Pride dines upon Vanity, sups on Contempt.
Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded.[Unsre Eitelkeit ist gerade dann am schwersten zu verletzen, wenn eben unser Stolz verletzt wurde.]
Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear.[Man wird selten irren, wenn man extreme Handlungen auf Eitelkeit, mittelmässige auf Gewöhnung und kleinliche auf Furcht zurückführt.]
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
Never worry about what you say to a man. They’re so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it’s unflattering.
Most People dislike Vanity in others whatever Share they have of it themselves, but I give it fair Quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of Good to the Possessor and to others that are within his Sphere of Action: And therefore in many Cases it would not be quite absurd if a Man were to thank God for his Vanity among the other Comforts of Life.
Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man’s last romance.
Man is a vain animal.
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
It gives one such a noble feeling to suffer for one’s silhouette.
In the background of all their personal vanity, women themselves have still their impersonal scorn – for “woman”.[Die Weiber selber haben im Hintergrunde aller persönlichen Eitelkeit immer noch ihre unpersönliche Verachtung – für “das Weib”.]
