#vanity

Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #dejan-stojanovic #desires #fights #literature

Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights they die. ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#equality #life #vanity #death

But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman's face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons. ↗

— Albert Camus

#men #vanity #women #beauty

He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#vanity #men

When women smoke, it is hard for them to quit because they are so worried about their weight; it's a vanity issue and a mindset. ↗

— Loni Anderson

#because #hard #issue #mindset #quit

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty. ↗

— Louis Kronenberger

#fact #greater #in fact #make #modesty

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#french #predisposed #pride #vanity

I thought of what pride would look like, a jowly old guy in a smoking jacket. Vanity was a tall, beautiful woman with a face like a mask. Envy was a treasure-hoarding dragon, dainty and diabolical. As I sketched in the dragon's face, I gave her eyebrows like mine, my turtle necklace around its scaly neck. Xanda drew them as cliffs and valleys, irrevocably linked pride as a mountain, envy as a valley, hating its lowness and longing to reach, overtake, conquer. She drew vanity as a volcano with an abyss at its core. ↗

— Holly Cupala

#pride #vanity #beauty

Now I feel like James Bond. Suave and intelligent, breaking all the codes while looking fabulous. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#thomas-raith #vanity #humor

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. ↗

— Jane Austen

#clichés #concealment #empowerment #feminism #ignorance