"Vain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen, Courteous Reader, how that those married people, who are but indifferently gifted with temporal means, indeavour to puff up each other with vain and airy hopes and imaginations, perswading themselves that all the troubles, vexations, and bondages of the married estate; are nothing else but Mirths, Delights and Pleasures; perhaps to no other end but to mitigate their ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... more the mighty thoats bore their terrible riders against the ramparts of the enemy. At the same moment the battle line of Helium surged over the opposite breastworks of the Zodangans and in another moment they were being crushed as between two millstones. Nobly they fought, but in vain. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... board an American merchant ship to look for English sailors, they adopt one easy rule, viz.—they select the stoutest, most hardy, and healthy looking men, and swear that they are Englishmen. After they have selected one of these fine fellows, it is in vain that he produces his protection, or any other evidence of his American birth ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Mr. Frog said would have annoyed some people a good deal, for he had just the same as told the stranger that he had a long, sharp nose. But luckily it happened that the newcomer was very vain both of the length and the sharpness of his bill. So he liked Mr. Frog's comment. And he promptly forgot his displeasure over Mr. ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... that we are alike?" Rachel asked feebly, looking in vain for any sign of a quizzical ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... original and national and, like that of Greece, owes little to foreign sources; and that it began in the heathen age, before Christian or Romantic influences had touched Iceland. Valuable as the early Christian poetry of England is, we look in vain there for the humour, the large-minded simplicity of motive, the suggestive character-drawing, the swift dramatic action, which are as conspicuous in many poems in the Edda as ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... they are to appear, are required to be clean and decent when they go to public prayers in their mosques; but are yet forbidden to appear there in sumptuous apparel, particularly clothes trimmed with gold or silver, lest they should make them vain and arrogant. The women are not allowed to be in their mosques at the same time with the men; this they think would make their thoughts wander from their proper business there. On this account they reproach the Christians with the impropriety of the contrary usage. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... butchery—the print of the naked foot—all, all were explained; and the chain, the broken link of which was found near the slaughtered animals—it came from his broken chain—the chain he had snapped, doubtless, in his escape from the asylum where his raging frenzy had been fettered and bound, in vain! in vain! Ah me! how had this grisly Samson broken manacles and prison bars—how had he eluded guardian and keeper and a hostile world, and come hither on his wild way, hunted like a beast of prey, and snatching his hideous banquet like a beast of prey, too! Yes, through the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... were landed. In vain strove the British to pass: Rochambeau our armies commanded, Our ships they were led by De Grasse. Morbleu! How I rattled the drumsticks The day we march'd into Yorktown; Ten thousand of beef-eating British Their weapons ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the basis of political prosperity. There is much advantage in the harmonious succession of ranks and orders and classes, in which the suffrages of the knights and the senators have their due weight. Too many have foolishly desired to destroy this institution, in the vain hope of receiving some new largess, by a public decree, out of a distribution of the property of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... apology, or even to observe his displeasure. Again he touched a few wild notes, and, raising his looks upward, seemed to be on the very point of bursting forth into a tide of song similar to those with which this master of his art was wont to enchant his hearers. But the effort was in vain—he declared that his right hand was withered, and pushed the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... all, you mayn't be over the Atlantic, but in London itself! Donne would have told me: but I don't like to trouble him with Questions, or writing of any sort. If you be in London, you will hear somehow of all this matter: if in America, my Letter won't go in vain. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... Michael lorded it over the kinky-head. Kwaque possessed overwhelmingly the slave-nature, while in Michael there was little more of the slave-nature than was found in the North American Indians when the vain attempt was made to make them into slaves on the plantations of Cuba. All of which was no personal vice of Kwaque or virtue of Michael. Michael's heredity, rigidly selected for ages by man, was chiefly composed of fierceness and faithfulness. And fierceness and faithfulness, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... skirmishes, but I never have witnessed such slaughter and such wild fighting as the British storm of Ticondaroga. We became mixed up—Highlanders, Grenadiers, Light Troops, Rangers and all, and we beat against that mass of logs and maze of fallen timber and we beat in vain. I was once carried right up to the breastwork, but we were stopped by the bristling mass of sharpened branches, while the French fire swept us front and flank. The ground was covered deep with dying men, and as I think it over now I can remember nothing but the fruit bourne ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... afraid,' he said, in his quizzing way; 'it is not everyone who is allowed to uphold the ark. Many a wise man has attacked Luther, and what has been effected? The Pope curses, the emperor threatens; there are prisons, confiscations, faggots; and all is vain. What can a poor pigmy like ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... wrenching free some of the bricks. He strained and panted, till it seemed as though the tendons of his body must break, but the wall remained whole and the slit unpassable; and then he gave way, almost childishly, to his passion of rage, and shouted insults and threats at Rad el Moussa in the vain hope that some one would hear and carry them. And some one did hear, though ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... intended to form a work of direction and guidance for a young man in the performance of his duty towards the society in which he lived and towards his God. It is only fair to say that the reader will look in vain in them for the advice which is found in writings of a similar character composed at a later period; but as a work intended to demonstrate the "whole duty of man" to the youth of the time when the Great Pyramid was still a new building, these "precepts" are very remarkable. The idea of God held by ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... the romantic school of Germany—Tieck, Novalis, Jean Paul Richter. . . . The mystic and romantic school of Germany lost itself in the Middle Ages, was overpowered by their influence, came to ruin by its vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a far profounder sense of the mystic and romantic charm of the Middle Age than Goerres, or Brentano, or Arnim; Heine, the chief romantic poet of Germany, is yet also much more than a romantic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... his own generosity. His vanity, however, did not come from an increasing admiration of his own personal appearance, a weakness which often belongs to middle age; but from the study of his so-called philosophy, which in time became an obsession with him. In vain the occasional college professors, who spent summer months at St. Saviour's, sought to interest him in science and history, for his philosophy had large areas of boredom; but science marched over ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... small disturbing note in the music of the spheres. Barrett's mention of Phineas Everton as one of our nearest neighbors disquieted me vaguely. It was quite in vain that I reasoned that in all human probability Everton would fail to identify the bearded man of twenty-eight with the schoolboy he had known ten or twelve years earlier. He had taught only one year in the Glendale High School, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... the weapons, and the elk was halted in his course. He tried to come on, but in vain, and slowly swayed from side to side. Then he tried to retreat, but it was too late. With a snort he went over, kicking up big clods of grass as he did so. Then he gave a shiver and breathed ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... like the drawing of a match across a stone; then a faint bit of glimmer flickered a moment. I couldn't see where they were. I bent forward a little, in vain. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Germain, after he had tried in vain to catch her, "here we are on foot, and it would do us no good if we should find the right road, for we should have to cross the river on foot; and when we see how full of water these roads are, we can ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... book was published at the psychological moment, it was written with no reference to any post-revolution spirit. For Artsybashev composed his novel in 1903, when he was twenty-four years old. He tried in vain to induce publishers to print it, and fortunately for him, was obliged to wait until 1907, when the time happened to be ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... for the purpose of plunder. With other things they carried off one of the children of the family, a girl several years old. The family was sorely distressed, and every possible effort was made to rescue the child. But all in vain. Many years after, when the poor little girl's father and mother were both dead, her surviving brother and sister heard of her. They felt satisfied they had been correctly informed, and resolved to go to see her, and if possible try to get her back to live with ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... rose high above the mist, shone down upon the crowded decks of the schooner, her white sails glistening as the land was left behind, with Poole and Fitz Burnett using the glass in turn to watch the mouth of the little river; but they watched in vain, for there was no sign of enemy hurrying to the bank, nothing to disturb the peace and beauty of ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... short note to his father, saying that he would reach London about midnight next day and asking him to invite Aunt Susan to lunch on Tuesday. Then he waited in vain for sight of Cynthia until, driven to extremes by tea-time, he got one of the maids to take her a verbal message, in which he stated that the climb to the summit of the Yat could be ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... are the best as they do not cut the shoulder in the same way as webbing. I once hunted a great many London shops in vain for a Rucksack with leather shoulder straps. They all had thin webbing, which soon turns into a wisp and hurts the muscles of the shoulder. The leather straps should finish on a ring at the top which should be attached to the top of the Rucksack ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... dark night and the darker weather he went straightway to search for them, with as many boats and folk as he could get together. They sailed and searched in every direction, and it was in vain. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... advertised for a cook—in vain! And ranch life, in consequence, began to lose colour and coherence. Even the animals suffered: the dogs, the chickens, and in particular the tame piglet, who hung disconsolate about the kitchen door watching, and perchance praying, for the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... denominations, in order that in the social features of the day its real significance may not be lost sight of, but fervent prayers may be offered to the Most High for a continuance of the Divine Guidance without which man's efforts are vain, and for Divine consolation to those whose kindred and friends have sacrificed their ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... four years is barely sufficient time in which to gain a satisfactory insight into their various departments. For a person, however gifted, to hope to receive an adequate medical training in two or three years is vain. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... more they smell." They fear lest we should unsettle the minds of the many for whom these evils will never be mended; lest we make them discontented; discontented with their houses, their occupations, their food, their whole social arrangements; and all in vain. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... sniff with greedy longing at the appetizing aroma. Growing desperate, the prowler would dig down, through perhaps three feet of snow, till he reached the stony roof of the house. On this he would tear and scratch furiously, but in vain. Nothing less than a pick-axe would break through that stony defence; and the beavers, perhaps dimly aware of the futile assault upon their walls, would go on calmly nibbling birch-sticks ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... added to his rage. Again he flew with his sword at the corporal, and again he was met with the besoms in his face. He caught one with his hand, and he was knocked back with the other. He attempted to cut them in two with his sword, but in vain. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... and is said to have quite a number of valuable qualities, branching freely and producing an abundance of good grain and straw. It is however, sensitive to cold winters in some degree and thereby limited in its distribution. Hallett, the celebrated English wheat-breeder, tried in vain to improve the peculiar qualities of this ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... it came to pass that when those Lamanites who had gone to war against the Nephites had found, after their many struggles to destroy them, that it was in vain to seek their destruction, they returned again ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... on account of her 'dirty mind'—when a certain nobleman can get no honest labourers to work on his estate, because they suspect him of 'rooking' young college lads;—and when a church in a seaport town stands empty every Sunday, with its bells ringing in vain, because the congregation which should fill it, know that their so-called 'holy man' is a rascal! All over the world this rebellion against Falsehood,—this movement towards Truth is felt,—all over the world the people ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... secret room in it, only known to two or at most three individuals, at the same time, who are bound not to reveal it, unless to their successors in the secret. It has been frequently the object of search with the inquisitive, but the search has been in vain. There are no records of the castle prior to the tenth century, when it is first noticed in connection with the death of Malcolm II. in 1034. Tradition says that he was murdered in this castle, and in a room which is still pointed out, in the centre of the principal tower; and that ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... his last piece of work, in the vain endeavour to complete which he exposed himself to his old enemy, influenza, I shall give several letters of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... imagine; therefore treat me as a gentleman and a customer, and serve me with what I call for. Keep your impertinent repartees and impudent behaviour for the coxcombs that swarm round your bar, and make you so vain of your blown carcass.' And indeed, I believe the insolence of this creature will ruin her master at last, by driving away men of sobriety and business, and making the place a den ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the porous plaster seems to me to be the article to fill a want long felt. If, by this means, a breed of watermelon can be raised that will not strike terror to the heart of the consumer, this agricultural address will not have been delivered in vain. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... itself to our view." I took a hasty glance over it, and perceived that its northern edge was fringed with green; then a dull white belt marked the great Sahara, or Desert, and then it exhibited a deep green again, to its most southern extremity. I tried in vain to discover the pyramids, for our telescope had not sufficient ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... deep Sigh, Alas, said I, Man was made in vain! How is he given away to Misery and Mortality! tortured in Life, and swallowed up in Death! The Genius being moved with Compassion towards me, bid me quit so uncomfortable a Prospect: Look no more, said he, on ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... could only find them and destroy them before he ever saw them again! Long and patiently she looked for them, but her search was in vain. She ransacked his study and his dressing-room; she opened every drawer, and fumbled in every ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... is now described, as existing only for its own benefit; without right, except possession; and now also without might. "It foresees nothing, and has no purpose, except to maintain its own existence. It is wholly a vortex in which vain counsels, falsehoods, intrigues and imbecilities whirl like withered rubbish in the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... do them? I am awfully sorry— indeed, I am disgusted— but the facts are too plain." Miss Day then in a few eager whispers, which Maggie in vain endeavored to suppress, gave her chain of evidence. Rosalind's distress; her passionate desire to keep the coral; her entreaties that Miss Day would lend her four guineas; her assurances that she had not a penny in the world to pay her debt; her fears that it was utterly useless ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... purposely baked and brewed for them weekly to no small quantities according to their foundation, and a house ordained purposely for them, and officers according duly given attendance to serve them to their great comfort and relief." But all the pleading was in vain. Commissioners were appointed, who presented their report to Lord Cromwell December 2, 1539. They say that "we found the Prior a very honest and conformable person, and the house well furnished with jewels and plate, whereof some be meet for the king's majesty's use." Then follows a list of the treasures ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... verge and compass of all visible things. But there be evil men and seducers abroad, traitors to their altar and their faith." Here he paused, but presently continued, "My friends, though our religion be meek and lowly, yet does it not deny to us the comforts but sparingly scattered through this vain and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Among these is one from M. Du Plessis. On receipt of your letter, in answer to the one I had written you, on the subject of his memorial, I sent to M. La Motte, M. Chaumont, and wherever else I thought there was a probability of finding out Du Plessis' address. But all in vain. I meant to examine his memoir, as you desired, and to have it copied. Lately, he came and brought it with him, copied by himself. He desired me to read it, and enclose it to you, which I ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... ruling in different parts of the Delta, and another dynasty at Thebes, no army could be levied which could dare to meet the enemy in the field. The inhabitants fled to their cities, and endeavoured to defend themselves behind walls; but it was in vain. The walls of the Egyptian cities were rather banks to keep out the inundation than ramparts to repel an enemy. In a short time the strongholds that resisted were taken, the male population put to the sword, the women and children enslaved, the houses burnt, the temples ruthlessly ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... chuckled for hours afterwards as he thought of his epigram. That night, as he turned over in bed for the third time, as was his custom before going to sleep, another epigram came to him—"Money is the only fox hunted night and day." He kept repeating it over and over again with vain pride. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Birmingham), besides bird-calls and pipes. In the next shop were two dapper little Sulus in Spanish-looking costumes, with dozens of pairs of the golden-edged pearl-shells, which we had searched for in vain the night before last. The bargain was not yet concluded, so that it was useless for us to try to trade. The shells, being bought and sold by weight, are handled rather roughly; but it was in vain that ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... apt to subject him to a searching cross-examination. And his mother had to beg the boy off with many a plea, such as mothers know how to use; and if the others did not succeed, and the appeal to the heart was in vain, she could always send the good man back upon his memory, and put it to his conscience whether he ought to visit too severely upon his son the sin the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... young fellows came to see me, and told me there was to be a picnic on Saturday, and I must get father's horse and buggy and take one of the girls. In vain I pleaded that I did not know any of them well enough. They laughed at me, and said that Belle Marigold had consented to go with me; that I knew her—she had been in the store and bought some blue silk for twelve-and-a-half cents a yard; and they rather thought she fancied me, she seemed ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... to regret his thyme and blackberries, and the eldest brother seized the pony by the mane and tried to make it turn round, for he remembered the blue eyes of Jacob the rope-maker's daughter. But he tugged and pulled in vain, for the pony galloped straight on into the sea, till the waves met its forefeet. As soon as it felt the water it neighed lustily and capered about with glee, advancing quickly into the foaming billows. When the waves had covered the children's legs they repented their careless behaviour, and cried ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... exceptionally interesting that I made her the object of redoubled observation. The swarm at this time is greatly reduced in numbers. I have still some thirty laggards, who continue very busy, though their work is in vain. I see some very conscientiously stopping up the entrance to a tube or a Snail-shell in which they have laid nothing at all. Others are closing the home after only building a few partitions, or even mere attempts ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... The second point is the strong appeal to the Ithacans—to their sense of right, to their sense of shame, and to their fear of the Gods, who "in their divine wrath shall turn back ill deeds upon the doer." But in vain; that Ithacan Assembly contains friends and relatives of the Suitors, and possibly purchased adherents; nay, it contains some of the Suitors themselves, and here rises one of them to make a ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... anointed, namely in Scotland, for Edgar was the first anointed King in Scotland, about the year 1100.—12. the souls, who in those dayes were said to be in Purgatory.—25. not to be feared, if there be no true cause for it.—26. to swear, to wit, idly, rashly, and in vain.—27. Priests may have wives, according to the constitution of the law, and of the primitive Christian Church.—30. every day by Faith.—31. be contracted and consummate, the Kyrk may make, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... soul for some master-thought that should guide me through this labyrinth of life, teaching wherefore I was born, and how to do my task on earth, and what is death. Alas! Even that unreal image should forget to ape me and smile at these vain questions. Thus do mortals deify, as it were, a mere shadow of themselves, a spectre of human reason, and ask of that to unveil the mysteries which Divine Intelligence has revealed so far as needful to our guidance, and hid ...
— Monsieur du Miroir (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or fortress there. This was granted by the Bolognese, and the castle was quickly built under the direction and from the design of Agostino and Agnolo; but it had a very short life, for when the Bolognese discovered that all the promises made by the Pope were vain, they dismantled and destroyed it much more quickly than it ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... (if we may credit the fable) changed countenance with alarm; the hands made a vain effort to continue their course; the wheels remained motionless with surprise; the weights hung speechless;—each member felt disposed to lay the blame ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... into the hands of an agent to farm. She was tired of the long highly-coloured descriptions of Canadian scenery and the tales of Vincent's adventures, and she had got into the way of skipping his vain repetitions of all the absurd things he had said to her on the night of his departure; but the postscript stirred strange feelings in her breast. His mother was married a second time, but to Audrey's certain knowledge Vincent had no little half-sisters; it followed that ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... I felt at that moment those pangs of jealousy in which a poet had tried in vain to make me believe! the jealousy of engravings, of pictures, of statues, wherein artists exaggerate human beauty, as a result of the doctrine which leads them to ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... a vain hope; she hesitated and gave incorrect answers several times in the first recitation, and when it came to the second showed herself almost ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... Eginhard speaks with lofty contempt of the "vana ac superstitiosa praesumptio" of the poor woman's companions in trying to alleviate her sufferings with "herbs and frivolous incantations." Vain enough, no doubt, but the "mulierculae" might have returned ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... down on life's journey with so many bags and parcels and boxes of superfluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are forced to sit down by the roadside and gasp for breath, instead of wearing themselves out in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show or embittering their hearts because they can not succeed in getting into the weary race of wealth and fashion,—suppose instead of all this, they should turn to quiet ways, lowly pleasures, pure and simple joys, "plain living ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... country and destroyed it. The king of England, one day, drew out his army in battle array on a hill near Nantes, in expectation that the Lord Charles would come forth and offer him an opportunity of fighting with him: but, having waited from morning until noon in vain, they returned to their quarters: the light horse, however, in their retreat, galloped up to the barriers, and set fire to ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... mortal's agony, With an immortal's patience blending:—vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... all the time the passing troops mock and insult them. At last, near Coulombs, after a march of two hours and a half, a man of seventy-three, called Jourdaine, falls. His guards rush upon him, with blows and kicks. In vain. He has no strength to rise, and his murderers finish him with a ball in the head and one in the side, and bury him hastily in a field ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hours more the daughter waited. "Mother, it is five o'clock, and the Lord has not sent us anything." "He will, my dear, before half-past six;" and the widow went in an adjoining room, to ask that her daughter might not feel it vain to call upon God. In fifteen minutes, the door-bell rang violently, and a gentleman, valise in hand, said, "Mrs. X——, I left the room which I hired of you one year ago, in a great hurry, you will remember; and I owed you five dollars. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... me vain," she half whispered, and her lips trembled a little at his praise. But he disregarded this remonstrance, and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... both placer and quartz mines. So honest John Galler's famous placer mine still remains in the great list of lost mines, like the Gunsight Lead and other noted mines for which men have since prospected in vain. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Teacher without the intervention of the belief in the Resurrection is manifestly impossible. We know what He is said to have taught; we know what has come of that teaching in the world at large; but if the link which connects the two be not a real one, it is vain to explain it by the dreams of affection. It was not a matter of a moment or an hour, but of days and weeks continually; not the assertion of one imaginative mourner or two, but of a numerous and variously constituted body of people. The story, if it was not true, was not delusion, but imposture. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... capable and honorable persons, and what they have said to you is actually the general opinion of the town—that is to say, the conviction of the better and more sensible elements in the town. Were that not the case I should have labored quite in vain with these good people to bring a single one of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... lying at Gravesend. Neither Yates nor Gilpin have yet answered, but I am in daily expectation. I have sent your letter of this morning also to Gilpin. The waiting for these answers has been my reason for not writing you. I have made very particular enquiries about Webber, but in vain. He was a common seaman (not the ship's carpenter) and no traces of him are at the I. House: it is most probable that he has entered in some Privateer, as most of the crew have done. I will keep the L1 note till you find out something I can do with it. I now write idly, having ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of burning fire; that breath of wider air; that taste of sharper salt, which, arriving when we least expect it, and least—heaven knows—deserve it, makes any final opinion upon the stuff of this world vain and false; and any condemnation of the opinions of others foolish and empty. It destroys our assurances as it alleviates our miseries, and in some unspeakable way, like a primrose growing on the edge of a sepulchre, it flings forth upon the heavy night, a fleeting ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... these there is still plenty of the fabulous if you will, although, even here, there may be two opinions possible; but there is another group, of an order of merit perhaps still higher, where we look in vain for any such playful liberties with Nature. Thus we have "Conservation of Force"; where a musician, thinking of a certain picture, improvises in the twilight; a poet, hearing the music, goes home ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fire Down from heaven by prayer, Though man's vain desire Hang faith's wind-struck lyre Out in ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and the whole round of human experience was governed and controlled by an inexorable fate that was totally indifferent to human wishes. The formula which finally arose to meet this situation was "conformity to nature," a submission to the iron laws of the world which it was vain to attempt to change. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... trust each other. The very air is full of anxiety and apprehension. Such, gentlemen, is the miserable condition of the country. The nation is in great peril. Its interests, its institutions, its property, are all in great and common peril. Paralysis has seized upon the whole country. In vain now shall we argue about causes. The effect is upon us. Business is stagnated. Those who have capital do not dare to move it. But we here must do something. Mr. LINCOLN is coming, and all along ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... "Peace, vain, ignorant fly!" cried the same speaker, one with a young voice, which he was trying, as I thought, to make grave and old; "terror must first strike your heart, or you cannot sit down with the Society of the White Wolf. You stand convicted ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sentiments of the public and the usefulness of repressive measures. (Archives nationales, F.7, 3016, Report of the commissioner-general of Marseilles for the second quarter of 1808.) "Events in Spain have largely fixed, and essentially fixed, attention. In vain would the attentive observer like to conceal the truth on this point; the fact is that the Spanish revolution is unfavorably looked upon. It was at first thought that the legitimate heir would succeed to Charles IV. The way in which people have been undeceived has given the public a direction quite ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... remain in a state of suspension: force may replace him on the throne, but cannot keep him there. It is neither by force, nor by surprise, nor by the wishes of one party, that the national will can be brought to change its government. It would even be in vain, at the present moment, to offer us conditions, to render a new government more supportable. There are no conditions that can be examined, as long as the necessity of bending our necks to the yoke, of renouncing our independence, is not proved to us. Now, my lord, this necessity ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... name in vain?" called Mr. Prescott, as he came through the hallway and looked in the parlor. "Merry ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... was so startling that, instead of trying to reach its cord and draw the glistening instrument towards him, he lay perfectly still again, sweeping the sides of the valley as far as he could in search of danger, but searching in vain, till the thought occurred to him that he might achieve the object he had in view by cautiously taking out his knife and cutting twig after twig so that they might fall across the ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... headway: commands and threats and cries of defiance and rage, faint but intense, and which all at once ceased at the crack of a shot! The judge's sister let out a soft note of affright and looked here and there for explanation. In vain. The Vicksburg merchant ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... statements as to the profits which may be derived from the planting of nuts in the northern states, but I must confess that I have looked in vain both for the facts upon which such statements might be based and also for orchards which actually are profitable. If such exist in New York state I have not been able to find them ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... the public interests while a more permanent force shall be in course of preparation. But much will depend on the promptitude with which these means can be brought into activity. If war be forced upon us, in spite of our long and vain appeals to the justice of nations, rapid and vigorous movements in its outset will go far toward securing us in its course and issue, and toward throwing its burthens on those who render necessary the resort from reason ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... on. Not only with his sword fought he, but with his horse as well. Rearing the beast on its hind legs, he would swing it round and let it descend where least it was expected, laying about him with his sword at the same time. In vain they sought to bring down his charger with their pikes; so swift and furious was his action, that before their design could be accomplished, he was upon those that meditated it, scattering them out of reach to save ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... and if this account—bald and inadequate as I know it to be—of a very happy time spent in rambling among some of the finest scenery of this lovely earth, may induce any one to betake himself to Kashmir, he will achieve something worth living for, and I shall not have spilt ink in vain. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... vi. 152); 'transact' (P. L. vi. 286); 'voluble' (P. L. ix. 436). We may note in Jeremy Taylor a similar reduction of words to their origins; thus, 'insolent' for unusual, 'metal' for mine, 'irritation' for a making vain, 'extant' for standing out (applied to a bas-relief), 'contrition' for bruising ('the contrition of the serpent'), 'probable' for worthy of approval ('a probable doctor'). The author of the excellent Lexique ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... its support. These faithful allies continued to carry on the contest with the left of the American line with furious determination, encouraged by the presence of Tecumseh, until finding all hopes of retrieving the day to be in vain—General Proctor and his soldiers having fled or surrendered—they yielded to the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, and left the field—upwards of 100 of them having fallen in battle, and the bodies ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... stupidity of those thrice accursed musicians. Each time, Marija would emit a howl and fly at them, shaking her fists in their faces, stamping upon the floor, purple and incoherent with rage. In vain the frightened Tamoszius would attempt to speak, to plead the limitations of the flesh; in vain would the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. "Szalin!" Marija would scream. "Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... around Shakespeare; and he took Shakespeare almost frankly in the place of Nature, or of poetry. He affirms, "Shakespeare knew the human mind, and its most minute and intimate workings, and he never introduces a word, or a thought, in vain or out of place." This granted (and to Coleridge it is essential that it should be granted, for in less than the infinite he cannot find space in which to use his wings freely) he has only to choose and define, to discover and to ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... in the drinking songs. The wine was good, but the times were bad. Those who, like Wilhelm Mueller, had shared in the great sufferings and the great hopes of the German people, and who then saw that after all the sacrifices that had been made, all was in vain, all was again as bad or even worse than before, could with difficulty conceal their disaffection, however helpless they felt themselves against the brutalities of those in power. Many, who like Wilhelm Mueller had labored to reanimate German ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... families, and the destruction of so much happiness. The view of the Potomac and Washington is very fine, and one thought sorrowfully of the poor Lees who gave up their pretty home and all else, for the sake of Virginia, and in vain! ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... shirt-sleeves, with a remarkably high collar and a shock of curling and very dark hair, was arranging the balls at one of the inner tables. The shirt sleeves were loudly striped and the curling hair was arranged in ornamental waves of which he seemed very vain; for as Bat watched, he saw the man gaze into a specked mirror and pass a ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... surface of the ocean to its bottom; nets radiating such terrific forces that the very water itself was beaten back and stood motionless in vertical, glassy walls. Torpedoes were futile against that wall of energy. The most fiercely driven rays of the fishes flamed incandescent against it, in vain. Even the incredible violence of a concentration of every available force-ball against one point could not break through. At that unimaginable explosion water was hurled for miles. The bed of the ocean was not only exposed, but ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... not vain glory that bade its erection, It serves as a refuge, a shield, a protection; Its like on the earth never yet has been known And yet by man's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... before I can act it. I have now settled myself not to expect you this year-do not unsettle me: I dread a disappointment, as I do a relapse of the gout; and therefore cut this article short, that I may not indulge vain hopes, My affection for you both is unalterable; can I give so strong a proof as by supplicating you, as I do earnestly, to act as is most prudent for your healths and interest? A long journey in November would be the very ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Certainly the violet was not made in vain—and in the Eternal Correspondence known to higher intelligences than our own, there surely must exist a grand and beautiful Flower lore, wherein each blossom has an individual word to speak, a lesson to unfold, by form and coloring, and, more than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... arms, was born under the influence of the planet Mars. I am, therefore, in a measure constrained to follow that road, and by it I must travel in spite of all the world, and it will be labour in vain for you to urge me to resist what heaven wills, fate ordains, reason requires, and, above all, my own inclination favours; for knowing as I do the countless toils that are the accompaniments of knight-errantry, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Engineer frequently do this thing, and then fly off to their guns—bang, bang, finish; but this time he does not dash for his gun, nor does the Engineer, who flies out of his cabin at the sound of the war shout "Hippopotame." In vain I look across the broad river with its stretches of yellow sandbanks, where the "hippopotame" should be, but I can see nothing but four black stumps sticking up in the water away to the right. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... sat in that House (a period of between thirty and forty years), if he had done nothing else, but had only been instrumental in carrying through this measure, he should think his life well spent; and should retire quite satisfied, that he had not lived in vain. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... passed while the young man sought in vain to enchain his incoherent thoughts. He could think of nothing vividly. He ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... time the German front was very short, its left being at Hohenstein, about halfway between Soldau and Allenstein and slightly northeast of Tannenberg. But it made up in activity what it lacked in length. In vain the Russians tried to break the German ranks and open up a road to the northwest. Much blood was spilled on both, sides during three days' fighting, but the German line held. In the meantime the Russians had evacuated Allenstein, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various |
