Vain Quotes

986 Vain quotes by 692 unique authors

The essence of Vanderbilt is still learning, the essence of its outlook is still liberty, and liberty and learning will be and must be the… — John F. Kennedy
Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness, within those… — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake. — Quintilian
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship. — Samuel Johnson
I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, not two or three, or ten,… — Leo Tolstoy
Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream. And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream. — George Linley
Shed not for her a bitter tear; Nor give the heart to vain regret. Tis but the casket that lies here; the gem that fills… — Belle Starr
A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the… — Aesop
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would… — George Bernard Shaw
Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery, because we have .. the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality… — Luigi Pirandello
I have done what I could do in life, and if I could not do better, I did not deserve it. In vain I have… — Maurice Maeterlinck
It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self- estimate which will… — George Eliot
We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains - chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a… — Mark Twain
I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,… — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new,… — Henri Poincare
The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly… — William James
He who knows himself well is mean and abject in his own sight, and takes no delight in the vain praise of men. — Thomas a Kempis
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty. — Louis Kronenberger
I have a theory that evolutionary biologists are more vain than particle physicists. — Robin Ince
As leakers take great risks in releasing information, assuring them that they are not sacrificing themselves in vain and that their leaks would have public… — Evgeny Morozov
Aircraft do not crash of themselves. They come to grief because men are foolish, or vain, or lazy, or irresolute or reckless. One crash in… — Nevil Shute
One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain, one bestows on it the name of… — Emile Durkheim
How many precious things do we not already possess which others have not - have hardly an idea of! Let us enjoy these, then, and… — Jane Welsh Carlyle
Would a man ever be called vain for speaking his mind? — Marianne Williamson

Who Wrote These Vain Quotes

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