Quotes on Vain

Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

In going on with these Experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig'd to destroy! If there is no other Use discover'd of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble.

All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.

To teach vain Wits that Science little known,_x000D_ _x000D_ T' admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!

Laws without morals are in vain.

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.

Nowadays the world is becoming increasingly materialistic, and mankind is reaching toward the very zenith of external progress, driven by an insatiable desire for power and vast possessions. Yet by this vain striving for perfection in a world where everything is relative,they wander even further away from inward peace and happiness of the mind.

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?

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.

As love is full of unbefitting strains,_x000D_ _x000D_ All wanton as a child, skipping and vain,_x000D_ _x000D_ Form'd by the eye and therefore, like the eye,_x000D_ _x000D_ Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms,_x000D_ _x000D_ Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll_x000D_ _x000D_ To every varied object in his glance

In judging others a man laboreth in vain; he often erreth, and easily falleth into sin; but in judging and examining himself he always laboreth to good purpose.

It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.

He who knows himself well is mean and abject in his own sight, and takes no delight in the vain praise of men.

The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self- estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Some rhyme a neebor's name to lash;_x000D_ _x000D_ Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu' cash;_x000D_ _x000D_ Some rhyme to court the countra clash,_x000D_ _x000D_ An' raise a din;_x000D_ _x000D_ For me, an aim I never fash;_x000D_ _x000D_ I rhyme for fun.

Our life must once have end; in vain we fly_x000D_ _x000D_ From following Fate; e'en now, e'en now, we die.

Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness, within those precincts, and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain!

Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love, Time will not be ours for ever, He, at length, our good will sever; Spend not then his gifts in vain: Suns that set may rise again; But if once we lose this light, 'Tis with us perpetual night. Why should we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys.

No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes