Vanity
In conventional parlance, vanity is the excessive belief in one's own abilities or attractiveness to others (Stephen LaMarche). Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility. The related term vainglory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but originally meant boasting in vain, i.e. unjustified boasting; although glory is now seen as having an exclusively positive meaning, the Latin term gloria (from which it derives) roughly means boasting, and was often used as a negative criticism.
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Famous quotes containing the word vanity:
“What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Alas! While your ambitious vanity is unceasingly laboring to cover the earth with statues, with monuments, and with inscriptions to eternalize, if possible, your names, and give yourselves an existence, when this body is no more, why must we be condemned to live and die unknown?”
—Thomas Paine 1737–1809, U.S. writer and magazine editor. Pennsylvania Magazine, pp. 362-4 (1775)
“Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well- informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)