Vain Quotes - Page 33

• The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Should Have, Justice

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.431, Penguin

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• [Jehovah is] certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Jealous, Religion, Liberty

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• It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual

  Jeremy Bentham

  Community, Understanding, Individual

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.9, Hackett Publishing

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• They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness. A day may come - it will, if his prayer is heard. A terrible day of vengeance when the master in his turn will cry in vain for mercy.

  Solomon Northup

  Fear, Prayer, Ignorant

  Solomon Northup (2016). “Twelve Years a Slave”, p.135, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• I am afraid, ... that health begins, after seventy, and often long before, to have a meaning different from that which it had at thirty. But it is culpable to murmur at the established order of the creation, as it is vain to oppose it. He that lives, must grow old; and he that would rather grow old than die, has God to thank for the infirmities of old age.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Order, Long, Age

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• In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Play, Skills, Soul

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1888). “Longfellow's Days: The Longfellow Prose Birthday Book : Extracts from the Journals and Letters of H. W. Longfellow”

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• Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame, Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame, Averse alike to flatter or offend, Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

  Alexander Pope

  Faults, Blame, Praise

  Alexander Pope (1835). “The works of Alexander Pope; with a memoir of the author, notes [&c.] by G. Croly”, p.88

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• Unless you come out of your mind and become a no-mind you will not know what life is all about, you will live in vain. You will not have your honeymoon, it is impossible. You will not know the sweetness that existence is full of and the ecstasy.

  Rajneesh

  Mind, Impossible, Life Is

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• Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Karma, Men, Trying

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.357, Penguin

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• Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts, unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

  Emily Bronte

  Weed, Moving, Heart

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2014). “Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell”, p.212, The Floating Press

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• Christianity is a lifestyle - a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established "religion" (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one's "personal Lord and Savior" . . . The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.

  Richard Rohr

  Christian, Jesus, Selfish

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• They never sought in vain that sought the Lord alright!

  Robert Burns

  Military, Lord, Alright

  'The Cotter's Saturday Night' (1786) st. 6

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• We are not only to renounce evil, but to manifest the truth. We tell people the world is vain; let our lives manifest that it is so. We tell them that our home is above and that all these things are transitory. Does our dwelling look like it? O to live consistent lives!

  Hudson Taylor

  Truth, Home, Dwelling

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• Tell me, you vain professor, when did you shed a tear for the deadness, hardness, unbelief, or earthliness of your heart? Do you think that such an easy religion can save you? If so, we may invert Christ's words and say, 'Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to life, and may there be that go in there.'

  John Flavel

  Heart, Thinking, Tears

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• It is vain for you to expect, it is impudent for you to ask of God forgiveness on your own behalf, if you refuse to exercise this forgiving temper with respect to others.

  Benjamin Hoadly

  Exercise, Forgiving, Respecting Others

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• Nature always springs to the surface and manages to show what she is. It is vain to stop or try to drive her back. She breaks through every obstacle, pushes forward, and at last makes for herself a way.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Nature, Spring, Break Through

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• It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Bogs, Wilderness

  David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape”, p.5, Harvard University Press

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• Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher

  Evelyn Waugh

  Wine, Age, Comfort

  Evelyn Waugh (1947*). “Wine in peace and war”

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• I admit that these terms and the diagrams connected with them repel some readers, and fill others with the vain imagination that they have mastered difficult economics problems, when really they have done little more than learn the language in which parts of those problems can be expressed, and the machinery by which they can be handled. When the actual conditions of particular problems have not been studied, such knowledge is little better than a derrick for sinking oil-wells erected where there are no oil-bearing strata.

  Alfred Marshall

  Oil, Imagination, Done

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• The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Ideas, Patterns, Study

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• Must we, under the happy hope of a false tranquility, sacrifice to the people in power the public welfare, and under vain pretence of preserving the peace, abandon the empire to robbers who would plunder it

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Sacrifice, People, Church

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• If the [Vestiges] be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!

  Adam Sedgwick

  Lying, Science, Men

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• Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea When heaven was all tranquillity.

  Charles Lamb

  Love, Moving, Fall

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• We are here speaking in open disapproval of that false system of philosophy, not so long ago introduced, by which, because of an extended and unbridled desire of novelty, truth is not sought where it truly resides, and, with a disregard for the holy and apostolic traditions, other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, not approved by the Church are accepted as true, on which very vain men mistakenly think that truth itself is supported and sustained.

  Pope Gregory XVI

  Philosophy, Men, Thinking

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• The world calls for and expects from us simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility... Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man. It risks being vain and sterile.

  Pope Paul VI

  Faith, Prayer, Inspiration

  Catholic Church. Pope (1963-1978 : Paul VI), Pope Paul VI (1976*). “On evangelization in the modern world”

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