Helen Hunt Jackson Quotes

Wounded vanity knows when it is mortally hurt; and limps off the field, piteous, all disguises thrown away. But pride carries its banner to the last.

Would you hurt a man keenest strike at his self-love?

Take pride away from a man and you might as well run a knife through his heart.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

I have a natural resistance to being humiliated.

Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.

My pain threshold is quite high when it comes to vanity.

Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.

Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

Wounds to the pride are remembered long after wounds to the flesh.

Pride is handsome, economical; pride eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for pride.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled.

If you don't like me, there must be something wrong with you.

Every one at the bottom of his heart cherishes vanity; even the toad thinks himself good-looking,--"rather tawny perhaps, but look at his eye!

... many a heart is caught in the rebound ... Pride may be soothed by the ready devotion of another; vanity may be excited the more keenly by recent mortification.

No man who says, 'I'm as good as you,' believes it. He would not say it if he did.

Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.

I would much rather fight pride than vanity, because pride has a stand-up way of fighting. You know where it is. It throws its black shadow on you, and you are not at a loss where to strike. But vanity is that delusive, that insectiferous, that multiplied feeling, and men that fight vanities are like men that fight midges and butterflies. It is easier to chase them than to hit them.

Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary.

The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

I have been vain since birth. I expected other people to like what I did, although my vanity has definitely diminished over the years.

Nobody calls me silly. That is not a word that applies to me.