"Vainglory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... belief in divine beings corresponding to our PRESENT conception of ourselves—that is as separate personalities having each a separate and limited character and function, and animated by the separatist motives of ambition, possession, power, vainglory, superiority, patronage, self-greed, self-satisfaction, etc.—in so far as anthropomorphism is the expression of that kind of belief it is of course destined, with the illusion from which it springs, to pass away. When man arrives ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... lose thy choice thing; thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vainglory in all ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... little aside, theology having no part in this colloquy. She smiles, not reproachfully, at Dante's vainglory. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... shall be visited upon the children, and the unthinking and worldly have sought refuge from this law by declaring it harsh and cruel. Miserable and blind! For do we not see that the wicked man, who in the pride of his power and vainglory is willing to risk punishment to HIMSELF—and believes it to be courage—must pause before the awful mandate that condemns an equal suffering to those he loves, which he cannot withhold or suffer for? In the spectacle of these innocents struggling against disgrace, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... been so much wrapped up in his own vainglory, we might have had a full record of the eventful voyage which revealed to Europe the shores of our Canadian dominion first of all the lands on the continents of the western hemisphere. Fortunately, however, there resided ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... gone the stream of rhetoric, the denunciations, the satire, the tremendous assertions of God's mind and purposes. The lash that was wielded was far-reaching; all the vices of the age—irreligion, blasphemy, drunkenness, extravagance, vainglory, loose living—fell under its sting. The condemnation was general, and each man looked to see his neighbor wince. The occurrence at the ball last night,—he was on that for final theme, was he? There was a slight movement throughout the congregation. Some glanced to where would have ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... The words were scarcely out of his mouth, before it struck him that such an observation was a direct tempting of Providence, to trip his heels and lay him on a sickbed for his boast. So, after a slight hesitation, he added, 'But the race is not to the swift, brother, and I am wrong to indulge in vainglory about anything. Life and death are uncertain; none realize it, I trust, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... aunt who was ill, away for an indefinite period, for Patsy's steady wages quite sufficed to keep his cousin at home to care for his grandmother. Lydia sometimes feared the satisfaction she took in Patsy's exemplary career was tinctured with vainglory for her own share in it, but, if so, she was punished for it now, since it was his very prosperity that took away from her the only steady domestic help she had ever been able to keep. She had now only a cook, a slatternly negress, with a gift for frying chicken ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... to us charmed, with your kind reception of him, and with everything he saw at the Park. Shall I once more give you a peep into my vile and deceitful heart? What motive do you think lay at the bottom of my conduct when I desired him to call upon you? I did not suspect, at first, that pride and vainglory had any share in it, but quickly after I had recommended the visit to him, I discovered, in that fruitful soil, the very root of the matter. You know I am a stranger here; all such are suspected characters, unless they bring their credentials ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... forward to offer themselves up as a sacrifice for an atonement to the angry gods, to rescue and stipulate for their indebted country? What made Curtius, on a like occasion, so desperately to throw away his life, but only vainglory, that is condemned, and unanimously voted for a main branch of Folly by all wise men? What is more unreasonable and foppish (say they) than for any man, out of ambition to some office, to bow, to scrape and cringe to the gaping rabble, to purchase their favour by bribes and ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... sure. All the letters which he writ after his battles show awe rather than exultation; and he attributes the glory of these achievements, about which I have heard mere petty officers and men bragging with a pardonable vainglory, in nowise to his own bravery or skill, but to the superintending protection of heaven, which he ever seemed to think was our especial ally. And our army got to believe so, and the enemy learnt to think so too; for we never entered into ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... their delight that one (Dante) has come to be the fresh object of their love, just as it is said that "there shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance." (Luke XV, 10.) These splendors in Mercury are the souls of those in whose virtue there was the alloy of ambition and vainglory—a combination, according to Dante, which makes "the rays of true love less vividly mount upwards." The poet is addressed by a spirit who bids him ask any question he will and Beatrice confirms the invitation. "Speak, speak with confidence ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... joined the main army, Boquet was detached with two thousand men to take post at Loyal Hanna, fifty miles in advance. Here intelligence was received that the French garrison consisted of but eight hundred men, of whom three hundred were Indians. The vainglory of Boquet, without the consent or knowledge of his superior officer urged him to send forward a party of four hundred Highlanders and a company of Virginians, under Major James Grant to reconnoitre. Major Grant divided his troops, and when near the fort, advanced with pipes playing and drums beating, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... N. dignity, self-respect, mens sibi conscia recti [Lat.] [Vergil]. pride; haughtiness &c adj.; high notions, hauteur; vainglory, crest; arrogance &c (assumption) 885. proud man, highflier^; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... say of Epicurus that he basely and covertly forces and ravishes Fame, by not enjoying her publicly but ruffling and debauching her in a corner? For as men's bodies are oft necessitated by famine, for want of other food, to prey against nature upon themselves, a like mischief to this does vainglory create in men's minds, forcing them, when they hunger after praise and cannot obtain it from other men, at last ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... 'miracle.' The ordinary operations of Providence amply suffice to bring it. If God wills to sting, He will 'hiss for the fly,' and it will come. The ferocity and ambition of a grim and bloody despot, impelled by vainglory and lust of cruel conquest, do God's work, and yet the doing is sin. The world is full of God's instruments, and He sends punishments by the ordinary play of motives and circumstances, which we best understand when we see behind ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... having so keen an insight into the Things, will mistake for a fallacy turning on the double meaning of a term. And the greater the genius of him who thus safely leaps over the chasm, the greater will probably be the crowing and vainglory of the mere logician, who, hobbling after him, evinces his own superior wisdom by pausing on its brink, and giving up as desperate his proper ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... are subject to many such as men are subject to: among the rest, they disturb the neighbourhood in the discussion of their private causes; they quarrel and fight on small motives, such as a little bad food, or a little vainglory, or the sex. But it must be something present or near that excites them; and they calculate not the extent of evil they may do ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vainglory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavors are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had Bartolommeo da Bagnacavallo, Amico of Bologna, Girolamo da Cotignola, and Innocenzio da Imola, painters all, who, living in Bologna at one and the same time, felt the greatest jealousy of one another that could possibly be imagined. And, what is more, their pride and vainglory, not being based on the foundation of ability, led them astray from the true path, which brings to immortality those who strive more from love of good work than from rivalry. This circumstance, then, was the reason that they did not crown the good beginnings that they had made with that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... an imaginary than an actual evil, and though a deep wound to pride, no offence to morality. Thus have I laid open to you my whole heart, confessed my perplexities, acknowledged my vainglory, and exposed with equal sincerity the sources of my doubts and the motives of my decision. But now, indeed, how to proceed I know not. The difficulties which are yet to encounter I fear to enumerate, and the petition I have to urge I have scarce courage to mention. My family, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Nichols who met the challenge, oblivious of all counsels of pride, culture, vainglory and hypocrisy. This was his mate, a sweeter lady than any he ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs |
