Vain Quotes
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Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Many sweat to reconcile St Paul and St James, but in vain. 'Faith justifies' and 'faith does not justify' contradict each other flatly. If any one can harmonize them I will give him my doctor's hood and let him call me a fool.
Martin Luther
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After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
Baruch Spinoza
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The vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never having understood anything. For anyone who had ever experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.
Galileo Galilei
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A flower, when offered in the bud, is no vain sacrifice.
Isaac Watts
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Christ is a rock in a weary land, a covert from the tempest of Divine justice, receiving through the ages the snows of Divine mercy, and melting them for the green pastures and still waters of God's peaceful flock — a rock against which wicked men and devils have breathed their empty curses in vain, for eighteen hundred years.
Edward Thomson
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It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.
Charles Dickens
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Never expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.
Washington Allston
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Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.
Jonathan Swift
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Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.
Seneca the Younger
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It is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found - in loving obedience.
George Eliot
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The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.
John Ruskin
