"La vertu n'irait pas si loin si la vanité ne lui tenait compagnie.

"Virtue would not go far if vanity did not keep it company.

Virtue would not go so far if vanity did not keep it company.

Il est difficile de parler de soi longtemps sans vanité.

« La vanité est si ancrée dans le cœur de l’homme qu’un soldat, un goujat, un cuisinier, un crocheteur se vante et veut avoir ses admirateurs ; et les philosophes mêmes en veulent. Et ceux qui écrivent contre veulent avoir la gloire d’avoir bien écrit ; et ceux qui lisent veulent avoir la gloire de l’avoir lu ; et moi qui écris ceci, ai peut-être cette envie ».

La vertu ne nous coûte que par notre faute, et si nous voulions être toujours sages, rarement aurions-nous besoin d'être vertueux.

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

...vanity is content with the appearance alone

All sensible people know that vanity is the most devastating, the most universal, and the most ineradicable of the passions that afflict the soul of man, and it is only vanity that makes him deny its power. It is more consuming than love. With advancing years, mercifully, you can snap your fingers at the terror and the servitude of love, but age cannot free you from the thraldom of vanity. Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity. Love is simple and seeks no subterfuge, but vanity cozens you with a hundred disguises. It is part and parcel of every virtue: it is mainspring of courage and the strength of ambition; it gives constancy to the lover and endurance to the stoic; it adds fuel to the fire of the artist's desire for fame and is at once the support and the compensation of the honest man's integrity; it leers even cynically in the humility of the saint. You cannot escape it, and should you take pains to guard against it, it will make use of those very pains to trip you up. You are defenseless against its onslaught because you know not on what unprotected side it will attack you. Sincerity cannot protect you from its snare nor humour from its mockery.
[His Excellency]

Virtue has need of limits.

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

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

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.

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.

La réputation et la vertu y sont regardées comme imaginaires, si elles ne sont accompagnées de la faveur du prince, avec laquelle elles naissent et meurent de même.