Vain Quotes - Page 4

• Kindness is the evidence of greatness. If anyone is glad that you are here, then you have not lived in vain.

  Charles Fenno Hoffman

  Kindness, Greatness, Be Kind

  6 Copy quote

• We are not to suppose, that there is any violent exertion of power, such as is required in order to produce a great event in little time; in nature, we find no deficiency in respect of time, nor any limitation with regard to power. But time is not made to flow in vain; nor does there ever appear the exertion of superfluous power, or the manifestation of design, not calculated in wisdom to effect some general end.

  James Hutton

  Nature, Science, Power

  James Hutton (1788*). “Theory of the earth; or an investigation of the laws observable in the composition, dissolution and restoration of land upon the globe. (From. the Trans., Roy. soc. of Edinb.).”, p.86

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.

  Auguste Comte

  Knowledge, Mean, Science

  "Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings".

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life.

  Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp

  Life, Mean, Science

  4 Copy quote

• But since the brain, as well as the cerebellum, is composed of many parts, variously figured, it is possible, that nature, which never works in vain, has destined those parts to various uses, so that the various faculties of the mind seem to require different portions of the cerebrum and cerebellum for their production.

  Georg Prochaska

  Nature, Science, Brain

  7 Copy quote

• Science gains from it [the pendulum] more than one can expect. With its huge dimensions, the apparatus presents qualities that one would try in vain to communicate by constructing it on a small [scale], no matter how carefully. Already the regularity of its motion promises the most conclusive results. One collects numbers that, compared with the predictions of theory, permit one to appreciate how far the true pendulum approximates or differs from the abstract system called 'the simple pendulum'.

  Leon Foucault

  Science, Simple, Numbers

  6 Copy quote

• A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Art, War, Winning

  23 Copy quote

• But Mousie, thou art no thy lane In proving foresight may be vain The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain For promis'd joy!

  Robert Burns

  Art, Pain, Philosophical

  Robert Burns (2009). “The Best Laid Schemes: Selected Poetry and Prose of Robert Burns”, p.48, Princeton University Press

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious.

  David Hume

  Strong, Pain, Philosophy

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.306

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will.

  Thomas Nagel

  Conceited, Psychology, May

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mortal Questions”, p.32, Cambridge University Press

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another, I have my mission ... He has not created me for naught ... If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

  John Henry Newman

  Spiritual, Sorrow, Doe

  77 Copy quote

• May I not seem to have lived in vain.

  Tycho Brahe

  May, Last Words, Seems

  32 Copy quote

• Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.

  William Butler Yeats

  Blood, Discipline, Tolerance

  Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats (2001). “YER”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unless man is committed to the belief that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality.

  Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

  Brother, Equality, Men

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  114 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am astonished about those people who are ordered to prepare their provisions, then the start of the journey is announced, however they remain unmindful in their vain discussions and fruitless deeds.

  Hasan of Basra

  Wisdom, Islamic, Journey

  "The Life of This World Is a Transient Shade". Book by Abdul Malik Al-Qasim, January 1, 1999.

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I can, by a lucky chance, in these uneasy days, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness; if I can, how and then, prompt a happier view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, I shall not have written in vain.

  Washington Irving

  Inspirational Life, Sadness, Heart

  5 Copy quote

• As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

  Marianne Moore

  Butterfly, Congruence, Complement

  Marianne Moore, Robin G. Schulze (2002). “Becoming Marianne Moore: The Early Poems, 1907-1924”, p.229, Univ of California Press

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Politics, Reason

  Thomas Jefferson (1856). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.209

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The character is everything that I felt really strongly against - she's superficial, materialistic, vain, amoral. She's all of these things, and I realised that I really hated her. How do you play someone that you hate? But I found it really interesting and it gave me a whole new insight into what my job, or my role as an actress, could be.

  Emma Watson

  Boyfriend, Jobs, Hate

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". Interview with Dylan Jones, www.gq-magazine.co.uk. May 3, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

  Anatole France

  Writing, Sound, World

  8 Copy quote

• One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it...If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better.

  Galen Rowell

  Photography, Real, Mistake

  17 Copy quote

• Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain.

  Aristotle

  Nature, Incomplete

  Politics bk. 1, 1256b

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade! Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless childhood stray'd, A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales that from ye blow A momentary bliss bestow.

  Thomas Gray

  Happiness, Pain, Blow

  Thomas Campbell, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray (1872). “The Poetical Works of Campbell, Goldsmith and Gray: With Memoirs of the Authors”, p.391

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Spangling the wave with lights as vain As pleasures in the vale of pain, That dazzle as they fade.

  Walter Scott

  Pain, Light, Dazzle

  Walter Scott, Sir Walter Scott (1841). “The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart”, p.415

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lightly from fair to fair he flew, And loved to plead, lament, and sue; Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain, For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

  Walter Scott

  Life, Pain, Suits

  Sir Walter Scott (1866). “The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott”, p.102

  7 Copy quote

  Show source