Vain Quotes - Page 18

• He who lives in despair / takes and gives in vain.

  Hadewijch

  Giving, Despair

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• Vain man is apt to think we were merely intended for the world's propagation and to keep its human inhabitants sweet and clean; but, by their leaves, had we the same literature he would find our brains as fruitful as our bodies.

  Hannah Woolley

  Sweet, Men, Thinking

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• A man hath riches. Whence came they, and whither go they? for this is the way to form a judgment of the esteem which they and their possessor deserve. If they have been acquired by fraud or violence, if they make him proud and vain, if they minister to luxury and intemperance, if they are avariciously hoarded up and applied to no proper use, the possessor becomes odious and contemptible.

  John Jortin

  Men, Luxury, Violence

  John Jortin (1787). “Sermons on Different Subjects: By the Late Reverend John Jortin, ...”, p.75

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• Words? I tell you not to write me letters; I command you. Is it not enough to want you so in vain, but you send me what evokes you here before me -- this paper, all along whose lines your hand has lain?

  Anne Reeve Aldrich

  Writing, Hands, Paper

  Anne Reeve Aldrich (1893). “Nadine and Other Poems”

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• Gentlemen, if ever a generation will come after us which is so weak and soft-hearted that it doesn't understand our task, then indeed the whole of National Socialism has been in vain. To the contrary, in my opinion one should bury bronze plates on which it is recorded that we have had the courage to carry out this great and so necessary work.

  Odilo Globocnik

  Gentleman, Tasks, Generations

  "God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust through the Centuries" by Arthur Grenke, (p. 101), 2005.

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• You, faulty men! Not only got lost on the way of charlatains, but contravened against the divine nature. Weren't settled for the wealthy, clear air, you bewitched it with smoke and burnt smell, you weren't settled for the best spring water, you filled up yourself with several kinds of hard drinks, the sun shined for you in vain, you didn't behold it...

  Tivadar Kosztka Csontvary

  Spring, Men, Air

  "The Positivum". Pamphlet by Tivadar Kosztka Csontvary, written between 1910-1920.

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• All the wants which disturb human life, which make us uneasy to ourselves, quarrelsome with others, and unthankful to God, which weary us in vain labors and foolish anxieties, which carry us from project to project, from place to place in a poor pursuit of we don't know what, are the wants which neither God, nor nature, nor reason hath subjected us to, but are solely infused into us by pride, envy, ambition, and covetousness.

  William Law

  Ambition, Pride, Envy

  William Law, P. G. Stanwood (1978). “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love”, p.153, Paulist Press

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• I never, with important air, In conversation overbear. . . . . My tongue within my lips I rein; For who talks much must talk in vain.

  John Gay

  Air, Important, Tongue

  John Gay (1808). “Gay's Fables: In One Volume Complete”, p.8

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• Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon'd round, And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown'd? No; the dead know it not, nor profit gain; It only serves to prove the living vain.

  John Gay

  Ostriches, Crowns, Nodding

  John Gay, Nathaniel Cotton, Edward Moore (1826). “Gay's Fables and other poems: Cotton's visions in verse ; Moore's Fables for the female sex ; with sketches of the authors' lives”, p.219

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• Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach Who please, the more because they preach in vain

  Lord Byron

  Wine, May, Soda

  Lord Byron (2013). “Don Juan”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts.

  Francis Bacon

  Wise, Men, Vanity

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• Slayer of the winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the summer nigh! The bitter wind makes not the victory vain. Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.

  William Morris

  Summer, Art, Winter

  William Morris, May Morris (2012). “The Collected Works of William Morris: With Introductions by His Daughter May Morris”, p.82, Cambridge University Press

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• The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame, Die fast away: only themselves die faster. The far-fam'd sculptor, and the laurell'd bard, Those bold insurancers of deathless fame, Supply their little feeble aids in vain.

  Robert Blair

  Men, Littles, Fame

  Robert Blair, Robert Anderson (1802). “The Poetical Works of Robert Blair: Containing The Grave, Etc., to which is Prefixed, A Life of the Author, by Robert Anderson, Accompanied by Prints, Designed and Engraved by W. Gardiner”, p.14

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• I never revolted in vain, as a rebel or as a tyrant, but I rose seeking reformation for the nation of my grandfather Mohammad. I intend to enjoin good and forbid evil, to act according to the traditions of my grandfather, and my father Ali Ibn Abi-Talib.

  Husayn ibn Ali

  Father, Tyrants, Evil

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• Polite diseases make some idiots vain, Which, if unfortunately well, they feign.

  Edward Young

  Disease, Idiot, Polite

  Edward Young, Thomas Park (1808). “The Poetical Works of Edward Young: In Four Volumes. Collated with the Best Editions:”, p.107

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• Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

  Francis Bacon

  Lying, Taken, Men

  Francis Bacon (2015). “Bacon's Essays: Top Essays”, p.2, 谷月社

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• Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

  John Adams

  Suicide, Selfish, Passion

  Letter to John Taylor, 15 Apr. 1814

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• If there be ground for you to trust, as you do, in your own righteousness, then all that Christ did to purchase salvation, and all that God did from the fall of man to prepare the way for it, is in vain. Consider what greater folly could you have devised to charge upon God than this, that all those things were done so needlessly; when, instead of all this, He might only have called you forth, and committed the business to you, which you think you can do so easily.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Fall, Men, Thinking

  Jonathan Edwards “The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Volume I - III”, Lulu.com

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• It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people.

  Voltaire

  People, Ignorant, Luck

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• I think people just probably don't want people to think that they're vain.

  Lily Allen

  Thinking, People, Want

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, music.avclub.com. February 14, 2007.

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• Follow not after the vain, understand the ills of sense pleasures. One who is vigilant and meditative, obtains deep joy.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Joy, Pleasure

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• Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.

  Francis Bacon

  People, Common, Praise

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• The idea of a judgment of history is secularism's vain, meaningless, hopeless, pathetic attempt to devise a substitute for what the great Abrahamic traditions of faith know is the final judgment of almighty God, who is not an impersonal force. History is not God. God is God. History is not our judge. God is our Judge.

  Robert P. George

  Ideas, Judging, Finals

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• ...many foolish persons, wanderers from other parts, have the vain fashion of graving their names and the obscure places whence they come, upon its stones, which is silly and marketh the doer for a fool.

  Mark Twain

  Fashion, Silly, Names

  Mark Twain, Howard G. Baetzhold, Joseph B. Mccullough (1996). “The Bible According to Mark Twain”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

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• Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence except on their favor will have no attachment except to the person of their benefactor.

  Edward Gibbon

  Attachment, Favors, Lasts

  Edward Gibbon, Henry Hart Milman (1838). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.154

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