Vanity, he saw, was his chief failing. “Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly,” he wrote, vowing to reform himself. By “vanity” he did not mean he had an excessive pride in appearance. Adams was never one to spend much time in front of a mirror. Rather, in the eighteenth-century use of the word, he was berating himself for being overly proud, conceited.
