"Vain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day from Irkutsk we took a yemshick who proved sullen in the highest degree. The country was gently undulating, and the road superb but our promises of navodku were of no avail. We offered and entreated in vain. As a last resort we shouted in French to the ladies and suggested that they take the lead. Our yemshick ordered his comrade to keep his place, and refused to turn aside to allow him to pass. He even slackened his ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... In vain through each succeeding year Did Nature mourn her lessening store. A Primrose on the river's brim A Party emblem was to him, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... the darkness closed round while Chicken Little strained her eyes in vain for Sherm. It was almost ten before he came back. She was standing at the gate watching for him. The rest of the family had gone to bed. "Chicken Little can comfort him better than any of us," Dr. Morton had told his wife. "He ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... do to answer, as they deserve, your two last letters? Sure no happy couple ever had such a child as we have! But it is in vain to aim at words like yours: and equally in vain for us to offer to set forth the thankfulness of our hearts, on the kind office your honoured husband has given us; for no reason but to favour us still more, and to quiet our minds in the notion of being ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... an uproar. The presumption of toleration in religious matters would then present itself unmasked; but the presumption is not the less because the name of "Man" only appears to those laws, for the associated idea of the worshipper and the worshipped cannot be separated. Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes! by whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church, or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... charge, brave, even reckless, failed. The brigades broke in vain on Jackson's iron front. Riddled by the fire of the great battery and of the riflemen they could not go on and live. The Germans had longed for revenge, but they did not get it. The South Carolinians fell upon them at the edge of the wood and hurled ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Lord, that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ, my God: All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... whether against my better judgment or not, I was rather more than inclined to believe him innocent of actual share or complicity in the murders of Noah and Salter Quick. But I could see that he was a queer mortal; odd, even to eccentricity; vain, candid and frank because of his very vanity; given, I thought, to talking a good deal about himself and his doings; probably a megalomaniac. He might treat us well so long as things went well with ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... on a door-step and pauses before a door has got to enter, and Love can't push it away. No, it can only git its wings torn off and trompled on in the vain effort. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... tears trickle down the rugged, mahogany-coloured face of the captain, and honoured him for it, but there was little time to waste in vain regrets. It was necessary to save the boat, if possible, as we were getting short of boat-repairing material; certainly we should not have been able to build a new one. So, drawing the two sound boats together, one on either side of the wreck, we ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... were in vain. The wigwam was a failure, as far as fire was concerned. It was very small and uncomfortable, too; the wind blew through a hundred crevices, which grew larger as the Elm bark dried and cracked. A heavy shower caught ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... his own struggles becoming weaker each moment, and at last he was conscious that somebody had crawled towards his feet and was passing a cord about them. In vain he sought to kick out and release himself; the next minute the cord was pulled tight. His feet were jerked from beneath him, he fell backwards heavily, and for some time he knew ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Kelmscott's feet could not more thoroughly or completely have stunned him. For a second or two he gazed in the young man's face uneasily, his colour came and went, his bosom heaved in silence; then he roped his moustache with his trembling fingers, and tried in vain to pump up some harmless remark appropriate to the occasion. But no remark came to him. Mrs. Clifford darted a furtive glance at Elma, and Elma darted back a furtive glance at Mrs. Clifford. Neither said a word, and each let her eyes drop to the ground ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... admiration in her eyes, strutted about, as proud and as vain as a peacock. Presently he began to inventory his assets, mentally, and shortly he found himself comparing them ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hasty hints, bare suggestions. But if they rouse one heart to a new realization of what evenings at home ought to be, and what evenings at home too often are, they have not been spoken in vain nor out ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... mare's egg," said her husband, angrily. "How shall I find the Baron Conrad to bear a message to him, when our Baron has been looking for him in vain for ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... frequenting the haunts of smugglers, horse-jockeys, and other irregular persons, who looked on his intrusion with jealous eyes, and were apt to consider him as an exciseman in the disguise of a Quaker. All this labour and peril, however, had been undergone in vain. No search he could make obtained the least intelligence of Latimer, so that he began to fear the poor lad had been spirited abroad—for the practice of kidnapping was then not infrequent, especially on the western coasts of Britain—if indeed he had ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the only inspiration; to accept any formula is to see with dead men's eyes. That has been said again and again by artists, but not with Leonardo's mystical and philosophical conviction. He knew that it is vain to study Nature unless she is to you a goddess or a god; you can learn nothing from reality unless you adore it, and in adoring it he found his freedom. How different is this doctrine from that with which, ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... will teach her about everything there." So they talked of heaven and heavenly things. The little baby's death had not been in vain. Belle and Jack both thought more of another world than they had ever done before, and in each a little voice whispered, "Am I ready ...
— Nanny Merry - or, What Made the Difference • Anonymous
... the captive was nearly exhausted, and the end was coming; for each dive was shorter in depth as well as time. The whale then tried fresh tactics, rising to the surface and rolling over and beating the water heavily with its tail; but all in vain: it could not rid itself of the deeply plunged harpoon, and lay for a few moments ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... sins a second time Wakes a dead soul to pain, And draws it from its spotted shroud, And makes it bleed again, And makes it bleed great gouts of blood, And makes it bleed in vain! ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... of salt-marsh to the right, imprisoning the upland with a vain promise of infinite liberty, and, between low, distant sandhills, a rim of sea. Stretches of pine woods behind, shutting in from the great outer world, and soon to darken into evening gloom. Ploughed fields and elm-dotted pastures to ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... Bowman, Liberal whip, but no bill was passed. Bills were presented every year only to be voted down by the Conservative Government. N. W. Rowell, the Liberal leader, pledged the support of his party in a non-partisan measure but in vain. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... to find out something about the robbery," said Colonel Colby. "But so far all my efforts have been in vain. I intend, if the articles are not recovered by the time the school session comes to an end, to pay for everything that has been stolen." And that was all the master ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... muttered the bailiff to himself, as he strode away. "He's a idiot, that's what he is! and so be all men that loses their wits a-sighing after a girl. Vain, deceitful, fickle creatures, the girls be when they're young; but once let them get a hold on you, your ring on their finger, and they turn into vixenish, snarling women! Luke's a sight ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... for he had eaten little that his maid might be the better fed, and he was very sad. When he reached the village he found his errand like to be vain. News of the Plague was coming from many parts, and each man feared for his own skin. At every house they questioned him: "Art thou from a hamlet where the Plague hath been?" and when he answered "Yea," the door ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... an ecstacy of joy and expectation—but there came no response from her neighbor—no answering signal, and as the lonely woman watched, hoping, looking, praying—there rolled over her with crushing sadness the conviction that all her hopes of friendliness were in vain. The neighborhood would not receive her—she was an outcast. They were condemning her without a hearing—they were hurling against her the thunders of silence! The injustice of it ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... were hardly better than the trenches. Only by duck-boards could one walk about the morass in which huts were built and tents were pitched. In the wagon lines gunners tried in vain to groom their horses, and floundered about in their gum boots, cursing the mud which clogged bits and chains and bridles, and could find no comfort ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... wayward conduct gave them anxiety, the partners saw it was in vain to remonstrate. Every attention was paid to fit him out for his headstrong undertaking. He was provided with four horses, and all the articles he required. The two Snakes undertook to conduct him and his companions to an encampment of their tribe, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... who gives testimony. Com—mit'ted, done, performed. 2. Coun'sel, a lawyer. 4. Re-ject'ed, refused. 6. As-sured', made bold. Con-fid'ing-ly, with trust. 8. Pro-fane', irreverent, taking the name of God in vain. 33. Per'ju-ry, the act of willfully making a false oath. Chaff, the light dry husk of grains or grasses. 34. Ma-tured', perfected, fully developed. Pot'ter, one whose occupation is to make earthen ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... we wasted a whole fortnight (January 11-24, 1878) in vain works; and I afterwards bitterly repented that the time had not been given to South Midian. Yet the delay was pleasant enough, after the month which is required to acquire, or to recover, the habit of tent-life. The halting-day was ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... countless perils and miseries. But their hardships and afflictions were not of long continuance. With energy, industry, frugality, and love, they soon obtained security, comfort, and health. And it is no vain and idle imagination which assigns to those years, which succeeded the successful planting of the colony, the period of the greatest happiness and virtue which New England has ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... [2022]), daughter of Hrothgar and Wealhtheow. Beowulf tells Hygelac that her father has betrothed her to Ingeld, prince of the Heathobards, in the hope of settling the feud between the two peoples. But he prophesies that the hope will prove vain: for an old Heathobard warrior, seeing a Danish chieftain accompany Freawaru to their court laden with Heathobard spoils, will incite the son of the former owner of the plundered treasure to revenge, until blood is shed, and the feud is renewed. That this was what afterwards ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... tried in vain to recover his old composure. He was white to the lips, and his hand shook as he tried to arrange ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... been decided that they would start at eight o'clock the next morning, at that hour everybody was in the kitchen; but the coach, the hood of which formed a roof of snow, stood solitary in the middle of the yard, without horses and without driver. In vain a search was made for the latter in the stable, barns, and coach-house. Then all the men decided to scour the country, and they set out. They found themselves in the Square, with the Church at the farther end, and on both sides low houses in which Prussian soldiers could be ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... ran some distance away to a point where he could descend to the water's edge and made his way along the foot of the little bluff. Peering into the shadows, he called in vain to the Mexican. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... and by his faith discerned; and his only earthly wisdom is to accept the united testimony of the men who have sought these things in the way they were commanded. Of whom no single one has ever said that his obedience or his faith had been vain, or found himself cast out from the choir of the living souls, whether here, or departed, for whom ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... mutiny, no hint of aught but obedience and devotion among the incongruous and unruly elements from which he had fashioned his invincible army; and at the end we see him leaving Italy of his own free will, at the call of his country, to waste himself in a vain effort to save her from the blunders of other leaders and from the penalty of inherent weakness, which only his sword ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... beauty, the spirit, the influence of their women, is generally acknowledged; but that female reserve and delicacy which draws the thread of an English novel through three volumes, would be looked for in vain in Poland. Niemcewicz, however, published in 1827 an historical novel, "John of Trenczyn," which is considered as a happy imitation of Scott. Others were written by count Skarbeck. Among the novels, which present a psychological development of character, and a description of fashionable life, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... is the best. Because a thing is simple it is not always the case, however, that it finds the most ready acceptance. If, in my humble capacity of public service, I am the indirect means of this being accomplished, I shall feel that my summer's work was not altogether in vain. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... in labour—great with some conception. Come then to me, who am a midwife's son and myself a midwife, and do your best to answer the questions which I will ask you. And if I abstract and expose your first-born, because I discover upon inspection that the conception which you have formed is a vain shadow, do not quarrel with me on that account, as the manner of women is when their first children are taken from them. For I have actually known some who were ready to bite me when I deprived them of a darling folly; they did not perceive that I acted from goodwill, not knowing that no god is the ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... absorbed in the enjoyment of his favorite occupation. Suddenly a distant sound of rapidly advancing wheels was heard, and almost immediately a carriage appeared, drawn by a pair of wild, ungovernable horses, while the terrified coachman strove in vain to restrain their ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... He struggled to escape from that iron hold in vain. The hand which had seized him was not to be shaken off. Despard had fixed his grasp there, and there in the throat of the fainting, suffocating ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... palm for us (Companions!) be proffer'd, Lo! now the maidens muse and meditate matter of forethought Nor meditate they in vain; they muse a humorous something. Yet naught wonder it is, their sprites be wholly in labour. We bear divided thought one way and hearing in other: 15 Vanquish't by right we must be, since Victory loveth the heedful. Therefore at least d'ye turn your minds the task to consider, Soon shall begin their ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... clergy do not realize it, they should. They are widening a breach, a chasm between the people and the church, that will be difficult to bridge over. They are positively bringing their calling into disrepute. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory but in lowliness of mind, is a divine injunction they seem ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... "Yes, but in vain," returned the princess; who then related to Raoul the scene that took place at Chaillot, and the king's despair on his return; she told him of his indulgence to herself and the terrible word with which the outraged princess, the humiliated coquette, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as she sailed triumphantly over them, Sylla's pulses tingled, and she was fired with the spirit of emulation. Although she was some little distance behind, she resolved to catch and pass the leaders, and with that intent commenced bucketing her mare along in rather merciless fashion. In vain did Jim shout words of warning. She turned a deaf ear to them. Had he not recommended that she should keep the road? Did he think the art of crossing a country was known only to the maidens of Fernshire? ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... earth a thousand discords ring, Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil, Still do thy sleepless ministers move on, Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting; Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil; Laborers that shall not fail, when man ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... saints—see the glory which shone over them, and look, too, the dead Hendrik Brant was whispering in their ears. And he, Foy, he was beside Martin playing his part in those red frays as best he might, and playing it not in vain. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... up and down saying to himself over and over again, "I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk, I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk." Sometimes he would come into the Forge and say it to the horses. The King of the Cats wondered how the human beings could put up with a creature who was so stupid and so vain. He had a red comb that fell over one eye. He had purple feathers on his tail. He had great spurs on his heels. He used to put his head on one side and yawn when the King of ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of ferocity, pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes of vain exertions, he returned to his bench in helpless despair, and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... limits of the comparatively unimportant provincial city of Leipsic. His three wives in succession and his twenty-one children were the domestic incidents which bound him to his home. Here he trained his choir, taught his pupils, composed those master works which modern musicians try in vain to equal, and the even tenor of his life was broken in upon by very few incidents of a sensational kind. We do not understand that Bach was a virtuoso upon the violin, although no other master has required more of that greatest of musical instruments. Upon the piano and organ the case is different. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... ideas everywhere excited was so great that we find, in the register of his legation of 1221, a sort of formula all prepared for those who would found convents like those of the Sisters of St. Damian; but even there we search in vain for the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... trouble it, while the multiformed monsters of antiquity and mythology restored in life, with which the terrestrials had been thrown into such close contact, roamed about its polished walls. Not even the fiercest could affect them, and they would but see themselves reflected in any vain assaults. The domed symmetrical cylinder stood there as a monument to human ingenuity and skill, and the travellers' last thought as they fell asleep was, "Man is really lord of creation." The following day at about noon they awoke, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... from me I wait, and wish, and oft complain; Once it would bid my sorrow flee, And my fair fortune turn again; It wounds my heart now ceaselessly, And burns my breast with bitter pain. Yet never so sweet a song may be As, this still hour, steals through my brain, While verity I muse in vain How clay should her bright beauty clot; O Earth! a brave gem thou dost stain, My own pearl, precious, ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... Hand had pointed the Knife, yet might he properly have been said to have struck the Blow. The picturesque Attitude of all present, when Clarissa suddenly cries out, 'God's Eye is upon us' has an Effect upon the Mind that can only be felt; and that it would be a weak and vain Effort for ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... never lost faith or patience. He believed, and he did not make haste. He waited for God; and he did not wait in vain. No man will wait in vain. When the time was ready; when the Jews were ready; when Pharaoh was ready; when Moses himself, trained by forty years' patient thought, was ready; then God came in his ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... delicate in health. Some writers have said that she had consumption, but as her stepfather repeatedly called it "Fits," I think it is certain that it was some form of epilepsy. Her parents did everything possible to restore her, but in vain. Once they took her to Bath, now Berkeley Springs, for several weeks and the expenses of that journey we find all duly set down by Colonel Washington in the proper place. As Paul Leicester Ford remarks, ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... man and spiders, 'tis in vain to lie; I hate thee, stand off, if thou dost come nigh me, I'll crush thee with my foot; I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the power to wound me, be forbearing in its exercise. Heaven knows that I would not, from the vain desire of showing command over you, inflict upon you a single pang. Ah! do not fancy that in lovers' quarrels there is any sweetness that ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down again in the morning. Gone were the trees that Maxfield Parrish might have painted, so vivid were they in their burnished green-and-yellow coloring, so spectacular in their grouping. Gone was the five-franc note which I had intrusted to a sandwich vender on the railroad platform in the vain hope that he would come back with the change. After that clincher there was no doubt about it—we were in La Belle France ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... little more reason and a juster accommodation of temper, Parnell might have been saved for his country, and the whole history of Ireland since then—if not, indeed, of the world—changed for the better. But these are vain regrets and it avails not to indulge them, though it is permissible to say that the desertion of Parnell brought its own swift retribution to the people for whom he had laboured so ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... rhyme with unexampled barbarity. Here and there, it is true, rhymes get paired off quite happily in the conventional manner, but directly afterwards you may come upon a poor weak little rhyme who will cry in vain for his mate through half a dozen interloping lines. Indeed, cases have been known of rhymes that have been left on a sort of desert island of a verse, and have never been fetched away. And sometimes when the lines have got chopped very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... to go to the morass for water. Wishing very much to communicate with these people, we walked towards them, but they suddenly rose and scampered up the hill among the trees, which were so thick as soon to conceal them from our view. Boongaree called to them in vain; and it was not until they had reached some distance that they answered his call in loud shrill voices. After some time spent in a parley, in which Boongaree was spokesman on our part, sometimes in his own language, and at others in broken English, which he always resorted to ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... left at the end of the week, and Abe and Morris wasted no time in vain regrets over her departure, but proceeded at once to assort and make up a new line of samples for Philip Hahn's inspection. For three days they jumped every time a customer entered the store, and Abe wore a genial smile of such fixity that his ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... directly to the home of Mr. Barslow, where he at once became subject to the jurisdiction of physicians and nurses and "could not be seen." But as to the reasons for the insane dash in the dark the historian will look in vain. I am disposed now to think that our motives were entirely creditable; but for ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... haunt him in his dreams, but would never more be heard in waking life again! And by the dead babe, almost as utterly insensate, the poor mother had fallen in a merciful faint—the slandered, heart-pierced Nest! Owen struggled against the sickness that came over him, and busied himself in vain ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and unemployment. The claim that a low tariff is bad for the workers is made with peculiar success in any period when unemployment is greater than usual. It is vain in reply to show that again and again equally bad periods of unemployment have occurred when a high tariff was in force, and that often the most highly protected industries are most affected. It is vain to suggest that fluctuations of unemployment are related rather to the rhythm ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... running from all directions to see what was going on. The coachman, coming somewhat to himself, disencumbered himself of his coat and hat; and, encouraged by two or three of his brothers of the whip, showed some symptoms of fighting, endeavouring to close with his foe, but the attempt was vain, his foe was not to be closed with; he did not shift or dodge about, but warded off the blows of his opponent with the greatest sang-froid, always using the guard which I have already described, and putting in, in return, short chopping blows with the swiftness of lightning. In a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... hope came to the exhausted men that their fight might not be in vain. Though the buckling plates still thundered, though the floor under their feet still pitched at crazy angles, there was a "feel" in the fire-room that ribs and beams and rivets were not so ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... long been familiar with China and its civilization, Japan and Korea have only recently come out from their Oriental seclusion. In looking into the past of the former, in vain do we seek for any adequate explanation, anything which will reasonably account for that phenomenally endowed race which occupies the centre of the stage to-day; which, knowing absolutely nothing of our civilization forty years ago, has ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... placed him again on the tile in front of his house, but the mother has not noticed him. Once freed from the cares of a family, she has resumed her wandering life among the trees and along the roofs. In vain I have kept away from my window, to take from her every excuse for fear; in vain the feeble little bird has called to her with plaintive cries; his bad mother has passed by, singing and fluttering with a thousand airs and graces. Once only ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the universe were fantastic as the veriest heathen myths. The self-evolved feelings and impulses of a black-eyed nymph like Gnulemah were not likely to be orthodox. She was probably no better than a worshipper of vain delusions ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... hoarse. They wandered up and down in a vain search. All the time Curly and his prisoner sat in the brush and scarcely batted ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... brought the fortune-hunters and bites about me, as I have said before, to make a prey of me and my money; and, in short, I was harassed with lovers, beaux, and fops of quality, in abundance, but it would not do. I aimed at other things, and was possessed with so vain an opinion of my own beauty, that nothing less than the king himself was in my eye. And this vanity was raised by some words let fall by a person I conversed with, who was, perhaps, likely enough to have brought such ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... behind, in the sweltering heat, the whole way packed tight with ammunition and other wagons, through a dust that filled The Gully to the very brim, I felt dead tired after a hard day's work and the long tramp of yesterday, when we looked in vain for a site for a new advanced dressing station. The road seemed without end. As I neared "home" and came over the slight rise at our cemetery the moon rose through a slight haze over the classic Mount Ida, as a great blood-red ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... noise and riot; his eyes were red with fever and weariness, and his soul was sick within him, and the morning looked him in the face and upbraided him as a sister might have upbraided him, who loved him. And he said in his heart, as one had said of old, that all was vanity; that it was vain to live, and evil to have been born; that the day of death was better than the day of birth, and all was delusion, and love but a word, and life a lie. His footsteps on the road seemed to sound all through the sleeping world; and when he looked the morning in the face he was ashamed, and cursed the ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... had grown with each engagement; but the hopes of Holland fell with her admiral, Tromp, who received a mortal wound at a moment when he had succeeded in forcing the English line; and the skill and energy of his successor, De Ruyter, struggled in vain to restore her waning fortunes. She was saved by the expulsion of the Long Parliament, which had persisted in its demand for a political union of the two countries; and the new policy of Cromwell was seen in the conclusion ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... After various vain attempts to either solve or forget the torturing riddle, he saw no other course than to lay the problem before a detective agency. He accordingly put his case in the hands of an agent de la surete who was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... 'twould be your fate To add one star to royal state:— May regal smiles attend you! And should a noble monarch reign, You will not seek his smiles in vain, If ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... appeal to all natures. We can only understand Shakespeare by the Shakespeare that is within us—an oft quoted saying but a very true one; and Pan might pipe for ever to one who has no music in his soul; and the rainbow might arch itself in vain to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... culminated in a currency crisis in May. The currency was forced out of its fluctuation band as investors worried that the current account deficit, which reached nearly 8% of GDP in 1996, would become unsustainable. After expending $3 billion in vain to support the currency, the central bank let it float. The growing current account imbalance reflected a surge in domestic demand and poor export performance, as wage increases outpaced productivity. The government was forced to introduce two austerity packages later ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... door, a peasant sat at the table in a narrow, shabby smock-frock, with a huge rent on the shoulder. The sunlight fell in a narrow, yellowish streak through the dusty panes of the two small windows, but it seemed as if it struggled in vain with the habitual darkness of the room; all the objects in it were dimly, as it were, patchily lighted up. On the other hand, it was almost cool in the room, and the sense of stifling heat dropped off me like a weary load ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life and death are equal things, all should be brave enough to meet what all the dead have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and polluted by the heartless ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... a prayer. St. Petrox placed him at Bareppa, and condemned him to carry sacks of sand across the estuary of St. Looe and empty them at Porthleven until the beach was clean to the rocks. He laboured a long time at that work, but in vain, for the tide round Treawavas Head always carried the sand back again. His cries and wails disturbed the families of the fishermen, but a mischievous demon came along, and, seeing him carrying an enormous sack full of sand and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... though at first timidly, the arrogant pretension to rule them across the waves. Their environment gave them courage, made them hardy and self-dependent, enlightened their intelligence, weaned them from vain traditions, revealed to them the truth that man's birthright is liberty. And gradually, as the reins of tyranny were drawn tighter, these pioneers of the New Day were wrought up to the pitch of throwing off all allegiance, and setting their ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... voice" will no longer be silenced, then we are wont to commune with our own hearts. All barriers melt away, and the saddened past, the troubled present, and the shadowy future rise successively before us, and refuse to be put by. In vain we tightly close the aching lids; strange lurid lights flare around us, and mysterious forms glide to ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... distinguished from a journey have ever been fixed; at any rate, it seemed none of my business at Tours to settle the question. Therefore, though the making of excursions had been the purpose of my stay, I thought it vain, while I started for Bourges, to determine to which category that little expedition might belong. It was not till the third day that I returned to Tours; and the distance, traversed for the most ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... man whose history I have recounted represents the most priceless qualities of this formula. In the first place he possessed that quality the key to which the philosophers of all ages have sought in vain,—he had solved the problem of eternal youth. At the age of sixty-five his enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of an adolescent. His energy was the energy of an adolescent. Despite his gray hair and white beard, his mind was perennially young. ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... In vain did Adrienne smile and seek to divert him from the thoughts that besieged him—she was herself in a melancholy mood, without knowing why, and her endeavors were but wasted; if he abandoned the train of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... disconcerted by his sudden appearance before their town, and their rulers came out and prostrated themselves at the king's feet: "Dost thou desire it? it is life for us;—dost thou desire it? it is death;—dost thou desire it? what thy heart chooseth, that do to us!" But the appeal to his clemency was in vain; the alarm had been so great and the danger so pressing, that Assur-nazir-pal was pitiless. The town was handed over to the soldiery, all the treasure it contained was confiscated, and the women and children of the best families were made slaves; some of the ringleaders paid the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... him. The edifice of the natural state is tottering, its foundations shake, and a physical possibility seems at length granted to place law on the throne, to honour man at length as an end, and to make true freedom the basis of political union. Vain hope! The moral possibility is wanting, and the generous occasion finds an ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... the street their motorcar was not to be seen. In vain they looked and waited, but could see nothing of the car or the chauffeur. They returned to the shop and stood just inside the door, where they watched and ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... Cuba's isle, He brought the train along, To furnish Shatter's men the while They sang the "rifle song"; And but for him supplies were vain; They must be brought through sun and rain, By ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... made of the injustice and insolence of an enemy who seems to have been irritated by every one of the means which had been commonly used with effect to soothe the rage of intemperate power, the natural result would be, that the scabbard in which we in vain attempted to plunge our sword should have been thrown away with scorn. It would have been natural, that, rising in the fulness of their might, insulted majesty, despised dignity, violated justice, rejected supplication, patience ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... scraped together close upon a couple of hundred reprints of plays, which cost me from 6d to 2s a-piece. He said he would have no acting in his house. I pleaded it was only a bit of pastime; but it was all in vain, and what was more he threw all my books on the fire. This greatly disheartened me—I should be about 14 years old at this period;—but though my father burned my play-books he did not quell my ardent ambition to go on the stage. A few days after, a ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... vain a paynim foe Armed with fate the mighty blow: For when he fell, the Elfin queen, All in secret and unseen, O'er the fainting hero threw Her mantle of ambrosial blue, And bade her spirits bear him far, In Merlin's agate-axled car, To her ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... men; this has been recognised at all times and in all places. The English are noted for their cruelty [Footnote: I am aware that the English make a boast of their humanity and of the kindly disposition of their race, which they call "good-natured people;" but in vain do they proclaim this fact; no one else says it of them.] while the Gaures are the gentlest of men. [Footnote: The Banians, who abstain from flesh even more completely than the Gaures, are almost as gentle ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... to join in the thoughtless generalizations about the obtuseness of the Alpine peasant which have disfigured some of the literature of climbing. These climbers have shown infinitely greater obtuseness before Alpine realities than the peasants derided by them. True, a star may compete in vain with a cheese in suggesting visions of joy, but our supercilious climbers forget that their admiration of nature's marvels is generally built up on a substratum of cheese—or the equivalent of cheese—plentifully supplied by the labour of others. There is another ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... named as one of the many who helped to deliver mankind from the thralldom of scholasticism. But any account of what he really was, what he did to immortalize his name, and to gain that prominent position among his own countrymen which he has occupied to the present day, we should look for in vain even in the most complete and systematic treatises on the history of philosophy published in Germany. Nor does this arise from any wish to depreciate the results of English speculation in general. On the contrary, we find that Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are treated with great ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Vain would be all attempts to convey the horror which thrilled the gathering spectators of this piteous tragedy. It was known to the crowd that one person had, by some accident, escaped the general massacre: but she ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... was plenty of it to be had in San Bernardino. But the purchase of a wagon suitable for the purpose was at present out of their power; the utmost Aunt Ri had hoped to accomplish was to have, at the end of a year, a sufficient sum laid up to buy one. They had tried in vain to exchange their heavy emigrant-wagon for one suitable for light work. "'Pears like I'd die o' shame," said Aunt Ri, "sometimes when I ketch myself er thinkin' what luck et's ben to Jos, er gettin' thet Injun's hosses an' waggin. But ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Christian experience, and then with an awful, though kindly, solemnity of speech and manner said, "Harriet, do you feel that if the universe should be destroyed (awful pause) you could be happy with God alone?" After struggling in vain, in her mental bewilderment, to fix in her mind some definite conception of the meaning of the sounds which fell on her ear like the measured strokes of a bell, the child of ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... divides with the Tower of Babel the shame, or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great edifices, built with "brick for stone." This was the inscription on ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... torn him to pieces on the spot had not the tribunes summoned him before the Comitia of the Tribes. Coriolanus himself breathed nothing but defiance; and his kinsmen and friends interceded for him in vain. He was condemned to exile. He now turned his steps to Antium, the capital of the Volscians, and offered to lead them against Rome. Attius Tullius, king of the Volscians, persuaded his countrymen to appoint Coriolanus their general. Nothing could ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... hissed in its fierce hatred and anger. Then Dot saw that the Kookooburra's big beak had a firm hold of the Snake by the back of the neck, and that it was trying to fly upwards with its enemy. In vain the dreadful creature tried to bite the gallant bird; in vain it hissed and stuck out its wicked little spiky tongue; in vain it tried to coil itself round the bird's body; the Kookooburra was too strong and too clever to lose its hold, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... under as many different Administrations. Six States, formed on such territory, are now in the Union. Every branch of this Government, during a period of more than fifty years, has participated in these transactions. To question their validity now, is vain. As was said by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, in the American Insurance Company v. Canter, (1 Peters, 542,) "the Constitution confers absolutely on the Government of the Union the powers of making ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... paid at a rate which puts it within the reach of the poor. On the other hand, those great people who are called artists, not artisans, who labour only for the rich and idle, put a fancy price on their trifles; and as the real value of this vain labour is purely imaginary, the price itself adds to their market value, and they are valued according to their costliness. The rich think so much of these things, not because they are useful, but because they are beyond the reach of the poor. Nolo habere bona, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... weary of writing. My health, indeed, was being greatly undermined, and suffering was become my daily solace! Often I could not stand when lifted off my camel. Sometimes I was senseless for an hour or two after we had encamped. I expected "to get used to it." Vain thought! I was just as tired and stiff with riding the last day as the first day when I started on the tour, besides having my health and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Duke of Monmouth have then foreseen that fatal day, twenty years later, when he crossed the road from Salisbury again like a hunted animal in his vain endeavour to reach the shelter of the New Forest; and still less, perhaps, could his father have foreseen that Antony Etricke, whom he had made Recorder of Poole, would be the man before whom his hapless son was taken to be ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... d'Orange, all palm-plumed and wood-wrapped, trends seaward and southward. And every night, after the stars come out, I see moving lights there,—lantern fires guiding the mountain-dwellers home; but I look in vain for the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... prove that Zopyrus, on his part, well understood how to return his royal friend's kindness. After the death of Cambyses, Babylon revolted from the Persian empire. Darius besieged the city nine months in vain, and was about to raise the siege, when one day Zopyrus appeared before him bleeding, and deprived of his ears and nose, and explained that he had mutilated himself thus in order to cheat the Babylonians, who knew him well, as he had formerly been on intimate terms with their daughters. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sigh. The burdens of distress Weigh on us all. E'en from the natal hour The purest soul some hidden cares oppress, O'ertasking far our vain and feeble power. Clouds o'er each mountain summit ever lower, And gloom enwraps each hushed and quiet vale: Bright eyes grow dim, each rosy cheek grows pale, For change is earth's inevitable dower. Then ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... life seems filled to the uttermost, and yet there are people who make their way everywhere. Soeren did not belong to this class. He sought in vain for the extra work on which he and Marie had reckoned as a vague but ample source of income. Nor had his good connections availed him aught. There are always plenty of people ready to help young men of promise who can help themselves; ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... while a hasty storm passed over, refreshing themselves with the liquor, and moralizing somewhat in the strain of the poem. I question whether Wordsworth's pedlar could have spoken more to the purpose. But all these excitations would, I confess, have spent their artillery in vain against the woolpack of my imagination; and after well considering the scene, I could not help looking at my companion with surprise: to me, the triumph of true genius seemed never more conspicuous, than ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... vain; he was drawn, against his will, to a house where an habitual criminal whom his lordship had let loose upon society was engaged in preparing ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... strong one who would fight with him? Behold the adversary has a buckler, a battle-axe, and an armful of javelins." Then I drew him to the attack; I turned aside his arrows, and they struck the ground in vain. One drew near to the other, and he fell on me, and then I shot him. My arrow fastened in his neck, he cried out, and fell on his face: I drove his lance into him, and raised my shout of victory on his back. While all the men of the land rejoiced, I, and his vassals whom he had oppressed, ...
— Egyptian Literature
... of command the dog rushed forward; the covey rose with a mighty whir, and the hunter fired both barrels, and the dog looked in vain for a dead bird, and then ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... nothing could happen to him. A nice sense of duty would no doubt have taken him back to his post in order fully to earn the sovereign which had been paid to him for his services as temporary waiter; but the voice of Duty called to him in vain. If the British aristocracy desired refreshments let them get them for themselves—and like it! He ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... I was lying in my own berth aboard the ship. I felt weak, faint, and dizzy, and strove in vain to collect my thoughts sufficiently to remember what had happened. My state-room door was open, and I perceived that the sun's rays were shining brightly through the sky-light upon the cabin-table, at which sat Capt. Hopkins, overhauling the medicine-chest, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of an innocent and unspotted lamb. But here St. Peter explains the Scripture,—for this though so short is an exceedingly rich Epistle,—since as soon as he had spoken of their vain course in the traditions of the fathers, he finds much instruction for us in the prophets—as in the prophet Jer. xvi.: "The heathen shall come to you from the end of the world, and say, our fathers ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... who had been unstable, she who was the chameleon? A queer sensation which had been hers before, and which she was to know more than once in days to follow, mastered her. It seemed that within her, coexistent and for ever in conflict, there were two Glorias: a girl who was very young, spoiled, vain, and selfish; a girl who was older, who looked above and beyond the confines of her own self, who was warmhearted and impulsive, and could be generous. There was the Gloria who was the product of her mother's teaching and pampering; ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... bundles. The meeting was sudden, and before either realized it a collision ensued and both were sliding down hill, a grand ensemble—the thin man underneath, the fat woman and bundles on top. When the bottom was reached and the woman was trying in vain to recover her breath and her feet, these faint words were ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... whatever. It is righteousness—not of words, not of theories, but in being, that is, in vital action, which alone is the prince of the power of the spirit. Where that is, everything has its perfect work; where that is not, the man is not a power—is but a walker in a vain show. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Call it not vain; they do not err, Who say, that, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshiper, ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... Reformed religion attracted him; he studied the Scriptures in their original languages, and the writings of the fathers and schoolmen. Unhappily his perverse and self-reliant spirit led him into grievous errors with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity. In vain the gentle Reformer Oecolampadius at Basle reasoned with him. He must needs disseminate his opinions in a book entitled De Trinitatis Erroribus, which has handed the name of Servetus down to posterity ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... unfinished works, and in the construction of fresh monuments which he proposed to build up out of the vast store of material accumulated in his industrious brain. The literary record of his life in Rome shows that this was no vain saying. He was at work on the later chapters of the De Vita Propria up to the last weeks of his life; and, scattered about these, there are records of his work of correction and revising. While telling of the books he has lately been engaged with, he wanders off in the same sentence to talk of ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... somebody. It is but a few weeks since one of the most celebrated physicians in the country wrote to me from a great centre of medical education to know if I had the works of Sanctorius, which he had tried in vain to find. I could have lent him the "Medicina Statica," with its frontispiece showing Sanctorius with his dinner on the table before him, in his balanced chair which sunk with him below the level of his banquet-board ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... something of a favourite with the mistress, whom she amused with her little airs, and pleased with her winning manners. She was now about fourteen, a half-blown beauty of the red and white, gold and blue kind. She had long been a vain little thing, approving of her own looks in the glass, and taking much interest in setting them off, but so simple as to make no attempt at concealing her self-satisfaction. Her pleased contemplation of this or that portion ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... got round the cape, great was our joy to find a fine ship in the bay. It was not far off from us, for we could see the ENG-LISH flag float in the breeze from one of its masts. I seek in vain to find words by means of which I can set forth in print what I then felt. Both Fritz and I fell on our knees and gave thanks to God that He had thus led the ship to our coast. If I had not held ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... was that she had not broken her word, that she had fulfilled the very letter of their bargain. There had been no crying out, no vain appeal to the past, no attempt at temporizing or evasion. She had marched straight ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... put it in his pocket-book, he stretched his hand to the chair beside the bed on which lay his clothes. Then came a gap in his consciousness, and the next thing he knew was the pocket-book in his hand, with the memory or the dream, he could not afterwards tell which, of having searched it in vain. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... found that the ordinary methods of destroying the tiger had been tried again and again without success. Cattle and goats had been tied up, and the native shikaris had taken their posts in trees close by, and had watched all night; but in vain. Spring traps and deadfalls had also been tried, but the tiger seemed absolutely indifferent to the attractions of their baits, and always on the lookout for snares. The attempts made at a dozen villages near the jungle had all ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... evidence of a struggle I looked in vain, but the nature of my companion's investigation was more obscure. Again the whole of his attention seemed to be directed upon the wall, the window-ledges ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... with the officers. Every one was eager to fight for the honour of France in Canada. One officer actually offered his whole fortune to another, in hopes of getting this other's place for service in Canada. But in vain. France had parasites at court, plenty of them. But the French troops who went out were patriots almost to a man. The only exception was in the case we have noticed before, when 400 riff-raff were sent out to take the places ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... high overhead towards the mountains, uttered an ominous "caw"; another crow answered, and there was silence again. The branches dropped, and the leaves hung out at the end of long stems. One could not help pitying the trees, though one knew one's pity was vain. ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... attention of his mistresses, he had come to inquire into the situation. When he found the justification of his gloomiest apprehensions, he nosed obstinately up to Constance, and would not be put off. In vain Constance told him at length that he was interfering with the treatment. In vain Sophia ordered him sharply to go away. He would not listen to reason, being furious with jealousy. He got his foot ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... a petition which was signed by 35,000 adult male Uitlanders, as great a number probably as the total Boer male population of the country. A small liberal body in the Raad supported this memorial and endeavoured in vain to obtain some justice for the new-comers. Mr. Jeppe was the mouthpiece of this select band. 'They own half the soil, they pay at least three-quarters of the taxes,' said he. 'They are men who in capital, energy, and education are at least our equals. What will become of us or our children ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... invisible to the eye—in one word, life—all, all life, completing the dreary round imposed upon it, has died out at last. A thousand years have passed since the earth last bore a living creature on her breast, and the unhappy moon now lights her lamp in vain. No longer are the cries of storks heard in the meadows, or the drone of beetles in the groves of limes. All is cold, cold. All is void, void, void. All is terrible, terrible—[A pause] The bodies of all living creatures have dropped to dust, and eternal matter has ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... of having a better dinner, a warmer coat, a carriage to shelter me from the weather, and to transport me from place to place without fatigue.' But the man who asks him for that fine blue ribbon would say, if he had the courage and the honesty to speak as he feels, 'I am vain, and it will give me great satisfaction to see people look at me, as I pass, with an eye of stupid admiration, and make way for me; I wish, when I enter a room, to produce an effect, and to excite the attention of those who may, perhaps, laugh ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... answered the physician. "It may be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due effect. Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England's gratitude, could ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and several Englishmen are amongst the victims." No names are given. Good gracious! If TOM has indeed perished, how am I ever to forgive myself for neglecting him? What must he have thought of me? I curse myself in vain for my—bah! What is the use of telling you this? The same paper informs me, in the elegant language appropriate to these occasions, that "Mr. FIGTREE, Q.C., has been offered, and has accepted, the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... little light literature, and what there was had few readers. Their appeals for redress of grievances, whether addressed to the State or to the Company, which pretended to look after their welfare, were alike in vain, and at length they rose in open revolt. Half a dozen of them, headed by Roger Ward and John Wolf, boldly printed the books owned by the patentees. Roger Ward seized upon this A B C of Day's, and at a secret ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... morning of the 17th, when, being almost within cannon shot of the town, having (p. 103) everything in readiness for a descent, a very severe gale of wind came on, and being directly contrary, obliged us to bear away, after having in vain endeavoured for some time to withstand its violence. The gale was so severe that one of the prizes that had been taken on the 14th sunk to the bottom, the crew being with difficulty saved. As the alarm by this time had reached Leith by means of a cutter that had watched our motions ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... sufferer's nostrils, and tried to rouse her mind by exciting her anger. But all was in vain. There hung the betrayed wife, pale, crushed, and quivering under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... "since I am very vain and moderately rich, I hereby commission you to paint me, just as soon as you ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... yourselves up as if it were brazen serpents, to hiss with your tongues, and to smite with your stings, bow yourselves down to your native dust, and acknowledge that yours have been the thoughts of ignorance, and the words of vain foolishness. Lo! ye are caught in your own snare, and your own pit hath yawned for you. Turn, then, aside from the task that is too heavy for you; destroy not your teeth by gnawing a file; waste not your strength ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Marquise, worldly, light, and vain, whom adversity had not broken, and could not sour; an Abbe, bland and double, but gentle and kindly in his way; a soldier, volatile, hot-headed, brave as a lion, simple as a child; an older man, sad, sneering, indifferent to this world ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... within you," had a new meaning for me. Not in the past or in the future, but now and here is Heaven within us. All our duties lie in this world and in the present, and trying impatiently to peer into that which lies beyond is as vain ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... sometimes failed, we sometimes won; we always faced them—we had to. Consequently we have some friends who are better than all the wives in Mahomet's paradise, and when I have asked for help in the making of this book I have never never asked in vain. Talk of ex-soldiers: give me ex-antarcticists, unsoured and with their ideals intact: they could sweep ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard |
