| I've picked out his gift and struggled over an appropriate note that makes a vain attempt to impart something passing for wisdom. |
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| The women squeezed into the corner in a vain attempt to escape her pursuer. |
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| She dipped her hands into the icy cold water and splashed some water across her sleepy face, in a vain attempt to wake herself up. |
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| He was yelling and crying, reaching out desperately and uselessly past the restraining arms in a vain attempt to bring his friend back. |
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| The interviewer, in a vain attempt to give St Clair another opportunity to repair the damage done by his earlier answer, rephrased the question. |
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| Under the early afternoon sun, she closed her eyes momentarily in a vain attempt to contain her anguish. |
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| In such situations, it is understandable that parents should seek an explanation, in a vain attempt at closure. |
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| We strolled half the length of the lake to locate a party of mallards, in a vain attempt to avoid catching the beady eyes of the Canada geese. |
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| He reorganised the players in serried tiers in a vain attempt to let them hear one another. |
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| Everything is ranked, classed and categorised for easy digestion in a vain attempt to bring forth order from chaos. |
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| Young people should settle into communes rather than keep haring from flat to flat in a vain attempt to keep up with the labour market. |
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| I walked up and down Tottenhan Court Road with Mark at lunchtime in a vain attempt to stave off unconsciousness. |
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| He had earlier used seven of his own clubs in a vain attempt to keep the ball on the short grass. |
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| He nobly sacrificed his life in a vain attempt to save the rest of his team. |
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| He or she may bark or yowl in a vain attempt to get you to just as miraculously reappear. |
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| The cold feel of the paint all over her face made her hop up and start jumping around, in a vain attempt to remove the paint. |
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| Oh man, these people are all around us making joke after joke, jive after jive, pun after pun, all in a vain attempt to elicit laughter. |
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| I saw a young woman in a little, flower print dress and slingbacks, tiny handbag held above her head in a vain attempt to stave off the rain and wind. |
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| But I will not use them in a vain attempt to ward off recession or simply to suit the political mood of the moment. |
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| This was no vain attempt to interfere in a situation beyond its grasp or to paper over cracks. |
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| I wonder what quackery the Kuwaiti authorities plan to invent in their vain attempt to identify gay men. |
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| Others went around spraying air freshener in a vain attempt to mask the stench. |
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| A young lady in blue fluttered excitedly in a vain attempt to stir someone to action. |
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| For many years he embraced this idiosyncrasy in a vain attempt to celebrate his process. |
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| This suggests different ways of evaluating benefit sharing, beyond the vain attempt to assign a specific value to a specific genetic resource. |
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| This is the gift' that a failing Mr Chirac has given us in a vain attempt to prevent us from rejecting the European Constitution. |
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| From what I could gather, he was being sent around to cold-call upon the local residents in a vain attempt to convert them to the service of his electricity utility provider. |
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| In a vain attempt at positive self-reinforcement, chalk all this up to maybe having worked out too hard last week. |
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| Three months later Jos duly dies at Aix-la-Chapelle, a watering place, whither he and Mrs Crawley have repaired in a vain attempt to recover his health. |
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| Their names allude to the doomed Antarctic expedition led by Captain Scott, where Oates nobly sacrificed his life in a vain attempt to save Scott and his team. |
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| Why did the long-suffering taxpayers have to spend their tax dollars in a vain attempt to elect Liberals in the last federal election? |
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| A surfer who braved 20 ft waves in a vain attempt to help rescue a mother and her children from seas off Scarborough said yesterday there was no safety equipment in the area. |
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| I took several deep breaths in a very vain attempt to calm myself. |
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| What we in the European Union call critical dialogue allows us to use a panoply of diplomatic tools without resorting systematically to sanctions and isolation in a vain attempt to bring certain dictatorships to heel. |
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| He assured monks and nuns that they could break their vows without sin, because vows were an illegitimate and vain attempt to win salvation. |
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| In a vain attempt to restore his health, the family moved to Los Angeles. |
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| These difficulties occur because the whole spirit of the EU is to use centralised direction in a vain attempt to achieve an idealised society by making laws and restricting activity. |
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| We have adopted countless resolutions during these last two parliamentary terms in a vain attempt to put an end to the death penalty in the United States and elsewhere. |
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| In a vain attempt to control inflation he imposed price controls which did not last. |
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| This clearly establishes that Quebec Liberal members were aggressively spreading as many Canadian flags around as possible in a vain attempt to get the numbers up in Quebec. |
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| It seems clear from this statement that the Conservatives were prepared to allow industry to police itself, in a vain attempt to appear to be saving taxpayers' money. |
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| A request from the applicant shall be accompanied by sufficient documentary evidence of his vain attempt and, if appropriate, of the conduct of the new holder. |
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| Among the first of its kind, the player-controlled Big Daddy reactivates with no recollection of the past decades events, and scours the city in a vain attempt to relocate the Little Sister that he was paired with. |
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| Which means a vain attempt on my part to make tea. |
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| Rather than spending hundreds of millions in a vain attempt to register millions of legally owned guns in Canada, why not just compare the list of firearms stolen with the list of firearms recovered by police? |
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| Spending here and spending there on a host of dubious projects becomes the order of the day, all of this in a vain attempt to attract voters to the party in power. |
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| It was because of my family history that I applied for the program, oddly enough, it was a vain attempt to try and understand what my aunt experienced at the hands of her captors. |
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| Those in charge of the music in the stadium have to turn up the sound to the absolute maximum in a vain attempt to make the music audible over the singing. |
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| Russian bombers were carpet bombing the ridge directly above them, in a vain attempt to kill the Mujahideen fighters that plagued their operations on the ground. |
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