Vain Quotes
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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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Evil labours with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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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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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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A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
William Shakespeare
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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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Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.
Blaise Pascal
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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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All Empires fall, All ages die, All strife shall be in vain. All Kings go down, All hope must fail, But Tanelorn remains Our Tanelorn remains.
Michael Moorcock
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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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It is vain to complain of fortune while we fail in policy and conduct.
Norm MacDonald
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We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.
Seneca the Younger
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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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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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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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Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.
Charles Dickens
