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More "Vanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about them. Heaven has bestowed on me a fair enough share of genius for the making up of all those neat strokes of mother wit, for all those ingenious gallantries to which the ignorant and vulgar give the name of impostures; and I can boast, without vanity, that there have been very few men more skilful than I in expedients and intrigues, and who have acquired a greater reputation in the noble profession. But, to tell the truth, merit is too ill rewarded nowadays, and I have given up everything of the kind since the trouble I had through a certain ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... enough for me; I knew they had laid a plot together. Maton was deceiving me, and I should be cheated in twenty-four hours unless I took care. At my age such treason should not have astonished me, but my vanity would not allow me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the pursuit than happy in the enjoyment of her wishes. Leonora was of a contented, unaspiring, temperate character, not easily roused to action, but indefatigable when once excited. Leonora was proud, Cecilia was vain. Her vanity made her more dependent upon the approbation of others, and therefore more anxious to please, than Leonora; but that very vanity made her, at the same time, more apt to offend. In short, Leonora was ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... had been cocksure as to the inevitable limitations, the faults and vices, of a lot of women. We had expected them to be given over to what we called "feminine vanity"—"frills and furbelows," and we found they had evolved a costume more perfect than the Chinese dress, richly beautiful when so desired, always useful, of ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... been obliged, as often as he renewed his dress, to sacrifice about two hundred of the cattle on his rancho. No people, whether males or females, are more fond of display; no people have paid more dearly to gratify this vanity; and yet no civilized people I have seen are so deficient in what they ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... which they are supposed to introduce. Like so much of our English fiction, they are very good matter in a very bad place. Digression and want of method and order are traditional national sins. Fancy introducing an essay on how to live on nothing a year as Thackeray did in "Vanity Fair," or sandwiching in a ghost story as Dickens has dared to do. As well might a dramatic author rush up to the footlights and begin telling anecdotes while his play was suspending its action and his characters waiting wearily behind him. It is all wrong, though every ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "His vanity. You know, missionary-school native going back to the village wearing real pants, to show off to the savages. Used to be a standing joke, down where I came from." MacLeod thought for a moment. "And Rudolf: he's always had a poor view of the democratic system ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... of those who had not yet been washed in the holy waters of baptism; and there were brought to him sixty, besides some others who are known as Visaians. And to all these, after he had sufficiently demonstrated the vanity of idols and the truth of the Christian belief, he imparted baptism, with so great a degree of consolation to them all, although they were old men, that they all marveled. But before dawn, behold some others, men and women ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... may often have a basis of truth; for in monarchies where polygamy prevails, and the kings have numerous daughters to dispose of, almost all the nobility can boast that they are of the blood royal. Where the claim is in no sense true, it will still be made; for it flatters the vanity of the monarch, and there is no ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... views, and prescribes a narrower boundary for the things he expects to obtain. The realities of life undeceive him at last, and there steals over the evening of his days an unwelcome conviction of the vanity of human hopes. The things he has secured are not the things he expected. He sees that a Supreme Power has been using him for unknown ends, that he was brought into the world without his own knowledge, and is departing from it ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... was at the Auxerre solemnity. I have not been present at a public execution, as the whole of my information about public executions was derived from a series of articles on them which I read in the Paris Matin. Mr. Frank Harris, discussing my book in "Vanity Fair," said it was clear that I had not seen an execution, (or words to that effect), and he proceeded to give his own description of an execution. It was a brief but terribly convincing bit of writing, quite characteristic and ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... perceived how his ridiculous talk captivated Miss Jennings, it occurred to her that the vanity of women was such, that this instance of one of their number being impressed by a foolish man's silly conversation was only typical of the manner in which the rest of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Raj, king of Delhi, that the bride's father emptied his coffers in gifts, but he filled them with the praises of mankind. A lakh of rupees [291] was given to the chief bard, and this became a precedent for similar occasions. "Until vanity suffers itself to be controlled," Colonel Tod wrote, [292] "and the aristocratic Rajputs submit to republican simplicity, the evils arising from nuptial profusion will not cease. Unfortunately those who should check it find their interest in stimulating it, namely, the whole crowd of mangtas ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... woman she was. Be content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly in love with one another. Heaven knows that I can make the admission now without one particle of vanity. In matters of this sort there is always one who gives and another who accepts. From the first day of our ill-omened attachment, I was conscious that Agnes's passion was a stronger, a more dominant, and—if ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... after year of the wonders of the loud-vaunted German system of espionage, had come fresh from his reading into contact with the actual agents. Their habit of lining their pockets at the expense of their Government, their unfulfilled pretensions, their vanity and extravagance, and, above all, their unimaginative stupidity in their estimation of men—these things were apt in the early years of the war to bewilder the man who had been so often told to fall down before the great idol ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... give way before them, how surprised they will be on entering the world to find themselves crushed beneath the weight of that universe they have expected to move at their own pleasure! Their insolent airs and childish vanity will only bring upon them mortification, contempt, and ridicule; they must swallow affront after affront; cruel trials will teach them that they understand neither their own position nor their own strength. ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... relations, the character of Captain Wilde Seemed to undergo an entire transformation. From being remarkable for his love of quiet retirement, he became restless and dissatisfied; and instead of laughing, as formerly, at public employment as only vanity and vexation, he, now that a greater vexation assailed him in his once peaceful home, eagerly sought relief, not, as a younger or less virtuous man might have done, in dissipation, but in the distractions of public business. But here again his evil fortune granted the desired ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... vividness of colour in his countenance. At the foot, was a tall young gentleman, with high cheekbones and a Celtic nose, who had lately joined from Tipperary. The colonel sat in the centre of one side of the table, stiff in attitude, sententious in discourse, invulnerable in vanity; a fierce-looking navy captain, and the meek mayor of the town, supported him to the right and left. A few diners out, fathers of families, and men who played a good game of billiards, and preferred the society of ensigns, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... never have flung away so much money to so foolish a purpose. You must consider, says my friend, this stands upon the same foundation as the Monument, and the fortunes of a great many poor wretches lie buried in this ostentatious piece of vanity; and this, like the other, is but a monument of the City's shame and dishonour, instead of its glory; come, let us take a walk in, and view its inside. Accordingly we were admitted in thro' an iron gate, within which sat a brawny Cerberus, of an Indico-colour, leaning upon ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... of the ranks some one must step now to the leadership so deserted,—for Dickens reigns in another region,—and whether or not it shall be Charles Reade depends solely upon his own election: no one else is so competent, and nothing but wilfulness or vanity need prevent him,—the wilfulness of persisting in certain errors, or the vanity of assuming that he has no farther to go. He needs to learn the calmness of a less variable temperature and a truer equilibrium, less positive sharpness and more philosophy; he will be a ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was directed against the other as by that which was directed at themselves. It is self-love that makes people easily offended and easily wounded; and the more self-love they have, the easier they are hurt and the quicker their resentment is aroused. Self-love begets vanity; it quivers in keenest anguish at a sneer or a scornful smile; it is distressed by even a fancied slight. Self-love throws the nerves of sensation all out to the surface and makes them hyper-sensitive, and so the person feels everything keenly. He is constantly smarting ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... of European clothing is universal. The females especially set their hearts upon the most fashionable mode of dress: whatever the Queen wears is their model, which they imitate to the utmost of their power. The men are importuned to gratify this feminine vanity; and if their means will not enable them to do so fairly, they will often have recourse to fraud. The love of foreign wares, and especially of such as serve for dress and ornament, is by far the most fertile source of crime. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... we meet with the individualist attitude to nature; a slightly hysterical exaggeration of feeling which was to be characteristic of romance; an intention of escaping from the vanity of mankind by an adventure into the wilds; a purpose of recovering primitive manners by withdrawing into primitive conditions; a passion for what we now consider the drawing-master's theory of the picturesque—the thatched cottage, the ruined castle ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and the Kiddy in an innocent vanity was looking over her left shoulder and admiring her mouse-coloured tail. Of a sudden she caught sight of Nina's eyes in the glass regarding her sombrely. She turned and put up her face to Nina's, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... age, felt a vague elation as he drove in by Lucy's side to Farafield. To confer a great benefit is always sweet. Perhaps if we analyse it, as is the fashion of the day, we will find that the pleasure of giving has a fond of gratified vanity and self-consideration in it; but this weakness is at least supposed to be generous, and Jock was generous to his own consciousness, and full of delight at what was going to be done, and satisfaction with his own share in it. But Lucy's sensations were very different. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... 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 ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his old trade as the judge of a Voluntary Criminal Court. "My criminals were tried for the faults which really make social life impossible. They were tried before me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, or for scandal-mongering, or for stinginess to guests or dependents." It is regrettable that Chesterton does not grant us a glimpse of this fascinating tribunal at work. However, it is Grant's job, on the strength of which he becomes the president and founder of the C.Q.T.—Club of ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... comforting words, however, Walter could not shake off the consciousness that take it all in all he had blundered desperately throughout the entire train of events connected with Lola and his vanity was sadly hurt. If any good had come out of what he had done it was more by chance than as a result of wise calculation. He had meant well, that was all that could be said, and the patronage these words implied was by no means flattering ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... whose mind all expectation of happiness was banished, who regarded his own position as one of incurable ignominy, looking upon himself as one who had been made unfit for society by no fault of his own. What was he to do with the wretched woman who could be kept from the evil of her pernicious vanity by no gentle custody, whom no most distant retirement would make safe from the effects of her own ignorance, folly, and obstinacy? "When is she to go?" he asked in a low, sepulchral tone,—as though these new tidings that had come upon him had ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... city of the empire which had been garrisoned by Philip.[*] But finding, upon trial, the difficulty of the enterprise, he conducted them towards the frontiers of France; and he there saw, by a sensible proof, the vanity of his expectations: the count of Namur, and even the count of Hainault, his brother-in-law (for the old count was dead,) refused to commence hostilities against their liege lord, and retired with their troops.[**] So little account did they make of Edward's pretensions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Madame Marve, the Egyptian Mystic, was a good wife to Professor Thunder, and a good mother to Letitia, according to the lights of show people at the conventions of the game, but she was still young enough to appreciate genuine admiration, and had sufficient of the vanity of the profession to roll a lively, dark eye for ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... Alfonso was always inclined to that sort of work—after passing a certain age, being very handsome in person and youthful in appearance, he practised art more for pleasure and to satisfy his own vanity than with any desire to set himself to chisel stone. He used always to wear on his arms, on his neck, and in his clothing, ornaments of gold and suchlike fripperies, which showed him to be rather a courtier, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... had heard was first-class, and offered to take Grace to the office. The reporter knew one of the men on the staff, as he had once written a story in which he figured, and the officer had been grateful for the mention of his name. Detectives, even private ones, are prone to vanity in this ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily upon the young gentlemen in general, but comforted by the applause of the young gentlemen's nearest relatives, and urged on by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would have been strange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake. Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made great progress and was naturally clever, Mr. Dombey was more bent than ever on his ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... be my inclination to observe the most strict privacy, the better to save expense, and also time. I do not dislike the path which lies before me. I have seen all that society can shew, and enjoyed all that wealth can give me, and I am satisfied much is vanity, if not vexation of spirit." Laidlaw was too conscientious to remain at Abbotsford, to be a burden on his illustrious friend; he removed to his native district, and for three years employed himself in a variety of occupations till 1830, when the promise of brighter days to his benefactor ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... how to take the conceit or vanity out of their comrades. In the summer days all the boys of the village used to gather at a place on the river, known as Thayer's swimming-place, about half a mile from the town pump, which was the centre from which all distances were measured ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... tell about children,—or anybody else. Keep a sharp eye on her, Miss White. And be careful, please, about vanity. I thought I saw her looking in the mirror in the hall this morning. Please ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... said at last, "what is this vanity? If I, who am Lady of wisdom, do not mock the children of men, why shouldst thou mock them, who art Lord of truth?" But Pthah answered, "They thought to bind me; and they shall be bound. They shall labor in ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... or perhaps unintended complaint, have put me completely beside myself again. It has been troubling me for over a year and I should like to get clear out of here. Nothing pleases me any more. The more distinctions I receive the more I feel that it is all vanity. My life is bungled, and so I have thought to myself I ought to have nothing more to do with strivings and vanities, and ought to be able to employ my pedagogical inclinations, which after all are my most characteristic ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... historians have done no more than justice in extolling the saviors of Rome. But their memory would have suffered no loss had the whole truth been made known; and the claims of national vanity are not of the same weight as the duty one owes to truth. Now, it is certain that Camillus did not gain such decisive advantages over the Gauls as the Roman accounts would lead one to believe, and that the deliverance of Rome was much less complete. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... always detected. Great genius and force of character undoubtedly make their own career. But because Walter Scott was dull at school, is a parent to see with joy that his son is a dunce? Because Lord Chatham was of a towering conceit, must we infer that pompous vanity portends a comprehensive statesmanship that will fill the world with the splendor of its triumphs? Because Sir Robert Walpole gambled and swore and boozed at Houghton, are we to suppose that gross sensuality and coarse contempt of human nature are the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... after similar distinctions, and we do them injustice by thinking that they only supported the scholars at their courts as a means of diffusing their own fame. A ruler like Borso of Ferrara, with all his vanity, seems by no means to have looked for immortality from the poets, eager as they were to propitiate him with a 'Borseid' and the like. He had far too proud a sense of his own position as a ruler for that. But intercourse with learned men, interest ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity," he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard enough to get rid ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... painted, or to be otherwise communicated, either directly, or by parable and emblem. Obey this behest, and thy life is in surety. Let thy heart then rejoice within thee, but let it rejoice with trembling. Never more let thy vanity persuade thee that thou art secure from the servants and Judges of the Holy Vehme. Though a thousand leagues lie between thee and the Red Land, and thou speakest in that where our power is not known; though thou shouldst be sheltered by thy native island, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... are guiltless of having ever essayed to build the lofty rhyme; but you must have known in your day many an apprentice and fellow-craft, if not some of the master-masons, in the temple of Apollo. Vanity is their universal foible, from him who decorated the shades of Twickenham, to the veriest scribbler whom he has lashed in his Dunciad. I had my own share of this common failing, and without considering how little likely this young fellow Twineall was, by taste and habits, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... only source of happiness the dead woman had ever possessed. The braid was sold for a mere trifle to a fashionable hair-dresser, who asked no questions concerning it, and when it was seen next, it was worn by some fine lady, who, in, her thoughtless vanity, never paused ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... spoke to 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 ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... was half Saxon and his father probably fully Norman, Gerald, with a true instinct, described himself as a "Welshman." His frank vanity, so naive as to be void of offence, his easy acceptance of everything which Providence had bestowed on him, his incorrigible belief that all the world took as much interest in himself and all that appealed to him as he did ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... of plebeians about him and tells them of ancient Rome, and of the rights of the people in old times. All at once he rises, a grand shadow of a Roman, a true tribune, brave, impulsive, eloquent. A little while longer and he is half mad with vanity and ambition, a public fool in a high place, decking himself in silks and satins, and ornaments of gold, and the angry nobles slay him on the steps of the Aracoeli, as other nobles long ago slew Tiberius Gracchus, a greater and a better man, almost ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of philosophy, or from exhorting and warning you as I have done hitherto, against caring much for riches and nothing for the perfecting of your souls. This is the bidding of the god. If to speak thus be to corrupt youth, then I corrupt youth. But he who says I speak other things than this talks vanity; and this I will do, though the penalty were ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... defied the Judge to do his worst, expressing his readiness to confront either gallows or platoon. The risk of either was about equal to that of his being tortured at the stake, on the steps of the Capitol. In spite of all this simple vanity, and flightiness of brain, you could see that the parson had good strong principles, and held to them fast; and I believe that his nervous excitability would not have deterred him from encountering real danger. He appeared thoroughly courteous, generous, and good-natured; and my companion, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... ebony, whilst the bathman stood to wash him and the slaves poured water on him; after which they rubbed him down well and said, "O our lord, Sir Wazir, health to thee forever!" Then they went out and shut the door on him; and in the vanity of phantasy he arose and removed the waist-cloth from his middle, and laughed till he well nigh fainted. He gave not over laughing for some time and at last quoth he to himself, "What aileth them to address me as if I were a Minister and style me Master, and Sir? Haply ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of the cross is the school of light; it discovers the world's vanity, baseness, and wickedness, and lets us see more of God's mind. Out of dark affliction ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to have worth, be worth, be valuable, bring in. valiente valiant, vigorous. valor m. valor, value. valle m. valley. vallecillo (dim.) vale. vals m. waltz. vamos (from ir) come! well! really! vanguardia vanguard. vanidad f. vanity. vano vain. vara yard. variedad f. variety. vario various, several. varon man. vasallo vassal. vaso glass. vasto vast. vaticinio vaticination, prediction. vaya (from ir) come! well! really. Vd. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... us, the students of the Yogi Philosophy—the teachers of the same—for human nature is the same in spite of names, and we must avoid the "vanity of vanities"—Spiritual Pride and Arrogance—that fault which has sent many a soul tumbling headlong from a high position on The Path, and compelled it to again begin the journey, chastened and bruised. The fall of Lucifer has many correspondences upon the occult plane, and is, indeed, in itself ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... pompous vanity were aroused. "Tink dis nigger can't shoot, eh? You-alls just watch an' Chris will show ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... softness, and indifference on the part of the men; vanity, cruelty, and foolery on the part of the officers. Those are the virtues which they offered us on first acquaintance. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... mocking laugh. It is astonishing, sometimes, how deeply a man may be hurt through his vanity. Rosemary had turned away, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... was successfully advocated by Henry Brougham, the leading democrat of that day—a man whose noble services to progress and to humanity in the earlier part of his career have been obscured by the inordinate vanity and unprincipled egotism which he displayed in the later phases of his long public life. He had entered parliament in 1810, and rapidly became the most active of the opposition speakers. He now employed without scruple all the arts of agitation, petition-framing, and parliamentary ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... 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 ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... in having an opportunity to test his gravatana, and this was just what he desired, for the old Indian was not a little vain of his skill, and he wished to make a show of it in the eyes of his companions. His vanity, however, was the more pardonable, as he was in reality a first-rate shot, which he proved to the satisfaction of everybody within half-an-hour. The instrument had scarcely been finished and laid aside, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... 26.—Solomon said, after he had tasted all the joys of the world, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' I, my friend, who have scarcely tasted any of the pleasures of the world, would say with Solomon, 'all is vanity.' I see nothing in which I can work. All are vanities, shadows; beneath all there is nothing. Great God! what is all this for? ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... it, she spied the image of the fairy in the spring. The fool, who had never seen herself, thought that the face was her own. "Poor Lucy!" she cried. "What! you, so fresh and beautiful, are forced by your mistress to carry water like a beast of burden! No, never!" And in her vanity she dashed the pitcher to the ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... danger of the experiment consisted in the possibility that the archer, instead of aiming at the rosette, would select an eye or some part of the head for a mark, in which case the result would be fatal. He was quite willing to incur the risk himself, trusting that the archer's vanity would impel him to aim at the right spot; but he had never contemplated the turn which affairs had ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... justify these sacrifices; they are valuable ends in themselves, still more valuable from contingent advantages. There is a deep influence hidden under these beautiful arts,—an influence far deeper than the world in its thoughtlessness, or the worldly student in his vanity, ever can know,—an influence refining, consoling, elevating: they afford a channel into which the lofty aspirings, the unsatisfied yearnings of the pure and elevated in soul may pour themselves. The perception ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... without apparent shame," it is entirely misplaced. Not merely outside of, but actually in his erotomania, Restif was a sentimental philanthropist of the all but most genuine kind, tainted indeed with the vanity and self-centredness which had reached their acme in Rousseau, but very much more certainly sincere, and of a temperament as different as possible from what is commonly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... self-sufficient, and he had the characteristic defect of pedantry: he overrated intelligence and he underrated character. Hence he was inclined to resent Washington's eminence as being due more to fortune than to merit, and he had for Hamilton an active hatred compounded of wounded vanity and a sense of positive injury. He knew that Hamilton thought slightingly of his political capacity and had worked against his political advancement, and he was too lacking in magnanimity to do ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... harder than ever. "If there's anything more preposterous than Carol's vanity because of her beauty, it's Lark's vanity for ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... speech I then made attacking him. I am sure the dear doctor, away off in Princeton, never even heard of my opposition to him, although in my conceit I thought the state reverberated with the report of my unqualified and bitter opposition to him. In my poor vanity I thought that perhaps what I had said in my speech of opposition to him had reached the cloisters of Princeton. As a matter of fact, he never heard about me or my speech, and afterward in the years of our association ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... certain buffetings of fate. But as all thoroughbred animals are thin-skinned, so are all the short-bred pachydermatous, whereby they endure and mayhap arrive at the manger well as the next. True, even Woodhull's vanity and self-content had everything asked of them in view of his late series of mishaps; but by now he had somewhat chirked up under rest and good food, and was once more the dandy and hail fellow. He felt assured that very presently bygones would be bygones. Moreover—so he reasoned—if he, Sam ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... The swaggering vanity of the fellow amused me, for he cocked his busby, swung the blue dolman which hung from his shoulder, sat his horse, and clattered his scabbard in a manner which told of his boyish delight and pride in himself and his ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would be of no use, unless it could come unattended with suspicion of my motives. I will hasten my departure from this house, that we may not meet again; and I will leave it to God Almighty to protect honesty and innocence against the dangers which must attend vanity and folly." So saying, he turned contemptuously from the youthful votary of ambition, and left ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... against a man who adopts the singular course—who undertakes the serious responsibility—of pleading his own defence. Such a proceeding might be thought to be dictated either by disparagement of the ordinary legal advocacy, by some poor idea of personal vanity, or by way of reflection on the tribunal before which the defence is made. My conduct is dictated by neither of these considerations or influences. Last of all men living should I reflect upon the ability, zeal, and fidelity of the Bar ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... Heraclius boldly ascended the heights of Mount Taurus, directed his march through the plains of Cappadocia, and established his troops, for the winter season, in safe and plentiful quarters on the banks of the River Halys. [82] His soul was superior to the vanity of entertaining Constantinople with an imperfect triumph; but the presence of the emperor was indispensably required to soothe the restless and rapacious spirit ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... been for all of them if Bull had never been placed in No. 7; happier still if he had never come to Roslyn school. Backward in work, overflowing with vanity at his supposed good looks, of mean disposition and feeble intellect, he was the very worst specimen of a boy that Eric had ever seen. Not even Barker so deeply excited Eric's repulsion and contempt. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... whoever lowers his aims of serving God under any worldly inducement, is deviating from the straight way: and, thought Malcolm, if King Harry feels Agincourt an empty word beside the song of Sion, must not all I have sought for be a very vanity? ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which her rejection might drive him. Such threats, as a rule, no longer move the feminine imagination; yet Justine's pity for all forms of weakness made her recognize, in the very heat of her contempt for Wyant, that his reproaches were not the mere cry of wounded vanity but the appeal of a nature conscious of its lack of recuperative power. It seemed to her as though she had done him irreparable harm, and the feeling might have betrayed her into too great a show ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... and others that thus came to visit me, I began to be much known; and as I did not forget to set myself out with all possible advantage, considering the dress of a widow, which in those days was a most frightful thing; I say, as I did thus from my own vanity, for I was not ignorant that I was very handsome; I say, on this account I was soon made very public, and was known by the name of La belle veufeu de Poictou, or the pretty widow of Poictou. As I was very well pleased to see myself thus handsomely used in my affliction, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... thought of Nellie's meek admiration of all my words and ways, and got her photo out to soothe my vanity. For the first time it struck me that her features were somewhat insipid. The thought seemed like disloyalty, so I banished it and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... surveying the usual museum specimens—the old stones, invariable spear-heads, stuffed animals; in short, the usual rather heterogeneous collection, made up of 'voluntary contributions,' prompted half by the vanity of the donor and half by his indifference to the objects presented. We had not, indeed, the 'old pump' or the parish stocks, as at Little Pedlington, but there were things as interesting. Here were a few old pictures given by the Government, and labelled in writing; ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... appearing to be hurt by the taunting intonation which pointed this remark, replied frankly, "I suppose I must have been guilty of imagining that I had; but, indeed, it was unpremeditated vanity. I really did not reflect upon the subject. I was only anxious to get over the dilemma in which we are placed by ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... for Rakes,' 'The School for Fathers,' and 'The School for Wives.' Nor is it surprising that, the fashion having once been set, Sheridan's comedy should be followed successively by 'The School for Eloquence,' 'The School for Ladies,' 'The School for Vanity,' 'The School for Greybeards,' 'The School for Widows,' 'The School for Arrogance,' 'The School for Prejudice,' 'The School for Friends,' 'The School for Authors,' 'The School for Grown Children,' 'The School for Grown Gentlemen,' and 'The ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... respectable women should go on such an errand—how could propriety endure it? No lady could thus expose herself without the loss of feminine bloom. If decent women took to this kind of service, where would the charm of womanhood be fled? "They are impelled by vanity, and seek the notoriety of scandal," said the envious. "None of them will stand the mere labour of it for a month, if we know anything," said the physiologists. "They will run at the first rat," said masculine wit. "Let them stay at home and nurse babies," cried ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... our desires have too long waged with our destiny. When these move in the same direction, and that which God's will renders unavoidable shall become our choice, all things will be ours; life will be divested of its vanity, and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to please myself. Thought I'd show Sadie what I could do; felt virtuous about it at the time, but begin to suspect that vanity pushed me on. Sadie would, no doubt, sooner have me safe at home. Anyhow, I think I've proved my argument—we're here, doing unthinkable things, freezing, sweating, getting thin, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... to-day, discarded to-morrow; admired, but not respected; desired, but not esteemed; ruling by passion, not affection; imparting her weakness, not her constancy, to the sex she should exalt; the source and mirror of vanity. We see her as a wife, partaking of the cares, and guiding the labors of her husband, and by her domestic diligence spreading cheerfulness all around; for his sake, sharing the decent refinements of the world, without being fond of them; placing all her joy, all ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... La Mothe, but that was forgotten in the contemptuous recall of a past he held should no longer rise against him. What the King forgave the King's minister should forget. The thrust had wounded his vanity, and now, as he saw his opening, he ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... treasures of earthly friendship and earthly affection—the whole world we might gain and enjoy; but if through all these, or in spite of all, we should not be led to the love and friendship of God, we should know only vanity, and life for us would in its issue be ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... consider "this, compared with the later productions, in the same light as we view the juvenile works of a Milton, or the first manner of a Raphael or other celebrated painter." In a letter to Hutcheson, Hume merely speaks of this article as "somewhat abusive;" so that his vanity, being young and callow, seems to have been correspondingly wide-mouthed and ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... love her," he said, hoarsely; "she has killed all my affection for her by her infernally variable moods, her jealousy, her vanity, and her inordinate passion for worldly pleasure, to the exclusion of ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and mysteriously. There was no apparent reason for her demise, but the autopsy, which revealed a large and irregular fragment of window glass lodged in her gizzard, proved that she was a victim of Beauty's vanity. A friend who was present said, as he tenderly held the glass between thumb and finger: "It is now easy to see through the cause of her death; under the circumstances, it would be idle to speak of it as pane-less!" Beauty had never seemed very devoted to ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... around in his bandages showing off like an innocent big-child—which was just what he was. He was prouder of being wounded than a really modest person would be of being killed. But there was no harm in his vanity, and nobody minded it. He said he was hit by a stone from a catapult—a stone the size of a man's head. But the stone grew, of course. Before he got through with it he was claiming that the enemy had flung a building ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... through the window, and retrieves the vanity bag from the floor where CHLOE dropped it, then again takes his stand against the Left lintel of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... soberly, "and yet do his duty. What he may not do—is this. He may not go out to kill another in cold blood, for a point of honour, or for revenge, or to sustain what he has already done amiss! No, nor for vanity, or for the hundred trifles for which men risk their lives and seek the lives of others. I hope I make myself clear, Captain Augustin?" ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... subsisted between us the honour he conferred on me by the dedication of one of his works. I said to him, when he departed for the headquarters of the King of Sweden, "My dear doctor, you will certainly discover the bump of vanity." The truth is, that had the doctor at that period been permitted to examine the heads of the sovereigns of Europe they would have ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... pillared temple that faces the Madeleine beyond the monumental fountains of the square. As they passed, people turned and said: "They are deputies." And Jansoulet felt a childlike joy, a vulgar joy compounded of ignorance and ingenuous vanity. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... considerably under her circumstances. Her mode of travelling to fairs or markets was either upon a common car, covered with a feather-bed and quilt, or behind Peter upon a pillion. This last method flattered Peter's vanity very much; no man could ride on these occasions with a statelier air. He kept himself as erect and stiff as a poker, and brandished the thong of his loaded whip with the ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... mining company. He was a graceful, fair-faced young fellow, with an open hand and the air of a potentate, and his grandeur had pleased Liz. She was not used to flattery and "fine London ways," and her vanity ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... spoiled child of his genius and of the large world of his admirers; there was no vanity about him, and no exaggeration of his own abilities, but other people, even artists whom he appreciated, were of merely relative importance to him. He declined to put himself in comparison with any of his contemporaries, though he admitted his deficiencies as compared to ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... sometimes killed by having a charcoal fire in their bedrooms? Because the carbon of burning charcoal unites with the oxygen of air, and forms carbonic acid gas, which is a narcotic poison. So it is here. SEXTON has got hold of some good points; he is not inapt as a speaker; if his inordinate vanity had only permitted him to be satisfied with occupying time of House for half an hour, or, say, three-quarters, he would have made damaging speech; as it is, he wearies House to death, swamps us all and himself in waste of verbiage, and the people he attacks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... . . To complete the illusion, I've even sprinkled myself with scent. I am over my ears in vanity! No care, no thought, nothing but a sensation of something or other . . . deuce knows what to call it . . . beatitude or something? I've never felt ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... more like those of a peevish scold than of a prophet and statesman. "All things mislyking the preachers," he says with candour, "they spoke boldly against the tarjatting of their tails, and against the rest of their vanity, which they affirmed should provoke God's vengeance not only against those foolish women, but against the whole Realm." God's vengeance was freely dealt out on all hands against those who disagreed with the speakers; but the silken trains that ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... concerning kings, which are mainly three: nay, he openly violated them (in this he did wrong, and acted in a manner unworthy of a philosopher, by indulging in sensual pleasure), and taught that all Fortune's favors to mankind are vanity, that humanity has no nobler gift than wisdom, and no greater punishment than folly. (See Proverbs ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... If I have at times dwelt severely upon the proneness of your spirit to anger, and of your hand to strife, it is because I would have you, if I could so persuade you, hate in yourself the sins of vanity and wrath by which you are most easily beset. I have spoken on the topic more to alarm your own conscience than to express my opinion. I know as well as my father that, in these forlorn and desperate days, the whole customs of our nation, nay, of every ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the humour of their childish vanity, painted an elaborate coat of arms, which he stuck in the crown of his hat, and by means of which he explained to them that he too was by rights a Spanish nobleman. With the utmost gravity he delivered some such medley as this: His Iberian origin ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... original nature; but 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 command and notoriety. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... private and roundabout channels. But this again was not a vice peculiar to officers appointed from civil life. It should be always remembered that honorable conduct and devoted patriotism was the rule, and self-seeking vanity and ambition the exception; yet a few exceptions would be enough to disturb the comfort of a large command. To sum up, the only fair way to estimate the volunteer army is by its work and its fitness ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... assure your Majesty that none is at present contemplated by the Emperor Napoleon (who has just contradicted the report officially), and Count Buol is of the same opinion. The latter is constantly hurting the vanity of the French Government by his irritable despatches, and neither party makes the slightest effort to command their temper; but it appears impossible that Napoleon can make a casus belli against Austria. Besides this, your Majesty may be assured that no warlike preparations ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... a lady's boudoir. Yet it will give to her a faithful reflection of her loveliness as it is in truth. I found it— this will interest you—in the Catacombs. You would not think the early Christians had so much vanity! Yet it was a mirror into which the virgin-martyrs-to-be of the time of Nero looked each day. As they looked, let Donna Violante look. Say to her from me—'Look long and well into this mirror, and profit by what you see.'—Humbly your friend, Don Vincenzio." ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... whence, thinkest thou, my little sir?—From those very renowned studs of the Tzar Ivan Alexyeitch, the brother of Peter the Great.... I'm telling you the truth! All stallions, dark brown in colour, with manes to their knees, tails to their hoofs.... Lions! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! But what's the use of regretting it? Every man has his limit fixed for him.—You cannot fly higher than heaven, nor live in the water, nor escape from the earth.... Let us live on a while longer, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... life saw a man so completely taken aback as was this crazy schoolmaster when I tackled him. Amazement, incredulity, wounded vanity, indignation, and bodily fear seemed all to be struggling together to assert themselves in his countenance and to find articulate expression upon his tongue; but fear was the strongest of them all—the fear that he might be actually subjected to the unspeakable indignity of personal violence. ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... for me to live a life of purity while continuing among my associates. I looked forward wishfully to the time when I could thus retire; but I saw also that, unless I could leave behind me my earthly-mindedness, my pride, vanity, and every carnal propensity, an outward solitude ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... should keep the child as clean as possible, and particularly she should train it to habits of cleanliness, so that it should feel uncomfortable when otherwise; watching especially that it does not soil itself in eating. At the same time, vanity in its personal appearance is not to be encouraged by over-care in this respect, or by too tight lacing or buttoning of dresses, nor a small foot cultivated by the use of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... 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 ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... down I feel that it is not true; you will never forget me altogether, Leonard—your first love—and no other woman will ever be quite the same to you as I have been; or, at least, so I believe in my foolishness and vanity. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... surrounding monks, as the last sacrament was administered, he said, "If I had served God as diligently as I have done the king, He would not have given me over in my gray hairs." The remains were interred by torchlight before daybreak on St. Andrew's Day, 1530, and to show the vanity of all things earthly tradition says that after the destruction of the abbey the stone coffin in which they were buried was used as a horse-trough for a neighboring inn. Nothing remains of the abbey as Wolsey saw it excepting the gate ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... to appetite or sensual pleasure was brought to the king's table. Singers, minstrels, dancers, magicians, entertainers of every description were summoned to the palace that they might contribute to the vanity of the monarch, and impress the onlooking nations ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... generosity of the Major's good-humour. On the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed poor Pen, whose nerves were strung up for a tragedy, and who felt that his grand entree was altogether baulked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin to cry—"I—I—I didn't know that you were come till just now," he said: ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fetch it. . . . Does this interpretation of the episode amaze? It is that which our poet gives of it. Distrust, and only that, impelled this lady to the action which, till Browning treated it, had been regarded as a prize-bloom indeed, but the flower not of distrust, but its antithesis—vanity! All the world knows the story; all the world, till this apologist arrived, condemned alone the lady. Like Francis ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... I say, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk[4:17], in the vanity of their mind, (18)having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in then, because of the hardness of their heart; (19)who, as being past feeling, gave themselves up to wantonness, to work all uncleanness in greediness[4:19]. (20)But ye ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... up. "Oh, yes, don't let me forget to give you a communicator. A real gizmo. About as big as a woman's vanity case. Puts you in immediate contact with the nearest Section G office, no matter how near or far away it is. Or, if you wish, in contact with our offices here in ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... began Ascobaruch in his unpleasant, crafty way. None knew better than he the art of appealing to human vanity. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... he is as much in love with himself as with her, because he is so proud of his conquest. That was my case. If I had had my eyes, I might have seen that she who could cheat her old father for a mere stranger, would certainly deceive him in his turn. But if love makes a man blind, vanity, Mr Simple, makes him blinder. In short, I ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... effect, a setting against which the Arab's own white robes should contrast more vividly; she remembered the black and silver waistcloth she had seen swathed round him, with curling scornful lip. There was a strain of vanity in all natives, she generalised contemptuously. Doubtless it pleased this native's conceit to carry out the colour scheme of his tent even in his clothes, and pose among the sable cushions of the luxurious divan to the admiration ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... to our legislation. The acts of your diplomatists and of your Generals, and the approbation given them by you and other representatives of German science, are a terrible demonstration, but conclusive, of the dangers and vanity of German culture. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned Charybdis on the "larboard." The mythological allusions have been justly censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise of the memory and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... stop, he was hunting for a model he had just heard of, and then he would drop into the Nazionale at night to report his want of progress, for no model ever came up to his standard. He referred to his own beauty with the frank simplicity and vanity of a child—a real Post-Impressionist; not one by pose, for there was not a trace of pose in him. I wish I could say how astonishing he was to me. Life has since thrown many young artists and writers my way and I am used to their conceits ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the last word with withering emphasis, and amid profound silence. The Bishop, staggered and puzzled, but too wise to persist longer in the dog's identity, still tried desperately to utter some word of excuse; but the Queen, whose vanity had received a serious wound—since she had not at once known her own pet—cut him short with a curt and freezing dismissal, and immediately turning to the Cardinal, she requested him to introduce to her the officers who had the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... it in UUCP mail, USENET, or other forms of electronic information interchange. The folklore interest of sitenames stems from the creativity and humor they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... from too many causes, not all of them elevating, to be capable upon so short a notice, even after a night of unique companionship, of such whole-souled agony and despair. In her imagination, her sense of drama, her vanity, in the fading of vague dazzling hopes of a future to which he held the key, and perhaps a little in her stormy heart, she had felt a degree of harsh disappointment, but she had already half-recovered; and as she sat looking at his ravaged face she ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... now that the chief point had been attained; yet man is an odd creature, and Chichikov actually felt pained by the could-shouldering administered to him by persons for whom he had not an atom of respect, and whose vanity and love of display he had only that moment been censuring. Still more, on viewing the matter clearly, he felt vexed to think that he himself had been so largely the cause ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... her quiet, easy movements; by the clear enunciation and pleasant tones, which could be ringing when necessary, of a cultivated voice that reached the ears of the bystanders. She did not wear the conventional black silk or cashmere of a shop-woman. There might be a lingering protest or a lurking vanity in the myrtle-green gown and the little lace cap, with its tiny noeuds of dark green riband, which she wore instead. One might guess by their dainty decorum and becomingness that Miss Franklin had thought a good deal, and to purpose, about dress, in her day—had made a study ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... resolved upon contrary to their sentiments. Men of upright, benevolent tempers have too many opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of individuals, who have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting to mankind. Perhaps the question now before the public may, in its consequences, afford melancholy ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... 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 out to ride Columbus would be seen riding on one side of him, the young Prince John riding ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... you recollect that dinner at which David Copperfield and Traddles were, where they are described as seated at the dinner, one "in the glare of the red velvet lady" and the other "in the gloom of Hamlet's aunt"? I am so glad you like Thackeray. "Pendennis" and "The Newcomes" and "Vanity Fair" I can ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... churchgoings and such like, as my father always was. It used to be a sorrow to me in my young married days to think as Tom was so far from the Lord, and I used to pray that 'is eyes might be opened and that 'e might be led to know the truth like me, which was vanity on my part, for I've come to see since that like as not 'e was nearer the Lord ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... like these from a man like old Peterkin should have inflated Frank's pride; but he was weak in many points; and though he detested Peterkin, it gratified him to be pointed out to strangers as a swell who lived in a fine house, and with the puff of vanity came the reflection that, as Frank Tracy of some other place than Tracy Park, with all its appliances of wealth, he would not be a swell whom strangers cared to see, and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... She was quite as beautiful, as witty, as clever, but in place of coquetry, she was gifted with honest simplicity, that men pronounced charming, while Lady Amelie, to her great chagrin, began to find her attractions on the wane. Men grew tired of her vanity and her cruelty. Women disliked her for her selfish disregard of everything but ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... immediately after Osiander had entered upon his duties at the university. In his inaugural disputation of April 5, 1549, "Concerning the Law and Gospel (De Lege et Evangelio)," Osiander's vanity prompted him at least to hint at his peculiar views, which he well knew were not in agreement with the doctrine taught at Wittenberg and in the Lutheran Church at large. His colleague, Matthias Lauterwald, a Wittenberg master, who died 1555, immediately took issue with him. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... heart; any body can see that who visits his nice stables, and looks upon the plump, well-cared-for horses. He has a spice of vanity; the girls are responsible, in a measure, for this, for they have flattered him until he begins to think he may be good enough for any of them; but he only thinks of Nannie Bates as a fit and desirable companion for him, and he works diligently to get the means to buy ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... not displeas'd with their rallying; their Wonder feeds my Vanity, and he that wishes to buy, gives me more Pride, than he that gives my ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... bestow upon her youthful beauty such ornaments as yours. But say, I pray you, where can the cunning hand be found which fashions such glorious birds? Was it in Venice or Vienna that you bought this materpiece of art?" Unsuspicious of evil, and bridling at gratified vanity at this attention from a stranger of such distinguished mien, the spoil-bedecked fair one replied to him as she had done ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... exactly what we now find was laid down of old with such precision in Scripture. "To deify error and to adore vain things," said the great philosopher, "may be well accounted the plague of the understanding. Some modern men, guilty of much levity, have so indulged this vanity, that they have essayed to find natural philosophy in the first chapter of Genesis, the Book of Job, and other places of holy writ, seeking the living among the dead. Now this vanity is so much the more to be ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... protest or contradiction. Evidently Felix had kindled a train of memories—a retrospective illumination. It was making, to Mr. Brand's astonished eyes, a very pretty blaze; his second emotion had been a gratification of vanity. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... services of this army, with which Christ can drive the Romans out of Judea, and triumphantly reign over the land of his ancestors, whence his glory will extend far and wide, until it far surpasses all that Rome and Caesar achieved. Jesus, however, demonstrates the vanity of all military efforts, declaring his time has not yet come, but assuring him he will not be found wanting when the moment comes for him to ascend the throne, for he hopes ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... all spread a thin membrane of vanity, nervous, not intellectual, sensitiveness; for all sense of humour was absent in this man, whose smile, when not a physical effort, was automatically and methodically responsive to certain fixed cues. He smiled when he said "Good morning," ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country might render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another. In short, the scheme is nugatory and impracticable; the inaptness of the project is only equalled by the vanity of the attempt." This bill, however, passed into a law, and was adhered to in the numerous loans advanced during the whole of the revolutionary contest. About the same time Pitt brought another measure into the house, which indicated that his views ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 16th Mr. Joseph Gerald breathed his last. A consumption which accompanied him from England, and which all his wishes and efforts to shake off could not overcome, at length brought him to that period when, perhaps, his strong enlightened mind must have perceived how full of vanity and vexation of spirit were the busiest concerns of this world; and into what a narrow limit was now to be thrust that frame which but of late trod firmly in the walk of life, elate and glowing with youthful hope, glorying in being a martyr to the cause which ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... indeed, a day of finery, which all my [v]sumptuary edicts could not restrain. How well soever I fancied my lectures against pride had conquered the vanity of my daughters, yet I still found them secretly attached to all their former finery; they still loved laces, ribbons, and bugles, and my wife herself retained a passion for her crimson [v]paduasoy, because I formerly happened to say it ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... occasion that the great evil, and that which rendered all negotiation and arrangement so difficult, was the absence of all reciprocal confidence, that we had none in his Minister (Thiers), and that the national pride and vanity (of which we, like themselves, had a share) were wounded by the ostentatious preparations for war, and the menacing and blustering tone of the press. He acknowledged these evils and their bad effects, and only shrugged up his shoulders at what I said about Thiers, of whom he has ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... 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 ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... buds of the heart open to close no more. Such a day was this in that girl's fate. But the day was not yet gone! That morning, when she dressed for her enterprise of filial love, perhaps for the first time Sibyll Warner felt that she was fair—who shall say whether some innocent, natural vanity had not blended with the deep, devoted earnestness, which saw no shame in the act by which the child could aid the father? Perhaps she might have smiled to listen to old Madge's praises of her winsome face, old Madge's predictions that the face and the gittern ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... schemes lie as incapable of development as the fallen tree is incapable of new sproutings. At the time the book of Ecclesiastes was written, the belief in any life after death was little known in Israel. This book was the work of a thorough pessimist, whose constant refrain was—Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity. It gives no hint of a second life; and in the absence of this faith the present life is to the writer an insoluble problem. This saying really expressed the popular belief that death ended everything. A man falls like a tree, and, like ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... they mingle love and religion, are inspired in great measure by sexual feeling; on the one hand, there is probably the cunning of a hypocritical knave, or the self-deception of a half-insane one, using the weaknesses of weak women to minister to his vanity or his lust under a religious guise; on the other hand, there is an exaggerated self-feeling, often rooted in the sexual passion, which is unwittingly fostered under the cloak of religious emotion, and which is apt to conduct to madness or to sin. In such cases the holy kiss owes its warmth ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... mask to keep every ray of sunshine from the complexion, a sunbonnet sewed on her head every morning by her careful mother, and long gloves covering the hands and arms." Our present love of outdoor life, of athletic sports, and our indifference to being sunburned, makes such painstaking vanity seem most unbearably tiresome. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... folly soon punished; for, as poor Richard says, Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy. And, after all, of what use is this pride of appearance, for which so much is risked, so much is suffered? It cannot promote health, nor ease pain; it makes no increase of merit in the person; ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... liberality, 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... going to the end of the strange business. I abstained from Welsh rare-bits and grog that evening, and did not even join in the customary game of whist. I wanted to be quite sure of my nerves, and my vanity made me anxious to make a good figure in ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... are the better in the sight of God?" she asked; "the ones that have done the work they were made to do, or those that are merely objects of vanity? But I have worked with mine, too; scrubbed and ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... sure she does n't like you? That 's to the credit of your humility. A fellow of more vanity might, on the evidence, persuade himself that he was ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... hint, and except his vanity in furnishing a good title, and his coxcombry of literary patronage, and his general hope that Helen's name being implicated in such a publication would avenge her rejection of himself, had had ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... sea, if you wish it, friend—have opportunities which do not befall us of the wilderness. Still, we know our own callings, and they are what I consider natural callings, and are not parvarted by vanity and wantonness. Now, my gifts are with the rifle, and on a trail, and in the way of game and scouting; for, though I can use the spear and the paddle, I pride not myself on either. The youth Jasper, there, who is discoursing with the Sergeant's daughter, is a ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... cause of prudence, and therefore rejoiced without compunction in seeing her favourite scheme for her darling restored to her more perfect than ever. Maurice, without having more than the minimum quantity of masculine vanity, had great faith in the virtues of perseverance and fidelity, and took the full benefit of Lucia's delight at seeing him; while Lucia herself was just simply glad—so glad that for an hour or two she quite forgot to ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... funeral smell of the flowers at the altar, there has been added the cacodorous scents of forty or fifty different brands of talcum and rice powder. It begins to grow warm in the church, and a number of women open their vanity bags and duck down for stealthy dabs at their noses. Others, more reverent, suffer the agony of augmenting shines. One, a trickster, has concealed powder in her pocket handkerchief, and applies it dexterously while pretending ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... seeks to satisfy itself, craves for the esteem of others, admiration, flattery, applause, and glory. This is vanity, different from conceit only in this, that the former is based on something that is, or has been done, while the latter is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... was not prepared to have them brandished in its face, and it would have none of Lady Hamilton,—nor would Lady Nelson. The general public opinion at the time receives, probably, accurate expression from Sir William Hotham, a man then in London society. "His vanity, excusable as such a foible is in such a man, led him to unpardonable excesses, and blinded him to the advantages of being respected in society.... His conduct to Lady Nelson was the very extreme of unjustifiable weakness, for he should at least have attempted to conceal his ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... on the errand called a twinkle to his eye and a half-smothered smile to his lips. She felt assured that he was thoroughly cognizant of the curiosity which had prompted her researches among the family records, and inferred that he had either no vanity to be flattered by such trifles, or was dowered with too much generosity to evince any gratification at the discovery of an interest she ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... attentively, who, however, had observed him immediately, and had asked her mother, "Is not that Monsieur in the boat yonder?" Madame Henrietta who knew Monsieur better than her daughter did, smiled at the mistake her vanity had led her into, and had answered, "No; it is only M. de Guiche, his favorite." The princess, at this reply, was constrained to check an instinctive tenderness of feeling which the courage displayed by the count had awakened. At the very moment the princess had put this question ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Rector shook his head. He had not thought of that aspect of the subject. He was indeed so free from vanity or self-importance, that his only feeling in regard to the sudden appearance of the perpetual curate was respect and surprise. He would not be convinced otherwise even now. "He can do his ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... let as look at the present position of American women in society. In its best aspects social life may be said to be the natural outgrowth of the Christian home. It is something far better than the world, than Vanity Fair, than the Court of Mammon, where all selfish passions meet and parade in deceptive masquerade. It is the selfish element in human nature which pervades what we call the world; self-indulgence, enjoyment, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... own personal appearance, of which he always took the greatest care, he had a naive admiration that he did not disguise. His candor in this respect was comical; yet, strange to say, he was really without vanity. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... tell me if Gifford is really my commentator: it is too good to be true, for I know nothing would gratify my vanity so much as the reality; even the idea is too precious ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... all her scenes, withdrawn, Let noise and vanity be gone: In secret silence of the mind, My heaven, and there my ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... at bottom that I am not an abandoned fellow; and that there is a mixture of gravity in me. This, as I grow older, may increase; and when my active capacity begins to abate, I may sit down with the preacher, and resolve all my past life into vanity and vexation of spirit. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... four or five o'clock in the afternoon that we were relieved, and then in a fashion that highly flattered our vanity. The little Japanese colonel appeared in person with a small force of riflemen and some stretcher bearers, and he fell back in astonishment when he saw our occupation. We had pushed forward a lookout a ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Bouillon no longer affected any doubt about the authenticity of the discovery. All his friends complimented him upon it, the majority to see how he would receive their congratulations. It was a chaos rather than a mixture, of vanity the most outrageous, modesty the most affected, and joy the most immoderate which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not hesitate to anticipate the subject of the lost books, by frequent allusions to the history and customs of his own country. It must be added, that in no part of his writings do worse instances occur, than in this treatise, of that vanity which was notoriously his weakness, which are rendered doubly offensive by their being put into the mouth of his brother ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... show, too, how gayly bedight and feather-crested was Amoyah, wearing a choice garb of furs;—often, so great was his vanity, his face was elaborately painted as if for some splendid festive occasion, a dance or the ball-play, instead of merely to impress with his magnificence this simple domestic circle. Tus-ka-sah dated the events that followed from one night ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... robust, brave-looking man, of unaffected manners, bordering on plainness, though highly educated, and accustomed in Europe, where he was chaplain to Lord C——d, to the most aristocratic society. Perhaps it was owing to his knowledge of the vanity of aristocratic airs that he affected such a plainness of manners, being thoroughly tired of the odd, unmeaning ceremonials of fashion. It must be confessed, at any rate, that he entertained no small contempt for the mushroom ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... was too fond of good eating; it is in vain to deny it; his deliberately pulling out a plum with his finger and thumb, shows the epicure, not excited by the voracity of hunger, but evidently aiming to protract his enjoyment. The exclamation which follows savours of vanity; but when his youth is recollected, this will be deemed a venial error, and it must also be considered that his few faults were probably compensated by a constellation of excellencies. This poem has been imitated, (I will not say successfully, for its beautiful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... President, "two or three weeks would do me no good. I cannot fly from my thoughts—my solicitude for this great country follows me wherever I go. I do not think it is personal vanity or ambition, though I am not free from these infirmities, but I cannot but feel that the weal or woe of this great nation will be decided in November. There is no program offered by any wing of the Democratic party but that ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... deep of rich content, we rose to retrace our steps. For, spurred by vanity, we must be returning the way we had come, to show ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... have ordered it, prohibition in actuality instead of its pretence. The pretence has satisfied the rumsellers who sold, the rum-drinkers who drank, and the radicals who have boasted of the law, for all have got out of it what results were desired: appetite was catered to, vanity was satisfied, and graft engendered for the benefit of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... certainly ruin all mine, as well as the Company's affairs. His mismanagement and obstinacy have caused the loss of many lacs of my revenues, dissipated and embezzled, and every public consideration sacrificed to his vanity and private views. I beg to offer an instance in proof of my assertions, and to justify the hope I have that you will cause to be made good to me all the losses I have sustained by the maladministration and bad practices of your servants, according to all the account of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lying in wait for him, undertook his consolation. One morning Alfred made his appearance in spurs, with his hat very much on one side and a huge bunch of hair on the other, by which signs his brother understood that his vanity was satisfied. He was just eighteen. That a man of respectable life and notions like Paul de Musset should take these adventures as a matter of course makes it difficult for an American to find the point ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... and only bestowed upon those who particularly distinguished themselves, was soon looked upon as an honourable mark of approved merit; and served very powerfully to excite emulation among the competitors, I doubt whether vanity, in any instance, ever surveyed itself with more self-gratification, than did some of these poor people when they first put ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... those pleasant thoughts and delusions which alone render life agreeable, and to which even to the very last we would gladly cling; but what becomes of the swiftness of time, when the mind sees the vanity of human pursuits? which is sure to be the case when its fondest, dearest hopes have been blighted at the very moment when the harvest was deemed secure. What becomes from that moment, I repeat, of the shortness of time? I put not the question to those who have never known that trial; they ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... since there is now an end of concealment between us; that is, that Allan Gerard is so weak as to feel shame at being a cripple. So much so, that the idea is intolerable of first remeeting you amidst your household's pitying curiosity. I never used to know I had a personal vanity; I fancy it is not quite that, but rather the humiliation of the man who has always been well-dressed and who suddenly finds himself sent into public sight in a shabby, tattered garment. I had accepted my physical conventionality as part of my social ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... riding down Pennsylvania Avenue, he, inquired of me in a humorous way, "Sherman, what special hobby do you intend to adopt?" I inquired what he meant, and he explained that all men had their special weakness or vanity, and that it was wiser to choose one's own than to leave the newspapers to affix one less acceptable, and that for his part he had chosen the "horse," so that when anyone tried to pump him he would turn the conversation to his "horse." I answered that I would stick to the "theatre ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 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 ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... his appearance to indicate that he was destined for the cure of souls. The proud father said: 'He is in philosophy.' The young man had a twinkle in his eye that might have been philosophical. Neither of them had a suspicion of the vanity concealed in ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... notice of Rosenthal's playing in the Koelnische Zeitung?" and there is a battery of suspicious looks directed towards him whilst murmurs arise, "What an uncultured man! To talk 'shop' like a regular musician!" The fact being that the man had read everything, but was setting a trap for the vanity of these egregious persons. The newspapers, the managers and the artists before the public are to blame for this callow, shallow attempt at culture. We read that Rosenthal is a second Heine in conversation. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... doomings, to inspire a dangerous passion, or to occasion maladies. It is surprising that these superstitious and abominable practices should have gained entrance among Christians, and have been dreaded by persons who ought to have known their vanity and impotency. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... "is the most destructive and bloodthirsty of all the brute creation. They not only kill for food, but through vanity and a desire for personal adornment. I have even heard it said that they kill for amusement, being unable to restrain their murderous desires. In this they are more ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... a question?" she said; "is it not enough that I lead the way? Hast thou lived with heretics till thou hast learned to instal the vanity of thine own private judgment in place of due honour ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... for the moral wellbeing of the communities to which they penetrated. Wherever there was a group of log cabins, thither some Methodist circuit-rider made his way or there some Baptist preacher took up his abode. Their prejudices and narrow dislikes, their raw vanity and sullen distrust of all who were better schooled than they, count for little when weighed against their intense earnestness and heroic self-sacrifice. They proved their truth by their endeavor. They yielded ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... being such an official instrument. Readers 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, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... reason. Thus you will have created in the bosom of your home a comedy in five acts, in which you play, to your profit, the brilliant role of Figaro or Almaviva; and for some months you will amuse yourself so much the more, because your amour-propre, your vanity, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... all his anxiety ceasing with the responsibility, "I expect to be made a member of the New York Philosophical Society at least, which is learned company for a man who has never been at college, for discovering a port on the coast of Africa, which harbour, ladies and gentlemen, without too much vanity, I hope to be permitted to call Port Truck. If Mr. Dodge, however should think this too anti-republican, we will compromise the matter by calling it Port Truck and Dodge; or the town that no doubt will sooner or later arise on its banks, may be called Dodgeborough, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... father chose the son's version in preference to his own, and published it. But the tales of Perrault, nevertheless, show the embellishment of the mature master-Academician's touch in subduing the too marvelous tone, or adding a bit of court manners, or a satirical hit at the vanity and failings of man. ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... and ventilating is easily solved for those who desire its solution sufficiently to make the necessary appropriations. One quarter of what is commonly spent for vanity and deceit will be ample. Most men and women, at least the unthinking, prefer fashionable show rather than health! A fearful statement, but sadly true. There is doubtless more danger from impure air than from cold. Our senses warn us quickly of the latter; the prompting ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... out—eloquently, even beautifully expressed, and with such personal charm, magnetism, and strength, that their profound messages speed right through the minds and hearts, without as much as spattering the walls, and land right square in the middle of the listener's vanity. For all this is a part of manner and its quality is of splendor—for manner is at times a good bluff but substance a poor one and knows it. The discovered one's usual and first great outburst is probably the greatest truth that he ever utters. Fearlessly standing, he looks ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... thanks for the benefit, could not approve the inflated words of this extravagant praiser, and said that Gotrik was more generous than Gaut. Wishing to crush the empty boast of the flatterer, he chose rather to bear witness to the generosity of the absent than tickle with lies the vanity of his benefactor who was present. For another thing, he thought it somewhat more desirable to be charged with ingratitude than to support with his assent such idle and boastful praise, and also to move the king by the solemn truth than to beguile him with lying flatteries. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... no doubt have surmised her secret before; but although Van Berg was intensely proud, as we have seen, and had been rendered self-complacent and self-confident by the circumstances of his lot, he had none of this contemptible vanity. The discovery of Ida's love caused him far greater surprise than when he recognized his own, and it was a source of deep satisfaction to him that this modern and conventional Undine had received a nature of ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Rachel can hem all the ruffles. And Cousin Elizabeth said ruffles were vanity. I'd like my frocks just as well ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... back upon him turn; Eternal life I did not heed, For which I now do mourn. 69. Ah, golden time, I did thee spend In sin and idleness, Ah, health and wealth, I did you lend To bring me to distress. 70. My feet to evil I let run, And tongue of folly talk; My eyes to vanity hath gone, Thus did I vainly walk. 71. I did as greatly toil and strain Myself with sin to please, As if that everlasting grain Could have been found in these. 72. But nothing, nothing have I found But weeping, and alas, And sorrow, which doth now surround ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... prove that it isn't, I will—and he shall have the chance. To me he seems utterly good and dear; I've never seen anything about him that looked otherwise— except, of course, his calling himself an earl's son. Maybe that is only vanity, and no real harm, when you get to the bottom of it. I do not believe he is any such person as you have painted him. I want to see him. I want you to find him and send him to me. I will implore him to be honest with me, and tell me the whole ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in every life, as in Solomon's, when all seems vanity. Lady Mabel Ashbourne's life had been cloudless—a continual summer, an unchangeable Italian sky; and yet there were times when she was weary of it, when some voice within her murmured, "This is not enough." She was pretty, she was ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... render an account of what you did on earth, for what reasons will you be remembered amongst men? Not because you established justice and did good deeds—or even great ones—for your people, but because you plunged the world in war in order to feed your vanity, and laid waste Belgium and shattered the Cathedral of Rheims. Truly a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... wealthy persons, more through vanity or weakness than generosity, have sacrificed their avidity to ostentation—some by renouncing their winnings, others by purposely losing. The greater number of such eccentrics, however, seem to have allowed themselves to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the best of it: you shall pay your court by flattering the people present, and I mine by abusing those absent. Now, in spite of your youth and curling locks, I will wager that I succeed the best; for in vanity there is so great a mixture of envy that no compliment is like a judicious abuse: to enchant ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... truthfully said that the tableau lasted as long as she willed it to last. Perhaps she read in the three masculine faces turned toward her a triangular admiration, since it emanated from three given points, and took from it a modest pinch for her vanity. Vain she never was; still, she was not without a share of vanity, that vanity of the artless, needing no sacrifices, which is gratified and appeased by a smile. It pleased her to know that she was lovely; and it doubled her pleasure to realize ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... sottish as would make a doubt which of these to prefer in his choice? Well, then, even as we have done with these two men, so let us do with two families, two nations, or two kingdoms. Lay them both to the line of equity; which done, and duly considered, when it is done, here doth vanity lie bare to the view, and there shines felicity. Wherefore it is more convenient that such as fear and follow the law of the true God should have the swaying of such empires; not so much for themselves, their piety and their honesty (God's admired gifts) will ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... the most lovely and the most austere, attract the pen of the poet. All the nations of Christendom send forth their warriors to the army of the cross, and the whole world thus becomes his patrimony. Whatever interest the taking of Troy might possess for the Greeks, or the vanity of the Romans might attach to the adventures of AEneas, whom they adopted as their progenitor, it may be asserted that neither the Iliad nor the Aeneid possesses the dignity of subject, the interest at the same time divine and human, and the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... of her being by many years the youngest of his children, rendered natural, if not excusable, had yet been the only one about her, who had discernment to perceive, and authority to check her little ebullitions of vanity and self-will; she felt, as soon as the first natural tears were wiped away, that a restraint had been removed, and, scarcely knowing why, was too soon consoled for the greatest misfortune that could possibly have befallen one so dangerously gifted. Her ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... I see the possibility that a dispassionate reader may accuse me of taking too high a position, and using too warm a style—in rather giving way to the dictates of feeling than dwelling upon the proofs of my innocence; perhaps also, he may accuse me of vanity, in seeking to enhance my own zeal and claims. Without attempting to controvert these censures, I beg him to consider all the circumstances of my situation: my voyage, shipwreck, and anxiety to pursue the steps of our celebrated navigators. Let him suppose himself to ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... I have seen nothing, in the various hypotheses brought forward, which did not to me involve a greater improbability than the presumption of guilt. Take that, for witness, that Byron accused himself, through a spirit of perverse vanity, of crimes he had not committed. How preposterous! He would stain the name of a sister, whom, on the supposition of his innocence, he loved with angelic ardor as well as purity, by associating it with such an infamous accusation. Suppose there are some ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... 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 heart; so ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... with some pride upon the fact, and his vanity in this particular almost conquered his fear of the Afghan blade that still nestled close to his bull neck. He had drunk in friendship with the sailor, dropping a drug into his cup, and waiting till his eyes grew dim and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle—not for life; that might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and noble—but for superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own part, he cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to exertion by those near to him, who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of that saintly 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 forth Approval of my wish. "And ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced ...
— Advice to Young Musicians. Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln • Robert Schumann
... again, in foolish Thing that I am! which this nice, [del. 4th] {un-nice,} Gentleman wou'd advise you to change, into foolish that I am! He does not seem to have tasted the pretty Contempt of Herself, the submissive Diminutive, so distant from Vanity, yet allayed by the gentle Reluctance in Self-condemnation [del. 4th] {;—-and the other fine Touches of Nature: which wou'd All have been lost, in the grave, sober Sound of ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... woman to be silly and vain about her beauty. But vanity and conceit are qualities that exist in people quite independently of their gifts and graces. The ugly and stupid are perhaps more often conceited than the beautiful or the clever,—vain, it would appear, of their very ugliness and stupidity. Besides, is it ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... to the line. The Blues cheered as he raised his gun. He turned with a grand bow, and levelled his piece once more. But triumph is not always victory. His previous fine shooting had aroused his vanity, and now the girls' applause quite flustered him. He missed his aim! Worse still, not being learned in the polite art of mastering his feelings, he became vexed, and in the next round actually missed ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... friendly feeling between Morris and the boys increasing, for the mathematical master, with all his weakness and vanity, felt at heart somewhat touched by the respect and deference paid to ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... thy more retired condition, arguings, strugglings, and strivings with thy spirit to persuade thee of the vanity of what vain things thou lovest, and to win thee in thy soul to a choice of Christ Jesus and his heavenly things? Take heed and rebel not, for the day of God's grace and patience will not be past with thee till he saith his "Spirit shall strive no ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... Robert spoke he approached a looking-glass, before which he presented himself, and commenced adjusting his dress, especially his wig, a piece of vanity which nettled the quick and irritable feelings of the squire exceedingly. The inference he drew was, that this wealthy suitor of his daughter felt more about his own personal appearance before her than about the dreadful fate which he ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... she said slowly, "why you don't act like other people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you what other people have to get in crazy ways—making their work feed their vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But you can put your ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... solving of any difficulty under the colorable pretext that it is a question about shadows, and not about substances, and one therefore which it is creditable to a man's good sense to decline; a pleasant sophism this, which at the same time flatters a man's indolence and his vanity. For once, however, I repeat that I am not sorry to hear such a phrase in your mouth, Phaedrus: I have heard it from you before; and I will frankly tell you that you ought to be ashamed of such a plea, which is becoming to a slothful intellect, but very unbecoming to yours. On this account, it ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... found that my master had actually begun to build the lonely cottage, other feelings mixed with those I have described. Revenge, and calculations of interest, were added to flattered vanity and sincere gratitude for kindness. I knew nothing would enrage Dr. Flint so much as to know that I favored another, and it was something to triumph over my tyrant even in that small way. I thought ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... there is a frost; the Samoa book can only increase that—I can't help it, that book is not written for me but for Miss Manners; but I mean to break that frost inside two years, and pull off a big success, and Vanity whispers in my ear that I have the strength. If I haven't, whistle ower the lave o't! I can do without glory and perhaps the time is not far off when I can do without coin. It is a time coming soon enough, anyway; and I have endured some two and forty years without public shame, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for two days. The vanity for which she did penance whenever her madonna loveliness, consummated by the white robe and veil of her novitiate, tempted her to one of the little mirrors in the pupil's dormitory, was powerless to check the blighting flow. There had been moments when she had argued that her vanity ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... thereby taught, in his meditations, to slap, with similar heedlessness, his own sadder fortunes, as of still less vital consideration. To these muddy philosophers, men and bricks were equally of clay. "What signifies who we be—dukes or ditchers?" thought the moulders; "all is vanity and clay." ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... coming to Solomon's judgment," said the other, leaning back upon the cushions and clasping his hands above his head,—"what the preacher says—'Vanity of ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... drawn into the war if it was once started. Black Hawk's first move with his band in the spring of 1832 was to visit Keokuk's village, set up his war post and call for recruits. He wore a British uniform and displayed a British flag. This foolishness and gratification of vanity cost him dearly in the end. He made an impassioned speech and wrought the Indians up to such enthusiasm that they demanded that Keokuk join with Black Hawk. It was a critical moment for the young chief—even his life was in danger; but he was a more skillful master ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... indifferent to women, for the most part," the doctor said thoughtfully. "He is so free from vanity, and at the same time so reserved, that one has difficulty in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... contempt for the bike, she displayed even more anxiety than Pa. With those fat freaks at the Castle and if engagements continued scarce, how would they manage, later on, lost in that huge London, with no money, and a child to feed? Her vanity was wounded as well. She had dreamed of dazzling her sister-in-law, making them all burst with jealousy over the splendid engagement at the Castle; and now everything was slipping from their hands, on the very day of their arrival, and there was nothing for them but to sit ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... with affectionate eagerness as they entered, and embraced them one after the other, kissing them on the cheek; "her little prodigals returning to the house of their father and mother, after feeding on the husks of vanity in the gay world which was never ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... under foot the throne; but finding he could not succeed in forming a Republican Government in France as he had in America, he, like many others, lost his popularity with the demagogues, and, when too late, came to offer his services, through me, to the Queen, to recruit a monarchy which his vanity had undermined to gratify, his chimerical ambition. Her Majesty certainly saw him frequently, but never again would she put herself in the way of being betrayed by one whom ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... low. 'Two such ladies, in the snow, here! at Fort Washington! The charms of the surprise is manifold. What has procured it? mercy, or vanity? One or the other it must be. A sick friend?or a French mantua-maker? But you are never going to drive back to New York in ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... it, may denote either the purpose of creation, or the effect of any temporary compulsion: as, "We are made to be serviceable to others."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 167. "Man was made to mourn."—Burns. "Taste was never made to cater for vanity."—Blair. The primitive word make seldom, if ever, produces a construction that is thus equivocal. The infinitive following it without to, always denotes the effect of the making, and not the purpose of the maker; as, "He made his son Skjoeld ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... into fashion. She was moving slowly and in the manner of a person not accustomed to walking. She was a lady—Lynde saw that at a glance—probably some city-bred bird of passage, resting for the summer in this vale of health. His youthful vanity took alarm as he reflected what a comical picture he must present with that old saddle on his back. He would have dumped it into the barberry-bushes if he could have done so unobserved; but it was now ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... himself." I take the words from a late book on the so-called art of the mime by the editor of a magazine devoted to the stage. The learned author evades plumbing the psychological springs of this astounding and almost invariable vanity, this endless bumptiousness of the cabotin in all climes and all ages. His one attempt is banal: "a foolish public makes much of him." With all due respect, Nonsense! The larval actor is full of hot and rancid gases long before a foolish ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... from one end to the other, to put yourself in the way of receiving it. You have as many addresses in your chest as James the Second. As to what were your views (for if you are not great enough to have ambition, you are little enough to have vanity) they can not be directly inferred from expressions of your own; but the partisans of your politics have ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... ounces of gold in it. He told me he had found it on the Shotover River, in New Zealand. I didn't know what to say or do at first, and then he paid me such a compliment that I fairly tingled all over with vanity. 'Sure an' ye'll take the wee bit av a stone from me, miss,' he said. 'I'm a Kerry man meself, an' when I heard yez singin' "The Kerry Dance," meself and half a dozen more men from the oold sod felt that if ye were ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... say," adds Annie Firmin, "that Mr. Ed married her for her beautiful hair, it was auburn, and very long and wavy. He used to sit behind her in Church. She liked pretty clothes, but lacked the vanity to buy them for herself. I have a little blue hanging watch that he bought her one ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... swarthy face stiffened and his teeth bared themselves in a snarl of hurt vanity, but as he started to speak he changed his mind and sat for a while silent, watching the splendid figure she made as she leaned against the tree with a breast rising and falling to the storm tide ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... mad whirl of life, its dim confusion, Its jarring discords and poor vanity, Breathing like music over troubled waters, What gentle voice, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... disappointment and hurt vanity, and remarked: "No, I came on Friday." (He laid some ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... enrolled among the Salaminian demots. The dispersion of his ashes connecting him with the island as its oecist, may be construed, if not as the expression of a public vote, at least as a piece of affectionate vanity on the part of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... reflect upon you. Pardon my frankness but I know your type well. You are a disciple of this individual freedom cult which has swept the world. You have regarded rules as being made only for the thrill and pleasure of breaking. It has pleased your vanity that Mr. Mooney should have chosen your company rather than the observance of football regulations, A loyal Elliott girl, having a friend on the team, would have insisted on keeping training rules with him. But, not you! You've been a thoughtless ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... kings, which are mainly three: nay, he openly violated them (in this he did wrong, and acted in a manner unworthy of a philosopher, by indulging in sensual pleasure), and taught that all Fortune's favours to mankind are vanity, that humanity has no nobler gift than wisdom, and no greater punishment than folly. (112) See ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... to me to observe the almost imperceptible, but not less certain effect, wrought by this institution among the small community of Boston; and to note at every turn the humanising tastes and desires it has engendered; the affectionate friendships to which it has given rise; the amount of vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The golden calf they worship at Boston is a pigmy compared with the giant effigies set up in other parts of that vast counting-house which lies beyond the Atlantic; and the almighty dollar sinks into ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... humble opinion of Ch'i-chao, the troops are now all fully inspired with a sense of obedience to the Chief Executive. Who then can claim the right to drag our Great President into unrighteousness for the sake of vanity and vainglory? Who will dare disobey the behests of the Great President if he should elect to open his heart and follow the path of honour and unbroken vows? If to-day, as Head of the nation, he ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... a hard blow to my vanity that you r-ran. See, I tr-ry to comfort myself in this question: Perhaps you did not know it was I ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... up a place to sleep in; this lodging she occupied some time, and he used to bring her forth at whiles with secrecy at night. I meanwhile having brought this part of the Colossus almost to completion, left it alone, and indulged my vanity a bit by exposing it to sight; it could, indeed be seen by more than half Paris. The neighbours, therefore, took to climbing their house-roofs, and crowds came on purpose to enjoy the spectacle. Now there was a legend in the city that my castle had from olden ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... have the Vanity to hope your Approbation of this Comedy, 'twou'd be so current a Stamp to it, that none, who have the Honour to know You, wou'd pretend to dispute it's Merit; but tho' I'm satisfy'd in Your good Nature, I must be ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... good graces. The paternal wrath subsided in face of the famous sculptor's authority. All Besancon congratulated itself on having brought forth a future great man. In the first outburst of delight due to his flattered vanity, the miserly attorney supplied his son with the means to appear to advantage in society. The long and laborious study demanded by the sculptor's profession subdued for a long time Sarrasine's impetuous temperament and unruly genius. Bouchardon, foreseeing how violently the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Simpson in his "Philosophy of Education," "embraces both the animal and moral impulses. It regulates the former, and strengthens the latter, whenever gluttony, indelicacy, violence, cruelty, greediness, cowardice, pride, insolence, vanity, or any mode of selfishness shew themselves in the individual under training, one and all must be repressed with the most watchful solicitude, and the most skilful treatment. Repression may at first fail to be accomplished, unless by severity; but the instructor sufficiently enlightened ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... of human action, that he is most interesting; that he becomes the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius. Christianity uses language very liable to be misunderstood when it seems to tell men to do good, not, certainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but "that their Father which, seeth in secret may reward them openly." The motives of reward and punishment have come, from the misconception of language of this kind, to be strangely overpressed by many Christian moralists, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... my vanity the worst blow it has ever had in its life," David corrected her. "Look here, Margaret, I want you to know the truth about that. I—I stumbled into that, you know. She was so sweet, and before I knew it I had—I found myself in the attitude of making love to her. Well, ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Robbie to the gate to beckon you to be quick? You suppose you may do as you like, but you are mistaken, you lazy, ill-behaved wench. The new frock I had bought you shall be given to Nannie Cameron, and you shall wear your old one to the kirk. How will that suit your vanity? And you may be off to bed now directly, without any supper. There are twigs enough for a birch rod, my lady, if bed does not bring you to a better frame of mind. Run in now, and don't let me see your face before ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... had the vanity which all actors possess, was flattered by the compliment, and but poorly ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... a compound of peculiarities, like most men who are put into the world to do something great. He was amusingly vain, while his dainty vanity so obscured his judgment that he could not see through the most fulsome flattery, especially that of women. At the same time he was professionally keen, with a clear-seeing intellect, dashing, flawless courage, and a mind that quickly grasped the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... disposed to scoff at religion, and to work on Sundays, though not so openly as on other days of the week. He went to church now because he was proud of his wife; not out of devotion, but vanity. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... 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 at variance; than which nothing in my opinion can be ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... name and address, "Whewel. Coggershall," blazoned on its brass face, told the time, just as it had told the time when the Regent was ruling at St. James's in those days which seem so spacious, yet so trivial in their pomp and vanity. ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Helene de St. Gre at last. And what a fool she must think me! As I hurried along the dark banquettes this thought filled my brain for a time to the exclusion of all others, so strongly is vanity ingrained in us. After all, what did it matter what she thought,—Madame la Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour? I had never shone, and it was rather late to begin. But I possessed, at least, average common sense, and I had given no proof even ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Hodder, outgrown the dean's religion, or had it ever been his own? Was there, after all, such a thing as religion? Might it not be merely a figment of the fertile imagination of man? He did not escape the terror of this thought when he paused to consider his labour of the past two years and the vanity of its results. And little by little the feeling grew upon him, such being the state of his mind, that he ought not to continue, for the present at least, to conduct the services. Should he resign, or go away for a while to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lines, which I enclose to you, as I think they have a good deal of poetic merit; and Miss Nimmo tells me that you are not only a critic but a poetess. Fiction, you know, is the native region of poetry; and I hope you will pardon my vanity in sending you the bagatelle as a tolerable offhand jeu d'esprit. I have several poetic trifles, which I shall gladly leave with Miss Nimmo or you, if they were worth house-room; as there are scarcely two people on earth by whom ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... with gratified vanity. She wore an exquisite gown of white silk and lace made in an apparently simple but very smart fashion, which revealed the pure beauty of her white throat and rounded arms, increasing her loveliness tenfold. She wore white silk stockings and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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 to the peering ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... on record was a ship constructed for Ptolemy Philopater, which had forty banks of oars. This vessel was rather a royal yacht, built to gratify the vanity of the court, than a ship intended for any useful purpose. It was 424 feet in length, and 58 broad. The height of the forecastle from the water was 60 feet. The longest oars were 58 feet, and their handles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... almost with contempt, and readily admits the superiority of a Briton, on the seas and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?—where you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?—and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to dig a grave, to prepare wood for a funeral pile, and bring marble to cover his remains. Meanwhile he piteously bewailed his unhappy lot; sighed and shed tears copiously; and said, with a last impulse of vanity, "What a musician ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... me, to make me see company, and to take me abroad. She took an inordinate pride in that beauty with which God had formed me, to bless and praise Him. However it was perverted by me into a source of pride and vanity. Several suitors came to me; but as I was not yet twelve years my father would not listen to any proposals. I loved reading and shut myself up alone every ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... splendour, and to predict its probable destruction. Moreover she thought it rude in him that he had no word of praise for her own brilliant beauty, nor a glance of astonishment for her gorgeous palace. Her offended vanity induced her at last to force from him the praise he so obstinately withheld. "O, gracious Lady," said he rather reluctantly, "marvellous indeed is your home and fit for a queen. If you travelled far and near, you could not find its equal. But, my lady, among ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... themselves when they need it. Who supports the people's widows and orphans? It is too lamentable a fact that too many ministers do not accustom their children to labor, but indulge them in their pride, vanity, indolence, and in the imitation of rich, proud, and pompous people of the world. Behold how many ministers with their wives, in our time, surpassing humility—how grand their attire, how lofty their appearance, how great ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... affairs, Mango sent his brother with an army to besiege Bagdad; and Oulagon, raising his banner, marched towards the city of the caliph. Now it happened that Musteazem, being at once under the influence of the most egregious vanity and of the most sordid avarice, neither believed in his danger, nor had the heart to expend money to provide the means of defence, but devoted to the hoarding of the jewels, gold, and treasures with which his palace abounded, the whole time that should have ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... long and continued watches or vigils he had had; and in this place he says thus: "May it please our Lord to free me from this malady," he says. "He well knows that I did not suffer these fatigues in order to find treasures for myself, since surely I recognize that all is vanity which is done in this age, save that which is for the honor and service of God, which is not to amass pomps or riches, nor the many other things we use in this world, in which we are more inclined than to the things which can save us." These ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... Heraclitus and Democritus are to be one lot that laughter and tears will go together (Sale of Creeds, l3)—accords with our views of the emotional temperament. Chiron is impressive on the vanity of fruition (Dialogues of the Dead, 26). And the figuring of Truth as 'the shadowy creature with the indefinite complexion' (The Fisher, 16) is only one example ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... very different temper. With this man's knavery was strangely mingled an eccentric vanity which resembled madness. The thought that he had raised a rebellion and bestowed a crown had turned his head. He swaggered about, brandishing his naked sword, and crying to the crowd of spectators who had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anyone—but they do not understand peace as involving either mutual concessions or a balance of armaments. They want to be feared and they are at present engaged in making the necessary sacrifices. If on some occasion their national vanity is wounded, the confidence which the country will feel in the enormous superiority of its army will be favorable to an explosion of national anger, in the face of which the moderation of the Imperial ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... surrounds herself. Everything about her pleases the eye; in her presence you breathe, as it were, your native air. This woman is natural. There is no effort about her; she is aiming at no effect; her feelings are shown simply, because they are true. Frank herself, she does not wound the vanity of others; she accepts men as God made them; pitying the vicious, forgiving defects and absurdities, comprehending all ages, and vexed by nothing, because she has had the sense and tact to foresee all. Tender and gay, she gratifies before she consoles. You ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... himself—"the most valorous adventurer!"—but it is not himself that he has before him, but the idol of his imagination, the imaginary being whom he is acting. And this, that it is entirely a third person, excuses his heart from the otherwise inevitable charge of selfish vanity; and so by madness itself he preserves our esteem, and renders those actions natural by which he, the first ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... mournfully, but with little wish to gather them up again. Her husband never asked an explanation of this strange mood in his wife, but at times he seemed perfectly conscious of it, and to feel a hidden pleasure in her depression; for, though he did not love this woman, the old man's vanity was as quick as ever, and it pleased him to see that her own soul was taking the vengeance on itself that he had bartered off for a price. Miserable, selfish, old man! All the gold of his life had turned to paltry ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... but vanity in beauty, And nought but weakness in a fond caress, And pitied men whose views of Christian duty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... with indignation I have hurl'd At the pretending part of this proud world, Who, swollen with selfish vanity, devise False freedoms, formal cheats, and holy lies, Over ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... although about the same age. Naturally reverent, she had been raised in a family where religious observances never remitted; where grace was always spoken. In this home her looks were seldom alluded to in any way, and vanity was not in her. She had her lovelinesses; her hair was long and fair, her eyes were beautiful, and her skin was of exquisite purity, like her eyes. Her charm lay in her modesty and quaint dignity, her grave and gentle gaze, and ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... his country during the late war, or a sort of fermentation-product, to mix the figure, of a banal heresy launched upon him recently by his wife. This is the penalty that the man of intellectual curiosity and vanity pays for his violation of the divine edict that what has been revealed from Sinai shall suffice for him, and for his resistance to the natural process which seeks to reduce him to the respectable level of a ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... obliged to yield; not to me, nor to my powers of persuasion, but to the holy truth of which I was then the advocate. The child came, and I was there also to receive him, and to enforce by my presence—which I saw without vanity had great influence—a fitting reception. He was a pensive, clever, interesting little fellow; sensitive and affectionate, timid, gifted with wonderful powers, and of great beauty. There was a shy look in his eyes, which made me sure that he inherited ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
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