Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.
William Law

Do not follow vain desires; for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger.
Abu Bakr

During my life I have seen, known, and lost too much to be the prey of vain dread; and, as for the hope of immortality, I am as weary of that as I am of gods and kings. For my own sake only I write this; and herein I differ from all other writers, past and to come.
Mika Waltari

Everything is vain and tortures the spirit instead of calming and satisfying it.
Johann G. Hamann

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them.
Augustus Hare

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
W. H. Auden

Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
John Kenneth Galbraith

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

He who seeks for methods without having a definite problem in mind seeks in the most part in vain.
David Hilbert

His daughter returned from her boarding school, improved in fashionable airs and expert in manufacturing fashionable toys; but, in her conversation, he sought in vain for that refined and fertile mind which he had fondly expected.
Emma Willard

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Henry David Thoreau

How vain, without the merit, is the name.
Homer

Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.
Jane Austen

I do not allow myself vain regrets or foreboding.
Mary Chesnut

I don't believe things happen in vain. I believe they happen for a reason.
Tracey Gold

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

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting.
John Ruskin

I think the best actors are the most generous, the kindest, the greatest people and at their worst they are vain, greedy and insecure.
Kenneth Branagh

I thought it was quite vain to say, I want to be a model.
Kate Moss