Vain Quotes - Page 16

• If you strive to find your Self by using your mind, you will strive and strive in vain, because the mind cannot give you the Truth. You are that Self. All else is illusion of the mind's creation.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Self, Giving, Mind

  FaceBook post by Sri Sathya Sai Baba from Apr 19, 2017

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Mind, May, Endeavour

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone (1809). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.158

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As for the ridiculous fear of making things below one's potential abilities... No, there is the root of the evil. There is the hiding place of stupidity I must attack: vain mortal, you are limited by nothing.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Fear, Roots, Evil

  19 Copy quote

• Happy the man, of mortals happiest he, Whose quiet mind from vain desires is free; Whom neither hopes deceive, nor fears torment, But lives at peace, within himself content; In thought, or act, accountable to none But to himself, and to the gods alone.

  George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne

  Men, Mind, Desire

  8 Copy quote

• Vain empty words / Of honour, glory and immortal fame, / Can these recall the spirit from its place, / Or re-inspire the breathless clay with life? / What tho' your fame with all its thousand trumpets, / Sound o'er the sepulchres, will that awake / The sleeping dead.

  George Sewell

  Sleep, Inspire, Clay

  George Sewell (1719). “The Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh: As it is Acted at the Theatre in Lincolns-Inn-Fields”, p.12

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There flows throughout our whole history a stream of humanity, of generosity, of tolerance, so broad, so powerful, and so pure that it would be vain indeed to look for a similar one in the past of any other European country.

  Ignacy Jan Paderewski

  Country, Powerful, Past

  14 Copy quote

• In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.

  Alfred Austin

  Gleam, Faces, Aspect

  Alfred Austin (1885). “At the Gate of the Convent: And Other Poems”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I!

  Conrad Aiken

  Memories, Writing, Always Trying

  Conrad Aiken (2015). “Blue Voyage: A Novel”, p.143, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well -- but 'tis not true!

  Matthew Arnold

  Self, Long, Trying

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.168, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A natural talent is required; for, when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits.

  Hippocrates

  Perseverance, Art, Reflection

  Hippocrates (1941). “Selected works”

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines on the palms of one's hand.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Dream, Book, Hands

  Sean Kernan, Jorge Luis Borges (1999). “The secret books”, Leete'S Island Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been, things remain.

  Arthur Hugh Clough

  Struggle, Enemy, Has Beens

  'Say not the struggle naught availeth' (1855)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.

  John Howard Payne

  Home, Giving, Bird

  John Howard Payne, “Home, Sweet Home”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The secret belief that the Lord of conscience loves and accepts each faithful sacrifice is the ultimate and sufficient support of all goodness; dispensing with the chorus of approving voices; replacing all vain self-reliance with a Divine strength; and with the peace of a reconciled nature consoling the inevitable sorrows of a devoted life.

  James Martineau

  Sacrifice, Self, Voice

  James Martineau (1879). “Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you are vain it is vain to sign your pictures and vain not to sign them. If you are not vain it is not vain to sign them and not vain not to sign them.

  Fairfield Porter

  Vanity, Ifs

  8 Copy quote

• Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!I am so weary of toil and of tears,-Toil without recompense, tears all in vain!Take them, and give me my childhood again!

  Elizabeth Chase Allen

  Years, Giving, Childhood

  Elizabeth Akers Allen, “Rock Me To Sleep”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a man doesn't find ease in himself, 'tis in vain to seek it elsewhere.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Men, Ease, Elsewhere

  12 Copy quote

• The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain-- The grandest death, to die in vain--for love Greater than sways the forces of the world!

  George Eliot

  Jesus, Should Have, Coward

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.4137, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Fickle, Unstable

  Michel de Montaigne (1853). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy. With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.2

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is vain to look for a defense against lightning.

  Publilius Syrus

  Lightning, Defense, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.

  Willa Cather

  Mad, Twenties, Littles

  Willa Cather (1988). “Not Under Forty”, p.24, U of Nebraska Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I am dead, no pageant train shall waste their sorrows at my bier. Nor worthless pomp of homage vain stain it with hypocritic tear.

  Edward Everett

  Mourning, Sorrow, Tears

  Edward Everett (1836). “Life and Speeches”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A vain man is a nauseous creature: he is so full of himself that he has no room for anything else, be it never so good or deserving.

  William Penn

  Men, Vanity, Rooms

  William Penn (1726). “A Collection of the Works of William Penn: To which is Prefixed a Journal of His Life, with Many Original Letters and Papers Not Before Published”, p.855

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Two, Dwelling

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.304, CUP Archive

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

  Walter Scott

  Royalty, Sigh, Monarchy

  Sir Walter Scott, J. W. Lake (1848). “The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott: with a sketch of his life”, p.83

  9 Copy quote

  Show source