Vain Quotes
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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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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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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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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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If I can stop one heart from breaking…” Emily Dickinson If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
Emily Dickinson
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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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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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Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.
Charles Dickens
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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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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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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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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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Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.
William Shakespeare
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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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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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Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.
Lord Byron
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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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Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.
William Shakespeare
