Vain Quotes - Page 37

• The philosophers likewise assume that in Nature there is nothing in vain, so that everything that is not the product of human industry serves a certain purpose, which may be known or unknown to us.

  Maimonides

  Purpose, May, Philosopher

  Moses Maimonides (2012). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.308, Courier Corporation

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• For, until the wisdom of men bear some proportion to the wisdom of God, their attempts to find out the structure of his works, by the force of their wit and genius, will be vain.

  Thomas Reid

  Men, Genius, Bears

  Thomas Reid (1827). “Essays on the powers of the human mind: An essay on quantity. An analysis of Aristotl's logic”, p.23

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You will seek for God in vain till you understand that God can't be seen as a "thing"; he needs a special way of looking - similar to that of little children whose sight is undistorted by prefabricated doctrines and beliefs.

  Anthony de Mello

  Children, Sight, Special

  "One Minute Nonsense". Book by Anthony de Mello, p. 8, 1992.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated.

  Kofi Annan

  Effort, Environmental, Degradation

  "In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all". Report for the United Nations sixtieth anniversary summit, 2005.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I looked about for some of my acquaintance, but in vain, for I saw not one person that I knew, which is very odd, for all the world seemed there.

  Fanny Burney

  World, Saws, Odd

  Frances Burney, Fanny Burney (2015). “Complete Works of Frances Burney (Delphi Classics)”, p.43, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptious, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt, too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Ignorant, Being Free, Liberty

  L'Ami du peuple newspaper, No. 559, August 27, 1791.

  87 Copy quote

  Show source

• The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt.

  Francis Parkman

  Ambition, Circles, Achievement

  Francis Parkman (1871). “Pioneers of France in the New World”, p.10

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off, like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us. But we listen in patience, as friends must, and as Isabel now did, refraining from comment, other than to encourage the release of the story and the attendant confession of human frailty and hope.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Emotional, Stories, Want

  "Friends, Lovers, Chocolate". Book by Alexander McCall Smith, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A politics of vengeance is not politics. Revenge is a recklessness towards the future in a vain attempt to make the present abolish a suffering which is already past.

  Bernard Crick

  Revenge, Past, Suffering

  Bernard Crick (1993). “In Defense of Politics”, p.87, University of Chicago Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain. One of the great Catalan poets, Joan Maragall, wrote this famous poem in which he called Barcelona the great enchantress, or some kind of sorceress, and in which the city has this dark enticing presence that seduces and lures people. I think Barcelona has a lot of that.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Dark, Men, Thinking

  24 Copy quote

• All Empires fall, All ages die, All strife shall be in vain. All Kings go down, All hope must fail, But Tanelorn remains Our Tanelorn remains.

  Michael Moorcock

  Kings, Fall, Age

  8 Copy quote

• I am ever Thine. If Thou cast me out, who shall take me in? If Thou disregard me, who shall look on me? More canst Thou remit, than I commit; more canst Thou spare, than I offend. Let not hurtful pleasures overcome me; at the least let not any perverse habit overwhelm me; From evil and unlawful desires; From vain, hurtful, impure imaginations; from the illusions of evil spirits; from pollutions of soul and of body; Good Lord, deliver me.

  Lancelot Andrewes

  Evil, Imagination, Soul

  15 Copy quote

• We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.

  Arthur Lynch

  Love, Life, Excess

  Arthur Lynch (1921). “Moods of Life: Popular Psychological Studies of Affairs of Every Day”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vanity is easily forgiven, for we are all vain, and even as we laugh at the weakness of others we feel that their vanity has touched the responding chord of our own.

  Arthur Lynch

  Vanity, Laughing, Weakness

  Arthur Lynch (1921). “Moods of Life: Popular Psychological Studies of Affairs of Every Day”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If for just the time of a finger-snap a monk produces a thought of loving-kindness, develops it, gives attention to it, such a one is rightly called a monk. Not in vain does he meditate. He acts in accordance with the master's teaching, he follows his advice. How much more so if he cultivates it.

  Gautama Buddha

  Love, Kindness, Teaching

  7 Copy quote

• Ah, cruel 'tis to love, And cruel not to love, But cruelest of all To love and love in vain.

  Anacreon

  Love, And Love

  12 Copy quote

• Do you know that there's hardly anyone left of last year's Caucasian governments? I've tried to stop it, but in vain. Yet they can't all be Trotskyites and traitors.

  Lavrentiy Beria

  Government, Years, Lasts

  "The Kremlin and the People". Book by Walter Duranty, p. 126, 2007.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable.

  Lavrentiy Beria

  Party, Loss, Expectations

  "The Current Digest of the Soviet Press". Issued by the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies, p. 9, 1953.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is, to a vain and sensitive soul, a stinging insult.

  Frederick Rolfe

  Soul, Insult, Sensitive

  "Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 296), 1963.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vanity is apt to inspire contempt, but that becomes immediately tempered by a gentler and more gracious feeling; for the vain man desires to win our approbation, and in this way he flatters us.

  Arthur Alfred Lynch

  Winning, Men, Vanity

  4 Copy quote

• True religion extends alike to the intellect and the heart. Intellect is in vain if it lead not to emotion, and emotion is vain if not enlightened by intellect; and both are vain if not guided by truth and leading to duty.

  Tryon Edwards

  Heart, Emotion, Enlightened

  Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.1145, Ravenio Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What labor and pains worldlings take to obtain the vain things of this life-to obtain the poor things of this world, which are but shadows and dreams, and mere nothings!

  Thomas Brooks

  Dream, Pain, Shadow

  Thomas Brooks “Heaven On Earth”, Lulu.com

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Consultation and compliance can conduce little to the perfection of any literary performance; for whoever is so doubtful of his own abilities as to encourage the remarks of others, will find himself every day embarrassed with new difficulties, and will harass his mind, in vain, with the hopeless labour of uniting heterogeneous ideas, digesting independent hints, and collecting into one point the several rays of borrowed light, emitted often with contrary directions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Independent, Light

  Samuel Johnson (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.183, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Eye

  Samuel Johnson (1854). “Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.375

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Thinking, Effort

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.136

  4 Copy quote

  Show source