Vain Quotes - Page 29

• The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, The road is forlorn all day, Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, And the hoof-prints vanish away. The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, Expend their bloom in vain. Come over the hills and far with me, And be my love in the rain.

  Robert Frost

  Rain, Flower, Clouds

  Robert Frost, Thomas Fasano (2008). “Selected Early Poems of Robert Frost”, p.40, Coyote Canyon Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is equally vain,” she thought, “for you to think you can protect me, or for me to think I can worship you. The light of truth beats upon us without shadow, and the light of truth is damnably unbecoming to us both.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Light, Worship You

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.498, Wordsworth Editions

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.

  Katherine Mansfield

  Mad, Wish, Unhappy

  Katherine Mansfield (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Katherine Mansfield (Illustrated)”, p.1297, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Healthy, Mind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “The Sorrows of Young Werther: Top Classic of German”, p.24, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Mean, Eye, Army

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.151, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The war was about vanity, he said. It was about old men who couldn't look in the mirror anymore and so they sent the young out to die. Was was a get-together of the vain. They wanted it simple--hate your enemy, know nothing of him.

  Colum McCann

  Hate, War, Simple

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.90, Bloomsbury Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands . . . They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion - we shall see - is not altogether false.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Dream, Book, Writing

  Jorge Luis Borges (1962). “Ficciones”, p.81, Grove Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.

  Erica Jong

  Successful, Artist, Soul

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.210, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Wisdom, Jesus

  50 Copy quote

• Now, I'm not very vain. If I'd ever been, making my living covered in various grease and dirt mixtures would have cured me quickly. Still, I wasn't up to facing two sexy men when I had one eye swollen mostly shut and half of my face black and blue.

  Patricia Briggs

  Sexy, Eye, Men

  Patricia Briggs (2007). “Blood Bound”, p.40, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, `Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.' But I was one-and-twenty No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, `The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.' And I am two-and-twenty And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

  A. E. Housman

  Wise, Heart, Men

  Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 13

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Fighting, Men, Order

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?

  Henry James

  Stupid, Thinking, Suffering

  Henry James (2013). “The Essential Henry James Collection”, p.921, eBookIt.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don't tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It's fairly sexy. Of course I don't know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don't burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch. (p. 247)

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Sexy, Appreciation, Book

  Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.247, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I tore open the closet door and began feverishly sorting through the shirts piled on the floor in the vain hope that inside that pile there might be some wondrously perfect shirt down there, a nice and tough but I'm also a surprisingly good listener with a true and abiding passion for cheers and those who lead them.

  John Green

  Cheer, Nice, Passion

  John Green, Lauren Myracle, Maureen Johnson (2009). “Let It Snow: Three Holiday Stories”, p.81, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to his puzzle.

  Umberto Eco

  Believe, Men, Keys

  Umberto Eco (2014). “Island Of The Day Before”, p.399, Random House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Wise, Fool, Asks

  5 Copy quote

• Jump way back to one time, Evie and me did this fashion shoot in a junk yard, in a slaughterhouse, in a mortuary. We'd go anywhere to look good by comparison, and what I realize is mostly what I hate about Evie is the fact that she's so vain and stupid and needy. But what I hate most is how she's just like me. What I really hate is me so I hate pretty much everybody.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Fashion, Hate, Stupid

  Chuck Palahniuk (2012). “Invisible Monsters Remix”, p.145, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God (which, we must note, was addressed specifically to perennial problems in political morality), then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) — the standard of self-law or autonomy.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  Men, Self, Expression

  "By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today".

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• Small Man can be a very funny or a very tiresome Tour Companion, depending on how this kind of thing grabs you. He gambles, he drinks too much and he always runs away. Since the Rules allow him to make Jokes, he will excuse his behaviour in a variety of comical ways. Physically he is stunted and not at all handsome, although he usually dresses flamboyantly. He tends to wear hats with feathers in. You will discover he is very vain. But, if you can avoid smacking him, you will come to tolerate if not love him. He will contrive, in some cowardly way, to play a major part in saving the world.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Running, Men, Play

  4 Copy quote

• But little Mouse, you are not alone,
  In proving foresight may be vain:
  The best laid schemes of mice and men
  Go often askew,
  And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
  For promised joy!
  Still you are blest, compared with me!

  Robert Burns

  Pain, Grief, Men

  4 Copy quote

• The poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still the master's own, Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth, Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth, While man, vain insect hopes to be forgiven, And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

  Lord Byron

  Dog, Fall, Heart

  George Gordon Byron, “Epitaph To A Dog”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was always embarresed by the words 'sacred,' 'glorious,' and 'sacrifice' and the expression 'in vain.' We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Business, Rain, Sacrifice

  "A Farewell to Arms". Book by Ernest Hemingway., 1929.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Strong, Passion, Wind

  Charlotte Bronte “Annotated Jane Eyre: An Autobiography with English Grammar Exercises: by Charlotte Bronte (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Lying, Animal, Men

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.444, GENERAL PRESS

  10 Copy quote

  Show source