A big tree attracts the gale.
Chinese (on pride)
All that glitters is not gold.
Latin Proverb
Clean your finger before you point at my spots.
Ben Franklin (1706-1790)
Clothes don’t make the man.
unknown
Clouds that thunder, do not always rain.
Armenian (on vanity and arrogance)
Empty vessels make the most sound.
John Lydgate (c.1370-1451)
Every ass loves to hear himself bray.
English (on vanity and arrogance)
His bark is worse than his bite.
George Herbert (1593-1632)
If someone gives you advice, it is in his own interest.
Tunisian Proverb
It is better to enjoy the cool breeze of others waving your flag, than to suffer the sweat of doing it yourself.
L.D. Seese (1992) thanks to J. Martin
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Chinese Proverb
No one can make us feel inferior without our consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Nobody’s perfect.
unknown
The cat would eat fish but would not get her feet wet.
Chaucer (c.1343-1400)
The drum makes a great fuss because it is empty.
Trinidadian (on vanity and arrogance)
The fly on the water buffalo’s back thinks he is taller than the water buffalo.
Tagalog (Filipino)(on vanity and arrogance)
The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Vanity blossoms but bares no fruit.
Nepalese (on vanity and arrogance)
Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.
Miguel de Unamuno
There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
William Shakespeare
They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
Ambrose Bierce
Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.
Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine
We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don’t care for.
Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.
Mark Twain
Vanity is often the unseen spur.
William Makepeace Thackeray
There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired – even I who write this, and you who read this.
Blaise Pascal
Vanity is the quicksand of reason.
George Sand
Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
Joseph Conrad
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.
Louis Kronenberger
What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.
Bertrand Russell
We think we are being interesting to others when we are being interesting to ourselves.
Jack Gardner
The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.
Julian Casablancas
I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round.
Muhammad Ali
It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.
Thomas More
We say little if not egged on by vanity.
Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish.
Luc de Clapier de Vauvanargues
We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
Anthony Trollope
If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity. But I mean by ‘vanity’ only that they appreciate their own worth. Without this kind of vanity they would not be great. And with vanity alone, of course, a man is nothing.
Yousef Karsh
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
Mirrors are dangerous things. They can just as easily tell us what we don’t like as what we do. Yet in truth you can’t tell anything from a reflection, as a reflection is actually empty.
Susie Staplehurst
Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It’s a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is.
Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War
There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don’t.
Rabih Alameddine
Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others.
Hugh Blair
However anxious one is to reach one’s goal, one can excuse delays on the route when these are caused by ovations.
Alexandre Dumas
