Vain Quotes - Page 7

• Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.

  William Butler Yeats

  Blood, Discipline, Tolerance

  Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats (2001). “YER”

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• Unless man is committed to the belief that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality.

  Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

  Brother, Equality, Men

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• 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

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• I hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Politics, Reason

  Thomas Jefferson (1856). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.209

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• 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

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• One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it...If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Real, Mistake

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• Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain.

  Aristotle

  Nature, Incomplete

  Politics bk. 1, 1256b

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• Lightly from fair to fair he flew, And loved to plead, lament, and sue; Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain, For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

  Walter Scott

  Life, Pain, Suits

  Sir Walter Scott (1866). “The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott”, p.102

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• 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

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• 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.

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• Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
  Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.

  Herman Melville

  Ocean, Dark, Blue

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby-Dick”, p.184, Tyché

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• 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

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• 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

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• We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.

  Seneca the Younger

  Dirty, Men, People

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• A word of kindness is seldom spoken in vain, while witty saying are as easily lost as the pearls slipping from a broken string.

  George D. Prentice

  Witty, Kindness, Broken

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• Not so in haste, my heart! Have faith in God and wait; Although he linger long, He never comes too late. He never comes too late, He knoweth what is best: Vex not thyself in vain; Until he cometh, rest. Until he cometh, rest. Nor grudge the hours that roll: The feet that wait for God Are soonest at the goal. Are soonest at the goal. That is not gained by speed; Then hold thee still, my heart, For I shall wait his lead.

  Bradford Torrey

  Heart, Feet, Long

  Bradford Torrey, “Not So In Haste, My Heart”

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• Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.

  Solomon

  Being Happy, Heart, Wine

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• Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those - regardless of their political party - who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Dream, Party, Men

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• Not vain the weakest, if their force unite.

  Homer

  Unity, Force, Ifs

  Homer (1796). “The Iliad of Homer”, p.34

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• 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

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• 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

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• Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they altimately are as revealed in their poetry.

  Stephen Spender

  Ambition, Vanity, Ambitious

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