Vain Quotes - Page 32

It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.

Michel de Montaigne

Vanity, Thrones, Sitting

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Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Stephen Vizinczey

Book, Writing, Character

Stephen Vizinczey “Truth and Lies in Literature, A Writer's Ten Commandments: (Revised and Extended edition)”, stephenvizinczey.com

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Nowadays the world is becoming increasingly materialistic, and mankind is reaching toward the very zenith of external progress, driven by an insatiable desire for power and vast possessions. Yet by this vain striving for perfection in a world where everything is relative,they wander even further away from inward peace and happiness of the mind.

Dalai Lama

Peace, Perfection, Mind

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His whole being radiates a pure, wild sweetness, flitting through night woods with little melodious cries, on some cryptic errand. There is also an aura of doom and sadness about this trusting little creature. He has been abandoned many times over the centuries, left to die in cold city alleys, in hot noon vacant lots, pottery shards, nettles, crumbled mud walls. Many times he has cried for help in vain.

William S. Burroughs

Wall, Sadness, Cat

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It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.

George D. Prentice

Life, Men, Half

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Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.

Carl Linnaeus

Science, Animal, Vanity

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Reality has no security and that is its beauty. Life has no security and that is its beauty. Because there is no security, there is adventure. Because the future is unknown, nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. That's why there is challenge, growth, adventure. If you miss adventure, you miss all. If your life is not that of an adventure, of a search into the unknown, then you are living in vain.

Rajneesh

Adventure, Reality, Missing

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Their sacrifice was great, but not in vain. All Americans and every free nation on earth can trace their liberty to the white markers of places like Arlington National Cemetery. And may God keep us ever grateful.

George W. Bush

Memorial Day, Grateful, Sacrifice

George W. Bush Honors the Brave and Fallen Defenders of Freedom in Arlington, Virginia, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. May 26, 2003.

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A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Prayer, Believe, Angel

Robert Louis Stevenson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)”, p.2610, Delphi Classics

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The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not burn some of the sin out of him.

James M. Barrie

Mother, Eye, Humble

James M. Barrie (2013). “The Little Minister (Illustrated Edition)”, p.27, Jazzybee Verlag

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Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

George Washington

Religious, Business, Men

"George Washington’s Farewell Address". "The Life of George Washington. Special Edition for Schools", ed. Robert Faulkner and Paul Carrese, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, oll.libertyfund.org. 2000.

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After the birth of printing books became widespread. Hence everyone throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature... Every year, especially since 1563, the number of writings published in every field is greater than all those produced in the past thousand years. Through them there has today been created a new theology and a new jurisprudence; the Paracelsians have created medicine anew and the Copernicans have created astronomy anew. I really believe that at last the world is alive, indeed seething, and that the stimuli of these remarkable conjunctions did not act in vain.

Johannes Kepler

Believe, Book, Writing

"The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's A Defence of Tycho Against Ursus With Essays on its Provenance and Significance". Book by N. Jardine, 1984.

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Their vain presumption of knowing all can take beginning solely from their never having known anything; for if one has but once experienced the perfect knowledge of one thing, and truly tasted what it is to know, he shall perceive that of infinite other conclusions he understands not so much as one.

Galileo Galilei

Knowledge, Science, Knowing

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To teach vain Wits that Science little known,
T' admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!

Alexander Pope

Science, Doubt, Littles

Alexander Pope, “An Essay On Criticism”

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All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.

John Owen

Done, Way, Spirit

John Owen, Rev Terry Kulakowski, Editor “Overcoming Temptation and Sin”, Lulu.com

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When the heart is once won to rest in God, to repose himself on him, he will assuredly satisfy it. He will never be as water that fails; nor hath he said at any time to the seed of Jacob, "Seek ye my face in vain." If Christ be chosen for the foundation of our supply, he will not fail us.

John Owen

Heart, Water, Faces

John Owen (2001). “Temptation and Sin”, p.83, Sovereign Grace Publishers,

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All possible truth is practical. To ask whether our conception of chair or table corresponds to the real chair or table apart from the uses to which they may be put, is as utterly meaningless and vain as to inquire whether a musical tone is red or yellow. No other conceivable relation than this between ideas and things can exist. The unknowable is what I cannot react upon. The active part of our nature is not only an essential part of cognition itself, but it always has a voice in determining what shall be believed and what rejected.

G. Stanley Hall

Truth, Real, Ideas

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We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.

Blaise Pascal

Truth, Heart, Trying

Blaise Pascal (1966). “Pascal Pensées”, Penguin Classics

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In going on with these Experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig'd to destroy! If there is no other Use discover'd of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble.

Benjamin Franklin

Humble, Science, Men

Benjamin Franklin (1972). “Benjamin Franklin: a biography in his own words”

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Natura nihil agit frustra [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputible axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unncecessary spaces.

Thomas Browne

Nature, Philosophy, Philosophical

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Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

Isaac Newton

Nature, Science, Simplicity

Sir Isaac Newton (1962). “Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World: The system of the world”, p.398, Univ of California Press

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This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

Jonathan Swift

Art, Nature, Lying

Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.551

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So is not mathematical analysis then not just a vain game of the mind? To the physicist it can only give a convenient language; but isn't that a mediocre service, which after all we could have done without; and, it is not even to be feared that this artificial language be a veil, interposed between reality and the physicist's eye? Far from that, without this language most of the initimate analogies of things would forever have remained unknown to us; and we would never have had knowledge of the internal harmony of the world, which is, as we shall see, the only true objective reality.

Henri Poincare

Eye, Science, Reality

"Statistical Mechanics of Disordered Systems: A Mathematical Perspective". Book by Anton Bovier, p. 3, 2006.

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A great part of its theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Success, Character, Simple

"Mathematical Circles Adieu". Book by Howard W. Eves, 1977.

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Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.

Friedrich Nietzsche

God, Fighting, Boredom

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thomas Wayne (2004). “Ecce Homo: How One Becomes what One is; The Antichrist: a Curse on Christianity”, p.152, Algora Publishing

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