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"You think too much of your "toilette", Adele; but you may have a flower." I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She sighed a sign of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not suppress; there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the little Parisienne's earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress."
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"Stupidity talks, vanity acts."
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Personal Development
"Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth."
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"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."
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"Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone by displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: 'I see your vanity through the hole in your mantle.' Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty."
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"Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty."
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Personal Development
"I was sorry for her; I was amazed, disgusted at her heartless vanity; I wondered why so much beauty should be given to those who made so bad a use of it, and denied to some who would make it a benefit to both themselves and others.But, God knows best, I concluded. There are, I suppose, some men as vain, as selfish, and as heartless as she is, and, perhaps, such women may be useful to punish them."
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Personal Development
"It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power, the same way money is power, the same way a gun is power."
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Personal Development
"Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf."
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Personal Development
"You think too much of your "toilette", Adele; but you may have a flower." I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She sighed a sign of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not suppress; there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the little Parisienne's earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress."
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Personal Development
"Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity."
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"I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon."
Routine
"Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror-glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids swollen and purple. On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me - my heart seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why and for whom I despaired."
Despair
"Youth is gone -- gone -- and will never come back: can't help it."
Aging
"How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought!"
Emotion
"Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb."
Behavior
"I wish I had only offered youa sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I've a use for it.''And so have I, sir,' I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. 'I could not spare the money on any account.''Little niggard!' said he, 'refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.''Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.''Just let me look at the cash.''No, sir; you are not to be trusted."
Power
"His veins were dark with a vivid belladonna tincture, the essence of jealousy."
Emotion
"Men, in general, are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea."
Cynicism
"I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre."
Conformity
"Renewed hope followed renewed effort: It shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, faded, flickered: Not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed."
Despair
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