"Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely..." - Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche

“But are there many honest people who will admit that it is pleasing to give pain?”

“Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.”

“Among human beings there is no greater banality than death. Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes birth, and next comes marriage.”

“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.”

“Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”

“Virtue would not make such advances if there were not a little vanity to keep it company.”

“Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.”

“My life has been the polar opposite of safe, but I am proud of it and so is my son, and that is good enough for me. I would do it all over again without changing the beat, although I have never recommended it to others. That would be cruel and irresponsible and wrong, I think, and I am none of those things.”

“Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one's status in the eyes of others; and shame is fear of humiliation at one's inferior status in the estimation of others. When one sets one's heart on being highly esteemed, and achieves such rating, then he or she is automatically involved in fear of losing status.”