power.

In courts, bashfulness and timidity are as prejudicial on one hand, as impudence and rashness are on the other. A steady assurance, and a cool intrepidity, with an exterior modesty, are the true and necessary medium.

Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary pocket-money at court; where, by custom and consent, it has obtained such a currency, that it is no longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment.