Vain Quotes - Page 15

• If you intend to speak a vain word, replace it with a tasbih.

  Abdullah ibn Mubarak

  Speak, Ifs

  28 Copy quote

• The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.

  Lord Acton

  Freedom, Passion, Opportunity

  13 Copy quote

• To ask me is in vain;
  For who goes up your winding stair
  Can ne'er come down again.

  Mary Howitt

  Stairs, Ask Me, Asks

  Mary Howitt (1834). “Sketches of natural history”, p.123

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Superstitions are all materialism, because they are all based on the consciousness of body, body, body. No spirit there. Spirit has no superstitions - it is beyond the vain desires of the body.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Desire, Body, Superstitions

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3600, Manonmani Publishers

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain.

  Brad Alan Lewis

  Sports, Struggle, Leader

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  45 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [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

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Without the Gospel everything is useless and vain.

  John Calvin

  Useless

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history.

  Ralph Adams Cram

  Christian, Years, Democracy

  RALPH ADAMS CRAM (1922). “TOWARDS THE GREAT PEACE”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A Christian man is on his guard with respect to those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, not according to God, by Whom the world itself was made; for he is warned by the precept of the apostle and faithfully hears what has been said, 'Beware that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the elements of the world'

  Saint Augustine

  Christian, Philosophy, Men

  Saint Augustine of Hippo, Catholic Way Publishing (2015). “The City of God”, p.344, Catholic Way Publishing

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... do not listen to vain and empty talk, in which the majority of world-loving people spend their time, and do not take pleasure in it. For the law says: 'You shall not raise false reports' (Ex. 23:1). Solomon says: 'Remove far from me vanity and lies' (Prov. 30:8). The Lord said: 'But I say to you, every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment' (Mt. 12:36).

  Lorenzo Scupoli

  Christian, Lying, Men

  10 Copy quote

• ... the Apostle says, 'he that says he abides in Christ ought himself also to walk as He walked' (I Jn. 2:6). Otherwise we make a vain pretence and show, if we follow not His steps, Whose name we glory in, and assuredly they would not be irksome to us, but would free us from all dangers, if we loved nothing but what He commanded us to love.

  Pope Leo I

  Christian, Names, Steps

  9 Copy quote

• Fear is the dream killer, the silent voice that pushes us to lose our passion in a vain attempt to seek safety.

  Seth Godin

  Dream, Passion, Voice

  4 Copy quote

• It is the Spirit alone that can mortify sin; he is promised to do it, and all other means without him are empty and vain. How shall he, then, mortify sin that has not the Spirit? A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.

  John Owen

  Mean, Eye, Men

  John Owen (2001). “Temptation and Sin”, p.34, Sovereign Grace Publishers,

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us all agree to die a little, or even completely so that African unity may not be a vain word

  Ahmed Ben Bella

  Unity, May, Littles

  25 Copy quote

• A glamorous life is quite different to a life of luxury. I don’t need luxury. For years, I was practically broke but I was still very vain and glamorous. And I still am.

  Lady Gaga

  Years, Luxury, Different

  8 Copy quote