Vain Quotes
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I know not whether it would be too bold an assertion to say that candor makes capacity.... But in order to try the truth of any observation relating to the mind, the easiest method is to illustrate it by outward objects. If, for instance, a man was to sweat and labor all the days of his life to fill a chest which was already full, the absurdity of his vain endeavor would be glaring. In the same manner, when the human mind is filled and stuffed with notions brought thither by fallacious inclinations, there is no room for truth to enter: candor being banished, passions alone bear the sway.
Sarah Fielding
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Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.
Helen Keller
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Oh! might I kiss those eyes of fire, A million scarce would quench desire; Still would I steep my lips in bliss, And dwell an age on every kiss; Nor then my soul should sated be, Still would I kiss and cling to thee: Nought should my kiss from thine dissever, Still would we kiss and kiss for ever; E'en though the numbers did exceed The yellow harvest's countless seed; To part would be a vain endeavour: Could I desist? -ah! never-never.
Lord Byron
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If a war be undertaken...before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.
Charles Eliot Norton
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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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You can call double-eyelid surgery wrong or see it as evidence of body dysmorphia, but don't overplay the race issue. It's insulting to those of us who are merely vain.
Euny Hong
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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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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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Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.
William Butler Yeats
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Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas
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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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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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It is so difficult not to become vain about one's own good luck.
Simone de Beauvoir
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Follow not after the vain, understand the ills of sense pleasures. One who is vigilant and meditative, obtains deep joy.
Gautama Buddha
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Polite diseases make some idiots vain,
Which, if unfortunately well, they feign.
Edward Joseph Young
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Earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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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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Nature has made nothing in vain.
Delarivier Manley
