"What heartache -- ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague, and chill The drear sand levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o'er and o'er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name; Always the same -- the same."英文原著 · 《A Mountain Woman》
Our Tatar, worn down by care and toil, and carrying seven heavens full of water in his manifold jackets and shawls, was a mere weak and vapid dilution of the sleek Moostapha, who scarce more than one fortnight before came out like a bridegroom from his chamber to take the command of our party.英文原著 · 《Eothen》
All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the imagination, a vapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect of overlooking and scorning the minute neatness of natural objects. This will not do. Again, Sir Joshua lays it down without any qualification that--英文原著 · 《Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners》
Many artists have also imagined they were following the directions of Sir Joshua when they did the same thing, that is, neglected the detail, and produced the same results--vapid generalities, absurd, foolish pictures.英文原著 · 《Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners》
It is affecting ignorance, and making it a title to wisdom. It is a vapid assumption of superiority. It is exceeding impertinence. It is rank coxcombry. It is nothing in the world else. To condemn because the multitude admire is as essentially vulgar as to admire because they admire. There is no exercise of taste or judgment in either case: both are equally repugnant to good sense, and of the two I should prefer the good-natured side. I would as soon agree with my barber as differ from him; and why should I make a point of reversing the sentence of the Whitechapel orders?英文原著 · 《Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners》
[1] I have heard of such a thing as an author who makes it a rule never to admit a monosyllable into his vapid verse. Yet the charm and sweetness of Marlowe's lines depended often on their being made up almost entirely of monosyllables.英文原著 · 《Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners》
Me dealing with animals who don't care that we are air-conditioning the outside and insist on rotting their brains by watching vapid housewives spit wine on each other.美剧 · 《Modern Family》