Vain Quotes

• Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.

  Jane Austen

  Pride, Thinking, Vanity

  Jane Austen (2008). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.26, Waking Lion Press

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• We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

  Alain de Botton

  Survival, Safe, Tests

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.87, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Education, College, Men

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• If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

  Emily Dickinson

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  "If I can stop one heart from breaking" l. 1 (ca. 1865)

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• Live for yourself and you will live in vain; Live for others, and you will live again.

  Bob Marley

  Love, Life, Music

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• We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Life, Women, Conceited

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• Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.

  Alexander Pope

  Winning, Sight, Soul

  'The Rape of the Lock' (1714) canto 5, l. 33

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• In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

  Jane Austen

  Love, Romantic, Funny Relationship

  Jane Austen (1819). “Pride and Prejudice: A Novel”, p.123

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• I have been vain since birth.

  Wallace Shawn

  Birth, Has Beens

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.

  Max Beerbohm

  Mean, Men, Vanity

  Max Beerbohm (2015). “The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm”, p.94, New York Review of Books

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• Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

  Alexander Pope

  Beauty, Eye, Winning

  'The Rape of the Lock' (1714) canto 5, l. 33

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• Look within.
  Within you is the hidden God.
  Within you is the immortal soul.
  Within you is the inexhaustible spiritual treasure.
  Within you is the ocean of bliss.
  Look within for the happiness which you have sought in vain.

  Sivananda

  Spiritual, Ocean, Soul

  Swami Sivananda (1944). “Gyana Yoga”

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• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Beautiful, Book

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.8, Penguin

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• To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.

  William Penn

  Stupid, Men, Fool

  William Penn (1841). “Fruits of solitude in reflections and maxims relating to the conduct of human life. A new ed”, p.122

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• I am intrigued by glamorous women ... A vain woman is continually taking out a compact to repair her makeup. A glamorous woman knows she doesn't need to.

  Clark Gable

  Makeup, Needs, Glamorous

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I'm not vain, I'm insecure.

  Mariah Carey

  Insecure

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

  Oscar Wilde

  Vanity, Sin, Conscience

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (with an Essay by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly)”, p.65, Mondial

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• It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.

  William of Ockham

  Peace, Creativity, Simple

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• You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell. What I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.

  Charles Dickens

  Love, Mean, Men

  Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank (1868). “The Works of Charles Dickens: Our mutual friend”, p.345

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• The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

  John Ruskin

  Selfish, Struggle, Vanity

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• If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Peace, Source, Ifs

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• Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Stupid, Ignorance, Stupid People

  Friedrich Schiller (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Schiller (Illustrated)”, p.1912, Delphi Classics

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• That we we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Patriotic, Government

  Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pa., 19 Nov. 1863.

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• When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

  William Shakespeare

  Thought Provoking, Lovers Meeting, Power Of Words

  William Shakespeare, Roma Gill (1998). “Richard II”, p.23, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Life and death are important. Don't suffer them in vain.

  Bodhidharma

  Life And Death, Suffering, Important

  Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.13, Macmillan

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