Vain Quotes - Page 7

• If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain.

  William Christopher Handy

  Dream, Song, Stories

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• Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
  Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
  So Man, declining always, disappears
  In the weak circles of increasing years;
  And his short tumults of themselves compose,
  While flowing Time above his head does close.

  Andrew Marvell

  Men, Years, Circles

  Andrew Marvell (1870). “The Poetical Works of Andrew Marvell: With Memoir of the Author”, p.96

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• It is vain for us to pray while conscious that we have injured another. Let us first make amends to the injured one before we dare approach God at either the private or the public altar.

  Jonathan Goforth

  Firsts, Praying, Conscious

  Jonathan Goforth (0101). “"By my Spirit"”, p.9, Solid Christian Books

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• I don't want to be vain or fearful, and I don't think I'll do anything [in terms of plastic surgery], but if I want to do something, I will. From my perspective, there's no reason to be afraid of aging, because if you age, you're lucky! The alternative is death.

  Drew Barrymore

  Thinking, Perspective, Age

  "ELLE's August cover girl on her latest film, her new outlook, and refusing to settle". Elle Interview, www.elle.com. July 8, 2010.

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• Love is rebellious bird that nobody can tame, and it's all in vain to call it if it chooses to refuse.

  Georges Bizet

  Love Is, Bird, Rebellious

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• The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
  Rocks dont see it.
  Bless and sit down.
  Forgive and forget.
  Practice kindness all day to everybody
  and you will realize you’re already
  in heaven now.
  That’s the story.
  That’s the message.
  Nobody understands it,
  nobody listens, they’re
  all running around like chickens with heads cut
  off. I will try to teach it but it will
  be in vain, s’why I’ll
  end up in a shack
  praying and being
  cool and singing
  by my woodstove
  making pancakes.

  Jack Kerouac

  Running, Kindness, Cutting

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• Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain.

  Karl Kraus

  Artist, Duty, Modest

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• If God had not intended that Women shou'd use their Reason, He wou'd not have given them any, 'for He does nothing in vain.

  Mary Astell

  Doe, Use, Reason

  Mary Astell, Bridget Hill (1986). “The first English feminist: reflections upon marriage and other writings”

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• The analysts try in vain to conceal the fact that they do not deduce: they combine, they compose ... when they do arrive at the truth they stumble over it after groping their way along.

  Evariste Galois

  Trying, Way, Facts

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• And I said couldn't we be more moderate? And he said why? And I said because I care about the team. And he said, 'No Jony, you're just really vain. You just want people to like you. I'm surprised at you, because I thought you really held the work up as the most important and not how you are perceived by people.' People misunderstand Steve because he was so focused.

  Jonathan Ive

  Team, People, Important

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• I grieve for you, how I mourn for you, who are so very dear to me, but again I can rejoice within my heart, not for nothing have I labored, neither has my exile been in vain.

  Saint Patrick

  Heart, Grieving, Rejoice

  "Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus". Translated by John Skinner, www.ancienttexts.org.

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• If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle., unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs

  James Connolly

  Mother, Country, Army

  James Connolly (1973). “Quotations from James Connolly: An Anthology in Parts”

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• For this I see, that we, all we that live, Are but vain shadows, unsubstantial dreams.

  Sophocles

  Life, Dream, Shadow

  Sophocles (1908). “The Tragedies of Sophocles”

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• That power is in vain which is never in use.

  Benjamin Whichcote

  Power, Use

  Benjamin Whichcote, Anthony Tuckney (1753). “Moral and religious aphorisms [collected by J. Jeffery from the papers of B. Whichcote]. Now re-publ., with additions, by S. Salter. To which are added, Eight letters: which passed between dr. Whichcote, and dr. Tuckney”, p.147

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• The quest for this unwearied peace is constant and universal. Probe deeply into the teaching of Buddha, Maimonides, or a Kempis, and you will discover that they base their diverse doctrines on the foundation of a large spiritual serenity. Analyze the prayers of troubled, overborne mankind of all creeds, in every age-and their petitions come down to the irreducible common denominators of daily bread and inward peace. Grown men do not pray for vain trifles. When they lift up their hearts and voices in the valley of tears they ask for strength and courage and understanding.

  Joshua L. Liebman

  Spiritual, Peace, Prayer

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• There is no way reality can be prevented from flowing the way it
  flows. It is our vain attempts to force it to flow in the service
  of our imaginary needs which sets us in painful conflict with our-
  selves and nature. You are not separate from the flowing reality;
  you are that flowing reality. See this and you will not see any-
  thing else which conflicts with it. You will be what you see.

  Vernon Howard

  Reality, Self, Needs

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• Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee.

  Omar Khayyam

  Brain, Care, Jade

  Omar Khayyam (2015). “The Sufistic Quatrains”, p.404, Omar Khayyam

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• It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say ‘if I put this pill in your beer it will explode,’ we might believe them; but were they to cry ‘if I pronounce this spell over your beer it will go flat,’ we should remain incredulous and Paracelsus, the Alchemists, Aleister Crowley and all the Magi have lived in vain. Yet when I read science I turn magical; when I study magic, scientific.

  Cyril Connolly

  Believe, Beer, Over You

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• I’m vain because I’m imperfect.

  Pete Doherty

  Imperfect

  The Sunday Times, May 14, 2006.

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• I remember as a young child, during one of my frequent trips to the local library, spending hours looking at book after book trying in vain to find one that had my name on it. Because there were so many books in the library, with so many different names on them, I’d assumed that one of them — somewhere — had to be mine. I didn’t understand at the time that a person’s name appears on a book because he or she wrote it. Now that I’m twenty-six I know better. If I were ever going to find my book one day, I was going to have to write it.

  Daniel Tammet

  Children, Book, Writing

  "Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant". Book by Daniel Tammet, 2006.

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• If you see the humanity in the world, grains of sand that bring everything to a halt - corruption, clashes of egos, human factors more than resources. So, how to avoid that? There’s a lack of human maturity. So it’s not been a fertile exercise to perfect yourself to some extent before you serve others, otherwise it’s like cutting the wheat when it’s still green. And nobody is fed by that. So we need a minimum of readiness to efficiently and wisely be at the service of others. So compassion needs also to be sort of enlightened by wisdom. Otherwise, it’s blind.

  Matthieu Ricard

  Cutting, Exercise, Maturity

  "The Happiest Man in the World". "Speaking of Faith" with Krista Tippett, onbeing.org. November 12, 2009.

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• Paleontologists ever since Darwin have been searching (largely in vain) for the sequences of insensibly graded series of fossils that would stand as examples of the sort of wholesale transformation of species that Darwin envisioned as the natural product of the evolutionary process. Few saw any reason to demur - though it is a startling fact that ...most species remain recognizably themselves, virtually unchanged throughout their occurrence in geological sediments of various ages.

  Niles Eldredge

  Age, Fossils, Saws

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• They [Bishops] shall also banish from churches all those kinds of music, in which, whether by the organ, or in the singing, there is mixed up any thing lascivious or impure; as also all secular actions; vain and therefore profane conversations, all walking about, noise, and clamour, that so the house of God may be seen to be, and may be called, truly a house of prayer.

  Pope Pius IV

  Prayer, House, Singing

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• During my life I have seen, known, and lost too much to be the prey of vain dread; and, as for the hope of immortality, I am as weary of that as I am of gods and kings. For my own sake only I write this; and herein I differ from all other writers, past and to come.

  Mika

  Kings, Fear, Writing

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• Now whether you like it or not, whether you want to admit it or not, whether you want to operate on it or not, you are made the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Most people who go to denominational churches never ever hear that! They never hear it! Never! All I was ever taught to say was, 'I'm a poor, miserable sinner.' I am not poor, I am not miserable and I am not a sinner. That is a lie from the pit of hell. That is what I was and if I still am then Jesus died in vain. Amen?

  Joyce Meyer

  Jesus, Lying, People

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