Vainglorious Past Quotes & Sayings

I think, sometimes, that I'm going nuts, and that perhaps there is something good about blocking clean water for those who have none, making sure that illiterate children remain so, and preventing the resuscitation of the public health sector in the country most in need of it. Lunacy is what it is. — Paul Farmer

The United States cannot reshape other countries in its own image and that, with a few exceptions, its efforts to police the world are neither in its interests nor within the scope of its resources. This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable. — George F. Kennan

Gillard is as likeable as Rudd is charmless. She is self-deprecating; he is ludicrously vainglorious. She is a mistress of understatement; he is a ranter. — Germaine Greer

Ada Taylor knelt beside me on the floor as I cried for the first time over the thought that my favorite person in the world was probably dead. — John Corey Whaley

You've got to be prepared for the names they are going to call you compared to your male peers ... You will be a floozy and a slattern. He will be virile and a ladies' man. You will be a freakshow, a retching wretch, a sloppy drunk. He will be charismatic, vainglorious, a ferocious drunk and Dionysian. You will be indiscriminate and desperate. He will be generous, tortured and driven. — Courtney Love

But dying is no easy trick. And suicide can't be put on a list of Things To Do in between cleaning the grill pan and leveling the sofa leg with a brick. It is the decision not to do, to un-do; a kiss blown at oblivion. No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It is for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. — Zadie Smith

I find it funny that people now come up to me and say, 'Wow, you are absolutely gorgeous. I'm like, 'I was beautiful before I lost weight. Egotistically speaking, I thought I was amazing.' — Raven-Symone

The older I get, the less I understand. — Blake Crouch

Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as 'a wise Latina' trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment - a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism. — Camille Paglia

In the freshness of the present moment, past is gone, future is not yet born, and - if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom - disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace. That is basic meditation. — Matthieu Ricard

Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and a democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims. — Felix Frankfurter

Theoretically, we Mennonites do not even know what we look like, since a focus on our personal appearance is vainglorious. Our antipathy to vainglory explains the decision of many of us to wear those frumpy skirts and the little doilies on our heads, a decision we must have arrived at only by collectively determining not to notice what we had put on that morning. — Rhoda Janzen

Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword. — David Mitchell

I said it is vainglorious to reproach yourself for lack of omniscience. That is also true of omnipotence. Report in as you can. — Rex Stout

Their flashlight newly activated, they walked him into the cane
never had he heard anything so loud and alien, the susurration, the crackling, the flashes of motion underfoot (snake? mongoose?), overhead even the stars, all of them gathered in vainglorious congress. — Junot Diaz

What I voice, I voice though my art, if that's not too vainglorious a word. But I don't think it is. — Brendan Gleeson

She saw none of them in their natural state. She asserts that though there may be women distinguished as writers in England, there are no ladies who have any great conversational and political influence in society, of that kind which, during the old regime, was obtained in France by what they would call their femmes marquantes2, such as Madame de Tencin, Madame de Deffand, Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse. This remark stung me to the quick, for my country and for myself, and raised in me a foolish, vainglorious emulation, an ambition false in its objects, and unsuited to the manners, domestic habits, and public virtue of our country. I — Maria Edgeworth

Michel. In my dreams, you come and get me. You take me by the hand and you lead me away. This life is too much for me to bear. I look at the key and I long for you and for the past. For the innocent, easy days before the war. I know now my scars will never heal. I hope my son will forgive me. He will never know. No one will ever know. — Tatiana De Rosnay

Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed:
1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer;
2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind. — Eric Hoffer

Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). — Vicki Courtney

There are some in the church who are very good at presenting the appearance of humility and sacrifice, all for selfish, vainglorious reasons. They enjoy their reputations as servants more than they enjoy the gospel. — Matt Chandler

We should not lose ourselves in vainglorious sohemes for changing human nature all over the planet. Rather, we should learn to view ourselves with a sense of proportion and Christian humility before the enormous complexity of the world in which it has been given us to live. — George F. Kennan

No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios:
Pebble : Beach
Raindrop : Ocean
Needle : Haystack — Zadie Smith

In many ways Nazism was antithetical to what the great mass of Germans said they admired - and certainly to what they paid homage. It was noisy, undisciplined, vainglorious; its leader was a half-educated posturing foreigner. For a decade the National Socialists were regarded as hoodlums, as part of the breakdown of what had been, if anything, an excessively ordered society before. — Eugene Davidson

Atheism is a conclusion reached by the most reasonable methods and one which is not asserted dogmatically but is explained in its every feature by the light of reason. The atheist does not boast of knowing in a vainglorious, empty sense. He understands by knowledge the most reasonable and clear and sound position one can take on the basis of all the evidence at hand. This evidence convinces him that theism is not true, and his logical position, then, is that of atheism.
We repeat that the atheist is one who denies the assumptions of theism. he asserts, in other words, that he doesn't believe in a God because he has no good reason for believing in a God. That's atheism
and that's good sense. — E. Haldeman-Julius

Here was one of the white man's most characteristic behavior patterns - where black men are concerned. He loves himself so much that he is startled if he discovers that his victims don't share his vainglorious self-opinion. — Malcolm X

Keep your eyes on him, you wretched vainglorious creature, — Naomi Novik

I just do whatever I do, and put it out there without tryin' to cater to anybody. If you like it, you like it. — Action Bronson

When the winds of life are pushing you back, THAT'S when you push forward the hardest. — Yvonne Pierre

Hatred is about possession. It is all-consuming, cruel, and vainglorious. When love is allowed to fester, it becomes twisted and corrupt; it settles deep in the heart ... and metastasizes, sending its dark roots through the body to raze all that stands in its way. Love is chaste and pure. Love is banal ... No, hatred has infinitely more possibilities. — Nenia Campbell