Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

We shall suffer as long as our thoughts and actions are prompted by desires and fears.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.
And men take care that they should.

All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.

Flatterers are always to blame for the vices which prevail among mankind

All is vanity, nothing is fair.

Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge.

The vanity of the contents” of individual experience is scrutable as an inessential trapping drawn into a matter by vested interests “…since it is at the same time the vanity of the self that knows itself to be vain

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually just the pretexts for it.

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.

If we ever admit our shortcomings it is through vanity