Percy Bysshe Shelley Quotes

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

Our brains are very animal but also very strange and egotistical. We're narcissistic.

The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.

The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.

The desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.

Vanity, not love, has been my folly.

Vanity is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are in fact still human.

It is difficult to divest one's self of vanity; because impossible to divest one's self of self-love.

Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of.

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.

What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.

Tilling the fertile soil of man's vanity.

Vanity makes people ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.

Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.

Vanitas vanitatum has rung in the ears Of gentle and simple for thousands of years; The wail still is heard, yet its notes never scare Either simple or gentle from Vanity Fair.

There is no restraining men's tongues or pens when charged with a little vanity.

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

Individuals motivated by self-interest, self-indulgence, and a false sense of self-sufficiency pursue selfish ambition for the purpose of self-glorification.

Vanity's ridiculous, but we all fall prey to it from time to time.

There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.

Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.

People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves.

Man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he's most assur d, glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.