Vain Person Quotes & Sayings

Philosophical studies are beset by one peril, a person easily brings himself to think that he thinks; and a smattering of science encourages conceit. He is above his companions. A hieroglyphic is a spell. The gnostic dogma is cuneiform writing to the million. Moreover, the vain man is generally a doubter. It is Newton who sees himself in a child on the sea shore, and his discoveries in the colored shells. — Robert Aris Willmott

I think it's easy for people to say, 'Because you do this, you must be this kind of person, vain or uptight or mean to people.' People have a sense of who you may be because of the job you do. That's unfair judgment. — Lamar Odom

Worthless is the charity of the man who bestows it unwillingly, because material charity is not his, but God's gift, while only the disposition of the heart belongs to the man. This is why many charities prove almost worthless, for they were bestowed unwillingly, grudgingly, without respect for the person of our neighbor. So also the hospitality of many persons proves worthless because of their hypocritical vain-glorious behavior to their guests. Let us offer our sacrifices upon the altar of love to our neighbor, with heart-felt affection: 'for God loves a cheerful giver' — John Of Kronstadt

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it it very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or the other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have other think of us. — Jane Austen

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." At — Seth Grahame-Smith

Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you, was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered - you must have music, dancing, and society - or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? — Charlotte Bronte

Study so that you are able to meet arguments of your opponents. Equip your ideology with supporting arguments. If you oppose a prevailing belief, if you criticize a great person who is considered to be an incarnation, you will find that your criticism will be answered by calling you vain and egoist. The reason for this is mental ignorance. Logic and free thinking are the twin qualities that a revolutionary must inevitably possess. To say that Mahatmas, who are great, should not be criticized because they are above criticism and for this reason, whatever they say about politics, religion, economics and ethics is correct and that whatever they say will have to be accepted, whether you believe it or not, reveals a mentality which cannot lead us to progress and is clearly regressive. — Bhagat Singh

Vanity is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are in fact still human. — C.S. Lewis

Not that there is any thing disagreeable about his person, but there is a total want of that nameless charm which captivates and controuls the inchanted spirit - at least, he appears to me to have this defect; but if he had all the engaging qualifications which a man can possess, they would be excited in vain against that constancy, which, I flatter myself, is the characteristic of my nature. No, — Tobias Smollett

This old dead hero had one only daughter left of his race; a beauty that, to describe her truly, one need say only, she was female to the noble male; the beautiful black Venus to our young Mars; as charming in her person as he, and of delicate virtues. I have seen an hundred white men sighing after her, and making a thousand vows at her feet, all vain, and unsuccessful; and she was, indeed, too great for any, but a prince of her own nation to adore. — Aphra Behn

No, my dog used to gaze at me, paying me the attention I need, the attention required to make a vain person like me understand that, being a dog, he was wasting time, but, with those eyes so much purer than mine, he'd keep on gazing at me with a look that reserved for me alone all his sweet and shaggy life, always near me, never troubling me, and asking nothing. — Pablo Neruda

An expert is nothing more than a vain person who has read a book. — Corey Taylor

Mankind has invented the mirror in vain, for there's nobody in this world who looks into the mirror and sees himself as he truly is; each person has his own mirror hidden in his own mind and he can't see more than what that mirror in his mind reflects! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. — John Green

Now a second-order vain person is a vain person who's also vain about appearing to have an utter lack of vanity. Who's enormously afraid that other people will perceive him as vain. A second-order vain person will sit up late learning jokes in order to appear funny and charming, but will deny that he sits up late learning jokes. Or he'll perhaps even try to give the impression that he doesn't regard himself as funny at all. — David Foster Wallace

I was used to being disliked as a kid. Not that I didn't deserve it: I was a pretty sad and unappealing creature, and still am, I guess. It's sort of simplistic to think that one tries to make stuff that accounts for one's repulsiveness as a person, but there's some truth to it. So, when I read something unfavorable, I always take it deeply personally. It's as if my efforts have been in vain, and I should just quit. — Chris Ware

You may look through the streets of heaven, asking each how they came to b there, and you will look in vain everywhere for a person who is morally and spiritually strong, whose strength did not come to him in struggle. There is no exception anywhere. Every true strength is gained in struggle. — Phillips Brooks

Your thoughts of Christ, be very careful that they are conceived and directed according to the rule of the word, lest you deceive your own souls, and give up the conduct of your affections unto vain imaginations. . . . [But] we are not to forego our duty [to contemplate Christ] because other men have been mistaken in theirs, nor part with practical, fundamental principles of religion because they have been abused by superstition. . . . Yet I must say that I had rather be among them who, in the actings of their love and affection unto Christ, do fall into some irregularities and excesses in the manner of expressing it . . . than among those who, professing themselves to be Christians, do almost disavow their having any thoughts of or affection unto the person of Christ.297 — Timothy Keller

Whilst a man is persuaded that he has it in his power to contribute anything, be it ever so little, to his salvation, he remains in carnal self-confidence; he is not a self-despairer, and therefore is not duly humbled before God, he believes he may lend a helping hand in his salvation, but on the contrary, whoever is truly convinced that the whole work depends singly on the will of God, such a person renounces his own will and strength; he waits and prays for the operation of God, nor waits and prays in vain — Martin Luther

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence except on their favor will have no attachment except to the person of their benefactor. — Edward Gibbon

Nor was I the only one struggling.To live an ordinary life, like any ordinary person, must have been the vain dream of countless others. — Sayo Masuda

I have always noticed in high school yearbooks the similarity of all the graduate write-ups - how, after only a few pages, the identities of all the unsullied young faces blur, how one person melts into another and another: Susan likes to eat at Wendy's; Donald was on the basketball team; Norman is vain about his varsity sweater; Gillian broke her arm on Spring Retreat; Brian is a car nut; Sue wants to live in Hawaii; Don wants to make a million and be a ski bum; Noreen wants to live in Europe; Gordon wants to be a radio deejay in Australia. At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are? — Douglas Coupland

It's much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What seems most important is that Dostoevsky's near-death experience changed a typically vain and trendy young writer-a very talented writer, true, but still one whose basic concerns were for his own literary glory-into a person who believed deeply in moral/spiritual values ... more, into someone who believed that a life lived without moral/spiritual values was not just incomplete but depraved. — David Foster Wallace

I looked about for some of my acquaintance, but in vain, for I saw not one person that I knew, which is very odd, for all the world seemed there. — Fanny Burney

I'm not a vain person, but I am human... — Jennifer Niven

The high ground of Christ & Him crucified must be claimed in our preaching. Any other footing is a slippery slope that inevitably descends downward into vain rhetoric and mere words. To the contrary, every pulpit must present a towering vision of the unique person and saving work of Jesus Christ. All preaching must point to His sin-bearing, substitutionary death for sinners. All exposition must lift up this Sacrificial Lamb who became a sin-bearing Substitute for all who believe. Every message must exalt this Christ, who was raised from the dead, exalted to the right hand of God the Father, and entrusted with all authority in heaven and earth. — Steven J. Lawson

As a person I'm perfectly vain, I'm just vainer as an actor about my ability. My acting vanity trumps my human vanity. — Rufus Sewell

For God has not linked our salvation with any particular kind of devotion. Any one devotional practice has things which others lack, but the effectiveness of all good practices comes from God alone and is denied to none of them, for one form of goodness cannot conflict with another. Therefore people should remember that if they see or hear of a good person who is following a way which is different from theirs, then they are wrong to think that such a person's efforts are all in vain. If someone else's way of devotion does not please them, then they are ignoring the goodness in it as well as that person's good intention. This is wrong. We should see the true feeling in people's devotional practices and should not scorn the particular way that anyone follows. — Meister Eckhart

People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing. — Donald J. Boudreaux

It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,
let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof. — Sarah Josepha Hale

It is easy to identify a shallow person by the attention he gives to what will do him absolutely no good. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what would have others think of us. — Jane Austen

Do you also believe that what gives our lives their meaning is the passion that suddenly invades us heart, soul, and body, and burns in us forever, no matter what else happens in our lives? And that if we have experienced this much, then perhaps we haven't lived in vain? Is passion so deep and terrible and magnificent and inhuman? Is it indeed about desiring any one person, or is it about desiring desire itself? That is the question. Or perhaps, is it indeed about desiring a particular person, a single, mysterious other, once and for always, no matter whether that person is good or bad, and the intensity of our feelings bears no relation to that individual's qualities or behavior? — Sandor Marai

It hurts when the one you love does not reciprocate your feelings. It hurts when all your efforts to set things straight go in vain. It hurts when you are unable to let go. It hurts when everything is rosy one moment and dark the next. All the emotions that are pent up inside you, suffocate you. The other person, it seems, has always been or becomes unemotional, unattached and either unaware or ignorant of your feelings. You are stuck at a place where there is no road ahead and you cannot find the road back home.

~ Lines from the Whispered Words article in June issue of Writer's Ezine — Arti Honrao

You come hither to learn to die, I am not the only person that must go this way: I can assure you, that your whole life, be it ever so long, is little enough to prepare for death. Have a care of this vain deceitful world and the lusts of the flesh: Be sure you choose God for your portion, heaven for your home, God's glory for your end, his word for your rule, and then you need never fear but we shall meet with comfort. — Richard Baxter

The task of getting the Gospel in an adequate way to every ethnic person is tremedous. There is but one solution. I'm sure that it isn't man, money, surveys, not talk. They all have their place, but if the basis of all of it isn't fervent, believing prayer, they are in vain. And prayer should not only be the basis but it should permeate and vitalize the whole work. — William Cameron Townsend

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will. — Thomas Nagel

A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.
It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior. — Stendhal

I act uncommonly important when I read, look all around to see if people are noticing how cleverly someone there is improving his mind and wits; I slit open page after page at splendid leisure, do not even read any more but satisfy myself with having assumed the posture of a person immersed in a book. That is how I am: harebrained, and all for effect. I am vain, but my satisfaction with my vanity costs remarkably little. — Robert Walser

I remember as a young child, during one of my frequent trips to the local library, spending hours looking at book after book trying in vain to find one that had my name on it. Because there were so many books in the library, with so many different names on them, I'd assumed that one of them - somewhere - had to be mine. I didn't understand at the time that a person's name appears on a book because he or she wrote it. Now that I'm twenty-six I know better. If I were ever going to find my book one day, I was going to have to write it. — Daniel Tammet

A person is bound to experience troubling doubts when attempting to forge a viable philosophy for living. When we are young, the world appears as a dream, no desire is unattainable, and no goal is impossible. We do not entertain the notion that the world will blunt our passionate aspirations, we assume that the world will yield to our resolute will. Misfortune, poverty, illness, and death crush a person's hopes, awakening us to parts of oneself and the world that we previously denied. When fate has spoken harshly we initially feel ruined, life appears as a bleak wasteland. We must then chose to accept a misery ridden existence or rally the courage and fortitude to turn our thoughts from bitterness and regrets, surrender vain notions that we are somehow special and immune from the terrors of a life when reality does not care a wit for our survival. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Save your world. Love it. Protect it, and respect it and don't let haters represent it.
Don't leave the saving to anyone else, ever, because, exhibit A - why, hello there - it's way too much for one person. And if you want to skip out on the responsibility train, my whole life - and death - will have been in vain.
It's yours. It's all yours for taking!
You're not going to waste it now, are you? — James Patterson

A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." "If — Jane Austen

I can't think of one person who is on TV who isn't vain. It's the nature of the beast. If you are on TV then you have a vanity, for sure. Just admit it! Why not? — Simon Cowell

You may call a person vain, and they will smile; you may call them immoral, and they may even feel flattered - but call them narrow-minded and they have done with you. — J. E. Buckrose

I'm a proud person. I'm not vain. I look at it like it is. If you've got the money and you're going to be out there, you owe it to people not to look like a dog if you can help it. — Dolly Parton