Alma Gluck Quotes

Those who suffer from an exaggerated sense of their own ability and accomplishment are continually subject to frustration, disappointment, and rage when reality intrudes and the world doesn't validate their idealized view of themselves.

Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud.

Man is very vain; he likes to feel that he is responsible for all the favorable things that happen, and he is innocent of all the unfavorable happenings

We men do nothing but lie and make ourselves important. Speech was invented for the purpose of magnifying all of our sensations and impressions — perhaps so that we could believe in them.

Many, many people exaggerate their accomplishments, blame their failures on others, and misrepresent reality in order to make themselves look better. This behavior is ubiquitous—sometimes intentional, more often subconscious. In ordinary life, we tolerate it, mutely or not, hoping that we are not as bad as the person whose lies we are listening to.

He who is vain and delights in his own ability is deceived by his inferiors. When he likes to bring forth arguments and kindliness, his inferiors take advantage of his abilities.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

Everyone flatters himself and carries a kingdom in his breast.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities, superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world; and, whatever apparent disadvantages he may suffer in the comparison with others, he has some invisible distinctions, some latent reserve of excellence, which he throws into the balance, and by which he generally fancies that it is turned in his favour.

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.

Like the juggler, deceiving by his tricks, one is deluded by egotism, falsehood and illusion.

We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.

A friend of mine always says, ‘Women love me for the man I’m not.’

The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.

It many times falls out that we deem ourselves much deceived in others because we first deceived ourselves.

Tis easy to break an idol, very easy: to regard the self as easy to subdue is folly, folly.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.