What man mistakes for it in himself is his vanity,--a vanity much more pernicious than mine, because it deceives its possessor, who is also wholly possessed by it, and is its slave.

I have had a great many illusions in my life, Signor Grandi." "One would say, baron, that you had parted with them." "Yes, and that is my chief vanity,--the vanity of vanities which I prefer to all the others.

It is only a man of no imagination who has no vanity.

He cannot imagine himself any better than he is.

A creative genius makes for his own person a 'self' which he thinks he is, or desires other people to believe him to be.