"Vainly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... standing near an electric light so that they could now see each other plainly. Betty observed a tall, overgrown boy with thin, straight features and clear hazel eyes, and now that his hat was removed, a mass of curly dark hair, which had been vainly ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... yuh t' fergit the basque? Er what hez happened to it?" cried Sary, sympathetically, while Barbara struggled vainly to wrench herself free from the ill-smelling wrap that ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... as the poet hears them, but as one in pain. "He never loved me!" she murmured, so softly that even the sparrows in the vine heard her not. And bitter indeed was the pain. But of what use to struggle, or to sigh, or vainly to regret? As things are written, so must they be read. She readily held him guiltless; what she regretted most deeply was the lack of power to have him and to hold him. Long before, she had realized the hopelessness of it all. Knowing that he drank from the cup of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... of May the Indians chose to depart long before sunrise. We were stirring before them, however, because I waited (though vainly) for a star ready to pass the meridian. In those humid regions covered with forests, the nights became more obscure in proportion as we drew nearer to the Rio Negro and the interior of Brazil. We remained ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... hidden. The inner apartment was ankle-deep in blood. The plaster was scored with sword-cuts; not high up as where men have fought, but low down, and about the corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid the blow. Strips of dresses, vainly tied around the handles of the doors, signified the contrivance to which feminine despair had resorted as a means of keeping out the murderers. Broken combs were there, and the frills of children's trousers, and torn cuffs and pinafores, and little round ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... de Sgur, like every one else, noticed the hostility which the Empress in vain tried to conceal. "The Empress of Austria," he says, "whose parents had been dispossessed by Napoleon in Italy, was noticeable for her aversion which she vainly essayed to hide; it made itself at once manifest to Napoleon, and he met it with a smiling face; but she made use of her intelligence and charm to win over hearts and to sow the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... hear the writhing boy groan, and cry out, in spite of all his efforts to keep from giving tongue. The girl continued sobbing, and vainly trying to prevent further punishment. Even as Fred came in sight of the scene the infuriated man, as if bothered by the way she interfered with his wretched work, gave her a fling that sent the girl headlong to ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... withered and horror-lined and old, and the bright-brown hair grown grey with the years that would pass in those few final moments. He saw the sweet red lips which had tempted him so often to wild thoughts parched and black, wide open and gasping vainly for the breath of life in a ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... of the last trip's commissariat, turkeys which drop out of their skins while the cook is larding them in the galley, beef which maybe eaten as spoon-meat, and tea apparently made with bilge-water,—sleeping or vainly trying to sleep in an unventilated dungeon which should be called death instead of berth, where the reek of the aforesaid putridities awakes him to breakfast without aid of gong,—propelled by a second-hand engine, whose every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... ho—hum!" grumbled Hank Butts, vainly trying to stifle a prodigious yawn. "This may be what Mr. Seaton calls a vacation on full pay, ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... linen, which was snowy white—one might suppose that he had been shot and stuffed on his return home from college, and had been sprinkled with the frowzy mouldiness which time imparts to stuffed animals and other things, in which a semblance to the freshness of living nature is vainly attempted to be preserved. So if he were motionless; but let him speak, and the internal freshness was still there, an ever-blooming garden of intellectual flowers. His antiquated costume was no longer grotesque—it harmonised with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... utmost confidence. Remembering how often the Moslems had vainly attempted to injure the great capital, and how for over two centuries they had never succeeded in penetrating to the south, the inhabitants pursued their daily avocations with no shadow of dread ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... without advancing, and a puppet-show, a vain worldly amusement which wears a false appearance of religion because it is diverting itself with quasi-religious problems. What is the state of the saint after death, is not as people vainly suppose a question parallel to, am I going to heaven or hell, what shall I do to be saved? To those questions the Buddha gives but one answer in terms of human language and human thought, namely, attain ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... but I had never failed to find in the eyes themselves the promise of a purpose. But now it was gone. I felt as if I were looking into a little pool which had been troubled by a stone, and I waiting vainly for the reflection to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... pathetic in its disappointment. He read the few curt lines through again and again, vainly trying to find something more behind the unmistakable refusal, but there it was ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... him. I observed that what he concluded with, about carrying him to Ulietea, seemed to meet with the approbation of all the chiefs; and I instantly saw the reason. Omai had, as I have already mentioned, vainly flattered himself that I meant to use force in restoring him to his father's lands in Ulietea, and he had talked idly, and without any authority from me, on this subject, to some of the present assembly, who dreamed of nothing less ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... who was rich, who appeared gay, who had lived so far, as it seemed, idly enough, would continue to live with her, as he had apparently lived without her, brightly, honestly, a little thoughtlessly, a little vainly. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... his heart like a stab; she had never faced him like this before, saying more plainly than with words that she defied him to control her. His child's face, the face he loved best of all! yet at this moment he was searching it vainly for the lineaments that were familiar to him. Something had changed her, had hardened her against him, in a moment. It seemed impossible that there should come such severance between them. John revolted against it, as against ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the notions which I had formed concerning it, having an air of antique grandeur which I had vainly expected to find at Rouen. It is well-built throughout, without that striking contrast between the newer buildings and the more ancient edifices, which is so remarkable in the capital of Normandy. The Hotel de Ville, in the large square, is a particularly fine building, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... shuffle, or crawl onward, as if they conscientiously thought they had no manner of right to tread the earth but on sufferance. Not so our coalheaver. Mark how erect he walks! how firm a keel he presents to the vainly breasting human tide that comes rolling on with a show of opposition to his onward course! It is he, and he only, who preserves, in his gait and in his air, the self-sustained and conscious dignity of the first-created man. Surrounded by an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... cannot make a philosophy of indifference! The affections are stronger than all our reasonings. We must take them into our alliance, or they will destroy all our theories of self-government. Such fools of fate are we, passing from system to system, from scheme to scheme, vainly seeking to shut out passion and sorrow-forgetting that they are born within us—and return to the soul as the seasons to the earth! Yet,—years, many years ago, when I first looked gravely into ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very grievously afflicted in their hearts at this long-threatened insult to the court. Their steps were lost in the crowd, their words in the uproar. Vergniaud himself, from a top step of the grand staircase, vainly appealed to order, legality, and the constitution. The eloquence, so powerful to incite the masses, is powerless to check them. From time to time the royalist deputies, highly indignant, returned to the chamber, and, mounting the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... order to find means for further information, and to increase our knowledge from the examination of things which actually have been. It is in this manner, that intention may be found in nature; but this intention is not to be supposed, or vainly imagined, from what ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... supposedly drowned in the great lake. He had sought me vainly along the shore, and finally turned away, convinced of my death, and that De Artigny had ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the middle of April the Russians vainly exerted themselves to break through to Hungary, but they completely failed with heavy losses. Thereupon the time had come to crush the enemy in a common attack with a full force of the combined ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... for a moment, looking straight ahead, entirely oblivious of us, and then seemed again to sink down within himself. It came to me that his was the action of a man striving vainly against a weariness unutterable. I swept the deck with my glasses. There was no other sign of life. I turned to find the Portuguese staring intently and with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... of any man's aspirations, but I do say that the people who, apart from Jesus Christ, and the entrance into their souls by faith of His quickening power, are seeking, some of them nobly, some of them sadly, and all of them vainly, to cure their faults of character, will never attain anything but a superficial and fragmentary goodness, because they have begun at ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... he effected after a while, and, having placed the body in a coffin, he threw it into the Nile, whence it floated down to the sea. Isis, the sister and widow of Osiris, together with her sister Nephthys, vainly sought for a long time her lord's remains, but at last found them on the Syrian shore at Byblus, where they had been cast up by the waves. She was conveying the corpse for embalmment and interment to Memphis, when Set stole it from her, and cut it up into fourteen pieces, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... afterwards, the carver of wood, the sculptor in stone and marble, the tile-maker and the lead and iron-worker, the painter, whether of scripture stories or of heraldic blazonings, the designer and the worker in stained glass for those gorgeous windows which we now vainly try to imitate—must each have been in requisition, and each, in the exercise of his art, contributed to raise the taste and cultivate the minds of the inmates of the cloister. Of many of these works the monks themselves ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... she cautiously lay down on the narrow and lumpy truckle-bed that had been insinuated against an unoccupied wall, and when she turned over restlessly in the night and the rickety ironwork creaked and Sarah Gailey moaned, and when she searched vainly for a particular garment lost among garments that were hung pell-mell on insecure hooks and jutting corners of furniture,—she was proud and glad because her own comfortable room was steadily adding thirty shillings or more per week to the gross receipts ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Lombock on the 30th of August, and reached Macassar in three days. It was with great satisfaction that I stepped on a shore which I had been vainly trying to reach since February, and where I expected to meet with so much ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... many years I should not die save in Jerusalem, Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land. But bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie, In this Jerusalem shall ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generous sentiments should not be a noble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist who gives a great many stabs in his plays, should not himself have given a few at least in real life. Vainly do the artists protest: lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba. They are merely taxed in addition with lying and hypocrisy. O you poor women of Verona, how far more subtle you were, when you founded your belief that Dante had really descended to hell, upon ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... black veil? What but the mystery which it obscurely typifies has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend, the lover to his best-beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin,—then deem me a monster for the symbol beneath which I have lived and die. I look around me, and, lo! on every ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shall the traveller come, That erst beheld me blooming, His searching eye shall vainly roam The dreary vale ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... first quivering cry, faint almost as a whisper, yet sharp and piteous, reached old Ike's ears instantly. He fell on his knees and remained some minutes motionless, then he rose and went slowly down-stairs. Hannah met him at the door, her dark face flushed with emotion which she vainly tried to ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... guards had driven off the musicians, and the lieutenant and some of the cuadrilleros were vainly trying ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... hostile, and armed him against acquiescence. The chill and order of the life repelled him. He saw himself rising in the cold of the morning and filing down with the others to early mass and trying vainly to struggle with his prayers against the fainting sickness of his stomach. He saw himself sitting at dinner with the community of a college. What, then, had become of that deep-rooted shyness of his which had made ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... men, what are ye doing, when Janardana sitteth silent? Without knowing what is in his mind, vainly do we roar in wrath! Let the high-souled Krishna give out what he proposeth. Accomplish promptly what he desireth to do.' Then all of them, hearing those words of Halayudha that deserved to be accepted, exclaimed, 'Excellent! Excellent!' They then all became silent. Silence having been restored ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... to see him scuttle in the direction of a crate of live turkeys which he had vainly struggled to approach when we passed them a few ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... assumption lies a fatal error, believe me, my dear niece! Too many, alas! too many young girls have vainly imagined, as you do now, that, though there might be men of base characters in society, none such were of their acquaintances. These have awakened from their fatal error with the sad consciousness ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... the throne of England, and the year afterwards, having, among other points, vainly demanded of the Dutch satisfaction for the murder of his regicide ambassador, which took place in this year, and some compensation for the cruelties exercised on the English at Amboyne some thirty years before, he declared war with Holland. To prove that he was in earnest, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... enjoyment of the picture his mind conjured up of the Master-Attendant vainly trying to ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... day, as I sat in my den at Wilton Street smoking moodily and thinking, I tried vainly to imagine what cardinal sin she could have committed. My sole thoughts were of her, and my all-consuming eagerness ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... protesting Of winds, when the tide runs high; And vainly the deep-sea waters Call out, as the waves speed by; For, deaf to the claim of the ocean, To the threat of the loud winds dumb, Past reef and bar, to shores afar, They rush when the hour ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... duly blended with fulsome flattery. Later in the evening, he contrived to be presented both to the ambassador and the cabinet minister, and treated them as if they were demigods; listened to them as if with an admiration which he vainly endeavoured to repress; never spoke except to enforce and illustrate the views which they had condescended to intimate; successfully conveyed to his excellency that he was conversing with an enthusiast for his exalted profession; and to the minister that he had met an ardent ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... looked upon his present forbearance as a sort of calm dishonorable submission, with many disdainful words provoked Tybalt to the prosecution of his first quarrel with him; and Tybalt and Mercutio fought, till Mercutio fell, receiving his death's wound while Romeo and Benvolio were vainly endeavoring to part the combatants. Mercutio being dead, Romeo kept his temper no longer, but returned the scornful appellation of villain which Tybalt had given him, and they fought till Tybalt was slain by Romeo. This deadly broil falling out in the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cannot be thus readily differentiated, and unless they are "worked up" in an orderly and systematic manner much labour will be vainly expended and valuable time wasted. The following method minimises the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... grown up since that date had ceased to expect anything in the way of pleasure, for "the war" was a ghost that wouldn't be laid. Did we want fine dresses, we were asked where the money was coming from, now that Uncle David had lost all his property by the war; did we vainly long for a trip to a Northern city, we were consoled by the announcement that if it had not been for the war Uncle David would have taken us to Europe; if we complained that we had to keep our own rooms in order and sweep the parlors besides, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... swept away. For this is the birth-night of the white Christ, son of the All-Father, and Saviour of mankind. Fairer is He than Baldur the Beautiful, greater than Odin the Wise, kinder than Freya the Good. Since He has come to earth the bloody sacrifices must cease. The dark Thor, on whom you vainly call, is dead. Deep in the shades of Niffelheim he is lost forever. His power in the world is broken. Will you serve a helpless god? See, my brothers, you call this tree his oak. Does he dwell here? Does he ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... a don't-care-a-bit sort of way. Regarded from five hours later, I fancy my performances with the two noble steeds in my charge must have been distinctly amusing to view, had anyone been unoccupied enough to watch me. Vainly did I try to induce them to drink of the printer's-ink-like fluid, water and mud, already stirred up by hundreds of other horses. When they did go in, they went for a splash, a paddle, and a roll, not to imbibe, and I had to go with them a little way, nearly up to my knees, in the mud. I have ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... or how unlikely it was that he should laugh in his sleeve at any one. We are too apt to forget when we think of the sins and faults of men how keen may be their conscience in spite of their sins. While they were thus talking of Cousin Henry, he was vainly endeavouring to console himself with the reflection that he had not committed any great crime, that there was still a road open to him for repentance, that if only he might be allowed to escape and repent in London, he would be ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... despatched, Charles took his way to the stable, but some motive caused him to stop at the horse trough, lean over it, and examine the reflection of his face. Evidently what he saw was not gratifying, for he vainly tried to smooth down his short hair, and then passed his hand over the scrub of his beard. "'T is said clothes make the gentleman," he muttered, "but methinks 't is really the barber. How many of the belles of the Pump Room and the Crescent would take me for other than ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... saw nothing. Then she knelt before the fire, warming her ice-cold hands on which the two- weeks' familiar ring seemed to shine with a fatal glitter. She kept moving it up and down with a nervous habit that she was trying vainly to conquer. ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... hardly say that the Central Park requires no advocate and no defence. Its great proprietor, the Public, is perfectly satisfied with his purchase and his agents. He thinks himself providentially guided in the choice of his Superintendent, and does not vainly pique himself upon his sagacity in selecting Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted for the post. This gentleman, in his place, offsets at least a thousand square plugs in round holes. He is precisely the man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... admit that the drama was a special art, with a method of its own. They resented bitterly the failures that followed when they refused to accept the conditions of the actual theater; and they protested shrilly against these conditions when they vainly essayed to fulfil them. "What a horrible manner of writing is that which suits the stage!" Flaubert complained to George Sand. "The ellipses, the suspensions, the interrogations must be lavished, if one wishes to have liveliness; and all these ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... the sun was obscured by heavy clouds, while violent rain and wind storms obliterated the last remnants of the spoor Tarzan constantly though vainly sought. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bestiality of souls wallowing in luxury and sloth. Shaping smiled, and said, 'How comes it that your wisdom is greater than that of the Master of wisdom?' Hator said, 'My wisdom does not come from you, nor from your world, but from that other world, which you, Shaping, have vainly tried to imitate.' Shaping replied, 'What, then, do you do in my world?' Hator said, 'I am here falsely, and therefore I am subject to your false pleasures. But I wrap myself in pain—not because ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Virginius drew her aside, suddenly snatched a sharp knife from a butcher's stall, and plunged it in her bosom, crying out: "This is the only way, my child, to keep thee free!" Then, turning to Appius, he held the bloody knife on high and cried: "On thy head be the curse of this blood." Vainly did Appius call upon the crowd to arrest the infuriated father; the people stood aside to allow him to pass, as though he had been something holy, and he rushed onward toward his portion of the army, which was soon joined by the troops that Dentatus ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... commotion around him, the boy had risen to his feet, and now, with strained eyes, was vainly striving to pierce the red mist in which he was enveloped. Before the song was ended, the multitude, from whom the hubbub rose, were evidently in rapid motion, and all in the same direction, sweeping past ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... cat and bird, but of the capitalist and the proletariat on which he battens. So for a little space let the unholy creature lie there writhing. Let it understand what it is to have a back broken by the weight of an impossible burden. Let it try vainly to drag its limbs from beneath an immovable load. Observe it, let it suffer. Very soon we will finish with it, and explode the iniquitous system it represents. See, in the name of humanity, of labour, of the unknown and unnumbered millions of the martyred poor, I set a match ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... lovely, while in her countenance the lilies and the roses of the garden were mingled together, very many princes of royal stock desired her in marriage; however in no wise could she thereunto be persuaded or compelled. Wherefore having a long time vainly labored, her parents by general consent brought her unto Saint Patrick, the fame of whose holiness was proved and published through all that country by many signs and miracles. Then they unfolded unto the saint the purpose of ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... great chief of the Narragansets. A man so noble and chivalric in his spirit that his life and death commanded the admiration of his worst enemies. They vainly imagined that some disembodied spirit of Greece or Rome had revisited the earth in the vast physical and mental ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... between the two chambers gave a faint sound as he opened it, yet neither mother nor child moved. A moment passed, and he had reached the bed. Another went by, and Isabel was awake, wildly but vainly trying to scream, to rise. A knee was on her bosom, two hands grappled her throat, and two out-starting eyes were close to hers. Her husband ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... time the news reached Spain of Coligny's settlement at Fort Caroline, a Spanish nobleman, Pedro Menendez, was preparing to establish a colony in Florida, and thus after a long delay carry out the task which De Soto had vainly attempted. Menendez was naturally as eager as the king to drive out the French intruders. So an expedition larger than was planned at first was hurried off. Menendez was to do three things: drive the French out, conquer and Christianize ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... bosom heaving, her hand tenderly pressing his? He dropped his hat, careless, of the watery risk, and seizing her by both arms above the elbows, held her for a moment in front of him, striving to collect himself, vainly trying to subdue the excitement that made him think he was going ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... sentimental maiden, but a robust and vigorous young woman, ready with a quick response, as well as with a ready blow did any one touch her unadvisedly, or use any inappropriate freedom. At last, one day while she waited vainly outside the cabinet in which the King was retired with a few of his councillors, Jeanne's patience failed her altogether. She knocked at the door, and being admitted threw herself at the feet of the King. To Jeanne he was no king ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... see The desolate Antigone. On the last path her steps shall treed, Set forth, the journey of the dead, Watching, with vainly lingering gaze, Her last, last ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... move amidst the reality of scenes which religious fiction vainly strives to equal. Remarkable proofs of genuine and vivid piety, triumphs of patience and grace, lifting their possessors above the most painful and distressing circumstances, are met with in all their explorations, and more than repay them for toil ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... two speakers at the foot of the bed, and trying vainly to understand what they were saying about him, was relieved when Dr. Wyeth handed Miss Lady a book and ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... such different grounds, as that the approbation of the one should exclude the admiration of the other. But not so. Nature in him is various as it is vigorous. He does not, with an over-jealous scrutiny, vainly try to reduce into seeming consistency affections spontaneously springing from many sources. Truth lies at the bottom; and, conscious of truth, he does not mistrust or question his own promptings. An awful reverence, the acknowledgment of a Law without appeal or error—Supreme, Sacred, Irresistible—rules ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... was working at the time in the house of one of Terry's brothers. Katie, too, was employed there; although she lived with Nick, her husband, she still occupied herself at times with her old occupation; and, as ever, she watched Marie with a careful eye, rather vainly so just then, for this girl was as wild as a girl ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... his ships had been blown down the coast, vainly struggling to keep away from the reefs, and were finally wrecked, one after another, at various distances to ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... appeared to be vainly trying to grapple with the thought. Dacres put his cigar between his lips again, and gave one or two puffs at it, but it had gone out. He pitched it out of the window, and struck his hand heavily on ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... had he and Joyce Harker met since the murder of Valentine Jernam. George had landed a cargo at Hamburg, and had given his brother's friend rendezvous there. Then the two men had talked of all that had been done so vainly, and all that remained to be done, Harker hoped, so effectively. Joyce had never been able to bring his suspicions concerning Black Milsom to the test of proof. Unwearied search had been made for the old man who had played the part ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... danger, such as it was, would be all over, and the ladies would be induced to go peacefully to bed again; and Annie would retreat with them to her ignoble cradle, very much disappointed, and looking vainly back at the more martial scene below. The next morning she would seem to have forgotten all about it, and would spill her bread and milk by the fire as if ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... red as a peony. Now I know a secret!' Charlotte vainly endeavoured to hide her confusion. 'Very well—not a word! I won't say more,' continued De Stancy good-humouredly, 'except that he seems to be a very ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... of the second reading came. The ever zealous Arthur Stanley was present. 'A superb speech from Gladstone,' he records, 'in which, for the first time, all the arguments from our report were worked up in the most effective manner. He vainly endeavoured to reconcile his present with his former position. But, with this exception, I listened to his speech with the greatest delight.... To behold one's old enemies slaughtered before one's face with the most irresistible weapons was quite intoxicating. One great charm of his speaking is ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... might be wandering, vainly, through the gloomy, whispering woods, ever penetrating farther into their merciless solitudes. And no homes smoked in the clearings, no camps glowed in the immensity of the dark—out there. This was just the beginning of the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... the grotto, with her father's head in her lap, trying vainly to staunch his wounds. Between them they contrived to carry him to the boat, which sailed swiftly towards the island. On the way the prince gently broke to his sister the sad ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... these words was so much the more gratified that his very eyebrows distended, and his eyes laughed. "You've got your wits about you!" he speedily exclaimed. "My mind is ever so dull! I've vainly given way to a fit of joy. But to think of these contingencies was ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... country seat which he possessed near Hampton Court. The world, that had paid him such abject court during his prosperity, now entirely deserted him on this fatal reverse of all his fortunes. He himself was much dejected with the change; and from the same turn of mind which had made him be so vainly elated with his grandeur, he felt the stroke of adversity with double rigor.[**] The smallest appearance of his return to favor threw him into transports of joy unbecoming a man. The king had seemed willing, during some time, to intermit the blows which overwhelmed him. He granted him his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... stood about and vainly tried to impress people who came in and asked questions which invariably had to be referred to his repair boy, the precocious expert stripped the wheel down to something that looked to Claire distressingly like an empty milk-pan. Then the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... attended to by the chief; who seeing him in possession of the bird, which he knew, said to himself, "This young man must be a favourite of heaven, or he could not have obtained a prize for which so many potent sultans, princes, and viziers, have vainly fallen sacrifices." He entertained him with hospitality, but asked no questions, and in the morning dismissed him with prayers for his welfare, and a present of a beautiful horse. Alla ad Deen having thanked his generous ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... to the highest hill in the center of the island, where he would spend long periods, examining the sea from horizon to horizon with his strong glasses, searching vainly for a sail. He thought once of keeping a mighty bonfire burning every night, but he reconsidered it when he reflected on the character of the ship ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... are, as my friend Mrs. Bethune Baliol warned me, in some degree worn out by the incessant labour of modern romancers and novelists, who, finding in those remote regions primitive habits and manners, have vainly imagined that the public can never tire of them; and so kilted Highlanders are to be found as frequently, and nearly of as genuine descent, on the shelves of a circulating library, as at a Caledonian ball. Much might have been made at an earlier time out of the history of a Highland regiment, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... to be ranconnee; and I—should be still more sorry that it should come to the ears of any of my good friends in Geneva, who know me less well than you and might judge me more harshly. There is no wine given for dinner, and I have vainly requested the person who conducts the establishment to garnish her table more liberally. She says I may have all the wine I want if I will order it at the merchant's, and settle the matter with him. But I have never, as you know, consented to regard our modest allowance of eau rougie as ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... quick, she worked away like lightning, and I could not follow her. She would rush through a proposition in Euclid, proving that some figure was, or was not equal to some other figure, and leave me stranded vainly trying to understand the first proof when she was at the last, and I couldn't care, anyhow, whether one line could be proved equal to another or not, I felt it would be much simpler to measure it and have done with it. It was the same in arithmetic; she ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... was asked for them. Little Silver noticed a large bundle of these dippers ready. The ghosts would then begin to bail up water out of the sea to empty it in the boat. All night they followed the junk, holding on with one hand to the gunwale, while they vainly dipped up water with the other, trying to swamp the boat. If dippers with bottoms in them had been given them, the sailors said, the boat would have been sunk. When daylight appeared the shadowy ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... there might yet be found intelligence and virtue in the people to sustain the Constitution, the Girondists met at Madame Roland's, and celebrated, with trembling exultation, the birth of popular liberty. The Constitution of the United States was the beau ideal of the Girondists, and, vainly dreaming that the institutions which Washington and his compatriots had established in Christian America were now firmly planted in infidel France, they endeavored to cast the veil of oblivion over the past, and to spread over the future the illusions ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow; you ride down steeples and staircases and over precipices; you hover in horrible suspense over inhabited towns, vainly seeking for a brake your hand cannot find, to save you from a headlong fall; you plunge into weltering rivers, and rush helplessly at monstrous obstacles. Anon Mr. Hoopdriver found himself riding out of the darkness ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... men, and an expenditure of two hundred thousand dollars. This was a sum of money, says the secretary, "far exceeding the ability of the United States to advance, consistently with a due regard to other indispensable objects." In the third place, the government vainly imagined that it was possible to effect a peace with the Wabash tribes. The views of Secretary of War Knox were very emphatic on this subject. "It would be found, on examination, that both policy and justice unite in dictating ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... firs, and made a fragrance as strong as if it had been distilled from centuries of summer. The villagers had been told by Father Antoine, that this stranger who was to marry their good "Tantibba," was one who had known and loved her for twenty years, and who had been seeking her vainly all these years that she had lived in St. Mary's. The tale struck a warm chord in the breasts of the affectionate and enthusiastic people. The whole village was in great joy, both for love of "Tantibba," and for the love of romance, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... kept either note-book or journal, and as my memory is not a retentive one I have allowed much to escape which I should now vainly attempt to recall. Some things must, however, have made a vivid and durable impression on my mind, as fragments remain, after the lapse of years, far more distinct than occurrences of much more recent date; ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... he argued with himself, vainly. Every objection that came forward was reasoned down by a trained mind, versed in the intricacies of the law. The deprivations of the fathers need not always descend unto the children. At last he went over, wondering whether his father had not more than ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... point of the sword after one of the fiercest sieges known to history. Scarcely had the beleaguered town been reduced, than the indomitable Guiscard found himself compelled to return to Italy, where the Emperor of the West, the unhappy Henry IV., vainly endeavouring to wipe out the humiliation of Canossa, had seized Rome and was actually besieging the great Hildebrand in the Castle of Sant' Angelo. Leaving his son Bohemond in command of the army in Macedonia, Robert recrossed the sea, and hastened with a handful of men towards Rome. But ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Vainly Kasya, who stood on the edge of the stream with the forget-me-nots in her hand, turned to the side from whence came the voice of the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... this mighty sea is yet unsought, Where thousand isles and kingdoms lie unknown, Not void of men as some have vainly thought, But peopled well, and wonned like your own; The land is fertile ground, but scant well wrought, Air wholesome, temperate sun, grass proudly grown." "But," quoth Ubaldo, "dame, I pray thee teach Of that hid world, what be ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the bed on which she had lain, and as the warmth restored me tried to think coherently. For a short while I was going over the facts of the night—or what seemed as facts to my remembrance. But as I continued to think, the possibilities of any result seemed to get less, and I found myself vainly trying to reconcile with the logic of life the grim episode of the night. The effort proved to be too much for such concentration as was left to me; moreover, interrupted sleep was clamant, and would not be denied. What I dreamt of—if I dreamt ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... I didn't know," he managed to mutter, with a slash at his horse which was vainly endeavoring to pull the cart from the rut in which it had stuck. "I guess I'll go along to the hotel. I've a bag of taters ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... showed no mercy; he did not even allow her to get to her feet; and though she clutched vainly at brambles and branches, and even at the stalks of the nettles, he was too strong ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... one aware of being looked at caused him to turn and look up as he finished the verse, and he longed for the self-possession of his room-mate as he vainly struggled to think of something to say which should not be utterly inane. He felt himself blushing, but he was well aware that a blush on his sunburned face was not so charmingly becoming as it was to the vision on the bank. It was she who spoke ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... seldom seen with wild delight Urging the rapid car along the strand, Or, skilful in the art that Neptune taught, Making th' unbroken steed obey the bit; Less often have the woods return'd our shouts; A secret burden on your spirits cast Has dimm'd your eye. How can I doubt you love? Vainly would you conceal the fatal wound. Has not the fair ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... up and get a new pair. I long for them, but I'm afraid my nice little plan for Laura will be spoilt," said Jessie Delano to herself, as she shook her head over a pair of small, dilapidated slippers almost past mending. While she vainly pricked her fingers over them for the last time, her mind was full of girlish hopes and fears, as well as of anxieties far too serious for a ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... a clergyman of uncertain denomination, had tried vainly for several minutes to attract his attention by clearing his throat, passing the salt, and making measured requests for water, bread, and ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale |
