Vain Quotes - Page 40

• This fine young man had all the inclination to be a profligate of the first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue of debauched vices - open-handedness - to be a notable vagabond. But there his griping and penurious habits stepped in; and as one poison will sometimes neutralise another, when wholesome remedies would not avail, so he was restrained by a bad passion from quaffing his full measure of evil, when virtue might have sought to hold him back in vain.

  Charles Dickens

  Passion, Men, Evil

  Charles Dickens (2017). “Children's Tales from Dickens – The Great Classics & The Wonderful Stories for Children (Illustrated Edition): Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Holiday Romance, The Old Curiosity Shop, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Christmas Stories, A Child’s Dream of a Star…”, p.1935, e-artnow

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• If those millions squandered on designing missionaries had been deposited in funds for the support of yourselves, when old age, misfortune, or sickness (from which none are exempt,) overtakes you, or for the distressed of your race, what a heaven of happiness you would have created on earth: ye would now be an ornament to your sex, and ages to come would call you blessed. But it is in vain to try - a priest-ridden female is lost to reason. Why? because she has surrendered her reason to the ... missionaries ... the orthodox; they are the grand deceivers.

  Anne Royall

  Sex, Blessed, Race

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• Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.

  George Santayana

  Religious, Soul, Atheism

  George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.51, Рипол Классик

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• Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Diversity, Uniforms

  Essais bk. 1, ch. 1 (1580)

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• What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.

  John le Carre

  Thinking, Cowboy, Play

  The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). Sounds like some writers.

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• It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race.

  Frances Wright

  Ignorance, Race, Evil

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.24

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• Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beauty, Weed, Long

  Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.158, Yale University Press

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• Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists and cöoperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But alas! each relaxing and desperation is an instinct too. To be active, well, happy, implies courage. To be ready to fight in a duel or a battle implies desperation, or that you hold your life cheap.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Courage, Fighting, Despair

  Henry David Thoreau (1894). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: With Bibliographical Introductions and Full Indexes”

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• It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Communication, Men, Literature

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.356, Penguin

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• Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
  Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
  Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Men, Giving

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays”, p.431, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing is made in vain, but the fly came near it.

  Mark Twain

  Made

  Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain’s Book of Animals”, p.23, Univ of California Press

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• Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry.

  Martin Luther

  Art, Thinking, Imagination

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• If to be venerated for benevolence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived in vain. And I flatter myself that it will not be ranked among the least grateful occurrences of your life to be assured that, so long as I retain my memory, you will be thought on with respect, veneration, and affection by your sincere friend.

  George Washington

  Memories, Grateful, Long

  George Washington (1948). “Basic Writings of George Washington”

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• To many men much-wandering hope comes as a boon, but to many others it is the deception of vain desires.

  Sophocles

  Hope, Men, Deception

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• I still like me, inside and out. Not in a vain way - I just feel good in my skin.

  Sophia Loren

  Feel Good, Skins, Way

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• There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.

  Blaise Pascal

  Happiness, Men, Trying

  Pensees no. 181 (1658). Popularly paraphrased as "There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart."

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• Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has a good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will pa tronize in vain,--which taste cannot tolerate,--which ridicule will seize.

  Jane Austen

  Grief, Sorrow, World

  Jesse Zuba, Jane Austen (2009). “Persuasion - Jane Austen”, p.150, Infobase Publishing

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• We never think of the main business of life till a vain repentance minds us of it at the wrong end.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Life, Thinking, Mind

  Sir Roger L'Estrange (1738). “Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections”, p.188

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• When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.

  Stendhal

  Two, Lovers, Intimacy

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• When you are disposed to be vain of your mental acquirements, look up to those who are more accomplished than yourself, that you may be fired with emulation; but when you feel dissatisfied with your circumstances, look down on those beneath you, that you may learn contentment.

  Hannah More

  Vanity, Contentment, Emulation

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• Your Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence,that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.

  Pierre Corneille

  Christian, Heaven, Stronger

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• It is an evil world. The fires of hatred and violence burn fiercely. Evil is powerful, the devil covers a darkened earth with hisblack wings. And soon the end of the world is expected. But mankind does not repent, the church struggles, and the preachers and poets warn and lament in vain.

  Johan Huizinga

  Powerful, Struggle, Fire

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• If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.

  David Hume

  Pain, Passion, Would Be

  David Hume (2016). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Revision of Great Book”, p.425, VM eBooks

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• We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but 'tis vain to ask. Whether there be body or not? That is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.

  David Hume

  Believe, Causes, Body

  David Hume (2016). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Revision of Great Book”, p.180, VM eBooks

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• Ruthless and arrogant though power can appear, it is only ever held by mere mammals who excrete and yearn, and who suffer from insomnia and insecurity. These mammals are also necessarily vain in the ­extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Power, Insomnia, Insecurity

  Christopher Hitchens (2001). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, Basic Books (AZ)

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