"In vain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I heard ecstasies all over the deck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards instead of earthwards, I saw far above any possibility of height, as one would have thought, a huge, truncated cone of pure snow, 13,080 feet above the sea, from ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... hero-worship was dedicated? Were these the men from whom he was to learn greatness of thought, heroism of action, purity in life, idealism—these blatant, coarse-worded, coarse-minded cynics to whom duty was a "bore" and pleasure an excuse to plunge into the lowest dregs of existence? In vain his young enthusiasm, his almost passionate desire to honor greatness in others fought his contemptuous conviction of their unworthiness. Gradually, it is true, he grew calmer, and, like a climber who has been flung from a high peak, gathered himself ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... dreams a knight, who stood in the midst of the gayest rout, with a smile on his lips and with bitterness in his heart,—a knight that had once dreamed a dream as fair as yours, of a woman noble and stately, for whom he went ever seeking, and in vain? ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... and tall, For a husband was at her last stake; And having in vain danced at many a ball, Is now happy to jump ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... among the dark mountains of paganism, and guilty of the most horrible ignorance of religion. It is true, they neither stole nor defrauded; they were sober, frugal, continent, and faithful to their word; but though they acted right habitually, it was all in vain, unless they acted so from precept. The new comers, therefore, used every method to induce them to embrace and practice the true religion—except, indeed, that of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
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