Sentence Examples:
And then again I played, and I felt my soul as I played, and the old dreams swept over me, and I said that it wasn't anything to do with personal vanity that made me crave for the big gifts of success; that it was my art, and that I must find myself in my art or die.
It wasn't that I was particularly anxious to appear well before Di (though I have enough vanity not to like the contrast between us to seem too great, even when she and I are alone), but because I wanted her to think, when she came to my room, that I'd been there a long time.
It is clear that the mania which defines his position must be the primary if not the cardinal business in the life of a lunatic, but his problem with that is different not in kind but merely in degree from the problem of lusts, vanities, and weaknesses in what we call normal lives.
Besides this, be on your guard; your persistence in requiring an open avowal from the Countess, is less the work of love than a persevering vanity.
His life is a perpetual satire, and he is still girding the age's vanity, when this very anger shews he too much esteems it.
On the other hand, as the years increase, things look smaller, one and all; and Life, which had so firm and stable a base in the days of our youth, now seems nothing but a rapid flight of moments, every one of them illusory: we have come to see that the whole world is vanity!
For vanity is so very common, and merit so very uncommon, that even if a man appears to be praising himself, though very indirectly, people will be ready to lay a hundred to one that he is talking out of pure vanity, and that he has not sense enough to see what a fool he is making of himself.
Curiosity grew into interest, and, flavored with a dash of pique, formed one of those messes with which, in stimulating their vanity, women fancy they satisfy their hunger of the heart.
Phoebe was not accustomed to being waited upon by white people, and to have a repast prepared for her by this cook of high degree flattered her vanity and wonderfully pleased her.
The author has not suffered his imagination to run wild from a foolish vanity to win applause as a fine writer, when the great object should be to give the reader a view of what he describes, as far as language will permit, in the same light in which he beheld it himself.
Every sentiment of vanity, or rather of independence and justice within me, instigated me to say to my persecutor, "You may cut off my existence, but you cannot disturb my serenity."
He resolved in the morning not to mention the appearance till he should have well observed the manners and the countenances of the family: he was conscious that, if any deception had been practiced, its authors would be too delighted with their success to conceal the vanity of their triumph.
The terms offered were such as I should willingly have accepted, though my fortune had allowed me greater liberty of choice: the respect with which I was treated, flattered my vanity; and perhaps the splendor of the apartments, and the luxury of the table, were not wholly without their influence.
"It may not appeal to your vanity, your Highness, but it is my duty to inform you that they have gone to report our clandestine meeting."
Were his and his wife's life all wrong, except as they had contributed to this new life of thoughtless spending and useless activity and vanity and splurge?
"Rub off some of your gloomy pessimism and cultivate a little more healthy girlish vanity, and you will do very well," she would say.
If this is a method adopted on purpose to chafe my vanity, it is very foolish, for it only bores me, and does not provoke me in the least.
English Comedy is not only considered inferior to that of most nations, but it is in many respects bad in its tendency, and may almost be looked upon as a school for vanity.
All natural talk is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other.
Hume tells us that "the queen's vanity lay more in shining by her own learning than in encouraging men of genius by her liberality."
The truth is, if I had been naturally guilty of so much vanity as to dictate my opinions; yet I do not find that the character of a positive or self-conceited person is of such advantage to any in this age, that I should labor to be publicly admitted of that order.
Nor was there any lack of ministers to the vanity of the woman who had now reached the zenith of her incomparable charms.
"She does, she will, she must," I said, vehemently, for I would have given worlds to calm the anxiety I know she feels for Caroline, and I do wish that on some points my sister thought as I do, not from vanity, my dear Mary, believe me, but for her own happiness.
They had a strong support in the person of the Empress, and they joined with the injured vanity of the French to press the Emperor towards war.
The greater enlargement of the organ of vanity in the hero is the only criterion by which I can distinguish them from each other.
One is caused by natural vanity, for many men are so presumptuous that they believe they know everything, and, owing to this, they assert things to be facts which are not facts.
He had seen himself in print; he had just experienced the ineffable joy of the author, that first pleasurable thrill of gratified vanity which comes but once.
I do not mean to honor by this name that fickle, unjust, common-place sentiment that we feel when our vanity assumes the form of love.
If his own vanity, however, did not mislead him, he was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had suffered, and still continued to suffer.
Then there are the cases where indolence, or selfishness, or vanity, or the love of social excitement, in the woman, unfits her for home life.
There I might have met with some woman who would have undertaken the task of teaching me the perils of every path, who would have formed my manners, counseled me without wounding my vanity, and introduced me everywhere where I was likely to make friends who would be useful to me in my future career.
My country was once mentioned with disdain: think not my vanity so much concerned in what I am going to say, as my honor: I am proud to be thought an Englishman: yet I think as highly of every worthy man of every nation under the sun, as I do of the worthy men of my own.
In a retrospect of the hundreds of competitors who have started for the prize of public patronage since our outset, we shall not, perhaps, be accused of vanity in placing to our own account the first appropriation of such means as may have contributed to the partial success of our contemporaries.
They have believed, or have pretended to believe, that I was seeking a miserable celebrity in the ashes of my own heart: they have said, that by an anticipation of vanity, I desired to gather and enjoy in advance, while yet living, the sad Flowers which might one day grow after me upon my tomb.
It is altogether beneficent: without this ever invading vanity, what hope would there be for the rich and powerful, accustomed to, and set upon their own way?
She read his admiration in the bold gaze he fastened upon her, and though she was without coquetry, she was conscious that her vanity was agreeably soothed.
The greater part of those who seek death at their own hand are moved thereto by love; it is the supreme longing for life, for more life, the longing to prolong and perpetuate life, that urges them to death, once they are persuaded of the vanity of this longing.
He comforted his vanity with the thought that Claudia had, by a conscious effort, checked a nascent affection for him, which, if allowed unimpeded growth, would have developed into a passion.
He knew from what French woman this manner of curling the hair came, who invented hoops, and whose vanity to show her foot brought in short dresses.
Jenny, trying with all her might to set the affair straight and satisfy everybody, was appealing to his vanity to salve his vanity.
Probably the native, whose personal property is limited to a loin cloth, thinks all other possessions are useless vanities and not worth troubling about.
While he was doing this, Compton "in a moment run him through the Body; so that his Pride fell to the ground, and there did sprawl out its last vanity."
For it cannot be doubted that it has an immediate tendency, in this case, to produce a frivolous levity, to generate vanity and pride, and to call up passions of the malevolent kind.
Were she to analyze her feelings, she would thoroughly despise herself for the envy, vanity, and distrust she would find in them, and think herself unworthy of the name of woman for allowing herself to study to gain the attentions of any man who might feel disposed to give them to another.
In attempting to gratify her own vanity she has prevented her side from scoring at a time when all personal desire should be put aside.
Never until this night had Helen realized how beautiful Katy was when in full evening dress, and her exclamations of delight brought a soft flush to Katy's cheek, while she felt a thrill of the olden vanity as she saw herself once more arrayed in all her costly apparel.
She inquired, making a gesture with one arm toward the fire while with the other she fumbled in her absurd little vanity bag.
Perhaps she read in the three masculine faces turned toward her a triangular admiration, since it emanated from three given points, and took from it a modest pinch for her vanity.
With these explanations of what are called the vanity and egotism of Genius, be it remembered, that the sense of their own sufficiency is assumed by men at their own risk.
She who aspired to make her mark in literature has made it, but as the chronicler of the sentiments, vanities, whims, and oddities of another.
Where the claim is in no sense true, it will still be made; for it flatters the vanity of the monarch, and there is no one to gainsay it.
It is, in nine cases out of ten, the more or less contemptible outpouring of vanity and conceit which the writer dare not exhibit to any mortal but himself.
There are two ways of getting hold of vain people: flatter their vanity, or threaten them; and there are also two ways of managing misers: fill their purse, or else attack it.
It is not bigotry or vanity or a petty notion of their own spheres which has kept the majority of women from lending themselves to the radical wing of the woman's movement.
Every page is full of personal earnestness and depth of feeling; but every page is also free from the slightest trace of vanity and egotism.
It has to do with motive and character, with form and philosophy; it is a criticism of life itself, or else it is mere vanity and vexation.
Their motives, their tastes, their vanity, their tyranny, and the domino on their vanity, the baldness of their tyranny, clinched her in feminine antagonism to brute power.
I have no doubt that in this letter which I have to write of your life and mine, of the past and of the future, of sweet things changed to bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned to joy, there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick.
You first attempt to reach her pure soul through her vanity, by praising her dress and accomplishments; and she nobly rejects the temptation.
It is a great mortification to the vanity of man that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.
We know of the pitiful avarice and vanity of many of the rich ladies who went to their homes to save their jewels, and fell with them clutched tightly in their hands.
I think I shall gratify a rational curiosity of my readers (however much they may condemn my vanity) if I give his reply in full.
Having found this sufficiently secret code, he was now able to gratify his immense interest in himself and his inordinate personal vanity by writing an intimate narrative of his own life.
If it were a real benefit to be born in a stone or wooden enclosure more ancient than another, it would be very reasonable to make the foundation of one's town date back to the time of the war of the giants; but since there is not the least advantage in this vanity, one must break away from it.
I know no modern biography in which the writer has kept more rigidly to the business of his narrative, or has less successfully been decoyed aside by the sirens of family vanity.
If there was any gratitude or vanity in my nun's heart, I felt I could stir it up, if Sister Sarah would listen to me long enough; and if gratitude, or even vanity, could be stirred, the rigidity of my nun would be impaired, and she might find herself off her guard.
All would be his daughter's and perhaps this would save her from the danger toward which her longing to live amid the vanities and tinsel of feminine slavery was leading her.
Who will undertake to account for that seemingly inexplicable mixture of love and vanity, that passionate tenderness of feeling, that prodigious duplicity of conduct?
It is the only country I have visited where the hands of the men are better cared for than the hands of the women; and this is not a pleasant commentary upon the question of who does the rough work, and who has the vanity and who the leisure for a meticulous toilet.
As he cannot consume it, he can but squander it to gratify his vanity, and lift himself to a position from which he can, or thinks he can, look down upon his fellows.
The autocratic power over the lives and future of millions to which he had been called had thrown no shadow of vanity or self pride over his simple life.
In every respect but money, Jane was just what he would have wished for a daughter-in-law; she was fashionable, she was beautiful, and the position of her family gratified his vanity.
These were the first articles of clothing that made me feel that everybody was looking at me, a feeling something between vanity and embarrassment.
She who does not desire friends has a sordid and insensible soul; but she who is ambitious of making every man her admirer, has an invincible vanity and a cold heart.
I have never liked him, have looked upon his aping of the foreign manners, his half-long hair which looks as if he had started again a queue and then stopped, his stream of words without beginning and without end, as a foolish boy's small vanities that would pass as the years and wisdom came.
To-day I find that, as your mother before you stole like a thief out of the house, so you have stolen into this place, which was forbidden you, to gratify your curiosity and your vanity.
It matters little whether Solomon wrote this book in his later years; it is, in any event, the confession of one who has had all the good things of this world, and who saw the emptiness of them all, and who sums up life with the words "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
As long as vanity is pleased, and novelty excites new ideas, the poet is welcomed and followed; but, let sadness or sorrow overtake him, of all his admirers not one friend remains!
And those, let me say, who without giving way to those grosser vices, let their minds be swallowed up with vanity, love of admiration, always longing to be seen and looked at, and wondering what folks will say of them, they too give way to the flesh, and lower themselves to the likeness of animals.
It were but right that those who exhort us against inordinate affections, and setting our hearts too much upon the world and its vanities, would tell us how to avoid doing so.
His promptness in securing my services, would have been flattering to my vanity, had I been ambitious to win the reputation of being a valuable slave.
Most women who have lived much and loved much finally become fanatics; bigotry is often only the last form which feminine vanity assumes.
It thrilled me much that our coming should have made so great excitement in the village, and doubtless my vanity would have taken fire again if I had not known that it was my captain these people had come to see, and not myself, of whom they had never heard.
It is the best thing that can happen to any woman to win the love of a good, true man, but it is cruel to wreck his happiness to gratify a foolish vanity.
No, it was not vanity, for I was strong in my drill, for the simple reason that I was ready to ride anywhere at anything, when I joined, and because I was so devoted to my profession, and thoroughly gloried in keeping those with whom I had to do perfect in every evolution they had to perform.
Too much dependence on my resolution, and the vanity of supposing myself superior in magnanimity to the rest of my sex, induced me to trust myself in your society.
However, the concealed fang of the paw that had so often played with, and patted me into vanity, was to wound me at length.
Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance of her table, and of all her domestic arrangements; and from this kind of vanity was her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties.
This feeling sprang more from enthusiasm than from personal vanity, the borders of which meanness she had just touched, but never crossed.
Perhaps my vanity was tickled once or twice by hearing this appellation applied to me; but I am sure I was not spoiled by the favor with which I was regarded.
This vanity extended to the Courtiers and even to the dwarfs, several of whom were usually connected with the court as a source of amusement.
In after years we may realize that many of our hobbies are but vanities, but the love of good books is something far beyond all these ephemeral pursuits. Doubtless few of us realized at the outset of our careers as book collectors how completely we should be mastered by this love of books.
This attendance is not the effect of attachment, or regard, but of sheer vanity, that he may afterwards boast of his charity and humane disposition: though, of all the people I have ever known, I think the French are the least capable of feeling for the distresses of their fellow creatures.
Nothing is so flattering to the vanity as the preference of a child, that naive, spontaneous affection to which it is impossible to impute mercenary motives.
Truly, it was a grand assemblage, one that should delight the heart and flatter the vanity of even the most capricious of prima donnas.
I was not blind to the share that vanity had in her mood nor to ambition's part in it, but I saw also and exulted in her tenderness.
He is instantly seen to be too proud, as well as too sincere, too great a man, in fact, altogether, to stoop to the dishonest little artifices by which vanity tries to steal applause.
He was amused, at the same time, to see in them symptoms of a boyish vanity, to which he had either not been prone, or which he had early extinguished.
That he had been of considerable use, I doubt not, but he believed, for I hold him to have been very honest; but he might easily make a false estimate of his own importance: those whom their virtue restrains from deceiving others, are often disposed, by their vanity, to deceive themselves.
I have attacked various subjects as I have been prompted thereto by curiosity, or vanity, or shame, but I have never mastered any of them, and the information I have obtained has been like a house built without a foundation, which the first gust of wind would blow down and scatter abroad.