The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.

Vanity is normal in performers. Does it bother other people? All the time. But nine times out of 10, that says more about them than you.

Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession.

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance.

There is a danger that threatens everyone in the church, all of us. The danger of worldliness. It leads us to vanity, arrogance and pride.

advertising confuses values ... By appealing either to fear, or to vanity, or to covetousness, it very skillfully insinuates false values.

We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest.

I see a city in the desert lies The vanity of an ancient king But the city lies in broken pieces While the wind howls and the vultures sing

It's not vanity to know your own good points. It would just be stupidity if you didn't; It's only vanity when you get puffed up about them.

There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

Love, to her ear, was but a name, Combin'd with vanity and shame; Her hopes, her fears, her joys, were all Bounded within the cloister wall.

I don't mind women who want to act. That's fine. It's odd that men want to act, in that there's still a degree of vanity associated with it.

Let us, therefore, foresake the vanity of the crowd and their false teachings, and turn back to the word delivered to us from the beginning.

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.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

I wouldn't say I'm vain - I'm just in a job where the way you look is important. Well, at least the facelift wasn't vanity, but the hair was.

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.

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.

I am simply not such a slave to my vanity, and I don't want to be, because as you get older you really have to start accepting the inevitable.

I believe in glamour. I am in favor of a little vanity. I don't rely on just my genes. Looking good is a commitment to yourself and to others.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.

Most frequently we make confidants from vanity, a love of talking, a wish to win the confidence of others, and to make an exchange of secrets.

Blind self-love, vanity, lifting aloft her empty head, and indiscretion, prodigal of secrets more transparent than glass, follow close behind.

Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence.

The desire to be the object of public attention is weak, but the excessive dread of it is but a form of vanity and over-self-contemplativeness.

I left Gorbachev's office thinking that everything about him was outsized: his achievements, his mistakes, and, now, his vanity and bitterness.

Vanity, showing off, is an attitude that reduces spirituality to a worldly thing, which is the worst sin that could be committed in the church.

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.

To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.

Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.

In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that's merely the vanity of advancing age.

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more. If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

Pride works _from within_; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

God gave us laughter, I think, as a balm to wash the wounds of our own blunders, as a splint to mend the bones we break in our rashness or vanity.

The exceeding delight we take in talking about ourselves should give us cause to fear that we are giving but very little pleasureto our listeners.

One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.

I enjoy vanity . But I can't stick to any of that lifestyle for too long because, when its true colors come out, it's empty and cold and soulless.

Men have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't.

Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.

Egocentricity: The vanity that makes you wonder what people are thinking about you when they are really wondering what you are thinking about them.

What's so wrong with vanity? It's different from narcissism, you know? It's not about admiring yourself-it's about taking pride in your appearance.

O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.

Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

Either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.

The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.

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