Vain Quotes - Page 3

• I have been vain since birth. I expected other people to like what I did, although my vanity has definitely diminished over the years.

  Wallace Shawn

  Vanity, Years, People

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

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• Without common sense, all thine efforts are in vain.

  Rudolf Steiner

  Inspirational, Common Sense, Effort

  Rudolf Steiner (2015). “How to Know Higher Worlds”, p.34, RSP

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• Chains tie us down by land and sea; And wishes, vain as mine, may be All that is left to comfort thee.

  William Wordsworth

  Sea, Land, Ties

  1804 'The Affliction of Margaret', stanza 8 (published 1807).

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• A source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn't have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible - the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Sex, Struggle, Gum

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• If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

  Samuel Adams

  Country, Patriotic, Men

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• Laws without morals are in vain.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Law, Liberty, Moral

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• May the culture of life and love render vain the logic of death.

  Pope John Paul II

  Death, Life And Love, Culture

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• Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sculpture, Awful, Shallow

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1925*). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson in One Volume”

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• Do not follow vain desires; for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger.

  Abu Bakr

  Anger, Greed, Lust

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• Living Life Tomorrow's fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.

  Omar Khayyam

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

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• All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

  George Orwell

  Selfish, Lying, Writing

  1946 'Why I Write'.

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• If you have to do with one who is unquestionably a slanderer, do not excuse him by calling him frank and free-spoken; do not call one who is notoriously vain, liberal and elegant; do not call dangerous levities mere simplicity; do not screen disobedience under the name of zeal; or arrogance, of frankness; or evil intimacy, of friendship. No, my friends, we must never, in our wish to shun slander, foster or flatter vice in others: but we must call evil evil, and sin sin, and so doing we shall serve God's glory.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Names, Evil, Simplicity

  Saint Francis de Sales, Catholic Way Publishing (2015). “The Saint Francis de Sales Collection [16 Books]”, p.279, Catholic Way Publishing

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• He had her in his arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain terrors shriveling up like ghosts at sunrise.

  Edith Wharton

  Flower, Sunrise, Arms

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.1992, Delphi Classics

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• She also considered very seriously what she would look like in a little cottage in the middle of the forest, dressed in a melancholy gray and holding communion only with the birds and trees; a life of retirement away from the vain world; a life into which no man came. It had its attractions, but she decided that gray did not suit her.

  A. A. Milne

  Retirement, Bird, Tree

  A. A. Milne (2012). “Once on a Time”, p.206, The Floating Press

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• To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry, is as vain and little as the things are which we court

  Philip Sidney

  Inspirational, Real, Ambition

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• A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the lord in vain- then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Religious, Heart, Names

  Robert A. Heinlein (1985). “Job, a Comedy of Justice”, Del Rey

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• Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.

  Jonathan Swift

  Believe, Character, Pride

  Jonathan Swift (1856). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.305

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• A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end that is aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character.

  Aristotle

  Passion, Learning, Character

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.1730, Princeton University Press

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• One of the cardinal sins in our country is profanity -- the taking of the name of the Lord in vain.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Country, Names, Sin

  Ezra Taft Benson (1988). “The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson”, Bookcraft Pubs

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• We take our international responsibilities very seriously and will not withdraw our troops from Iraq... Otherwise, the victims of terror in Madrid will have died in vain.

  Marek Belka

  Responsibility, Iraq, Troops

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• The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. And they're dying in vain right this very second. And you know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain? It's more soldiers dying in vain. That's what's worse.

  Mike Gravel

  Soldier, Dying, Vietnam

  Mike Gravel's speech at the 2008 Democratic primary Presidential debate in Orangeburg, South Carolina, www.nbcnews.com. April 26, 2007.

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• In God's world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain (as long as it was done out of love, not personal glory)

  Frederick William Robertson

  Failure, Sacrifice, Long

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• It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself.

  Epicurus

  Men, Capability, Asks

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• June falls asleep upon her bier of flowers;
  In vain are dewdrops sprinkled o'er her,
  In vain would fond winds fan her back to life,
  Her hours are numbered on the floral dial.

  Lucy Larcom

  Summer, Fall, Flower

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• As historians, we refuse to allow ourselves these vain speculations which turn on possibilities that, in order to be reduced to actuality, suppose an overturning of the Universe, in which our globe, like a speck of abandoned matter, escapes our vision and is no longer an object worthy of our regard. In order to fix our vision, it is necessary to take it such as it is, to observe well all parts of it, and by indications infer from the present to the past.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Science, Past, Order

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