Brethren: If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk. Let us not become desirous of vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another.
Gal 5:25-26; 6:1-10
The yearning after glory is a strange passion. It displays itself in a hundred different ways. Some wish to be honoured, some wish to be in regal power, some aspire to be rich, and others sigh to be strong and robust. This tyrannic passion, passing still further on, induces some to seek for glory by their alms-deeds, others by their fasts and mortifications, some by their ostentatious prayers, others by their learning and science, so various are the forms of this monster vice.
St John Chrysostom
Men soon find that there is no one more importunate than he who, filled with vainglory, praises himself, gives himself airs, and places on his head a wreath of incense. He is laughed at for his vanity, and the more they notice that he boasts of himself, the more they endeavour to humiliate him. In fact, the more you try to attract the praise of the world by your own vanity and vainglory, the more will people either avoid you or laugh at you.
St John Chrysostom
Public approbation has but little effect on a man who has acted from good and conscientious motives, such a man merits as much again as he seems to have disregarded before. Those who seek with too much eagerness for the esteem and applause of the world, receive during this life the reward of their good works, but merit nothing for eternity. The reward which men can give us is frivolous and transient, but God reserves for us an infinite reward, an eternal recompense.
St Ambrose
All the saints admonish us to be on our guard against vainglory, because, say they, it is a cunning thief, which often steals from us our best actions, and which insinuates itself so secretly that it has struck its blow even before we have perceived it.
Alphonse Rodriguez SJ
Would you wish to know how to save yourself from this tempestuous sea? Love God, and you will walk upon its waters, you will tread under foot the pride of the world, and you will be saved.
St Augustine
He sees a crowd of frivolous desires, hopes ill-founded, unjust hatreds, irregulated loves, he sees the wanton extravagance of our pleasures, the inutility of our occupations, the instability of our fortunes, the emptiness of our wishes, the littleness of our interests. Ah! how mean and contemptible did the world appear to him! No wonder he despised it, and retired from it for evermore.
L’Abbe Flechier (Panegyric of St Benedict)
AnaStpaul 