vain是一个雅思常考词汇，这个词的常用解释为a. 徒劳的, 无效果的; 自负的; 不尊敬的，这个词在很多英文原版小说中怎么应用呢，今天小编就带您了解一下。
在儒勒·凡尔纳的《格兰特船长的女儿》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- "Heaven forbid that I should answer you lightly such a question; I would not delude you with vain hopes."
在路易莎·梅·奥尔科特的《小妇人》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- In vain Amy telegraphed the word 'talk', tried to draw her out, and administered covert pokes with her foot.
在赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的《白鲸》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile.
-- In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not.
-- In connection with this appellative of "Whalebone whales," it is of great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents.
-- But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.
-- First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again.
在查尔斯·狄更斯的《雾都孤儿》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop this burst of indignation; 'somebody will hear us, my dear.
在简·奥斯汀的《傲慢与偏见》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- Vain indeed must be all her attentions, vain and useless her affection for his sister and her praise of himself, if he were already self-destined for another.
-- Chapter 18 ill Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield, Tand looked in vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred to her.
-- In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them.
-- In vain did she entreat him to stand up with some-body else, and offer to introduce him to any young lady in the room.
-- After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began: 'In vain I have struggled.
在丹尼尔·笛福的《鲁滨逊漂流记》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- It was in vain to sit still and wish for what was not to be had; and this extremity roused my application.
-- It presently occurred to me that it was in vain to pretend to make a raft with the wind off-shore; and that it was my business to be gone before the tide of flood began, otherwise I might not be able to reach the shore at all.
-- This was not so difficult to me as the making the shovel: and yet this and the shovel, and the attempt which I made in vain to make a wheelbarrow, took me up no less than four days - I mean always excepting my morning walk with my gun, which I seldom failed, and very seldom failed also bringing home something fit to eat.
-- But I think I was never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for anything I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco-pipe; and though it was a very ugly, clumsy thing when it was done, and only burned red, like other earthenware, yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the smoke, I was ex-ceedingly comforted with it, for I had been always used to smoke; and there were pipes in the ship, but I forgot them at first, not thinking there was tobacco in the island; and af-terwards, when I searched the ship again, I could not come at any pipes.
-- By this time I was come; and when they saw their danger, and that it was in vain to resist, they begged for mercy.
在简·奥斯汀的《理智与情感》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort to the renewal of her confidence in Edward's affection, to the remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word which fell from him while at Barton, and above all to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore round his finger.
-- The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it.
在西奥多·德莱塞的《嘉莉妹妹》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- She had vain imaginings about place and power, about far-off lands and magnificent people.
-- "Oh, I don't know," she would reply, feeling delight in the fact that one should think so, hesitating to believe, though she really did, that she was vain enough to think so much of herself.
-- She made one more vain effort and then burst into tears.
-- It is when the feet weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise.
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