“Are you not ashamed to wish to speak better than you can?” said Seneca to one of his sons who could not work out the exordium of an oration he was composing. One might say the same to those who adopt principles stronger than their character will bear. “Are you not ashamed of wishing to be more of a philosopher than you can be?”
In great actions men show themselves as they ought to be, in small actions as they are.
Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.
He is far advanced in the study of morals who can lay his finger on all the points that distinguish pride from vanity. The first is lofty, calm, dignified, imperturbable, resolute; the second mean, inconstant, easily swayed, restless, unsteady. One raises a man, the other puffs him up. The first is source of a thousand virtues, the second that of nearly all vices and all caprices. There is a kind of pride in which are comprised all the commandments of God, a kind of vanity that embodies the seven deadly sins.
Celebrity: the advantage of being known to those who do not know you.