Vain Quotes - Page 6

• One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.

  Emile Durkheim

  Names, Long, Doe

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.243, Routledge

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• Not vain the weakest, if their force unite.

  Homer

  Unity, Force, Ifs

  Homer (1796). “The Iliad of Homer”, p.34

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• If, at the end of my days, the sum of what I've taken exceeds the sum of what I've given, then I have lived in vain.

  Doug Rice

  Taken, Social Media, Ends

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• A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Humble, Men, Modest

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1796). “A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects”, p.275

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• Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they altimately are as revealed in their poetry.

  Stephen Spender

  Ambition, Vanity, Ambitious

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• I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.

  John Henry Newman

  Sorrow, Doe, May

  John Henry Newman (1900). “The Works of Cardinal Newman”

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• The world taught women nothing skillful and then said her work was valueless. It permitted her no opinions and said she did not know how to think. It forbade her to speak in public and said the sex had no orators. It denied her the schools, and said the sex had no genius. It robbed her of every vestige of responsibility, and then called her weak. It taught her that every pleasure must come as a favor from men and when, to gain it, she decked herself in paint and fine feathers, as she had been taught to do, it called her vain.

  Carrie Chapman Catt

  Sex, School, Responsibility

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• Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted makeup.
  Forget the laughs, forget the fights, forget the sex, forget the jealousy. But take off your hat and observe a moment's silence for the legions of unknown tubes of foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blusher and lipstick who died that it might all have been possible. But who died in vain.

  Marian Keyes

  Sex, Fighting, Makeup

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• It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Prayer, Vanity, Odds

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2008). “Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928-1931”

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• A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.
  It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.

  Stendhal

  Air, Hands, Want Something

  Stendhal (2006). “The Red and the Black: Easyread Edition”, p.245, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it - the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Humble, Hands, Effort

  Ann Radcliffe (2015). “The Mysteries of Udolpho: Horror and Romance”, p.665, 谷月社

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• You are a vain fellow. You want to be a hero. That is why you do such silly things. A hero!... I don't quite know what that is: but, you see, I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can. The others do not do it.

  Romain Rolland

  Hero, Silly, Men

  Romain Rolland (1938). “Jean Christophe”

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• When are Christian folks going to remember that every time you call yourself a Christian, you invoke the name of God, and that if you then walk a walk that does not reflect the presence of Christ in your life, cast a vote that does not reflect the presence of Christ in your life, then you are taking the name of the Lord your God in vain?

  Alan Keyes

  Christian, Names, Doe

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• People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing.

  Donald J. Boudreaux

  Winning, People, Political

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• To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Knowing, Doe, Speak

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• In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Lying, Passion, Heart

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• A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?’

  Pope Pius XII

  Christian, Believe, Taken

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• When a man has offered in sacrifice all that he has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding his life, and believing before God that he has been called to make this sacrifice because he seeks to do his will, he does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept his sacrifice and offering, and that he has not, nor will not seek his face in vain.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  Believe, Sacrifice, Men

  Joseph Smith Jr. (2010). “Lectures on Faith”, p.72, Cedar Fort

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• Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Spiritual, Long, People

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• I am far from any intention to limit curiosity, or confine the labours of learning to arts of immediate and necessary use. It is only from the various essays of experimental industry, and the vague excursions of mind set upon discovery, that any advancement of knowledge can be expected; and though many must be disappointed in their labours, yet they are not to be charged with having spent their time in vain; their example contributed to inspire emulation, and their miscarriage taught others the way to success.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Miscarriage, Necessary Use

  Samuel Johnson (1889). “Select Essays”

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• He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.

  John Calvin

  Doe, Looks

  John Calvin (2012). “On the Christian Life (Annotated Edition)”, p.20, Jazzybee Verlag

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• He is born in vain, who having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realize God in this very life.

  Ramakrishna

  Doe, Birth, Realizing

  Ramakrishna (1960). “Sayings: The Most Exhaustive Collection of Them, Their Number Being 1120”

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• Knowledge is vain and fruitless which is not reduced to practice.

  Matthew Henry

  Practice

  Matthew Henry (2016). “Bible commentary - Gospel of John”, p.779, Bible Study Books

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• Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Struggle, Trying, Important

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• Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment.

  Dogen

  Morning, Lightning, Dew

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