Inflated Quotes & Sayings

Two large prominent eyes that rolled about to no purpose (for he was utterly short-sighted) a wide mouth, thick lips and inflated visage, gave him the air of a blind trumpeter. A deep untuneable voice which, instead of modulating, he enforced with unnecsessary pomp, a total neglect of his person, and ignorance of every civil attention, disgusted all who judge by appearance. — Horace Walpole

Don't you think most of those kids think too much about who got an A or a B when they were in law school and what that means to an inflated G.P.A. and not enough about the world? asked Connor irrelevantly. — Daniel Amory

They made a simple enough mistake. The same one we're making. They founded their society on resource extraction, and in doing so, inflated their population beyond the carrying capacity of the land. — Daniel Suarez

Religion reminds me of a lace condom. While lovingly crafted, it's not designed for pleasure; unless inflated with fervour, it collapses; one size does not fit all; and no matter how many times you dunk it in holy water, it will not prevent misconceptions or contagion. — Lowestoft Thellow

Cam?"
"Yeah?"
"What were you doing in the den? Don't you normally have class, like, right now?"
His lips curved up at the corner and that dimple appeared. When he smiled like that, it felt like a ballon had suddenly inflated in my chest. "Yeah, I normally have class right now," he said, eyes a startling azure in the sun. "But I wanted to see you. — J. Lynn

Success should not be based on lavish lifestyles and inflated bank accounts; flaunting your fancy homes and putting your luxuries on display. You can't build a future on "Bottles" and Benz's. You can' retire on rims and Rolexes. You can't save if you're always shopping for stilettos. Acquisitions are fleeting. Investments are long-term. A sound future is built on stability, not status. — Carlos Wallace

I have no inflated ideas about success anyway. — Trevor Dunn

In order for Obamacare's cost structure to work, millions of Americans must sign up to pay inflated prices; that would help pay for the subsidies to cover insurance company costs on those with pre-existing conditions. — Ben Shapiro

The obvious and fair solution to the housework problem is to let men do the housework for, say, the next six thousand years, to even things up. The trouble is that men, over the years, have developed an inflated notion of the importance of everything they do, so that before long they would turn housework into just as much of a charade as business is now. They would hire secretaries and buy computers and fly off to housework conferences in Bermuda, but they'd never clean anything. — Dave Barry

The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout. — Garth Risk Hallberg

I loathe him. He stands for everything I hate in Washington. The right schools, houses in Georgetown, farms in Virginia, quiet meetings at their clubs. They've got their tight little world and you don't break in
they run it all. The bastards. The superior, self-inflated gentry of Washington. They use other men's intellects, other men's work, wrapping it all into decisions bearing their imprimaturs. And if you're on the outside, you become part of that amorphous entity, a 'damn fine staff.' (Alfred Gillette) — Robert Ludlum

Government should stand behind its currency and credit and the bank deposits of the nation. No individual should suffer a loss of money through depreciation or inflated currency of Bank bankruptcy. — Abraham Lincoln

A dad standing up near the stands' top with a Toshiba viewfinder to his eye takes a tomahawking baton directly in the groin and falls forward onto somebody eating a Funnel Cake, and they take out good bits of several rows below them, and there's an extended halt to the action, during which I decamp
steering clear of the sixteen-year-olds on the basketball court
and as I clear the last row yet another baton comes wharp-wharping cruelly over my shoulder, caroming viciously off big R.'s inflated thigh. — David Foster Wallace

I am in favor of high wages and agree that the higher the wages, the stronger the evidence of prosperity, provided (and that is the important point) they are so naturally, by the effectiveness of industry, and not in consequence of an inflated currency or any artificial regulation. — John C. Calhoun

Oftentimes in a society when people of a certain type, whether individual or a group, are subconsciously portrayed by the media as abnormal, they also slowly, subconsciously become enemies of that society due to feelings of cultural guilt. Ultimately by this the inflated media is an enemy of its very own cause. — Criss Jami

Your money can be inflated away but your knowledge and talent cannot. — Warren Buffett

Feeble is the character, that bows to inflated ego, arrogance, and whines of affluent, whilst raising itself mercilessly on the humble and underprivileged. — Aniruddha Sastikar

There are criminals who are drug users, but most addicts are criminals only by virtue of prohibition or from resorting to crime to pay inflated black market prices. — Danny Sugerman

My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."

"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh Holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"

"Arturo, stop that"

"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family."

My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame."

I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"

My mother came after me with the broom. — John Fante

Most of our fears are borrowed. Since that's the case, we should get busy returning them. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

We all become well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot. — Richard Rohr

In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words: from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. — Rick Perlstein

But say you've inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it's soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure. — Tom Robbins

People forget history nowadays,that is what the ego does, making one the prisoner of one's inflated present, ignoring the humble past one had lived. — Aporva Kala

A millionaire is a person who is free, who does what she loves, who has unlimited materials, her choice of tools, abundance, inspiration, freedom and an inflated sense of entitlement to have, create and get more. — Sara Genn

The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. — Alex Winter

I think my biggest problem was, as a celebrity on a TV show, you get an inflated ego and you think you're the center of the universe. — Kirk Cameron

I was still unteachable, being inflated with the novelty of heresy. — Augustine Of Hippo

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure as he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them. — Matthieu Ricard

The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege. — Simone Weil

I don't read reviews. I refuse to have my ego inflated or deflated by someone I don't know. — Suzan-Lori Parks

I am invariably and have been since adolescence inimical to the Republican mind which shows at the most inflated size the bad qualities of the bourgeoisie rather than the good qualities of the middle class which the Democrats call forth. — Janet Flanner

On the cover of this publication a bikini-clad young woman disported herself with a medicine ball, both articles looking as though they had been inflated with a bicycle pump. — John Mortimer

Italy may well be the main problem. It has benefited most from the euro by having been able to get the euro interest rate instead of what otherwise would have been its own. That would be much higher because Italy has been accumulating so much debt. In the past, Italy has inflated away its debt. The virtue of the euro is that Italy can't do it alone. A tight ECB policy wouldn't permit that to happen again. — Milton Friedman

Drug prohibition has caused gang warfare and other violent crimes by raising the prices of drugs so much that vicious criminals enter the market to make astronomical profits, and addicts rob and steal to get money to pay the inflated prices for their drugs. — Michael Badnarik

Though she'd begun to get a bit fat that winter, it was in February, around when her father found a toy poodle (sitting there, in the side yard, watchful and waiting as a person), and adopted it, that a weightlessness entered into Chelsea's blood - an inside ventilation, like a bacteria of ghosts - and it was sometime in the fall, before her 23rd birthday, that her heart, her small and weary core, neglected now for years, vanished a little, from the center out, took on the strange and hollowed heaviness of a weakly inflated balloon. — Tao Lin

At some point, Fatio had to tear those eyes away from Eliza and begin the same sort of dance cum duel with Waterhouse. Again, if Fatio had been a fellow of the Royal Society or a doctor at some university, Waterhouse would have had some idea what to make of him. As it was, Fatio had to conjure his credentials and bona fides out of thin are, as it were, by dropping names and scattering references to books he'd read, problems he'd solved, inflated reputations he had punctured, experiments he had performed, creatures he had seen. — Neal Stephenson

Realizing who we are and what we may become assures us that with God nothing really is impossible. From the time we learn that Jesus wants us for a Sunbeam until we learn more fully the basic principles of the gospel, we are taught to strive for perfection. It is not new to us then to talk of the importance of achievement. The difficulty arises when inflated expectations of the world alter our definition of greatness. — Howard W. Hunter

Undervaluations caused by neglect or prejudice may persist for an inconveniently long time, and the same applies to inflated prices caused by over-enthusiasm or artificial stimulants. — Benjamin Graham

hardly anyone knows what vainglory is anymore. If anything, people use the word "vain" or "vanity" today to mean being conceited or puffed up about yourself (usually in an unjustified way) - roughly speaking, it's a form of pride equivalent to having an inflated sense of your worth or importance. — Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung

Oppression porn - (1) The depiction of poverty, oppression, and/or despair with the intent of provoking moral arousal. Frequently appears as digital media, literature, and pseudo-immersive favela tours. The most common side effect is a dangerously inflated sense of national and/or cultural superiority. — T. Geronimo Johnson

The bully on the block who beats up somebody doesn't become more powerful. All they do is walk around inside their own mind with an inflated ego. — Frederick Lenz

Early in my life I had made a pact with myself. I would never eat anything that moved when I cooked it, excited the dog, or inflated upon impact with my teeth. — Erma Bombeck

Rather than giving people an inflated view of themselves, we need to give them concrete reasons to feel good about themselves. — Martin Seligman

...when I betray myself, others' faults become immediately inflated in my heart and mind. I begin to 'horribilize' others. That is, I begin to make them out to be worse than they really are. And I do this because the worse they are, the more justified I feel. — The Arbinger Institute

A basic flaw in contemporary American educational philosophy as much as it is under the influence of the late John Dewey, is it s failure to grasp the essentially artistic character of teaching. Due to an inflated opinion of "science" and all things supposedly "scientific," educators have been loathe to admit that teaching is an art, not a science. The art of teaching is a mingling of the liberal and the dramatic arts. Above and beyond the subject matter, the teacher actually needs but two assets: (a) a grasp of the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric,and logic; (b) a mastery of the dramatic art of presentation." - pg 126 footnote 1. — Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

The dark aftermath of the frontier, of the vast promise of possibility this country first offered, is an inflated sense of American entitlement today. We want what we want, and we want it now. Easy credit. Fast food. A straight shot down the interstate from point A to point B. The endless highway is crowded with the kinds of cars large enough to take a mountain pass in high snow. Instead they are used to take children from soccer practice to Pizza Hut. In the process they burn fuel like there's no tomorrow. Tomorrow's coming. — Anna Quindlen

There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people. — Vince Cable

I know what it's like to have an inflated libido. — Daniel Cudmore

It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe. — Iain M. Banks

Our "ego" or self-conception could be pictured as a leaking balloon, forever requiring the helium of external love to remain inflated, and ever vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect. — Alain De Botton

My mother by then had already begun her own decline, her own transformation, hardening into a bitter rind of a woman who pushed through the stations of her day as though each moment were unpleasant duty; as though the currencies of joy had become so inflated they could no longer purchase anything of worth. — James Sallis

Like a good Spaniard he needed words as much as he needed money, and the words he wanted had to be the most expansive and inflated available. In Spain words form a kind of currency which must be spent freely, and to do this is not easy for an American, yet not to do it in Spain is to miss the spirit of human relationships. — James A. Michener

In their minds it is the mark of an ill-prepared and amateur army to rely in the moments before battle on what they call pseudoandreia, false courage, meaning the artificially inflated martial frenzy produced by a general's eleventh-hour harangue or some peak of bronze-banging bravado built to by shouting, shield-pounding and the like[ ... ] It made no difference. None was a match for the warriors of Lakedaemon, and all knew it. — Steven Pressfield

When I then turned toward the scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown. — Augustine Of Hippo

Take me to my new trailer," Ezra ordered Dennis.
Dennis didn't move.
"What, did you not hear me?" Ezra raged. "I'm standing on your deaf ear?"
Dennis just stood there calmly.
Ezra slapped his own forehead with his right hand and sighed - civility didn't come easy. And here Dennis was standing his ground and demanding he be treated right.
"Please," Ezra said, defeated.
Dennis turned away from Elton and walked confidently toward the new RV the U.S. government had brought in for Ezra.
"Some people and their inflated egos," Ezra sniffed.
Dennis just smiled. — Obert Skye

There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy. — Elizabeth Gilbert

People forget history nowadays, he lamented, that is what the ego does, making one the prisoner of one's inflated present, ignoring the humble past one has lived. — Aporva Kala

Those who speak the truth in this world; they fall out of favor, in the current era of inflated lies. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Of a man who only wills the Good out of fear of punishment, it is necessary to say with special emphasis, that he fears what a man should not and ought not to fear: loss of money, loss of reputation, misjudgment by others, neglect, the world's judgment, the ridicule of fools, the laughter of the frivolous, the cowardly whining of consideration, the inflated triviality of the moment, the fluttering mist-forms of vapor. — Soren Kierkegaard

Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy. — Robert A. Heinlein

Who would not want an illness that has among its symptoms elevated and expansive mood, inflated self-esteem, abundance of energy, less need for sleep, intensified sexuality, and- most germane to our argument here-"sharpened and unusually creative thinking" and "increased productivity"? — Kay Redfield Jamison

To conceive of a god in one's image is already quite a feat for inflated egos. To imagine, however, that this likeness has chosen your generation amongst the thousands for ending the party is to bring the egocentrism to new heights. — Anthony Marais

Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died. Secunda saw Maximus die, and then Secunda died. Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and Epitynchanus died. Antoninus saw Faustina die, and then Antoninus died. Such is everything. Celer saw Hadrian die, and then Celer died. And those sharp-witted men, either seers or men inflated with pride, where are they? For instance the sharp-witted men, Charax and Demetrius the Platonist and Eudaemon, and any one else like them. All ephemeral, dead long ago. Some indeed have not been remembered even for a short time, and others have become the heroes of fables, and again others have disappeared even from fables. Remember this then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere. — Marcus Aurelius

Indignation caused Mercedes to puff out her cheeks temporarily, causing her narrow face to resemble a set of inflated fireplace bellows. "You don't like Mr. Swift any more than I do," she retorted.
"No," Lillian said frankly. "But much as I hate to admit it, that puts us in a minority. Swift is liked by everyone in the northern hemisphere, including Westcliff and his friends, my friends, the servants, the neighbors - "
"You are exaggerating - "
" - children, animals and the higher order of plants," Lillian finished sardonically. "If root vegetables could talk, I've no doubt they would say they like him, too."
Daisy, who was sitting by the window with a book, looked up with a sudden grin. "His charm doesn't extend to poultry," she said. — Lisa Kleypas

For a consumer society thrives by stoking unquenchable desires into unsustainable cravings and fanning them with an inflated rage for rights. The restlessness it creates by providing false satisfactions and deadening true desires simultaneously fuels the economy and destroys happiness. — Os Guinness

Happiness is not giddiness or some overly inflated sense of being. — Asa Don Brown

Language rarely lies. It can reveal the insincerity of a writer's claims simply through a grating adjective or an inflated phrase. We come upon a frenzy of words and suspect it hides a paucity of feeling. — Irving Howe

What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. — David Mitchell

It was the strangest things, how happiness came out of nowhere and inflated your soul. — Kate DiCamillo

Look, his ego is inflated; B he is without integrity. But the righteous one will live by his faith. C, f — Anonymous

Moffat's prose is fine: clear and steady, with just enough sweeping statements about destiny and dragons to keep things well inflated. The characters are appealing archetypes: Fernwen the scholarly dwarf is the everynerd, doing his best to live through the adventure. Telemach Half-Blood is the hero you wish you could be. He always has a plan, always has a solution, always has secret allies that he can call upon - pirates and sorcerers whose allegiance he earn with long-ago sacrifices. — Robin Sloan

Has anyone ever told you that you have That?" I must look thoroughly confused. "You've never heard of That?" he asks, surprised. I shake my head no. "It's a priceless quality that's impossible to define, really," he explains, "but you recognize it in the actions of great people." Showering friends and strangers with inflated but disingenuous compliments is a customary tradition in Iran called taarof, but looking into Doctor's eyes, I don't think he's taarof-ing. Some — Mahbod Seraji

(People) either overestimate Satan's influence and power, living with an inflated, erroneous perspective of his abilities. Or they underestimate him. They don't assign him any credit at all for the difficulties he's stirring up beneath the surface of our lives ... Satan is not God. And he is not God's counterpart or peer ... Satan is nothing but a copycat trying desperately to convince you he's more powerful than he actually is ... So even though he's given temporary clearance to strategize and antagonize, we don't need to pray from a position of fear or weakness against him ... But we can't expect to experience this power unless we're serious about joining the battle in prayer. — Priscilla Shirer

Common sense solutions to lowering your gasoline bills can go far. Carpooling, taking fewer or shorter road trips, and ensuring that your tires are fully inflated can all help stop the pinch at the pump. — Bob Ney

I should never have dreamed of purpose, I am coming to the conclusion that privacy, the small individual lives of men, are preferable to all this inflated macrocosmic activity. — Salman Rushdie

Boston - wrinkled, spindly-legged, depleted of nearly all her spiritual and cutaneous oils, provincial, self-esteeming - has gone on spending and spending her inflated bills of pure reputation, decade after decade. — Elizabeth Hardwick

People who take more than their share usually feel an inflated sense of entitlement. — Jeanne Phillips

There is too much at stake to chance rocking the boat by holding on to highly inflated expectations. Keeping our relationships intact and pretending they're successful, even if they aren't, is the price we must pay to harbor our deepest secrets. — Sarah Jo Smith

And they've concluded that our democratic system is an abject failure. And they think we Americans are weak, lazy, whiny, self-important global has-beens, inflated with a false sense of entitlement. In this, they are probably correct. — Douglas Preston

When you cut it up, put the pieces in your mouth and swallowed them, the British hamburger shaped itself to the bottom on your stomach like ballast, while interacting with your gastric juices to form an incipient belch of enormous potential, an airship which had been inflated in a garage. This belch, when silently released, would cause people standing twenty yards away to start examining the soles of their shoes. The vocalized version sounded like a bag of tools thrown into a bog. — Clive James

I murmur: "It's a seat," a little like an exorcism. But the word stays on my lips: it refuses to go and put itself on the thing. It stays what it is, with its red plush, thousands of little red paws in the air, all still, little dead paws. This enormous belly turned upward, bleeding, inflated - bloated with all its dead paws, this belly floating in this car, in this grey sky, is not a seat. It could just as well be a dead donkey tossed about in the water, floating with the current, belly in the air in a great grey river, a river of floods; and I could be sitting on the donkey's belly, my feet dangling in the clear water. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Empowered Women 101: Everyone wants to be a princess, but you weren't the first princess in his life. They scrubbed his floors, washed his workout clothes, picked up his dirty socks and dealt with his issues. Always remember that history leaves a pattern of what to expect. A real woman knows that the bible is a motivator, but the real instruction manual is observing the last woman's struggle. — Shannon L. Alder

Egoism [Ahamkar: Aham=I; kar=did] means 'I did'. Where one is not the doer and he says, 'I did'; that is egoism. To do egoism and to walk around with an inflated chest is pride (maan) and then to go on telling others 'I did it myself', is known as pride with my-ness (abhiman). — Dada Bhagwan

Water inflated the belly
Of Hart Crane, and of Shelley.
Coleridge was a dope.
Southwell died on a rope. — Roy Fuller

People always form images of who others are, and they can be inflated images. People may not realize that the enormous energy and spiritual power that comes through a teacher, especially in a teaching situation, has nothing to do with that person. — Eckhart Tolle

Social media inflames our already inflated view of self. — Mandy J. Hoffman

Even a paperback printed on acidic paper, whose pages have yellowed ten years on, can still be read, no matter how badly the spine is cracked or how inflated it's become from being dropped in the bathtub. The pages might separate from the spine, but a rubber band can keep them together. You may loan a book to your circle of closest friends, but shoes are another matter. A great book will never go out of style - books go with every outfit. — Lewis Buzbee

If you look into the footnotes of the business model for Apple Computer you'll see that they actually give the computers away for free; they just charge for the inflated sense of self-worth. — Christian Lander

It is beyond dispute that Osiris made his worshipers dream strange things of him, and that he possessed their bodies and souls forever. There is a devilish wrath against mankind with which Osiris was for Death's sake inspired. In the cool of the evening he walked among men, and upon his head was the Crown of Upper Egypt, and his cheeks were inflated with a wind that slew. His face was veiled so that no man could see it, hut assuredly it was an old face, very old and dead and dry for the world was young when tall Osiris died.
("A Visitor From Egypt") — Frank Belknap Long

I would argue that television and particularly the BBC were instrumental in puffing up the Royal Family to a level where they were inflated out of all, all proportion to their relevance on the national scene. — Andrew Morton

An inflated balloon
impressive to look at but hollow at the core and easily punctured. — Dianne Feinstein

Inflated descriptions by the pen or exaggerated illustrations by the pencil. — Grace Darling

Men tend to think all of their points were good, and they sure as hell didn't need me to boost their already inflated egos. — J.R. Rain

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. This is the famous study by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in New York mentioned a few chapters ago that launched the new science of what we might call Stupidology. It — Bill Bryson

These were strange caricatures of human beings, weirdly inflated, their breasts enormous spheres, held in place by string bikinis with cups the size of fourteen-meter yacht spinnakers. Their legs were elongated too, their toes pointed straight downward into high-heeled shoes steeper than double black-diamond ski runs. — Peter Sagal

The Commerce Clause has already been inflated so much that we basically can't do anything without the government's permission. — Alex Epstein

The lacrosse game took place in the optimistically dubbed SuperDome, an air-inflated sports facility made from some sort of pliable material. Thomas was playing in an indoor league for the winter season. Ryan had come along too. He half watched his brother, half played catch in the corner with a couple of other kids. Ryan also kept looking over at his father. He did that a lot now, looked for his father, as though Adam might suddenly vanish into thin air. Adam got it, of course. He tried to reassure him, but what could he really say? — Harlan Coben

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth. — Alain De Botton

This new meta-system is very much in favor of the self, but a self that is based on a proper sense of dignity, not on an inflated ego. A person who dare not admit he is wrong inflates his ego but weakens his self. — Edward De Bono