Vain Quotes · Page 21

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.

— Max Beerbohm

I am inclined to think that one's education has been in vain if one fails to learn that most schoolmasters are idiots.

— Hesketh Pearson

The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.

— Jean de la Bruyere

The human bones are but vain lines dawdling, the whole universe a blank mold of stars.

— Jack Kerouac

The words of that philosopher who offers no therapy for human suffering are empty and vain.

— Epicurus

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we…

— Marcel Proust

If, at the end of my days, the sum of what I've taken exceeds the sum of what I've given, then I…

— Doug Rice

He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more…

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe…

— Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in…

— Owen Feltham

i shall imagine life is not worth dying,if (and when)roses complain their beauties are in vain but though mankind persuades itself that…

— Anonymous

In vain shall Great Britain confer upon her colonies the free government and liberal principles of legislation, for which she is distinguished,…

— John Strachan

The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the…

— Ludwig von Mises

One good thing about TV is, if you die violently, God forbid, on camera, you will not have died in vain because…

— Kurt Vonnegut

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to…

— William Shakespeare

In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of…

— Auguste Comte

I wanted at one point to act, which is a weird thing for men to want to do. It's a very vain…

— Shane Black

I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a…

— Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Love is a great thing...which alone maketh every burden light.. Love is watchful, and while sleeping, still keeps watch; though fatigued, it…

— Thomas a Kempis

The laws keep up their credit, not by being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority;…

— Michel de Montaigne

It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

The vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never having understood anything. For anyone who had ever experienced…

— Galileo Galilei

My own opinion is that the suburban project is over. We are done. We don't know it yet. For about five years…

— James Howard Kunstler

Against fortune the carter cracks his whip in vain. [Fr., Centre fortune, la diverse un chartier rompit nazardes son fouet.]

— Francois Rabelais

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.

— Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

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

Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control.

— Marcus Aurelius

In vain I have looked for a single man capable of seeing his own faults and bringing the charge home against himself.

— Confucius

Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane...

— Alexander Pushkin

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

— Abraham Lincoln

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

— Alain de Botton

And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in…

— Antonio Porchia

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

— Alexander Pope

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater…

— Joseph Addison

I like me better naked. I don't mean that in a vain way... When you put clothes on, you immediately put a…

— Padma Lakshmi

What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o'er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age…

— John Dryden

His golden locks Time hath to silver turned, O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing! His youth 'gainst Time and Age…

— George Peele

The wise man is wise in vain who cannot be wise to his own advantage. [Lat., Nequicquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi…

— Quintus Ennius