Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.
Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.
See the man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope for a fool than for him. [Proverbs 26:7]
— Bible
As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.
Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.
It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.
Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?
Always hold your head up but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level.
A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.
A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.
Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
Whenever nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.
Whatever accomplishment you boast of in the world, there is someone better than you.
Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance: they are but beggars who can count their worth.
Conceit in weakest bodies works the strongest.
Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.
People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
Had we not loved ourselves at all, we could never have been obliged to love anything. So that self-love is the basis of all love.
Conceit is God's gift to little men.
Conceit is bragging about yourself. Confidence means you believe you can get the job done.
Conceit is a queer disease -- it makes everyone Sick except the person who has it.
Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from which storms burst forth when one makes a puncture in it.
If you done it, it ain't bragging.