Vanity Publishing Quotes

The Internet is the ultimate vanity-publishing medium, and therefore, the ultimate place for those of us who like to watch. The Internet can reach an audience at lower cost than any medium before it. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

Vanity's contribution to Fiction in general was an abundance of cheap labour and the occasional blockbuster, which was accepted into Fiction with an apologetic 'gosh, don't know how that happened'. ~ Jasper Fforde

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time's beginning but nearer its end. ~ H.G.Wells

Guard against that vanity which courts a compliment, or is fed by it. ~ Thomas Chalmers

Through vanity he had spared her. ~ Oscar Wilde

That was the source of my vanity and my cowardice: always I believed everyone was watching me. ~ Andre Dubus

The familiar warmth from the church saturated his heart. Was this what Mom meant by Christmas joy? ~ Jennifer Gladen

I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first. ~ Seth Godin

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity. ~ Thomas Carlyle

None of these visions of creation did more than serve the vanity of those holding them. As if all was made for them; for their eyes to witness, for their wonder to behold. Rint did not believe it. The past had no beginning. Something always existed before, no matter how far back one reached. ~ Steven Erikson

My lady," Sebastian murmured, resting one hand at
the small of her corseted back. Regarding Haldane with a slight smile, he continued to speak to Evie. "It seems I'll have to warn you, my love... this gentleman is a wolf in sheep's clothing."
Although Evie would have expected the elderly man to take offense at such a remark, Haldane chuckled with pleasure, his vanity flattered. "If I were twenty years younger, my impudent fellow, I would steal her away from you. Despite your much-vaunted charm, you are no match for what I was then."
"Age hasn't tamed you a whit," Sebastian replied with a grin, drawing Evie away from him. "Pardon us, my lord, while I remove my wife from safer territory."
"It is obvious that this elusive fellow has been caught firmly in your snare," Haldane told Evie. "Go, then, and pacify his jealous temperament."
"I... I will try," Evie said uncertainly. For some reason both men laughed, and Sebastian kept his hand on Evie's back as they left the main room. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Of course, people say maybe there are some self-published books out there that shouldn't be out there. Well, it's the same with conventional publishing. ~ Patti Davis

Lets say from the first moment of my life, everything's always been about me and nothing else, including apocalypse and chaos; let's say even apocalypse and chaos have been conceits of my psyche and bad faith
this assumes I ever kept any kind of faith at all, bad or otherwise ... Let's say I'm faithlessness made flesh, the modern age's leap of faith stopped dead in its tracks, fucking around with apocalypse and chaos only because in some broken part of me, among any wreckage of honor or altruism or commitment of compassion, or the bits and pieces of moral vanity, I really believed the abyss was always just the playground of my imagination, and I was its bully. ~ Steve Erickson

On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century ... First of all, what style should I employ? ~ Umberto Eco

Most human beings wish to be happy and healthy. This universal realization is painfully obvious and yet is overlooked due to its simplicity. We all naturally desire to feel free on all levels: mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. We wish to feel joyful, abundant, serene and blissful. This desire is ultimately grounded in a higher human nature. ~ Christopher Dines

He [man] abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Listen to your heart and not your ego. Your ego prompts you to boast of vain assertions to obtain the glory of this world. Turn away from vanity and seek Him in the recesses of your heart and soul ~ Abdul-Qadir Gilani

Love is that enviable state that knows no envy or vanity, only empathy and a longing to be greater than oneself ... ~ Joe McMahon

Guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness. ~ Toni Morrison

Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

My vanity is not dead. I laugh when I see pictures of myself as I am now-maybe so I won't cry, but just because it is really funny how much I've changed. ~ Michael Zaslow

The reason for the simplicity isn't disdain for uniqueness, as the other factions have sometimes interpreted it. Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed, and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one. I try to love it. ~ Anonymous

Pride creates a noise within us which makes the quiet voice of the Spirit hard to hear. And soon, in our vanity, we no longer even listen for it. We can come quickly to think we don't need it. ~ Henry B. Eyring

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose painting, vanity and chance. ~ Francis Bacon

Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke. ~ King James I

At the end of the day, if pride is your greatest strength, turn it into vanity. ~ Lionel Suggs

Vanity is not half a bad principle, if it will but stick to legitimate business. ~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Some people, under a nervous and self-effacing manner, conceal a great deal of vanity and self-satisfaction. ~ Agatha Christie

Gold is the gift of vanity and common pride, but flowers are the gift of love and friendship. ~ Franz Grillparzer

And yet to possess a young soul that has barely developed is a source of very deep delight. It is like a flower whose richest perfume goes out to meet the first ray of the sun. One must pluck it at that very moment and, after inhaling its perfume to one's heart's content, discard it along the wayside on the chance that someone will pick it up. I sense in myself that insatiable avidity that devours everything in its path. And I regard the sufferings and joys of others merely in relation to myself, as food to sustain my spiritual strength. Passion is no longer capable of robbing me of my sanity. My ambition has been crushed by circumstances, but it has manifested itself in a new form, for ambition is nothing but lust for power, and my greatest pleasure I derive from subordinating everything around me to my will. Is it not both the first token of power and its supreme triumph to inspire in others the emotions of love, devotion and fear? Is it not the sweetest fare for our vanity to be the cause of pain or joy for someone without the least claim thereto? And what is happiness? Pride gratified. Could I consider myself better and more powerful than anyone else in the world, I would be happy. Were everybody to love me, I'd find in myself unending wellsprings of love. Evil begets evil; one's first suffering awakens a realization of the pleasure of tormenting another. The idea of evil cannot take root in the mind of man without his desiring to apply it in practice. Someone has said th ~ Mikhail Lermontov

I begin early in the morning and edit everything I wrote the previous day. I write until mid-afternoon. My goal is to write a chapter per week, and if I am not finished by Friday, I write on the weekend. I get a lot of fan emails and answer them every day. In the late afternoon, I attend to the business of publishing, etc. ~ Virginia Henley

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears. I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless. ~ Michel De Montaigne

If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers and has been presented to her Sovereign at Court. From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Doug: I would not wipe my ass with your manuscript. Would you like to know why?
Bob: Sure
Doug: Because there is crap already all over it. ~ Joseph Cognard

London thou art a jewel of jewels, & jasper of jocunditie -- music, talk, friendship, city views, books, publishing, something central & inexplicable. ~ Virginia Woolf

It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. ~ Mark Twain