We are so vain that we even care for the opinions of those we don't care for.
When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty. - Stevie Nicks
Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. - C.G. Jung
If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin. - Samuel Adams
And yet, my girl, we weep in vain,In vain our fate in sighs deplore;Remembrance only can remain,But that, will make us weep the more. - George Gordon Byron
Nor deem the irrevocable PastAs wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at lastTo something nobler we attain. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action. - Demosthenes
The midsummer sun shines but dim, The fields strive in vain to look gay; But when I am happy in Him December's as pleasant as May. - John Newton
Don’t be so vain to think that you ruined me,that you wrecked me,destroyed me.I am the only one who has the power to do that.—, - Amanda Helm
We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. - Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them. - Anatole France
SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance. - Ambrose Bierce
Positive words left unsaid are like sachets of currency notes burnt in vain. Positive deeds left undone are like deep wells filled with soil to the brim. Do the undone, say the unsaid and turn the unturned. - Israelmore Ayivor
No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes - Virginia Woolf
if due to ego you think:i shall not fight; this resolve of yours is vain. your own nature will compel you. - Anonymous
We Wander In Vain If We Are Yet To Walk In The Path Of Our Destiny..Find What You Love,And Never Stop Doing It.. - Olasoji'Oba Rawlings
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. - Emily Dickinson
Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching, or cool one Pain, Or help one fainting Robin into his Nest again, I shall not live in Vain. - Emily Dickinson
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter. - W. Somerset Maugham
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. - Henry David Thoreau
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 preventedBy a fortunate habit of being contented. - Jane Taylor
Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life. - Henry Van Dyke
The praise that comes from love does not make us vain, but more humble. - James M. Barrie
What then remains, but well our power to use,And keep good humour still whate’er we lose?And trust me, dear, good humour can prevail,When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul - Alexander Pope
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. - Oscar Wilde
A little tact and wise management may often evade resistance, and carry a point, where direct force might be in vain.
When any man is more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. - George Moore
It was a momentary laughter, in which our souls united. But I think there comes a point in love, a unique moment which later on the soul seeks in vain to surpass, and that the effort to revive such happiness depletes it; that nothing thwarts happiness so much as the memory of happiness. - André Gide
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
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
The real satisfaction which praise can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not endeavored to deserve well in vain.
It is vain to say human beings might be satisfied with tranquillity; they must have action, and they will make it if they can not find it. - Charlotte Bronte
If anybody tries to penetrate the past with the knife of the present will always act in vain. The past is invulnerable. Such attempts can only cause the present or the future to bleed." - Gregor Brand - Simon Schwartz
When virtue and modesty enlighten her charms, the lustre of a beautiful woman is brighter than the stars of heaven, and the influence of her power it is in vain to resist. - Akhenaton
Unless man is committed to the belief that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality. - Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain. (Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens) - Friedrich von Schiller
What the sense feels, what the spirit perceives, is never an end in itself. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they are the end of all things: they are as vain as that. - Nietszche
To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live. - Henry James
The vain man is generally a doubter. It is Newton who sees himself as child on the sea shore, and his discoveries in the colored shell.
Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain. - John F. Kennedy
I'm not a political Christian; for the most part I allow people even their vain, earthly rights. And I certainly don't see anti-Christians as bad or evil (as if they actually have the power to pose any kind of threat against God Almighty), but rather complete idiots I was commanded to love. - Criss Jami
When you do great things, Expect greater things. None of your works are done in vain. You will achieve what you set forth to accomplish! - Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi') - Dōgen
It is in vain to wipe away tears in the rain. - Matshona Dhliwayo
With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain. - Friedrich von Schiller
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 glass that's broken presently: A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, Lost, vaded, broken, dead within the hour. - William Shakespeare
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Without the pen of , the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain. John Adams - Paine
Without an opportunity, their abilities would have been wasted, and without their abilities, the opportunity would have arisen in vain. - Niccolò Machiavelli
@bobbybaird i'm a writer, so are you. we try to compose our thoughts and words for effect as well as sense. vain of us? a bit. - Walter Kirn
The fires of hell may be made of the very love of God, experienced as torture by those who hate him: the very light of God's truth, hated and fled from in vain by those who love darkness. - Peter Kreeft
The mind-is not the heart.I may yet live, as I know others live,To wish in vain to let go with the mind-Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells meThat I need learn to let go with the heart. - Robert Frost
Love don't have definition .It was just as it was since the world was created. People are just trying to explain it in vain. - Bikash Bhandari
The vain man buys to impress, but the REAL man buys to fulfil a need. - Auliq-Ice
All life is in vain, for Death makes a nonsense of pain. - Gasmaskman
You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last. - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
That peace, safety, and concord may be the portion of our native land, and be long enjoyed by our fellow-citizens, is the most ardent wish of my heart, and if I can be instrumental in procuring or preserving them, I shall think I have not lived in vain. - Thomas Jefferson
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. - Nezahualcóyotl
It is vain to try to sacrifice once for all one'syouthful ideals. - Paul Bourget
Liberty a word without which all other words are vain. - Robert G. Ingersoll
Dangerous Are the ways of love ….Baby dangerous When you can’t get enough …Lonely nights are spent in vain - sami abouzid
I spent my timeLosing my sense of space and timeI had my plans I had my schemesAnd faith so strongTo know all was vain - Nirab karki
He does not live in vain, who employs his wealth, his thought, his speech to advance the good of others.
The war was about vanity, he said. It was about old men who couldn't look in the mirror anymore and so they sent the young out to die. Was was a get-together of the vain. They wanted it simple--hate your enemy, know nothing of him. - Mccann Colum
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. - Friedrich von Schiller
He has been waiting for us, waiting in vain, and His fatherly heart was filled with grief. When He then sought to call us home through chastenings, we rebelled against Him and His actions and again refused to come home to the Father. What else should He do with us? - M. Basilea Schlink
You can't attack the giants in your life, if you are not aiming to strike and hit the target. You can't run a race in vain, if you have no plans to win or finish it. Start, strive and aim high...never give up. Your best is yet to come! - Kemi Sogunle
Are we willing to shun vain repetition and keep our prayers out of an unchallenging rut by asking God to make us more sensitive to our own sin? - John Pereira
Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain. - John F. Kennedy
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. - Epicurus
... which would enable him to prolong for the time being, and to renew for one day more the disappointment, the torturing deception that must always come to him with the vain presence of this woman, whom he might approach, yet never dared embrace. - Marcel Proust
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. - Charlotte Bronte
Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous. - Sir Francis Bacon
If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it - the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded. - Ann Radcliffe
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
It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard. - Aesop
I love and I hate. How can this be, you ask in vain. I know not, but I feel it to be so and am wracked with pain.
There is but one solution: I'm sure that it isn't man, money, surveys, or talk. They all have their place, but if the basis isn't fervent, believing prayer, they are all in vain. - W. Cameron Townsend
Line in nature is not found;Unit and universe are round;In vain produced, all rays return;Evil will bless, and ice will burn. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is in vain for man to endeavor to instruct man in those things which the Holy Spirit alone can teach. - Pere La Combe