"Vanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... even cigar-smoking was confined to comparatively few persons, and the social prejudice against tobacco continued unabated. Thackeray significantly makes Rawdon Crawley a smoker—the action of "Vanity Fair" takes place in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The original smoking-room of the Athenaeum Club, which was founded in 1824, the present building being erected in 1830, was a miserable little room, Dr. Hawtree, on behalf of the committee, announcing that ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... in all this that he failed to grasp. In any case, the frightful danger that threatened Rose Andre dominated the whole situation; and Rnine was not the man to despise this threat and to persist out of vanity in a perilous course. Rose Andre's life came ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... an austere recluse,— Still less as one who hates mankind—, Do I thy peaceful precincts choose; But as a student, who can find No joys in Vanity's gay Fair That for an instant can compare With those thou askest ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... a pitiful display of vanity. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... published many passages, boldly reflecting upon the Government of the province, the ministry, the churches, and the college, and that it often contained paragraphs tending to fill the readers' minds with vanity to the dishonor of God, and the service of good men—in consequence of which, it was resolved that nothing should be published in the said colony, that had not been first perused and allowed by the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a very wide house, and by no means lofty, aught in the above may appear like interested pleading, as if I did but fold myself about in the cloak of a general proposition, cunningly to tickle my individual vanity beneath it, such misconception must vanish upon my frankly conceding, that land adjoining my alder swamp was sold last month for ten dollars an acre, and thought a rash purchase at that; so that for wide houses hereabouts there is plenty of room, and cheap. Indeed so cheap—dirt cheap—is ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... of a man of the world who was incomparably better informed than the mass of his congeners. Mr. Browning was the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers, and when he dealt in criticism the edge of his sword was mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity. The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lent their special emphasis to the condemnation. "I like religion to be treated seriously," he exclaimed with reference ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... heart, she retained the habit of duty, and that it was the strength of that habit which enabled her to pursue her functions as of old. Her grief was too strong and too true to require any pretence of being unable to fulfil trivial tasks, nor would she have understood that any one could so pretend. Vanity is a sentiment so entirely at variance with genuine grief, yet a sentiment so inherent in human nature, that even the most poignant sorrow does not always drive it wholly forth. Vanity mingled with grief shows itself ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... we were at Margaret's," Jennie returned, "for then we could romp around and not care anything about what happened to our clothes." Jennie hadn't a spark of vanity and cared so little for dress as to be ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... 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
... the far-away stars, Job sat at his tent door and as he meditated on the brevity and vanity of human life, its hopes deferred that make the heart sick, the sound of the clods as they fall upon the coffin lid, he asked the question that has quivered down the ages—"If a man ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... were dictated by his feelings. He takes so little pains to conceal this weakness, that we can hardly suppose he was aware of it. Contradiction he could not bear. Opposition of any kind produced a bitter feeling. Vanity, latent perhaps, but acrid, corroded his judgment of his adversaries. In France Governeur Morris remarked that he was too fond of calling fools those who did not agree with him; a sure sign of want of strength. Great minds are essentially ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... governs all things; I will answer, I am surprised to hear a rational being, who cannot remember forty-five of our short years, and knows not that he shall live in the world another hour, talk about eternal things, use great swelling words of vanity about unchangeability, and yet deny that God has made a revelation to man! I am really of the sentiment expressed by him who is justly styled the light of the world, who said "No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... union of the Peelites with a peace party, in direct opposition to whose strongest views and gravest warnings they had originally begun the war. 'In Gladstone,' Cornewall Lewis said, 'people ascribe to faction, or ambition, or vanity, conduct which I believe to be the result of a conscientious, scrupulous, ingenuous, undecided mind, always looking on each side of a question and magnifying the objections which belong to almost every ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... by nature a greedy girl, as I have said; but self-conceit will go far to generate every other vice under the sun. Vanity, which is a form of self-conceit, has repeatedly shown itself as the deepest feeling in the ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... my vanity," said she, gloomily; "he wrote beautiful and glowing poems in my praise, which were printed and read not only in Florence, but throughout all Italy. When he declared his love and pleaded for my hand, I thought, if I refused him, he would persecute me and ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... may be balked, never failed with me to recur on each successive attempt. Every one must know the feeling of triumph and pride which a grand view from a height communicates to the mind. In these little frequented countries there is also joined to it some vanity, that you perhaps are the first man who ever stood on this ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... neither the vanity of being an author, nor a sudden and capricious gust of humanity, which has prompted this present design. It has long been conceived and long been the principal subject of my thoughts. Ever since an indulgent master rewarded my youthful services with freedom and supplied me at a very early age with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... this time; and when I have asked them sometimes, How they expected to provide for such a flock as they desire? They answered, That the plague will certainly kill half of them; which, indeed, generally happens, without much concern to the parents, who are satisfied with the vanity of having brought forth so plentifully. The French ambassadress is forced to comply with this fashion as well as myself. She has not been here much above a year, and has lain in once, and is big again. What is most wonderful, is, the exemption they seem to enjoy from the curse entailed on the sex. ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... it outlives the man: but about the sixth month, when I already owed near two hundred dollars to Pinkerton, and half as much again in debts scattered about Paris, I awoke one morning with a horrid sentiment of oppression, and found I was alone: my vanity had breathed her last during the night. I dared not plunge deeper in the bog; I saw no hope in my poor statuary; I owned myself beaten at last; and sitting down in my nightshirt beside the window, whence I had a glimpse of the tree-tops at the corner ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... thing disturbed her, waking her within her sleep; so that she knew not what to think; save that we were devising some method to come to them. But this I removed from doubt, saying that she must not build on vain hoping; for I would not have her doubly tortured by the vanity of such believing. And, thereafter, having said such things as I might, though few they were, to comfort her, I bade her, gently, to sleep; and turned therewith to the Master Monstruwacan, who waited in quiet patience; and had no knowledge ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... were the marrow of action in reality as well as in fiction. Their plain and affectionate attachment to everything around them, handed down from their fathers, is by no means to be confounded with the obstreperous conceit of ages of mannerism, for they, out of vanity, introduce the fleeting modes and fashion of the day into art, because to them everything like noble simplicity seems boorish and rude. The latter impropriety is now abolished: but, on the other hand, our poets and artists, if they would hope for our approbation, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... subject to in their way: what he is marvelling at is really that anything should exist at all not a creature of his own moral disposition. Consequently the more he misunderstands the world and bids it change its nature, the more he expresses his own nature: so that all is not vanity in his illusion, nor night in his blindness. The poet sees most clearly what his ideal is; he suffers no illusion in the expression of his own soul. His political utopias, his belief in the power of love, and his cryingly ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... you say—for a woman of her period of life remarkably so; she puts me very much in mind of my mother, whom I in the confidence of youthful affection used to call 'my everlasting.' I recollect doing so only three days before the hand of death wrote upon her brow the vanity of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... ordinary vicissitudes of human existence but to the fickle humor of an absolute monarch. It is, therefore, as though Kingo at the height of his own fortune would remind himself of the quickness with which it might vanish, of the evanescense and vanity of all worldly glory. That idea is strikingly emphasized in ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... ill for a week, during which time Marie nursed her devotedly. She saw now her past conduct in its true light—her petty vanity, her thoughtlessness ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... the door of the Duke of Wellington. Not that he is usually a depreciator of his former leader, of whose military genius and great achievements he ever speaks with respect amounting to veneration. But he does not hesitate to accuse him of having sacrificed his old followers and friends to his own vanity, which petty feeling, he maintains, made the Duke desire that the only medal granted for the war against Napoleon, should be given for the only victory in which he beat the Emperor in person. We believe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... its service kept me in continuous joy, as waters invest a fish. I woke from a high dream. . . . And then, but for the fear of seeming cowardly, I would have extinguished my life as men blow out a candle. Vanity preserved me, sheer vanity!" He shrugged, spreading his hard lean hands. "Belhs Cavaliers, I grudged my enemies the pleasure of seeing me forgetful of valor and noble enterprises. And so, since then, I have served ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... 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 ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... revealed. He tells his daughters of the trouble that David got into through the thoughtlessness of Bathsheba, and warns them that "every woman ought religiously to conceal herself when dressing and washing, and neither out of vanity nor yet to attract attention show either her hair, or her neck, or her breast, or any part which ought to be covered." Hinton went so far as to regard what he termed "body modesty," as entirely a custom imposed upon women by men with the object of preserving their own virtue. While ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... specially repulsive to European taste are their monstrosity, their inartistic and hideous exaggeration, their accumulation of sanguinary horrors, and their childish triviality. Few of the classical myths exhibit these characteristics. The vanity or policy of Tiberius and Alexander in believing themselves to be, or wishing to be believed, divine, has nothing in common with the grotesque ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... doctor the first time she beheld him. Her profuse flaxen hair fell shadingly over her brow, and an acute observer might have detected her blindness by her suffering the fair locks to remain till a breeze swept them aside. They did not veil her vision. Mrs. Hazleton, with pardonable maternal vanity, loved to dress her beautiful blind child in a manner decorating to her loveliness. A simple white frock in summer, ornamented with a plain blue ribbon, constituted her usual holiday attire. She could select herself the color ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... two further remarks to his client, not at all flattering to Dolly's vanity,—which might have caused offence had not there been such perfectly good feeling between the attorney and the young man. As it was, Dolly replied to everything that was said with increased flattery. 'If I was a sharp fellow like you, you know,' said Dolly, 'of course ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... deserves some attention. Probably in nothing else is vanity and selfishness more easily displayed than in dress. How rare a thing it is to find a beautiful child, simply or even plainly dressed, who is neither vain of her good looks nor of her rich apparel. The ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... the system is the detestable double fastening to the carriage doors, and the curious fancy, prevalent on the Continent, that a platform is a vanity. It is a perpetual wonder to me that some of the wider Dutch ever succeed in climbing into their trains at all; and yet after accomplishing one's own ascent one discovers them seated there comfortably and numerously enough, showing no ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... the other day as egotism in which contempt for others is involved. It was agreed between us that egotism was normal, since happiness is not to be attained without a sense of personal utility to the world, and no objection was urged against it. Vanity was to be tolerated, because it was definitely social—a recognition of the existence and value of the good opinion of others; but never sense of superiority. And the sense of rebellion should be added to this other sense, as equally to be regretted. A young woman whose incredible acts ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... not pleasure, having ever present the end of it; equally, pain to him is not pain, because by the force of reasoning he has present the end of that too. So the sage holds all mutable things as things that are not, and affirms that they are no other than vanity and nothingness, because time has to eternity the proportion of the point ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... my master had actually begun to build the lonely cottage, other feelings mixed with those I have described. Revenge, and calculations of interest, were added to flattered vanity and sincere gratitude for kindness. I knew nothing would enrage Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another, and it was something to triumph over my tyrant even in that small way. I thought he would revenge himself by selling me, and I was sure my ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... instructive fashion, which we take as it stands. 'He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.' Let me measure myself by the side of that requirement. 'Clean hands?'—are mine clean? 'And a pure heart?'—what about mine? 'Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity'—and where have my desires and thoughts so often gone? 'Nor sworn deceitfully.' These are the qualifications that our psalm dashes down in front of us when we ask ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... followed his Ideal, who loved and prized it, and clave to it above and through all lesser mundane things. Of a man whom the senses could not allure, nor the craving for knowledge, nor the lust of power, nor the blast of spiritual vanity, shake from his perfect rectitude and service. Of a man who, seeing the good and the beautiful way, turned not aside from it, nor yielded a step to the enemy; in whose soul the voice of the inward Divinity no rebuke, nor derision, nor neglect ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... man's manipulation of difficult arguments. His talent, too, scarcely lent itself to the art of indirect intimations of his opinions. He remarks himself, in one of his letters, that he is about as clever at giving hints as the elder Osborne in 'Vanity Fair'; of whom Thackeray says that he would give what he called a 'hint' to a footman to leave his service by kicking the man downstairs. And, therefore, I suspect that when Fitzjames considered someone—even ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 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 at her first wooing. He plucked aside his skirts and walked in judgment; ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... power. Frightened, she started to tremble in every limb. Yet, to her astonishment, she had no feeling of anger or resentment. It seemed quite natural that this man should gaze at her in this intimate, caressing way. She found herself taking pleasure in it. Her vanity was gratified. If he looked at her so persistently, it must be that he thought her pretty. Her face began to burn, her bosom heaved, a strange sensation that heretofore only her husband had been able to arouse, came over her. And still his eyes were ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Ceremonies as be used in the Church, and have had their beginning by the institution of man, some at the first were of godly intent and purpose devised, and yet at length turned to vanity and superstition: some entered into the Church by undiscreet devotion, and such a zeal as was without knowledge; and for because they were winked at in the beginning, they grew daily to more and more abuses, which not only for their unprofitableness, but also ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... materialistic theories, if more loudly vociferated, were of scarcely greater significance than were those of Coleridge, who declared, "After I had read Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, I sported infidel, but my infidel vanity never touched my heart." [Footnote: James Gillman, Life of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... not unquestionable fact, would be almost incredible. Monsieur was some twenty years younger than the amorous Queen; in person he was offensive and contemptible; his character corresponded to his person, and his intelligence to his character. Elizabeth was eight and forty. Yet the man's amazing vanity made him a perpetual dupe, while it must have taken all her own vanity to persuade the lady that she could play Omphale to his Hercules. Yet she did it. In November she had him back in England. She kissed him before Walsingham and the French Ambassador, [Footnote: State Papers, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... my collecting funds spasmodically, a number of our local friends got "cold feet." Reports started, not circulated by well-wishers, that it was all a piece of personal vanity, that no such thing was needed, and if built would prove a white elephant, to support which I would be going round with my hat in my hand worrying the merchants. We had at that time some ninety thousand dollars in hand. I laid the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... have been already so liberal. But our programme of to-night is something truly creditable; and I cling to the idea that monsieur will honour us with his presence. And then, with a shrug and a smile: 'Monsieur understands—the vanity of an artist!' Save the mark! The vanity of an artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the manners of a gentleman and the vanity of an artist, to keep up ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inspired. Louis had had few adventures, very few, and this experience was exquisite and wondrous to him. It roused, not the fatuous coxcomb, nor the Lothario, but that in him which was honest and high-spirited. A touch of the male's vanity, not surprising, was ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... out of the big world you speak of," said Miss Mary, in a chilly tone. "The mantua-maker tells me the latest fashions are here from London sooner than they are in Edinburgh." She saw in his face the innkeeper's apology for his common sin against the Gaelic vanity. "We were just out for an airing," she added, taking Gilian's hand in hers and squeezing it ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the autumn extremely tedious. His old passion for Nina now and then flamed up in him, but her occasional coquetries no longer deceived him. They had their source only in her vanity. She exacted his embraces only as tribute to her own charm, her youth, her fresh ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... many sins for which to beseech God's pardon. For a long time my course was a course of vanity. I have been a seafaring man, a soldier, and a courtier; and, in the temptations of the least of these there is enough to overthrow a good mind and a good man. I die in the faith professed by the Church of England. I hope to be saved, and to have my sins washed away by the precious blood and ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... ain't it? That's the way I look at it. He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the world—all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where they belonged. They weighed down the back of his head so that it made his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was vanity, but it wasn't, it was malice. If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be nineteen feet high, but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of drawing. He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot was made first, but he didn't get there; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... certain than that in more than one instance he does great injustice to his predecessors.[404] To him, unquestionably, belongs the honor of having made a complete and exhaustive classification of causes, but there certainly does appear something more than vanity in the assumption that he, of all the Greek philosophers, was the only one who recognized them all. His sagacious classification was simply a resume of the labors of his predecessors. His "principles" or "causes" were incipient in the thought of the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... said, "that you offended it with your remark about its appearance. Hlats may have their share of vanity. At any rate, it seems to ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... "I admit my vanity, Walter, but it rests upon a just basis. Cressy, I repeat, is the best three year old in Virginia, which of course means the best in all the colonies, and I have a thousand weight of ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Queen Catherine to the charge of his kingdom in his absence. He sailed to Calais, where he was joined by MAXIMILIAN, Emperor of Germany, who pretended to be his soldier, and who took pay in his service: with a good deal of nonsense of that sort, flattering enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The King might be successful enough in sham fights; but his idea of real battles chiefly consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colours that were ignominiously blown down ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... are those who believe in Shakspeare, and those who believe in Tupper. All merit is measured by sliding scales, and each has his own theory of the sliding. In a dozen centuries it will all come right, no doubt. In the mean time there is vanity in one half the world and vexation of spirit in the other half, and each man joins each half in turn. But once enter the charmed gate of the gymnasium, and you leave shams behind. Though you be saint or sage, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... her attention to my clothes. The costumes which I suffered her to select were marvels of Parisian art and New York adaptiveness. She sought too, by frequent allusions to my increased personal beauty, to arouse my vanity and induce me to throw off the pall of soberness that had settled upon my spirit. When this failed, she had recourse to an opposite policy, and repeated to me the remarks she overheard in coming out of church and elsewhere concerning ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... sometimes for the life of the guilty. And Thou, O God, from afar perceivedst me stumbling in that slippery course, and amid much smoke sending out some sparks of faithfulness, which I showed in that my guidance of such as loved vanity, and sought after leasing, myself their companion. In those years I had one, -not in that which is called lawful marriage, but whom I had found out in a wayward passion, void of understanding; yet but one, remaining faithful even to her; in whom I in my own ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... twenty-seven years. A careful enquiry into the accuracy of the record as to the ages of the numerous other witnesses at the same trial has established it in an overwhelming majority of instances; and it is absurd gratuitously to charge Chaucer with having understated his age from motives of vanity. The conclusion, therefore, seems to remain unshaken, that he was born about the year 1340, or some time between that year ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the risk; for there were coquettes in the village,—strangers, visitors, let us hope,—who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Cornelia and her Children. Paris. Venus and Cupid. Rome. Villa Borghese: Toilet of Minerva. Venice. Academy: The Marriage of Cana; Madonna in Glory; Vanity, Orpheus, and Eurydice; Rape of Proserpine; Virgin in Glory. Verona. Man and Woman playing Chess; Triumph of Bacchus. Vienna. Woman ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were walking together, looked at me rather hard; and I attributed the Dragon's failure to stop at the Sign of the Rose to the silly vanity which forbade his wearing "specs" like a sensible old gentleman. Accordingly, with laudable presence of mind, I did what seemed the ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... was out in a moment and had his head on her lap, calling to papa to keep the carriage fast and block the way of the squadron, for the man's leg was hurt. I really thought we were lost. At these manoeuvres anything may happen, at any instant. Papa will follow the horse-artillery. You know his vanity to be a military quite as much as a naval commander like the Greeks and Romans, he says. We took the bruised man into our carriage and drove him to camp, Carinthia nursing him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the equal truth of what we have just stated above. To accept this verity and turn our energies toward the emancipation of our own sex—toward their emancipation from frivolous aims, petty prejudices, and that attitude toward the other sex which is really the sycophancy born of vanity and weakness; to make them recognize the State as a multiplication of their own families, and patriotism as the broadening of their love of home; to make them see that that mother will be most respected whose son does not, when a downy beard ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... that worshipped God, nay, even those of Asia and Europe, sent their contributions to it, and this from very ancient times. Nor is the largeness of these sums without its attestation; nor is that greatness owing to our vanity, as raising it without ground to so great a height; but there are many witnesses to it, and particularly Strabo of Cappadocia, who says thus: "Mithridates sent to Cos, and took the money which queen Cleopatra had deposited there, as also eight hundred talents belonging ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... insisted on plainness of dress as a duty. Undoubtedly the spirit which originally prompted the requisition was good, Christlike. It was the desire to take from the useless adornment of the person and bestow upon objects of Christian effort and charity. It was the desire to remove temptations to vanity and idle display. But in too many cases these things were forgotten. Christians received the precept in the letter and not in the spirit. They came to insist on plainness of dress as a mark of a true Christian, ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... was a great and lonely figure haunted by a dream which few of those about him could understand, and with which hardly any could sympathise. He writes pathetically: "I am fairly entitled to say that, since the year 1851, I have lived wholly for study. There can be no vanity in making this confession, for, strange to say, in a university ostensibly endowed for the cultivation of science and letters, such a life is hardly regarded ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... New York he had spent in his cabin, immersed in correspondence. Having dealt with this and exhausted it, on the second, third, and fourth days he found nothing to do. He never played cards; he eschewed all acquaintance with his fellow men except in the way of business; he had no vanity, and to be stared at on the promenade deck because of the fame of his wealth merely annoyed him. On the other hand, he had not the smallest excuse to lock himself up in his stuffy state-room. He enjoyed fresh air, and had never been sea-sick ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... I literally need it. I don't literally need the big turquoise in my neck-tie; which incidentally means, by the way, that if you should admire it you're quite welcome to it. Such words—that's my point—are like such jewels: the pride, you see, of one's heart. They're mere vanity, but they help along. You've got of course ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... (immortal, as I believe), I have but little that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... a Castle who had three Knights devoted to her. She loved one, and her vanity was pleased with the other two. While she continued to play with them all, they all loved her to distraction; but presently her preference for the one Knight became evident, and the two others, after ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... with much less difficulty than could have been anticipated at any former period of French history. Napoleon's great public works, too, though undertaken chiefly for the purpose of gratifying his own vanity and that of the nation, could not be executed without furnishing subsistence to vast bodies of the labouring poor, and were thus serviceable to more important ends. From his vain attempts to supply the want of English manufactured goods and colonial ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Garden. For to the creature that ardently pursues God there comes at last a time when He reveals Himself to the searching soul, saying: "I Am Here. Come!" Then in secrecy we arise,—and go to Him out of the House of Vanity into the music of ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... said, that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, we hope he did not mean that the two terms were at all synonymous; because, if he did, we unquestionably stand prepared to contest his knowledge of human nature, despite both his wisdom and experience. Darby's reply was not a long one, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Crump soon made the discovery that "the heir" sold many more than she did during the day, but such was her vanity that she could not at first bring herself to believe that people preferred to buy of the pale-faced cripple boy than of her, with her jet black wig and creaking voice. When she found it was really the case, she was very angry. ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... writes in his journal: "My daughter Agnes says, 'Much as I wish you to come home, I had rather that you finished your work to your own satisfaction, than return merely to gratify me.' Rightly and nobly said, my darling Nannie; vanity whispers pretty loudly, 'She is a chip of the old block,' My blessing on her ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... stage nearly all human passions which lend themselves to comedy or farce. Sordid avarice, lavish prodigality, shameless vice, womanly resignation, artless coquetry, greed for money, downright hypocrisy, would-be gentility, self-sufficient vanity, fashionable swindling, misanthropy, heartlessness, plain common-sense, knowledge of the world, coarse jealousy, irresolution, impudence, pride of birth, egotism, self-conceit, pusillanimity, ingenuity, roguery, affectations, homeliness, thoughtlessness, pedantry, arrogance, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... always be more generous and noble than his actions; knew too that I must take his charm of manner and vivacity of intercourse for real virtues, and indeed they were as real as the beauty of flowers; and I was aware as by some sixth sense that, where his vanity was concerned, I might expect any injustice from him. I was sure beforehand, however, that I should always forgive him, or rather that I should always accept whatever he did and love him for the charm and sweetness and intellect in him and hold myself more than recompensed for anything ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... a party of the monks of Canterbury determined to be beforehand with the bishops and even with the king. They secretly elected their subprior to the vacant see, and sent him off to Rome to be confirmed before their action should be known, but the personal vanity of their candidate betrayed the secret, and his boasting that he was the elect of Canterbury was reported back from the continent to England to the anger of the monks, who then sent a deputation to the king and asked permission in the regular way to proceed to an election. ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... thing after another goes missing in our class, first it was Fleischer's galoshes, then my new gloves, three times money was missing, and today Fraulein Steiner's new vanity bag. There was a great enquiry. But nothing was found out. We all think it is Schmolka. But no one will tell. To-day we could none of us attend to our lessons especially when Sch. left the ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... legitimate cares on to the proprietor's shoulders. She actually—you can understand and share my indignation, can't you, Tom, as you've shared other things?—she even gives over her black tin box full of valuables to the hotel clerk to put in the safe; the coward! But her vanity—ah, there's where we get her, such speculators as you and myself. She's got to outshine the woman who sits at the next table, and so she borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like the peacock she is, and trembles till they're back in ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... opportunity for frankness. "Why doesn't his wife tell him of that unpleasant mannerism, so he can correct it?" bears witness to the universal appreciation of this function of married life. But if John nurses hurt feelings whenever Mary punctures his vanity by suggesting that he presents to the world a less than perfect front, Mary may soon lose courage and relinquish her wifely job of husband improvement. Or the ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... true that they had such a proverb. They were as remarkable, it seems, in those days as they are now for their national self-importance and vanity. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... of words to thank her for her narrative. His mind, indeed, was empty of everything beyond a dull longing for escape. From this pause, which grew the more embarrassing with every second, he was roused by the sudden laughter of the lady. His vanity was alarmed; he turned and faced her; their eyes met; and he caught from hers a spark of such frank merriment as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at this sturdy answer. His vanity was piqued that two rude sailors should be so uninfluenced by his learned discourse. He ordered Basil to tell them what the inevitable consequences of their obstinacy ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... themselves for him; nor of the greater folly of his irreligion. The epistle to Keith is puerile and shocking. He is not so sensible as Lord Ferrers, who did not think such sentiments ought to be published. His Majesty could not resist the vanity of showing how disengaged he can ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of the hot sun and into a secluded archway, he talking straight on with a speed and pitiful grandiloquence totally unlike him. "I've finished all the easy parts—the first ecstasies of pure license— the long down-hill plunge, with all its mad exhilarations—the wild vanity of venturing and defying—that bigness of the soul's experiences which makes even its anguish seem finer than the old bitterness of tame propriety—they are all behind me, now?-the valley of horrors is before! You can't understand it, Smith. O ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... should not be wantonly injured; because the quarrel, is not between private Individuals, but between their Governors, in which their real Interests are seldom consulted. Very few necessary Wars have ever disturbed the peace of the World: they generally are the consequence of Ambition, Pride, and Vanity. ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... the moral debasement of the Covenant-people, and marked out pride as its last source, the last judgment upon the whole earth forms the subject of discourse. In that judgment there will be a most clear revelation of the vanity of all which is created—a vanity which, in the present course of the world, is so frequently concealed—and that the Lord alone is exalted, and that those who now shut their eyes will then be compelled to acknowledge these truths. That Isaiah has this general ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Helen?" asked Prescott. He always had a feeling of repulsion toward Mr. Harley, his sounding talk, his colossal vanity and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... lounging about in pyjamas, go barefoot with the utmost sangfroid. The sarong, as worn by the slender and graceful Malay, appears a modest and appropriate garb, but the grotesque effect of native attire on the broad-built Dutchwoman affords conclusive proof that neither personal vanity nor a sense of humour pertain to her stolid personality. Dutch Puritanism certainly undergoes startling transformations under the tropical skies, and the Netherlands India produces a modification of European ideas concerning what have been called "the minor moralities of life," unequalled in ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... asked the gentleman, who was quite disappointed to find he could not purchase the establishment at his own price, as he had expected to do at a later hour in the day, after the young man had had an opportunity to consider the vanity of worldly hopes. ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... was she! what am I! those are the arms That are triumphant when the battle fails. O Julian, Julian! all thy former words Struck but the imbecile plumes of vanity; These, through its steely coverings, pierce the heart. I ask not life nor death; but, if I live, Send my most bitter enemy to watch My secret paths, send poverty, send pain - I will add more—wise as thou art, thou knowest No foe more furious than forgiven kings. I ask not then what ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Perthshire than Edinburgh. But he feared nothing. He was going into the wilderness after his own stray sheep, and he had a conviction that any path of duty is a safe path. He said little to any one. The people looked strangely on him. He almost fancied himself to be Christian going through Vanity Fair. ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... anonymous pamphlet, 'La Conference du Cardinal Mazarin avec le Gazetier' (Brussels, 1649), says that she was infatuated about him, and allowed him to visit her in her room. She even permitted him to take off and keep one of her gloves, and his vanity leading him to show his spoil, the king heard of it, and was vastly offended. An anecdote, the truth of which no one has ever denied, relates that one day Buckingham spoke to the queen with such passion in the presence of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cases. Well, Wong Pao, we are entirely surrounded by an expectant mob and their attitude, after much patient waiting, is tending towards a clearly-defined tragedy. By what means is it your intention to extricate us all from the position into which your insatiable vanity ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... woman's vanity, but she was willing to oblige, and so signified her readiness to put the dress on, and in less than ten minutes she had metamorphosed herself from the quiet, retiring sewing-girl into a ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... venom of the strike at the Rathbawne Mills. McGrath's dual sense of wounded vanity prescribed a course of surpassing vindictiveness. His personal resentment, reinforced by consummate appreciation of the adversaries with whom he had to deal, dictated a safe road to revenge, which enabled him to ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... in me a clean heart, O God, O wretched man that I am! "Let a man," says William Law when he is enforcing humility, "but consider that if the world knew all that of him which he knows of himself: if they saw what vanity and what passions govern his inside, and what secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions, he would have no more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom than a rotten and distempered body to be loved and admired for its beauty and comeliness. This ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... "My uncle, from whom I inherited this property, was a noble of the old school. State with him was of the greatest importance. He loved to make a show—not that he really cared about it himself, or had any large amount of vanity, but that he considered it necessary to maintain the dignity of his order. Thus he kept up this useless troop of lazy varlets in faded liveries, when a good house-steward and two active footmen would have served him much better. I shall turn some of those fellows to the right-about ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... she had her share of natural vanity, was too impatient to do more than cast a perfunctory glance at her reflected self. At this period of her life when a drive in a hired cab was enough of a novelty to give her pleasure, a day such as the one that lay before her filled her ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... it all right," Snake interjected. "I was pretty good at that sort of thing in the war. The officers said I had a mighty good nose—for smelling I mean," he made haste to add for fear his pals would accuse him of personal vanity. "In some of the trenches they used rats and canary birds to give warning of gas. But I was the official smeller for my bunch, and I got so I was pretty good at it if I do ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... not how many pairs of bright eyes are watching him shyly out of the coverts. Once, when I had watched him strut and drum a few times, the leaves rustled, and two hen grouse emerged from opposite sides into the little opening where his log was. Then he strutted with greater vanity than before, while the two hen grouse went gliding about the place, searching for seeds apparently, but in reality watching his every movement out of their eye corners, and admiring ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities; those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year; at length, ambition is dead, pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... glance, for I was sure she would have kissed me again had I asked her; but I wanted no more of her kisses, although I had found them so sweet. I seemed to have suddenly grown stronger and wiser where she was concerned; yet I suppose the poor truth of the matter was, that she had stung my vanity keenly, and said little to endear herself to me in our recent interview. Her words, instead of harming me, had roused all the resentment of the strong vital force within me. I felt curiously stirred, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the middle of the lakes, where no one could touch us unless they risked their lives on great wooden rafts. I thought the amount of inverted truth in this charming description very pleasing if not very flattering to our national vanity. ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... final ascent brings us to a colossal Buddha, now reclining, as if his work were done and he were entering upon the bliss of Nirvana. At this last stage there is also a series of waxwork figures which symbolize the vanity of life and of human desire. Four forms represent, first, the babe at its mother's breast; secondly, the youth full of vigor; then the older man haggard with care; and finally, the corpse, upon whose vitals the birds of the air ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... me aside and kindly pointed out what they conceived to be a blunder. I have dwelt, perhaps tediously, upon this swap; my excuses are—first, that, having made few such good bargains during the days of my vanity, the memory is a pleasant one; and, second, that the horse will necessarily play a ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... visited him, to write down the lauds; and the priest wrote them down on comely sheepskin, which the Hermit dried and prepared with his own hands. When the Hermit saw them written down they appeared to him so beautiful that he feared to commit the sin of vanity if he looked at them too often, so he hid them between two smooth stones in his cave, and vowed that he would take them out only once in the year, at Easter, when our Lord has risen and it is meet that Christians should rejoice. And this vow he faithfully kept; but, ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... that it may not be for the last time. Yet I don't think that either of us would care much to survive the other. In his case, at any rate, his occupation would be gone and he would suffer from that extinction, because I suspect him of some vanity. I don't mean vanity in the Solomonian sense. Of all my people he's the one that has never been a vexation to my spirit. A most ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... was living under an assumed name and that his bona fides was doubtful, he might have impressed the jury to some slight degree. He could not, however, control the malice he felt, and he was smarting from Crozier's retorts. He had a vanity easily lacerated, and he was now too savage to abate the ferocity of his forensic attack. He sat down, however, with a sure sense of failure. Every orator knows when he is beating the air, even when his audience ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thoughtless Nation, which gets little or nothing from others, but saving all it can; and being frugal in proportion to its Indolence and Poverty. This is a self-evident Truth, and yet our Nobility and Gentry spend in Vanity and Luxury, treble as much as Men of twice their Fortune in England, tho' they do not half the Good among their Tenants, and neither spend half the Time or Money with them, or take half the pains to improve them, while they every Year encrease their Rents, and our Beggars: ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... discounted their paper. It hath pleased Providence to raise the price of E.I. sugars; the quotations of B.P. coffee are likewise improving, in both of which articles I am a large holder. Yet am I not puffed up with foolish vanity, but have girded myself round with the girdle of lowliness, even as with the band which is all round my hat! In token whereof, I offered to hand 20 puncheons of the former, as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... smell no hay or cropped herbage, see no summer pastures with circles of cool shade, hear no voice of herds among the hills? They were very likely the only horses your grandfather ever had. Not much trouble to harness and unharness them. Not much vanity on the road in those days. They did all the work on the early pioneer farm. They were the gods whose rude strength first broke the soil. They could live where the moose and the deer could. If there was no clover or timothy ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... the other, rising in a fury. 'Say anywhere! Your vanity is intolerable, your conceit is beyond endurance; you talk as if you were some rare and precious prize, instead of a common boaster. You are a common fellow, and a ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... with these ears - that drunkenness "may lead to vice." Now I did not think it at all proved that Burns was what is called a drunkard; and I was obliged to dwell very plainly on the irregularity and the too frequent vanity and meanness of his relations to women. Hence, in the eyes of many, my study was a step towards the demonstration of ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 be ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... certainly ruin all mine, as well as the Company's affairs. His mismanagement and obstinacy have caused the loss of many lacs of my revenues, dissipated and embezzled, and every public consideration sacrificed to his vanity and private views. I beg to offer an instance in proof of my assertions, and to justify the hope I have that you will cause to be made good to me all the losses I have sustained by the maladministration and bad practices of your servants, according to all the account of receipts of former years, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... foes, I shall have occasion presently to show. But I must return to the scene I was describing. I may be pardoned for first giving a slight sketch of myself. I hope that I may escape being accused of vanity, as I shall not dwell on my personal appearance. I believe that I inherited some of my parents' good looks; but the hardships I have endured have eradicated all traces of them. I was well grown for my age (I was barely fifteen), but, dressed in my loose shooting-costume, my countenance ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused—the management of thoroughbred horses and the society ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Light, which was all well enough in its way; 'twas a time to be abroad in the sunlit wind. And I sighed: not knowing what ailed me, but yet uneasy and most melancholy. The world was an ill place for a lad to be (thinks I), and all the labor of it a vanity.... ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... everywhere restored discipline, being inflamed with a holy zeal for the honor of God. His dignity seemed to make no alteration either in his mortifications, or in the constant recollection of his soul. Honored by all the world, even by kings, he was never affected with vanity. Powerful in works and miracles, he looked upon himself as the most unworthy and most unprofitable among the servants of God, and had no other ambition than to appear such in the eyes of others, as he was in those of his own humility. By his courage in maintaining the law of God and the canons ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... had to confess it in her heart—he had never taken any notice of the young girls who lived in the villas around him. She knew very well that he preferred them to them all, and her vanity felt flattered; she said soothingly, but at the same time evasively: "No, Woelfchen, you can't go with me any more, it's not proper any more." And she held out her ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... may be the better enabled to serve and benefit his fellow-men; while the discontented and presumptuous Masters who were buried in the ruins of the arches represent those who strive to acquire it for unholy purposes, to gain power over their fellows, to gratify their pride, their vanity, or their ambition. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... will never return to inquire whether men obey or disobey his law, who will regard it? Do you suppose the world will be turned upside down, and reformed, by a little good advice? Nay, verily, the world has had trial of that vanity long enough. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terrors of the Lord, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... sedately on the threshold of their own door-steps, frequent sallies abroad into this quiet city having doubtless convinced them of the futility of all sorties. The old houses were their carved facades as old ladies wear rich lace—they had reached the age when the vanity of personal adornment had ceased to inflate. The great cathedral, towering above the tranquil town, wore a more conscious air; its significance was too great a contrast to the quiet city asleep at its feet. In these ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... flowers to the little Ianthe, and once a costlier lute than her own, in return for her father's help with the idioms. Also he borrowed some of Dom Diego's own works, issued anonymously from the printing presses of Amsterdam; and from his new friend's "Paradise of Earthly Vanity," and other oddly entitled volumes of controversial theology, the young enthusiast sucked instruction and confirmation of his doubts. To Dom Diego's Portuguese fellow-citizens the old gentleman was the author of an erudite essay ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
