Top 100 In Vain Quotes
#1. He destroys that he might build; for when He is about to rear His sacred temple in us, He first totally razes that vain and pompous edifice, which human art and power had erected, and from its horrible ruins a new structure is formed, by His power only.
Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon
#2. It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.
George Dennison Prentice
#3. Look within.
Within you is the hidden God.
Within you is the immortal soul.
Within you is the inexhaustible spiritual treasure.
Within you is the ocean of bliss.
Look within for the happiness which you have sought in vain.
Sivananda
#4. I am now the site of an unmistakable sag ... With fancy holographic belt buckles do I attempt to restrain my stampeding softness. In vain ... My only virtues, as a physical specimen, are my sideburns, which are like the pelts of rare woodland animals. My sideburns are not to be ignored.
Rick Moody
#6. A politics of vengeance is not politics. Revenge is a recklessness towards the future in a vain attempt to make the present abolish a suffering which is already past.
Bernard Crick
#7. The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody's interested in somebody who's just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing - there is no latest thing. It's all rubbish.
Vivienne Westwood
#8. Whether we athletes liked it or not, the 4-minute mile had become rather like an Everest: a challenge to the human spirit, it was a barrier that seemed to defy all attempts to break it, an irksome reminder that men's striving might be in vain.
Roger Bannister
#9. A mighty pain to love it is,
And 't is a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.
Abraham Cowley
#10. A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the lord in vain- then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?
Robert A. Heinlein
#11. He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
Michel De Montaigne
#12. Empty hands held high
such a small sacrifice
if not joined with my life, i sing in vain tonight
may the words i say, and the things i do
make my lifesong sing to you
Let my lifesong sing to you ...
Casting Crowns
#13. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
Anonymous
#14. No reliance can be placed on the friendship of kings, nor vain hope put in the melodious voice of boys; for that passes away like a vision, and this vanishes like a dream.
Saadi
#15. He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.
John Calvin
#17. Was never true love loved in vain, For truest love is highest gain.
George Eliot
#18. Many have a vague idea that they must make some wonderful effort in order to gain the favor of God. But all self-dependence is vain. It is only by connecting with Jesus through faith that the sinner becomes a hopeful, believing child of God.
Ellen G. White
#19. If you live in a society like ours, in which people seldom object if they hear someone taking the Lord's name in vain but are outraged if they see a pregnant woman smoking, then you are living in a world that values the worldly more than the divine.
David Brooks
#20. Live for yourself and you will live in vain;
Live for others, and you will live again.
Bob Marley
#21. Sometimes Robert believed one thing and sometimes the other, and he wondered if that was true of all those who loved too much and in vain.
Jeane Westin
#22. All Juleps are made for present use, and therefore it is in vain to speak of their duration.
Nicholas Culpeper
#23. Many sweat to reconcile St Paul and St James, but in vain. 'Faith justifies' and 'faith does not justify' contradict each other flatly. If any one can harmonize them I will give him my doctor's hood and let him call me a fool.
Martin Luther
#24. What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you become its prey
William Gaddis
#25. 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
#26. Some change imperceptibly, little by little, others quickly and once and for all, but everyone changes, and for that reason it is in vain to ask whose fate is the best. My
Leena Krohn
#27. How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.
Hermann Hesse
#28. We ought to punish pitilessly that shameful pretence of friendly intercourse. I like a man to be a man, and to show on all occasions the bottom of his heart in his discourse. Let that be the thing to speak, and never let our feelings be beneath vain compliments
Moliere
#29. Mavis' bear sailed through the air in Cassie's room, falling onto the bed. 'What's he in aid of?' 'He's reconnaissance expert. He wouldn't hear of me enterin' potential hostile ground without testin' for fire. Has his sacrifice been in vain?
Christine M. Knight
#30. 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
#31. Let not one single life have passed in vain. What really matters is who you love and how you love.
Oprah Winfrey
#32. The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#33. Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men to remain just; in vain would it would try to force them to be self-sacrificing.
Frederic Bastiat
#34. It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.
Michel De Montaigne
#35. What exists in this heart is not imaginary. This hand would not grasp air in trying to hold you, nor this eye blind itself in searching for you in vain.
Chrissy Moon
#36. Love can take what shape he pleases; and when once begun his fiery inroad in the soul, how vain the after knowledge which his presence gives! We weep or rave; but still he lives, and lives master and lord, amidst pride and tears and pain.
Bryan Procter
#37. Judith (sadly): A change has come over my children of late. I have tried to shut my eyes to it, but in vain. At my time of life one must face bitter facts!
Noel Coward Sir
#38. 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."
"Are you saying we shouldn't hope?"
"I'm saying we should remove the carrot and walk forward with our eyes open!
Margaret Weis
#39. It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.
James Russell Lowell
#40. I think it's really rare to see women on television who are brilliant, selfish, vain, fallible - and I feel like I have all those capacities in myself, so it's good to see people in the media representing all of those things.
Kerry Bishe
#41. But this emphasis would be lavished in vain, if it served, in your opinion, only to abstract a general type from phenomena whose particularity in our work would remain the essential thing for you, and whose original arrangement could be broken up only artificially.
Jacques Lacan
#42. O that one unguarded moment! / Were it mine to live again, / All the strength of its temptation / Would appeal to me in vain.
Phoebe Cary
#43. In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.
James Russell Lowell
#44. On Writing About Nora Hawks
I write about a female character to try, in vain, to understand two things: the purpose of life, and women.
Dennis R. Miller
#45. All life is in vain, for Death makes a nonsense of pain.
Gasmaskman
#46. In vain he seeketh others to suppress, Who hath not learn'd himself first to subdue.
Edmund Spenser
#47. My dream is to be Endora in Bewitched. That's the part I want to do. I want to do a fabulous old woman. I want to be Maggie Smith someday. Not exactly like her, but that genre. I like that kind of humor - sophisticated, vain stuff.
Jackee Harry
#48. I've always made it a rule to have a suit for every day of the week. Perhaps you'll tell me I'm vain, but you'd be surprised if you knew what it had meant to me, at critical moments of my life, to be dressed exactly in accordance with my mood. It gives one such confidence, I think.
Christopher Isherwood
#49. The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass
But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint
Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain
Muhammad Iqbal
#50. No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
Jonathan Swift
#51. There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
Erica Jong
#52. Life is a beautiful journey, full of joy and pain
You never know when it will end, don't let a moment pass in vain ...
In the whole ruckus of life, nothing had I gained,
I just wanted freedom, no more did I wanted to be chained ...
Mehek Bassi
#53. Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream. And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream.
George Linley
#54. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented.
Ludwig Von Mises
#55. Do you know that there's hardly anyone left of last year's Caucasian governments? I've tried to stop it, but in vain. Yet they can't all be Trotskyites and traitors.
Lavrentiy Beria
#56. Lightly from fair to fair he flew, And loved to plead, lament, and sue; Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain, For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.
Walter Scott
#57. Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
#59. I love you as exiled souls love each other when they meet in the middle of the desert. There will never be anything physical between us, but no passion is in vain, no love is ever wasted.
Paulo Coelho
#60. When you have planted
the rose of Love into your heart
your life has not been in vain.
Omar Khayyam
#62. It is in vain to ridicule a rich fool, for the laughers will be on his side.
Jean De La Bruyere
#63. It's not that I'm vain; I simply thought I had plenty of time, so I told Vivian I'd be ready to go in a few minutes.
Nicholas Sparks
#64. Death, with funereal shades in vain surrounds me, My reason through his darkness seeth light: 'Tis the last step which brings me close to Thee: 'Tis the veil falling, 'twixt Thy face and mine.
Alphonse De Lamartine
#65. One honest John Tompkins, a hedger & ditcher,
Although he was poor, did not want to be richer;
For all such vain wishes in him were prevented
By a fortunate habit of being contented.
Jane Taylor
#66. Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul. And of this no one may know save God.
James Bryant Conant
#67. You have left Your Beloved and are thinking of others:
and this is why your work is in vain.
Kabir
#68. Allah does not call you to account for what is vain in your oaths, but He will call you to account for what your hearts have earned, and Allah is Forgiving, Forbearing.
Anonymous
#69. What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#70. At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.
Dante Alighieri
#72. Forbid it Lord that I should boast, save in the death of Christ, my God: All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood.
Isaac Watts
#73. First of all a natural talent is required; for when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place ...
Hippocrates
#74. 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
#75. The prayers of Christians are in vain if they do not plan any corresponding actions
Sunday Adelaja
#77. I can't let my mother's death have been in vain. Democracy is the best revenge, and we will have it.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
#78. 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
#79. Lysandra said softly, "I will not apologize to you. I serve her. And I am willing to spend the rest of my life pretending to be her so that her sacrifice isn't in vain - " "You
Sarah J. Maas
#80. In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.
Elie Wiesel
#81. A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.
Jessamyn West
#82. I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting, I read books, I sang songs of history, And today I've come home to Cold Mountain To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.
Hanshan
#83. When we are conscious of the least comparative merit in ourselves, we should take as much care to conceal the value we set upon it, as if it were a real defect; to be elated or vain upon it is showing your money before people in want.
Colley Cibber
#84. We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.
Blaise Pascal
#85. Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
Khalil Gibran
#86. A flower, when offered in the bud, is no vain sacrifice.
Isaac Watts
#87. All outward means of grace, if separate from the spirit of God, cannot profit, or conduce, in any degree, either to the knowledge or love of God. All outward things, unless he work in them and by them, are in vain.
John Wesley
#88. They never sought in vain that sought the Lord alright!
Robert Burns
#90. 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
#91. Why abandon a seat in your own home to wander in vain through dusty regions of another land? If you make one false step, you miss what is right before your eyes.
Dogen
#92. There is something peculiarly dispriting about the emptiness that wells up when, in a strange city, one dials the same telephone numbers in vain.
W.G. Sebald
#93. So much the worse for you!" he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, "Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!
Leo Tolstoy
#94. My motivation has to do with what happened to my family. I want to help young people make important decisions at the most important time in their life. If I didn't do this, it would be like my kids died in vain. I want to help them make the right decisions.
George Chuvalo
#95. The man who is roused neither by glory nor by danger it is in vain to exhort; terror closes the ears of the mind.
[Lat., Quem neque gloria neque pericula excitant, nequidquam hortere; timor animi auribus officit.]
Sallust
#96. I grew up in South Jamaica, Queens, in New York. My parents were very religious churchgoing people. They were very strict. I was never really allowed to indulge in anything vain. Modesty always. I have three brothers and two sisters, so everything was on a budget.
Wynter Gordon
#97. I have dealt with the poor, Bathsheba. They need a great deal, but I do not believe they feel any great want for aristocratic females dressed in the latest stare of fashion telling them they are proud, vain, and licentious.
Loretta Chase
#98. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#100. they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. ROM1.22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
Anonymous
