This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A certain amount of distrust is wholesome, but not so much of others as of ourselves. Neither vanity nor conceit can exist in the same atmosphere with it.
Distrust |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
What greater vanity can there be, than to go about by our proportions and conjectures to guess at God? And to govern both him, and the world according to our capacity and laws?
Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.
Error | Evidence | Father | Force | Habit | Judgment | Necessity | Occupation | Receive | Respect | Temptation | Respect | Temptation |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
The vanity of the passing world and love are the two fundamental and heart-penetrating notes of true poetry. And they are two notes of which neither can be sounded without causing the other to vibrate. The feeling of the vanity of the passing world kindles love in us, the only thing that triumphs over the vain and transitory, the only thing that fills life again and eternalizes it.
Nahuatl Wise Men including Nezahualcoyotl NULL
The false wise man, like an ignorant physician, a man without understanding, claims to know about God. He has his own traditions and keeps them secretly. He is a boaster, vanity is his. He makes things complicated; he brags and exaggerates. He is a river, a rocky hill (a dangerous man). A lover of darkness and corners, a mysterious wizard, a magician, a witch doctor, a public thief, he takes things. A sorcerer, a destroyer of faces. He leads the people astray; he causes others to lose their faces. He hides things, he makes them difficult. He entangles them with difficulties; he destroys them; he causes the people to perish; he mysteriously puts an end to everything.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
Industry |
I'm a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries.
Greed |
Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin
Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside – I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little – or there are many fools.
Little |
He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom.
Age | Appearance | Life | Life | People | Perception | Thought | Wealth | Youth | Youth | Thought |
Peter Geach, fully Peter Thomas Geach
The wicked can for the moment use God's creation in defiance of God's commandments. But this is a sort of miracle or mystery; as St. Paul said, God has made the creature subject to vanity against its will. It is reasonable to expect, if the world's whole raison d'être is to effect God's good pleasure, that the very natural agents and operations of the world should be such as to frustrate and enrage and torment those who set their wills against God's. If things are not at present like this, that is only a gratuitous mercy, on whose continuance the sinner has no reason to count. 'The world shall fight with him against the unwise.... Yea, a mighty wind shall stand up against them, and like a storm shall blow them away.'
Defiance | God | Good | Present | Reason | Wills | World | God |
Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, aka Baron Pierre de Coubertin
The day when a sportsman stops thinking above all else of the happiness in his own effort and the intoxication of the power and physical balance he derives from it, the day when he lets considerations of vanity or interest take over, on this day his ideal will die.
Balance | Day | Effort | Power | Thinking | Will | Happiness |
David Swing, aka Professor Swing
There is no vanity away from man. The sea gives us her music without egotism. The rainbow spreads out her gorgeous lines without boasting. The nightingale sings her notes her self unseen among the wild thorn, in the silent night. The floral world in June fills the air with perfume, and the sight with her indescribable tints, but without any ostentation. Man alone has vanity ; not because man alone has soul for this would be to degrade soul below the standard of dumb life , but be cause man alone has wandered from the divine path. This wan dering has been aided and abetted by his blindness to yester day, and by living only in the proud thrones and crowns and. glories of to-morrow. Vanity draws its chief nutriment from the future. This is, perhaps, the reason why nearly all of us pass through a vain period in early years. Fortunate is the heart that did not, in early life, pass through a score of years of personal greatness.
Robert Devereux, Lord Essex, 2nd Earl of Essex
My sins are more in number than the hairs on my head. I have bestowed my youth in wantonness, lust and uncleanness; I have been puffed up with pride, vanity and love of this wicked world’s pleasures. For all which, I humbly beseech my Saviour Christ to be a mediator to the eternal Majesty for my pardon, especially for this my last sin, this great, this bloody, this crying, this infectious sin, whereby so many for love of me have been drawn to offend God, to offend their sovereign, to offend the world. I beseech God to forgive it us, and to forgive it me – most wretched of all.
Eternal | God | Love | Lust | Youth | Youth | God | Forgive |
Purge me therefore, O Lord, though it be with fire. Burn up the chaff of vanity and self-indulgence, of hasty prejudices, second-hand dogmas,--husks which do not feed my soul, with which I cannot be content, of which I feel ashamed daily--and if there be any grains of wheat in me, any word or thought or power of action which may be of use as seed for my nation after me, gather it, O Lord, into Thy garner.
Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.
Absurd | Perfection |
For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Lord of the world, O hear my psalm, And as sweet incense take my plea. My heart hath set its love on Thee And finds in speech its only balm. This thought forever haunts my mind, Some day to Thee I must return, From Thee I came and backward yearn My very fount and source to find. Not mine the merit that I stand Before Thee thus, since all is Thine, The glorious work of force divine, No product of my heart or hand. My soul to Thee was humbly bent Even before she had her birth, Before upon the sphere of earth Her heav’nly greatness made descent.
Day | Decision | Evil | Imagination | Judgment | Justify | Man | Righteousness | Scandal | Spirit | Work |