Top 100 Vanity All Is Vanity Quotes
#1. Why do you beat the air and run in vain? Every occupation has a purpose, obviously. Tell me then, what is the purpose of all the activity of the world? Answer, I challenge you! It is vanity of vanity: all is vanity.
Saint John Chrysostom
#2. It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.
Thomas More
#3. The churchyard is the market place where all things are rated at their true value, and those who are approaching it talk of the world and its vanities with a wisdom unknown before.
Richard Baxter
#4. Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man's depraved nature.
William Prynne
#5. A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
Honore De Balzac
#6. We all of us must come to terms with what and who we are, and recognize that this wisdom is not going to earn us any praise, that life is not going to pin a medal on us for recognizing and enduring our own vanity or egoism or baldness or our potbelly.
Sandor Marai
#7. The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief weare inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#9. Bhakti is the one essential thing.
To be sure, God exists in all beings.
Who, then is a devotee? He whose mind dwells on God.
But this is not possible as long as one has egotism and vanity.
The water of God's grace cannot collect
on the high mound of egotism. It runs down.
Ramakrishna
#10. Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!...
Leo Tolstoy
#11. All success in life comes to naught if it is laced with vanity.
Andy Paula
#12. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
Qoheleth
#13. But, as I understand it, your God is a universal God; He is God on all suns and all planets. Surely, then, He must have universal form? Would it not be a staggering vanity to imagine that He can manifest Himself only in the form that is appropriate to this particular, not very important planet?
John Wyndham
#14. All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.
Berthold Auerbach
#15. The point is that all of life is "pointless" - vanity or emptiness - unless something else is involved that transcends the pointlessness.
Jim Berg
#16. I'm hoping my children will save me from my vanity. If it doesn't, plastic surgery is an option ... It sucks to have to grow older. We all have to accept it.
Gwen Stefani
#17. 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.
Osamu Dazai
#18. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man;
Thomas Paine
#19. Vanity, revenge, loneliness, boredom, all apply: lust is one of the least of the reasons for promiscuity.
Mignon McLaughlin
#20. We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even to those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.
Blaise Pascal
#21. Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#22. [ ... ] But then,
What is not vain, by God, in lives of men?
All is in vain! We play at blind man's buff
Until hard edges break into out path.
Man life's is error. Where, then, is relief?
In shedding tears or wrestling down my grief?
Jan Kochanowski
#23. There is a bit of vanity hiding somewhere within every one of us," Che wrote afterward. "It made me feel like the proudest man on earth that day." From then on, to all but his closest friends, he was Comandante Che Guevara.
Anonymous
#24. The problem is hedonism. The problem is the preening vanity and selfishness of 'coming out,' of parading private inclinations, of a kind that repel normal people, as if those inclinations were, all by themselves, marks of authenticity and virtue, of suffering and oppression.
John Derbyshire
#25. I think the industry is oblivious to the fact that most people listen to all kinds of stuff. I personally don't know of anyone who listens to only one genre of music. It's vanity because no one does.
Keith Urban
#27. Such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener.
Francis Bacon
#30. [Vanity] is an unrecognised form of stupidity, you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that's a glaring form of stupidity.
Pascal Mercier
#31. In all we do, and hear, and see,
Is restless Toil and Vanity.
While yet the rolling earth abides,
Men come and go like ocean tides
Anne Bronte
#32. I have frequently experienced myself the mood in which I felt that all is vanity; I have emerged from it not by any philosophy, but owing to some imperative necessity of action.
Bertrand Russell
#33. I've loved 'Vanity Fair' since I was 16 years old. You know, we're all colonial hangovers in India, steeped in English literature. It is one of these novels that I read under the covers at my convent boarding school in Simla.
Mira Nair
#34. The vanities of all others may gradually die out, but the vanity of a saint regarding his sainthood is hard indeed to wear away.
Ramakrishna
#35. Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the master's sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his pre-eminence.
Robert Greene
#36. All that is in the world is vanity except to love God and serve him only.
Thomas A Kempis
#37. You're very smart. Smarter than I am, I hope. Though of course I have such incredible vanity that I can't really believe that anyone is actually smarter than I am. Which means that I'm all the more in need of good advice, since I can't actually conceive of needing any.
Orson Scott Card
#38. Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#39. This world is all vanity. It is a tempest hurling us from one sorrow to another.
Jocelyn Murray
#40. If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity.
Yousuf Karsh
#41. Vanity is easily forgiven, for we are all vain, and even as we laugh at the weakness of others we feel that their vanity has touched the responding chord of our own.
Arthur Lynch
#42. Nothing makes a man more aware of his capabilities and of his limitations than those moments when he must push aside all the familiar defenses of ego and vanity, and accept reality by staring, with the fear that is normal to a man in combat, into the face of Death.
Robert S. Johnson
#43. Now I feel and I say all the time that vanity is, like, long gone. I'm really free of worrying about what I look like, because it's out of my shaky hands. I don't control it. So why would I waste one second of my life worrying about it?
Michael J. Fox
#44. Words alike make the destiny of empires and of individuals. Ambition, love, hate, interest, vanity, have words for their engines, and need none more powerful. Language is a fifth element - the one by which all the others are swayed.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#45. You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing - your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal.
David Foster Wallace
#46. You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#47. If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
William James
#48. So much of writing is fed by vanity and the feeling that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world and it has not been done before and only you can do it. Without these feelings, many writers would not be able to write anything at all.
Pankaj Mishra
#49. A headstrong maid, that she is-and won't listen to no advice at all. Pride and vanity have ruined many a cobbler's dog.
Thomas Hardy
#51. He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman had been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn't wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in love.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#52. And yet, after all, what is posthumous fame? Altogether vanity.
Marcus Aurelius
#53. For me the motley and the bauble, yea,
Though all be vanity, as the Preacher saith,
The mirth of love be mine for one brief breath!
Frederic Lawrence Knowles
#54. All I have left is my anger at the foolishness of the world. The unnecessary cruelties, the pomposity and vanity of people who should know better. Most of the time I just want to shake some sense into the world.
Stephen Hunt
#55. All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men - more so, if possible.
Jerome K. Jerome
#56. FOR THAT WHICH BEFALLETH THE SONS OF MEN BEFALLETH BEASTS; AS THE ONE DIETH, SO DIETH THE OTHER; YEA, THEY ALL HAVE ONE BREATH; SO THAT A MAN HATH NO PREEMINENCE ABOVE A BEAST: FOR ALL IS VANITY. FOR
Robert Cowan
#57. There is a danger that threatens everyone in the church, all of us. The danger of worldliness. It leads us to vanity, arrogance and pride.
Pope Francis
#58. Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.
Veronica Roth
#59. After all, is a gentleman's library of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves anything more than a vanity?
Billy Collins
#60. Fashion is everywhere and about everything. It is folly, vanity and the fun of it all. It is disguise, innuendo, and cunning. It is mean, gorgeous and ambitious, and definitely the last word for the next few seconds.
Barbara Kruger
#61. I hate to admit it, but governmental deviousness is usually better explained by incompetence, vanity, and the need to protect one's job at all costs.
Jasper Fforde
#63. It is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business, and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess.
Seneca The Younger
#64. Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
William Hazlitt
#65. All is vanity, all is delusion, except those infinite heavens.
Leo Tolstoy
#66. Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God. Perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity.
Brother Lawrence
#67. This nation is like all the others that have been spewed upon the earth
ready to shout for any cause that will tickle its vanity or fill its pocket. What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!
- Letter to J. H. Twichell, 1/29/1901
Mark Twain
#68. Vanity is normal in performers. Does it bother other people? All the time. But nine times out of 10, that says more about them than you.
Tom Hardy
#69. Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation.
Helen Keller
#70. Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.
Rick Santorum
#71. Roy: The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through whatever we might become. All else is vanity.
Tony Kushner
#72. There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#74. The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory; glory is due to those only who dare to associate with pain, and have trampled pleasure under their feet.
Francois Fenelon
#75. Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide,
First strip off all her equipage of Pride,
Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress,
Or Learning's Luxury or idleness,
Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain
Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.
Alexander Pope
#77. A brushstroke of vanity is good to add into the mix, to balance your timidity. We're all blessed with a lot of timidity and a lot of worry and anxiety, and vanity is a good antidote.
Mel Brooks
#78. But here is the single greatest thing about the 'Vanity Fair' party: There are uniformed In-N-Out Burger employees circulating the room with trays of cheeseburgers all night long.
Diablo Cody
#79. I do not know
What kind of my obedience I should tender.
More than my all is nothing; nor my prayers
Are not words holy hallowed, nor my wishes
More worth than empty vanities; yet prayers and wishes
Are all I can return.
William Shakespeare
#80. Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinion of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#81. There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.
Tennessee Williams
#82. The only sure way of avoiding these evils [vanity and boasting] is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, youare obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause.
Lord Chesterfield
#83. Man may think human intellect and reasoning are almighty, that the brain is able to comprehend all truths of the world; but the verdict of God's Word is, vanity of vanities.
Watchman Nee
#84. Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another.
George Eliot
#85. Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but vanity, let us have the pride of good, and above all let us never despair.
Alexandre Dumas-fils
#86. It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#87. The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
Michel De Montaigne
#88. Mirror Mirror on the Wall,
Who's fairest of them all?
I'm Mona Lisa and She is plain,
But the truth is - we all are Vain.
Saru Singhal
#89. Every noble action is selfish. Some selfish actions are nobler than others. But they are all selfish. And as such there can be no action purely noble anyway. Even the nobility in God's great philosophical intentions is bounded by his vanity.
Kedar Joshi
#90. Either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it ...
Leo Tolstoy
#91. Of all the weaknesses that beset a man, vanity is the most deadly. For through vanity can a wise man turn to folly.
Raymond E. Feist
#92. Every man's occupation should be beneficial to his fellow-man as well as profitable to himself. All else is vanity and folly.
P.T. Barnum
#94. I know this kind of person. I've known them all my life. They get the sympathy of others with what passes for insecurity. But what really motivates them is a vanity so immense most of us can not conceive of it. Insecurity is simply a disguise.
Anne Rice
#95. In reference to Persepolis and all palaces, cities and temples of the past: could these wonders have come into being without that suffering? without the overseer's whip, the slave's fear, the ruler's vanity? was not the monumentality of past epochs created by that which is negative and evil in man?
Ryszard Kapuscinski
#96. But it is none the less true that men do not come to God by way of their own reason; neither do they in this way get near to him, because all their intelligence is but vanity. Whence
John Calvin
#97. Quomondo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Evelyn Waugh
#98. The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.
Immanuel Kant
#99. It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
Thomas Paine
#100. The irony of man's fate reflected in his image: that all men, from beggar to emperor, from harlot to queen, from ragged clerk to Pope, must come to this. No matter what their poverty or power in life, all is vanity, equalized by death.
Barbara W. Tuchman
