What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.
quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Vanity Kills
Have you heard the latest? (you love you)
Have you seen who just walked in (vain vain vain vain)
(uh huh, you love you) right over there
Shes so vain vain vain vain
Vain vain vain vain
Im glad youve found someone who loves you
But sad to say that someone is you
And now perhaps youll both be happy
Guess that makes two just you and you
Someone who cares so much about you
But does that someone have to be you
Bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom yeah
Bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom yeah
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, you love you
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, it kills
So glad I found you glancing in the mirror
Gazing deeply at loves patron saint
Admire the frame, survey the scenery
Or are you just inspecting the paint
Temptations strong modestys so weak
High on yourself humble you aint
Bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom yeah
Bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom yeah
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, you love you
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, you love you
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills (no way)
Vanity kills, you love you
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, it kills
So vain, vain vain vain
You love you (yeah)
Give it, give it us, give it us
So vain, so vain, so vain
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, you love you
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, you love you
Vanity kills, it dont pay bills
Vanity kills, you love you
Vanity kills, if the blast dont get you
Then the fallout will
You love you
song performed by by Abc

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Have pride and vanity
Service and sacrifice can be the base
For your pride and not your caste or creed.
Have pride that you have helped someone rise
And not that you have conquered someone.
Pride is that one feels about oneself high.
Show vanity for your simplicity;
Show not vanity for your affluence.
Show vanity for your affinity;
Show not vanity for your elegance.
Vanity is that one shows oneself high.
11.07.208
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Oh Vanity
Oh vanity oh vanity
You only like to read
About beauty
Little about pain
Or hateful disdain
Am I so vain
Am I so shallow
To refuse a
Dark place to go
I'll lend a hand
To those in need
I'll give my love
While looking up
Is this not positivity
Not vanity
poem by Harriet James

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Night Will Soon Be Lost
THE NIGHT WILL SOON BE LOST
The night will soon be lost
Another night of so many already gone
Who knows how many left?
I have seen far more nights
Than I will ever see again
Mostly it’s done
I have some nights left
But not so many
That I should waste it wholly
On frivolity
I’ll try now
To write a poem down
So this night
Will not have been wholly in vain
But who knows
Vanity of vanity of vanity
Perhaps for all nights and all poems- vanity
I am writing this poem down nonetheless
It flows as if it knows it has real life within it
I don’t know now how long this night will last
Or how many nights I have left
I have written a poem
Will G-d save it as if it were not vanity to vanity?
I do not know.
poem by Shalom Freedman

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
If I Could Only Bear My Own Silence
IF I COULD ONLY BEAR MY OWN SILENCE
If I could only bear my own silence
If I could only be quiet and still
If I could only let the world say itself
Without my commentary,
If I could only be wise enough
To know all my words
‘Vanity of vanity of vanity.
’
Oh again and again and again
As now
I must say that I am -
But in this world of billions now
And billions more before
And billions more after
Why me?
Why my name?
‘Vanity of vanities’
All aloud again.
poem by Shalom Freedman

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Complaints Return Upon Themselves
THE COMPLAINTS RETURN UPON THEMSELVES
The complaints return upon themselves
There is only old age under the sun.
Vanity of vanity of vanities
I am the greatest vanity of all.
Even the morning light
That usually wakes my soul
Cannot break the dim foreboding
Of Hell on the horizon.
I will die
I will go down
I know.
But my People
This Land
Will You Save us?
poem by Shalom Freedman

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Vanity
Some call it vanity
I call it complete sanity
I belong to a different league
A goddess with a cocktail of different wigs
Far too intelligent for any audience
To mass entertain will be an utter nuisance
I'm too intelligent to respond
It’s only with a certain class that I bond
For I am far too glamorous
To be anything but humorous
I belong to a group called animosity
A simple case of personal philosophy
Where I outclass modernity
My body built to perfection
I know it is the universal intention
Some call it vanity
I call it complete sanity
I am so artistically brainy
That my thoughts are far from grainy
I belong to a different breed
I simply will not spoon-feed
If you are born empty inside
I’m afraid I can’t take you for a ride
They refer to my vanity as a beast
I stare at my vanity with sanity as a feast
poem by Sylvia Chidi

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Take Vanity Away
Oh take vanity away from me.
Make pure only my heart.
For vanity takes away from me
the most important part.
Let him that sees me, see past my form
and concentrate on my soul.
For that is of my body
is never the starring role.
What lies within the strength of my mind
is what should be possessed,
not the image I show to you,
not the way I'm dressed.
For outward appearance cannot compare
to the inner beauty inside.
Please let vanity be cast away
and take away my pride.
poem by Edwina Reizer

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.
quote by Henri Bergson

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.
quote by Gustave Flaubert

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

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.""
quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.
quote by Louis Kronenberger

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Kohelet Again It Is Not Just The Vanity Of Vanities
It is not just the vanity of vanities
It is not just the truth of the contradictions
It is not just ‘a time for this and a time for that'
It is not just ‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth before the evil days grow nigh'
It is not just ‘Better a living dog than a dead lion'
It is not just ‘Enjoy your days with the wife of your youth'
It is not just the eternal truths
And the poem of the long home-
And the turning again and again of the wind and the water
And the sun and the sound-
It is not just the sheer beauty of the thing and its words
Despite an occasional archaic ugliness
It is not just the truth that cannot be gone beyond
Because this is what life is and what the grave is and what we are
It is not just too ‘that the making of many books much less the making of many poems is a weariness of the flesh-
It is that after all the years I have arrived at the time
Where the golden bowl may be broken and the voice of the grinders made low
And man return to his eternal home-
As in youth I in old age read and reread the words of the Preacher
And know myself and all of us in them-
Oh the greatest Literature is here
And part of it I repeat in my fragmented self
While the long distance of life goes beyond
In words which will be heard for the first time -
For this too is not everything
And what we do not know yet
Kohelet too does not know-
And for all of us as God permits
Who knows what will come
After the Vanity-
If it is after all Vanity
And the end of it all?
poem by Shalom Freedman

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
What Will I Do Today And What Will I Do Tomorrow?
What will I do today and what will I do tomorrow
And what will I do for the rest of my life?
Write and write and write
Until I can no longer write –
And even if this writing is never known?
And even if this writing is wholly lost?
And even if this writing is not really worth very much?
And even if it is known only a little?
And even if others are highly critical of it?
And even if it seems vanity of vanity and only vanity?
Write and write and write
To the end of my life.
poem by Shalom Freedman

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Dream Land
I
To think that men of former days
In naked truth deserved the praise
Which, fain to have in flesh and blood
An image of imagined good,
Poets have sung and men received,
And all too glad to be deceived,
Most plastic and most inexact,
Posterity has told for fact;
To say what was, was not as we,
This also is a vanity.
II
Ere Agamemnon, warriors were,
Ere Helen, beauties equalling her,
Brave ones and fair, whom no one knows,
And brave or fair as these or those.
The commonplace whom daily we
In our dull streets and houses see,
To think of other mould than these
Were Cato, Solon, Socrates,
Or Mahomet or Confutze,
This also is a vanity.
III
Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemain,
And he before, who back on Spain
Repelled the fierce inundant Moor;
Godfrey, St. Louis, wise and pure,
Washington, Cromwell, John, and Paul,
Columbus, Luther, one and all,
Go mix them up, the false and true,
With Sindbad, Crusoe, or St. Preux,
And say as he was, so was he,
This also is a vanity.
IV
Say not: Behold it here or there,
Or on the earth, or in the air.
That better thing than can be seen
Is neither now nor e’er has been;
It is not in this land or that,
But in a place we soon are at,
Where all can seek and some can find,
Where hope is liberal, fancy kind,
And what we wish for we can see,
Which also is a vanity.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough

Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.
quote by Jane Austen

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
When Vanity Becomes One's Face
Unfortunately,
When vanity becomes the face...
Of one parading that around others.
A charading done that has taken place,
Becomes the accepted familiarity.
And when the time does come,
For that one to reveal underneath a mask...
Worn to masquerade reality.
What is seen is regarded as fake.
Leaving one without choices or options to make.
Unfortunately...
When vanity becomes the face,
Of one parading that around others.
A charading done that has taken place,
Becomes accepted familiarity.
When vanity becomes one's face,
Escaping these presentations...
Is difficult to erase to replace with truth.
Since deceivers only deepen,
A distrusting of them and whatever they do.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!