For some natures, changing their opinions is just as much a requirement of cleanliness as changing their clothes: for others, however, it is merely a requirement of vanity.
For it is a matter of daily observation that people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies their vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without comparison with others.
Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).
That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity.
Some have lavish garments, carry sharp swords, and feast on food and drink. They possess more than they can spend. This is called the vanity of robbers. It is certainly not the Way.
The need for sociability induce man to be in touch with his fellow men. However, this need might not ("ne saurait", Fr.) find its full (or complete) satisfaction in the conventional (or superficial, - "conventionnel", Fr.) and deceitful world, in which (or where) everyone is mainly (or mostly) trying to assert oneself in front of others ("devant les autres", Fr.), to appear, and hoping to find in society ("mondaine", Fr.) relationships some advantages for his interest and vanity (or vainglory or conceit", Fr).
The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
Ecclesiastes said that "all is vanity," Most modern preachers say the same, or show it By their examples of true Christianity: In short, all know, or very short may know it.
What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?