#vanity

Then the cow asked: "What is a mirror?" "It is a hole in the wall," said the cat. "You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy. ↗

— Mark Twain

#self-image #vanity #beauty

I'm not good, of course; I wouldn't give a fig to be good. So it's not vanity. It's on a far grander scale; a splendid selfishness, - authorized, too; and papa and mamma brought me up to worship beauty, -and there's the fifth commandment, you know. ↗

— Harriet Prescott Spofford

#beauty

Don't be vain. What you look like doesn't matter. It's the deed that matters. ↗

— Sarah Addison Allen

#change #deeds #vanity #change

SONG OF DAWN I saw the sun rise by accident. It was a horrible sight. Annoyed by its splendor, I sought refuge in a moist pillow, and lay there, alone, at the dawn of another day, that brought me closer to another death, pondering the vanity of my solitude, the vanity of procrastination, and the tiresome inevitability of waking up again the same person. It might still be possible to change, but obstinately I remain the same, hoping that others might take solace in my consistency. But perhaps they take no solace in it, perhaps they too find it tedious. ↗

— John Tottenham

#regret #vanity #change

It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now ↗

— William Makepeace Thackeray

#life #vanity #death

The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt trips and mysticized by yoga. (Not for nothing does Amazon.com include diet and exercise books on its "Religion and Spirituality" bestseller list. ....) ↗

— Ross Douthat

#exercise #puritanical #purity #vanity #yoga

You know, at 35 or at 38 or 40 you really start to see what your body could look like if you just don't do anything all winter long. So that's another motivating factor, our vanity. ↗

— Stone Gossard

#anything #body #could #factor #just

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. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#calls #come #conscience #conviction #everything

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. ↗

— Garrison Keillor

#far #gentle #greed #look #never

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. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#better #changed #characters #even #hold