Vain Quotes - Page 11

• That the foundation of our national policy should be laid in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles, it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity, of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice.

  James Madison

  Justice, Voting, Foundation

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• Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.

  James Anthony Froude

  Nature, Men, Originality

  James Anthony Froude (2004). “Short Studies on Great Subjects”, p.439, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.

  James Russell Lowell

  Fudge, Stealing, Notion

  James Russell Lowell (1911). “The poetical works”

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• No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Fire, Flattery

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1824). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published; the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.209

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• Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Girl, Passion, Heart

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.256

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• [Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.

  Blaise Pascal

  Reading, Book, Men

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• Now a' is done that men can do, And a' is done in vain.

  Robert Burns

  Men, Done, Can Do

  1796 'It was a' for our rightfu' king', stanza 2.

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• There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity i am bought and sold; for them i will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; - though i confess with shame i sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by i shall have the manhood to withhold.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Spiritual, College, Class

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.12, Penguin

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• It is in vain that we search for an essential difference between good and evil, for their constituents are the same. The crucial distinction lies in their structure, i.e., the manner in which the pieces are assembled. Evil is disintegration, an angry juxtaposition of alienated opposites, with parts always striving to repress other parts. Good is the synthesis and reconciliation of these same pieces.

  Charles Hampden-Turner

  Lying, Opposites, Differences

  Charles Hampden-Turner (1982). “Maps of the Mind”, Macmillan Publishing Company

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• In the light of her son's comment she reconsidered the scene at the mosque, to see whose impression was correct. Yes it could be worked into quite an unpleasant scene. The doctor had begun by bullying her, had said Mrs Callendar was nice, and then - finding the ground safe - had changed; he had alternately whined over his grievances and patronized her, had run a dozen ways in a single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain. Yes, it was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential life of him had been slain.

  E. M. Forster

  Running, Bullying, Nice

  "A Passage to India".

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• Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Death, Regret, Home

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• Evils come not, then our fears are vain; And if they do fear but augments the pain.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Pain, Evil, Worry

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Way to Wealth and Poor Richard's Almanac”, p.24, Nayika Publishing

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• Vexed sailors cursed the rain, for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.

  Edmund Waller

  Rain, Shepherds, Sailor

  Edmund Waller (1854). “Poetical Works”, p.68

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• The mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and clods of mud do not concern us in the least. The fate of humanity condemned ultimately to perish from cold is not worth troubling about. If you take it to heart it becomes an unendurable tragedy. If you believe in improvement you must weep, for the attained perfection must end in cold, darkness and silence. In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, and knowledge, and even for beauty is only a vain sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of one's clothes in a community of blind men.

  Joseph Conrad

  Believe, Heart, Fate

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad”, p.89, Cambridge University Press

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• This, then, is the truth of the discourse of universal human rights: the Wall separating those covered by the umbrella of Human Rights and those excluded from its protective cover. Any reference to universal human rights as an 'unfinished project' to be gradually extended to all people is here a vain ideological chimera - and, faced with this prospect, do we, in the West, have any right to condemn the excluded when they use any means, inclusive of terror, to fight their exclusion?

  Slavoj Žižek

  Wall, Mean, Fighting

  Slavoj Žižek (2002). “Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates”, p.150, Verso

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• Let no man deceive you with vain words or vain hopes or false notions of a slight and sudden repentance. As if heaven were a hospital founded on purpose to receive all sick and maimed persons that, when they can live no longer to the lusts of the flesh and the sinful pleasures of this world, can but put up a cold and formal petition to be admitted there. No, no, as sure as God is true, they shall never see the Kingdom of God who, instead of seeking it in the first place, make it their last refuge and retreat.

  John Tillotson

  Hope, Men, Sick

  John Tillotson (1696). “The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson ...: Containing Fifty Four Sermons and Discourses, on Several Occasions. Together with The Rule of Faith”, p.663

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• Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice.

  Elias Canetti

  Real, Lying, Men

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• Without the Gospel everything is useless and vain.

  John Calvin

  Useless

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• Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation.

  John Calvin

  Pride, Men, Vanity

  John Calvin (1845). “Institutes of the Christian Religion”, p.24, Lulu.com

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• Hereby we may understand that God, of His special grace, maketh the teachers of the gospel subject to the Cross, and to all kinds of afflicitons, for the salvation of themselves and of the people; for otherwise they could by no means beat down this beast which is called vain-glory.

  Martin Luther

  Teacher, Mean, People

  Martin Luther (1987). “Commentary on Galatians”, p.356, Kregel Publications

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• There is no grace more excellent than faith; no sin more execrable and abominable then unbelief. Faith is the saving grace and unbelief the damning sin. (Mark 16:16) ... Before Christ can be received, the heart must be emptied and opened: but men's heart's are full of self-righteousn ess and vain confidence (Rom 10:3).

  John Flavel

  Heart, Men, Self

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• Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person...Withou t concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Home, Rights, Progress

  Remarks at presentation of booklet on human rights, In Your Hands, to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, United Nations, New York, March 27, 1958.

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• If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.

  James Connolly

  Army, Effort, Flags

  James Connolly, Peter Berresford-Ellis (1988). “James Connolly: Selected Writings”, p.124, Pluto Press

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• Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel... We find it in the delightful myth of Antaeus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid... Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic - and this we know it is, for certain - then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

  Nikola Tesla

  Men, Ideas, Space

  "Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency". Nikola Tesla's Address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, February 1892.

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• An artist must believe in himself - Possibly not so passionately as Lawrence - but passionately. Your belief is contagious. Others say - He is vain - but they are affected.

  Tennessee Williams

  Believe, Artist, May

  "Notebooks".

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