Vain Quotes

986 Vain quotes by 692 unique authors

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true,… — Leonardo da Vinci
It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank… — Immanuel Kant
Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in… — Fyodor Dostoevsky
What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this… — Arthur Schopenhauer
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the… — Barbara Pym
I've been accused of being very vain about my apathy. — Bret Easton Ellis
Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul, that soft summer morning round a turning in the path, the disgusting carcass on a bed… — Charles Baudelaire
How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and… — David Mitchell
I would have done the same thing I did. I would have put all my energy into loving someone that wasn't you. I would have… — Jonathan Tropper
Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain,… — Helen Keller
She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too… — Elizabeth Gaskell
When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you… — C.S. Lewis
Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose… — Blaise Pascal
Shall we mourn here deedless forever a shadow-folk mist-haunting dropping vain tears in the thankless sea — J.R.R. Tolkien
Laments of an Icarus The paramours of courtesans Are well and satisfied, content. But as for me my limbs are rent Because I clasped the… — Charles Baudelaire
A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain… — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Clichés so often befall vain people. — Ann Beattie
All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty. — Arthur Golden
It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to… — Annie Dillard
[He] didn’t like to think of himself as vain, but there were definitely times when he wished there was someone on hand to take his… — David Nicholls
I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest… — Fyodor Dostoevsky
I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape. — Jean-Paul Sartre
No, my dog used to gaze at me, paying me the attention I need, the attention required to make a vain person like me understand… — Pablo Neruda

Who Wrote These Vain Quotes

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