50 Vanity Quotes To Balance Pride And Appreciation

Are you in the mood for some awesome vanity quotes?

Vanity is a powerful force of nature that human beings must learn to harness. 

Tell us your favorite

Is being vain so bad?

Vanity impacts the world more than we may realize.

Consumer scientists at the University of Southern Illinois suggest that vanity is a dominant driving force in consumer habits.

Shoppers continuously spend more than they have on expensive name brands.

Why? Vanity, of course.

Their studies show that the more a person cares about impressing other people, the more likely they will overspend. 

If our inner thoughts are concerned with what others think, we seek outwardly recognizable symbols of status.

Yet, vanity can drive a person to want to look good for others while pushing them to look good for themselves. 

What makes a person vain?

Check out our insightful and thought-provoking quotes about vanity below to find out. 

If you enjoy this article, check out our collection of materialistic quotes about the lure of more stuff.

Top 10 short vanity quotes

1. “Vanity plagues us all.” — Richard Lawson

2. “Vanity is the quicksand of reason.” — George Sand

3. “Vanity is an old and venerable habit.” — Catherynne M. Valente

4. “Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.” — Benjamin Franklin

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5. “Vanity is always running a campaign to canonize itself.” — Jeffrey F. Kirby

6. “There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.” — Henry Ward Beecher

7. “My vanity is excessive: wherever I sit is the head of the table.” — H. L. Mencken

8. “Vanity indeed is a venial error, for it usually carries its own punishment with it.” — Junius

9. “The vain man is like a painter who continually draws but his own picture.” — Edward Counsel

10. “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.” — Jane Austen

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Funny vanity quotes

11. “Vanity has many outlets in conversation, but great I is the front door.” — John Thornton

12. “I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.” — Lionel Shriver

13. “He had the vanity to believe men did not like him — while men simply did not know him.” — Gustave Flaubert

14. “There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.” — Edward Bulwer Lytton

15. “Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that sh*t. Wanna fly, you got to give up the sh*t that weighs you down.” — Toni Morrison

16. “Vanity is becoming a nuisance; I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I’m not ready for that yet.” — Margaret Atwood

17. “There is no limit to the vanity of this world; each spoke in the wheel thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it.” — H. W. Shaw

18. “A vain man is a nauseous creature: he is so full of himself that he has no room for anything else, be it never so good or deserving.” — William Penn

19. “Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One’s life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic.” — Michael Ayrton

20. “Vanity is something we all have, but few like to admit. But is having the sole goal of looking better in your birthday suit really such a bad thing in this day and age?” — Stuart Marsh

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Vanity quotes and sayings

21. “A person may be proud without being vain.” — Jane Austen 

22. “Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.” — Madame Swetchine 

23. “Such vanity is always punished by nature, which vindicates its rights.” — George Sand 

24. “O vanity! How little is thy force acknowledged or thy operations discerned!” — Henry Fielding

25. “Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.” — Jane Austen

26. “Beyond the games, it plays, however, the reality is that vanity is a cancer within the human heart.” — Jeffrey F. Kirby

27. “This is vanity: living to pretend, living to seem, living to appear. And this makes the soul restless.” — Pope Francis

28. “Vanity is the fruit of ignorance; it thrives most in subterranean places, never reached by the air of heaven and the light of the sun.” — J. W. Ross

29. “It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

30. “Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honored, and run after, not because of one’s personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one’s individual existence.” — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

Vain and vanity quotes from the Bible

31. “Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.” — Proverbs 31:30

32. “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” — Galatians 2:21

33. “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” — Philippians 2:3

34. “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.” — Matthew 6:7

35. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” — Psalm 127:1

36. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” — Deuteronomy 5:11

37. “Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.” — Psalms 39:6

38. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers.” — 1 Peter 1:18-19

39. “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” — 1 Corinthians 15:58

40. “What are you doing, you devastated one? Why dress yourself in scarlet and put on jewels of gold? Why highlight your eyes with makeup? You adorn yourself in vain. Your lovers despise you; they want to kill you.” — Jeremiah 4:30

More vanity quotes and sayings

41. “Vanity is the flatterer of the soul.” — Edward Counsel 

42. “You are vain and wicked—as a genius should be.” — Gunter Grass

43. “So to me, there’s a difference between vanity and arrogance that should start to be recognized.” — Marie Southard Ospina

44. “Vain is equivalent to empty; thus, vanity is so miserable a thing that one cannot give it a worse name than its own.” — Chamfort

45. “Foolish men always believe that a little knowledge will give them control over the world, but it is no more than a display of their vanity.” — J. P Vinluca

46. “The vanity that makes us swell up. The vanity that does not have long life because it is like a soap bubble. The vanity that does not give us true gain.” — Pope Francis 

47. “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” — Dale Carnegie

48. “Lies of vanity are undoubtedly the most common lies; because vanity is one of the most powerful springs of human action and is usually the besetting sin of everyone.” — Amelia Opie

49. “Just because vanity is human does not mean we shouldn’t try to temper it, to rein it in. Otherwise, if we let our sweaty egos run rampant, we wouldn’t have much of a society.” — Richard Lawson

50. “Let us see a true-hearted man crushing that vermin called vice, braving that luxury, scorning with easy and simple logic the silly vanity which induces men to appear strong in absurdity and powerful in the abuse of life.” — George Sand

What did you learn from these vanity quotes?

American writer Richard Lawson once said, “Just because vanity is human does not mean we shouldn’t try to temper it, to rein it in.”

Vanity can work for us or against us. 

Social comparison theory is a term coined by psychologists to describe how we constantly evaluate ourselves through other people. 

We make ourselves feel better by viewing ourselves as more fortunate than others.

The reverse of this is true.

In upward social comparison, we feel terrible about ourselves because we believe someone else is outdoing us. 

Both processes have profound impacts on us.

In upward social comparison, we tear ourselves down because we feel we are being outworked or outdone by our friends, family, co-workers, or partners. 

Downward social comparison helps us cope by allowing us to see a bad situation as not so bad by comparing our conditions to others who have it worse.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these vanity quotes and sayings?

Let us know in the comment section below.

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