1.

“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.”

—Benjamin Franklin

2.

“Narcissistic people are always struggling with the fact that the rest of the world doesn’t revolve around them.”

—Unknown

3.

“Though they are quick to put others down, unhealthy narcissists view themselves in absolutely positive terms.”

—Daniel Goleman

4.

“There’s a reason narcissists don’t learn from mistakes and that’s because they never get past the first step which is admitting that they made one.”

—Jeffrey Kluger

5.

“Some narcissistic people end up believing their own lies.”

—Unknown

6.

“It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.”

—Voltaire

7.

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

—Oscar Wilde

8.

“Narcissism falls along the axis of what psychologists call personality disorders, one of a group that includes antisocial, dependent, histrionic, avoidant and borderline personalities. But by most measures, narcissism is one of the worst, if only because the narcissists themselves are so clueless.”

—Jeffrey Kluger

9.

“I think a lot of self-importance is a product of fear. And fear, living in sort of an un-self-examined fear-based life, tends to lead to narcissism and self-importance.”

—Moby

10.

“Since [narcissists] deep down feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault.”

—M. Scott Peck

11.

“The silent killer of all great men and women of achievement—particularly men, I don’t know why, maybe it’s the testosterone—I think it’s narcissism. Even more than hubris. And for women, too. Narcissism is the killer.”

—James Woods

12.

“I am a recovering narcissist. I thought narcissism was about self-love till someone told me there is a flip side to it. It is actually drearier than self-love; it is unrequited self-love.”

—Emily Levine

13.

“Narcissus weeps to find that his image does not return his love.”

—Mason Cooley

14.

“The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one’s narcissism.”

—Erich Fromm

15.

“Narcissists commonly cut people off and out of their lives due to their shallow emotional style of seeing others as either good or bad.”

—Karyl McBride

16.

“Self-love forever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens…to stumble upon it.”

—George Gordon Noel Byron

17.

“A sociopath is one who sees others as impersonal objects to be manipulated to fulfill their own narcissistic needs without any regard for the hurtful consequences of their selfish actions.”

—R. Alan Woods

18.

“I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I mustn’t say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.”

—Sylvia Plath

19.

“A narcissist paints a picture of themselves as being the victim or innocent in all aspects. They will be offended by the truth. But what is done in the dark will come to light. Time has a way of showing people’s true colors.”

—Karla Grimes

20.

“The sadistic narcissist perceives himself as Godlike, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotionless and non-sexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict.”

—Sam Vaknin

21.

“Hate is the complement of fear and narcissists like being feared. It imbues them with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence.”

—Sam Vaknin

22.

“I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.”

—Frank O’Hara

23.

“Narcissistic personality disorder is named for Narcissus, from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Freud used the term to describe persons who were self-absorbed, and psychoanalysts have focused on the narcissist’s need to bolster his or her self-esteem through grandiose fantasy, exaggerated ambition, exhibitionism, and feelings of entitlement.”

—Donald W. Black

24.

“A man who loves others based solely on how they make him feel, or what they do for him, is really not loving others at all—but loving only himself.”

—Criss Jami

25.

“The ‘Selfie Stick’ has to top the list for what best defines narcissism in society today.”

—Alex Morritt

26.

“Out of all the addictions in the world, attention is slowly but surely becoming one of the most dangerous.”

—Saahil Prem

27.

“Relationships with narcissists are held in place by hope of a ‘someday better,’ with little evidence to support it will ever arrive.”

—Ramani Durvasula

28.

“This Narcissus of ours
Can’t see his face in the mirror
Because he has become the mirror.”

—Antonio Machado

29.

“I bet it gets pretty lonely with only your ego for company.”

—Alexandra Bracken

30.

“How starved you must have been that my heart became a meal for your ego.”

—Amanda Torroni

31.

“Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.”

—Stefan Molyneux

32.

“If anybody studying psychology wants a concrete example of what a narcissist looks like, I advise them to consider any man who cheats on his wife. These guys are the textbook me-firsters, the ones who think the rules don’t apply to them, the ones who tell themselves as long as she doesn’t know, there’s no harm done. No woman needs to sleep with these guys. There are so many single self-absorbed narcissists who will fuck you poorly.”

—Julie Klausner

33.

“The only crime is pride.”

—Sophocles

34.

“The greater our own level of narcissism, the more we detest it in others.”

—Steve Maraboli

35.

“When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.”

—Brené Brown

36.

“Narcissistic love is riding on the rollercoaster of disaster filled with a heart full of tears.”

—Sheree Griffin

37.

“There was nothing more unattractive than narcissism, she thought: nothing could transform beauty into a cloying, unattractive quality than that self-conscious appreciation of self.”

—Alexander McCall Smith

38.

“The paradox is that no love can prove so intense as the love of two narcissists for each other.”

—Norman Mailer

39.

“I have a very simple question to people…who seem to suffer from excessive narcissism: Please name three other persons who are smarter and more capable than you, in the field you work in. (In most cases they are utterly unable to answer that question honestly.)”

—Ingo Molnar

40.

“A narcissist can’t be faithful. This is because—to a narcissist—’you’ don’t exist except as a mirror. When he looks at you, all he sees is his own reflection. Distort this reflection and he will go find another mirror. It’s as simple, or as complicated, as that.”

—Tigress Luv

41.

“Love doesn’t die a natural death. Love has to be killed, either by neglect or narcissism.”

—Frank Salvato

42.

“It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.”

—David Brooks

43.

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm (that they cause) does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

—T. S. Eliot

44.

“Narcissists have poor self-esteem, but they are typically very successful. They feel entitled; they’re self-important; they crave admiration and lack empathy. They are also exploitative and envious. The malignant types never forget a slight. They may kill you ten years later for cutting them off in traffic. But they act perfectly normal while plotting their revenge.”

—Janet M. Tavakoli

45.

“Withhold admiration from a narcissist and be disliked. Give it and be treated with indifference.”

—Mason Cooley

46.

“I love narcissists—even more than they love themselves. You don’t have to buoy them up. They are their own razzle-dazzle show and you are the blessed, favored with a front-row seat.”

—Patricia Marx

47.

“The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside.”

—Sam Vaknin

48.

“If people are really narcissistic or have a need to be seen as more than they really are, or to be admired as having it all together, then they cannot be followed and trusted by others.”

—Henry Cloud

49.

“Whether with a narcissist a week, a month, a year, a decade, or a half of a century, one thing is for sure…one day you will wake up to the revelation that it was all just a figment of your imagination.”

—Tigress Luv

50.

“The most uninteresting thing in the world is watching narcissists fuck each other.”

—Jarett Kobek