"Despair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... daughter, to all the questions of exclusiveness and fashion. If they had been born duchesses they could not have been less concerned about obtaining invitations to what their maid called "the first circles," and they would sometimes reduce Allen to despair by giving the preference to a lively literary soiree, when he wanted them to show themselves among the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and no doubt with the promise, seldom performed, that a respite from punishment would be eventually granted. In other instances, there is as little doubt, that they were the final results of irritation, agony, and despair.[61] The confessions are generally composed of "such stuff as dreams are made of," and what they report to have occurred, might either proceed, when there was no intention to fabricate, from intertwining the fantastic threads which sometimes stream ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... making is not ended. Whether a decree of Fate has fixed any ultimate limits to our efforts we have no means of knowing, and no occasion to assume. Is not our wisest course, then, to persist in trying? It is bad method ever to despair of knowing ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... we reached the Hoang Ho, China's sorrow and the engineer's despair. The much-discussed bridge is two miles long, crossing the river on one hundred and seven spans. As the train moved at snail's pace there was plenty of time to take in the desolate scene, stretches of mudflats alternating with broad channels ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... "Brother Hal is sitting out there in chains, looking longingly year after year for the help that does not come, and eating his poor heart out with despair because those to whom he should look for help do ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... after their departure the couriers returned, with Pellican. On inquiring of the latter what had become of my men, he replied that he had left them encamped at a lake about sixty miles distant, where the Esquimaux, abandoning himself to despair, could not be prevailed upon to go a step farther; and that he (Pellican) had been sent forward by Henderson to urge on the party whom they expected. They were within a day's journey of them; and yet the wretches returned ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... the trawl to-night," said Tom Platt, with quiet despair. "He come alongside special to cuss us. I'd give my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old Ohio 'fore we quit floggin'. Jest abaout six dozen, an' Sam Mocatta layin' ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... those that escape these dangers, and reach the upper waters, are very much bruised and battered,—"spent salmon" they are called. After their long journey of six or seven hundred miles from the sea, it seems as if they would be filled with despair at the sight of these boiling cataracts. They refuse bait on the way, apparently never stopping for food, from the time they leave the salt water. Often with fins and tails so worn down as to be almost useless, their noses worn to the bone, their ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... moment, then reached out for her hand, which she gave him. They had no children; and, as he well knew, Doris pined for them. The look in her eyes when she nursed her friends' babies had often hurt him. But after all, why despair? It was only four years ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... dilate on the merit of the pieces selected. The sublime agony of Prometheus Bound, the majesty of wickedness in Clytaemnestra, the martial grandeur of the siege of Thebes, or of the battle of Salamis, in Aeschylus; the awful doom of Oedipus, his mysterious end, the heroic despair of Ajax, the martyrdom of Antigone to duty, in Sophocles; the passion of Phaedra and Medea, the conjugal self-sacrifice of Alcestis, the narratives of the deaths of Polyxena and the slaughter of Pentheus by the Bacchae, in Euripides, speak for themselves, if the ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... delivered them to the hands of those who treat them as if they were stones and sticks full of nothing but monstrosity instead of breathing men like themselves to be shielded by brotherhood and hope and not dashed down by cruelty and despair." ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... affair continued until the end of the whole business came with a suddenness that promised for a time to cast our hero into the utmost depths of humiliation and despair. ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... flesh thrice daily, and reducing sleep to the barest minimum, Ignatius sought by austerity to snatch that crown of sainthood which he felt to be his due. Outraged nature soon warned him that he was upon a path which led to failure. Despair took possession of his soul, sometimes prompting him to end his life by suicide, sometimes plaguing him with hideous visions. At last he fell dangerously ill. Enlightened by the expectation of early death, he then became convinced that his fanatical asceticism was a folly. The ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... despair by the crushing agonies of a life, Cassy had often resolved in her soul an hour of retribution, when her hand should avenge on her oppressor all the injustice and cruelty to which she had been witness, or which she had in her own ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you suppose I don't feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!" And as though in despair he laid his head ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... not the rejection of many of the most precious revelations of the Bible, to which we wish to cling, and without a belief in which there would be the old despair of Paganism, the dreary unsettlement of all religious opinions, even a disbelief in an intelligent First Cause of the universe, certainly of a personal God,—and thus a gradual drifting away to the dismal shores of that godless Epicureanism which Socrates derided, and Paul and Augustine ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... on the bench. Having established a professional standing, Barnabas Beers was not a man to step down, and though the Professor, after a while, endeavored to extract some information from the auctioneer as to whether there was likely to be many bidders, he finally gave it up in despair, for he found Mr. Beers as uncommunicative as a hitching post, as he afterwards ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... overwhelmed her heart, again, with bitter grief. She went to the window, where her little work-table had been placed, and throwing herself down in a chair before it, she crossed her arms upon the table, laid her forehead down upon them in an attitude of despair, and burst ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... Divide, Mount Harrington, towering a thousand feet higher above the valley floor than Clouds Rest above the Yosemite. Down the slopes of the Monarch Divide, seemingly from its turreted summits, cascaded many frothing streams. The Eagle Peaks, Blue Canyon Falls, Silver Spur, the Gorge of Despair, Lost Canyon—these were some of the romantic and appropriate titles we found on the Geological ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... gone to seed and was only a dry husk. Morally the world was terribly corrupt, from its lowest slums up to the palaces of the rich where sensuality ran riot. As a consequence of these conditions, pessimism spread a dark pall over the world. Men everywhere were in despair. They entertained the darkest and bitterest views of life. Nothing seemed to them worth while. The world was all a muddle, and the human heart ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... dense blue waters curled lazily up the feet of a little, naked, brown child that played contentedly with a shell of rainbow hues. Again he saw a throng upon a pier-head, and in its forefront an unknown woman, plainly dressed, with deep brown eyes wherein Despair dwelt, tearless but white to the lips as she watched a steamer draw away. And yet again, he seemed to stand with others upon the threshold of the cardroom of a Hong-Kong club: in a glare of garish light a man in evening ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... true patriot, frets in despair at McClellan's keeping the army in the unhealthiest place of Virginia. Stanton's opponents, the rats, find all right, even the deaths by disease. In the end McClellan is to be all the better for it. Is there no ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... her hands from his arms; he put her back into the chair and sat beside her; he hated to see the white despair of her face. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... weeks after the coup d'etat, and fear seized the minds of those who were active in opposition, or suspected even of being hostile to the new government. France, surprised, perplexed, affrighted, must needs carry on a war of despair, or succumb to the usurpation. The army and the people alike were governed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... she had said, and yet in her most mad despair, of this way she had never thought; though strange it had been, considering her lawless past, that she had not—never of this way—never! Notwithstanding which, in one frenzied moment in which she had known naught but her delirium, her loaded whip had found ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ought not to despair when we are tempted, but the more fervently should cry unto God, that He will vouchsafe to help us in all our tribulation; and that He will, as St. Paul saith, with the temptation make a way to escape that we may be able to bear it.(2) Let us therefore humble ourselves under ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... crying alone and neglected in the nursery, aroused Bella from a horror stricken stupor. Her father's despair made him unapproachable, but she might comfort Bertie, forgotten by ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... may well be returned, who being asked by what means a man might revenge himself upon his enemy, answered, By becoming himself a good and honest man. And the same Diogenes may be quoted also against Sophocles, who, writing of the sacred mysteries, caused great grief and despair to multitudes of men:— ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Pacific, in order to thwart the myrmidons of the law!) They found them so reserved and uncommunicative, however, on the subject of their personal affairs, that the most curious gossip in the settlement at last gave up speculating in despair. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... a rose is too haughty for heaven's dew She becometh a spider's gray lair; And a bosom, that never devotion knew Or affection divine, shall be filled with rue And with darkness, and end with despair." ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... meeting-place. When I explained to the nurse that "The Bull and Bush" was a kind of cabaret she hastened from ward to ward to tell the men that after all the Englishman might have selected a worse spot to entertain his girl. He was at once the joy and the despair of the whole hospital and the nurse had much trouble in consoling the patients when ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... a laugh; and the laughing group excited the jealousy of a group of dowagers and the attention of a troop of men in black who surrounded Simon Giguet. As for the latter, he was chafing in despair at not being able to lay his fortune and his future at the feet ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... offer her solace in her sorrow; how he would bid her be of good cheer, and encourage her to bear the world as the world had now fallen to her lot. He had pictured to himself that he would find her sinking in despair, and had promised himself that with his vows, his kisses, and his prayers, he would bring her back to her self-confidence, and induce her to acknowledge that God's mercy was yet good to her. But now, on awakening, he discovered that she had been tending him in his misery, and watching him ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Helium knew then that there was trickery in their justice; but though her situation seemed hopeless she did not cease to hope, for was she not the daughter of John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, whose famous challenge to Fate, "I still live!" remained the one irreducible defense against despair? At thought of her noble sire the patrician chin of Tara of Helium rose a shade higher. Ah! if he but knew where she was there were little to fear then. The hosts of Helium would batter at the gates of Manator, the great green warriors of John Carter's savage allies ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the Maniac will seek, Cold and hunger awake not her care: Thro' her rags do the winds of the winter blow bleak On her poor withered bosom half bare, and her cheek Has the deathy pale hue of despair. ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... gather up close to Christian, wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that Christian's sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now. And with that he had almost pressed him to death; so that Christian began to despair of life. But, as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his sword, and caught it, saying, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... strange and romantic history we see this passion portrayed with the most complete and graphic fidelity in all its influences and effects; its uncontrollable impulses, its intoxicating joys, its reckless and mad career, and the dreadful remorse and ultimate despair and ruin in which ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... his hands in a gesture of despair, and looked again at Mrs. Willoughby. His glance said, unmistakably, 'Now see what you've done!' Fielding broke into an open laugh; and Clarice haughtily asked him to explain the joke, so that the others present might share ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. You cannot tell me not to love the men who shall be after me; a soft voice within me, I know not what, cries out ever, 'Live for them as for your own children.' When in the circle of my own small life all is dark, and I despair, hope springs up in me when I remember that something nobler and fairer may spring up in the spot where I ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... cried he, dropping upon his knee before the maid-in-waiting, "thou hast saved me from despair. Knowest thou 'tis eight and forty hours since thy gentle presence hath made ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... before her; it was the only article of food she possessed, and no wonder her forlorn, desolate state brought up in her lone bosom all the anxieties of a mother when she looked upon her children: and no wonder, forlorn as she was, if she suffered the heart swellings of despair to rise, even though she knew that He, whose promise is to the widow and to the orphan, can not ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... been in as good condition of health as ever I was in my life or any man in England is, God make me thankful for it! But the condition I am in, in reference to my mother, makes it unfit for me to keep my usual feast. Unless it shall please God to send her well (which I despair wholly of), and then I will make amends for it by observing another day in its room. So to the office, and at the office all the morning, where I had an opportunity to speak to Sir John Harman about my desire to have my brother Balty go again with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... laugh dashed them from her. Her beautiful face, as white as the alabaster Psyche near her, was full of wild and demoniac expressions, which chased each other with the velocity of clouds over her countenance. Remorse, anguish, and despair settled like a brooding tempest on her forehead; then wringing her hands, she again ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... frightened, and with better reason, than her companion. Julia's marble pallor, and the awful stillness of her form—the keenest glance could not detect a quiver in the face or a heave of the bosom—almost stilled that exigent pulse within her own breast with a sudden anguish of despair. ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... despair, go over to the classical camp, in hope of receiving some help or tolerance from their former enemies. They receive it indeed: but as traitors should, to their own eternal dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at the joints, or rusticated, or cut into masks and satyrs' heads, and so set ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... letter was come from Charles, and there is a rendezvous she said, somewhere, but she could not recollect where. She thought you intended to meet Charles and their family at Spa the end of the summer; if so, I shall not despair of seeing you many months sooner than I can otherwise expect it. I shall know to-day at dinner more particularly about it. Lord March thanks you for your frequent and kind ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... matters they acted on the old Turkish proverb—"The Sultan's treasure is a sea, and he who does not draw from it is a pig." Germany found means to satisfy these dominating and acquisitive instincts, and thus regained power at the Sublime Porte. The Ottoman Empire therefore remained the despair of patriotic reformers, a hunting-ground for Teutonic concessionnaires, a Hell for its Christian subjects, and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... in despair. She dared not appear at dinner and arose the next morning after a sleepless night. For two or three hours she hovered about the telephone, hoping for word from Theodore. He would certainly 'phone her. He would tell her he was sorry for the way he had left her, for the way he had spoken to ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... a look full of despair, as if seeing all hope go from her forever; then she said simply, "Farewell," and ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... it had ever been before, in reprobating any such alliance for him, as most unequal and degrading. Her way was clear, though not quite smooth.—She spoke then, on being so entreated.—What did she say?—Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does.—She said enough to shew there need not be despair—and to invite him to say more himself. He had despaired at one period; he had received such an injunction to caution and silence, as for the time crushed every hope;—she had begun by refusing to hear him.—The change had perhaps been somewhat sudden;—her proposal of taking ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Rosa, in her despair, "you are an honest man, sir; how would you feel if one day you found out that you had given the prize to a man for something which he not only had not produced, but which ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... look, like that of a dog who has been ill-treated. "That is what made you notice me," he exclaimed; "it brands me, doesn't it? Yes. A freak. One might as well be piebald." He spoke with extraordinary vehemence, and, taking a handful of his hair, he tugged at it in a rage of despair; then sinking his face between his hands, he sat shaking his head mournfully ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... the depths of despair because a dress does not fit, I should not help her by telling her the truth about her character, and lecturing her upon her folly in wasting grief upon trifles, when there are so many serious troubles in the world. From her point of view, the fact that ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... passed away, and during the passage of that period March Marston's bosom became a theatre in which, unseen by the naked eye, were a legion of spirits, good, middling, and bad, among whom were hope, fear, despair, joy, fun, delight, interest, surprise, mischief, exasperation, and a military demon named General Jollity, who overbore and browbeat all the rest by turns. These scampered through his brain and tore up his heart and tumbled about in his throat and lungs, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... desire, and you are now the slave of your desires. Without any change in yourself, without any insult, any injury to yourself, what sorrows may attack your soul, what pains may you suffer without sickness, how many deaths may you die and yet live! A lie, an error, a suspicion, may plunge you in despair. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... stranger overcame his weakened powers, and many hours of repose and tranquil conversation were necessary to restore his composure. Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally. He asked me the history of my earlier years. The tale was quickly told, but it awakened various trains of reflection. I spoke of my desire of finding a friend, of ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... fading daylight she went along, immersed in her own sad thoughts. Her walk at that hour was entirely aimless. She had only gone forth because of the irritation she felt at her aunt's constant complaints. So entirely engrossed was she by her own despair that she had not noticed the figure of a man who, catching sight of her at the end of Woodnewton village, had held back until she had gone a considerable distance, and had then sauntered leisurely in the direction ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... remembering the hereditary weakness of the Carrs, who had all married badly, she told herself that in hardness lay her solitary refuge from despair. After all, it was better to be hard than ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... wandered from his home, singing the story of his loss and his despair to the helpless passers-by. His grief moved the very stones in the wilderness, and roused a dumb distress in the hearts of savage beasts. Even the gods on Mount Olympus gave ear, but they held no power over ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... be partly accounted for by the ancient law, which held the household of the offender equally responsible with him for the offence, independently of the facts in the case. However, it was certainly also common enough for a bereaved wife to perform suicide, not through despair, but through the wish to follow her [289] husband into the other world, and there to wait upon him as in life. Instances of female suicide, representing the old ideal of duty to a dead husband, have occurred in recent ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... was fairly large, and contained two cots, one against each wall. She was left disconsolately alone, numb, in despair, and moving about in ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... they could not find the safe fording. The French ran up and down the shore, hoping to see someone who could tell them the location of the ford, but found no one. The enemy was advancing rapidly upon them and they had about given up in despair, when they saw a deer with her young step into the water and cross safely. In full confidence that the instinct of the animal had guided her correctly, they followed and reached the south side of the Main safely. The Saxons followed, ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... at three, he found a note from Tetlow inclosing another of Dorothy's cards and also the promised check. Into his face came the look that always comes into the faces of the prisoners of despair when the bolts slide back and the heavy door swings and hope stands on the threshold instead of the familiar grim figure of the jailer. "This looks like the turn of the road," he muttered. Yes, ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... was a box of matches at last! He struck a light in feverish haste, and lit the nearest gas-bracket. For an instant he could see nothing, in the sudden glare; but the next moment he fell back against the wall with a cry of horror and despair. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... upon the rough stones, feeling weak, and perspiring profusely. It was many hours now since he had tasted food, and in his misery and despair he felt that he should be starved to death ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!—and Lord William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if he promises—that I shall be no more his wife—but just a friend henceforward—if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary friends—then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near a ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... again a desolate, shut-up appearance, for Agnes, Maddy and Jessie had returned to New York; Agnes to continue the siege which, in despair of winning the doctor, she had commenced against a rich old bachelor, who had a house on Madison Square; and Maddy to her books, which ere long obliterated, in a measure, the bitter memory of all that had ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... down kindly at him. "In your country you have many a fine example of glass. France, too, is rich in rose windows which are the despair of our modern craftsmen. But we glass-makers are working hard and earnestly, and who knows but in time we may give to the world such glass as is at Rheims, Tours, ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... money was in this city, and a man like Douglas B. Longhurst—a forty-niner, the man that stood at bay in a corn patch for five hours against the San Diablo squatters—weakening on the operation, I tell you, Loudon, I began to despair; and—I may have made mistakes, no doubt there are thousands who could have done better—but I give you a loyal hand on it, I ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... was, an effect further heightened by the erect grace of his carriage. His body was nimble and alert—the words are the words of an ancient chronicler—his limbs were finely shaped; his hands and feet were the theme and the despair of his parasites. But no quality with which it had pleased Heaven to endow his body was ever noted by an observer who was not at first taken captive by the enchantment of the young King's face. His countenance was cast in the mould of antique beauty. So might Alcibiades have looked when he ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... by word. He watched carefully the result, ready to cease speaking, if the shock was too great. He did not suppose that this young girl, timid to excess, with a sensitiveness almost a disease, would be able to hear without flinching such a terrible revelation. He expected a burst of despair, tears, distressing cries. She might perhaps faint away; and he stood ready to call ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... after a long illness, died of consumption in September 1841. Three days after her death at Leamington, Cobden called to see him. "I was in the depths of grief," said Bright, when unveiling the statue of his friend at Bradford in 1877, "I might almost say of despair, for the life and sunshine of my house had been extinguished." Cobden spoke some words of condolence, but after a time he looked up and said, 'There are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers and children are dying ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... an hour after this answer he sent forty men, under Kittakara, to commence the clearing, as he was in despair about his ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... practiced with our Hawkins' rifles and revolvers, as he said, "just to keep his hand in." After an hour or two of this strange battle, in which the Indians suffered fearful carnage, and we encountered no loss, our foe in rage and despair retired. They left sixty of their number dead, besides taking with them many wounded. We continued our march ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... prospect that her father's own lips had placed before her not a month since, had bewildered and dismayed them alike. They had summoned their courage to meet the shock of her passionate grief, or to face the harder trial of witnessing her speechless despair. But they were not prepared for her invincible resolution to read the Instructions; for the terrible questions which she had put to the lawyer; for her immovable determination to fix all the circumstances in her mind, under which Michael Vanstone's decision had been ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... expressed in fuller tones than in this poetry. As ancient Hebrew poetry flowed in the two streams of prophecy and psalmody, so the Jewish poetry of the middle ages was divided into Piut and Selicha. Songs of hope and despair, cries of revenge, exhortations to peace among men, elegies on every single persecution, and laments for Zion, follow each other in kaleidoscopic succession. Unfortunately, there never was lack ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... expected to meet with some difficulties for the first few days, from the nature of the country he had seen from the hill. I did not mention this to the rest of the party, for fear it might still further tend to depress their spirits, as three or four of them even now seemed to despair of ever reaching our destination. I did all in my power to keep them in good heart, but they were saddened and depressed ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... may hereafter fructify. I really think you cannot go on better, for educational purposes, than you are now doing,—observing, thinking, and some reading beat, in my opinion, all systematic education. Do not despair about your style; your letters are excellently written, your scientific style is a little too ambitious. I never study style; all that I do is to try to get the subject as clear as I can in my own head, and express it in the commonest ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of them to be sorry for them," Edgar said. "Their life is of the hardest. They live mostly on black bread, and are thankful enough when they can get enough of it. To heavily tax men such as these is to drive them to despair, and that without producing the gain expected, for it is in most cases simply impossible for them to pay the taxes demanded. It seems to me that a poll-tax is, of all others, the worst, since it takes into no account the differences of station and wealth—to the rich the impost ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... of its poignant associations; nothing transcendental had affected me; but now I shuddered, physically shuddered, as though the cubic space were informed with a spirit in the torture of an everlasting despair. Doria not knowing, he could have borne his punishment. But now Doria knew. He had lost her love, the rock on which he had built his hope of salvation. He was damned to eternity. It is the supreme and unspeakable horror of eternal life that you cannot ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... for its own Dross, which has so long passed current among us in Pieces abounding with all the Levities of its volatile Inhabitants.} The reigning Depravity of the Times has yet left Virtue many Votaries. Of their Protection you need not despair. May every head-strong Libertine whose Hands you reach, be reclaimed; and every tempted Virgin who reads you, imitate the Virtue, and meet the Reward of the high-meriting, tho' low-descended, ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... to stand practically alone. But unexpected assistance came to them from the district of the Tiber. The confederacy of the Hernici, called by the Romans to account for their countrymen found among the Samnite captives, now declared war against Rome (in 448)—more doubtless from despair than from calculation. Some of the more considerable Hernican communities from the first kept aloof from hostilities; but Anagnia, by far the most eminent of the Hernican cities, carried out this declaration ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... piteously across her eyes as though to shut out the crowds, the station, and the urgency of this personality beside her. Despair was in her heart. How ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... soft, slow, quick, unequal, concentrated; a Heaviness in the Head so considerable, that the sick Person could scarce support it, appearing to be seized with a Stupidity and Confusion, like that of a drunken Person; the Sight fixed, dull, wandering, expressing Fearfulness and Despair; the Voice slow, interrupted, complaining; the Tongue almost always white, towards the end dry, reddish, black, rough; the Face pale, Lead-coloured, languishing, cadaverous; a frequent Sickness at the Stomach; mortal Inquietudes; ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... institution of antiquity is that solemn ceremony which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for their transgressions by penitences. Remorse must necessarily have preceded the expiations; for the maladies are older than the medicine, and all needs have ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... over her music, while Maxwell's face was hidden behind a paper. Mrs. Burke was silent through despair. Nickey glanced furtively at his hearers for ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... an hour approaching when philosophy will fail, and all human science will desert you. What then will be your substitute? Tell me, Colonel Burr, or rather answer it to your own heart, when the pale messenger appears, how will you meet him—'undamped by doubts, undarkened by despair?' ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... in the Pilgrim, at the Interpreter's house, by the representation of a man in an iron cage, who says, 'I cannot get out, O now I cannot!' The awful account of Spira's despair must have made a strong impression upon Bunyan's mind. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... excluded from all pity, regard, and assistance; that, stung by self-conviction, insulted with reproach, denied the privilege of penitence and contrition, cut off from all hope, impelled by indigence, and maddened by despair, they had plunged into a life of infamy, in which they were exposed to deplorable vicissitudes of misery, and the most excruciating pangs of reflection that any human being could sustain; that whatever remorse they might feel, howsoever they might detest their own ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... In despair, De Peyster at last raises a white flag, and white handkerchiefs are waved from ramrods. Some of the younger backwoodsmen did not know what a white flag meant, and kept on firing. The colonels ordered them to stop, ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... belief. Even if there were no God and no future and no miracles and no Jesus of history, sin would be sin and its harvest the same; goodness and right and virtue would always be the same and their harvest the same. But men can not live without God without living in hopeless despair. Walter, what did Christ come into the world for, if not to do for us the very things we really needed and were dying to get? He revealed God to us. Made the future plain. Showed man his duty to his neighbour. Brought ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... meet him. It was a painful duty that Oswald had to discharge, and the old earl, when he heard of the defeat of the army, the death of the son to whom he was deeply attached, and the capture of his brother, the Earl of Westmoreland, gave way to despair, dismissed his army to their homes at once, and retired, completely broken down in body and spirit, to his castle ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... Smith in the spectacle: the almost naked Malays, armed with their terrible krises, swarming on every part of the vessel; the Chinamen with pikes, muskets, and stink-balls fighting with the courage of despair to keep the boarders at bay. As yet the Malays had not gained a permanent footing on the deck, but for every man that was felled or hurled back into the praus there were a dozen to fill the gap, and the most valorous of fighters ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... were utterly useless, being occupied by an indomitable race of rats and mice; they had an impregnable fortress somewhere in the old walls, and kept possession, in spite of the house-keeping artillery Mrs. Moore levelled against them. The poor woman gave up in despair; she locked the doors, and determined to ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... him in his work, by themselves inducing Cavalier to abandon his present course. They did not conceal from themselves that this would be difficult, but as they could command means of corruption which were not within the power of d'Aygaliers, they did not despair ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Hercules, whose death she had been the unwitting cause of by giving him the poisoned robe which NESSUS (q. v.) had sent her as potent to preserve her husband's love; on hearing the fatal result she killed herself in remorse and despair. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... should have made Grace unhappy. (Julia sneers). However, now I come to think of it, you'll make Paramore unhappy. And yet if you refused him he would be in despair. ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... for words like that? A threat by action! Here, I'll go right away and will yell 'help!' and will turn the signal handle," and he seized the door-knob with such an air of resolution that the conductor just made a gesture of despair with his hand ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... shouted a warning, but her voice failed to carry. For a moment she stood with her hands pressed together in despair, then turned and swiftly scudded to her machine. She sprang in, swept forward, reached the rim of the mesa, and plunged down. Never before had she attempted so precarious a descent in such wild haste. The car fairly leaped into space, and after it struck swayed dizzily as it shot down. The girl ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... unexpectedly perished at the same time; for as the roof tumbled down, some of these men tumbled down with it, and others of them were killed by their enemies who encompassed them. There was a great number more, who, out of despair of saving their lives, and out of astonishment at the misery that surrounded them, did either cast themselves into the fire, or threw themselves upon their swords, and so got out of their misery. But as to those that retired behind the same way by which they ascended, and thereby escaped, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... is in the Moniteur!" "What!" "Yes! The Decrees." Whereupon the tutors rushed to the family drawing-room, whither we followed them. There sat my father, thunderstruck, the Moniteur in his hand. When he saw the tutors come in, he threw up his arms in despair, and let them fall again. After a silence on his Part, during which my mother rapidly acquainted the gentlemen with the state of affairs, my father said: "They are mad!" That was all, and after another silence, a long one— ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... formerly authorized by the church. In one place, alarmed at the liberty which in its opening efforts always shows itself an enemy, it will cast itself into the arms of a convenient servitude. In another place, reduced to despair by a pedantic tutelage, it will be driven into the savage license of the state of nature. Usurpation will invoke the weakness of human nature, and insurrection will invoke its dignity, till at length the great sovereign of all human things, blind force, shall come ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... special cause. This only will we remark upon as pre-eminently strange, that in these beyond all other spectacles men's minds are hurried into excitement without any regard to a fitting sobriety of character. The Green charioteer flashes by: part of the people is in despair. The Blue gets a lead: a larger part of the City is in misery. They cheer frantically when they have gained nothing; they are cut to the heart when they have received no loss; and they plunge with as much ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... ground; there was a sharp hollow where the head had lain, and a broad depression for the shoulders. It was the impression of the body of a man—a large man like Wilbur. Any hope, any doubt she might have had, slipped from her mind, and despair rolled into it with an even, sullen current, like the motion of ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... dim and darkened; Gloom, and sickness, and despair, Dwelling in the gilded chambers. Creeping up the marble stair, Even stilled the voice of mourning— For a child lay ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... glass, and catching from within, strong against your face, the pungent warmth and aroma of the heated soil and the delicate fragrance of young seedlings. How fast the seeds come—some of them! Others come so slowly that the amateur gardener is in despair, and angrily decides to try a new seed house next year. The vegetable frames are sown in rows—celery, tomatoes, cauliflowers, lettuce, radishes, peppers, coming up in tiny green ribbons, the radishes racing ahead. The flower frames, however, are sown in squares, each about a foot across, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... particularly happy about it. Malcolm Haer characteristically went into a fracas with confidence, an aggressive confidence so strong that it often carried the day. In battles past, it had become a tradition that Haer's morale was worth a thousand men; the energy he expended was the despair of his doctors who had been warning him for a decade. ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... in despair, descend into their own mines for the purpose of trying to raise some coal themselves, but their employes, declining to assist in hauling them up again, they are left to their fate, and nothing ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... as her own linen; she looked at her husband with fixed eyes widened by fear; she tried to speak, but her throat was dry. Michu disappeared like a shadow, having tied Couraut to the foot of his bed where the dog, after the manner of all dogs, howled in despair. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... fourth place], what need is there of a long discussion? [If we were to think that, after we have come to the Gospel and are born again, we were to merit by our works that God be gracious to us, not by faith, conscience would never find rest, but would be driven to despair. For the Law unceasingly accuses us, since we never can satisfy the Law.] All Scripture, all the Church cries out that the Law cannot be satisfied. Therefore this inchoate fulfilment of the Law does not please on its ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... speed, and John's wagon, a long, well-oiled affair with a coat of red, discarded house paint on its framework, had come to grief in a collision with Brown's, one sunny afternoon. Even Silvey, the optimist, who had furnished the motive power, had looked at the wreckage in well-founded despair. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely |
