The crown had become a bauble with which unscrupulous Popes dazzled the vanity of princes whom they summoned to their aid, and soothed the credulity of their more honest supporters.
As such, it was usually conferred upon provincial governors of the first class, and in time also upon barbarian potentates whosevanity the Roman court might wish to flatter.
Like most men, he had a touch of vanity too, and he might have resented the words vaguely, had he not remembered his talk with his mother an hour before.
This meeting had been deftly arranged by Mrs. Townley, with the help of Edward Lambert, who now held her fingers with a kind of vanity of possession whenever he bade her good-bye or met her.
Not an exquisite, he had all that vanity as to appearance so usual with the military man; himself of the most perfect temper and sweetness of manner and conduct, the unusual disturbed him.
Mackenzie, therefore, had responsibility, and if she was not elated over it, she still knew the importance of her position, and had enough practical vanity to make her an efficient servant and companion.
According to Xenophon, they were acquainted with most of the expedients by the help of which vanity attempts to conceal the ravages of time and to create an artificial beauty.
More than one intendant was amused by this broad streak ofvanity in the colonial character.
The vanityof such a supposition, in their present circumstances, brought the tears to her eyes and a quiver about her mouth.
In youth alone its empty praise we boast, But soon the short-lived vanity is lost: Like some fair flower the early spring supplies, That gaily blooms, but even in blooming dies.
He did not, nor did he again allow his optimism and ever-ready vanity to cozen him with false hopes.
A shade of disappointment and ruffled vanity crossed his face.
In my situation, it would have been the extreme of vanity to be forming expectations on Mr. Crawford.
It would have been a vast deal pleasanter to have had her more disinterested in her attachment; but his vanity was not of a strength to fight long against reason.
Henry Crawford was gone, gone from the house, and within two hours afterwards from the parish; and so ended all the hopes his selfish vanity had raised in Maria and Julia Bertram.
Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long.
He has not lost hisvanity with his reason: he is a Prince in spite of the bars and the straw.
Vanity was the inspiration for the resident's sudden assertion of the prerogatives of his office, he decided, the petty vanity of a boor eager to demonstrate authority.
Or was the resident's sudden assumption of dignity a petty vanity finding vent in the display of newly acquired powers?
It was the first time he had used them, and it was not vanity that inspired him to pin them on his coat.
This cured me of Quakerism: I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit, when what he says an ordinary man might say without all that quaking and trembling.
Vanity may strut in rags, and Humility be arrayed in purple and fine linen.
But wiser men, perceiving the unsafety and vanity of these and all external things, have cast about for some higher course.
But his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be struck at her it must go through me.
All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues, her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the innocence of sleep.
But the grinning King of Terrors had stood by all the time, saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
I constantly act as phlebotomist to the vanity of the young and to the anecdotage of the senile and senescent.
We have the same self-absorption, the same vanity and corroding ambition.
This, I believe, is not so much vanity as curiosity.
I am at a loss," he says, referring to the Decline and Fall, "how to describe the success of the work without betraying the vanity of the writer.
People speak of the vanity of all these bridal preparations.
Some writers have blamed Mattheson very much on account of his vanity and his jealousy of Handel.
But a rather harmless vanity like that shown in the following example is still not uncommon, and may easily be excused, as it is not incompatible with a good heart.
She felt that the crown was heavy at times, but it adorned her and kept her young; and in spite of the jealousy it gave rise to, the court satisfied her vanity and brought her sufficient consolation.
Never has the saying of Ecclesiastes been more exactly verified: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!
In the way of honors privileges, and when we recall their father's modest at Ajaccio, it is hard to keep from smiling at the vanity of these new Princes of the blood.
These ladies, too, aroused the hottest jealousies, and soon they gave rise to a sort of parody of the questions of vanity that agitated the Emperor's family.
His son and successor Reccared, however, saw the vanity and danger of this policy and took the opposite course.
The “Dance of Death” in its various forms reminded of the vanity of all earthly pleasures.
But Eck’s vanity led him not only to seek the greatest possible fame from his present disputation, but also to drag in Luther by challenging his theses.
Wittekind and Albion, the two most famous Saxon chiefs, acknowledged the vanity of further resistance.
Walter bowed his head, but not in the delighted vanity with which a young man generally receives the assurance of another's praise.
One suspects that it would have pleased his vanity to have his name linked with the Queen's by the lips of scandal.
To the scalps already adorning the belt of his vanity he would add that of the love of a beautiful young queen.
He did not say that military incompetence and a presumptuous vanity which would listen to no counsels had been the cause of a ruin that had engulfed the chivalry of Portugal, and finally the very kingdom itself.
But he in his egregiousvanity must of cours e misunderstand.
The court was at Fontainebleau when the last bulwark of Henry's prudence was battered down by the vanity of that lovely fool, Charlotte, who must be encouraging her royal lover to resume his flattering homage.
Far, however, from acting as a deterrent, the royal scowl was mere incense to the vanity of Buckingham, a spur to goad him on to greater daring.
That vanity sustained him to the end, which he suffered in October of 1595, a full year after his arrest.
Whereas the amateur who works with no higher aim than that of immediate recognition betrays it from the vanity and wantonness of his spirit.
The Vanity of Human Wishes There is only one thing vainer and that is the having no wishes.
No," Kee told her, "that's carrying your vanity scourging too far.
Her lovely gray hair was tucked under a black hat, and her lips and cheeks, quite evidently the result of a well-equipped vanity box, were the only touch of colour about her.
Hath not this oft-told tale a moral, Impressive of the vanity To which all human hopes must tend— To where ambitious flights must end!
A man gives entertainments only for criticism; and people, on their return home, revenge themselves for the obligation of the invitation, by laughing at his vanity for pretending to live at so much expense.
