Vain Quotes

986 Vain quotes by 692 unique authors

To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and…though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at… — Arthur Schopenhauer
O, but they say, the tongues of dying men enforce attention, like deep harmony: where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain: for… — William Shakespeare
...Je n’ai pas cessé de l’être si c’est d’être jeune que d’aimer toujours !... L’humanité n’est pas un vain mot. Notre vie est faite d’amour,… — George Sand
It (trying to keep the law) grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a… — William P. Young
Liberty a word without which all other words are vain. — Robert Green Ingersoll
Love, I thought to myself abstractedly. Not 'This is love' or 'Is this love?' Not a sentence, not a certainty, not a thought with moving… — Julian Gough
Only against death does man cry out in vain. — Malcolm Lowry
[Vanity] is an unrecognised form of stupidity, you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and… — Pascal Mercier
Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things… — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide… — Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best way to make a sort of peace, a fragile armistice to be sure, but precious all the same, with men, officers or not,… — Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to… — Albert Camus
Each day is a miracle that intoxicates me. I want more. I greet every morning like a new pleasure. And yet I am keenly aware… — Malika Oufkir
Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd, Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd. Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise, Where mixed with… — Alexander Pope
All right, I'll take a chance. I will fall in love with you. If i'm a fool you can have the night, you can have… — Bob Dylan
It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all… — Charles Dickens
Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is… — Khalil Gibran
It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in… — Bertrand Russell
... because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books… — Bohumil Hrabal
How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth… — Janet Fitch
How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. — Hermann Hesse
The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam, The meditation that is rather dream, With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks; The hour of steaming… — Paul Verlaine
In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they… — Jorge Luis Borges
There is something peculiarly dispriting about the emptiness that wells up when, in a strange city, one dials the same telephone numbers in vain. — W G Sebald
Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that… — Jane Austen

Who Wrote These Vain Quotes

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