Vain Quotes
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You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell. What I mean is that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me.
Charles Dickens
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Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me.
Charles Dickens
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It is in vain that we search for an essential difference between good and evil, for their constituents are the same. The crucial distinction lies in their structure, i.e., the manner in which the pieces are assembled. Evil is disintegration, an angry juxtaposition of alienated opposites, with parts always striving to repress other parts. Good is the synthesis and reconciliation of these same pieces.
Charles Hampden-Turner
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But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.
Thomas Carlyle
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Sweet is true love that is given in vain, and sweet is death that takes away pain.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
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Kindness is the evidence of greatness. If anyone is glad that you are here, then you have not lived in vain.
Charles Fenno Hoffman
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It is equally vain,” she thought, “for you to think you can protect me, or for me to think I can worship you. The light of truth beats upon us without shadow, and the light of truth is damnably unbecoming to us both.
Virginia Woolf
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Polite diseases make some idiots vain,
Which, if unfortunately well, they feign.
Edward Joseph Young
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Whosoever will list himself under the banner of Christ, must, in the first place and above all things, make war upon his own lusts and vices. It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, benignity and meekness of spirit.
John Locke
Nazareth
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Chains tie us down by land and sea; And wishes, vain as mine, may be All that is left to comfort thee.
William Wordsworth
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It was a place to bless God in and cease from vain words.
Elizabeth von Arnim
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The lover's pleasure is in the pleasure of the beloved. The lover is satisfied when the beloved is fed. The lover is vain when the beloved is adorned.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
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It is vain to speak of approaching judgment when finding our place, our portion, and our enjoyment in the very scene which is to be judged.
Charles Henry Mackintosh
