Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Ben Sira

He who seeketh vanity findeth delusion.

Delusion |

Blaise Pascal

What vanity is painting, which attracts admiration to things which in the original we do not admire.

Admiration |

Christopher Fry

It's always our touches of vanity that manage to betray us.

Edmund Burke

Greater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.

Ambition | Avarice | Folly | Meanness |

Edmund Burke

Of all vanities of fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Titles, indeed, may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.

Birth | Nobility | Virtue | Virtue |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own... The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

People | Rest |

Eric Hoffer

We probably have a greater love for those we support than those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest... There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

Giving | Love | Self | Self-interest |

George Santayana

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

Fame | Love |

Henry Ward Beecher

There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.

Nothing |

Joseph Addison

Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It give bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in its utmost deformity.

Bitterness | Good | Indifference | Jealousy | Little | Love | Madness | Man | Resentment | Soul |

Joseph Joubert

Avoid singularity. There may often be less vanity in following the new modes than in adhering to the old ones. It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting, them.

Singularity | Wise | Following | Old |