#vain

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

— John Owen

#helpless #helps #leave #mortification #must

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#cannot #conceal #feeling #found #live

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

#easily #kindness #lost #pearls #sayings

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

#back #direction #face #half #his

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

#although #attain #berkeley #described #familiar

I have been vain since birth. I expected other people to like what I did, although my vanity has definitely diminished over the years. ↗

— Wallace Shawn

#been #birth #definitely #did #diminished

In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it. ↗

— Alexander Smith

#departures #find #lay #life #more

Affliction is not sent in vain, young man, from that good God, who chastens whom he loves. ↗

— Robert Southey

#god #good #loves #man #sent

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance. ↗

— Baruch Spinoza

#come #easily #himself #imagine #man

And weep the more, because I weep in vain. ↗

— Thomas Gray

#i #more #vain #weep