helpful self-examination

I am vain when it comes to vocabulary. Vain to an irritating point. Oh, I am so glad I grabbed my nearly destroyed copy of Thomas a Kempis' Inner Life and was once again, like the previous post, splashed with ice cold water with the following:

Lofty words do not make a man just or holy; but a good life makes him dear to God. I would far rather feel contrition than be able to define it....'Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity,'...It is vanity to solicit honours, or to raise oneself to high station.

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. Guilty of first degree vanity of words. Tsk.