"It is very often nothing but our..." - Quote by Jane Austen
It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.
More by Jane Austen
“but a sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. it soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.”
“Those who do not complain are never pitied.”
“I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily seen through I am afraid is pitiful.”
More on Vanity
“People press toward the light not in order to see better but in order to shine better.--We are happy to regard the one before whomwe shine as light.”
“After all, what does fame everlasting mean? Mere vanity.”
“Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you.”
More on Self Deception
“A man is never so proud as when striking an attitude of humility.”
“Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.”
“We know how often in our lives through laziness and cowardice we give up the battle and try to hypnotise our minds into the belief that we are brave.”