vanity 허영 虛榮 Eitelkeit forfaengelighed

… some very small and microscopic features of the soul: yes, he is master at the very small. But he doesn’t want to be! His character like great walls and bold frescoes much better! It escapes him that his spirit has a different taste and disposition and likes best of all to sit quietly in the corners of collapsed houses – there, hidden, hidden from himself, he paints his real masterpieces, which are all very short, often only a bar long – only there does he become wholly good, great, and perfect; perhaps only there. But he doesn’t know it! He is too vain to know it.

Nietzsche, The Gay Science