Dying In Vain Quotes

1. "When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,Tears our best hopes away, the wounded HeartExhausted, leans on all that can impartThe charm of Sympathy; her mutual wailHow soothing! never can her warm tears failTo balm our bleeding grief's severest smart;Nor wholly vain feign'd Pity's solemn art,Tho' we should penetrate her sable veil.Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our painsRespecting, kinder welcome far acquiresThan cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes.Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires,Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes,To cheer the Gloom with her unreal fires."
Author: Anna Seward

2. "To attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and…though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely in expectation of which they lived."
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

3. "Linnaeus's last lesson, of which he himself was unaware, was that professorships kill philosophers. Oh, I'm vain enough to want my burgeoning Flora Japonica to be published one day--as a votive offering to human knowledge--but a seat at Uppsala, or Leiden, or Cambridge, holds no allure. My heart is the East's in this lifetime. This is my third year in Nagasaki, and I have work enough for another three, or six. During the court embassy I can see landscapes no European botanist ever saw. My seminarians are keen young men--with one young woman--and visiting scholars bring me specimens from all over the empire."
Author: David Mitchell

4. "It is vain to think that any weariness, however caused, any burden, however slight, may be got rid of otherwise than by bowing the neck to the yoke of the Father's will. There can be no other rest for heart and soul than He has created. From every burden, from every anxiety, from all dread of shame or loss, even loss of love itself, that yoke will set us free."
Author: George MacDonald

5. "Host: For those of you just tuning in, our guests tonight are the amazing Murder Magician, and his lovely minion, The Assistant...Assistant: Charmed, I'm sureHost: Who recently killed The Rumor. And you were awarded the Oppenheimer prize for villainy at last week's annual summit for dastardly deeds-- what are you going to do with all that money?Murder Magician: Well, I'm so glad you asked that-- because I spent all the money on this giant MURDERBOT, and I've been dying to show it off!Assistant: It's true... every penny.Host: Wow! That's impressive! So what does it do?Murder Magician: Well, Mr. Clark... it murders people.Laughter.Murder Magician: I'm serious.Assistant: He is."
Author: Gerard Way

6. "I can smell the sex coming off you right now. I could take you down on this sidewalk and be up that skirt of yours in a heartbeat. And you wouldn't fight me, would you?""Now, we can be civilized and wait until we get home. Or we can get down to it right here. Either way, I'm dying to come inside of you again, and you're not going to say no." - Wrath to Beth"
Author: J.R. Ward

7. "It goes back to all of us wanting to be in Hollywood. We're all dying to win an Oscar."
Author: Jerry Della Femina

8. "In vain shall Great Britain confer upon her colonies the free government and liberal principles of legislation, for which she is distinguished, if she do not carry with her the revelations of God."
Author: John Strachan

9. "If not exactly raging against the dying of the light, I was at least a little cross with it."
Author: Mark Gatiss

10. "Even if they try to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that thereare some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they areworth dying for. And if a person has not found something to die for, thatperson isn't fit to live!"
Author: Martin Luther King Jr.

11. "Life's not easy for unicorns, you know. We're a dying breed."
Author: Meg Cabot

12. "Our society has tried to make death invisible, thinking that if we ignore it long enough it will go away. Often we as family and loved ones are so afraid of death that even mentioning the word to terminal patients is taboo. We think the dying are oblivious to what is happening to them. Sadly, a dying person frequently feels afraid to bring it up him or herself. When I enter a hospital room I often hear a sigh of relief. At last, someone is here to help the family come to terms with what is playing out before them. Death has too long been the elephant in the living room, while everyone awkwardly discusses the weather."
Author: Megory Anderson

13. "It is a balsam," answered Don Quixote, "the receipt of which I have in my memory, with which one need have no fear of death, or dread dying of any wound; and so when I make it and give it to thee thou hast nothing to do when in some battle thou seest they have cut me in half through the middle of the body—as is wont to happen frequently,—but neatly and with great nicety, ere the blood congeal, to place that portion of the body which shall have fallen to the ground upon the other half which remains in the saddle, taking care to fit it on evenly and exactly. Then thou shalt give me to drink but two drops of the balsam I have mentioned, and thou shalt see me become sounder than an apple."
Author: Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

14. "Her kitsch was the image of home, all peace, quiet, and harmony, and ruled by a loving mother and a wise father. It was an image that took shape in her after the death of her parents. The less her life resembled the sweetest of dreams, the more sensitive she was to its magic, and more than once she shed tears when the ungrateful daughter in a sentimental film embraced the neglected father as the windows of the happy family's house shone out into the dying day."
Author: Milan Kundera

15. "Oh for craps sake. You're not dying again, are you? It's seriously inconvenient when you do that." -Aphrodite"
Author: P.C. Cast

16. "Secrets she'll take to the grave and secrets she's dying to share."
Author: Simone Elkeles

17. "But a smell shivered him awake.It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive - so alive! And it was close.The vapors invaded Nicholas' nostrils and his hair rose to their roots. His eyes were as heavy as manhole covers, but he opened them. Through the dying calm inside him snaked a tremble of fear.The trees themselves seemed tense, waiting. The moonlight was a hard shell, sharp and ready to ready be struck and to ring like steel.A shadow moved.It poured like oil from between the tall trees and flowed across dark sandy dirt, lengthening into the middle of the ring. Trees seem to bend toward it, spellbound. A long, long shadow..."
Author: Stephen M. Irwin

18. "If I were dying when I should've, say in the late sixties, when I thought my head would explode with howling misery, when every time their father opened his fat mouth I thought I'd have to kill him, then – then I would've written the girls affectionate letters, telling them of my sadness, and how much I loved them, and how sorry I was to be leaving them. Too late. They're here, they're grown-up, they're crap, and so we'll bicker towards oblivion."
Author: Will Self

Dying In Vain Quotes Pictures