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：
-- Besides, they would have it that the Indians, who made them prisoners, would have dragged them into the interior, and it was impossible, they said, to hunt all through Patagonia for three men—three Scotchmen; that the search would be vain and perilous, and cost more lives than it saved.
-- The CATAPEZ, after vain attempts at finding an opening, dismounted, crossed his arms, and waited.
-- They looked in vain for some harbor of refuge, and the terrified horses galloped so wildly along that the riders could hardly keep their saddles.
-- One might search for it in vain in any other part of the world."
在阿瑟·柯南·道尔的《巴斯克维尔的猎犬》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted.
在费奥多尔·陀思妥耶夫斯基的《白痴》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- Vain and ambi-tious almost to morbidness, he had had much to put up with in the last two months, and was seeking feverishly for some means of enabling himself to lead a more presentable kind of existence.
-- Very likely he anticipated far worse things than was at all necessary; it is often so with vain persons.
-- Upon the pretext that his tenant needed quiet, he kept him almost in isolation, and Muishkin protested in vain against this ex-cess of zeal.
-- In vain the girls assured her that a man who had not written for six months would not be in such a dreadful hurry, and that probably he had enough to do in town with-out needing to bustle down to Pavlofsk to see them.
-- Aristocrat, millionaire, and idiot, he has ev-ery advantage!One might hunt in vain for his equal, even with the lantern of Diogenes; his like is not to be had even by getting it made to order!'
在荷马的《伊利亚特》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- It will be a sorry tale hereafter that an Achaean host, at once so great and valiant, battled in vain against men fewer in number than themselves; but as yet the end is not in sight.
-- For all their vain struggles he flung them both from their chariot and stripped the armour from their bodies.
-- Eschew vain quarrelling, and the Achaeans old and young will respect you more for doing so.'
-- Dolon answered, his limbs trembling beneath him: 'Hec-tor, with his vain flattering promises, lured me from my better judgement.
-- Vain is your boast in that you have scratched the sole of my foot.
在赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯的《隐形人》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- I was apathetic, and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries, the passion of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the downfall of my father's grey hairs.
在赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯的《人魔岛》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- N February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by Ocollision with a derelict when about the latitude 1' S. and longitude 107' W. On January the Fifth, 1888 that is eleven months and four days after my uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gen-tleman, who certainly went aboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned, was picked up in latitude 5' 3' S. and longitude 101' W. in a small open boat of which the name was illegible, but which is supposed to have belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha.
在詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库柏的《最后的摩根战士》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- As the psalms of David exceed all other lan-guage, so does the psalmody that has been fitted to them by the divines and sages of the land, surpass all vain poet-ry.
-- Glancing his eyes around, with a vain effort to pierce the gloom that was thickening beneath the leafy arches of the forest, he felt as if, cut off from human aid, his unresisting companions would soon lie at the entire mercy of those barbarous enemies, who, like beasts of prey, only waited till the gathering darkness might render their blows more fatally certain.
-- I did believe there was no cry that Indian or beast could make, that my ears had not heard; but this has proved that I was only a vain and conceited mortal.'
-- In vain were the eyes of each individual bent along the oppo-site shores, in quest of some signs of life, that might explain the nature of the interruption they had heard.
-- The leaves were unusu-ally agitated; the dangerous rifle fell from its commanding elevation, and after a few moments of vain struggling, the form of the savage was seen swinging in the wind, while he still grasped a ragged and naked branch of the tree with hands clenched in desperation.
在威廉·萨默塞特·毛姆的《月亮和六便士》里，有这样的句子出现：
-- It was vain to seek the analysis of his emotion.
-- Dirk, with his vain lamentations, had begun to bore me, and I avoided his society.
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