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More "Vanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like the wind, or crawl in the grass, and knew how to strike, quickly and unexpectedly, as the first streak of dawn came into the East. Like Napoleon, he knew the value of time, and, in fact, he had somewhat of the dash and daring, not to mention the vanity, of the Corsican. His men believed in him and loved him, for he marched them to victory, and with odds of five to one ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... really was—more profane, more intemperate, more licentious. It is equally true that this tendency, added to the fact that he was a handsome peer, had much to do with the immediate popularity of his poems. There was also a paradoxical vanity, which does not seem easily reconcilable with his misanthropy, that thus led him to reproduce himself in a new dress in his dramas and tales. He paraded himself as if, after all, he did value ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... example, that our admired Haller, who unmasked in so manly a spirit the sickly nothingness of vain honors; a man whose philosophical greatness I so highly appreciated, that he was not great enough to despise the still greater vanity of an order of knighthood, which conferred an injury on his greatness. I am convinced that in the happy moment of their ideal conceptions, the artist, the philosopher, and the poet are really the great and good man whose image ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that defeat and surrender—surrender so early, so immediate—should have to ensue. It was not indeed that he thought of that disaster as, at the worst, a direct sacrifice of their possibilities: he imaged—it which was enough as some proved vanity, some exposed fatuity, in the idea of bringing Mrs. Lowder round. When, shortly afterwards, in this lady's vast drawing-room—the apartments at Lancaster Gate had struck him from the first as of prodigious extent—he awaited ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Chauvinism—this last as effective an instrument as the oppressor can wield. Divide et impera is a maxim of despotic state-craft, old as despotism itself; "flatter and rule" is a method equally sure, and such Santa Anna practised to its full. He let pass no opportunity of flattering the national vanity, which brought the Mexican nation to shame, with much humiliation—as the French at a later period, and as it must every people that aims at no higher standard of honour than what may be derived ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... be chosen to flatter. The quality we should prize is that rectitude which will shrink from no truth. Intimacies, which increase vanity, destroy friendship. ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... reverse of this. In the present work of men, meanness, aimlessness, unsightliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, narrow-garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome Vanity Fair, busily base. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... mirror in his bedroom, that gave on Horridge's Hotel, and surveyed himself thoughtfully. He was looking at the only man he trusted, for it was not vanity, but a love of agreeable company that explained the passion for mirrors which was the ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... burden which no sane man will wish to bear."[1218] "As soon as high purpose, intense human attachments, are the springs of action and resolve, discipline will come into our movement to crush out base selfishness, vanity, and personal ambition,"[1219] This is very nice, but how are "high purpose" and "intense human attachment" to be made the "springs of action"? Unfortunately the writer keeps the secret ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... them, descriptive and significant, even the last, which strangers mispronounced Pudding Point. Even in old New York there were once such names rich in historical association as Long Acre Square, now reduced to Times Square to please the vanity or cupidity of a newspaper. But, save the Indians, no body of people on this continent, not even the old-time cowboys and prospectors with their Bright Angel Trail, have ever rivaled the southern highlanders, the mountain folk of the Blue Ridge, the Great Smokies and the Cumberlands, in ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... pathway which leads to the glorious mountain-top than to follow an easier path to some lower summit. If we truly feel that, we do well to take the path, for we have a right to forget ourselves for the sake of our aim. But if we ask for success after all, it is mere blind vanity which makes us so ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... own words may not pronounce my condemnation; and that what I have here ventured to say in regard to imitation, may be understood as it is meant, in a general sense, and not be imputed to an opinion of my own originality, which I have not the vanity, the folly, or the blindness, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... not hurt me. There was a time in which I owned to myself that it would be very bitter, and then I told myself, that I hoped,—that I hoped that you would wait. But now, I have acknowledged to myself the vanity and selfishness of such a wish. If I really love you am I not bound to want what may ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... or no prince, that is not how one man should conduct himself with another. What! You'll ride with me incog. and set me talking! But if I know you, you'll preshede me, if you please! Spy!" And the fellow, crimson with drink and injured vanity, almost spat the word into the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lawrence stood slackly, with his back to her, and behind him Walters walked across the trunk. His step was firm and agile, his figure well-proportioned and athletic, and it was somehow obvious that he relished the opportunity of showing his powers. Afterwards, she hated him for his vanity. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... judgment would most condemn, and endeavour to extirpate.—Man is a stranger to nothing, more than to himself;—the recesses of his own heart, are no less impenetrable to him, than the worlds beyond the moon;—he is blinded by vanity, and agitated by desires he knows not he is ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... from the table and crossed his legs comfortably. For him all the chill had gone out of the air. Suppose that there was something in this? An old, old devil of vanity came back to the aged husband's heart. He recalled that he had been somewhat of a beau before he learned the joy of loving Angy. More than one Long Island lassie had thrown herself at his head. Of course Blossy would "get over" this; and Angy knew that ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... to pause before he put the next question. He could scarcely explain why he hesitated, but he called to mind the Paradise cafe and the red-faced Englishman. He was ready enough to sacrifice his wife if by so doing money might be gained, but he felt somehow hurt in his vanity at the idea of this ugly, slow-witted Northerner usurping his place. With an effort, however, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... attention to the arrangement of the animals in Plate VI, where economy of space, and a desire to display each detail to advantage, are the leading motives. I give it as the readiest example to hand, and because it fairly illustrates the principle in question. You must excuse the apparent vanity in making choice of one of my own works to exemplify a canon of art. The sheep at the top is supposed to be scampering over rocks; the ram below may be any distance from the sheep that you choose to imagine—the only indication of relative position is separation, by means of a ridge ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... countless impulses to look at the flower-face of the royal auditor. They were surreptitious and sidelong peeps, it is true, but they served him well. He caught her gaze bent upon him more than once, and he detected an interest in her look that pleased his vanity ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... drift that the devil whipped St. Jerome in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it was a phantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an angel been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading, not the vanity, it had been plainly partial; first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus, whom he confesses to have been reading, not long before; next to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... hole of the pistol shot. He died clutching my hands, swearing that he loved me and that he had killed himself for me ... a tiresome, horrible scene.... And nevertheless I am sure that he was deceiving himself, that he did not love me. He killed himself through wounded vanity on seeing that I would have nothing to do with him,—just for stubbornness, for theatrical effect, influenced by his readings.... He was a Roumanian tenor. That was in Russia.... I have been an actress a part of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... lamentable matter for any writer to find himself compelled to sketch, however briefly, the early years of Benjamin Franklin. That autobiography, in which the story of those years is so inimitably told, by its vividness, its simplicity, even by its straightforward vanity, and by the quaint charm of its old-fashioned but well-nigh faultless style, stands among the few masterpieces of English prose. It ought to have served for the perpetual protection of its subject as a copyright more sacred than any which rests upon mere statutory law. Such, however, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... becomes loquacious. But he has a certain stern impassibility of feature—a coldness of manner—which have been mistaken for dignity. His immobility of countenance, however, may be the effect of sluggish sensibilities, or even of dull perceptions;[40] and the same savage vanity, which leads him to make a display of strength or agility before friend or enemy, prevents his acknowledging ignorance, by betraying surprise.[41] We have been in company with Indians from the Far West, while they saw a railroad ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... atmosphere of combined temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved. Very agreeable indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time. Deep down in his heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he pleased. When King Ferdinand went ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... extreme simplicity of his manners. He drives only six horses. Besides, he is known as a man of learning and piety;—has his private chapel, and private clergyman, who always preaches against the vanity of worldly riches. He has also a private secretary, whose sole duty is to smoke to him, that he may enjoy the aroma of Spanish cigars, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the twilight I wandered by the old home place, and I saw it lie in wreck; all was vanity and despair. I sought for the things that belonged to my childhood days, but none of them ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... stairs, was wearing an immensely long and wide ermine stole, and carrying a huge muff to match. Before she touched the electric bell she pulled her large hat forward a little over her face, and adjusted the thick veil, which had a pattern like a spider's web. Then she opened a gold vanity box suspended from her wrist by a chain, and looked at herself in the small mirror it contained. Her face was so shadowed by the hat and disguised by the veil that at a little distance it might be difficult for any one not very familiar with ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to be most relieved to be let out before Miss Maitland caught you," retorted Honor. "What an opportunity to point a moral on the fatal consequences of vanity!" Then, as Flossie flounced angrily away: "You've never thanked me for unlocking this door yet. I thought we were supposed to cultivate manners at St. Chad's. If Vivian asks where you've been, ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... his poverty which held him back, then she might make the advances. She might put aside her pride, and go halfway to meet him, and to remove his difficulties and embarrassments. If, after that, he still did not ask her, I think his scruples would have become mere vanity,—I think it would show that he cared more for his mere vanity ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... anything for some time. Vanity ain't like a mill-store about my neck; but at the same time, whenever any one plugs me in the face with an aged cabbage, I allus like to make a some little acknowledgment. Of course I knew that she was handin' me one for my fool break; but she did it in cold blood, an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... I? O vanity, We are not what we deem, The sins that hold my heart in thrall, They are more real ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... themselves, and not from an accident. Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow suddenly after a victory—it is the transient vanity of torrents swollen by a storm. Civilized nations, especially at the present day, are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain, and their specific weight in the human family results from something more than a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... visit. Would she, womanlike, at the last moment contradict herself and withhold the full surrender of life? It was impossible, and yet he felt a vague fear. At any rate, he had burned the bridges behind. His way was clear. He would bring to bear every power he possessed to win her, and in the vanity of his powerful manhood he laughed with ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... that, all men have their weak side. There isn't one, trust me, who can withstand the brilliant attractions of the belle of the ball room, such as, pardon my vanity, I hope to be on next Tuesday evening. I have seen a little of the world in my time, and have always observed, that whoever can eclipse all her fair compeers at one of these brilliant assemblages, possesses, for the time, a power that may be used to advantage. All the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... the table to me, with an enormous sorrow in his voice as he spoke. "Thrice I have had my chance—thrice! If ever that door offers itself to me again, I swore, I will go in, out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. I will go and never return. This time I will stay... I swore it, and when the time came—I ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... playful vanity he gave vent to a torrent of self-appreciation. He then named all the "other notables present"—a poet, a cartoonist, a budding playwright, a distinguished Russian revolutionist, an editor, and another newspaper man—maligning and deriding some of them and grudgingly praising the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Infanta of Castilla, but as Isabel his wife not at all. During her early years, she had sought rest and comfort in the world. She plunged wildly into every manner of dissipation and pleasure; like Solomon, she withheld not her heart from any good; and like Solomon's, her verdict at the close was "Vanity and vexation of spirit." And then—just when she had arrived at the conclusion that there was nothing upon earth worth living for—when she had "come to the end of everything, and cared for nothing," she met with an old ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... was point-de-vice of prime quality over black velvet. My uncle's welcome was more than a vain lad could stomach; and what youth of his first teens hath not a vanity hidden about ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and was very fond of nice furniture, china and dainty things, but I have lost all taste for these, and stopped making fashionable calls, for I have seen the vanity and wickedness in fashionable society and costly dressing. I educated myself to look at things as I thought God would, and this change came about after that transaction between my soul and God, at the Methodist church, which I know ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... And if any one wished especially to flatter him he would best accomplish his purpose by asking him to sing one of his own songs. Those who knew him were well aware of this, and often enjoyed a good laugh at the expense of his vanity. This accounts for the clamorous call he received to give them a song of his ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... Versailles had, for its own ends, pretended. To the Nuncio the King said that the designs of Lewis were palpable and should be frustrated. This officious protection was at once an insult and a snare. "My good brother," said James, "has excellent qualities; but flattery and vanity have turned his head." [471] Adda, who was much more anxious about Cologne than about England, encouraged this strange delusion. Albeville, who had now returned to his post, was commanded to give friendly assurances to the States General, and to add some high ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an odious, clever woman?' She sat down and hated herself. All the passing vanity that had been stirred in her by Sir Henry's compliments, all the natural pleasure she had taken in the success of her great adventure as a business woman, in the ease with which she, the Squire's paid secretary, had lately begun to lead the patriotic effort of an English county—how ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... creation to vanity, in the hope that the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For this double deliverance—from corruption and the consequent subjection to vanity, ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... lurked an expression of undisguised curiosity. Rose, for that was her name, was something of a coax, and all her life long she had managed to get her own way; she was an only child, and had been not a little spoiled; but in spite of many faults she was lovable, and beneath her outer shell of vanity and self-satisfaction there ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... with me, I have betaken myself to the Stoics, and not all in vain. Marcus Aurelius has often been one of my bedside books; I have read him in the night watches, when I could not sleep for misery, and when assuredly I could have read nothing else. He did not remove my burden; his proofs of the vanity of earthly troubles availed me nothing; but there was a soothing harmony in his thought which partly lulled my mind, and the mere wish that I could find strength to emulate that high example (though I knew that I never should) was in itself a safeguard against the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... It is vain;— Of mirth I said: What profits it?— Therefore I found a book, and writ Therein, how ease and also pain, How health and sickness, every one Is vanity beneath the sun. ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... a glance at yourself in the glass! Oh Jane, Jane, the best of us and the freest from imperfection is not without a little pride and vanity; but don't be too confident, my saucy beauty; consider that you complained to William yesterday, about the unusual length of time that has elapsed since you received his last letter, and yet he could, write to his fa—— What, ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... not vanity—it is only love visible in a different aspect, and not the least amiable either, ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the paltry sneer, but at the prophecy relating to Godolphin: "he had never distinguished himself in anything—he never would." Rank, wealth, power, Constance felt these she wanted not, these she could command of herself; but she felt also that a nobler vanity of her nature required that the man of her mature and second choice should not be one, in repute, of that mere herd, above whom, in reality, his genius so eminently exalted him. She deemed it essential to her future happiness that Godolphin's ambition should be ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of His grace, and in the profusion with which He gives it, is to bring them nearer to Himself; but they make use of it for an utterly different end: they rest in it, reflect upon it, look at it, and appropriate it; and hence arise vanity, complaisance, self-esteem, the preference of themselves to others, and often the destruction of religious life. These people are admirable, in themselves considered; and sometimes by a special grace ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... eyes had smarted, and oh, what answers she had made! That dreadful tight panic had clutched at her throat whenever the Superintendent had looked at her, and she had disgraced herself ten times over. She went hot and cold to think of it, and felt quite sick with hurt vanity. She who did so well every day and was so much looked up to by her classmates, what MUST they be thinking of her! To tell the truth, she had been crying as she walked along through the woods, because she was so sorry for herself. Her eyes were all ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... established on the English throne; and the confederacy, though not successful in every instance, accomplished their great aim of putting a stop to the encroachments of the French monarch. They mortified his vanity, they humbled his pride and arrogance, and compelled him to disgorge the acquisitions which, like a robber, he had made in violation of public faith, justice, and humanity. Had the allies been true to one ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... are not worthless; and by commending, as our Lord repeatedly did, those who have done well, they, by that principle of our nature of which we are here speaking, are strongly excited to do better. To feed vanity, is to commend vanities; and they who prize and commend beauty, or fashion, or dress, or frivolous accomplishments, may be guilty of this folly; but not the parent or the person who commends in a child those things which are really commendable, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... always being FIRST, while little Auntie" (the general nickname for Lubov Sergievna) "is innocent enough to admire him, and at the same time devoid of the tact to conceal her admiration. Consequently she flatters his vanity—not ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... she brought every power of her mind into action; she was gracious in the extreme; she overcame her proud nature, and assumed a winning gentleness; in short, she flattered the ambassador with such delicate refinement, that he swallowed the magical food offered to his vanity, without ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... father's greatest vanity was his secret pride in his ability to put over the biggest generosity of the year without its being traceable to him. One day a girl acquaintance of her asked her if she knew that her father spent $25,000 every year for Christmas. Marion laughed; ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... and the glittering of the myriad stars flung a light over his room and shone on the little bracket of books above his bed (a Bible, an "Arabian Nights," and tattered copies of "David Copperfield," "Vanity Fair," "Peregrine Pickle," "Tom Jones," and "Harry Lorrequer"), on the little washing stand, a chest of drawers, a cane-bottomed chair, and the little bed. There were no pictures on the walls because of the sloping roof, but there were two china vases on the mantelpiece, and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... undoubtedly preserve their neutrality, provided it were respected, and avoid any interference with the politics of Europe.... On the other hand, they would not suffer others to interfere against the emancipation of America." With characteristic vanity Canning said that it was he himself who "called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old." Yet precisely this had already for a long while been a cardinal point of the policy ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... recals an interesting period in the history of the earldom, was originally a royal residence. It was erected in the middle of the fourteenth century by Jane of France, who, with a very pardonable vanity, directed her new palace to be called Navarre, that her Norman subjects might never forget that she was herself a queen, and that she had brought a kingdom as a marriage portion to her husband. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... narrative, he jumped up quickly and left the room with strong rapid strides. The friends followed him with their eyes, silently and very much astonished; then they went to take another look at the picture. The old Doge again looked down upon them with a smirk, in his ridiculous finery and foppish vanity; but when they carefully looked into the Dogess's face they perceived quite plainly that the shadow of some unknown pain—a pain of which she only had a foreboding—was throned upon her lily brow, and that dreamy ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... supported on the knuckles of her clasped hands, her elbows resting upon her knees. "Oh, Daddy—and you aren't due at the party till seven. Four hours. Four valuable hours sitting around in your dandy new suit of evening clothes. Vanity. Pure vanity. We're all the same, men who don't need—fixing, and women who do. Only you men won't admit it. Women do. They surely do. Any woman's ready to admit she'd rather look nicer than any other woman than ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... sceptre, the Pontifical dignity, and the power of the temporal prince, are covered over with a funeral shroud,—every object that strikes the eye, and every sound that vibrates on the ear, is an awful memento which reminds us of our approaching dissolution, points out the vanity and nothingness of all earthly grandeur, and convinces, us that in holiness of life, which unites us to God and secures an immortal crown in the enjoyment of the sovereign good, consists the greatness as well as the happiness of man. An awful truth exemplified ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Tostig was remorseless as the tiger, as treacherous and as fierce. With less intellectual capacities than any of his brothers, he had more personal ambition than all put together. A kind of effeminate vanity, not uncommon with daring natures (for the bravest races and the bravest soldiers are usually the vainest; the desire to shine is as visible in the fop as in the hero), made him restless both for ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... self-love and most active vanity were disturbed; but above that rose another passion that had of late years grown strong within her—avarice. She recognized the sure ring of gold in those notes, and ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... because I dance so pretty, with my little toes. Will you call me Cherrytoe always, mamma?" asked 'Toinette, with such a complacent delight in her own accomplishments, that her mother's smile was sad as it was tender. But she felt that this was not the time or place to reprove the vanity so rankly springing in the child's ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... introduced to a foreign officer that I did not fear him, with his weak eyes, his affected mannerisms, his studied rudeness, not to me, but to the country I represented. How I made some of them dance! Not for vanity's sake; rather the inborn patriotism of my race. I had only to think of my father, his honorable scars, his contempt for little things, his courage, his steadfastness, his love for his country, which has so honored him with its trust. Oh! I am a patriot; ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... return; but this we did not quite swallow. After a day or two they went into Paris again, and I then began to suspect that they were essaying the role of mediators, and that Count Bismarck was feeding their vanity with permits, and receiving his equivalent by learning the state of affairs within ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 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, almost elated, in remembering what she had said, and contrasting her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... did not see that Archibald Wickersham was left standing alone a moment in the middle of the lawn. But Miriam Burrell saw and understood the black rage that shadowed his face. Long before then she had penetrated to the layer of vanity beneath his air of boredom. More than once she had used that knowledge maliciously, to stir him. And she knew how unending could be his hatred for anyone who had ever ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... had been blowing all night, so that the waves were shouldering the rocks with huge assault. Now Fergus's sermon, which he meant to use as a spade for the casting of the first turf of the first parallel in the siege of the pulpit of the North parish, was upon the vanity of human ambition, his text being the grand verse—And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy; there was no small amount of fine writing in the manuscript he had thrust into his ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... him so often from his distant home to the city, and supposed it must be some legal business which engaged him; but gradually a different solution dawned upon her mind. She rejected it as the prompting of vanity, but again and again the supposition recurred. The imperturbable gravity and repose of his manner often disconcerted her. It was in vain that she resorted to sarcasm, and irony; he was incorrigibly unruffled; in vain she was cold, repellent, haughty; his quiet smile remained unaltered. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... principles, but by the conjunction of other qualities. This distinction I cannot at present justify or explain any farther. I can only observe in general, that under the indirect passions I comprehend pride, humility, ambition, vanity, love, hatred, envy, pity, malice, generosity, with their dependants. And under the direct passions, desire, aversion, grief, joy, hope, fear, despair and security. I shall ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the lesson is not complete when the grave slams the book. A few plumb the depths of their ignorance before death: these are able to speak—and these are the teachers of men. We get here one reason why giants are fewer in our day: with the growth of man's imaginings and his inventions there is more vanity to be forced through; the truths of life lie deeper hid; more phantasms arise to lure us from the quest of realities; the task ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Simonides, who was celebrated for his piety, introduced into his poem the exploits of Castor and Pollux. Such digressions were not unusual with the poets on similar occasions, and one might suppose an ordinary mortal might have been content to share the praises of the sons of Leda. But vanity is exacting; and as Scopas sat at his festal board among his courtiers and sycophants, he grudged every verse that did not rehearse his own praises. When Simonides approached to receive the promised reward Scopas bestowed but half the expected ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... do not differ much from the asavas for they are but the specific passions in forms ordinarily familiar to us, such as covetousness (lobha), anger or hatred (dosa), infatuation (moha), arrogance, pride or vanity (mana), heresy (di@t@thi), doubt or uncertainty (vicikiccha), idleness (thina), boastfulness (udhacca), shamelessness (ahirika) and hardness of heart anottapa); these kilesas proceed directly ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... which she lay off Havre, the "Repudiator" had brought more prizes into that port than had ever before been seen in the astonished French waters. Her actions with the "Dettingen" and the "Elector" frigates form part of our country's history; their defence—it may be said without prejudice to national vanity—was worthy of Britons and of the audacious foe they had to encounter; and it must be owned, that but for a happy fortune which presided on that day over the destinies of our country, the chance of the combat might ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dizzy watching him foil villains in five reels a week. He inherited some money—quite a lot, I believe, and suddenly vanished from the screen, turning up as Brown-Smith here last year. But he simply could not resist the call of his vanity to come back once more as the dashing hero of the film. He had planned to step into this picture, turn the tables in the fight with Mr. Scanlan, who he thought was an actor and not a pugilist, and thus come back to the movies in a blaze of ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... following pages in manuscript, and to make many useful suggestions, and Mr. Frank Sidgwick, to whose careful revision alike of manuscript and proof and to whose kind and candid criticism I am indebted perhaps more than an author's vanity may readily allow me to acknowledge. Lastly, it would argue worse than ingratitude to pass over my obligation to the admirable readers of the Clarendon Press, whose marvellous accuracy in the most diverse fields and ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... a pompous professional air, and appeared to be waiting for the entire party to be ceremoniously introduced to him. Nothing unwilling to humor the vanity of the eccentric little man, Servadac proceeded to go ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... 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
... my mind with animation and excitement, which shut out thoughts of Margaret. Could I have looked with clairvoyant vision, and beheld her then, locked in her chamber, should I have been so happy? Oh, what fools vanity and pride make of us! Even then, with my heart high-strung with hope and courage, had I known the truth, I should have abandoned my friends, the voyage, and Europe, and returned in the pilot's boat, to find something more precious than all the continents ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240 His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... "And now you see You should not listen to flattery. Vanity, Sir is a horrid vice— I'm sure the ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... of part of the young wife's head the day after her marriage is a custom to prevent young married women from being tempted by vanity to show off their hair, which is generally in Palestine very beautiful. The poor things cover up the part so well that there is no fear of any of it ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... frequently mentioned in their letters as being sure to have much sympathy in their work. A late biographer of the Earl wrote: "She had the penetration to appreciate Nelson through the cloud of personal vanity and silly conceit which caused him to be lightly esteemed in London society." Her "bull-dog" she used playfully to call him. She visited Gibbon at Lausanne, in 1795, and he writes: "She is a charming woman who, with sense and spirit, has the playfulness ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... Cadenus by transposition of the letters), took pleasure in directing and interesting till, from being proud of his praise, she grew fond of his person. Swift was then about forty-seven, at the age when vanity is strongly excited by the amorous attention ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... hours a day of actual travel. This in a hot climate is as much as a man can accomplish without being oppressed; and we always tried to make our progress more a pleasure than a toil. To hurry over the ground, abuse, and look ferocious at one's native companions, merely for the foolish vanity of boasting how quickly a distance was accomplished, is a combination of silliness with absurdity quite odious; while kindly consideration for the feelings of even blacks, the pleasure of observing scenery and ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... says 'gentlemen don't grow any better on one soil than another,' but are 'indigenous to the whole United States,' though Mr. Winters is a Marylander himself." Then she naively added in explanation, and in a little vanity about her botanical lore: "'Indigenous' means, maybe you don't know, a plant that belongs to, is a native of, some particular region. Mr. Seth taught me and Father John. They both know lots about botany, though father hasn't ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... of mine proved unpopular with them, for it stabbed their vanity, and neither my prestige nor the novelty of the idea was sufficient salve. These Hans for centuries had believed and taught their children that they were a super-race, a race of destiny. Destined to Whom, for What, was not so clear to them; but nevertheless ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... soft and white, and the care with which it was arranged indicated a certain harmless vanity in it. There was something a little conscious, too, about her dress—an effect difficult to describe without exaggeration. It was not bizarre nor "artistic," but you would have understood at once that its departures from the prevailing mode were made on principle. If you took it in connection ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sounded as if his inside were lined with cotton wool; "got a knife in my ribs six months back; never got well; and I've been drinking all the time "—and then, with a silly smile of childish vanity, "all over her. She's my new girl—wot d'ye think of ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... quoth the Pardoner, opening his wallet, "now in the matter of sinning, messire, an thou hast some pet and peculiar vice— some little, pretty vanity, some secret, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... which seeks to prevent the experiment. In fact opposition seems sometimes to enhance the virtue of a novelty in the minds of those who propose or advocate its adoption. Many reformers suffer from this form of vanity. ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... Father," the President. Their costumes were a mingling of the picturesque with the grotesque; of tawdriness with magnificence; of artificial tinsel and glitter with the regal spoils of the chase; of childlike vanity with barbaric pride. Yet before these the glittering orders and ribbons of the diplomats became dull and meaningless, the uniforms of the officers mere servile livery. Their painted, immobile faces and plumed heads towered with grave ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... What vanity is envy! for I find I have been rich in dross of thought, and poor In that I was a fool, and lastly blind For never ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... that it was no other than the Sage Munaton, a great enemy of his, whose vanity could not tolerate the prophecies that Don Quixote was about to conquer in battle a certain ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of Reuchlin, studied Cabbalism mainly as a magical science. He was nominally a Catholic, but attacked Rome and scholasticism quite in the spirit of Luther. His three chief works are, On the Threefold Way of Knowing God, On the Vanity of Arts and Sciences (a ferocious attack on most of the professions), and On Occult Philosophy (treating of natural, celestial, and religious magic). The "magician," he says, "must study three sciences—physics, mathematics, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... illustrating the progress of the human family in the Western Hemisphere. This portion of the earth has no cause for humiliation for the part it has performed in the march of civilization. It has not accomplished everything; far from it. It has simply done its best, and without vanity or boastfulness, and recognizing the manifold achievements of others it invites the friendly rivalry of all the powers in the peaceful pursuits of trade and commerce, and will cooperate with all in advancing the highest and best interests of humanity. The wisdom and energy ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... not guessed she was thus acutely sensitive concerning her plumpness. Instantly, he was all contrition over his unwitting offense inflicted on her womanly vanity. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... to my vanity. I felt not a little indignant at being so easily cajoled, played upon, and almost kidnapped by this unprincipled scoundrel. It was a valuable lesson, however; for experience is a ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... pair of white kid gloves, a little trinket known as a "vanity case," containing a tiny mirror and a tinier powder puff; a couple of small hair-pins, a newspaper clipping, and a few silver coins were all ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... before them. This curious faculty was possessed by Rasputin to a very marked degree—a faculty which has puzzled scientists through all the ages, a faculty which usually runs side by side with an overweening vanity and an amazing self-consciousness. Sometimes the possessor of that most astounding and mysterious intuition is also possessed of a humble and retiring disposition. But ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... she has made some conquests to-night, that cream-white satin with her diamonds and these old fashioned gold bands, suit her to perfection. She enjoys wielding the sceptre and she does it with such seeming unconsciousness, and absence of vanity that is very charming, never boasting of her conquests even to me." But where can she be all this time, I wonder, and with whom? so breaking in upon Lionel's reverie, she repeated her question of, "Where and with whom is Vaura? she has missed ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... Imagination came down to the Corner of a Venison Pasty, and brought her once even upon her Knees to gnaw off the Ears of a Pig from the Spit. The Gratifications of her Palate were easily preferred to those of her Vanity; and sometimes a Partridge or a Quail, a Wheat-Ear or the Pestle of a Lark, were chearfully purchased; nay, I could be contented tho I were to feed her with green Pease in April, or Cherries in May. But with the Babe she now goes, she ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... cried the Queen, when she first saw me. I may repeat it without vanity, for I suppose it was true. Anyway it is exactly what everybody said the moment they set eyes on me. People always praise dolls to their faces, and that is what makes us look so conceited. Even when we are old, and battered, ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... and a few minutes later stopped as he passed the one big mirror in the ranch, and surveyed himself critically for a moment with a dispassionate interest that was removed from vanity. Then he ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... conformable to the dictates of reason! who look on their profession, not as a means of displaying their learning, but as a rule for their own practice! who follow their own precepts, and comply with their own decrees! You may see some of such levity and such vanity, that it would have been better for them to have been ignorant; some covetous of money, some others eager for glory, many slaves to their lusts; so that their discourses and their actions are most strangely ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... saw a little figure come, and pause, and pass into it. Something very light and white, nimble, smooth, and elegant, gone almost before I knew that any one had been there. And yet my heart came to my ribs, and all my blood was in my face, and pride within me fought with shame, and vanity with self-contempt; for though seven years were gone, and I from my boyhood come to manhood, and all must have forgotten me, and I had half-forgotten; at that moment, once for all, I felt that I was face to face with fate (however poor it might be), weal ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... his servants. He had told the Jesuit missionaries that they thought more of selling beaver-skins than of saving souls. He had insulted those about him, sulked, threatened, foamed at the mouth in rage, revealed a childish vanity in regard to his dignity, and a hunger insatiable for marks of honor from the King—"more grateful," he once said, "than anything else to a heart shaped after ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... it, I would know nothing of it now. She does not know half that I do about it; they tell me I play much better than she; yet they let her play on it in company before me, and I cannot pretend to play after. Why is it? It is not vanity, or I would play, confident of excelling her. It is not jealousy, for I love to see her show her talents. It is not selfishness; I love her too much to be selfish to her. What is it then? "Simply lack of self-esteem" I would say if there was no phrenologist near to correct ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... achievement flowed again in me. I crossed to the piano to assemble the finished sheets, answering him with one of those expressions of thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward vanity. I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me back to the reality ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of fun," remarked Miss Pennington in a supercilious tone, as she looked in the small mirror of her vanity box to see what effect the sun and dust were having on her brilliant complexion. For it was dusty, with the thousands of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... his hand the arch rebel, who was yet to pay the penalty of his inordinate vanity and scheming with his life, dismissed the prisoner and her captors. He instructed an Irish renegade and member of his cabinet, called Nolin, to see to it that the prisoner was kept under close arrest until her fate was decided upon—which would probably be before morning. Nolin told some ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... at the astonishing memory of this country lad: and the applause that greeted the reciter might well be calculated to awaken his latent vanity. It was like being called before the curtain after the first act by a young actor on his first appearance. And I believe every one understood the meaning of the verses, which seemed to imply that the hungry prodigal, famishing for food, was fed with husks instead of grain. ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... cause of that spirited disaster, the intervention of England on behalf of the new Hohenzollern throne, was due, of course, to the national policy of the first William Pitt. He was the kind of man whose vanity and simplicity are too easily overwhelmed by the obvious. He saw nothing in a European crisis except a war with France; and nothing in a war with France except a repetition of the rather fruitless glories of Agincourt and Malplaquet. He was of the Erastian Whigs, sceptical ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... remedies of infirmities; as, for instance, let them avoid the society of women, shun idleness, macerate the flesh by fasting and vigils, keep the outward senses, especially sight and hearing, from things forbidden, turn away their eyes from beholding vanity, and finally dash their little ones—i.e. their carnal thoughts—upon a rock (and Christ is the Rock), suppress their passions, and frequently and devoutly resort to God in prayer. These are undoubtedly the most effectual remedies for incontinence in ecclesiastics ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... Lincoln's dead, and Zach Taylor's dead—and so the world goes. 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' the Bible says. My father used to read it to us boys, when I was your age. It's true, my boy. Have as little to do with the world as you can, except to get an honest living out of it—a living anyway. Don't ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... Berenger's life was needful till Eutacie should be in their power so as to prevent such a marriage as that! To Diane, the very suggestion became certainty: she already saw Eutacie's shallow little heart consoled and her vanity excited by these magnificent prospects, and she looked forward to the triumph of her own constancy, when Berenger should find the image so long enshrined in his heart crumble in its ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more likely than that a portion of the Knights Templars were initiated in the mysteries of such Oriental sects as those of the House of Wisdom of Al Hakem, the seventh and last degree of which at first 'inculcated the vanity of all religion, and the indifference of actions which are neither visited with recompense nor chastisement here or hereafter.' At a later age, when the doctrines of this society had permeated all Islam, it seems to have labored very zealously to teach both women and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... He was always anxious, he said, to be generous, but Nanny would not let him assist a starving child. They had really not a penny beyond what Nanny earned at the loom, and now we know how Sanders shook her if she did not earn enough. His vanity was responsible for the story about her wealth, and she would not have us ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... 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 admit that it seemed to be the only thing possible in ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... Caesar Moreno as premier called forth the protest of the representatives of three great Powers, and such an uprising of the people that he had to give way. Adroit politicians were not wanting to flatter his vanity, defend his follies, and show him how to violate the spirit and intent of the Constitution, while keeping within the letter of the law. The Legislatures were packed with subservient office-holders, while every artifice was used to debauch the native electorate ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... I was received with open-handed graciousness. Nothing can be more charming than the unconscious generosity of simple folk. To this family I applied the word simple and cut myself with a cool smile at my own vanity. Was I not a countryman and as rustic-minded as they? But I had come from another community, had crossed a state line and the lines of several counties, and besides I took to myself the credit of having read many a cunning book, and therefore these people were surely more simple than I. Traveling ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... fair sister!" said the Prioress, with an air of superiority. "We have no temptations in our blessed retreat. Our rule saveth us, and our seclusion from the vanity of the world—and I pray you, what other evil can assail a ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... informed that you have been engaged in a fight," he continued, in a tone a little less sharp than that with which he had pronounced my name; and I had the vanity to believe that the square tone in which I had uttered the single word I had been called upon to speak had produced ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... RETURNED, 4a3b4c3b4d3e4f3e, 6: The vanity of human wishes: a feeble lad kissing his mother good-bye as he sets sail to seek health in a foreign climate; a gallant seaman kissing his wife good-bye as he sets sail to seek their fortune across the seas—but the ship ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... (psychical) faculties; and, personally, my own firm conviction is that there is nothing dangerous in mediumship. The mere dabbling in mediumship, as either the means of a new sensation, or for the gratification of personal vanity, is to be thoroughly deprecated, as a perversion of some of the most wonderful possibilities of our natures; while the prosecution of mediumship, or anything else, to the detriment of mind, nerves, or health, in any direction, is a sin against oneself, and will inevitably ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... that is definitely known of Lewis's family and early life. It is not much; but it suffices to show that he came of fine, fearless stock, mettlesome and reliant,—the sort of stock that brings forth men of action. The invertebrate vanity of blood is kept out of this story, in accord with the democratic belief of the time that a strong man's ancestors are what he himself makes them. They may have done their part well, but it remains for him to put the finishing touches to their reputation. Given a few sturdy ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... girl listened to her father's words, in tears. Throwing herself at his feet she thanked him for his mercy and promised to love him more fondly than ever. She told him that her vanity had not been flattered by what most girls might have thought an honour, that she would rather have the love of one good man like her father, than share with others the affections ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... pride of position, vanity in regard to the new suit, glee at being fairly at sea and doing for himself, and a certain humorous perception that he was ridiculously small—little Billy presented a very remarkable appearance as he stood that day on the deck of his father's vessel, with his ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... are appraised at advanced rates. It is the extreme of French fashion which comes to Luchon. Eaux Bonnes and Cauterets are close rivals, but Luchon is the queenliest of the triplet. As a consequence, the place shows a touch of caprice, of vanity, even of arrogance; prosperity is a powerful tonic, but sometimes its iron enters ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... This vanity of a drunken man illustrates the truth of an old proverb, "When the wine is in, the wit is out." Josephus says that all the court heard his command; hence, while he was showing the glory of his court, he also showed that he had a wife who ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... seemed to see him urge his faded faculties to take their cue and perform. The poor fellow tried to do himself credit more seriously than ever in his old best days. With Miss Searle, credulous passive and pitying, he had finally flung aside all vanity and propriety and shown the bottom of his fantastic heart. But with our host there might be no talking of nonsense nor taking of liberties; there and then, if ever, sat a consummate conservative, breathing the fumes of hereditary privilege and security. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... I am going to do with my fortune," said I. I was holding out my vanity at arm's length and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... is after all only a sign and sample of the prevailing growth and extent of fashionable luxury. Nowhere in the world, I suppose, is this more conspicuous than in Paris, the very Vanity Fair of mundane pleasure. The hostesses of dinners, dances and fetes vie with one another in seeking bizarre and extravagant effects. Here is a good example of it taken from actual life the other day. It is an account of an "oriental fete" given at a ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... to prove to itself its superiority over that of the vulgar. I make a parenthesis in my ill-temper in favor of my vanity, and I bring together all the evidence which my knowledge ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... uncertain, and for ever running out of the beaten track. Why go to look at the flowers, and take delight in their beauty? When you return home, you will see the vanity of your pleasure. Why purchase fleeting joys of loose women? How long do you retain the delicious taste of the dainties you feast upon? For ever wishing to do this, wishing to see that, wishing to eat rare dishes, wishing to wear fine clothes, you pass a lifetime ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... parent learn, before he resolves to educate his son, the importance of ascertaining whether his son was ever designed for professional life. The weak vanity of a parent has frequently ruined his son, and brought down his own gray hairs with sorrow to ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... the fashion when she first came out; I had the character of being a great rake, and was a great dandy—both of which young ladies like. She married me from vanity, and the hope of reforming and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the difference between a public pirate and an organizing servant of the public. Take away from this man his public church business, his power to make money, his human vanity over an hereditary title, and we still have left the story of a big life, much of it spent in doing good for the sake of other people. You cannot efface that strange personality; that desire after all the admiration of his wonderful ability to administer ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... eminent artist selected by that body, a number of sittings, and the result was a portrait of great merit, which was placed in the Chamber of Commerce with that of Alexander Hamilton. I regarded this as a high compliment from so distinguished a body of merchants, but I do not indulge in the vanity of a comparison ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... he becomes harsh, censorious and bitterly controversial, making many enemies and leading a wretched home-life. C. has a grand oratorical energy and dignity, but lacking in the organs of reverence and humility, he overrates himself and becomes famous for his vanity. D. has the intellect, wit, humor, and social qualities to shine in company, but from lack of the organ of self-respect, he fails to maintain the dignity of a gentleman and command proper respect in society. E. had the power and genius to rank among the most eloquent and distinguished ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... tightly compressed, the features lean and keen from restless intellectual energy. The loose, bending figure, the neck too weak for the weight of the head, explain the infirmity of will, the passion, the cunning, the vanity, the absence of manliness and veracity. He was born into an age of violence with which he was too feeble to contend. The gratitude of mankind for his literary excellence will forever preserve his memory from too harsh a ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... fair to deride a man's ugliness, but the ugly is fair game when self-obtruded into notice by personal vanity and conceit. Moreover, this form of negro folly is not to be destroyed by gentle raillery; it wants hard words, even as certain tumours require the knife. Such aping of Europeans extends from the physical to the moral man, and in general only the bad habits, gambling, drinking, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... war. Yet at one time these intrigues came perilously near to accomplishing their purpose. Matters were still further complicated by the activities and interference of a former Foreign Minister, Signor Giolitti, whose vanity had been flattered, and whose ambitions had been cleverly played upon by the Teutonic emissary. To fully understand the extraordinary nature of this proceeding, one must picture Count von Bernstorff, at the height of the submarine crisis, negotiating not with ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... thoughtfully. "The world continues to revolve in the same circles of folly and vanity, and after making an effort to withdraw from them, it falls back again into the old ruts. Men are nothing but actors, and every one wants to adorn himself with glistening rags, in order to take the first ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... and wealthy suitors to woo a lad hardly yet arrived at man's estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better to be bound by golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, than to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of Toronto I know little or nothing; no doubt, some are respectable enough in their way, and perform the inferior duties belonging to their station tolerably well. Here they are kept in order—in their proper place—but their 'proceedings' are evidence of their natural conceit, their vanity, and their ignorance; and in them the cloven foot appears, and evinces what they would do, if they could. I believe that in this city, as in some others of our Province, they are looked upon as necessary evils, and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... this spot Are deposited the remains of one Who possessed beauty without vanity, Strength without insolence, Courage without ferocity, And all the virtues of man without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the memory of BOATSWAIN, a dog, Who was born at Newfoundland, May 1803, And died ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... April last, two days after the McBain meeting, and we there conversed together on the subject of the conversation he Messrs. Ketchum and Gardner, had with Messrs. Bunce and Palmer, in Albany, (where it was alleged that they Ketchum, Cowles and Gardner, had complained of vanity, neglect and ill-treatment of Mr. Young.) That I expressed my surplice to Mr. Cowles, that he, (Cowles) Ketchum and Gardner should lend their names to an instrument denying the conversation above alluded to, when he Cowles, Ketchum ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... rational than the modern conscript or professional soldier. He is more rational in his object, which is the intelligent and intelligible object of conversion; where the modern militarist has an object much more confused by momentary vanity and one-sided satisfaction. The Crusader wished to make Jerusalem a Christian town; but the Englishman does not wish to make Berlin an English town. He has only a healthy hatred of it as a Prussian ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... cheeks below the pigment of the complexion. She tried looking at the reflection from different angles to get various effects. It was impossible for her not to know that she was good to look at, but she had very little vanity about it. None the less it pleased her ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... was a long time before it went out that night, but even then I tried to salve my conscience—to make myself believe that it was not all vanity, for I said that the things wanted trying on, and the buttons and buttonholes were stiff. But at last everything was neatly folded up again and put away, and I lay down to sleep and dream of my new career. ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... the rocks with huge assault. Now Fergus's sermon, which he meant to use as a spade for the casting of the first turf of the first parallel in the siege of the pulpit of the North parish, was upon the vanity of human ambition, his text being the grand verse—And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy; there was no small amount of fine writing in the manuscript he had thrust into his pocket; and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... position that the very man who is pursuing you, because he thinks you are discontented with YOUR husband, once thought he could pursue me because I had left MINE. You are here with him alone, without the knowledge of your husband; call it folly, caprice, vanity, or what you like, it can have but one end—to put you in my place at last, to be considered the fair game afterwards for any man who may succeed him. You can test him and the truth of what I say by telling him now that ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... she did not accuse me, and what miseries and starvation she did not profess herself to undergo; all the while she was living exceedingly fat and contented, to outward appearances, at our house at Castle Lyndon. Novel-reading and vanity had turned her brain. I could not say a rough word to her (and she merited many thousands a day, I can tell you), but she declared I was putting her to the torture; and my mother could not remonstrate with her but she went off into a fit of hysterics, of which she ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of these books. In Ecclesiastes we have described the trials of a mind which has lost itself in undefined wishes and in despair, and the efficacious remedies for these mental diseases are shown in the pictures of the vanity of the world and in the final divine judgment, in which the problem of this life will have its complete solution. SOLOMON, the author of these works, adds splendor to the sublimity of his doctrines by the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... very many kinds of book collectors, but I think all may be grouped in three classes, viz.: Those who collect from vanity; those who collect for the benefits of learning; those who collect through a veneration and love for books. It is not unfrequent that men who begin to collect books merely to gratify their personal vanity find themselves presently so much in love with the pursuit that they become collectors ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... Northamptonshire yeoman. In his True Born Englishman, Defoe spoke very contemptuously of families that professed to have come over with "the Norman bastard," defying them to prove whether their ancestors were drummers or colonels; but apparently he was not above the vanity of making the world believe that he himself was of Norman-French origin. Yet such was the restless energy of the man that he could not leave even his adopted name alone; he seems to have been about forty when he first changed his signature "D. Foe" ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold, And speckl'd vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould, And Hell it self will pass away And leave her dolorous mansions ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... First you convict me of vanity—now of self-love. Let me do as I please, Franziska. You, too, shall do as you please ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... of my deserving, For hell I have deserved by my sinful working. I know right well, my elders and parents Have of a long time deceived be With blind hypocrisy and superstitious intents, Trusting in their own works, which is nothing but vanity; Their steps shall not be followed for me: Therefore, I pray you, show me a brief conclusion, How I ought to live in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... light Was to the sun, that fills it, turn'd again, As to the good, whose plenitude of bliss Sufficeth all. O ye misguided souls! Infatuate, who from such a good estrange Your hearts, and bend your gaze on vanity, Alas for you!—And lo! toward me, next, Another of those splendent forms approach'd, That, by its outward bright'ning, testified The will it had to pleasure me. The eyes Of Beatrice, resting, as before, Firmly upon me, manifested ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... handsome; but, by the fierce, haughty character of his countenance, the fire which flashes from his eyes, and the contempt which curls his mustachoed lip, create fear, instead of winning regard, and this was the case with Charles. One, however, of those maidens, unto whom it was the folly and vanity of his youth to pay general court, conceived for him a passion deep and pure, which in semblance, at least, he returned; but how far to answer his own nefarious purposes, for Charles Elliott was a godless young ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... honourable house,' 'His gracious Majesty's unfortunate subjects,' as if the words were something real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile, listening with a little of an author's vanity, and contemplating (not severely) the spikes on ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... we had previously stated to have been directed by Miss Montgomerie to her captor a few hours before, there was nothing in her manner daring dinner to convey the semblance of a prepossession. True, that in the tumultuous glow of gratified vanity and dawning love, Gerald Grantham had executed a toilet into which, with a view to the improvement of the advantage he imagined himself to have gained, all the justifiable coquetry of personal embellishment had been thrown; but neither the handsome blue uniform with its glittering ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... which travelled onward from Egypt to Greece, and from Greece, together with the other refinements of her philosophy, into the greater part of Italy. On reaching the church, unless the wealth and situation of the departed can permit the consolation or the vanity of a high mass, the body is immediately committed to the tomb. Such at least is the practice at Rome; and there are few who have not witnessed with disgust the indecent haste of the few attendants by whom this portion of the last rites is usually despatched. In the country, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... itself indicates that there is not enough in him to make him really great; while he who really is so needs never concern himself about it, nor does he ever. I can think of no better way for one to attain to humility and simplicity than for him to have his mind off of self in the service of others. Vanity, that most dangerous quality, and especially for young people, is the outcome of ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... growing familiar with her voice will soon have assurance that, addressing the public, she would not have blotted a passage or affected a tone for the applause of all Europe. Yet she could own to a liking for flattery, and say of the consequent vanity, that an insensibility to it is inhuman. Her humour was a mouthpiece of nature. She inherited from her father the judicial mind, and her fine conscience brought it to bear on herself as well as on the world, so that she would ask, 'Are we so much ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... from no toil, and dreaded no danger? He whom you were faithfully serving hath not watched over your peace, nor guarded for you that treasure which you had confided to his care. What profit is there in obedience, what benefit in devotion? Prayer has been but vanity, ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... Ambassador need not depend on outside approval; his work is done in quiet and solitude. The Kaiser, on the contrary, conducts his foreign policy in the glaring limelight of publicity; and whenever he has been criticized by experts, his vanity has only too often been tempted to appeal to popular passion and to gain popular applause. For that reason, and entirely apart from his indiscretions, the bare fact that the Kaiser has become his own Foreign Secretary has lessened the chances ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... impunity. He had none of the graces nor virtues of Zadig; but thinking himself a much more accomplished man, he was enraged to find that the other was preferred before him. This jealousy, which was merely the effect of his vanity, made him imagine that he was desperately in love with Semira; and accordingly he resolved to carry her off. The ravishers seized her; in the violence of the outrage they wounded her, and made the blood ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... no sign. Her first impulse had been to object, but her vanity, her love of art, her love of power—all were touched. At the same time she was curious now as to whether he had merely expected to take her as his mistress or to wait until he could honor her as ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... philosophical aspect, in spite of their repulsiveness are invested with dignity, and really indicate great moral and intellectual movements, as well as the personal ambition or vanity of conquerors. They are the ultimate solutions of great questions, not to be solved in any other way,—unfortunately, I grant,—on account of human wickedness. And I know of no great wars, much as I loathe and detest them, and severely and justly as ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... proved a fool! He had more need to go to school, Than to come hither to clatter. STU. Certain, this is a solution Meet for such a boy's question. HU. Sensual Appetite, I pray thee Let pass all trifles and vanity For a while, it shall not long be, And depart, I thee require; For I would talk a word or two With this man here, ere he hence go, For to satisfy my desire. SEN. Why, Gog's soul! will ye so shortly Break pointment with yonder company, Where you should come to supper? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... VANITY FAIR.—"A vivid and powerful story. Mr. Oppenheim knows the world, and the unusual nature of the setting in which his leading characters live gives this book distinction among ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... He had quite a superstitious veneration for judges. It was perfectly sincere and it never wavered. He would not hear a word against them. When he pleaded before them his personal sentiments ran in a line with his best interests; for although judges are above most temptations, their vanity is often sensitive, and Mr. Bradlaugh's ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... Pierce?" Our Leading Citizen's prickly vanity was up in arms at once. "I'll match him or fight him dollar for dollar, as long as my weasel-skin lasts. No, sir: if Hal's going to fight, I'll stick by him as long as there's ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a pair of white kid gloves, a little trinket known as a "vanity case," containing a tiny mirror and a tinier powder puff; a couple of small hair-pins, a newspaper clipping, and a few silver coins were all ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... his great back upon us, taking his seat on the low wall near Catherine's chair. It was clear even to our vanity that he did not think us worth another word—that we had passed absolutely from his mind. Madame Claude came waddling out at the same moment, Gil carrying a chair behind her. And we—well we slunk away and sat on the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... had had only to do with soldiers. In the evening he said to me, "I am sure that the committee of inspectors of the hall are at this very moment engaged in settling what is to be done at St. Cloud to-morrow. It is better to let them decide the matter, for by that means their vanity is flattered. I will obey orders which I have myself concerted." What Bonaparte was speaking of had been arranged nearly two or three days previously. The committee of inspectors was under the influence of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a girl. Drink and vanity had primed him for any folly. He drove so carelessly for a bit that he nearly put us into a ditch. We passed several cottages and at the last he ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... centuries and a half,-an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked, does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the capital of Mexico. The fiction of Manco Capac and his sister-wife was devised, no doubt, at a later period, to gratify the vanity of the Peruvian monarchs, and to give additional sanction to their authority by deriving it from a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... fearful concerning what may be thought of him. Vanity, vanity! Come, let us run down the garden. Canst thou catch me, Hugh!" And with this she fled away, under the back stoop and through the trees, light and active, her curls tumbling out, while I hurried after her, mindful of damsons, and wondering how ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... enjoyable; and that he tried to keep him in ignorance of sickness, old age, and death. We know from the same story that at last the young prince obtained permission to drive into the country, and that, by meeting an old man, asick man, and a corpse, his eyes were opened to the unreality of life, and the vanity of this life's pleasures; that he escaped from his palace, and, after defeating the assaults of all adversaries, became the founder of a new religion. This is the story, it may be the legendary story, but at all events ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... repentance had passed over Madeleine, and found her, at the commencement of our narrative, the victim of consumption and internal anguish, the more keen because the more secret. The outward world believed her happy; many silly maidens, in moments of vanity, deemed they could have gained heaven if they were possessed of Madeleine's wealth, her jewels, her carriages, her dresses; but were the veils that shroud the hypocrisy of human joy raised for the warning of the uninitiated, many a noble heart like ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the Artist (who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning, and the damosel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems. Your wood cut is a rueful Lignum Mortis. By the by, is the widow likely to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his heart. And the black squirrel becomes a boy with the first snow. What a pity he cannot shout! There is a superabundant joy and life in his long, graceful bounds, when his beautiful form, in its striking contrast with the white snow, seems magnified to twice its real size. Perhaps there is vanity as well as joy in his lithe, bounding motions among the naked trees, for nature seems to have done her utmost to provide a setting that would best display his ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... her, perhaps, that others had flattered her into a certain consciousness of her own value. She felt her veins full of the same rich blood as that which had flushed the cheeks of handsome Judith in the long summer of her triumph. Whether it was vanity, or pride, or only the instinctive sense of inherited force and attraction, it was the best of defences. The golden bracelet on her wrist seemed to have brought as much protection with it as if it had been ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lying at the west mouth of the Indus; and afterwards leaving the river entirely, entered the ocean, either for the purpose of ascertaining himself whether it were actually navigable, or, as Arrian conjectures, in order to gratify his vanity by having it recorded, that he ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... treasury," said the vizier, "and view thy wealth; as, perhaps, the lustre of gold, and the brilliant sparkling of jewels, may amuse thy senses and disperse thy sorrow." "Vizier," answered the sultan, "this world to me is all vanity; I regard nothing but the contemplation of the Deity: yet how can I be relieved from melancholy, since I have lived to this age and he has not blessed me with children, either sons or daughters, who are the ornaments ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... wondering at the nature of the delights to which the mere approaches were so paved with shillings. She quivered on occasion into the perception of this and that one whom she would on the chance have just simply liked to be. Her conceit, her baffled vanity, was possibly monstrous; she certainly often threw herself into a defiant conviction that she would have done the whole thing much better. But her greatest comfort, mostly, was her comparative vision of the men; by whom I mean the unmistakeable gentlemen, for she had no ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... marriage, and I know that she is as free in the sight of God as if he had never lived. If the world doesn't like my open shame, let it look to its own secret shame,—the marriages made and maintained from interest, and ambition, and vanity, and folly. I will take my chance with the men and women who have been honest enough to own their mistake, and to try to repair it, and I will preach by my life that marriage has no sanctity but what ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 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
... the day in which I myself had eloped. But in a brief period I ceased to think upon the subject; my attention being all absorbed in a contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon went; the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and annual establishment, which would enable me to indulge at will in the luxury already so dear to my heart,—to vie in profuseness of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... prayer, by the cleansing of the fountain, by sustaining grace shall we be sufficient for these things. For this manner of preaching one man alone can ascend into the hill of the Lord:—"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, and hath not lifted up himself unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully." ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... up in her eyes. There was permission: there was something more, that was flattering to his vanity. He took the wine-glass, and, slowly and in silence, filled it from ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and Methodists both piously combed their hair over their foreheads, and clipped it in a straight line just above the eyebrows. But alas! in this as in many other directions, Methodists and Doppers have alike become "subject to vanity." In these degenerate days "the fringe" has flitted from the masculine to the feminine brow; and now that it is "crinkled" no longer claims to be a badge of superior sanctity. In one of these Dopper churches the Rev. W. Frost long conducted Wesleyan services, the crowding ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... something brilliant, certainly, in that. The gardien was an extra- ordinarily typical little Frenchman, who struck me even more forcibly than the wonders of the inner enceinte; and as I am bound to assume, at whatever cost to my literary vanity, that there is not the slightest danger of his reading these remarks, I may treat him as public property. With his diminutive stature and his per- pendicular spirit, his flushed face, expressive protuber- ant eyes, high peremptory voice, extreme volubility, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... originated in the wicked vanity of Sir William Davenant himself, who, disdaining his honest but mean descent from the vintner, had the shameless impiety to deny his father and reproach the memory of his mother by ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... been given to never use a long word when a short one will serve the same purpose. This advice is to be emphasized. Words of "learned length and thundering sound" should be avoided on all possible occasions. They proclaim shallowness of intellect and vanity of mind. The great purists, the masters of diction, the exemplars of style, used short, simple words that all could understand; words about which there could be no ambiguity as to meaning. It must be remembered that by our ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... olive-branch to those who had caused his laurels to wither, and by whom, notwithstanding his abuse, calumnies, and menaces, he would have been more proud to be saluted Emperor than by all the nations upon the Continent. His vanity, interest, and policy, all required this last degree of supremacy and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... nought but vanity in beauty, And nought but weakness in a fond caress, And pitied men whose views of Christian duty Allowed indulgence in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... impossible to assert that they are not less happy. How many times, when I was at liberty, have I heard the old wish for an accession of years, or envy those yet too young to be sensible of "the miseries of a revolution!"—Were the vanity of the self-sufficient philosopher susceptible of remorse, would he not, when he beholds this country, lament his presumption, in supposing he had a right to cancel the wisdom of past ages; or that the happiness of mankind might be promoted by the destruction of their morals, and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... become a considerable building with a summer parlour in the Second; the shepherds' tents on the Delectable Mountains have risen into a palace, with a dining-room, and a looking- glass, and a store of jewels; while Vanity Fair has lost its former bad character, and has become a respectable country town, where Christiana and her family, seeming altogether to forget their pilgrimage, settled down comfortably, enjoy the society of the good people of the place, and the sons marry and have children. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... her wounded vanity gradually lost itself in better thoughts. Did all her world think of her like the scathing criticisms of those two chance callers, who thus killed the time of waiting for someone to come down to them? She began to feel glad that she ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Desire of certain Pirates [Archer and White], a little before their Execution, To which there is added, A more private Conference of a Minister with them (Boston, 1724). With his usual insufferable vanity, he indicates that the capture of the pirates was widely attributed to his public prayer against pirates on Sunday, Apr. 26: "Behold, before the week was out, there comes in a Vessel wherein" were the captive pirates. But the victorious mutiny ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... beneath the roof. The lighted window in Saunders' cottage told where a man hung between life and death, but love was in that home. The futility of life arose before this lonely man, and overcame his heart with an indescribable sadness. What a vanity was all human labour, what a mystery ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... seek 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 at her first wooing. He plucked aside his skirts and walked in judgment; ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... the despondency that ever overpowered me after a violent attack of ague there was a potent and never dormant agent urging me to action which kept me alive; and that was my personal vanity and desire to distinguish myself before I ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... air, although nothing would have induced him to confess the fact. His own father had come to Pennsylvania as a servant of one of the first settlers, and the reverence which he had felt, as a boy, for the members of the Quaker and farmer aristocracy of the neighborhood, had now developed into a late vanity to see his own family acknowledged as the equals of the descendants of the former. Alfred had long since discovered that when he happened to return home from the society of the Falconers, or the Caswells, or the Carsons, the old man ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... of the conjectures is right," said Durrance, with a smile. Ethne had hit upon the right subject to delay the statement of the decision to which she knew very well that he had come. Durrance had his vanities like others; and in particular one vanity which had sprung up within him since he had become blind. He prided himself upon the quickness of his perception. It was a delight to him to make discoveries which no one expected a man who had lost his sight to make, and to announce them unexpectedly. It ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... intrigue," and not long ago only he wrote to Lord Palmerston, that if the Monarchy with the Montpensier succession was inconvenient to us, he could get up a Republic. Such principles are sure to be known in Spain, the more so when one considers the extreme vanity of Sir H. Bulwer, and his probable imprudence in the not very creditable company which he is said to keep. Lord Palmerston will remember that the Queen has often addressed herself to him and Lord John, in fear ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... from that of the other saints who taught the higher forms of Hinduism in northern India. The unity of God, the absence of any real distinction between Hindus and Musalmans, the uselessness of ceremonial, the vanity of earthly wishes, even the equality of castes, are topics common to Nanak and the Bhagats; and the Adi-Granth or sacred book compiled by Nanak is full of quotations from elder or contemporary teachers, who taught essentially the same doctrine as Nanak himself." ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... looked it up in the Dictionary. Then she reported: "Lightness of conduct, want of weight, inconstancy, vanity, frivolity." She told it off with ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... goes by the name of the Mitre. Compared to Windsor, I here found prince-like attendance. Being, perhaps, a little elevated the preceding evening, I had in the gaiety, or perhaps in the vanity of my heart, told the waiter, that he must not think, because I came on foot, that therefore I should give him less than others gave. I assured him of the contrary. It was probably not a little owing to this assurance that I had so much ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... side. This last form is handy for storks, which do not pluck fish out of water so much, but scoop up frogs, crabs, and reptiles from the ground. The ridiculous bill of the puffin, or sea-parrot, is an eccentricity. There may be some idea in it, but I suspect it is an effect of vanity merely, being coloured blue, yellow, and red, and quite in keeping with the other absurdities of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... yacht racing is an organized pastime, a function of social idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy inhabitants of these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love of the sea. But the writer of the article in question goes on to point out, with insight and justice, that for a great number of people (20,000, I think he ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his own superiority with all the vanity of a selfish nature, but he no less enjoyed, with a keen and malicious relish, the intense mortification which, he was well assured, Marston must experience; and all the more acutely, because of the utter impossibility, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... alone is law; does it permit me to hold a private rank in this place, without molestation?' 'It permits,' said Osmyn, 'yet more; he has commanded, that you should have admittance to ALMEIDA.' ALMORAN, whose vanity betrayed him to flatter his own power in the person of HAMET, replied with a smile: 'I know, that ALMORAN, who presides like a God in silent and distant state, reveals the secrets of his will to thee; I know that thou art'—'I am,' said Osmyn, 'of all thou seest, most wretched.' At this declaration, ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... merchant-ships; in Europe and on the continent, all the sovereigns were silently preparing for new efforts; only the government of King Louis XV., intrenched behind its disinterestedness in the negotiations, and ignoring the fatal influences of weakness and vanity, believed itself henceforth beyond the reach of a fresh war. The nation, as oblivious as the government, but less careless than it, because they had borne the burden of the fault committed, were applying for the purpose of their material recovery that power of revival which, through a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a man may as well show a smile to the world as a worried look, or a mean look, or one of the countless casts of countenance that are moulded by conceit and vanity. A smile is frequently misconstrued by the simple-hearted into the outward sign of inward kindness. Many think that it conciliates children and little dogs. But that which the many think ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... that must be overlooked. I am a devotee, and I should lose my reputation and all the world would despise me if I did not burn myself." Zadig having made her acknowledge that she burned herself to gain the good opinion of others and to gratify her own vanity, entertained her with a long discourse, calculated to make her a little in love with life, and even went so far as to inspire her with some degree of good will for the person who ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... by no indication of any kind, formerly sufficed to recall the principal experiments that she had practised on mankind before having discovered Samuel Brohl. The result had not been very cheerful, for beneath this form of calendar stood a confession of faith, thus expressed, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" This melancholy declaration was signed, and the signature was perfectly legible. Mlle. Moriaz spelled it out readily, although at that moment her sight was dim, and she was convinced that the trinket, which Count Larinski ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... scrap of vanity in Betty's manner. She spoke seriously, just as one who, knowing she possesses a gift, accepts it ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... "The Golden Vanity" right through all its many verses. This was followed by a solo from Mac—a sad little Irish song—and another duet by Mac and Patsy, "When Irish Eyes are Smiling," followed by "Oh Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast," sung in parts by Jack, Patsy, and ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... adoration, he made to kiss her hand first. But she drew it away, and put her finger to her lip, as if to bid him depart unheard. When he had left the house, she fell upon the sofa and wept, but only for wounded vanity, for chagrin that she had exposed her heart to one of those gentry who will adore a woman until there is danger of her becoming ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... steps with his firm, regular tread, he suggested poise and confidence and, perhaps, vanity also in his fastidious dress. As Marta's slight, immature figure came to the edge of the veranda, he wondered what she would be like five years later, when she would be twenty-two and a woman. It was unlikely that he would ever know, or that in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... cafe, and a first brief glimpse of the Louvre. At dinner-time I found a posy at my place; and afterward Laddie came and spent the evening in my little salon, playing to me, and having what he called 'babblings and pleasantries.' I found that he was translating 'Vanity Fair' into Polish, and intended to sell it at home. He convulsed me with his struggles to put cockney English and slang into good Polish, for he had saved up a list of words for me to explain to him. Hay-stack and bean-pot were among them, I remember; and when he had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... he might get rid of the wheat and harvest the chaff. His malice worked indirectly the effect opposite to his purpose, and achieved the same result as Christ's winnowing seeks to accomplish—namely, it got rid of the chaff and kept the wheat. Peter's vanity was sifted out of him, his self-confidence was sifted out of him, his rash presumption was sifted out of him, his impulsive readiness to blurt out the first thought that came into his head was sifted out of him, and so his unreliableness and changeableness were largely sifted out of him, and he became ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... now begun. The heathen epitaphs are loaded with titles of honor, and with the names of the offices which the dead had borne, and, like the modern Christian (?) epitaphs whose style has been borrowed from them, the vanity of this world holds its place above the grave. But among the early Christian inscriptions of Rome nothing of this kind is known. Scarcely a title of rank or a name of office is to be found among them. A military title, or the name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... since we have nothing that is our own. And this is the way in which, in individual men, the City of Confusion is overthrown, when chastity expels luxury, fortitude overthrows temptations, humility excludes vanity. Furthermore, we have sanctification from the faith and sacraments of Christ, fortitude from the love of Christ, exultation in the hope of the promises of Christ. Let us each do what we can, that faith may sanctify us, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... sat alone, sewing, setting nice stitches in her green-and-gold silk. Like other women, heretofore when she had sewn a new gown she had builded for herself air-castles of innocent vanity and love when she should be dressed in it. Now she builded no more, but sat and sewed among the ruins of all her happy maiden fancies. She had given herself no care concerning any other arrangements for her ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... heat of my late ague hath dried up those springs, by which scholars say the Muses use to take up their habitations. However, I need not their help to reprove the vanity of those many love-poems, that are daily writ, and consecrated to Venus; nor to bewail that so few are writ, that look towards God and Heaven. For my own part, my meaning—dear Mother—is, in these Sonnets, to declare my resolution to be, that my poor abilities in Poetry, shall ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... however, there was the characteristic Slav mingling of quick wits with streaks of childish vanity. He wanted passionately to make this tough Englishman feel what a great country Poland had been and would be again; what great people his ancestors had been; and what a leading part they had played in the national movements. And the more he hit against an answering ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... certainly drawn up with skill. A high-sounding but barren title, which gratified the Duke's vanity and signified nothing, had been conferred upon him, while at the same time he was forbidden to make conquests or contracts, and was obliged to submit himself to the civil government of the country: in short, he was to obey the Prince of Orange ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a frequenter of the schools of the philosophers (he had been a scholar of Anaxagoras, and not, as many have erroneously stated, of Socrates, with whom he was only connected by social intercourse): and accordingly he indulges his vanity in introducing philosophical doctrines on all occasions; in my opinion, in a very imperfect manner, as we should not be able to understand these doctrines from his statements of them, if we were not previously acquainted with them. He thinks ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... against the king, and he was perhaps growing impatient of serving under a minister who was virtually the king's representative, though his actual revolt may have been an unpremeditated ebullition of youthful vanity. A libel on the speaker, of which the turbulent parson, Horne, was the author, gave him an opportunity for self-display; he usurped the functions of leader of the house, persuaded it to enter on proceedings ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... pompous design of displaying his death before the assembly at the games. Lucian lets us hear the speeches, descriptive of Peregrinus's life, delivered before the decisive act. A certain Theagenes, an admirer of Peregrinus, delivers a bombastic eulogy, 3-7, repelling the charge of vanity imputed to him, and comparing his proposed death with that of Hercules, &c. Lucian opposes to this some invectives delivered by another, whose name he professes to have forgotten, which refer, 7-30, to the history of Peregrinus to which Theagenes had alluded; tracing his crimes, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... care enough about her coming home to be in town to-day!" Mrs. Emery's maternal vanity flared ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... imitate. But while I give these arguments against verse, I may seem faulty that I have not only written ill ones, but written any; but since it was the fashion, I was resolved, as in all indifferent things, not to appear singular—the danger of the vanity being greater than the error; and therefore I followed it as a fashion, though very far off." Sir Robert appears to have been in the sulks, for some cause not now known, with his great brother-in-law; and was pleased to punish him by thus publicly pretending ignorance of his existence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... men of clerkly attainments took 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 certain part in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... was surprised that none of the older Court ladies fared any better, and on inquiring from one of them the reason, she replied: "Why, I did it purposely, of course, so as to flatter Her Majesty's vanity. Certainly I could make them just as well as she, if not better, but it would not be good policy." After we had all finished making our cakes, the eunuchs were ordered to make the rest, and needless to say they were ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... often wondered how her wild, sparkling sister Kate dared to be so familiar with him. She had ventured the thought once when she watched Kate dressing to go out with some young people and preening herself like a bird of Paradise before the glass. It all came over her, the vanity and frivolousness of the life that Kate loved, and she spoke out ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... intelligent readers of Gilead, and that Captain Jim's extravagant estimate of his friend was by no means indorsed by the community. But criticism took a humorous turn even in that practical settlement, and it appeared that Lacy Bassett's vanity, assumption, and ignorance were an unfailing and weekly joy to the critical, in spite of the vague distrust they induced in the more homely-witted, and the dull acquiescence of that minority who accepted the paper for its respectable exterior and advertisements. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... an hour, day and night, throughout my stay. But I had been in America at least ten days before the question was put to me, even in jest. I had expected to be surrounded by boasting and impatient vanity concerning the achievements of the United States and the citizens thereof. I literally never heard a word of national boasting, nor observed the slightest impatience under criticism.... I say I had ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... greedy crowd, the glory and justice of San Marco. Shouts of approbation succeeded each happy allusion to the national renown, and bravos, loud and oft-repeated, were the reward of the agents of the police, whenever they most administered to the self-delusion and vanity of their audience. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it as well! Help me—thou too. Who? 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 from ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... peculiar, and original cast of imagination. With these he possesses many external and instrumental advantages; and he makes use of them all. His fortune is among the largest; a fortune which, wholly unincumbered, as it is, with one single charge from luxury, vanity, or excess, sinks under the benevolence of its dispenser. This private benevolence, expanding itself into patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, in which he has not reserved a peculium for himself of profit, diversion, or relaxation. During ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... that there is not a set of people in this kingdom who have caused our Church so much trouble and uneasiness. I should rather say that they alone cause us any; for as for the rest, what with their drowsiness, their plethora, their folly, and their vanity, they are doing us anything but mischief. These fellows are a pestilent set of heretics, whom we would gladly see burnt; they are, with the most untiring perseverance, and in spite of divers minatory declarations of the holy father, scattering their books abroad through all Europe, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Gloria! Mark King liked the appellation little enough, telling himself with thorough-going unreason that there was a silly name to fit to perfection a silly girl, but altogether out of place to tie on to an unspoiled Sierra lake. Ben would have done a better job in naming it Lake Vanity. Or Self-Regard. King could think of a score of designations more to the point. For though he had never so much as set his eyes on either Gloria or her mother, he had his own opinion of both of them. Nor did he in the least realize that that ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... propriety, I do feel that we should administer a stinging rebuke to the use of such appallingly infantile language by one of our students. Surely a man's culture should show itself, above all, in the addresses he pays to the young lady of his choice. What vanity to build and conduct a great institution of learning, such as this aims to be, and then permit one of its pupils to express his regard for a student from the Annex in such language as even Mr. Kraus was reluctant to quote: 'Mezie-wezie ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Which is the finer form for fiction, a swift and direct telling of the story, with the concentration of a Greek tragedy, such as we find in the "Scarlet Letter" and in "Smoke," or an ampler and more leisurely movement more like that of the Elizabethan plays, such as we may see in "Vanity Fair" and ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... from his wise and legal measures (for I hold that a king is not entitled to pass even wise laws illegally) has been apparent to us ever since. But now all this is to be overturned—with or without the consent of the Things—because a foolish woman, forsooth, has the power to stir up the vanity of a foolish king! Shall this be so? Is our manhood to be thus riven from us, and shall we stand aloof and see it done, or, worse still, be consenting unto it? Let death be our portion first! It has been rumoured that the people of southern lands ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... sight very well worth while looking upon. There were no fine houses at that time, and no great counting houses built of brick, such as you may find nowadays, but a crowd of board and wattled huts huddled along the streets, and all so gay with flags and bits of color that Vanity Fair itself could not have been gayer. To this place came all the pirates and buccaneers that infested those parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out money like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying of fever. For the sky in ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... coquetry in the very clothes I wore! And now that we are so entangled, now that he loves me, what is my duty? I find I can't respect his love for me. A part of it is because my beauty fascinates him, but more of it seems to me just wounded vanity. I was the only woman who ever flouted him, and he has a kind of snobbery that made him think I must be something remarkable because of it. I talked that all out with him—yes, I've dragged him through all that humiliation. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... strongest and healthiest constitution. I spoke in all the more notable cities and towns of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. With regard to my success, I will let the Eastern press speak for me. It is not from any motive of vanity that I insert the following notices of the papers, but from a wish to establish in the minds of my readers the fact that my labor was earnest, and not without good results. These extracts are not given in the order in which they appeared; I insert them, taken at random, from hundreds of a similar ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Arachne, and, with the persuasive words of a wise old woman, warned her that she must not let her ambition soar too high. Greater than all skilled craftswomen was the great goddess Athene, and were Arachne, in impious vanity, to dream that one day she might equal her, that were indeed a crime for any ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... we shun one pain and find a greater; and thus arises the ineffectual character which we so complain of in life— the disappointments, failures, mortifications which form the material of so much moral meditation on the vanity of the world. Much of all this is inevitable from the constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which cannot be understood by us except with the utmost ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... commends or even excuses the dance. All unite to condemn it." The late Episcopal bishop of Vermont, writes: "Dancing is chargeable with waste of time, interruption of useful study, the indulgence of personal vanity and display, and the premature incitement of the passions. At the age of maturity it adds to these no small danger to health by late hours, flimsy dress, heated rooms, and exposed persons." Episcopal Bishop Meade, of Virginia, declares: ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... was one who had fallen short of absolute and perfect beauty, merely by the trifling defect of a slight cast in her left eye. But this blemish, minute as it was, so shocked the pure ideal of her soul, rather than her vanity, that she passed her life in solitude, and veiled her countenance even from her own gaze. So the skeleton sat shrouded at one end of the table, and this poor lady at ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Hood in my hands," cried he, "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 should ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... on these cushions by this open window. But more than all, how does the dear pedagogue and dialectician, the learned Solon? Is he as wise yet as his great namesake? O what days of merriment have his vanity and simplicity afforded me! But he was a good soul. Would he could have accompanied you. You are not so far out of leading-strings that you could not have taken him with you as a travelling Mentor. In truth, nothing could ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... short interval, and dictated in an enthusiastic voice, and with flaming eyes: "If I have been mistaken in my calculations, my heart is pure, and my intentions are well meaning. I have not listened to the promptings of glory, of vanity and ambition; I have only regarded the welfare of the country and government. If they should not approve of my actions and views, nothing is left to me but to step back into the crowd, put on the wooden shoes of Cincinnatus, and give an example of respect for the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... yielding soul is necessary for you; therefore God has chosen a child, myself, to be your helper. Forget yourself as the man to whom many eyes are turned, and become the little, helpless one, who cannot take care of itself, but lets another care for it. The pride, presumption and vanity, of the natural man, must give place to the littleness and simplicity of the child. Says our Saviour, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." O, when shall we learn that it is littleness, and not greatness, ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... yours! A few caresses, a few cajoleries, and your satisfied vanity silences your distrust and disarms your good sense! Did you not know that this young man is the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... on Sarah's behalf, thanked the captain for the handsome present he had made, remarking at the same time, in a somewhat admonitory tone, that such fine things were calculated to arouse worldly thoughts and vanity ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... 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 buttoning it when the family fire in ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... air of the soul, in which it can breathe and live, is the present God and the spirits of the just: that is our heaven, our home, our all-right place. Cleansed of greed, jealousy, vanity, pride, possession, all the thousand forms of the evil self, we shall be God's children on the hills and in the fields of that heaven, not one desiring to be before another, any more than to cast that other ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... laugh at the French for their braggadocio propensities, and intolerable vanity about La France, la gloire, l'Empereur, and the like; and yet I think in my heart that the British Snob, for conceit and self-sufficiency and braggartism in his way, is without a parallel. There is always something uneasy in a Frenchman's conceit. He brags with so much ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... separated; the other, David Bonham, he was very glad to see. Between Bonham and Verner the contrast was very great; for the former, though of excellent family, was the most unpretending fellow possible, free from pride, vanity, and selfishness, and kind-hearted, generous, good-tempered, and the merriest of the merry. The first A.B. who volunteered for the "Blanche," when he knew Mr Pearce had been appointed to her, was Dick Rogers, an old friend of his father's, with whom he had served man ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... if they did something in the line of honest and honorable toil to support themselves, rather than live on the heart's blood of an unselfish and overworked father; and as for the wife who exacts the income of a duchess to keep up the silly parade of Vanity Fair, there may come a day for her, when, shorn of the generous and loving support of a good husband, and forced to earn her own livelihood, as the penniless widows of bankrupt men are sometimes forced to do, she will appreciate, too ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... out punishment for offences, each faction being eager to gain the favour of the Emperor, neither party was able to keep quiet. They alternately abandoned themselves to the madness of despair or presumptuous vanity, according as they failed or succeeded in ingratiating themselves with him. Sometimes they attacked one another en masse, sometimes in small bands, sometimes in single combat, or set ambuscades ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... Paris, who, ever since you were sixteen have exhibited your youth at the receptions of all classes of society, in your first black coat with your crush-hat on your hip,—you, I say, have no conception of that anguish, compounded of vanity, timidity and recollections of romantic books, which screws our teeth together, embarrasses our movements, makes us for a whole evening a statue between two doors, a fixture in a window-recess, a poor, pitiful, wandering ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... when I have taken a run over to their prosperous farm; but in spite of all the success that has attended me and mine, I think, have thought, and I hope I shall still think to my last day, that my journey to the New World, my adventures, and all I gained, would have been but so much vanity and emptiness had I not won Lilla, who has shed upon my life a sunshine such as has proved that after all she was the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... manners are different from your English ones. I cannot make them otherwise, and that amuses people; and I cannot help liking to please, and so I become excited. I enjoy society so much that it is not safe for me! So don't be sorry, dear Sophy, it is a fit penance for the vanity that elated me too ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with her Michel was his vanity and his craving for adulation. In July, 1837, she had come to the end of her patience, as she wrote to Girerd. It was one of her peculiarities to always take a third person into her confidence. At the time of Sandeau, this third person was Emile Regnault; ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... tower; so they travelled there, and the white-haired sire held the infant at the font, while the tears furrowed his aged cheeks. But—by slow degrees the insidious effects of the great capital invaded the mind of the sweet young wife, and the simple tastes of her girlhood turned to vanity, so that when the second babe was born, and her husband wished to call her Hannah after her sainted grandmother, she wept, and made an awful fuss, and would not be consoled until he gave in to Viola Imogen, and a christening cloak trimmed with plush. And ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Oh how merciful was that watchful Providence which prolonged those powerful slumbers of that night, not allowing even the infant at my bosom to open its eyes at so critical a moment. If ever gratitude glowed in my bosom, if ever the world appeared to me worthless as vanity, and if ever I wished to dedicate myself, my husband, my babe, my all, to our great Redeemer, it was at ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... to his Langholm correspondent about an old schoolfellow, who had grown rich by scraping, Telford said: "Poor Bob L—— His industry and sagacity were more than counterbalanced by his childish vanity and silly avarice, which rendered his friendship dangerous, and his conversation tiresome. He was like a man in London, whose lips, while walking by himself along the streets, were constantly ejaculating 'Money! Money!' But peace to Bob's ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... rope, he acquitted him of such artful fopperies. Of Richard's intelligence he had formed a good opinion from the time when the latter had enlisted himself upon his side in the argument concerning superstition; and it flattered his vanity to find so sensible and accomplished a young fellow deferring to his opinion upon all practical points, and apparently desirous of obtaining his views ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... actor. His best attempts at acting were bad—at times they reached the limit. Off the stage he was a snob by affiliation and a gossiper by inclination. He drifted into the profession on the tide of his own vanity and continued in the lower ranks through the merit of his complete unfitness to advance a rung higher. There are many of ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... injured by the oppression, revolt; and, in order to shake off the tyranny, even call the lawful authority in question. The more you know, the modester you should be: and (by the bye) that modesty is the surest way of gratifying your vanity. Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful; represent, but do not pronounce, and, if you would convince others, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... cannot say I see many perfections in him; but you talk'd very differently just now;—Mr. Worthnought then was lighter than vanity; and now, it seems, he has more weight with ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... singular one. His wife was a weak and indolent woman, and with little religious character about her; she was the first of the family, however, over whom Dominica's influence was felt. In a short time her habits of vanity and self-indulgence were laid aside; and she began to pray night and morning, and to attend Mass, which till then she had neglected. Then one of the sons, who was to all outward seeming given up to the thoughtless dissipation of his age, and had always ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... they have secured for her, her true place among the intellectual nations of the world. Let them find out how she had fallen from her high estate and ruthlessly put an end to all that self satisfied and little-minded vanity which had been the cause of their fatal weakness. What was it that stood in her way? Was her mind paralysed by weak superstitious fears? That was not so; for her great thinkers, the Rishis, always stood for freedom of intellect and while Galileo was imprisoned and Bruno burnt for ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... burden of life unrelieved by the blessing of love, or the hope of it, well—why despair? Man is matter animated by a series of emotions, the majority of which are pleasurable. Disappointment ends like success, and the futile dust of nations offers itself in evidence of the vanity of all attributes except wisdom, the wisdom that teaches us to accept the inevitable silently, and endure our moment with equally undemonstrative acquiescence, whether it comes full fraught with the luxury of living, or ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... an additional and interesting article to his 'Vanity of Human Wishes.' He said he had never been more mistaken in his life. He thought the queen had never behaved more amiably, or shown more good sense, than in appropriating you to her service; but what a service had it turned out!—a confinement to such a companion as Mrs. Schwellenberg!—Here ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... story, and very pleasing to our national vanity to think that one of the daughters of America may some day be closely related to the Queen of England, but it is a very remote contingency, and not very ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 48, October 7, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... fear is the hippopotami, whose footprints I saw on the island. When the garden was prepared, I cut my initials on a tree, and the date 1855. This was the only instance in which I indulged in this piece of vanity. The garden stands in front, and, were there no hippopotami, I have no doubt but this will be the parent of all the gardens which may yet be in this new country. We then went up to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations from hell run us into, how ill our ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... reader has done me the honor to peruse the first volume of my memoirs, I indulge the vanity of supposing that he will like to be informed how I became a member of General ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... great, to find how little you seem to know of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from certain publications which do very erroneously, if they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally prevalent in England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle, and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each other, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... disabuse the minds of those who care for the little piece of artistry, and since 1894, when it was published, I have matured sufficiently in life's academy not to be too unduly sensitive either as to the merit or demerit of my work. There is, after all, an unlovable kind of vanity in acute self-criticism —as though it mattered deeply to the world whether one ever wrote anything; or, having written, as though it mattered to the world enough to stir it in its course by one vibration. The world has drunk deep of wonderful literature, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did her father and his people solicit her to quit her husband, and return to them, and to the belief in which she had been bred. Her favourite brother, Mecumeh, came, and besought her, by all the motives of national pride and family vanity, to return to her people in this world, that she might not be severed from them in the land of souls. But the young Garanga, whom her husband called Marguerite, after a woman of his own nation, was bound by a threefold cord—her ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... this soon reached his daughter. Her eyes were now at once opened, and she saw how unworthily she had given away her hand, how from vanity she had violated her duty to her father, and to all those who had once been dear to her. Alas, it was too late! She tried all means to dissuade her husband from his unjust demands, but he was resolute; and when she continued unceasingly ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... consummate flatterer; always, however, adapting his remarks to the nature of the person with whom he was conversing. Thus to Nellie Kennedy he said a thousand foolish things, just because he knew he gratified her vanity by doing so. Although possessing the reputation of a wealthy man, J.C. was far from being one, and his great object was to secure a wife who, while not distasteful to him, still had money enough to cover many faults, and such a one he fancied Nellie Kennedy ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... from the market, or any public place, lest they should have been defiled by the touch of an unclean thing, or person; loving the chief seats in their religious meetings, and the highest places at feasts; and so forth,—full of affectation, vanity, and pride. ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
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