"Vanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she was penniless; she owed him the historic name she bore and a large fortune; but, in return, she had given him, and without his being aware of it, a position of some eminence. She had made him happy in the only way in which a small and ordinary man could be made happy,—by gratifying his vanity. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... face, and in his swelling, resilient muscles was the primordial vigor of life. He was marred and scarred by that mysterious world of rough men and rougher deeds, the outposts of which began beyond her horizon. He was untamed, wild, and in secret ways her vanity was touched by the fact that he came so mildly to her hand. Likewise she was stirred by the common impulse to tame the wild thing. It was an unconscious impulse, and farthest from her thoughts that her desire was to re-thumb the clay of him into a likeness ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... nose, long eyes and narrow temples form a combination rarely seen in our district. I was pointing him out to Rose, when he called to her familiarly and congratulated her on visiting at the great house. I saw no movement of foolish vanity in her; on the contrary, there was great simplicity in her story of the drive and the lunch. I was pleased at this and told her so, later, when we were ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... "It just shows the vanity o' feelin' sure o' mortal man," continued Susan. "She was sure, 'n' Mrs. Allen was sure, 'n' the minister had faith; 'n' then there was Mrs. Macy, too. There was a while when it looked to me 's if swoopin' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... wash and a hasty adjustment of her hair before a mirror in a tiny "vanity box," which shared the watch charm snap with the little jade god, served to still further ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... vanity I gave up was the vanity of keeping a maid. By way of further accustoming myself to the retreat from the world which I now began to meditate, I declined all invitations to parties under the pretext of indisposition. But ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... animation of success is too universally acknowledged, to make the writer of the following sheets dread much censure of temerity; though the precariousness of any power to give pleasure, suppresses all vanity of confidence, and sends CECILIA into the world with scarce more hope, though far more encouragement, than attended her highly- ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... Whilst man lives, indeed, among the vanities of time, his covetousness, his envy, his pride, and his wrath, may be in a tolerable state, and may help him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have their gratifications as well as their torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the supernatural Word and Spirit of God must find itself unavoidably devoured by itself, shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath. O Theogenes! ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... it behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and by faith formed in charity to cleave unto him, so that thou mayst never be separated from him by thy sins. Suspect the abuses of the world. Set not thy heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. Be serviceable to all thy neighbours, and love them as thyself. Reverence thy preceptors: shun the conversation of those whom thou desirest not to resemble, and receive not in vain the graces ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... not been without some significance. It might be just instinct with her, as Toby had declared, but that Sheila regarded his engagement as a mistake he was fairly convinced. That she herself had any feeling for him beyond that of friendship he did not for a moment imagine. Bunny had no vanity in that direction. There was too much of the boy, too much of the frank comrade, in his disposition for that. They were pals, and the idea of anything deeper than palship on either side had never seriously crossed his mind. He was honest ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... my ears, that I may hear her sweet voice, and give me nerve, while God keeps me here, that I may live longer to earn bread for dear Pansie. She provided for, I would gladly lie down yonder with Bessie and our children. Ah! the vanity of desiring lengthened days!—There!—I have drunk it, and methinks its final, subtle flavor ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... memory of a great Queen,—daughter, wife, mother of powerful kings and of sovereigns of three kingdoms,—this speech will bring before you one of those conspicuous examples which spread before the eyes of the world its absolute vanity. You will see in a single life all the extremes of human affairs: boundless felicity and boundless misery; a long and peaceful possession of one of the world's noblest crowns; all that can be given of the glories of birth and rank gathered upon a head which is afterwards exposed to all the insults ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... other fellow. And the big one is charging himself with having licked the little one. Neither wants to acknowledge he got licked; and each would rather pay a fine and have it entered on the records that he won the fight. So much for sheer vanity!" ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... IV. lived she had comparatively few opportunities of betraying State secrets, but from the disaster of Flodden to her death, her history is one long series of intrigues, the outcome of her ruling passions—vanity and greed. Her first short-sighted act of treachery after the death of James was to appropriate to her own use the treasure which he had entrusted to her for his successors, the queen thereby incurring life-long retribution in her ineffectual attempts ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... scarcely conceivable to the public of the present day, the poorer classes in Rome were, on the other, invested with such a degree of moral license, and permitted such an extent of political privilege, as flattered their vanity into blinding their sense of indignation. Slaves in their season of servitude, masters in their hours of recreation, they presented, as a class, one of the most amazing social anomalies ever existing in any nation; and formed, in their dangerous and artificial position, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... father viewed her increasing charms and ever-growing list of admirers with the gloomy apprehension of a disappointed man who had come to look upon each gift of the gods as a new sorrow cunningly disguised. Her mother, on the contrary, fanned the girl's natural vanity and ambition with a success which rarely attended the enterprises of this foolish old woman, and Rita proving to be endowed with a moderately good voice, a stage career was determined upon without reference to the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... Mrs. Newbolt—when Maurice met Mrs. Newbolt's niece, something happened. Perhaps because he felt her starved longing for personal happiness, or perhaps her obvious pleasure in listening, silently, to his eager talk, touched his young vanity; whatever the reason was, the boy was fascinated by her. He had ("cussing," as he had expressed it to himself) accepted an invitation to dine with the "ancient dame" (again his phrase!)—and behold the reward of merit:—the niece!—a gentle, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Byron, "was much more disgusted with any human production than with the eternal nonsense, and tracasseries, and emptiness, and ill-humour, and vanity of this young person; but he has some talent, and is a man of honour, and has dispositions of amendment. Therefore use your interest for him, for he is improved and improvable;" and, in a letter to Murray, Aug. 21, 1817, "You ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... frequent irregularities she had pardoned, until the utter estrangement, occasioned by his passion for the Countess of Exeter, filled her with such trouble, that, overpowered at length by anguish, she complained to her mother Lady Lake,—an ambitious and imperious woman, whose vanity had prompted her to bring about this unfortunate match. Expressing the greatest indignation at the treatment her daughter had experienced, Lady Lake counselled her to resent it, undertaking herself to open the eyes of the injured Earl of Exeter ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of her warm hand upon his cold, damp forehead, mocked her hopes. His motionless chest told of the vanity of her fond anticipations of seeing his heart again quicken into living activity. And yet, she could not give him up. She could not believe that he was dead. As she still hung over him, it seemed to her that there was a slight twitching of the muscles about the neck. How suddenly ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... the change which a few thousand pounds more or less could produce in Lady Stock's behaviour." Yet, such is the inconsistency or the weakness of human wishes, that the very attentions which our heroine knew were paid merely to her fortune, and not to her merit, flattered her vanity; and she observed, with a strange mixture of pain and pleasure, that there was a marked difference in Lady Stock's manner towards her and the Elmours. When the evening was over, and when she "had leisure to be good," Almeria ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... have been all lately reading with delight, contemplates the year 3000 as a period at which his works may still be studied. If any man might be led reasonably to form such an anticipation for himself by the admiration of his contemporaries, Lord Macaulay may be acquitted of vanity. The year 3000 is far away, much will happen between now and then; all that we can say with certainty of the year 3000 is that it will be something extremely different from what any one expects. I will not ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... different; tall too, and active, but with heavier movements, and more of firmness than of sweetness in her scarred face. She had no girlish vanity in her glossy hair, or the cap starched to such absolute perfection, for so much of her youth and beauty had vanished with that scar—a deep blue line from brow to chin—that no loving arrangement of the hair by Margotte's deft fingers ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... might then find that their daughters would get more readily "off their hands," at a less expense than they now incur by pursuing Coelebs through all the turnings and windings of Vanity Fair. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... end? Listen to this. I quote largely from Andre Cheradame, a man who deals not in platitudes and conceits to tickle the vanity of a nation, but in ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... caution, and he took himself away: leaving me in a mixture of contrarious feelings, part ashamed to have played on one so gullible, part raging that I should have burned so much incense before the vanity of England; yet, in the bottom of my soul, delighted to think I had made a friend—or, at least, begun to make a friend—of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "and an end should soon be put to his doings." So spake the King; but an old Knight, full of days and wisdom, answered him and warned him that the task of taking Robin Hood would be a sore one, and best let alone. The King, who had seen the vanity of his hot words the moment that he had uttered them, listened to the old man and resolved to bide his time until perchance some day Robin ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... anecdotes are told, chiefly caused by his inordinate vanity, and his mental singleness of purpose. He thought of no one but himself; he saw nothing beyond the one and immediate object at which he grasped; and yet these faults were caused rather by natural weakness of intellect ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... so often your guest? As Colonel Bradshawe says, I have no fit companion here but Mrs. Shortridge, and he is often with her. As to his presumption, it is not so new to me as you suppose. I have often laughed at him for his vanity in thinking that nobody can do anything as well as himself. I have had to check him before this for presuming to find fault with your management of the brigade; but did not imagine he would have the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... these varely or idol-houses they consume a prodigious quantity of leaf gold, as all their roofs are gilded over, and sometimes the entire structure is covered from top to bottom; and as they require to be newly gilded every ten years, a prodigious quantity of gold is wasted on this vanity, which occasions gold to be vastly dearer in Pegu than it would ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... and sustains them, yet this happiness depends not on the various modes of gratification put within our reach, but mainly on character. A man may possess all the resources for enjoyment which this world can afford, and yet feel that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit," and that he is supremely wretched. Another may be in want of all things, and yet possess that living spring of benevolence, faith, and hope, which will make an Eden of the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... without breakfast. There was a queer change in him—a sudden lofty independence—a sudden loathing of himself. He knew now that it was not in him to do good work in the world, but at least he would pay his own way. He had been a mass of vanity and now he was so mean in his own eyes that he shrank from the passers-by. Perhaps the long strain had damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous centre—I do not know what change a physician would have found in him, ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... many Particulars and unnecessary Circumstances, that they justly deserve the Name, rather of Histories than Characters.—Such is the [P]Article concerning Emira. 'Tis an artful Description of a Woman's Vanity, in pretending to be insensible to the Power of Love, merely because she has never been exposed to the Charms of a lovely Person; and there is nothing in this Character, but what is agreeable to Nature, and carried on with a great deal of Humour. But the many ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... banishment from Oxford, and his father's turning him out of doors. "Of the Lord's dealings with me in France, and in the time of the great plague in London, in fine, the deep sense he gave me of the vanity of this world, of the deep irreligiousness of the religions of it; then of my mournful and bitter cries to him that he would show me his own way of life and salvation, and my resolution to follow him, whatever reproaches or sufferings should attend me, ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... decided I could live without that. Tim Mahoney was there, grouching round about having to light up the hall next night for the B'nai B'rith; and I told him to take it for himself. He already had six drawnwork doilies and a vanity box with white and ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was of opinion that the real source of the mischief was that Moreau had married a young wife, and that she and his mother-in-law considered they were entitled to as much attention as Madame Bonaparte received. Pride, jealousy and vanity, he declared, were the real source of the quarrel. Decaen, indeed, has a story that when Madame Moreau once called upon Josephine at Malmaison, she returned in an angry state of mind because she was not at once admitted, bidding a servant ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... philosophic abstraction into the arena of real life." The periodicals were accordingly filled with articles on railways, banks, free-trade, education, agriculture, communal institutions, local self-government, joint-stock companies, and with crushing philippics against personal and national vanity, inordinate luxury, administrative tyranny, and the habitual peculation of the officials. This last-named subject received special attention. During the preceding reign any attempt to criticise publicly the character or acts of an official was regarded as a very heinous ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... real opinions? He had brains and literature; his pose before the world was not that of an ignorant charlatan. Vanity, no doubt, was his prime motive, but did it operate to make a cleric of a secret materialist, or to incite a display of excessive liberalism in one whose convictions were orthodox? Godwin could not answer to his satisfaction, but ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... which she had remotely coveted for weeks—never expecting to possess it, yet never quite reconciling herself to the thought that it might be worn by some other woman. That length of silk had grown gradually to symbolize the last glimmer of girlish vanity which motherhood had not extinguished in her heart; and while she looked at it now, in her new recklessness of mood, a temptation, born of the perversity which rules human fate, came to her to go in and buy it while she was still desperate enough to act foolishly and not be afraid. For the first ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Let not the vanity of the cook induce you to forget the duty of a servant, which is, in the first place, to please his master: be particular, therefore, in enquiring what things please your employer. Many capital cooks will be found for great ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... and from her eastern frontier, that after the war France would remain a power only through the support of her Allies. For that fear we must now ask forgiveness; but at least we can plead in excuse that it was unselfish and free from all national vanity. If, in spite of ultimate victory, France had lost her high place among the nations, we should have felt that the victory itself was an irreparable loss for the world. And now we may speak frankly of that fear because, however unfounded it was, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... that don't weigh a grain under ten pounds; I bought it out of Mercury's thousandths, too." Finally, for fear he would seem to be lying, he ordered the scales to be brought in and carried around to prove the weights. And Scintilla was no better. She took off a small golden vanity case which she wore around her neck, and which she called her Lucky Box, and took from it two eardrops, which, in her turn, she handed to Fortunata to be inspected. "Thanks to the generosity of my husband," she smirked, "no woman has better." "What's ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Raphael congratulated himself, and thanked God that he had given him life in the same age with that painter; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his last address to the Academy, "reflected, not without vanity, that his Discourses bore testimony to his admiration of that truly divine man, and desired that the last words he pronounced in that academy, and from that chair, might be the name ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the padre to their own quarters, but Juan Gonzalvo was across the court speaking quietly to Yahn Tsyn-deh whose vanity required some soothing that she had been shut out by Tahn-te from council and her ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... ungrateful in itself, and presented too unbroken a series of calamities and defeats, to invite the attention of the French historians, who willingly turned to those brilliant passages in this reign, more soothing to national vanity. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... or vibrate on the nerves, after the first burst of passion: but to Philip Beaufort it was an era in life; it was the first insult he had ever received; it was his initiation into that changed, rough, and terrible career, to which the spoiled darling of vanity and love was henceforth condemned. His pride and his self-esteem had incurred a fearful shock. He entered the house, and a sickness came over him; his limbs trembled; he sat down in the hall, and, placing the fruit beside him, covered his face with his hands and wept. Those were not the tears of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... statement seemed to be particularly gratifying to the young officer's vanity, and had a distinctly mollifying effect upon his original hauteur and coldness. He thawed visibly, and even condescended to laugh at some mild joke upon which Grosvenor ventured, and then sought to further satisfy his curiosity by making a number of personal enquiries as to where Phil and his friend ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... share of genius for the making up of all those neat strokes of mother wit, for all those ingenious gallantries to which the ignorant and vulgar give the name of impostures; and I can boast, without vanity, that there have been very few men more skilful than I in expedients and intrigues, and who have acquired a greater reputation in the noble profession. But, to tell the truth, merit is too ill rewarded ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... no mood to regard this vanity complacently, went up on deck and declined to have anything to do with the matter. He maintained this attitude of immovable virtue until tea-time, by which time Flower's entreaties had so won upon him that he was reluctantly compelled to ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... common, allegedly humorous euphemism for a {bug}. There's a related joke that is sometimes referred to as the "one-question geek test". You say to someone "I saw a Volkswagen Beetle today with a vanity license plate that read FEATURE". If he/she laughs, he/she is a geek (see {computer geek}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... these colonial subjects be governed? and from whom shall they derive their laws? These were questions to which the vanity and the arbitrary principles of the King soon found a reply. Two councils were to be provided, one for each colony, and each consisting of thirteen members. They were to govern the colonists according to such laws, ordinances, and instructions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... "to prove to himself that he's the best man on this planet. Because he's physically least capable of living here! His vanity's ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... unkindness. He had been a great traveler (as a missionary); he had written his autobiography, somewhat egotistically; he was devoted to the forms of his religion, like a mediaeval Prince of the Church and an elegante. But under all the artificialities of personal vanity and exterior grace, he proved to have a cold determination that seemed more selfishly ambitious than ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... him that his young daughter, pious and simple and destitute even of that seasoning of vanity which is so good and necessary a thing in a woman, but proud at heart like all her race, would derive no compensation from the outward brilliancy of the Imperial Court for the absence of domestic ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... is a faint hint at an amusing and pardonable little vanity of Webster's, who, as the reader will discover later, liked to think that he had a hand in pretty much every important measure in the political and literary history of the country in those early days, and remembered that ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... disinterestedness in their sentiments. In this country within a country, it is not merely required of a woman that she should satisfy the senses and the soul; she knows perfectly well that she has still greater obligations to discharge, that she must fulfil the countless demands of a vanity that enters into every fibre of that living organism called society. Love, for her, is above all things, and by its very nature, a vainglorious, brazen-fronted, ostentatious, thriftless charlatan. If at the Court of Louis XIV. there was not a woman but envied Mlle. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... have guessed, to look at my faultless frock-coat and neatly creased trousers, at my finely gloved hand and polished top-hat, that my pockets held scarcely a brass farthing. The service proceeded. A good sermon on the Vanity of Riches found lodgment in my ears, and then the supreme moment came. The collection-plate was passed, and, gripping my two pennies in my hand, I made as if to place them in the salver, but with studied ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... arise again; and the brother about to depart might return, but more than the usual doubt hung upon his future. For between the white dresses of the sisters, shone his scarlet coat and golden sword-knot, which he had put on for the first time, more to gratify their pride than his own vanity. The brightening moon, as if prophetic of a future memory, had already begun to dim the scarlet and the gold, and to give them a pale, ghostly hue. In her thoughtful light the whole group seemed more like a meeting in the land of shadows, than a parting in the substantial ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... cultivation of literature, harm to us, still more, in our cultivation of science; but in the true sphere of rhetoric, in public speaking, this sense has given us orators whom I do think we may, without fear of being contradicted and accused of blind national vanity, assert to have inherited the great Greek and Roman oratorical tradition more than the orators of any other country. Strafford, Bolingbroke, the two Pitts, Fox,—to cite no other names,—I imagine few will dispute that these ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... should have inflated Frank's pride; but he was weak in many points; and though he detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be pointed out to strangers as a swell who lived in a fine house, and with the puff of vanity came the reflection that, as Frank Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park, with all its appliances of wealth, he would not be a swell whom strangers cared to see, and Jerry's chance ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... filled his life held to her high ideals—would never lower them—he could honour and reverence her. If she, like him, could change, and accept selfishly that which she would scorn in another, she would not be the splendid creature she was. And yet—without conceit or vanity—Truedale believed that Lynda felt for him what he felt ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... of the Clare mountains. Sometimes his brown-gold moustache and square shoulders were caught sight of as he rode rapidly along the roads. He had once been seen sitting with Mrs. Lawler behind the famous cream-coloured ponies; and to allude to his disgraceful conduct without wounding Olive's vanity was an art that Mrs. Barton practised daily; and to keep the girl in spirits she induced Sir Charles, who it was reported was about to emigrate his family to the wilds of Maratoga, to come and stay with them. If a rumour were to reach the Marquis's ears, it might help to bring him to the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... vitiates the Monroe Doctrine in its popular form,—the idea of some essential incompatibility between Europeanism and Americanism. That idea has given a sort of religious sanctity to the national tradition of isolation; and it will survive its own utility because it flatters American democratic vanity. But if such an idea should prevent the American nation from contributing its influence to the establishment of a peaceful system in Europe, America, and Asia, such a refusal would be a decisive stop toward ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... faith, he indulged in what would seem to Western minds gross excesses. He established an extensive harem for his own peculiar use, and immured therein the fairest captives of the war. The conduct of the ruler was imitated by his subjects. The presence of women increased the vanity of the warriors: and it was not very long before the patched smock which had vaunted the holy poverty of the rebels developed into the gaudy jibba of the conquerors. Since the unhealthy situation of Khartoum amid swamps and marshes did not commend itself to the now ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... window, and retrieves the vanity bag from the floor where CHLOE dropped it, then again takes his stand against the Left lintel ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tells us (1, 14), "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind," he does not mean that there is nothing worth striving after, for he would then be condemning the objects of God's creation. His meaning is that it is vain to pursue any one thing to the exclusion of every other. He then proceeds to name three prominent ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... scholars of the grammar-school, went to the first, and the children of the poor to the second. I, however, announced myself as a candidate to the provost, who was obliged to receive me, although he discovered vanity in my placing myself among his catechists, where, although taking the lowest place, I was still above those who were under the care of the chaplain. I would, however, hope that it was not alone vanity that impelled me. I had a sort of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... a fresh interest in his eyes. He certainly did not intend to marry the poor girl; had she had sufficient tact, she might, perhaps, have persuaded him to do so; but her fervent love and perfect confidence, though very gratifying to his vanity, did not inspire him with that feeling of respect which any man would wish to have for the girl he was going to marry. I do not say that his premeditated object had been to persuade her to leave her home, but Father John was ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... a pair of hell-fire spurs on, riding upon Sphinx, directed the whole retinue towards the Madeiras. But the Count had no small share of an amiable vanity, and perceiving great multitudes of people, Gascons, &c., assembled upon the French coast, he could not refrain from showing some singular capers, such as they had never seen before: but especially when he observed all the members of the National Assembly extend ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... of his countrymen almost with contempt, and readily admits the superiority of a Briton, on the seas and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?—where you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?—and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the agreeable, tactful doctor. He could see that something was in the air, that Lindsay was not a man to talk with this degree of intimacy out of pure charity or vanity. But the great specialist said nothing very definite after all: he let fall, casually, the fact that good men for office work—men of experience who were skilful and tactful—were rare. He had just lost a valuable ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... every blot of colour! Look at the two principal dancers! They are down on their knees, arms raised, bosoms advanced, skirts extended, a hundred coryphees are clustered about them. Leaning hands, uplifted necks, painted eyes, scarlet mouths, a piece of thigh, arched insteps, and all is blurred; vanity, animalism, indecency, absurdity, and all to be whelmed into oblivion in a moment. Wonderful life; ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... the dull, crude vapours that environ it, and makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes." His imagination keeps up the ball after his senses have done with it. He seems to have even a greater enjoyment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated description which he gives of them, than in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse with allusions to eating and drinking, but we never see him at table. He carries his own larder about ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... by a species of pride or vanity. He wanted to show off his courage before his followers, who were mostly does; many of them his wives too—for the old antelopes are shocking polygamists. It would never do to appear timid in the eyes of the fair does; and he was determined to cut a swagger. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... clothes, and adjusted his tie with skilful fingers. "You'd really be handsome, Johnny, if you were only a little vainer," she said, pushing him away to survey the result; and when he stared at her, repeating: "I never heard that vanity made a man better-looking," she responded gaily: "Oh, up to a certain point, because it teaches him how to use what he's got. So remember," she charged him, as he smiled and took up his hat, "that you're going to see a pretty young woman, and that you're ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... "Your vanity, Ruth, would be odious if it were not so ridiculous. But you should not allow your complacency, over a merely pretty face, to lead you into such presumption as you have been guilty of to-night. I blame myself somewhat for what has occurred; if I had not accorded you permission ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... kind of skulkin' livin' up to your big name?" Chadron spoke in derision, playing on the vanity which he knew to be as much a part of that old murderer's life as the blood ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... than vanity in this self-conscious calm; this visible contempt for all and everything. He kept his side-face turned to the guests, and only his ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... in reality her leaders instinctively turned to Stoicism, as affording a compromise between the mere thoughtless activity of youth, which acts for the love of acting, and the jaded philosophy of the vanity of all effort. About the middle of the century (circa B.C. 150) there existed in Rome a centre of culture and intellectual influence, a little group of men peculiarly interesting, because they form practically the first instance of an intellectual ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... linen. Though lying on his back like a person who is seriously ill Mr. Travers was conscious of nothing worse than a great fatigue. Mr. Travers' restfulness had something faintly triumphant in it. To find himself again on board his yacht had soothed his vanity and had revived his sense of his own importance. He contemplated it in a distant perspective, restored to its proper surroundings and unaffected by an adventure too extraordinary to trouble a superior mind or ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... its drift. It would be so if its moral were that, in this world, true enthusiasm naturally leads to ridicule and discomfiture. But it preaches nothing of the sort; its moral, so far as it can be said to have one, is that the spurious enthusiasm that is born of vanity and self-conceit, that is made an end in itself, not a means to an end, that acts on mere impulse, regardless of circumstances and consequences, is mischievous to its owner, and a very considerable nuisance to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... last an audience and he knew no mercy. All the agitation of the last week came pouring forth—he lost all sense of time and place; he was at the end of the world addressing infinity on the subject of his woes, and it says a good deal for his vanity and not much for his sense of humour that he did not feel the lack of proportion ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... not as being sorry for them, but rather wishes still hee might finde more occasions to worke on. He is the generall corrupter of spirits, yet vntainted, inducing them by gradation to much lasciuious deprauity. He is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and suggests youth to perpetrate such vices, as otherwise they had haply nere heard of. He is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming what he is not, and is indeed what hee seemes not. And if hee lose ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... twinkle to his eye and a half-smothered smile to his lips. She felt assured that he was thoroughly cognizant of the curiosity which had prompted her researches among the family records, and inferred that he had either no vanity to be flattered by such trifles, or was dowered with too much generosity to evince any gratification at the discovery of an interest ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... their ink, in order to give more bitterness to their sarcasms, have not pardoned those outbursts of a soul of twenty. They have believed, or have pretended to believe, that I was seeking a miserable celebrity in the ashes of my own heart: they have said, that by an anticipation of vanity, I desired to gather and enjoy in advance, while yet living, the sad Flowers which might one day grow after me upon my tomb. They have cried out at the profanation of the inner feeling; at the effrontery of a soul shown naked; at the scandal ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... holding his head so proudly that the perpendicular feather of his cap leaned backward at a sharp angle. With his scarlet soldier's coat, all burst along the seams, and not meeting by a yard over his red silk undershirt, with his bit of broken mirror dangling at his waist like a lady's jewelled "vanity set," with his china-ink black mustache and superb beard, he presented for all the purposes of the time and place an appearance in keeping with the magnificence of his voice and of ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... apart from her, engrossed as he had ever been in his studies, politics, and business. She had no one left with her but a daughter to whom she had never given her whole heart, and so she had ended by devoting her life to Henri's interests and putting all her vanity into his future. And her one thought—the thought which occupied every hour of her days and nights, her fixed idea—was the marriage of this adored son. She wanted him to marry well, to make a match which should ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... provided. But when Mrs. Vizard has to sing in one key, and people talk in five other keys, that gives this artist such physical pain that she often declines, merely to escape it. It does not much mortify her vanity, she has so little. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... indebted to the Marquise alone for the sudden coldness of the King; and accordingly she vowed an eternal hatred to the woman whom she considered in the light of a successful rival. Up to the present period, anxious as she was to avenge her wounded vanity, she had been unable to secure an opportunity of revenge; but having at this particular moment won the affection of the Prince de Joinville,[162] who had been a former lover of Madame de Verneuil, and with whom, as she was well aware, he had ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... he reproached us for the vanity of our actions, the impurity of our bodies; and he raised his fist towards the dromedaries on account of the silver bells which they wore under their jaws. His fury filled my very entrails with terror; nevertheless, it was a ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... (1556) Charles with solemn ceremony resigned all his kingdoms—Austria and the Empire to his brother, Spain to his son the celebrated Philip II. Charles himself retired to a Spanish monastery, where two years later he died. He had found life a vanity, indeed. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... with the working of the invention we are considering, we have visited Mr. Palmer's establishments in Philadelphia and Boston. The distinguished "Surgeon-Artist" is a man of fine person, as we have said. But if he has any personal vanity, it does not betray itself with regard to that portion of his organism which Nature furnished him. There is some reason to think that Mr. Palmer is a little ashamed of the lower limb which he brought into the world with him. At least, if he follows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Christlike character while one is complacent about an economic system that is definitely organized about the idea of selfish profit; to praise Christian ideals while one is blind to the inevitable urgency with which they insist on getting themselves expressed in social programs—all this is vanity. It is deplorable, therefore, that the Christian forces are tempted to draw apart, some running up the banner of personal regeneration and some rallying around the flag of social reformation. The division is utterly needless. Doubtless our own individual ways of coming ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... colors were but fast colors, self-conceit would be a most comfortable quality. But life is so humbling, mortifying, disappointing to vanity, that a man's great idea of himself gets washed out of him by the time he ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... very well. He saw its vice rather than its romance. He had attended one bullfight, and had left his seat in disgust when he saw a lot of men and women of seeming gentility applauding a silly fellow whose sole stock in trade was an unblushing vanity. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... as his voice went on sounding in my ears, all the light of desire, and of the sun, faded from the Earth; I saw the vast landscape of the world dim, as in an eclipse; its populations eating their bread with tears, its rich men sitting listless in their palaces, and aged Kings crying "Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity!" ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... out of the course of events must have had some message for him, and it must have been his fault that he could not divine it. A sense of culpability grew upon him with the sense of his ignominy in cheapening it by making it subservient to what he knew was, in the last analysis, a wretched vanity. At least he could refuse himself that miserable gratification hereafter, and he got back some measure of self-respect in forbidding himself the pleasure he might have taken in being noted for a strange experience he could never be got to ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... signed "Princess of Orangia," her too-bold identification of herself with Hilda Wangel hurt him as a rough touch, that finer tact would have avoided. There can be no doubt at all that while she was now largely absorbed by the compliment to her own vanity, he was still absolutely enthralled and bewitched, and that what was fun to her made life and ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... was having a lovely time. Seldom had he been happier. All good collies respond in semi-psychic fashion to the moods of their masters. And, to Lad, the very atmosphere about him was thrilling just now to waves of stark excitement. With the delightful vanity which is a part of the collie make-up, he realized that in some manner he himself was a prominent part of this excitement. And he ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... of talent says: "Your pleasure at any party will depend far more upon what you take with you into the room than upon what you find there. Ambition, vanity, pride, will all go with anxiety, and you will probably carry them all home again, with the additional burden of disappointment. Even if they are all gratified, you will know that others are disliking you, even if envious of you. To go with a sincere desire to please others ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... from both women, if he has been driven away from the last one because the woman could get more money from some other man, then he should be resorted to, for if attached to the first woman he would give her more money, through vanity and emulation to spite the other woman. But if he has been driven away by the woman on account of his poverty, or stinginess, he should not then ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... me, my dear Maximilian, that I have no vanity; I believe that is true, and must believe so, to be able to continue this account without exposing myself to the charge of presumptuousness in your eyes. When I was alone at home, in recalling my aunt's conversation, I could not help dreaming over with a secret satisfaction ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... not long before he perceived he was in love, neither was it long before he made a declaration of it: as his passion was likely enough to be real, Miss Jennings thought she might believe him, without exposing herself to the imputation of vanity. Talbot was possessed of a fine and brilliant exterior, his manners were noble and majestic: besides this, he was particularly distinguished by the favour and friendship of the duke; but his most essential merit, with her, was his forty thousand pounds ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Mr. Pathurst, that I would prefer is that you will not mention that little matter to anybody. I suppose" (he smiled, and his voice was superlatively suave) "it is vanity on my part—you ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the Crystal Palace. The exterior has a strange and elegant but somewhat unsubstantial effect. The interior is like a mighty Vanity Fair. The brightest colours blaze on all sides; and ware of all kinds, from diamonds to spinning jennies and printing presses, are there to be seen. It was very fine, gorgeous, animated, bewildering, but ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... concerning kings, which are mainly three: nay, he openly violated them (in this he did wrong, and acted in a manner unworthy of a philosopher, by indulging in sensual pleasure), and taught that all Fortune's favours to mankind are vanity, that humanity has no nobler gift than wisdom, and no greater punishment than folly. (112) See ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... January the 2nd, 1814. In our principles of government we differ not at all; nor in the general object and tenor of political measures. We concur in considering the government of England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. In our estimate of Bonaparte, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Aunt Faith's ministrations during these first, few, unsettled weeks. The young woman who "had no objections to the country," objected no more to these pleasant country fashions of neighborly kindness. She had reason. Aunt Faith's "thirds bread," or crisp "vanity cakes," or "velvet creams," were no sooner disposed of than there surely came a starvation interval of sour biscuits, heavy gingerbread, and tough pie crust, and dinners feebly cooked, with no attempt at desserts, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... from the death-bed of a powerful prince. He fettered this revolution or reform; but, Senores, it was only for a while and in appearance. Like the mole, it has laboured and advanced, surely and unseen. Happy for our king if he expires before the vanity of his efforts, and the inutility of the bloodshed and misery they have occasioned, are demonstrated; before he learns that a principle never dies, though all the artillery of the world be brought to bear upon it. History judges the dead; nations judge the living. Let us so act that we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... standin' up wavin' a red-hot pitchfork. Some folks might have been flattered at bein' took for such a famous character; but I wa'n't; I'm retirin' by nature, and besides, Ez's description wa'n't cal'lated to bust a body's vanity b'iler. I was prouder of the consequences, the same bein' that Ezra signed the Good Templars' pledge that afternoon, and kept it for three whole months, just sixty-nine days longer than any previous attack within the memory ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... serious work that life might offer her; she recognised that with most people avoidance of the trivial and the hope of something extraordinary and unprecedented were dictated either by idleness and incompetence, or by morbid self-love and vanity. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... people of England to consider how the House of Commons, under the operation of these examples, must of necessity be constituted. On the side of the court will be, all honors, offices, emoluments; every sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable petty services to individuals, into a spreading interest in their country. On the other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the court, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and search for expedients which might put an end to the trouble and let him walk free again with his head raised high. But there were only the two expedients. He must speak out his fears that justice had miscarried, and that device his vanity forbade; or he must adopt Pettifer's suggestion, and from that he shrank almost as much. He began to resent the presence of Stella Ballantyne and he showed it. Sometimes a friendliness, so excessive that it was almost hysterical, betrayed him; more usually a discomfort and constraint. He avoided ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... to be well received in the Town; which (not for my Vanity) pleases me, but that thereby I find Honesty begins to come in fashion again, when Loyalty is approv'd, and Whigism becomes a Jest where'er 'tis met with. And, no doubt on't, so long as the Royal Cause has such Patrons as your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... highwaymen would be empty, in case robberies were totally abolished; but have men a right to acquire money by going out to the highway? Have men a right to acquire it by rendering their fellow-creatures miserable? Is it lawful to abuse mankind, that the avarice, the vanity, or the passions of a few may be gratified? No! There is such a thing as justice to which the most sacred regard is due. It ought to be inviolably observed. Have not these unhappy men a better right to their liberty, and to their happiness, than our American merchants have ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... Heaven's gate in yon fair reflection as learn to love in this light-minded, deceitful city," Hilarius said to himself a little bitterly. He deemed that he had plumbed its hollowness and learnt the full measure of its vanity. Already he shunned the company and diversions of his fellow pages, though he was ever ready to serve them. A prentice lad's homely brawl set him shivering; a woman's jest painted his cheeks 'til they rivalled a young maid's ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... the treatment I had got from the dragoon. It was not that I was in love with the black-haired girl; indeed, I think I hated her; but I could not get her face out of my head or her voice out of my ears. She had mocked me, treated me as if I was no more than a foolish servant, and my vanity was raw. I longed to beat down her pride, to make her creep humbly to me, Andrew Garvald, as her only deliverer; and how that should be compassed was the subject of many hot fantasies in my brain. The dragoon, too, had tossed me about like a silly sheep, and my manhood cried out ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... writings;—and which we are again very sorry to say, must in our opinion, if persisted in, utterly and entirely prevent Mr. Keats from ever taking his place among the pure and classical poets of his mother tongue. It is quite ridiculous to see how the vanity of these Cockneys makes them overrate their own importance, even in the eyes of us, that have always expressed such plain unvarnished contempt for them, and who do feel for them all, a contempt too calm and profound, to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... tantalising time, I was bold enough to cherish certain aspirations." Here he took up his position behind a chair, resting his hands lightly on the back of it. "That those aspirations were not wholly unsuspected by you I had reason to believe. I may, of course, have been mistaken; love, or vanity if you prefer it, may blind the wisest of us. In any case, if I was vain, my pride came to the rescue, and sooner than incur the humiliation of a refusal—possibly a scornful refusal—I kept my secret locked in the inmost sanctuary of my heart, and went away." Mr Ogilvie illustrated ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... penned these memorials, let me ask myself, from any paltry vanity, or desire to talk about that self? I hope this is not the case, and forasmuch as one may be able to judge in one's own cause, I think I was actuated by better views. These, briefly, were to afford consolation to some unfortunate being, situated like myself, by explaining the evils to ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... have forgotten all about me before this and gone over to pretty Miss Rogers and the study of photography except that I've been a bit obdurate—unusually so, he is naive enough to assure me, and his vanity is piqued." ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... galley-slaves. When the high winds of events blow loud and frequent then the sails are hoisted, or the ship drives on of itself. When all is calm and sunshine then to our oars. Yet it is not unflattering to a man's vanity to reflect that what he writes at twelve at night, will before twelve hours are over, have perhaps, five or six thousand readers! To trace a happy phrase, good image, or new argument, running through the town and sliding into all the papers. Few wine merchants can boast of creating more sensation. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... this foolish idea, he became so puffed up with pride and vanity that he halted and started to bray loudly. But in the midst of his song, his driver guessed what the Ass had got into his head, and began to beat ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... after a fit of discontent or homicide, cruise vaguely about Islamism for half a lifetime, and at last return, bearded venerables, to be stared at by their kinsfolk as portents, heaven-sent, because they have freighted themselves with a cargo of fond maxims such as "The World is Illusion: all Flesh is Vanity," and similar gnomic balderdash, the wisdom of ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... and industrious than when they were rich and prodigal. Why has New England produced so many educators? Why is it that so few eminent men of genius and learning have arisen out of the turmoil and vanity of prosperous cities? Why is it that money cannot create a college, and is useless unless there is a vitality among its professors and students? The condition of national greatness is the same as that seen in the rise and fortunes ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... little laugh of gratified vanity. She stood close to Dick as he loaded the revolver for the last time and fired over the sea with a vague notion at the back of his head that he was protecting Maisie from all the evils in the world. A puddle far across the mud caught the last rays of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... that!" snorted Wilkinson; "why, I've flattered you, if anything. People never know what they're like. There's such a lot of rotten vanity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... winning of Jane was not so easy a matter as my vanity had prompted me to think. I started with a handicap, since Jane had heard my declaration to Mary, and I had to undo all that before I could do anything else. Try the same thing yourself with a spirited girl, naturally laughter-loving and coy, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... pompous vanity were aroused. "Tink dis nigger can't shoot, eh? You-alls just watch an' Chris ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... little pats and pulls she widened the flaring red bows on her hair and retied the cerise scarf in its picturesque, loose knot about her throat. As a final tribute to that feminine instinct which knows no race she drew from some cunningly devised hiding place a small, cheap "vanity box," and proceeded very gravely to powder ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... impression on the senses or minds of the alleged percipients, by fallacious appearances; or some epidemic delusion, propagated by the contagious influence of popular feeling, has been concerned in the case; or some strong interest has been implicated—religious zeal, party feeling, vanity, or at least the passion for the marvelous, in persons strongly susceptible of it. When none of these or similar circumstances exist to account for the apparent strength of the testimony; and where the assertion is not in ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... military official in government employ, who serves the state from vanity, or, as is most often the case, simply for the sake of the pay wrung from the harassed and toilworn working classes (all taxes, however raised, always fall on labor), if he, as is very seldom the case, does not directly rob the government in the usual way, considers himself, and is considered ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... and the two Generals came in from some vanity of inspection to grumble a little merrily at the open air banquet, but to take their places in all good humour, and the lively meal began with all the home witticisms, yet not such as to exclude strangers. Indeed, Hubert Delrio was treated with something like distinction, and was evidently ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... what I had done, and have been accounted since, I suppose, an useless fop, and fit only to plant coleworts, and I cannot bend to mean submissions; and this, Sir, is the history of the Historian. I confess to you, I had once the vanity to hope, had my patron continued in his station, for some, at least, honorary title that might have animated my progress, as seeing then some amongst them whose talents I did not envy: but it was not my fortune to succeed.' This ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... edition, in mentioning the fact respecting Lord Byron, which had been the immediate cause of its publication, I added these words: "I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity which it may appear to betray;—for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal notes of the noble author convey no flattery;—but amidst their pungency, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... scales of every listener's judgment to be weighed, as does the orator. A man may write as listlessly as he pleases, use much or little of his brain or energy, just as he chooses or feels like doing. No one is watching him. His pride and vanity are not touched, and what he writes may never be seen by anyone. Then, there is always a chance for revision. In conversation, we do not feel that so much depends upon our words; only a few persons hear them, and perhaps no one will ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... infatuated with my pocket map of Persia; the fact that Persia occupies so great a space on the map in comparison with the small portions of adjoining countries visible around the edges makes a powerful appeal to his national vanity, and he regards me with increased affection every time I trace out for him the comprehensive boundary line of his native Iran. After nightfall we repair to the principal tent, and Mohammed Ali Khan and his secretary consume ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... put away all my vanity clothes. No need for them in Hiroshima and in an icy room on a winter's morning, I do not stop to think whether my dress has an in-curve or an out-sweep. I fall into the first thing I find and finish ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... be then that for the last five years he had stood aloof from her because she had arrayed herself in fashionable attire? She was still very red in the face, still suffering from wounded vanity, still conscious of that soreness which affects us all when we are made to understand that we are considered to have failed there, where we have most thought that we excelled. But her womanly art enabled her quickly to conceal the pain. "I have made a promise," she ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Pompey sailed, taking his family along with him. He had collected a few ships and 2,000 miscellaneous followers, and with them he arrived off Pelusium, the modern Damietta. His forlorn condition was a punishment sufficiently terrible for the vanity which had flung his country into war. But that it had been his own doing the letters of Cicero prove with painful clearness; and though he had partially seen his error at Capua, and would then have possibly drawn back, the passions and ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Wilson Follett, privately printed, and now, I believe, out of print.[1] They define both the mood of the stories as works of art and their burden and direction as criticisms of life. Like Dreiser, Conrad is forever fascinated by the "immense indifference of things," the tragic vanity of the blind groping that we call aspiration, the profound meaninglessness of life—fascinated, and left wondering. One looks in vain for an attempt at a solution of the riddle in the whole canon of his work. Dreiser, more than once, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Thou that hearest. If Thou care at all for the miserable things called men that crawl upon the earth—help me! If I once prayed for a great work that could stay my hunger for things eternal, I repent me now and confess that it was pride and vanity. Make me a slave, toiling at servile tasks for food, so that Merle and the children be not taken ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... receive me half an hour this afternoon? I have something important to say; I have vanity enough to believe as it concerns me it will interest you. We shall be more alone at your house than mine, or I might ask ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... became a follower of Richard l'Eveque, a man who was master of every kind of learning, and whose breast contained much more than his tongue dared give utterance to; for he had learning rather than eloquence, truthfulness rather than vanity, virtue rather than ostentation. With him I reviewed all that I had learned from the others, besides certain things, which I now learnt for the first time, relating to the Quadrivium, in which I had already acquired some information from the German Hardewin. ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... Greeks and Romans, almost every syllable was known to have a fixed and determined quantity." Or thus: "Among the Greeks and Romans, all syllables, (or at least the far greater number,) were known to have severally a fixed and determined quantity."—Blair and Jamieson cor. "Their vanity is awakened, and their passions are exalted, by the irritation which their self-love receives from contradiction."—Tr. of Mad. De Stael cor. "He and I were neither of us any great swimmer."—Anon. "Virtue, honour—nay, even self-interest, recommends the measure."—L. Murray ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... great man and they will keep on doing so until the last of those passes away whose judgment of him is clouded by the sense of his personality. But men will never debate about the greatness of Mr. Harding, not even Mr. Harding himself. He is modest. He has only two vanities, his vanity about his personal appearance and his vanity ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... upon few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by continuous effort be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the Sun adown the Western Sky! Each cherish'd hope had prov'd its vanity! Now neither Earth, nor Heaven was mine. Rejected, sad, abandon'd, and forlorn; Of God it seem'd not lov'd; of Hell, the scorn! No hope, or ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... on the 2d of October, taking with him the constable, the cardinal, his confessor, and, for all his escort, fourscore of his faithful Scots, and sixty men-at-arms. This knowing gossip, as his contemporaries called him, had fits of rashness and audacious vanity. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... delight of Clinton, more of his "wardrobe," as he called it, was brought ashore. For this he was indebted to the good-natured persistence of Harry, who, though amused at the vanity of the young man from Brooklyn, felt disposed to gratify him in ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... proudly. 'No, aunt, we only lower ourselves by exclusiveness. It is degrading to ourselves and our tastes to make them badges of vanity. Let them be freely partaken, we shall be first still. The masses cannot mount ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pass'd the heats Of summer and the winter frosts, content In heav'n-ward musings. Rich were the returns And fertile, which that cloister once was us'd To render to these heavens: now 't is fall'n Into a waste so empty, that ere long Detection must lay bare its vanity Pietro Damiano there was I yclept: Pietro the sinner, when before I dwelt Beside the Adriatic, in the house Of our blest Lady. Near upon my close Of mortal life, through much importuning I was constrain'd to wear the hat that still From bad to worse it shifted.—Cephas came; He came, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... him | into the Ranks of hu |-manity; Give him a | place in your Kingdom of | vanity! Welcome the | stranger with Kindly af |-fection; Hopefully, | ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... minister, and ruled with a vigour which was assuredly not less than the Cardinal's. Such transformations are not the work of a moment, and Henry's would have been impossible, had he in previous years been so completely the slave of Vanity Fair, as most people thought. In reality, there are indications that beneath the superficial gaiety of his life, Henry was beginning to use his own judgment, form his own conclusions, and take an interest in serious matters. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... come here troubling me on a Sabbath day wi' thy vanity and thy worldly talk. I'd liefer by far be i' that world wheere there's neither marrying nor giving in marriage, for it's all a moithering mess here.' She turned to the closed Bible lying on the dresser, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... across our poor lives a splendid goal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity, those who have made another object of their desires than the passing satisfaction of selfishness and vanity, and have understood that the art of living is to know ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... as a cousin. Even Mr. Rollstone could hardly have objected under these circumstances, and Rose only doubted about leaving her mother. It presently appeared, however, that Mrs. Morton wished to remain with Mrs. Rollstone. Westhaven was more to her than any other place, and her vanity had so entirely departed that she could best take comfort in her good old friend's congenial society. Constance offered to remain and obtain some daily governess or high school employment there; but it was to her relief that she found ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge |
