Sentence Examples:
I saw Angelica, but her form seemed to be dissolving away indistinctly in a trembling radiance, and I strove in vain to hold it fast before me.
Surely you must be aware that your pretensions are vain, and that even if you disable, or slay me, your presence will be more than ever distasteful.
Vain threats and denunciations would not bring back the stolen money, and, to Teddy, this was more important than "squaring himself" with Skip.
Efforts had been made to rescue him, the engines had been reversed, boats put out and life-buoys thrown into the water, but all in vain.
Henry showed no haste to question her, he only gazed searchingly into her face; but it was in vain, she remained calm beneath his glance.
With piteous words, she wept and begged for freedom, but all in vain; her words only increased the hardness of her captor's heart.
This anxiety increased when, turning into the most picturesque bay I ever saw, my eyes sought in vain for the vestige of a human habitation.
The Turks beat upon its ramparts in vain; they were flung back from its walls like ocean waves from the cliffs of a rocky coast.
Many times, during the past years, he had wakened from curious dreams that in the light of day he had tried in vain to interpret.
Men never wash properly: they either half do it or else beat to pieces whatever they may be washing in the vain endeavor to properly purify it.
Without a single personal attraction, she was inordinately vain, forever striving by her dress and conduct to invite attention from the other sex.
His dishes were generally plain and according to the season, but he dearly loved a goose, and was vain of his dexterity in carving it.
It was in vain that I explained to these afflicted people that spleen-disease required a long course of medicine, and could not be cured in a day.
The nurse's hope was in vain, however, so the staff quickly ushered me into the X-ray room again to complete what work they had begun.
The whole of the unhappy family cast themselves at his feet, and touching the ground with their foreheads, implored mercy, but in vain.
Had they entered upon a political career, I am quite sure that they would have served their Prince faithfully, without pride and without vain ostentation.
If the sound-waves were absolutely without influence upon the light, this could not have occurred, and all our artifices would then, too, be in vain.
"Oh, well," returned the sleepy father, sitting up and, rubbing his eyes vigorously in a vain effort to get all the sleepiness out of them.
Oh, that impalpable and formidable obstacle, against which all his efforts hurled themselves in vain, that obstacle built up of silence and oblivion!
Weak are we to resist the attraction of evils that lurk about the way of goodness; and we are conscious that we walk in a vain show.
Geoffrey, a tall, athletic Englishman, looked over the surging sea of French heads, and looked in vain for a quarter to which he could beat a retreat.
At the dead lips of the Sphinx you listen in vain, but beneath a Big Tree the ages speak and the centuries shift their scenes.
Peter, knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers.
We can imagine the revulsion of feeling which drove the blood to the king's heart as he instantly felt that he had sinned in vain.
Every day Harriet tried to supplant her, or, rather, to get back her old position, but every single day she tried in vain.
A careful survey of the roadway was not in vain, for soon they saw wide tracks of automobile tires which possessed a very odd tread.
Even under ordinary circumstances, the father's influence over a boy yet in childhood is exerted in vain, if the mother lend herself to baffle it.
He used all his rhetoric to comfort her; but it was in vain to think of removing her sorrow, which was rather heightened than diminished.
When all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their watch by the head-stone.
After a vain attempt to cut off the English archers, the Scots closed in a hand-to-hand conflict, and fought under a deadly hail of arrows.
It is then not an amusement, but a pretentious and useless display, whose highest reward is the shallow applause of the idle and the vain.
Achilles, when the mist cleared away, looked round in vain for his adversary, and acknowledging the prodigy, turned his arms against other champions.
She bent her graceful head over Yvonne's, and made the first real sacrifice that life had demanded from an essentially strong if inordinately vain temperament.
To Goldsmith has been imputed a vain ambition to shine in company; it is also said that he regarded with envy all literary fame but his own.
He looks around him as the storm of resentment seems ready to burst forth: his wrinkled brow and haggard face in vain ask for sympathy.
Students too frequently expend much time almost entirely in vain, from want of attention to this truth, trite and commonplace as it may be deemed.
And when night darkens, and you return to the castle, white and weary, in vain I seek in the game-bag the spoils of the chase.
He was somewhat vain of his success and somewhat piqued by the social neglect which he had suffered at the hands of the "old families."
In vain the unfortunate dupes protested that the report was obviously false, asking that further inquiries should be made before reprisals were carried into effect.
His consort in vain urged him with tears not to set foot outside the palace, as though she too had sad presage of her destiny.
When such was the state of affairs, defense was vain, and on the 5th of June a capitulation was concluded on the hardest of terms.
The Elegant Ella was, by nature, self-centered and vain; and though a good-natured little girl, she was not very dependable in the household.
She says that they were foolish, condescending, proud, vain, and pompous, yet she admits that they were charitable and considerate of their neighbors.
In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is.
And then, as he had this time disquieted himself in vain, who could tell if perhaps his other fears might vanish in the same way?
Whilst employed in this vain attempt, the keepers took the opportunity of fastening the door, and securing him once more in his place of confinement.
Accordingly, this wretched old man was put to the rack, and, while undergoing the horrible infliction, was examined by Bacon, but in vain.
It is cant to insist that we must reverence such women, any more than we would reverence covetous, cold, sensual, lazy, vain or cowardly men.
Achilles, when the mist cleared away, looked round in vain for his adversary, and acknowledging the prodigy, turned his arms against other champions.
Nothing can be more absurd than the vain harangues by which common-place consolation is offered to those who mourn a wife, a child, a friend.
She was a vain, silly creature, who looked like a big wax doll, and in less than a year Archie discovered that she was faithless.
When the great light drew within the door of his wigwam, the people in the village looked in vain for the coming of their children.
The expectant peace party, waiting for the message in vain, were to believe that the Americans had scornfully refused to hear their prayer for peace.
Thad thereupon obediently gave a fresh tug, but all in vain; his head remained stuck between the bars like a cow's in the patent stalls.
She has been playing fast and loose with her lovers, deluding them, for these three years past, with vain hopes and false promises.
Every possible effort was made to save the unfortunate pleasure- seekers, but in vain; they disappeared from view long before a boat could reach them.
Many were the attempts made to entrap or destroy her, but in vain; for more than six months she eluded the vigilance of her pursuers.
Before the wild echoes had rung through the vault, the hysterical girls were tearing at the hard walls, trying in vain to dislodge a nugget.
Every day would see her and her uncle before the parlor window blundering over the harp-strings, often in vain attempts to puzzle out an accompaniment.
Let none there make a vain show and ostentation of their riches but fear lest they should thereby bring on themselves the vengeance of heaven.
One may listen in vain for a note of alertness in their response; the heard notes will not echo the smallest zest for any enterprise.
The most excellent of our good men do their best to man our ships, with the assistance of all possible external appliances; but in vain.
In vain did Frederick adopt every manner, by caressing amiability, and by provoking sneers, by unexpected questions, by feigned indifference, and oblique threats.
Its object had been chiefly to intimidate, for no man ever sued in vain for mercy from Maximilian, whose clemency and magnanimity were well known.
In vain, therefore, does its splendid physiognomy, completely human, give such promise of a sense of humor as a face in repose can be expected to give.
In vain, now that the temptation had departed, he sat and waited for its reappearance, half cursing himself for having broken the spell.
He had in vain tried to follow the rascals up, although he had received several letters offering to compromise the matter for a certain amount.
Rocket jets were set roaring at full capacity in a vain effort to break the wreck away from the deadly vicinity of the circling asteroid.
I endeavored, in vain, to lead the conversation back to the sudden impulse which the simple act of dismounting had given to both our hearts.
"I was a beastly cad," he fumed, kicking the covering down to the foot, and rolling out with the vain attempt to find some diversion.
And I should be sorry, indeed, to see my little girl so spoiled by all this silly flattery as to grow up conceited and vain.
With a cry of horror I sprang forward in a vain attempt to save the life that for two years I would so gladly have seen extinguished.
Without a real and popular criticism of contemporary work as a preliminary and basis, the criticism and circulation of the classics is quite manifestly vain.
It may have been before the moon came over the snowy mountains, or it may not have been till the worn-out stars in vain repelled the daybreak.
Matthew Arnold, paraphrasing Joubert's description of Plato, has characterized him as 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.'
Rex reddened and hurried away from her out of the hall door, leaving her to the miserable consciousness of having made herself disagreeable in vain.
Many were the attempts made to entrap or destroy her, but in vain: for more than six months she eluded the vigilance of her pursuers.
The order was obeyed, and one moment of suspense followed, in the vain hope of hearing the huge frame of Lawton tumbling from his steed.
Even now the patriot party in the governing common council was in the minority; an attempt to induce it to join the insurrection was in vain.
In the vacation of 1729, he was seized with the darkest despondency, which he tried to alleviate by violent exercise and other means, but in vain.
I was awakened by convulsive starts, and in vain sought again for quiet slumber; the same images filled my mind, diversified in a thousand horrid forms.
The purport was, that we should keep at a comfortable distance from the enemy, and keep up a vain parade of annoying them by detachment ...
The petitioner asks redress for the injury so atrocious and so aggravated; and, as far as my voice goes, he shall not ask it in vain.
Muttered the corporal, once more knocking his head: but he knocked in vain; like an empty house, there was no one within to answer the appeal.
Whether he succeeded or failed, it would be vain to hunt through his works to find a single epithet in which he mentioned them with contempt.
It would have been equally vain and imprudent to have resisted or irritated such a body of men, he, therefore, affected to comply with their demands.
He tried in vain to find some edible roots, and was at length reduced to the necessity of chewing grass and the pith of alder trees.
This poor fellow piteously begged of the doctor to try and extend his life so that he could die a free man; but all in vain!
For a moment Raymond's head seemed to swim, and then his nerves steadied themselves, and he wondered if he might not be disquieting himself in vain.
Only he was irritated and alarmed by the abiding sense of some surrounding danger, which stayed with him, which he fought against in vain.
It had those false, difficult smiles of uneasy gaiety, and the pitiful graces which attempt a fascination that the hurrying years have rendered vain.
Even Polish insurrections never led to any more active measures on the part of the Western powers than delusive expressions of sympathy and equally vain remonstrances.
As the light of the sun gradually faded away, the little band of colonists tried to quicken their pace, but they tried in vain.
Blessed is the soul which, at the hour of its separation from the body, is sanctified from the vain imaginings of the peoples of the world.
Nay, my feeling is more violent than pity; and I count it nothing less than blasphemy so to take the name of the country in vain.
After remonstrating in vain against their violations, I told them I was a prince of the house of Judah, and demanded an audience with their sovereign.
He gathered me in his arms, kissed me and lamented over me, and denounced ferocious threats against "Medusa;" while I in vain tried to stop him.
Blessed is the soul which, at the hour of its separation from the body, is sanctified from the vain imaginings of the peoples of the world.
Others, as a direct result of a vain and feeble resistance to its rise in the initial stages of its development, have died out and been utterly discredited.
At the same time she attracted him; he was vain of what had seemed his conquest, and uneasily exultant in the thought of her immense fortune.