Top 100 In Vain Quotes
#1. This preparatory sort of idealism is the one that, as I just suggested, Berkeley made prominent, and, after a fashion familiar. I must state it in my own way, although one in vain seeks to attain novelty in illustrating so frequently described a view.
Josiah Royce
#2. Not in vain has Lincoln lived, for he has helped to make this republic an example of justice, with no caste but the caste of humanity.
George Bancroft
#3. Do not desire your neighbor's wife in vain.
Julian Tuwim
#4. Once a war is underway the process of deceit continues with regard to the troops who return with broken bodies and broken minds, especially when the wars were never justified. Admitting that the wars are senseless and in vain is too much to bear.
Ron Paul
#5. Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.
Henry David Thoreau
#6. The salesmen bought me perfume and invited me to lunch. But they couldn't talk to me about why families of guajiros slept in the city's parks under flashing Coca-Cola signs. Those men only murmured sweet nonsense to me, trying in vain to flatter me.
Cristina Garcia
#7. All Empires fall, All ages die, All strife shall be in vain. All Kings go down, All hope must fail, But Tanelorn remains Our Tanelorn remains ...
Michael Moorcock
#8. If thou neglectest thy love to thy neighbor, in vain thou professest thy love to God; for by thy love to God, the love to thy neighbor is begotten, and by the love to thy neighbor thy love to God is nourished.
Francis Quarles
#9. Without common sense, all thine efforts are in vain.
Rudolf Steiner
#10. In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#11. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain unless you've used up all the other four-letter words.
W.C. Fields
#12. June falls asleep upon her bier of flowers;
In vain are dewdrops sprinkled o'er her,
In vain would fond winds fan her back to life,
Her hours are numbered on the floral dial.
Lucy Larcom
#13. If free men refused to look at dead bodies then brave men will have died in vain.
John Shaw Billings
#14. Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation.
John Calvin
#15. He was invaded by an unreasoning calm, which he interpreted as an omen that nothing new was going to happen, that everything he had done in his life had been in vain, that he could not go on: it was the end.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#16. Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
Hermann Von Helmholtz
#17. Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,Leave off your idle pain;Seek other mistress for your minds,Love's service is in vain.
Robert Southwell
#18. Nothing felt better to him than the act of waiting for her. As long as he believed it wasn't in vain, he was able to justify his presence.
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
#19. Life and death are important. Don't suffer them in vain.
Bodhidharma
#20. But I do not slay man or beast needlessly, and not gladly even when it is needed. Neither do I talk in vain.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#21. Our society holds to youthfulness with a white-knuckled grip. Ultimately it's all in vain. But the gospel promises us eternal youthfulness in God's presence.
Randy Alcorn
#22. In vain we roared;in vain we tried
To rouse her into laughter:
Her pensive glances wandered wide
From orchestra to rafter -
"TIER UPON TIER!" she said,and sighed;
And silence followed after.
Lewis Carroll
#23. In vain do we seek to awaken our churches to zeal in evangelism as a separate thing. To be genuine it must flow from love to Christ. It is when a sense of personal communion with the Son of God is highest that we shall be most fit for missionary work, either ourselves or to stir up others.
Archibald Alexander
#24. without warning, the thermometer disappeared from my fingers. Some sudden suction had drawn it inside the cow. I ran my fingers round just inside the rectum - nothing; I pushed my hand inside without success; with a feeling of rising panic I rolled up my sleeve and groped about in vain.
James Herriot
#25. 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
#26. When we profess God's name, but do not live answerably to it, we take it in vain.
Thomas Watson
#27. If, at the end of my days, the sum of what I've taken exceeds the sum of what I've given, then I have lived in vain.
Doug Rice
#28. The page is as white as my face after a night of weeping. It is as sterile as my devastated mind. All martyrdoms are in vain. He also is drowning in the blood of too much sacrifice.
Lay aside the weapons, love, for all battles are lost.
Elizabeth Smart
#29. Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
Pablo Neruda
#30. This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad ... Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#31. And though all streams flow from a single course to cleanse the blood from polluted hand, they hasten on their course in vain.
Aeschylus
#32. If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.
John Lancaster Spalding
#33. I attempted in vain to calculate the size of the holdings on the shelves, floor on floor, only to boggle hopelessly, baffled by bibliographic boundlessness.
Richard Fortey
#34. Nothing is ever lost, nor broken in vain.
It is the tapestry of life, a picture that has been framed.
Natalie Ducey
#35. Life is brutally short, and there's only one go at it. We don't go for the old myths about helping somebody as we travel along life's path or our living will have been in vain. It's for now. Not tomorrow. But now.
Mick Norman
#36. Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth ... The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.
Lydia M. Child
#37. Royalty consists not in vain pomp, but in great virtues
Agesilaus II
#38. Poverty, labor, and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate in vain seek for.
William Hazlitt
#39. He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently trying in vain to find the answer to some question.
Leo Tolstoy
#42. The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday.
Theodor Adorno
#44. They came out of the vault intoxicated, not by the mere thought of food, but by the consciousness that they too were of use in the world and did not live in vain, and had deserved the praise and thanks which Tonya would shower on them at home.
Boris Pasternak
#45. The man who waits for reality to write the truth inside his soul waits in vain.
Leonard Peikoff
#46. Why do you beat the air and run in vain? Every occupation has a purpose, obviously. Tell me then, what is the purpose of all the activity of the world? Answer, I challenge you! It is vanity of vanity: all is vanity.
Saint John Chrysostom
#47. Certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything anymore: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#48. What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
Alain De Botton
#50. No, you're going in vain," she mentally addressed a company in a coach-and-four who were evidently going out of town for some merriment. "And the dog you're taking with you won't help you. You won't get away from yourselves.
Leo Tolstoy
#51. I don't believe things happen in vain. I believe they happen for a reason.
Tracey Gold
#52. Birds sing in vain to the ear, flowers bloom in vain to the eye, of mortified vanity and galled ambition. He who would know repose in retirement must carry into retirement his destiny, integral and serene, as the Caesars transported the statue of Fortune into the chamber they chose for their sleep.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#53. She knew that the horse, born to serve nobly, had waited in vain for someone noble to serve. His spirit knew that nobility had gone out of men.
D.H. Lawrence
#54. He shall rise up and shut the door, it will be in vain for mere professors to knock, and cry Lord, Lord open unto us, for that same door which shuts in the wise virgins will shut out the foolish for ever. Lord, shut me in by Thy grace.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#55. No thing happens in vain, but everything for a reason and by necessity.
Steven Weinberg
#56. Oh my God. She waited for the chastising sting of the mark, which acted like a behavioral-modification dog collar. When the burn didn't come after taking the Lord's name in vain, she found some of the fog in her brain lifting.
Sylvia Day
#57. For neither do men live nor die in vain. Here
H.G.Wells
#58. [Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain?
Frank Harris
#59. In vain we chisel, as best we can, the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny reappears continuously.
Victor Hugo
#60. I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here,
Edgar Allan Poe
#61. Shall this nectar Run useless, then, to waste? or ... these lips, That open like the morn, breathing perfumes, On such as dare approach them, be untouch'd? They must
nay, 'tis in vain to make resistance
Be often kissed and tasted.
Philip Massinger
#62. I grieve for you, how I mourn for you, who are so very dear to me, but again I can rejoice within my heart, not for nothing have I labored, neither has my exile been in vain.
Saint Patrick
#63. If you want to find Him, SEARCH HIS WORD! If you will read His Word with the steady resolve to find God within its pages, I am able to tell you upon its precious word that you will not seek Him in vain.
L.R. Shelton Jr.
#64. If for just the time of a finger-snap a monk produces a thought of loving-kindness, develops it, gives attention to it, such a one is rightly called a monk. Not in vain does he meditate. He acts in accordance with the master's teaching, he follows his advice. How much more so if he cultivates it.
Gautama Buddha
#65. There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
Blaise Pascal
#66. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord builds the city, the guard keeps watch in vain.
Anonymous
#67. Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
Carl Jung
#68. There was movement on its broad shoulders, and Puck appeared, clinging to its back, a huge grin splitting his face. "All right," he announced grandly, as the troll jerked and spun around, trying in vain to reach him, "I claim this land for Spain." And
Julie Kagawa
#69. Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.
Charles Dickens
#70. Was he happy? One would ask that question in vain. A question like this makes sense only when applied to creatures who are rich in alternative possibilities, so that the actual truth can be contrasted with partly real probabilities and reflect itself in them.
Bruno Schulz
#71. The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his Joan of Arc when he said against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable.
Christopher Hitchens
#72. One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
Kurt Vonnegut
#73. In vain a zealous evangelist with a fely hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying without cease: 'God is great and good. Come unto Him.' On the contrary, they all make haste toward some trivial objective that seems of more immediate interest than God.
Albert Camus
#74. Alone, he saw the slanting waves roll in,
Each to its impotent annihilation
In a long wash of foam, until the sound
Become for him a warning and a torture,
Like a malign reproof reiterating
In vain its cold and only sound of doom.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
#76. Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.
Gerald Brenan
#77. He who tempts, though in vain, at last asperses
The tempted with dishonor foul, supposed
Not incorruptible of faith, not proof
Against temptation.
John Milton
#78. The glitter of the great world, you know, is only so much froth and spume: you may look in vain for happiness there.
Jude Morgan
#79. Grey eyes that grow sadder than sunset or rain,
Fond heart that is ever more true
Firm faith that grows firmer for watching in vain---
She'll wait by the sliprails for you.
Henry Lawson
#80. It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#81. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.
George Washington
#82. I am inclined to think that one's education has been in vain if one fails to learn that most schoolmasters are idiots.
Hesketh Pearson
#83. If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain
Ai Weiwei
#84. What shall I take with me?
Will I let nothing behind me over the earth?
How shall my heart act?
Is it that we come in vain to live,
to sprout over the earth?
Let us leave at least flowers,
let us leave at least songs.
Nezahualcoyotl
#85. We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.
Abraham Lincoln
#86. Standing on the podium at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and receiving a gold medal was the crowning jewel in a successful gymnastics career and, most certainly, the confirmation that my parents' sacrifices were not in vain.
Dominique Moceanu
#87. This is the moment too many couples struggle in vain to avoid or ignore - even to the point of choosing bitter divorce and fractured family over the daunting task of confronting the sky together, with all the "confident girders" behind them in the past.
Christopher Ryan
#88. Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.
Jonathan Swift
#89. I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one.
Jorge Luis Borges
#90. And weep the more, because I weep in vain.
Thomas Gray
#91. We chip away as best we can at the mysterious block of marble our lives are made of- in vain; the black vein of destiny always reappears.
Victor Hugo
#92. He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days..
Chinua Achebe
#93. A word of kindness is seldom spoken in vain, while witty sayings are as easily lost as the pearls slipping from a broken string.
George Dennison Prentice
#96. What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o'er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?
John Dryden
#97. But do not search for the Gods in vain when it is your own heart and mind that can find the way.
Vasileios Kalampakas
#98. Let the past not be forgotten. Let the lessons not be in vain.
Lora Leigh
#99. For all the failures of naval, air and army defense, the men who died at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines would not die in vain.
Nigel Hamilton
#100. You spend your whole life believing that you will always be on the outside or on the borderline. You struggle and struggle, and yet it all seems to be in vain. And then, suddenly, you are allowed inside and lifted up into the light.
Peter Hoeg
