"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speculation to all, a few of his female acquaintance excepted (for he had no friends), who asserted roundly that it represented them all, and some were even willing to go the length of saying that it represented more, and stood for dirty, drivelling, desperate, and a few other choice words which it is quite unnecessary to mention. Only a few, and these were among the knowing and peculiarly observant ones of Gorman's intimates, said that "D" stood for "deep." But then, many of those who thus pronounced their opinion, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... that your pot-boiling is a desperate and barely sufficient expedient to keep the wolf from the door. So she is planning to help you realize ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sharp, desperate fight. Strong natures have to. Why was she born with these ambitions and aims and capabilities and the ardent desire to do something? All girls did not have them. Some in the class laughed and made merry without a ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... valuable as a short history of the ostrich method of dealing with realities. The beggar, of course, continues to cry aloud after his tongue, and even his head, have been removed, because there are so many millions of him. Again and again, in the course of history, he has gathered desperate courage to defy authority that is blind and evil. Always at last, as in the French and the Russian revolutions and in the more recent European revolts, he succeeds in wresting the power from those in autocratic authority. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... miner magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results. The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, a la Powderly, who will be willing to carry faggots ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... with a shuddering instinctive fear. Then suddenly the thunders seemed to stifle all memory of sound—and left only the silent universe with myself and this terribly beautiful thing in the midst of utter emptiness. And I loved it with a strange, desperate, tigerish love. It expressed itself so magnificently; and that is really all a man, or a waterfall, or a mountain, or a flower, or a grasshopper, or a meadow lark, or an ocean, or a thunderstorm has to do in this world. And it was doing it right ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... malice, as well as to homicide; that having myself whetted the appetite of the populace to blood, no wealth, no power, could prevent my becoming their victim: and thou tellest me thy secret now, ere the trial be over and the innocent condemned, to show what a desperate web of villainy thy word to-morrow could destroy; to enhance in this, the ninth hour, the price of thy forbearance; to show that my own arts, in arousing the popular wrath, would, at thy witness, recoil upon myself; and that if not for ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... had SIXTY of them in a gang, driving them around the country like brutes, to dig up gold and silver for them, (which they will get enough of yet.) Should the lives of such creatures be spared? Is GOD and Mammon in league? What has the Lord to do with a gang of desperate wretches, who go sneaking about the country like robbers—light upon his people wherever they can get a chance, binding them with chains and hand-cuffs, beat and murder them as they would rattle-snakes? ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... a wretched son of mortality: to all which the genie princess replied, that her remonstrances were vain; she had fixed her affections, and would rather be torn into a thousand pieces than desert the object of her heart. The mother upon this finding the case desperate, and being herself softened by the uncommon beauty of the youth, who had fallen at her feet, entreating mercy for his beloved, at length relented, and agreed to sanctify their loves by her consent to their marriage. It was accordingly celebrated; and this island, which after the name ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... of Sir Marcus. Jealousy makes men (and women) do strange and desperate things. The character of Eric Coverly, the new baronet, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... lamentable truth: that the strange position in which destiny had placed her—a position strange but not infamous—had made of her a being apart, had put her outside the ordinary life of humanity, outside the law of love!... A desire to explain, to convince, to justify herself, the desire of a desperate creature at bay, burned up in her like a flame: it flashed and died. Henri had no confidence in her! He believed this odious thing of her—this abominable, incredible thing!... Her heart was full to bursting with an agony of grief, of outraged innocence.... ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the captain. "I'm about desperate; I'd rather hang than rot here much longer." And with the word he took the accordion and struck up "Home, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... establishment does not produce great results in the building of the Church when compared with the work of evangelists and educationalists. In some places their aid was at first apparently necessary to success, but as time went on that first desperate importance ceased. We have not so large a medical force that we can afford to use it for any but the most important and necessary purposes; yet, if the establishment of a native Church is the dominant purpose, large numbers of medicals are doing work which is (from this point ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... Two eyes she had beseeching me Meekly and brave, and her brown breast Throbbed hot and quick above her heart; And then she opened her dagger bill,— 'Twas not a chirp, as sparrows pipe At break of day; 'twas not a trill, As falters through the quiet even; But one sharp solitary note, One desperate, fierce, and vivid cry Of valiant tears, and hopeless joy, One passionate note of victory; Off, like a fool afraid, I sneaked, Smiling the smile the fool smiles best, At the mother bird in the secret hedge Patient upon her ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... stop," said the almost desperate girl, "I will shut myself up and not appear till he is gone. I will any way, if you don't ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... who has conferred on me all his duties and power. After the military operations which were carried on as far as the last town in Isabela, being tired and somewhat sick, I was put in charge of these military headquarters, which I found to be very much mixed up, the town, moreover, being desperate on account of the assaults committed by my predecessor, Rafael Perca, who was appointed by the Colonel, and who was formerly 2d Captain of the steamer Filipinas. After arriving and taking charge, having received numerous complaints against him, I ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... armadillos and gigantic crabs, to which Mr. Roosevelt has given the name of Kermit crabs, to commemorate the escape of his son, who was carried off by one of these monsters and rescued by a troglodyte guide after a desperate struggle. On emerging from the forest the travellers were faced by perpendicular granite crags, which they ascended on the backs of some friendly condors.... The summit proved to be an extensive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... evil without remedy? Is human nature always to be sacrificed to outward decoration? Is the outward always to triumph over the inward man? Is nobleness of sentiment never to spring up among us? May not a reform in this particular begin in the laboring class, since it seems so desperate among the more prosperous? Cannot the laborer, whose condition calls him so loudly to simplicity of taste and habits, take his stand against that love of dress which dissipates and corrupts so many minds among the opulent? Cannot the laboring class refuse ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... constitution—coming from both sides, they neutralize each other. To argue a constitutional question by guessing at the "suppositions" that might have been made by the parties to it, would find small favor in a court of law. But even a desperate shift is some easement when sorely pushed. If this question is to be settled by "suppositions," suppositions shall be forth ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... attempt to plant an English colony in America. Drake, finding the people in a desperate state, took them in his ships and sailed with them for England. Hardly had they gone before other ships came and the missing colonists were sought for in vain. Then fifteen men were left on the island to hold it for England, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... suburban train. He purposely appeared gay before his train-acquaintances. He left the train in high spirits. He pursued a lonely path toward home. He reached a stream. He set to work making many marks of a desperate struggle. He placed a revolver at his heart and fired. Then with unusual fortitude he threw ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... received an expected visitor at her apartment. Expecting him, she made a desperate effort to appear as strong and unconcerned as she had been on the occasion of a former meeting. There was little in her appearance to suggest worry, illness or alarm when she entered the rather unsettled little library and confronted ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... attack east of Telepotch and Polen; severe fighting for the height near Oravozil is in progress, the Russians reoccupying it by a desperate assault after losing it earlier in the day; 600,000 Austro-German troops are now engaged over an irregular line between the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... say about the goodwill and devotion of all engaged, I perceived and deeply felt last night. It moved me even more than the demonstration itself, though I do suppose it was the most brilliant ever seen. When I got up to speak, but for taking a desperate hold of myself, I should have lost my sight and voice ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... swell. Poor Lorraine! I don't mean poor because of the estate, because he's rich, of course; but do you know, I think he's sadder than ever. He's very much cut up that the Colonel died, of course, but he seems desperate about everything, and talks more about suicide than he did at Snuffy's, Jem says. One thing he is quite changed about; he's so clean! and quite a dandy. He looked awfully handsome, and Jenny said he was beautifully ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... according to the word of General Saterges, it was rascality which the General could pardon. He had gained many a victory in desperate strife,—now one other, the last and most complete: the kingdom's fairest star to shine among his honors! The proclamation of Stephen Cordier's pardon would instantly make broad the way to Chateau Desperiers. She came of a proud race, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... progressive, and at peace with [12] all men, we West Indian Blacks, were we ever to become constitutionally dominant in our native islands, would emulate in savagery our Haytian fellow-Blacks who, at the time of retaliating upon their actual masters, were tortured slaves, bleeding and rendered desperate under the oppressors' lash—and all this simply and merely because of the sameness of our ancestry and the colour of our skin! One would have thought that Liberia would have been a fitter standard of comparison in respect of a coloured population starting a national life, really and truly equipped ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... there is no action, however original or peculiar, which is not in respect of far the greater number of its details founded upon memory. If a desperate man blows his brains out—an action which he can do once in a lifetime only, and which none of his ancestors can have done before leaving offspring—still nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of the movements necessary to achieve ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... and the other killed the invader of his domestic peace, for which offence the Governor said he would never allow a man to be hanged. It is to Mr. McDaniel's credit that this clemency was exercised in full view of the desperate efforts which have been made for more than a year to save from the gallows one Turner, a man of influential family, for whose crime there was no excuse. All recourses of appeal to the courts having been exhausted, Turner's ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... in so desperate a condition, my child?" asked Mr. Halberg; "and did your mother's patience never fail her, so that she would speak accusingly of ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... North Cape had left on the previous day—there would not be another for a fortnight. Cursing his ill-luck, he resolved to reach the Altenfjord by land, and began to make arrangements accordingly. Those who knew the country well endeavored to dissuade him from this desperate project—the further north, the greater danger, they told him,—moreover, the weather was, even for Norway, exceptionally trying. Snow lay heavily over all the country he would have to traverse—the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... there had been dreadful riots, and disorders in Paris. The Swiss Guards had been cut to pieces, and the king and royal family imprisoned. The priests had nearly all perished or been banished from France. The national assembly was divided into desperate factions, which often turned their arms against one another. When one party triumphed, proscription followed, and the guillotine was put in requisition, and blood flowed in torrents. The grossest irreligion likewise prevailed. Leaders of the atheistical mob would extend their arms ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... with the sensitive soul of him, and hidden always under an impassive mask of self-control, lay the battling spirit, an indomitable fighting streak; it cropped out in a cool, calculating manner of taking desperate chances when the sleeping devil in him was roused. He would sidestep trouble—and one met the weeping damsel at many turns of the road in those raw days—if he could do it without loss of self-respect; but the man who stirred him up needlessly, or ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... self-control enough to sit silent, but her mouth assumed that peculiar expression which at times revealed a few little mysteries of her nature—showing that beneath the quietude and simplicity of the girl lay the strong, desperate will of ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... seen this desperate work can form but a faint conception of its true character. Written or spoken words may conjure up a pretty vivid picture of the scene, the blackness of the night, and the heaving and lashing of the waves, but words cannot ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was her brother and his certain fate, if the two thousand dollars were not paid in by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana's sake. He approached the table, and his old ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... remark in myself the vice of falsehood—on the contrary, I was, if anything, too outspoken and truthful. Yet, during this first stage of my manhood, I often found myself seized with a strange and unreasonable tendency to lie in the most desperate fashion. I say advisedly "in the most desperate fashion," for the reason that I lied in matters in which it was the easiest thing in the world to detect me. On the whole I think that a vain-glorious desire to appear different from what I was, combined with an impossible hope ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... 'I entered on his lodgings t'other day, chiefly because I had seen this very board. It matters little to me where I live, and I had a desperate hope that some intelligence might be cast in my way there, which would not reach me elsewhere. Yes, I live at Brass's—more shame for me, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... more in this interval. All that precedes is a desperate attempt to induce me to continue my descriptions: notoriety ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... are both excellent things, but I do not admit the inference. A wide and most fertile territory, as yet but thinly inhabited, may easily be made to yield abundant food for its population: and where a desperate villain knows, that when he has made his town or his village "too hot to hold him," he has nothing to do but to travel a few miles west, and be sure of finding plenty of beef and whiskey, with no danger that the law shall ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... sat quite still, her fingers twisted together and straining on her knee. If Sister Giovanna had looked up, she would have wondered how mere sympathy could be so deep and stirring. But she could not; her own struggle was too desperate. Minutes passed before she spoke again, and then there was a change in her, for her voice ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... bold knights, who had ever lived in the realms of romance. Maria addressed the Hungarian barons in an impressive speech in Latin, the language then in use in the diets of Hungary, faithfully describing the desperate state of her affairs. She committed herself and her children to their protection, and urged them to drive the invaders from the land or to perish in the attempt. It was just the appeal to rouse such hearts to a phrensy of enthusiasm. The youth, the beauty, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... all the rage and scorn that a threat so contrary to all schoolboy codes of honour and friendship might deserve. I believe Alured struck him, but at any rate Trevor Lea gained his point, though at the cost of a desperate quarrel. ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there, And the world and its kingdoms Incredibly faded; And you group through the Terror Above you and under For the light, for the warmth, The assurance of life; But the blasts are ice-born, And your heart is nigh burst With the weight of the gloom And the stress of your strangled And desperate endeavour: Sudden a hand - Mother, O Mother! - God at His best to you, Out of the roaring, Impossible silences, Falls on and urges you, Mightily, tenderly, Forth, as you clutch at it, Forth to the infinite Peace of ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... admit, an arrangement apt to miscarry in the heat of desperate battle, but I could think of none better, since it was absolutely necessary that no ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... magnifying mirror he spied the squat khaki buildings of his base. Werewolves of War, the batch of planes he belonged to had been christened, and it was a richly deserved title. In front of the front they fought, detailed to desperate, harrying missions, losing an average of ten men a day. The ordeal of gas and fire and acid bullets added five years to a man's brow overnight—if he served with the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... white men and wipe them out, as he had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad. A friendly cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by Colon's acute mind to be desperate indeed. He had only a small force, torn by jealousy and private quarrels, and a defensive fight at this stage of his enterprise would almost surely be a losing one. The territory of Caonaba included ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... a settlement of the succession and declined to go farther in the matter. Essex was thus thrown upon his own resources, and his anger against the queen being roused afresh by the refusal to renew his monopoly of sweet wines, he formed the desperate project of seizing her person and compelling her to dismiss from her council his enemies Raleigh, Cobham, and Cecil. As some pretext, he intended to affirm that his life was in danger from these men, who were in league with the Spaniards. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... thus endeavoring to shield one another from suspicion, and, as a result, are both equally in peril. Our being alone together here will enrage Monsieur Cassion, and he will use all his power for revenge. My testimony will only make your case more desperate should I confess what I know, and you ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... raider Wolf after a cruise in which she had sunk eleven vessels in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The extension of submarine warfare to the sinking of hospital ships was more shocking as an exhibition of barbarity than alarming as a proof of naval efficiency, and may even have been designed as a desperate measure to commit Germany beyond recall to the alternative of victory or irredeemable ruin. As an outrage against international morality it was only exceeded by the torpedoing on 6 June of a Dutch vessel on which British delegates were to have gone to The Hague to discuss with ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... delighted in the exercise of power, and rejoiced in conflicts or commotions, from the exhilaration they occasioned, and the opportunity they gave for the gratification of the activity of his nature. He pursued the object of getting possession of the ministry house and land with such desperate pertinacity, not, I think, from avaricious motives, but for the sake of the power it would give him as a considerable landholder. His love of form and public excitement led him to operate as he did with his church. He kept it in continual action during the few ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... gold, and all my wealth is gone!— You partial heavens, have I deserv'd this plague? What, will you thus oppose me, luckless stars, To make me desperate in my poverty? And, knowing me impatient in distress, Think me so mad as I will hang myself, That I may vanish o'er the earth in air, And leave no memory that e'er I was? No, I will live; nor loathe I this my life: And, since you leave me in the ocean thus To sink or ...
— The Jew of Malta • Christopher Marlowe
... army in France have been subjected to as severe a trial as it is possible to impose upon any body of men. The desperate fighting described in my last dispatch had hardly been brought to a conclusion when they were called upon to face the rigors and hardships of a Winter campaign. Frost and snow have alternated ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... her with baffled rage and hate. For a moment she almost decided to take her chances and seek Burke Lawson in the distant Hollow. But night was coming—the black, drear night of the low places. Marg was desperate, but a primitive conservatism held her. Not for all she hoped to gain would she brave Burke Lawson alone in the secret places of Devil-may-come Hollow! So she followed after Nella-Rose and reached home while her sister was preparing ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... a moment, Dale, while I tell you what I propose. It is a desperate venture, but if you are still going to be obstinate it is all I can think of, and we might just as well try it as throw ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... hunting for him, and was, therefore, totally unaware of the flank movement that was under way. It could not be that he was still asleep; he had no fears on that score. It might be, too, that the Irishman had arrived at the conclusion that the situation had grown so desperate as to warrant him in the dernier resorte he had fixed upon. If such was the case, then, as Mickey himself might have said, "the ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... woman to herself. She made a desperate effort for self-command. Little by little, the unmeaning look died down, and presently she sat silent and moveless, staring at the two with stormy eyes out of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... could do nothing, Ala was far away at the capital, even supposing that she should be disposed to set out in search of us, and hours, perhaps days, must elapse before she could be informed of what had happened. Not even when Jack and I were in the dungeon had our case seemed so desperate. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... body might expect to see you back again, another season," observed Daggett, glancing meaningly towards his companion, as if he had seriously revolved so desperate a plan in his mind. "'Tisn't often that a sealer lets a station like that you've described drop out of his recollection in a ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... itself while Gefty was making a rapid and rather desperate mental review of various heavy-duty tools which might be employed as weapons to force the janandra into submission and haul it off for confinement elsewhere in the ship. Not impossible, but a highly precarious and ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... result, the defeat of Lee and Jackson by General Hooker. But the desperate character of the situation rendered it necessary ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... at the worst hold the boat until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and with a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... worked it was hurt by the gun; but in its passage across the deck it knocked down and killed three men, and jammed one of the guns on the other side in such a way that it became for a time unserviceable. Ben Bolter and his comrades were making desperate efforts to clear the wreck, when they heard a shout on deck for the boarders. The bowsprit of the Waterwitch had by that time been shot away; her rigging was dreadfully cut up, and her wheel smashed; and Captain Ward ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... and a little sick. She got only the meaning of the words, their value would come later. But with a desperate effort she pulled herself together, and smiled with ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Parker testified—sought the little fellow vehemently, and had he been successful, he might yet have made some effort, trusting to his master's toleration; but the loss and reproach had made him an absolutely desperate man. Was it blind flight or self-destruction? That he had money about him, having cashed a cheque of his master's, favoured the first idea, and no one would too curiously inquire whether Mr. Egremont was aware of ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this resolution so suddenly? There was time, all the time in the world, and having once neglected the thing at the very start, it was curious that she should now, at this late date, make her desperate resolve. Preston had not been worse, more difficult to handle. In fact, when the two women had grown used to his case, the management had been simple enough. He had thought she was inured to the disgust and the horror—placid ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... necessarily, as matters were managed, an unlimited power over the people, and gratified that malignant vigilance which ever attends upon suspicion and conscious guilt. Many of the tenants, for instance, when driven to the uttermost depths of distress and misery, have been desperate enough to appeal to the head landlords, and almost in every case the agent himself was enabled to show them their own letters, which the absentee had in the meantime transmitted to the identical party ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... relieving force failed to relieve. It was under Havelock and Outram; and arrived when the siege had been going on for three months. It fought its desperate way to Lucknow, then fought its way through the city against odds of a hundred to one, and entered the Residency; but there was not enough left of it, then, to do any good. It lost more men in its last fight than it found in the Residency when it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... society, and the flunkey FitzPlushe, by virtue of his supposed wealth, sat amongst peers and was idolised. Then was the harvest-time of scheming lawyers, parliamentary agents, engineers, surveyors, and traffic-takers, who were ready to take up any railway scheme however desperate, and to prove any amount of traffic even where none existed. The traffic in the credulity of their dupes was, however, the great fact that mainly concerned them, and of the profitable character of which ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... be rejected, as it can not be a true theory. Every true theory passes through these three stages,—possibility, probability, and certainty. A theory is not science, until it is certainly true, and so becomes knowledge. The evolution of man from the brute is in the throes of a desperate struggle to show that it may possibly be a true theory or hypothesis. Yet some who are ready to admit that they are "scientists," claim ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... well as I do that that doesn't make a particle of difference. If I had been a boy instead of a girl, and had bucked the world for a living, I'd probably have done worse; and, anyway, it doesn't matter!" Her voice rose as if she were growing desperate. "I—I—like you—to pieces, Ward, and I'd—I'd rather marry you—than anyone else. But I don't want to think about that for a long while. I don't want to be engaged, or—or any different than the way we've been. It was good to be just pals. It was like my pretend Ward. I—I always wanted him—to ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... of her belongings, in charge of her mother's maid, and the immediate necessity of dressing more carefully than had been possible when she had been so rudely roused by the Baroness. She was surprised to find herself so little tired by the desperate adventure, and without even a cold as the result of the never-to-be-forgotten chill she had ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... colonists, the problem of fighting the full power of England was apparently a desperate one. The militia, with superior numbers, had chased the British from Concord, and had made a stubborn defence at Bunker Hill; but the British were about to move with overwhelming strength. To raise, equip, clothe, and feed armies was the task of a strong administration, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... which every happy night You cure with ease and with delight; With pleasure, as the poet sings, Too great for mortals less than kings. Chloe, when on thy breast I lie, Observes me with revengeful eye: If Chloe o'er thy heart prevails, She'll tear me with her desperate nails; And with relentless hands destroy The tender pledges of our joy. Nor have I bred a spurious race; They all were born from thy embrace. Consider, Strephon, what you do; For, should I die for love of you, I'll haunt thy dreams, a bloodless ghost; And all my kin, (a numerous host,) ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... had to pronounce the irrevocable vows, had resolved to fly at all hazards; that Sister Mary, unconscious of her designs, had proposed to take her on a party of pleasure, and that the rash girl, blind to every risk but that of delay, had seized on this desperate means of escape. What must have followed had she not chanced on Odo, she had clearly neither the courage nor the experience to picture; but she seemed to have had some confused idea of throwing herself on ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... was just, only just, sufficient to turn first one and then the other of them upon its hinges and work the various bolts and bars into their respective places. Two men could never have done the job, but being three and fairly desperate we managed it. Then we retreated to our archway and, as nothing happened, took the opportunity to eat and drink a few mouthfuls, Quick remarking sagely that we might as well die upon full ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... increased the excitement and terror a hundredfold. All eyes were strained in the endeavour to ascertain something of their position, and presently the Farne Lights became visible. After a moment's consultation, the awful truth made the men desperate. There was no doubt as to the imminent and immediate peril in which they were, for the dangerous character of the coast of the islands was well known. The captain and men, aroused to almost superhuman effort by the awful catastrophe that was coming upon them, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... we might have to go to the bottom—s-sst! like that. And now Red Dick and his cargo steamer were belting through the tide rips toward the Terra del Fuego shore, to find a bay, I suppose, and a bit of a beach to haul up and patch things. And I couldn't help thinking as he went that he'd lost a desperate reputation about as easy as any ever I heard of; but I might as well also say now that I'd been shipmates with Red Dick, and I always did believe he was a good deal of a bluff. But my crew didn't think that. There was great ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... overview: North Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and spare parts shortages. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel. The nation has suffered its eleventh ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... she persuades Etzel to invite her brothers to his court on a visit. Against many forebodings and warnings they come, Hagen with them. After numerous interesting episodes upon the journey, they arrive at Etzell's court and are handsomely welcomed. But the inevitable quarrel soon breaks out and a desperate fight begins. After a most desperate and bloody struggle, Gunther, Hagen, and a few followers are shut up in a hall. To ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... "but I ate the others before I knew you were coming. They are good, aren't they? Does your mother ever bake sugar cakes?" he ended in a desperate attempt ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... the subject. The result of this is either to lead to the view that there is no subject, whence we arrive at materialism; or to lead to the view that what is presented is part of the subject, whence we arrive at idealism, and should arrive at solipsism but for the most desperate contortions. Now I wish to preserve the dualism of subject and object in my terminology, because this dualism seems to me a fundamental fact concerning cognition. Hence I prefer the word acquaintance because it emphasises the need of a ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... certain ancient notes. That some such plausible objection was now raised against Micaiah is very likely, otherwise Jehoshaphat, who used to disbelieve all such false prophets, could never have been induced to accompany Ahab in these desperate circumstances. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... by Terrestrial women; and not half aware what she did, but yielding instinctively to the habit of compliance with imperative command spoken in a masculine voice, she opened her hands just as I had lost all hope. With one desperate effort I swung her fairly on to the platform, and, seeing her safe there, fell back myself scarcely ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... his confederate meant, and the intended effect was produced. He began to think that Smith was a desperate man, and capable of murdering him, or instigating his murder, in case of treachery. This made him feel rather uneasy, in spite of his capture ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... of the sort that waxes as the straits become more desperate. Since the town abandoned and betrayed her, she would depend upon her citadel, and by a stubborn resistance make Cesare pay as dearly as possible for the place. To the danger which she seems almost ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... desperate worry that had driven every other thought from Jairus' mind. "What is it you need?" The disciples felt that the very tone of Jesus' voice was a rebuke to their ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... himself from under his fallen horse, which was lying across his legs. I couldn't let him lie like that; so I pulled up, leaped down, and, shouting to Sandho to stand, dashed at the fallen and wounded horse's head, caught him by the bit, and dragged at him to make him rise. The poor beast made a desperate effort, and got upon three legs; but sank back again with a piteous groan, for it had stepped into some burrow and snapped its off hind-leg right in two. However, the horse's effort had saved its rider, who struggled to his feet, his face blackened with powder and bleeding, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... getting desperate, of that there is now no shadow of doubt. The Tientsin trains that have been lately running more and more slowly and irregularly, as if they, too, were waiting on the pleasure of the coming storm, are going to run ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... me and I will hold my peace, And make plain to me wherein I have erred. How agreeable are upright words! But what does a reproof from you reprove? Do you think to reprove mere words, When the speeches of the desperate are as wind? You fall upon a blameless man, And you make merchandise of your friend. Now therefore be pleased to look upon me; For surely I will not lie to you. Turn ere you let injustice be done, Yea, turn again, my cause is righteous. Is there injustice ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... as being the least important. Then my feet either slipped too far into the stirrups and were cut, or they were jerked out; every corner was a new terror, for at each I was nearly pitched off on one side, and when at last Upa stopped, and my beast stopped without consulting my wishes, only a desperate grasp of mane and tethering rope saved me from going over his head. At this ridiculous moment we came upon a bevy of brown maidens swimming in a lakelet by the roadside, who increased my confusion by a chorus of laughter. How fervently I hoped that the track would never ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... cast. In a general rising lay the only hope of safety for Sharp's murderers. Desperate themselves, they determined to carry others with them along the same path, and by some signal show of defiance commit the party to immediate and irretrievable action. The occasion for this was easily found. May 29th, the King's ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... in, lads," cried the heroic and desperate Highlander, wielding a great green blanket in a way that might have roused the admiration if not the envy of Ajax himself. "Keep it ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Calais last September. Nevertheless, he felt anxious and nervy; he could not comprehend the apathy assumed by the factitious Mole. That the apathy was assumed Chauvelin was keen enough to guess. What it portended he could not conjecture. But that the Englishman would make a desperate attempt at escape was, of course, a foregone conclusion. It rested with Hebert and a guard that could neither be bribed nor fooled into treachery, to see that such an ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... [11] Strange infatuation, desperate pride, that man should reject the humbling simplicity of Divine truth, and run so anxiously, greedily, and in hosts, in the road to ruin, because priestcraft calls it 'the way of God'; preferring the miserable sophistry of Satan and his emissaries to the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... shrewdness which prognosticates as well as discerns, and saw the inevitableness of the ultimatum of all irregularities in a world which, however irregular it is in practice, still holds regularity as its model of conduct and progression. Ida Edgham would, in the desperate state of the earth before the flood, have made herself famous. As it was, her irregular talents had a limited field; however, she did all she could. It always seemed to her that, as far as the right and wrong of things went, her own happiness ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... an universal cough Convulsed the skies, as during a debate, When Castlereagh has been up long enough (Before he was first minister of state, I mean—the slaves hear now); some cried "Off, off!" As at a farce; till, grown quite desperate, The Bard Saint Peter prayed to interpose (Himself an ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... indeed, desperate. It had taken practically all John's income to live respectably. Living expenses were high and rents exorbitant. What made matters worse, there was practically no life insurance. John had intended ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... that?" he asked, pulling himself together with a sudden desperate self-possession that caused Sweetwater to cast a quick significant glance at the coroner, as he withdrew to his corner, leaving the ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... and now as the golden-bearded and long-eared Midas. And last of all he appears as the disappointed, disillusioned man, "infelix academicus ignotus." A wife and children on his hands, his occupation gone, his hopes of the Revels Mastership blasted, he becomes desperate, and writes that last bitter letter ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... body swept round the monster and imprisoned him tightly. The four, so suddenly rescued, swam away to a safer distance from the struggle, and then they turned to watch the encounter between the two great opposing powers of the ocean's depths. Yet there was no desperate fight to observe, for the combatants were unequal. The end came before they were aware of it. Zog had been taken by surprise, and his great fear of Anko destroyed all of his magic power. When the ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... form "God refuse me" occurs in Webster's White Devil (ed. 1871, p. 7), where Dyce quotes from Taylor, the water poet: "Would so many else in their desperate madnes desire God to Damne them, to Renounce them, to Forsake them, to Confound them, to Sinke them, to Refuse them?" "Against ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Benjamin Rush, who remained his correspondent when he was in Europe. Added to all his other troubles, his domestic afflictions were very great. At the age of thirty-two, he had buried four wives. The fifth was a desperate fury, who gave him great trouble as long as he lived. After preaching about six years in Philadelphia, he was seized with an irresistible impulse to visit England. No persuasions could divert him ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Rue St. Jacques, i. 310; compels parliament to register the inquisition edict, i. 312; his indignation at the psalm-singing on the Pre aux Clercs, i. 315; summons Francois d'Andelot, whom he orders to be imprisoned, i. 317, 318; desperate schemes to obtain money, i. 321; makes the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis with Philip of Spain and Mary of England, i. 322; communicates to William, Prince of Orange, his own designs and those of Philip II. against the Protestants, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... come into the cells whenever I liked, and to stay there as long as it pleases me. But prisoners are like children: you must not worry them. But I opened the wicket, and I remained there, watching him. Ah, gentlemen, I have been here twenty years, and I have seen many desperate men; but I never saw any despair like this young man's. He had jumped up as soon as I turned my back, and he was walking up and down, sobbing aloud. He looked as pale as death; and the big tears were running ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... dinner-time without intermission; and though the duke made some desperate efforts, and some successful ones, his losses were, nevertheless, trebled. Yet he ate an excellent dinner, and was not at all depressed; because the more he lost the more his courage and his resources seemed to expand. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... five. Where was he at this moment? What witness could he call upon? Caffie's wound was made by a hand skilled in killing, and this learned hand was his, more even than that of a murderer. Every one knew that his position at that moment was desperate, financially speaking; and, suddenly, he paid his debts. Who would ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... mortar-vessel in to bombard the stranded ships, but by this time Cochrane had become desperate. He adopted a device which recalls Nelson's use of his blind eye at Copenhagen. At one o'clock he hove his anchor atrip and drifted, stern foremost, towards the enemy. He dare not make sail lest his trick should be detected and a signal ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... were only two of the thieves, and the sheriff with a large posse was pursuing them and forcing every man they came across into the chase, and a regular man-hunt was on. It was interesting only because one of the thieves was a noted outlaw then out on parole and known to be desperate. We were in no way alarmed; the trouble was all in the next county, and somehow that always seems so far away. We knew if the men ever came together there would be a pitched battle, with bloodshed and death, but there seemed little chance that ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... back as spray from a rocky coast. Regiment after regiment was repulsed, and the Coldstreams still advanced. Saxe thought the battle lost, and begged the king and the dauphin to flee while time permitted. At the last desperate moment, he rallied the artillery and all the forces of his army for a final effort. The artillery was massed before the English, and they had none to answer it. The king himself led the charge against their flanks, which the Dutch should have protected. But the ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... briefly, the truth: how young Arthur had had frequent quarrels with his grandfather over his waste of money, how after one of them, not at all unlike the others, he had disappeared, and how Captain Stewart, in desperate need, had set afoot his plot to get the lad's greater inheritance for himself. He described for her old David Stewart and the man's bitter grief, and he told her about the will, about how he had begun to suspect Captain Stewart, and of how he had traced the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... noticed his gestures, which were indeed those of a desperate man, and Sergius exclaimed: "Are we then wholly abandoned? Why does not the thorn-bush light its fires, and destroy the evil-doers with its flames? Why is the thunder silent, and where are the lightnings that played round the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were slashing down the grass with their swords, and sweeping it away with their shields, while my Tokrooris were beating it down with long sticks and tearing it from its withered and fortunately tinder-rotten roots, in desperate haste. The flames rushed on, and we already felt the heat, as volumes of smoke enveloped us; I thought it advisable to carry the gunpowder (about 20 lbs.), down to the river, together with the rifles; while my wife and Mahomet dragged ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... overworked. Once the entire army of cashiers, driven to defensive action, had combined in order to demand from Hugo, not only higher pay, but an increase in their numbers. Hugo had immediately consented, expressing regret that their desperate ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... agitation, something in the hunted, desperate way in which his eyes were running over the ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... she was aiming at. She could afford to smile, but somehow she was coming to feel that this little man who was now her husband had it in him, after all, to put up a fierce and desperate fight for his own. If he were pushed to the wall he would fight back like a wildcat, and well she knew that there would be ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... road, our conductors, made invocations of Allah and of the Prophet in loud and shrill tones, accompanied by repeated blows with a leather thong on the drums suspended to their saddle-bow. Our conversation chiefly turned upon the Turcomans, and although we were all agreed that they were a desperate enemy, yet we managed to console ourselves by the hope that nothing could withstand our numbers and appearance, and by repeatedly exclaiming, 'In the name of God, whose dogs are they, that they should think of attacking us?' Every one vaunted his own courage. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... material resolution, of the Chicago platform, and carried it through the sub-committee and the general committee, in spite of the most desperate and persistent opposition on the part of Tilden and his friends, Mr. Cassidy himself in an adjoining room labouring to defeat it."—New ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... came a sudden, loud, human scream; and immediately, from different parts of the decks, there rose, afresh, some most horrible shouts of agony from odd men. This grew into an intense screaming that shook my heart up; and there came again a noise of desperate, brief fighting. Then a breath of cold wind seemed to play in the mist, and I could see down the slope of the deck. I looked below me, towards the bows. The jibboom was plunged right into the water, and, as I stared, the bows disappeared into the sea. The deck of the house became a wall to ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... power on earth could have drawn any one of us from our places that hour. We watched, holding our breaths. The mate paused in her search; we could hear the wash beating along her sides; reared her neck as high as she could reach, blind and lonely in all that loneliness of the sea, and sent one desperate bellow booming across the swells as an oyster-shell skips across a pond. Then she made off to the westward, the sun shining on the white head and the wake behind it, till nothing was left to see but a little pin point of silver on the horizon. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... in this depth of despair snatching at an equally desperate hope, "what if, instead of keeping this silence, you were to go to her ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of the question, nay, the very sound of a name totally silent for so many years, made Fortune's heart throb till its beating was actual pain. Then came a sudden desperate ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... hope he will take no notice of us. I must give you the advice which an old Namaqua chief gave me. He said—'Whenever you see a lion moving in the middle of the day, you may be certain that he is in great want of food and very angry. Never attack one then, for they are very dangerous and most desperate.' If, therefore, Major, you wish a very serious affair, and one or two lives lost, you will attack that animal. But you must expect that what I say ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... particular interest, yet the very receiving affectionately and greedily such a general report as good and true, gives some ease and relaxation to the heart. To see delivery possible, is some door of hope to a desperate sinner. But to see it, and espy more than a possibility, even great probability, though he cannot reach a certainty, that will be as the breaking open of a window of light in a dark dungeon. It will be as the taking off of some of the hardest ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... a gray day, chill and ominous. As the three most interested in the event came together on the road facing the point from which Hazen had decided to make his desperate plunge, the dreariness of the scene was reflected in the troubled eye of the lawyer and that of the still more profoundly affected Ransom. Only Hazen gazed unmoved. Perhaps because the spot was no new one ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... them, and seized the ships of Zemar, Beyrout, and Sidon. The forces sent from Gebal to Zemar were made prisoners by the Amorite chief at Abiliya, and the position of Rib-Hadad daily became more desperate. Pa-Hor, the Egyptian governor of Kumidi, joined his opponents, and induced the Sute or Beduin to attack his Sardinian guards. Yapa-Hadad, another governor, followed the example of Pa-Hor, and Zimridi the governor of Sidon had from the ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... the window hung dripping under their load of moisture, each spray shedding a constant shower on the spray below it. On one of these lower sprays, under the perpetual drip, what should we see but a poor little humming-bird, drawn up into the tiniest shivering ball, and clinging with a desperate grasp to his uncomfortable perch. A humming-bird we knew him to be at once, though his feathers were so matted and glued down by the rain that he looked not much bigger than a honey-bee, and as different as possible from the smart, pert, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... AMONG THE EARLY SETTLERS. A series of desperate encounters with Indians, daring exploits of Texan Rangers, incidents of guerilla warfare, fearful deeds of desperadoes and regulators of the west, and graphic delineations of hunting and trapping well worthy universal preservation. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... enough, saith wisdom; for he feareth to ask for more; And that by the sweat of my brow, addeth stout-hearted independence; Give me enough, and not less; for want is leagued with the tempter; Poverty shall make a man desperate, and hurry him ruthless into crime; Give me enough, and not more, saving for the children of distress; Wealth oftentimes killeth, where want but ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Serbia to Salonika in a box car lighted only by candles, bitterly cold, and frightfully exhausting. We were seven hours in travelling fifty-five miles, and we arrived at our destination at three o'clock in the morning. Several of the men contracted desperate colds, which clung to them for weeks. Davis was chilled through, and said that of all the cold he had ever experienced that which swept across the Macedonian plain from the Balkan highlands was the most penetrating. Even his heavy clothing could not ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... induced them to enter this order,—and recall, in this connection, a little anecdote current here in Rome, to the following effect:—A young fellow, from whom Fortune had withheld her gifts, having become desperate, at last declared to a friend that he meant to throw himself into the Tiber, and end a life which was worse than useless. "No, no," said his friend, "don't do that. If your affairs are so desperate, retire into a convent, become a Capuchin." "Ah, non!" was the indignant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... enough," said Captain Blastblow, as he thrust his hand into the inside of Cornwood's shirt. The latter seemed to understand what this movement meant, and he renewed his struggles in the most desperate manner. ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... free and, a bit breathless, but with the same desperate gaiety, exclaimed: "If this is matrimony, give ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... step nearer to the bound man, her arms half outspread as though she would guard him from them; her face, with its luminous, soft pallor, was suddenly desperate and strange. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... transformation of the century—seemed after the fatal crisis of Novara (1849) further than ever from a close. Now was the morrow of the vast failures and disenchantments of 1848. Jesuits and absolutists were once more masters, and reaction again alternated with conspiracy, risings, desperate carbonari plots. Mazzini, four years older than Mr. Gladstone, and Cavour, a year his junior, were directing in widely different ways, the one the revolutionary movement of Young Italy, the other the constitutional movement of the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... with people who wanted them enough to pay for them even a tithe of their cost, it would have been wiser. Failing this, a fire seems the only thing for them, and their removal to the cheaper custody of a combustible or slow-burning warehouse the best recourse. Desperate people, aging husbands and wives, who have attempted the reconstruction ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bad business. Of "Tannhauser" we sold over two thousand copies. One thing more: tell me, dear Liszt, how could we make it possible that I could attend the first performance in Weimar incognito? This is a desperate question, especially as at this moment it is no longer, as it recently was, a matter of indifference to me whether I am to dwell in a royal Saxon prison or not. Listen: I hold the Grand Duchess in high regard; would not this lady, to whom I attribute real nobility, at your suggestion ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... well as some doubts of a similar nature in reference to two or three of the best of the foremast hands, alone left him at all in doubt as to the expediency of such a course. As no boats were lowered from the cruiser, however, the necessity of resorting to so desperate a measure, did not occur, and the duty of lightening the schooner had proceeded without interruption. As soon as the boatswain came off from the islet, he and the men with him were directed to take the hands and lift the anchors, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... that the convict had expressed great anxiety lest I should decline to see him. My hoped-for visit was the only matter which appeared to occupy the mind or excite the care of the mocking, desperate young man; even the early and shameful termination of his own life on the morrow, he seemed to be utterly reckless of. Thus prepared, I was the less surprised at the scene which awaited me in the prisoner's cell, where I found ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... more important, I fear, than many of them guess. This will be a desperate war, and ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... you had it you needed not many signs to know it by, at least you would not doubt of it, more than he that sees the light can question it. But, I say, to believe in Christ is simply this: I,—whatsoever I be,—ungodly, wretched, polluted, desperate, am willing to have Jesus Christ for my Saviour, I have no other help, or hope, if it be not in him. It is, I say, to lean the weight of thy soul on this foundation stone laid in Zion, to embrace the promises of the gospel, albeit general, as "worthy of all ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... will render it the most convenient possible for the suppressing of piracy. The most desperate and active pirates of the whole Indian Archipelago are the tribes of the Sooloo group of islands lying close to the north shore of Borneo, and the people of the north and northeastern coast of Borneo itself; these have of late years proved extremely troublesome both ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the street-corners; we have transcribed these placards, and our readers will remember them. During sixty years that the cannon of revolution have, on certain days, boomed through Paris, and that the government, when menaced, has had recourse to desperate measures, nothing has ever been seen like these placards. They informed the inhabitants that all assemblages, no matter of what kind, would be dispersed by armed force, without previous warning. In Paris, the metropolis of civilization, people do not easily believe that a man will ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... before, but nobody had had the sense to discover us. We couldn't discover ourselves,—though if we could have foreseen how the sere and yellow nations of the earth would taunt us with youth and inexperience, we should have had to do something desperate!" ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and earth for pelf, And hanging friends[133] to save thyself: Thou son of Chance! whose glorious soul On the four aces doom'd to roll, Was never yet with Honour caught, Nor on poor Virtue lost one thought; 70 Who dost thy wife, thy children set, Thy all, upon a single bet, Risking, the desperate stake to try, Here and hereafter on a die; Who, thy own private fortune lost, Dost game on at thy country's cost, And, grown expert in sharping rules, First fool'd thyself, now prey'st on fools: Thou noble gamester! whose high place Gives ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... foresee trifles. The difficulty in which this prediction of the Servant's grave being 'with the rich' places those who reject the Messianic reference of the prophecy to our Lord may be measured by the desperate attempts to evade it by suggesting other readings, or by making 'rich' to be synonymous with 'wicked.' The words as they stand have a clear and worthy meaning on one interpretation, and we even venture to say, on one interpretation only, namely, that they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... were heard, and the moon shone calmly on the water. Ere long he beheld the last of his companions sink without struggle or cry. Should he give in also? Not for a moment would he yield to such a thought; and he prepared himself for the desperate struggle. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... thickest ranks of the enemy. His uncouth war-horse and awkward armour had scarcely less effect than his wonderful address and courage in attracting the attention of both parties; and when after three desperate charges, his sorry steed was slain under him, one of the Christian chiefs make a powerful effort for his rescue, bore him to a neighbouring eminence, and presented to him a more suitable coat of armour, and a horse more worthy ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... one of them was getting the worst of it, and was inclined to "hedge." In fact, he had had enough of it; but he was too wise to abandon his tactics when it was time for him to retreat. Mustering all his power, he made a desperate effort, and succeeded in forcing the other back enough to turn his huge body without exposing his flank to the tusks of the enemy, and ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... of the Medea is admirable; her desperate situation is, by the conversation between her nurse and the keeper of her children, and her own wailings behind the scene, depicted with most touching effect. As soon, however, as she makes her appearance, the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... front of the Gerald Road Police Station, and Hamar was conducted to an ante-room, prior to being taken before the inspector. Just as a policeman was about to search him, he made one last desperate effort. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... The rifle barrel was thrust down the bear's throat after the stock had been torn away, and upon the steel still are shown the marks of the brute's teeth. The same teeth were knocked out by the flailing blows of the desperate pioneer, who finally escaped when Bruin tired of the fight. Then Hamblin discovered himself badly hurt, one hand, especially, chewed by the bear. The animal later was killed by a neighbor and was identified by broken ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... the empire the important Cirta and the other communities assigned to the Roman condottiere Publius Sittius for himself and his troops(97) obtained the legal position of Roman military colonies. The stately provincial towns indeed, which the insane fury of Juba and of the desperate remnant of the constitutional party had converted into ruins, did not revive so rapidly as they had been reduced to ashes, and many a ruinous site recalled long afterwards this fatal period; but the two new Julian colonies, Carthage and Cirta, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen |
