Quotes About Vain

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain. I'm not even a god.

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.

We lean on Faith; and some less wise have cried, "Behold the butterfly, the see that's cast!" Vain hopes that fall like flowers before the blast! What man can look on Death unterrified?

We live in a world full of pain. Where love is blind and words are left in vain. Where trust is lost and never to be gained.

She hated our family? She had always seemed to me their distillation, a glittering monument to our blood's vain cruelty. Yet it was true what she said: nymphs were allowed to work only through the power of others. They could expect none for themselves.

Reality is just a nice way of saying "tragedy." The truth is, people are vain and mean!

which, according to San Juan, is the mystery of the great alchemistical transmutation; the attainment of the true stability of the psychic life. Without this internal stability, all other labor is in vain.

Deep down, Julia had always known that this artistic escape was a vain attempt to find clarity and comfort.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

which would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace.

But the sources of great events are like those of rivers; in vain do we explore the earth's surface, we can never find them.

And what doe they tell us vainly of new opinions, when this very opinion of theirs, that none must be heard but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion of all others, and is the chief cause why sects and schisms doe so much abound and true knowledge is kept at distance from us ; besides yet a greater danger which is in it.

Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, His proud imaginations thus displayed:—

Thus they in mutual accusation spent The fruitless hours, but neither self—condemning; And of their vain contest' appeared no end. (The closing lines of Book Nine, which illuminates The Fall.)

The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.

The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited, to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.

Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it.

Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted makeup. Forget the laughs, forget the fights, forget the sex, forget the jealousy. But take off your hat and observe a moment's silence for the legions of unknown tubes of foundation, mascara, eyeliner, blusher and lipstick who died that it might all have been possible. But who died in vain.

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

Rain which falls upon the sea is useless; so is food for one who is satiated; in vain is a gift for one who is wealthy; and a burning lamp during the daytime is useless.

It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual

Study without thought is vain: thought without study is dangerous.

Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry.

There will not be, nor arise in us, the righteousness of God, unless our own righteousness falls and perishes utterly. We do not rise unless we who are standing badly have first fallen. Thus altogether the being, holiness, truth, goodness, life of God, etc., are not in us, unless in the presence of God we first become nothing, profane, lying, evil, dead. Otherwise the righteousness of God would be mocked, and Christ would have died in vain.