See Also: PRIDE

1. An aura of self-love clung to him like a cloak —Robert Traver
2. Arrogance … was escaping from him like steam —Cornell Woolrich
3. Arrogant as a hummingbird with a full feeder —A. E. Maxwell
4. As careful about his looks as a young girl getting ready for her first dance —Carlos Fuentes
5. Conceit grows as natural as hair on one’s head; but it is longer in coming out —Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms
6. Conceit like a high gloss varnish smeared over him —Rosa Guy
7. Conceit that plays itself in an elevated nose … that is only playing at being conceited; like children play at being kings and queens and go strutting around with feathers and trains —Jerome K. Jerome
8. The ego blows up like a big balloon —Delmore Schwartz
9. Flaunt my knowledges, like a woman will flaunt her pretty body —Borden Deal
10. He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow —George Eliot
11. He [a man without vanity] would be a very admirable man, a man to be put under a glass case, and shown round as a specimen, a man to be stuck upon a pedestal, and copied like a school exercise —Jerome K. Jerome

    Jerome concluded his comparison as follows: “A man to be reverenced, but not a man to be loved, not a human brother whose hand we should care to grip.”

12. (Ed Koch) is like the rooster who takes credit for the sunrise —Jack Newfield, Village Voice, October 7, 1986
13. Looks at herself in the mirror like she was the first woman in the world —George Garrett
14. A man is inseparable from his congenital vanities and stupidities, as a dog is inseparable from its fleas —H. L. Mencken
15. A man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms … the rich for the alms of envy, the poor man for the alms of my pity —Ben Hecht
16. My vanity [after hurtful remark] like a newly-felled tree, lies prone and bleeding —Carolyn Kizer
17. Preening himself like a courting rooster —Robert Traver
18. Preening like a politician after a landslide victory —Elyse Sommer
19. Puffed himself up like a ship in full sail —Hans Christian Andersen
20. Self-love is a cup without any bottom; you might pour all the great lakes into it, and never fill it up —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
21. Sleek and smug as a full-bellied shark —T. Coraghessan Boyle
22. Strutting … like a pouter pigeon —Jerome K. Jerome

    The pigeon named for its propensity for puffing out its distensible crops provides a novel alternative of the more commonly used “Strutting like a peacock.”

23. Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return —George Eliot
24. Vanity, like murder, will out —Hannah Parkhouse Cowley
25. Vanity, like sexual impulse, gives rise to needless self-reproach —Charles Horton Cooley

    Cooley followed up on his simile with “Why be ashamed of anything so human? What, indeed should we be without it.”

26. Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about forever in expectation of a crumb —William Gilmore Simms