Vain Quotes
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As love is full of unbefitting strains,
All wanton as a child, skipping and vain,
Form'd by the eye and therefore, like the eye,
Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms,
Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll
To every varied object in his glance
William Shakespeare
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It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.
Willa Cather
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I'm not vain, I'm insecure.
Mariah Carey
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Bloated, one Kirchner himself staggers off to work, where all work is in vain and the onslaught of mediocrity flattens everything. Like the cocottes that I painted, that is how one is now. Wiped out, next time gone.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
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How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all.
Blaise Pascal
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It is vain to complain of fortune while we fail in policy and conduct.
Norm MacDonald
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To gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
Hermann von Helmholtz
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There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
Blaise Pascal
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I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it by the most uninterrupted career of conquests.
George Washington
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Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.
William Shakespeare
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Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.
Blaise Pascal
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If a man's esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine today. If ever the future should bring to you a time when you need a man's help, believe me, you will not call in vain. God grant that no such time may ever come to you to break the sunshine of your life; but if it should ever come, promise me that you will let me know.
Bram Stoker
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And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking into these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Let not one single life have passed in vain. What really matters is who you love and how you love.
Oprah Winfrey
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Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal.
Immanuel Kant
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Of what use are the great number of petrifactions, of different species, shape and form which are dug up by naturalists? Perhaps the collection of such specimens is sheer vanity and inquisitiveness. I do not presume to say; but we find in our mountains the rarest animals, shells, mussels, and corals embalmed in stone, as it were, living specimens of which are now being sought in vain throughout Europe. These stones alone whisper in the midst of general silence.
Carl Linnaeus
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We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
Blaise Pascal
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... because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.
Bohumil Hrabal
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The labour of digging
and watering, the anxious zeal with which I
pounced on weeds, the poring over gardening
books, the plans made as I sat on the little seat
in the middle gazing admiringly and with the
eye of faith on the trim surface so soon to be
gemmed with a thousand flowers, the reckless
expenditure of pfennings^ the humiliation of my
position in regard to Fraulein Wundermacher,
all, all had been in vain.
Elizabeth von Arnim
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All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.
Sarah Dessen
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Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.
William Shakespeare
