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How to use the word vainly in a Sentence?

Sample usage from literary quotes and the newswire.

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Human rights progress in Vietnam should also be better served by restoring relations with that country, the Vietnamese have already developed complex relations with the rest of the free world. Instead of vainly trying to isolate Vietnam, the United States should test the proposition that greater exposure to Americans will render Vietnam more susceptible to the influence of our values.

John McCain

Found on FOX News
5 years ago

We fail to see that some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty, with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea of what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet.

Pope Francis

Found on Reuters
8 years ago

Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it...

William James

added by anonymous
10 years ago

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

Reinhold Niebuhr

added by anonymous
10 years ago

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

added by anonymous
10 years ago

Do not anxiously expect what is not yet come; do not vainly regret what is already past.

Chinese

added by anonymous
12 years ago

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.

Christopher Morley

added by anonymous
13 years ago

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that, without very much bloodshed, it might be done.

John Brown, last words in a written note given to his jailer, Dec. 2, 1859

added by anonymous
13 years ago

One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life.

Anatole France

added by anonymous
14 years ago

Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yieldAgainst stupidity the very godsThemselves contend in vain. Exalted reason, Resplendent daughter of the head divine,Wise founders of the system of the world,Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou,Bound to the tail of folly's uncurb'd steed,Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd,Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.

Johann Christian Friedrich von Schiller

added by acronimous
14 years ago

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