Vain Quotes - Page 5

• As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

  Marianne Moore

  Butterfly, Congruence, Complement

  Marianne Moore, Robin G. Schulze (2002). “Becoming Marianne Moore: The Early Poems, 1907-1924”, p.229, Univ of California Press

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• The character is everything that I felt really strongly against - she's superficial, materialistic, vain, amoral. She's all of these things, and I realised that I really hated her. How do you play someone that you hate? But I found it really interesting and it gave me a whole new insight into what my job, or my role as an actress, could be.

  Emma Watson

  Boyfriend, Jobs, Hate

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". Interview with Dylan Jones, www.gq-magazine.co.uk. May 3, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

  Anatole France

  Writing, Sound, World

  8 Copy quote

• In working well, if travail you sustain, Into the wind shall lightly pass the pain; But of the deed the glory shall remain, And cause your name with worthy wights to reign. In working wrong, if pleasure you attain, The pleasure soon shall fade, and void as vain; But of the deed throughout the life the shame Endures, defacing you with foul defame.

  Nicholas Grimald

  Life, Pain, Wind

  Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, Thomas Sackville Earl of Dorset, Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Vaux Baron Vaux (1854). “Poetical Works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: Minor Contemporaneous Poets, and Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst”, p.210

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?

  John Dryden

  Birthday, Long, World

  Juvenal, John Dryden, Nahum Tate, Persius, Richard Duke (1713). “The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis: and of Aulus Persius Flaccus”, p.210

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o'er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?

  John Dryden

  Birthday, Years, Long

  8 Copy quote

• I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Silly, Eagles, Turkeys

  Franklin's Letter to His Daughter (excerpt), www.greatseal.com.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.

  Fredric Jameson

  Winning, Degrees, Machines

  21 Copy quote

• If you pray for a thing, but have fear as you pray, that you may not receive it, or that your prayer will not be acted upon by Infinite Intelligence, your prayer will have been in vain.

  Napoleon Hill

  Prayer, Infinite Intelligence, May

  Napoleon Hill, Wallace D. Wattles (2012). “Get Rich Collection”, p.148, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Charles Darwin [is my personal favorite Fellow of the Royal Society]. I suppose as a physical scientist I ought to have chosen Newton. He would have won hands down in an IQ test, but if you ask who was the most attractive personality then Darwin is the one you'd wish to meet. Newton was solitary and reclusive, even vain and vindictive in his later years when he was president of the society.

  Martin Rees

  Years, Hands, Personality

  7 Copy quote

• I'm before him on my knees, and he kisses me He assumes I lose my reason and I do. Men are stupid, men are vain, Love's disgusting, love's insane, A humiliating business-oh how true.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Love, Business, Stupid

  4 Copy quote

• Empty me of the selfishness inside, every vain ambition and the poison of my pride, and any foolish thing my heart holds to, Lord empty me of me so I can be filled with you.

  Chris Sligh

  Christian, Heart, Ambition

  Song: Empty Me, Album: Running Back to You, 2008

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.

  Jonathan Swift

  Dream, Night, Mind

  9 Copy quote

• As everyone knows, the ancients before Aristotle did not consider the dream a product of the dreaming mind, but a divine inspiration, and in ancient times the two antagonistic streams, which one finds throughout in the estimates of dream life, were already noticeable. They distinguished between true and valuable dreams, sent to the dreamer to warn him or to foretell the future, and vain, fraudulent, and empty dreams, the object of which was to misguide or lead him to destruction.

  Sigmund Freud

  Dream, Inspiration, Two

  17 Copy quote

• Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever.

  William Wordsworth

  Sweet, Memories, Heart

  William Wordsworth (1854). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth”, p.239

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The judgment: You are now before Yama, King of the Dead. In vain will you try to...deny or conceal the evil deeds you have done. ... the mirror in which Yama seems to read your past is your own memory, and also his judgment is your own. It is you yourself who pronounce your own judgment.

  Gautama Buddha

  Kings, Memories, Book

  20 Copy quote

• A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Humble, Men, Modest

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1796). “A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects”, p.275

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world taught women nothing skillful and then said her work was valueless. It permitted her no opinions and said she did not know how to think. It forbade her to speak in public and said the sex had no orators. It denied her the schools, and said the sex had no genius. It robbed her of every vestige of responsibility, and then called her weak. It taught her that every pleasure must come as a favor from men and when, to gain it, she decked herself in paint and fine feathers, as she had been taught to do, it called her vain.

  Carrie Chapman Catt

  Sex, School, Responsibility

  89 Copy quote

• If, at the end of my days, the sum of what I've taken exceeds the sum of what I've given, then I have lived in vain.

  Doug Rice

  Taken, Social Media, Ends

  4 Copy quote

• Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Fire, Inspire, Soul

  'La Nouvelle Hèloise' (1761, ed. M. Launay, 1967) pt. 2, letter 11

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Knowing, Doe, Speak

  4 Copy quote

• When are Christian folks going to remember that every time you call yourself a Christian, you invoke the name of God, and that if you then walk a walk that does not reflect the presence of Christ in your life, cast a vote that does not reflect the presence of Christ in your life, then you are taking the name of the Lord your God in vain?

  Alan Keyes

  Christian, Names, Doe

  6 Copy quote

• A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?’

  Pope Pius XII

  Christian, Believe, Taken

  127 Copy quote

• In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Lying, Passion, Heart

  18 Copy quote

• It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Prayer, Vanity, Odds

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2008). “Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928-1931”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source