vanity

Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.

Life is how you brew it. Wake up, you have a story to tell. Don't chase vain glory, your story will tell it. You owe it to yourself to write the lines of your story in the ink of purpose!

That which attracts the world must please and pander to the self-importance of man. The world itself is a vain show, and likes its own. Consequently there is nothing which so carries the mass of men along with it as that which flatters the vanity of the human mind. It may assume the lowliest air, but sinful man seeks his own honour and present exaltation.

...but doth not the person who expends vast sums in the furniture of his house or the ornaments of his person, who consumes much time and employs great pains in dressing himself, or who thinks himself paid for self-denial, labour, or even villany, by a title or a ribbon, sacrifice as much to vanity as the poor wit who is desirous to read you his poem or his play?

The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics,economics, and all the other branches of learning. Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings.

What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.

As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.

Vanity remains a feeble weaponThe delusional wearer of it considers herself strong

Only small men parade their learning, talk over their audience and air their superior knowledge. Only brutal men throw their strength about, and vain rich men display their wealth in ostentatious useless luxuries.

Premature independence is the daughter of conceit.

Why did you come in to-night with your heads in the air? 'Make way, we are coming! Give us every right and don't you dare breathe a word before us. Pay us every sort of respect, such as no one's ever heard of, and we shall treat you worse than the lowest lackey!' They strive for justice, they stand on their rights, and yet they've slandered him like infidels in their article. We demand, we don't ask, and you will get no gratitude from us, because you are acting for the satisfaction of your own conscience! Queer sort of reasoning!... He has not borrowed money from you, he doesn't owe you anything, so what are you reckoning on, if not his gratitude? So how can you repudiate it? Lunatics! They regard society as savage and inhuman, because it cries shame on the seduced girl; but if you think society inhuman, you must think that the girl suffers from the censure of society, and if she does, how is it you expose her to society in the newspapers and expect her not to suffer? Lunatics! Vain creatures! They don't believe in God, they don't believe in Christ! Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end by eating up one another, that's what I prophesy. Isn't that topsy-turvydom, isn't it infamy?

...most systems end up by making imagined humility into a form of vanity, so they end up with vanity just the same.

It's all about vanity, isn't it? I think it says something about people if they can't do it

Were you there?__he shook her head. __o. I was here in Nain having achild.___hen why do you weep as though you had part in hiscrucifixion? You had no part in it._____ like nothing better than to think I would haveremained faithful. But if those closest to him__isdisciples, his own brothers__urned away, who am I tothink I__ better than they and would have donedifferently? No, Marcus. We all wanted what wewanted, and when the Lord fulfilled his purpose ratherthan ours, we struck out against him. Like you. In anger.Like you. In disappointment. Yet, it is God__ will thatprevails.__e looked away. __ don__ understand any of this.___ know you don__. I see it in your face, Marcus. Youdon__ want to see. You__e hardened your heart againsthim._ She started to walk again.__s should all who value their lives,_ he said, thinking ofHadassah__ death.__t is God who has driven you here.__e gave a derisive laugh. __ came here of my ownaccord and for my own purposes.___id you?_ Marcus_ face became stony.Deborah pressed on. __e were all created incompleteand will find no rest until we satisfy the deepest hungerand thirst within us. You__e tried to satisfy it in your ownway. I see that in your eyes, too, as I__e seen it in somany others. And yet, though you deny it with your lastbreath, your soul yearns for God, Marcus LucianusValerian.__er words angered him. __ods aside, Rome showsthe world that life is what man makes of it.___f that__ so, what are you making of yours?___ own a fleet of ships, as well as emporiums andhouses. I have wealth._ Yet, even as he told her, heknew it all meant nothing. His father had come to thatrealization just before he died. Vanity. It was all vanity.Meaningless. Empty.Old Deborah paused on the pathway. __ome points theway to wealth and pleasure, power and knowledge. ButRome remains hungry. Just as you are hungry now.Search all you will for retribution or meaning to your life,but until you find God, you live in vain.

Never trust someone that claims they care nothing of what society thinks of them. Instead of conquering obstacles, they simply pretend they don't exist.

There is a code of behavior, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behooves the woman, whatever her own occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there smiling.

Cockiness _ the state subjective or intuitive state of self-assurance _ is a sign of ignorance. Maturity comes with encountering the horrible and learning about what a person can withstand.

How good it is when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this is the dead body of a bird or pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is the mere juice of grapes, and your purple edged robe simply the hair of a sheep soaked in shell-fish blood!And in sexual intercourse that it is no more than the friction of a membrane and a spurt of mucus ejected. How good these perceptions are at getting to the heart of the real thing and penetrating through it, so you can see it for what it is!This should be your practice throughout all your life: when things have such a plausible appearance, show them naked, see their shoddiness, strip away their own boastful account of themselves.Vanity is the greatest seducer of reason: when you are most convinced that your work is important, that is when you are most under its spell.