Quotes & Sayings About Vain

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. — Henry David Thoreau

Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history. — Ralph Adams Cram

My cruel fate hath warr'd with me in vain
Life, glory, worth, and all unmeasur'd skill
Beauty and grace, themselves in me fulfill
That many I surpass, and to the best attain. — Benvenuto Cellini

It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being ... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's naught in this life sweet But only melancholy; O sweetest melancholy! — John Fletcher

[W]ork at ridding yourself of the esteem you have had up to now for the glitter and sparkle of virtue and the vain applause of the world, which Our Lord so assiduously avoided and so often recommends us to shun, and that you labor in earnest to acquire true and solid virtues. — Vincent De Paul

Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet! - that one strives, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now. — Herman Melville

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, - the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear od death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.
- The White Silence — Jack London

Criticism often hides incompetence & increases vanity. Therefore critics are always more vain that the achievers they criticize. — Steve Cioccolanti

A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire ... — Friedrich Engels

Kitsch parodies catharsis ... It is in vain to try to draw the boundaries abstractly between aesthetic fiction and kitsch's emotional plunder. It is a poison admixed to all art; excising it is today one of art's despairing efforts ... — Theodor Adorno

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. — Sylvia Plath

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. — Anonymous

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;
A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud;
A brittle that's broken presently;
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.
And as goods lost are seld or never found,
As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh,
As flowers dead lie withered on the ground,
As broken glass no cement can redress;
So beauty blemished once, for ever lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost. — William Shakespeare

I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

In their best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; — David Brooks

Certainly man is a remarkably vain, variable, and elusive subject.10 It is hard to base any constant, uniform judgment upon him. — Michel De Montaigne

The arch of heaven looks like an
upside-down cup, under which the wise
wander in vain. May your love for your beloved
be as great as the love of the bottle for the glass.
Look, how one gives and one receives, lip against
lip, the precious blood of the grapes. — Omar Khayyam

How vain, without the merit, is the name. — Homer

Do not have any other loves before me in your heart. Do not take my name in vain. Do not kill me. Observe me, and keep me holy. — Jonathan Safran Foer

How many perish through empty learning in this world, who care little for serving God. And because they love to be great more than to be humble, therefore they "have become vain in their imaginations." He only is truly great, who hath great charity. He is truly great who deemeth himself small, and counteth all height of honour as nothing. He is the truly wise man, who counteth all earthly things as dung that he may win Christ. And he is the truly learned man, who doeth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will. — Thomas A Kempis

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do
then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. — Tennessee Williams

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. — Baruch Spinoza

Faith is indeed intellectual; it involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you have only knowledge. — J. Gresham Machen

One whom the music of his own vain tongue doth ravish like enchanting harmony. — William Shakespeare

With vivid words your just conceptions grace,
Much truth compressing in a narrow space;
Then many shall peruse, but few complain,
And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain. — John Wolcot

The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and
vigorous nutriment. — Blaise Pascal

Languor is upon your heart and the slumber is still on your eyes.

Has not the word come to you that the flower is reigning in splendour among thorns? Wake, oh awaken! let not the time pass in vain!

At the end of the stony path, in the country of virgin solitude, my friend is sitting all alone. Deceive him not. Wake, oh awaken!

What if the sky pants and trembles with the heat of the midday sun---what if the burning sand spreads its mantle of thirst---

Is there no joy in the deep of your heart? At every footfall of yours, will not the harp of the road break out in sweet music of pain? — Rabindranath Tagore

All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich — Johann Kaspar Lavater

those that have received Christ must by faith live upon him, and not receive his grace in vain. — Matthew Henry

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade! Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless childhood stray'd, A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales that from ye blow A momentary bliss bestow. — Thomas Gray

When we as a nation, strive in vain to preserve the beauty of our national life, forgetting our biblical roots, we are doomed. — Richard Halverson

I don't like myself. I'm not vain at all. I hate looking at myself - I always think I look ugly. Honest. — Bruno Tonioli

You only love when you love in vain.
Try another radio probe
when ten have failed,
take two hundred rabbits
when a hundred have died:
only this is science.
You ask the secret.
It has just one name:
again. — Miroslav Holub

Do everything without complaining and arguing, 15 so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. 16 Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ's return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless. — Anonymous

Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain. — Thomas Aquinas

Both deaths were equally vain, neither of them shortened the war by so much as a second; but in both cases, the man or men who killed them believed it was just and necessary; and if they were wrong, who's to blame? What — Jonathan Littell

Not so in haste, my heart! Have faith in God and wait; Although he linger long, He never comes too late. He never comes too late, He knoweth what is best: Vex not thyself in vain; Until he cometh, rest. Until he cometh, rest. Nor grudge the hours that roll: The feet that wait for God Are soonest at the goal. Are soonest at the goal. That is not gained by speed; Then hold thee still, my heart, For I shall wait his lead. — Bradford Torrey

Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions. — John Ruskin

The vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never having understood anything. For anyone who had ever experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing. — Galileo Galilei

The Holy Scriptures surpass in efficaciousness all the arts and all the sciences of the philosophers and jurists; these, though good and necessary to life here below, are vain and of no effect as to what concerns the life eternal. — Martin Luther

When you're up against a trouble, meet it squarely, face to face. Lift your chin and set your shoulders, plant your feet and take a brace. When it's vain to try to dodge it, do the best that you can do. You may fail, but you may conquer. See it through! — Edgar Guest

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever. — William Wordsworth

I'm like every other girl. I have to try really hard my whole life to try to be fit. And I'm super-vain. — Gwen Stefani

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

It is in vain that we can predict and control the course of events in the future, unless we know how to live in the present. It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer. It is in vain that engineers devise faster and easier means of travel if the new sights that we see are merely sorted and understood in terms of old prejudices. It is in vain that we get the power of the atom if we are just to continue in the rut of blowing people up. — Alan W. Watts

And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain. — Li-Young Lee

How can anyone lose who chooses to become a Christian? If, when he dies, there turns out to be no God and his faith was in vain, he has lost nothing ... If, however, there is a God and a heaven and a hell. then he has gained heaven and his skeptical friends have lost everything ... — Blaise Pascal

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

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. — Annie Dillard

I am intrigued by glamorous women A vain woman is continually taking out a compact to repair her makeup. A glamorous woman knows she doesn't need to. — Clark Gable

Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, 'Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.' I'm no god and I'll contend no longer. — Isaac Asimov

Katherine Anne [Porter] treated them like favored nephews; she even cooked meals for them. Unfortunately, however, beneath Christopher's deference and flattery, there was a steadily growing aggression. By her implicit claim to be the equal of Katherine Mansfield and even Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne had stirred up Christopher's basic literary snobbery. How dare she, he began to mutter to himself, this vain old frump, this dressed-up cook in her arty finery, how dare she presume like this! And he imagined a grotesque scene in which he had to introduce her and somehow explain her to Virginia, Morgan [Forster] and the others . . . [t]hus Katherine Anne became the first of an oddly assorted collection of people who, for various reasons, made up their minds that they would never see Christopher again. The others: Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten, Cole Porter, Lincoln Kirstein. — Christopher Isherwood

Above all, the earth is moving in a void. All efforts of man to improve it are a vain endeavour. — Sibaprasad Dutta

Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vain-glory is the bane of us, the humans. — Mary Oliver

Oh, how great peace and quietness would he possess who should cut off all vain anxiety and place all his confidence in God. — Thomas A Kempis

[T]he vanity of the contents" of individual experience is scrutable as an inessential trapping drawn into a matter by vested interests " ... since it is at the same time the vanity of the self that knows itself to be vain — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Let the public mind become corrupt, and all efforts to secure property, liberty, or life by the force of laws written on paper will be as vain as putting up a sign in an apple orchard to exclude canker worms. — Horace Mann

Space is space,life is life,everywhere is the same. But as for me, sustained by the toil of others, lacking civilized vices with which to fill my leisure, I pamper my melancholy and try to find in the vacuousness of the desert a special historical poignancy. Vain, idle, misguided! How fortunate that no one sees me! — J.M. Coetzee

You should recognize that man's soul, this single entity whose powers and parts we have described, may be compared to matter, and that the power of reasoning is its completed form. As long as the soul lies dormant and does not acquire its form from knowledge, then the nature of the soul is useless and exists in vain. — Maimonides

I dare say you are planning on a late repentance. You do not know what you are doing. You are planning without God. Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and they are gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is 'Able to save completely those who come to God through him' (Hebrews 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, 'Since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you' (Proverbs 1:24-26).

Believe me, you will find it no easy matter to turn to God whenever you please. — J.C. Ryle

The world taught women nothing skillful and then said her work was valueless. It permitted her no opinions and said she did not know how to think. It forbade her to speak in public and said the sex had no orators. It denied her the schools, and said the sex had no genius. It robbed her of every vestige of responsibility, and then called her weak. It taught her that every pleasure must come as a favor from men and when, to gain it, she decked herself in paint and fine feathers, as she had been taught to do, it called her vain. — Carrie Chapman Catt

By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was distateful to him. I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell. When he said 'go', I went; 'come', I came; 'do this', I dit it. But I did not love my servitude [ ... ]. — Charlotte Bronte

Beauty is vain. It appears and, like the wind, it's gone. Remember that. — Sylvain Reynard

These are the effects of doting age,
vain doubts and idle cares and over caution. — John Dryden

But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens. — Marcel Proust

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

Anthropologists have invented the ingenious, convenient, fictional notion of the "true Negro," which allows them to consider, if need be, all the real Negroes on earth as fake Negroes, more or less approaching a kind of Platonic archetype, without ever attaining it. Thus, African history is full of "Negroids," Hamites, semi-Hamites, Nilo-Hamitics, Ethiopoids, Sabaeans, even Caucasoids! Yet, if one stuck strictly to scientific data and archeological facts, the prototype of the White race would be sought in vain throughout the earliest years of present-day humanity. — Cheikh Anta Diop

The solitary Bee Whose buzzing was the only sound of life, Flew there on restless wing, Seeking in vain one blossom where to fix. — Robert Southey

Reckless. Insatiable. Deceptive. Clingy. Vain. Dismissive. Trivial. Violent. Tactless. Controlling. Impractical. Fearful. Think of one example in your past where you exhibited each of these traits. Whatever memory comes to your mind will usually provide you with a clear illustration. Know that you have the capacity to exhibit all defects. — Alexandra Katehakis

To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow pre-ordained for us, because we are so well-suited to live in it, he [Douglas Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle. — Richard Dawkins

Reality has no security and that is its beauty. Life has no security and that is its beauty. Because there is no security, there is adventure. Because the future is unknown, nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. That's why there is challenge, growth, adventure. If you miss adventure, you miss all. If your life is not that of an adventure, of a search into the unknown, then you are living in vain. — Rajneesh

I had crossed fifty years of my life, and come across uncountable females as son, husband, father, friend in my life. Coming across several women I carefully studied most of them, and feels that I got master knowing female. But every time when my heart comes across to a female, my all knowledge on female goes to a vain. What they want? , What are they looking for? When their mind changes? When their priority changes? No one knows, in a minute they use to change decisions, if someone ask, they says it's a little thing. They never think, little things makes big or if they can't stick on little things how they can stand in important decisions. They never show they are weak, but every time they are compromising themselves. It's their big heart but impacting every around. They always think they can do anything by doing nothing. — Nutan Bajracharya

To become Christ-like is the only thing in the whole world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly and all lower achievement vain. — Henry Drummond

Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane ... — Alexander Pushkin

An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain, the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes. — Mahatma Gandhi

How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. — Hermann Hesse

The motives behind scientism are culturally significant. They have been mixed, as usual: genuine curiosity in search of truth; the rage for certainty and for unity; and the snobbish desire to earn the label scientist when that became a high social and intellectual rank. But these efforts, even though vain, have not been without harm, to the inventors and to the world at large. The "findings" have inspired policies affecting daily life that were enforced with the same absolute assurance as earlier ones based on religion. At the same time, the workers in the realm of intuition, the gifted finessers - artists, moralists, philosophers, historians, political theorists, and theologians - were either diverted from their proper task, while others were looking on them with disdain as dabblers in the suburbs of Truth. — Jacques Barzun

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

Nine Principles Never have a wicked heart. Train not by thought, but by practice. Learn a wide variety of arts and skills, and do not fix on only one. Know not only your own techniques but also those of many others. Find out rationally what is an advantage and what is a disadvantage. Foster an intuitive ability to judge all things. Feel an essence that you cannot see on the surface. Pay attention to the very smallest of phenomena. (Everything takes its own course, and sometimes we get unexpected results.) Do nothing in vain, for the energy and time we have is limited. — Kazumi Tabata

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher — Evelyn Waugh

It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities. — Alexander Hamilton

In outward show so splendid and so vain; 'tis but a gilded block without a brain. — Phaedrus

Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain. — Hermann Von Helmholtz

I've been accused of being very vain about my apathy. — Bret Easton Ellis

Chapter XV.--He Entreats God, that Whatever Useful Things He Learned as a Boy May Be Dedicated to Him. 24. Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast saved me from all my most mischievous ways, that Thou mightest become sweet to me beyond all the seductions which I used to follow; and that I may love Thee entirely, and grasp Thy hand with my whole heart, and that Thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the end. For lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful thing I learnt as a boy--for Thy service what I speak, and write, and count. For when I learned vain things, Thou didst grant me Thy discipline; and my sin in taking delight in those vanities, Thou hast forgiven me. I learned, indeed, in them many useful words; but these may be learned in things not vain, and that is the safe way for youths to walk in. — Augustine Of Hippo

The world is lying in misery, we ourselves are sinners, men are perishing in sin every day. The gospel is the sole means of escape; let us preach it to the world while yet we may. So desperate is the need that we have no time to engage in vain babblings or old wives' fables. While we are discussing the exact location of the churches of Galatia, men are perishing under the curse of the law; while we are settling the date of Jesus' birth, the world is doing without its Christmas message. — J. Gresham Machen

Thou talk'st of nothing." "True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasty; Which is as thin of substance as the air; And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his face t the dew-dropping south. — William Shakespeare

Barni loved talking about the dresses. "Aren't they huge? I've just always been this way," she said, twirling a little. "Just born healthy, I guess."
Oh, God. I hated her so much. — Katherine Center

Did he live in a false world, a world that had grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation - in the face now of Jim's silence in particular - but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the real? — Henry James

Do you want to demonstrate that the living also have a wordless language, with which books cannot be written but which can only be lived, second by second, which cannot be recorded or remembered? First comes this wordless language of living bodies ... then the words books are written with, and attempts to translate that first language are vain ... — Italo Calvino

We believe that our salvation depends solely upon God's work in us, and not upon our testimony; and the little child with stammering lips, but wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, will precede vain scribes into the Kingdom of Heaven. — Abraham Kuyper

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt. — Francis Parkman

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. — Thomas Szasz

I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought - or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain ... — Ingmar Bergman

All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men - more so, if possible. — Jerome K. Jerome

I'm as vain as everybody else, but if I see a mirror I have to look at myself. — Alessandra Ambrosio

For my part, I believe that the vain, glorious and the violent will not inherit the earth ... In pursuance of that faith my friends and I take the hands of the dying in our hands. And some of us travel to the Pentagon, and others live in the Bowery and serve there, and others speak unpopularly and plainly of the fate of the unborn and of convicted criminals. It is all one. — Daniel Berrigan

Beware of singing divine psalms for an ordinary recreation, as do men of impure spirits, who sing holy psalms intermingled with profane ballads: They are God's word: take them not in thy mouth in vain. — Lewis Bayly

They say, the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention, like deep harmony;
Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain;
For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain. — William Shakespeare