Vain Quotes - Page 8

• I love a serious preacher, who speaks for my sake and not for his own; who seeks my salvation, and not his own vain glory. He best deserves to be heard who uses speech only to clothe his thoughts, and his thoughts only to promote truth and virtue.

  Jean Baptiste Massillon

  Use, Speech, Sake

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• O world, world when I was younger I thought there was some order governing you and your deeds. But now you seem to be a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild beasts, a game in which men move in circles…a stony field, a meadow full of serpents, a flowering but barren orchard, a spring of cares, a river of tears, a sea of suffering, a vain hope.

  Fernando de Rojas

  Spring, Moving, Men

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• Pride of one's work is not improper, unladylike, or vain. We can all take a lesson from the sea turtle. She does not travel thousands of miles or risk all for her ego. She has an instinct for greatness --- one that I believe is found in all living creatures.

  Mary Alice

  Believe, Pride, Greatness

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• The task of getting the Gospel in an adequate way to every ethnic person is tremedous. There is but one solution. I'm sure that it isn't man, money, surveys, not talk. They all have their place, but if the basis of all of it isn't fervent, believing prayer, they are in vain. And prayer should not only be the basis but it should permeate and vitalize the whole work.

  William Cameron Townsend

  Prayer, Believe, Men

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• World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Love, Pain, Use

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1866). “Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetical works”, p.222

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• And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weaknesses. All men, I believe, are under a necessity of paying tribute at some time or other to Love, and it is vain to strive to avoid it. I was a philosopher, yet this tyrant of the mind triumphed over all my wisdom; his darts were of greater force than all my reasonings, and with a sweet constraint he led me wherever he pleased.

  Peter Abelard

  Sweet, Believe, Men

  Peter Abelard, Héloïse (2017). “Letters of Abelard and Heloise”, p.40, Litres

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• The German Army is tired. The vain effort to defeat Russia's armies has used up its equipment and reduced its morale.

  Walther von Brauchitsch

  Tired, Army, Russia

  "Kaltenborn Edits the War News" Hans Kaltenborn, (p. 25), 1942.

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• hen we mourn those who die young — those who have been robbed of time — we weep for lost joys. We weep for opportunities and pleasures we ourselves have never known. We feel sure that somehow that young body would have known the yearning delight for which we searched in vain all our lives.

  Josephine Hart

  Believe, Opportunity, Joy

  "Damage: a novel".

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• I think I've developed into an actress because I've worked darn hard at it and I've learned a great deal from a lot of gifted people. And if I have nothing else to show for my life, apart from a scrapbook full of cuttings, I have the knowledge that my early days in Hollywood weren't in vain.

  Veronica Lake

  Cutting, Thinking, People

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The artist is an interpreter of Nature. People learn to love Nature through pictures. To the artist, nothing is in vain; nothing beneath his notice. If he is great enough, he will exalt every subject which he treats.

  William Morris Hunt

  Artist, People, Enough

  William Morris Hunt (1976). “William Morris Hunt on painting and drawing”, Dover Pubns

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• Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope.

  John Boyd Orr

  War, Thinking, Agreement

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• What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

  Alain de Botton

  Home, Exotic, May

  "Toothbrush, bikini... and dead poet" by Philip Marsden, www.theguardian.com. May 19, 2002.

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• It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Real, Character, Men

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• In vain do we seek to awaken our churches to zeal in evangelism as a separate thing. To be genuine it must flow from love to Christ. It is when a sense of personal communion with the Son of God is highest that we shall be most fit for missionary work, either ourselves or to stir up others.

  Archibald Alexander

  Son, Church, Missionary

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• For my part, I believe that the vain, glorious and the violent will not inherit the earth. . . . In pursuance of that faith my friends and I take the hands of the dying in our hands. And some of us travel to the Pentagon, and others live in the Bowery and serve there, and others speak unpopularly and plainly of the fate of the unborn and of convicted criminals. It is all one.

  Daniel Berrigan

  Friendship, Believe, Fate

  Daniel Berrigan (1980). “We Die Before We Live: Talking with the Very Ill”, Harper San Francisco

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• Mithridates, he died old. Housman's passage is based on the belief of the ancients that Mithridates the Great [c. 135-63 B.C.] had so saturated his body with poisons that none could injure him. When captured by the Romans he tried in vain to poison himself, then ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.

  A. E. Housman

  Poison, Body, Belief

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• There are few of us so blind as not to realize that unless the moral force of religious conviction impels, the goal of truth and lasting international cooperation cannot be attained; there are few of us who do not appreciate the vital truth of the words, "If God does not build the house, those who build it build in vain."

  Sumner Welles

  Religious, Appreciation, Appreciate

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• Marriage is a way to avoid intimacy. It is a trick to create a formal relationship. Intimacy is informal. If a marriage arises out of intimacy it is beautiful but if you are hoping that intimacy will arise out of marriage, you are hoping in vain. Of course, I know that many people, millions of people, have settled for marriage rather than for intimacy - because intimacy is growth and it is painful.

  Rajneesh

  Marriage, Beautiful, People

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• You may look through the streets of heaven, asking each how they came to b there, and you will look in vain everywhere for a person who is morally and spiritually strong, whose strength did not come to him in struggle. There is no exception anywhere. Every true strength is gained in struggle.

  Phillips Brooks

  Strength, Strong, Struggle

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• I feel like I am floating in plasma
  I need a teacher or a lover
  I need someone to risk being involved with me.
  I am so vain
  and I am so masochistic.
  How can they coexist?

  Francesca Woodman

  Teacher, Risk, Needs

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• The Bourne Underneath the growing grass, Underneath the living flowers, Deeper than the sound of showers: There we shall not count the hours By the shadows as they pass. Youth and health will be but vain, Beauty reckoned of no worth: There a very little girth Can hold round what once the earth Seemed too narrow to contain.

  Christina Rossetti

  Life, Flower, Shadow

  Christina Rossetti (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Christina Rossetti (Illustrated)”, p.185, Delphi Classics

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• SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Life, Ocean, Musical

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.215, University of Georgia Press

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• ... as a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and to respect my limitations and give them full credit, rather than to try to ignore them, for the latter vain effort will be punished by failure.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Giving, Design, Effort

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• And the issue is never the merits of the evidence but always the jealous rivalry of the contestants to see which would be the official light unto the world. Right down to the present day we have been the spectators of a foolish contest between equally vain and bigoted rivals.

  Hugh Nibley

  Jealous, Light, Issues

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• If you love men and they are unfriendly, look into your love; if you rule men and they are unruly, look into your wisdom; if you are courteous to them and they do not respond, look into your courtesy. If what you do is vain, always seek within.

  Mencius

  Wisdom, Men, Looks

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