What's the difference between ambition and vanity?

Ambition


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of going about to solicit or obtain an office, or any other object of desire; canvassing.
  • (n.) An eager, and sometimes an inordinate, desire for preferment, honor, superiority, power, or the attainment of something.
  • (v. t.) To seek after ambitiously or eagerly; to covet.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Jubilant Democrats are eyeing so-called “red states” such as Georgia and Utah and expanding their ambitions to take both the Senate and House .
  • (2) The award for nonfiction went to New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos for his book on modern China, Age of Ambition .
  • (3) "My great ambition is to be president of a golf club where I am playing," he teased .
  • (4) So far, there is little sign of similar hubris at the Human Brain Project, a far more complex undertaking, but perhaps for the moment Markram's ambition is precisely what is needed.
  • (5) Photograph: KHIZR KHAN This sombre, serene oasis overlooking the Potomac river might also prove the graveyard of Donald Trump’s ambitions for the US presidency.
  • (6) Britain’s troubled relationship with the EU has provided Boris Johnson with nothing but fun since he first made his name lampooning the federalist ambitions of Jacques Delors as the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the early 1990s .
  • (7) President Obama's ambitions for new nuclear reductions?
  • (8) As Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, said when he published the initial white paper back in 2010: “At its heart, universal credit has a simple ambition – to make work pay, even for the poorest.
  • (9) "The player [Suárez] is amazing and I love his quality, commitment and ambition to play," said Mourinho.
  • (10) Some … actually dropped to the low end of their ambition ranges, which have led small island states to ask, 'Why is this?'
  • (11) Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of Kenya said the “truth [of the Gospel] continues to be called into question in the Anglican communion” and warned against “the global ambitions of a secular culture”.
  • (12) As important, if not more so, as his ambition to make exams tougher is his hostility towards other measures of ability, such as course work and controlled assessments.
  • (13) And Bristol, I guess, is following on because it has an ambition to become something similar.” According to Key, Bristol’s congestion problems are only as bad as those of other UK cities, and it’s “streets ahead” on walking and cycling .
  • (14) The company recently announced its ambition to reach a valuation of $50bn, but it is unclear how much Uber is worth if it has to start picking up expenses it has up to now pushed on to the shoulders of its drivers.
  • (15) If the ambition set out by the world’s heads of state in New York is ever to be achieved, the global tax system needs more than just a sticking plaster.
  • (16) But concerns about a slowing economy, jobs, civil rights and a lack of progress in the Kurdish peace process appear to have combined with worries that Erdoğan could assume quasi-dictatorial powers to thwart the president’s ambitions.
  • (17) Ian Macfarlane signals frontbench ambition after defecting to Nationals Read more But the deputy leader of the Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, pushed back at the criticism, saying it was not unprecedented for people to move between the Coalition parties and noted it was not as significant as ousting a prime minister.
  • (18) Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN and a former frontrunner to replace Clinton as state secretary, saw her political ambitions cut short after she suggested that the attack could have originated from a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim US-made film.
  • (19) In this context, it is hard not to wonder whether a scheme on the scale and ambition of Packington, located as it is in a sea of valuable central London real estate, could ever be replicated.
  • (20) For Davutoglu, this ambition entails a "comprehensive" approach embracing enhanced economic, cultural and social ties as well as political and security relations.

Vanity


Definition:

  • (n.) The quality or state of being vain; want of substance to satisfy desire; emptiness; unsubstantialness; unrealness; falsity.
  • (n.) An inflation of mind upon slight grounds; empty pride inspired by an overweening conceit of one's personal attainments or decorations; an excessive desire for notice or approval; pride; ostentation; conceit.
  • (n.) That which is vain; anything empty, visionary, unreal, or unsubstantial; fruitless desire or effort; trifling labor productive of no good; empty pleasure; vain pursuit; idle show; unsubstantial enjoyment.
  • (n.) One of the established characters in the old moralities and puppet shows. See Morality, n., 5.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) With most big stars, the vanity and the power and the money take over.
  • (2) She believes her explorations – of their vanities, their blindnesses, their cruelties, of the brief moments in which they attain goodness, or glimpse a kind of realistic, unselfish love – to be of urgent importance.
  • (3) Aesthetic surgery crosses the dividing line between surgery for reconstruction and alteration of deviations (which do not in themselves constitute objective deformities) and is sometimes even performed without medical indication, but just for the gratification of individual vanity.
  • (4) So how did Vanity Fair decide to illustrate this heartfelt and rather astonishing interview?
  • (5) Using various self-report indices of these constructs we found that (a) defensive self-enhancement is composed of two orthogonal components: grandiosity and social desirability; (b) grandiosity and social desirability independently predict self-esteem and may represent distinct confounds in the measurement of self-esteem, (c) narcissism is positively related to grandiose self-enhancement (as opposed to social desirability), (d) narcissism is positively associated with both defensive and nondefensive self-esteem, and (e) authority, self-sufficiency, and vanity are the narcissistic elements most indicative of nondefensive self-esteem.
  • (6) "I've got a few men I respect very much and one would be Frank Gehry ," Pitt told Vanity Fair.
  • (7) Vanity Fair's contributing editor, Sarah Ellison, said Abramson was eminently prepared for the top job.
  • (8) A correlational analysis of the 7-factor components of the NPI (Authority, Exhibitionism, Superiority, Vanity, Exploitativeness, Entitlement, and Self-Sufficiency) and the MMPI validity, clinical, commonly scored, and content scales suggests that the seven NPI components reflect different levels of psychological maladjustment.
  • (9) By the time the guests have their fill of caviar-stuffed potatoes and get in their limos to the Vanity Fair party across town, most are sufficiently well lubricated to deal with one another: I walk in to see Benedict Cumberbatch standing by the bar with Joan Collins, while Patrick Stewart and Jared Leto are expressing mutual admiration for one another nearby.
  • (10) Janine di Giovanni is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and the author of Ghosts by Daylight (Bloomsbury).
  • (11) But also, how cool that you are all talking about that.’” The film has opened to mainly negative reviews, with the Guardian’s Henry Barnes feeling that the compromises Emmerich has made “ leave Stonewall feeling neutered ” while Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson called it “ alarmingly clunky ”.
  • (12) Vanity Fair and the New Yorker have said they will not host parties either.
  • (13) Condé Nast's Vanity Fair was the worst performer among the big name titles in the sector in print, reporting sales of 81,344, down 8% period-on-period and 16.8% year-on-year.
  • (14) In a rare interview with Vanity Fair, the Oscar-winning director of Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist said the arrest hit him harder than any incident since the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family in 1969, as well as the subsequent media circus that followed.
  • (15) It’s about vanity and a desire to splash the cash.
  • (16) You got to love the Tories they're happy to spend taxpayers money (the've increased debt by £555 billion since George Osborne took office in 2010, ) on big vanity projects.
  • (17) I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother.” In a 2005 Vanity Fair interview on the subject, Dolce said he would love an “entire football team” of children, but: “I have the small handicap of being gay so having a child is not possible for me.” They refer constantly to their business as their baby.
  • (18) When the case came to court, Mr Justice Eady refused to allow Vanity Fair to give the jury the full details of the 1977 attack.
  • (19) Prince undertook a six-month tour to promote 1999, where he was joined on the bill by his proteges the Time and a new all-female group, Vanity 6, the latter seemingly an embodiment of Prince’s sexual fantasies.
  • (20) Sometimes, it seems, calling oneself a feminist is a personal act of vanity, with no wider resonance – witness Louise Mensch the feminist , Theresa May the feminist and, most fantastically, Margaret Thatcher the feminist, even though her supporters will happily tell you that the woman stood for no one but herself.