Vain Quotes · Page 17

Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,Leave off your idle pain;Seek other mistress for your minds,Love's service is in vain.

— Robert Southwell

Tis all in vain to keep a constant pother About one vice and fall into another.

— Alexander Pope

It is vain philosophy that supposes more causes than are exactly adequate to explain the phenomena of things.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

I'm always chasing rainbows, Waiting to find a little bluebird in vain.

— Joseph McCarthy

Nor has he lived in vain, who from his cradle to his grave has passed his life in seclusion.

— Horace

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

— William Makepeace Thackeray

As a person I'm perfectly vain, I'm just vainer as an actor about my ability. My acting vanity trumps my human vanity.

— Rufus Sewell

“You have left Your Beloved and are thinking of others: and this is why your work is in vain.”

— Kabir

... as a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and…

— Edsger Dijkstra

“It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys, The champions and enthusiasts of the state: Turbid ardors and vain joys Not…

— Herman Melville

We are all blind until we see That in the human plan Nothing is worth the making If it does not make…

— Edwin Markham

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies? Heav'n still with laughter the…

— Alexander Pope

How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not - have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy…

— Jane Welsh Carlyle

Love can take what shape he pleases; and when once begun his fiery inroad in the soul, how vain the after knowledge…

— Bryan Procter

The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint Pharaohs of today have…

— Anonymous

Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is…

— Nikola Tesla

Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot,' billed as 'the laugh sensation of two continents,' made its American debut at the Coconut Grove Playhouse,…

— John Lahr

Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and…

— Florence Nightingale

[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some…

— Blaise Pascal

It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture…

— Charles Dickens

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau! Mock on, mock on: 'Tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And…

— William Blake

... do not listen to vain and empty talk, in which the majority of world-loving people spend their time, and do not…

— Lorenzo Scupoli

A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah, what shallow, vain conceit there is in…

— Henry Ward Beecher

Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

— Gerald Brenan

“It is easy to identify a shallow person by the attention he gives to what will do him absolutely no good.”

— Michael Bassey Johnson

“An expert is nothing more than a vain person who has read a book.”

— Corey Taylor

All the promises you made to me you made in vain. I lost myself inside your tainted smile again!

— Justin Lee Riner

All Juleps are made for present use, and therefore it is in vain to speak of their duration.

— Nicholas Culpeper

“I'd like to be a successful author before my hairline recedes further! OK I'm vain”

— David H. Millar

Yes, one must suffer, even in vain, so as not to have lived in vain.

— Antonio Porchia

It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.

— Joshua Reynolds

But I feel vanity is a part of art and the non-vain are really non-artistic.

— Barry Webster

Sow truth, if thou the truth wouldst reap: Who sows the false shall reap the vain.

— Horatius Bonar

The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.

— Edward Gibbon

I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear, or anything but that vain animal who is so proud of being rational.

— John Wilmot

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow…

— Augustus Hare

Every night, we put on shows that are deteriorating our bodies' life span... we don't do it for it all to be…

— Machine Gun Kelly

Never was flattery lost on a poet's ear; a simple race, they waste their toil for the vain tribute of a smile.

— Walter Scott

To ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair Can ne'er come down again.

— Mary Howitt