Vain Quotes - Page 27

Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.

J. K. Rowling

Inspirational, Beauty, Wise

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I ask myself how I could give in to this perpetual vertigo that I in fact provoked and feared. I floated among erratic clouds and talked to myself in front of the mirror in the vain hope of confirming who I was. My delirium was so great that during a student demonstration complete with rocks and bottles, I had to make an enormous effort not to lead it as I held up a sign that would sanctify my truth: I am mad with love.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Clouds, Mirrors, Rocks

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Let us labor for an inward stillness-- An inward stillness and an inward healing. That perfect silence where the lips and heart Are still, and we no longer entertain Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions, But God alone speaks to us and we wait In singleness of heart that we may know His will, and in the silence of our spirits, That we may do His will and do that only

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Healing, Heart, Perfect

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2012). “My Complete Poetical Works (Annotated Edition)”, p.1264, Jazzybee Verlag

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To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live.

Henry James

Inspirational, Life, Time

Henry James, F. O. Matthiessen, Kenneth B. Murdock (1981). “The Notebooks of Henry James”, p.99, University of Chicago Press

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Faith is indeed intellectual; it involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you have only knowledge.

John Gresham Machen

Divorce, Effort, Intellectual

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We know it's all just daydreaming. In all likelihood, no one in this forest'll ever get a javelin, and I'll never see my mother's kingdom again, let alone be hailed by crowds as the jewel of Kildenree. Maybe it's vain to wish for it. But sometimes, it'd be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth. Right Finn?

Shannon Hale

Mother, Real, Nice

Shannon Hale (2010). “The Goose Girl”, p.280, A&C Black

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Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

Simone de Beauvoir

Unique, Self, Natural

Simone de Beauvoir (1969). “The Woman Destroyed”, HarperCollins Publishers

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O, but they say, the tongues of dying men enforce attention, like deep harmony: where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain: for they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain. he, that no more must say, is listened more than they whom youth and ease have taught to gloze; more are men's ends marked, than their lives before: the setting sun, and music at the close, as the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last; writ in rememberance more than things long past

William Shakespeare

Sweet, Pain, Past

William Shakespeare, Charles R. Forker (2002). “King Richard II: Third Series”, p.242, Cengage Learning EMEA

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...Je n’ai pas cessé de l’être si c’est d’être jeune que d’aimer toujours !... L’humanité n’est pas un vain mot. Notre vie est faite d’amour, et ne plus aimer c’est ne plus vivre." (I have never ceased to be young, if being young is always loving... Humanity is not a vain word. Our life is made of love, and to love no longer is to live no longer.)

George Sand

Humanity, Life Is, Made

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It grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in more subtle expressions like responsibility and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainly out of uncertainty. And contrary to what you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.

William P. Young

Believe, Responsibility, Thinking

"The Shack". Book by William P. Young, books.google.ru. June 20, 2008.

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Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Liberty

Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1162, Library of Alexandria

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Love, I thought to myself abstractedly. Not 'This is love' or 'Is this love?' Not a sentence, not a certainty, not a thought with moving parts or direction. Just love, all of it, as it is. Whether it's enough or not. Wthether it's real or we're making it up. However shoddy it gets, or bent out of shape. It's still extraordinary. However foolish, however vain. However badly it ends. Love.

Julian Gough

Real, Moving, Shapes

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Only against death does man cry out in vain.

Malcolm Lowry

Men, Doe, Cry

Malcolm Lowry (1965). “Selected letters”

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[Vanity] is an unrecognised form of stupidity, you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that's a glaring form of stupidity.

Pascal Mercier

Vanity, Stupidity, Able

Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.80, Atlantic Books Ltd

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Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Hands, Knowing, Everyday

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The best way to make a sort of peace, a fragile armistice to be sure, but precious all the same, with men, officers or not, is to let them bask and wallow in childish self-glorification. There’s no such thing as intelligent vanity. It’s an instinct. And you’ll never find a man who is not first and formenost vain. The role of admiring doormat is about the only one that one man is glad to tolerate in another. With these soldiers I had no need to tax my imagination.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Intelligent, Men, Vanity

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Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.

Albert Camus

Unhappy, Lovers, Cherish

Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.97, Vintage

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Each day is a miracle that intoxicates me. I want more. I greet every morning like a new pleasure. And yet I am keenly aware of all life's artifices. Getting dressed, wearing make-up, laughing, having fun-isn't all that just playing a role? Am I not more profound, carrying the burden of those twenty years when I 'wasn't alive', than all those who rushed around in vain during that time?

Malika Oufkir

Morning, Fun, Years

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Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd, Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd. Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise, Where mixed with Gods, his lov'd idea lies: O write it not, my hand - the name appears Already written - wash it out, my tears! In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays, Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeyes.

Alexander Pope

Lying, Writing, Heart

Alexander Pope (1808). “The poetical works of Alexander Pope. To which is prefixed the life of the author”, p.108

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It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.

Charles Dickens

Boys, Thinking, Years

Charles Dickens (2009). “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: Great Expectations”, p.343, Cosimo, Inc.

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Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life.

Khalil Gibran

Life, Teaching, Men

"Spirits Rebellious". Book by Kahlil Gibran. Chapter "Khalil The Heretic", part 3, 1908.

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All right, I'll take a chance. I will fall in love with you. If i'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too. Can you cook and sew. make flowers grow. Do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?

Bob Dylan

Falling In Love, Morning, Pain

Song: Is Your Love In Vain ?

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It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.

Bertrand Russell

Dream, Men, Reason

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... because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.

Bohumil Hrabal

Real, Book, Laughing

Bohumil Hrabal (1992). “Too Loud a Solitude”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.

Janet Fitch

Prayer, Eye, Hair

Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.222, Hachette UK

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