Vain Quotes

986 Vain quotes by 692 unique authors

We are dwellers in a divine universe where no desires are in vain - if only they be large enough. — George MacDonald
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge. — Leonardo da Vinci
But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on… — Marcel Proust
And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so… — Michel de Montaigne
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. — Oscar Wilde
Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain. — John F. Kennedy
If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thous didst it of thine obstinacy.… — Khaled Hosseini
Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform… — Michel de Montaigne
Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get… — Thomas Merton
In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for… — Mark Kurlansky
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men. — Mary Wollstonecraft
Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain. — Thomas Aquinas
Your father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vain—Maddy glanced… — Scott Westerfeld
I was sorry for her; I was amazed, disgusted at her heartless vanity; I wondered why so much beauty should be given to those who… — Anne Bronte
You're not going to be different ... you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts… — Leo Tolstoy
At heart, he could not abide sense in women: he liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as… — Charlotte Bronte
The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint Pharaohs of today have stalked me in… — Muhammad Iqbal
To think that the affairs of this life always remain in the same state is a vain presumption; indeed they all seem to be perpetually… — Miguel de Cervantes
I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his… — George MacDonald
True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance… — William Shakespeare
The first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing… — Jack London
Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word. — Julio Cortazar
We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not… — Stephen Hawking
Tell me about this Wizard Howl of yours." "He's the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he'd only had time, he would have… — Diana Wynne Jones
It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. — Charles Dickens

Who Wrote These Vain Quotes

692 authors contributed a total of 986 Vain Quotes, led by these top contributors: