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All that glitters is not gold.
Latin Proverb
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Clean your finger before you point at my spots.
Ben Franklin (1706-1790)
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Clouds that thunder, do not always rain.
Armenian (on vanity and arrogance)
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Empty vessels make the most sound.
John Lydgate (c.1370-1451)
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Every ass loves to hear himself bray.
English (on vanity and arrogance)
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His bark is worse than his bite.
George Herbert (1593-1632)
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If someone gives you advice, it is in his own interest.
Tunisian Proverb
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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
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It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Chinese Proverb
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No one can make us feel inferior without our consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
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Nobody's perfect.
unknown
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The cat would eat fish but would not get her feet wet.
Chaucer (c.1343-1400)
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The drum makes a great fuss because it is empty.
Trinidadian (on vanity and arrogance)
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The fly on the water buffalo's back thinks he is taller than the water buffalo.
Tagalog (Filipino)(on vanity and arrogance)
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The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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Vanity blossoms but bares no fruit.
Nepalese (on vanity and arrogance)
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Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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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
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There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
William Shakespeare
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They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
Ambrose Bierce
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Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity.
Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine
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We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.
Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
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There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.
Mark Twain
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Vanity is often the unseen spur.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
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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
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Vanity is the quicksand of reason.
George Sand
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Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
Joseph Conrad
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Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.
Louis Kronenberger
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What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
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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
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We think we are being interesting to others when we are being interesting to ourselves.
Jack Gardner
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The vanity of others runs counter to our taste only when it runs counter to our vanity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.
Julian Casablancas
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I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round.
Muhammad Ali
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It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.
Thomas More
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We say little if not egged on by vanity.
Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
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It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish.
Luc de Clapier de Vauvanargues
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We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
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Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
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No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
Anthony Trollope
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others.
Hugh Blair
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However anxious one is to reach one's goal, one can excuse delays on the route when these are caused by ovations.
Alexandre Dumas