vainness

But this was a position the vainness of which I couldn't join: it was no part of my disposition to combat, or even regret, the inevitable.

What is a life in vainness spent, That will not bear the common test, When, laid to rest In earth's cold breast, We sleep at last, insentient?

And though some ingenious Persons formerly puzzled themselves in prescribing Rules for the Quantity of English Syllables, and, in Imitation of the Latins, compos'd Verses by the measure of Spondees, Dactyls, &c., yet the Success of their Undertaking has fully evinc'd the Vainness of their Attempt, and given ground to suspect they had not throughly weigh'd what the Genius of our Language would bear; nor reflected that each Tongue has its peculiar Beauties, and that what is agreeable and natural to one, is very often disagreeable, nay, inconsistent with another.

They’re not about vainness or whatever the popular narrative claims.

He feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness of sense, too bitterly the impotence of the hand, and the vainness of the color to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which God has revealed to him.