"Despair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incentive of despair to spur them to great deeds, did these lack a yet stronger stimulus to action. There were bright eyes, and fair forms in their camp, dependent on their victory for life, and, yet dearer, honor. So great was the terror spread through those regions by the name of Catiline, and by the outrages ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the encampment of the army, yet still the artillery had not arrived. The lombards and other heavy ordnance were left in despair at Antiquera; the rest came groaning slowly through the narrow valleys, which were filled with long trains of artillery and cars laden with munitions. At length part of the smaller ordnance arrived within half a league of the camp, and the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... chart of the Caribbean Sea. Cuba and Porto Rico appeared on a large scale. The boys studied it in silence and finally Mason shook his head in despair. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... but a pacific laissez-faire for the purposes of trade. France envisages the complete ruin of German industry and commerce, and believes that Foch is the man to do it. At this the Italians smile quietly and counsel the timorous Germans not to despair. Rome chooses to hold to the thesis that a prosperous Italy depends on a prosperous Germany, and no outsider is qualified to dispute such a point of view. Somehow Italy manages to suggest a similar thought to England. A prosperous England depends ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... to have no choice in naming his own dog, Whitey turned in despair to Injun, who had stood solemnly by. "How about you?" Whitey asked. "Haven't ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... kingdom, and allow them to converse with all the metals with impunity? Nest time make your scientific fact an integral part of the story, and do not try to introduce too much knowledge in one dose. All children love Nature and sympathize with her (or if they do not, "then despair of them, O Philanthropy!"), and all stories that bring them nearer to the dear mother's heart bring them at the same time nearer to God; therefore lead them gently to a loving ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... themselves when the Roman general refused the request. No Southern people of Europe in that time would have shown such heroism upon such a matter. Leaving honour aside, however, the old book tells us that a man should never despair. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... in any case—even till the night, if necessary.... But what was she to do? Of course, she could not stand there looking out of the window all the time! The hours, indeed, seemed endless! She was ready to weep with impatience, with despair! ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... darkness. He had become an outcast, a wanderer, a gunman, a victim of circumstances; he had lost and suffered worse than death in that loss; he had gone down the endless bloody trail, a killer of men, a fugitive whose mind slowly and inevitably closed to all except the instinct to survive and a black despair; and now, with this woman in his arms, her swelling breast against his, in this moment almost of resurrection, he bent under the storm of passion and joy possible only to him who ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... the ruling-class of any other country, particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in being more vigorous and in actually trying to produce the accepted standards which all classes, everywhere, desire, but usually despair of realizing. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... to the boat, and there she lay, holding a novel in her hand. From the hammock she had a fine view of the deck, and this was Gilray's chance. As soon as he saw her comfortably settled, he pulled a long face and climbed on deck. There he walked up and down, trying to look the image of despair. When she made some remark to him, his plan was to show that, though he answered cordially, his cheerfulness was the result of a terrible inward struggle. He did contrive to accomplish this if he was waiting ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... contends in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man; but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now every man should be valiant, but he ...
— Laws • Plato
... individual was left to take the direction which in his judgment best suited him. Though our great gun was leveled, and the first shell thrown at the American Continent, driving a slaveholding faction into despair, and a political confusion from which they have been utterly unable to extricate themselves, but become more and more complicated every year, Africa was held in reserve, until by the help of an All-wise Providence we could effect what has just been ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... settled into a sort of blank despair so unlike its usual expression that Erica's wrath flamed ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... their right, as Bragg massed every available gun and man to meet him. This massing, however, was just what Grant wanted; for he now expected Hooker to appear on the other flank, which Bragg would either have to give up in despair or strengthen at the expense of the center, which Thomas was ready to charge. But with Hooker not appearing, and Sherman barely holding his own, Grant slipped Thomas from the leash. The two centers then met hand to hand. But ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... you don't know what it means to receive a lot of overdue bills. [Reads one of the letters] The rent unpaid—the landlord acting nasty—my wife in despair. And here am I sitting waist-high in gold! [He opens an iron-banded box that stands on the table; then both sit down at the table, facing each other] Just look—here I have six thousand crowns' worth of gold which I have dug up in the last fortnight. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... way to heaven without forcing one entirely to quit the earth. I passed several hours with him, and he knew how to reach my heart, even while condemning my faults. He caused me to feel humiliated for my sins, without crushing me, or driving me to despair; he showed me the futility of all human things, the sadness and emptiness of all pleasures arising from vanity and self-love.... Indeed, during a few moments, I thought seriously of consecrating my life entirely to God, and of becoming ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the heart itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... terrible flickering gloom of the fight I was cruel and fierce with despair; I was naked and bound; was stricken: and Beauty returned through the shambles of night; In the faces of men she returned; ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... seduced her husband from her after many years of married life, and the pair had fled, leaving her destitute, with the little girl upon her hands. She seemed quite hopeful and cheery, and, though she was unaffectedly sorry for the loss of her husband's earnings, she made no pretence of despair at the loss of his affection; some day she would meet the fugitives, and the law would see her duly righted, and in the meantime the smallest contribution was gratefully received. While she was telling all this in the most ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... themselves, whose ears are pathetically strained to catch the feeblest echo of any rumour from the outside world that brings them the slightest hint of release. For months these poor fellows had been continually alternating between hope and despair, when the news of the Hague meeting seemed for large numbers to bring them definitely, at long last, within measurable distance of the reality. Knowing therefore as you do, equally well with us, the mental condition of these men, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... slowly and got into bed. Her conscience was too hard to trouble her; but the thought of Jim and his despair stood for some time between her and sleep. She was tired out, for the day had been full of excitement, but it was quite into the small hours before her tired eyes ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... and beneficial, and that abstain from all acts that are optional and spring from desire alone.[1532] From loss of all such objects in which are centred our affections, from loss of wealth, O king, and from the tyranny of physical diseases add mental anguish, a person falls into despair. From this despair arises an awakening of the soul. From such awakening proceeds study of the Scriptures. From contemplation of the import of the scriptures, O king, one sees the value of penance. A person possessed of the knowledge of what is essential and what accidental, O king, is very rare,—he, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... what hast thou done To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me? I, whose career, through the blasted year, Has been tracked by despair and agony." ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... for a hard struggle with the world, with a bare dollar in his pocket, and when that was gone the whole world seemed to combine in a desperate league against him to prevent his achieving another. How at last, on the very edge of starvation and despair, he had wrung from it the means of beginning his fortunes; and how he had gone on step by step, forgetting all the pleasant ties of his youth, all recollections of nature and cheerful faces of friends and kinsfolk, adding thousand to thousand, house to ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... the place for the folk-lore-loving Sarrasin. No doubt that, actually, human life is just the same in Hampstead as anywhere else, from Pekin to Peru, tossed by the same passions, driven onward by the same racking winds of desire, ambition, and despair. People love and hate and envy, feel mean or murderous, according to their temper, as much on the slopes of Hampstead as in the streets of London that lie at its foot. But such is not the suggestion of Hampstead itself ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... up at 6 A.M., tramp over the downs and in a place I wot of, some five miles away, I gather heather for Ma. I run. I get back by 8.30. I find my uncle and cousins getting into a cab. Some one says, "How lovely! Are these for me?" I grip them in despair. They are for Ma. "Quite right," says someone. A day or two later my heather was placed, ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... it's a bad job, my lad; but we will not judge him. Robert Gowan must have suffered bitterly, and been in despair of ever coming back, before he changed his colours. But we can't see why, and how things are. I want no apology, Frank, only for you to come to me as ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... one of the characteristics of her love through life. There was no word passed between them. He could not speak, any more than could she. He knelt down by her. She was dying; she was dead; and he knelt on immovable. They brought him his eldest child, Ellinor, in utter despair what to do in order to rouse him. They had no thought as to the effect on her, hitherto shut up in the nursery during this busy day of confusion and alarm. The child had no idea of death, and her father, kneeling and tearless, was far less an object of surprise or interest ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... she is dead." I lay dumb, sightless, deaf as she; The long slow hours passed over me. I saw Grief face to face; I know The very form and traits of Woe. I drained the galled dregs of the draught She offered me: I could have laughed In irony of sheer despair, Although I could not weep. The air Thickened with twilight shadows dim: I rose and left. I knew each limb Of these great trees, each gnarled, rough root Piercing the clay, each cone of fruit They bear in autumn. What blooms here, Filling the honeyed atmosphere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... In despair, the Regent called on Orange, Hoorn, and Egmont to help her in restoring order. Refugees had come back from foreign countries and were holding religious services openly, troops of Protestants marched about the streets singing Psalms and shouting "Long live the Beggars!" ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Yesterday this Day's Madness did prepare; To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair: Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: Drink! for you know not why ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the water became a solid mass. Swinging his little daughter in his arms one kiss turned the sweet child into a cold statue. A single hour availed to drive happiness from Midas' heart. In an agony of despair he besought the gods for simple things. He asked for one cup of cold water, one cluster of fruit and his little daughter's ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... from the house he paused once more to glance up at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor Lombard's house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not look like a person capable of a disinterested ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... those generous souls who always supply the missing information appeared, just at the moment when we felt like giving up in despair. He said, "I think there is a Trenton falls some place hereabouts, but can't tell you where." Now the "where" was the most important thing to us. Seeing the look of disappointment spread over our faces, he quickly said, "I am almost certain the tall man with the palm beach suit and straw hat ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the point was given up in absolute despair, When a distant cousin died, and he became a millionaire, With a county seat in Parliament, a moor or two of grouse, And a taste for making inconvenient speeches in the House! Then it flashed upon Britannia that the fittest of rewards Was, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... lives there, and falls desperately in love with an actress, for whom he leaves his art, his mother, and his betrothed, is ruined in purse, and returns at last, heart-broken, to his old home, to die; the actress all the while sees his despair with indifference, and proves herself therefore a 'fille ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were now doing their best to execute. They had hoped to effect an easy capture by means of a night surprise. But we were in a better state of defence than they had anticipated. Our men were brave and well armed; and then we were fighting for our very existence; we had the courage of despair, and this was an immense advantage. Our band amounted to twenty-four all told; theirs to more than fifty soldiers, in addition to a score or more of peasants, who were slinging stones from the flanks. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... grave Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, And wrestled with her fate alone; With love, and anger, and despair, The phantoms of disordered sense, The awful doubts of Providence! The school-boys jeered her as they passed, And, when she sought the house of prayer, Her mother's curse pursued her there. And still o'er many a neighboring door She saw ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the base of an iron pillar. Deserted immediately by their deliverer, the pointers made overtures to two elderly ladies, standing bewildered in the crush, to be repulsed with umbrellas, and then sit down upon their tails in despair. Their forlorn condition, left friendless amid this babel, gets upon their nerves, and after a slight rehearsal, just to make certain of the tune, they lift up their voices in melodious concert, to the scandal of the two females, who cannot escape the neighbourhood, and regard the ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... mountain. But there Gibbie feared a certain precipitous spot; and, besides, there was no path in that direction. So Ginevra had not run far before again she saw him right in her way. She threw herself on the ground in despair, and hid her face. After thus hunting her as a cat might a mouse, or a lion a man, what could she look for but that he would pounce upon her, and tear her to pieces? Fearfully expectant of the horrible grasp, she lay ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... defended. Only at Mariora's command did the bear release Black Mask who, attacked from behind, was unable to defend himself. Burning with rage, he quitted the hut and said, meaningly to the woman: 'You shall be mine nevertheless!' Mariora came to me next day, full of despair, telling me the whole story, and asking me whether she ought to tell her husband. I advised her to keep the secret in her own bosom and to close her door against Fatia Negra. Oh, I know the fellow! ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... of the old Roman stoic, and attempt to meet the exigencies of his moral condition, by the steady strain and hard tug of his own force? He cannot long do this, under the clear searching ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, without an inexpressible weariness and a profound despair. Were he within the sphere of paganism, it might, perhaps, be otherwise. A Marcus Aurelius could maintain this legal and self-righteous position to the end of life, because his ideal of virtue was a very ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... be married, but an attack of insanity prevented the union, though it did not destroy the ardent friendship of the lovers. Cowper could never wholly throw off the fear of the future. "Day and night," he once wrote, "I was upon the rack, lying down in horror and rising up in despair." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in despair. What was he to do? "Give me one more chance," said he, "and if they all say the same, then ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... light of a single candle, she saw the young man seated at a table; his head was resting, face downward, on one arm; his whole attitude was eloquent of despair; but it was not this abandonment of grief which caused her to thrill with quick terror; it was because the hand held clenched in ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... seems to be, that it will be less, and not more of a body, than our present one. . . . Is this hope, to me at once inconceivable and contradictory, palpable and valuable enough to you to send you to that Italian Avernus, to get it made a little more certain? If so, I despair of your making your meaning intelligible to a poor fellow wallowing, like me, in the Hylic Borboros—or whatever else you may choose to call the unfortunate fact of being flesh and blood. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Devil were all one to him; and when he embarked as senior chaplain he took a hatchet with which to break down the graven images of Louisbourg. In the end Whitefield warmed up enough to give the expedition its official motto: 'Nil desperandum Christo Duce.' The 'Never Despair' heartened the worldlings. The 'Christ our Commander' appealed to the 'Great Awakened.' And the whole saying committed him to nothing particular concerning the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... Godolphin found a worthy pen to sing the praise of the victor of Blenheim yet?" he asked of a man who appeared to be a referee on matters literary. "The last I heard was that he was scouring London, tearing his periwig in pieces in despair that the race of poets was extinct, and he could only find the most wretched doggerel mongers, whose productions were too vile to be tolerated. Has the noble lord found a better rhymster? Or will the victory of the great Duke have to go unsung by ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with a ferocious stroke, falling backward in the rebound. Just one word I uttered (spell it with three, not four, letters), and implored him to be calm. Then he hit the fish on the head with the back of the gaff. In the silence of despair I resigned myself as he smote again; he actually now gaffed the fish, but seemed too paralysed to lift him up the low bank. However, I dropped the rod and snatched the gaff out of his hands, to discover that the strangest thing in my experience ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... conscript fathers, is whether peace can exist with all men, or whether there be any war incapable of reconciliation, in which any agreement of peace is only a covenant of slavery. Whether Sylla was making peace with Scipio, or whether he was only pretending to do so, there was no reason to despair, if an agreement had been come to, that the city might have been in a tolerable state. If Cinna had been willing to agree with Octavius, the safety of the citizens might still have had an existence in the republic. In the last war, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... overnight while Pierre went off to his brandies. But this was Christmas eve, and he was very tired. Even the scent of the sandalwood could not make him fancy he was warm. The world seemed to be a black place, full of suffering and despair. ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... words despotism and freedom would instantly have a distinct business meaning. Make known in the city of Manila that the Americans will abandon it, and the reviving hopes of the men of affairs would be instantly clouded, and the depression deepen into despondency and despair. Let it be the news of the day that the Americans will stay, and the intelligence of the city would regard its redemption as assured, every drooping interest revive, and an era of prosperity unknown under the dismal incompetency ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... might of his colossal organ, it was all over with the fame of all his predecessors. Nourrit, till then the favourite of the Parisians, a distinguished tenor singer, recognized the rival's power. His day was over, and in despair over his lost and irrecoverable glory, he flung himself from an upper window upon the pavement, and so made an end of his life. Duprez may justly be considered one of the greatest dramatic singers of our time, and the main features of his method soon spread themselves all over Europe. ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... their spring-time gaiety, their harvest-time of joy, seasons that never fail of laughter or of fetes; but there are other loves, framed in melancholy, circled by distress, whose pleasures are painful, costly, burdened by fears, poisoned by remorse, or blackened by despair. The love in the heart of Marguerite and Emmanuel, as yet unknown to them for love, the sentiment that budded into life beneath the gloomy arches of the picture-gallery, beside the stern old abbe, in a still and silent ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... and whips. There be those who think proneness to such suffering is unmanly, or that the sufferer should at any rate hide his agony. Cicero did not. Whether of his glory or of his shame, whether of his joy or of his sorrow, whether of his love or of his hatred, whether of his hopes or of his despair, he spoke openly, as he did of all things. It has not been the way of heroes, as we read of them; but it is the way with men ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the elements of music into Charles Dickens when he was a small boy do not appear to have been attended with success. Mr. Kitton tells us that he learnt the piano during his school days, but his master gave him up in despair. Mr. Bowden, an old schoolfellow of the novelist's when he was at Wellington House Academy, in Hampstead Road, says that music used to be taught there, and that Dickens received lessons on the violin, but he made no progress, and soon relinquished it. It was not until many years after ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... and looked around him in despair: "All that stuff to verify and O.K.! What an infernal ass I am! By the nineteen little josses in Malcourt's bedroom I'm so many kinds of a fool that I hate to count up beyond ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... against the window still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child in the spring. What was the winter to her now! Nothing but a step towards joy. The world was all broken up and made new. The ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... possession of that alone should I feel justified in proposing to marry Aveline. She was much in the same condition, for although Lady Anne had carefully preserved the document given to me by her mother, as yet it did not appear that she would benefit thereby. Still I did not despair. I knew that Sir Thomas was generous, and that he had a true regard both for Aveline and for me; and I hoped that, if I put the matter before him, he would enable me to carry out my wishes. Several times ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... and I've got to give up goin' to the navy." He suddenly realized the unmanliness of his attitude, rose to his feet, closing his lips tightly, and faced the older man with a resolute expression of despair ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... dreadful shadow drops upon your heart as you enter their presence. Without, the hell-storm seems to fall again, and the whole sunny plain to be darkened with its ruin, and the city to send up the tumult of her despair. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... brothers and sisters in Christ, whom hitherto we have hated and despised because we did not know them, and had been poisoned against them. I am a conspicuous case in point myself. And when I have been conquered by a little desultory reading and by a little effort after love no man need despair. And if you will listen to this lecture with a good and honest heart: with a heart that delights to hear all this good report about a fellow-believer: then He who has begun that good work in you will perfect it by books and by lectures like this, and far better than this, till you ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... traversing the island constantly, asking no other pay than the right of keeping as slaves the natives whom they captured, he now has to pay patrolmen, as the Indians are so scarce.[40] The next year (1529) the treasurer, Lope de Hurtado, writes that the Indians are in such despair that they are hanging themselves twenty and thirty at a time.[41] In 1530 the king is petitioned to relinquish his royalty on the produce of the mines, because nearly all the Indians on the island are dead.[42] And in 1532 the licentiate, Vadillo, estimates the total number of Indians ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... lost her husband like you, and the loss of servants need not bring despair, since others may readily be found. Nevertheless, I too am of opinion that we should have some pleasant exercise with which to while away the time, for otherwise we shall ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Versailles, reinforced by the prisoners of war who had been returned from Prussia, began, by the 9th of April, to make active assaults on such forts as were held by the Federals. Confusion and despair began to reign in the Council of the Commune. Unsuccessful in open warfare, the managing committee tried to check the advance of the Versaillais by deeds of violence and retaliation. They arrested numerous hostages, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... plenty of elbow-room in the Hotel de la Belle Etoile, and there is water enough; but in other respects the provision it offers is scanty and comfortless. I spent four days and nights in it, and was on the borders of despair, when what looked like a mere chance saved me. Suppose I had not walked down Fleet Street; suppose I had not stopped to look at the little cork balls in Lipscombe's window, so mournfully emblematic of ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... into a bill of exchange for any amount. The diabolical missive had been enclosed in an envelope, so that the other side of the sheet was blank. When it arrived, Victurnien was writhing in the lowest depths of despair. After two years of the most prosperous, sensual, thoughtless, and luxurious life, he found himself face to face with the most inexorable poverty; it was an absolute impossibility to procure money. There had been some throes of crisis before the journey came to an end. With the Duchess' help ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... and with renewed determination to oppose the enemy—a determination which displayed itself later in the fighting at Sannaspost, Moester's Hoek, and Wepener. Kruger found the burghers in the Free State in the depths of despair; when he departed they were as confident of ultimate victory as they were on the day war was begun. The old man had the faculty of leading men as it is rarely found. In times of peace he led men by force of argument as much as by reason of personal ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... breath, scarcely able to reach home, and there witness their vain attempts to get among their fellows above them? If you never witnessed this, I wish you would take some pains for it, and when you find them giving up in despair, when too chilly to fly, and perishing after many fruitless attempts for life, I think, if you possess sympathy, benevolence, or even selfishness, you will be induced to do as I did—discard at once wire hooks and all else from under the hive in the spring, and give ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... gave a groan of despair as he looked at his model when those war-whoops broke loose. Richard, who had succeeded after many trials in lapsing into the dreamy attitude which his father wanted, started up at the first whoop, so alert and interested that his nostrils quivered. He scented ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... scores of seamstresses, but no hump-backed damsel appeared;—all were as straight as arrows! Not more ardently, he says, did Don Quixote pant for Dulcinea, than he for Humpina. Days rolled on unsuccessfully: he began to despair. At length he resolved to change his measures, and, instead of clambering up flights of steps, to station himself near the stand of a gossiping milk-woman, and watch her customers. Numbers of women came to buy their ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... lost in despair at an all-encircling mystery. Not so the Greek Childe Roland who set the slug-horn to his lips and blew a challenge. Neither Shakespeare nor Browning tells us what happened, and the old legend, Childe Roland, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... been built by Semiramis, who consecrated it not to Juno, as is generally believed, but to her own mother, Derceto. Atergatis was another name of this Goddess. She was said, by an illicit amour, to have been the mother of Semiramis, and in despair, to have thrown herself into a lake near Ascalon, on which she was changed ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... means—save as we suggest above—whereby the assassin can have made his escape. The whole affair is one of the most mysterious of late years, and will doubtless be relegated to the list of undiscovered crimes. The police have no clue, and apparently despair of finding one. But the discovery of the mystery lies in the bell. Who rang it? or did it ring of itself, as we ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... the immortal Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way." These utterances of inspiration so fittingly describing the period that ushered in the bloody French Revolution, may be applied with equal truth ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... bibliographers is to be trusted, that these volumes were reviewed, in the Roman Catholic paper called The Rambler, by no less a person than Cardinal Wiseman, who was extremely complimentary to "Bishop Blougram," and did not by any means despair of the writer's conversion. After "Men and Women" the poet was silent for a long time. His wife's health was failing, though at the time of the war in Lombardy her burning energy burst out in the "Poems before Congress," and though she watched ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... know him," answered Honoria, in a tone of utter despair. "Do not ask me where or when that man and I have met. It is enough that I know him. My darling could ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to pay for the upkeep of the camps: in other words, that we should turn the Colonials into slave raiders and slave-drivers (but save them the expense of buying the slaves), the only thing that stands between us and despair is the thought that Heaven has never yet failed us. We remember how African women have at times shed tears under similar injustices; and how when they have been made to leave their fields with their hoes on their shoulders, their tears on evaporation have drawn fire and brimstone ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... curling smoke rose from one corner of the pyre—the flames licked upward, crackling. La stood there like a beautiful statue of despair gazing at Tarzan and at the spreading flames. In a moment they would reach out and grasp him. From the tangled forest came the sound of cracking limbs and crashing trunks—Tantor was coming down upon them, a huge Juggernaut of the jungle. The priests were becoming uneasy. They cast apprehensive ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... who had left her there after a pleasant evening and was on his way out heard her real name paged. He beat it back to inquire what in the Sam Hill Haymond wanted with her? He found her in the sort of despair that would come to a girl like that at a time like that. What you call the 'until' Minnie probably called the 'too-late.' Maybe she guessed what the minister had cone for and what she had just missed. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... times before he had given up looking at illustrated papers for fear of what he might find in them. But Margot's tragic beauty, as presented by photographers, or as seen from a distance, loyally seated at the claimant's side, was as nothing to the dark splendour of her despair when the claimant was in his new-made grave. It was the day after the burial that she had sent for Stephen; and her letter had arrived, as it happened, when he was thinking of the girl, wondering whether she had friends who would stand by her, or whether ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... filled our cavern with despair. Lately he made me forge a wishing-cap for him. With it he makes himself so none can see him. Now we slaves can never rest. Sh! sh! ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair. The usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often crush the opposition in embryo. The smaller the extent of the territory, the more difficult will it be for the people to form a regular or systematic plan of opposition, and the more easy ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... he whispered eagerly. "She could not sleep. She must know to-night if you live. I hid myself in your garden, and I wait and I wait. But you do not come, and I despair. And then," cried the old man joyfully, "the miracle! Now my mistress can ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... everything swam before me. I don't know how I managed to reach this house, and I don't know how long I had been sitting in a room up-stairs when the recollection of the subpoena occurred to me. I was standing here dazed with despair; I saw that I was somehow caught in the toils, and that it was going to be impossible to prove my innocence. If another man had been in my position, I should have believed him guilty. I stood looking at the cask in the corner there, scarcely conscious ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... The Union Jack was pulled down and dragged through the mud. The distinctive ribbons worn round the hats of the men as badges were pulled off and trampled underfoot. I saw men crying like children with shame and despair. Some went raving up and down that they were Englishmen no longer; others, with flushed and indignant faces, sat contemplating their impending ruin, 'refusing to be comforted.' It was a painful, distressing, and humiliating scene, and such as I hope never to witness again. While I write, the remembrance ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... when he caught sight of him. "What is your name?" And Mr. Ball took out his book to register the new-comer, with much the same relish that the Giant Despair showed when he had bagged ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... He went on saying this over to himself, as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair. ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and black marks round her great brown eyes, which were always large but looked bigger than ever now that they had not been closed since the baby left, wandered about the chateau, looking like a picture of despair. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... kindly loving mother, whose place in her heart could never be filled? And in a few hours even this still, unconscious face would have vanished, and then there would be nothing left her but a memory. She fell on her knees in despair, wringing her hands and pressing her lips to ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Mr. Jorrocks, in the most orthodox manner, flushed off his old flint and steel fire-engine, and proceeded to give it an uncommon good loading. The Yorkshireman, with a look of disgust, mingled with despair, and a glance at Joe's plush breeches and top-boots, did the same, while Nosey, in the most considerate sportsmanlike manner, merely shouldered a stick, in order that there might be no delicacy with his visitors, as to who should shoot first—a piece of ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... doctrines, of the traditions of Labour in France, which predisposes the working-man to seek safety in a return to the old system of the Corporations. A similar feeling exists among the employers, who desire, though they too often despair of seeing, a closer union of interests between themselves and their working-men. Wherever the movement languishes, one of the chief causes will be found to be the apathy, the discouragement, and the frivolity ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... certain latent optimism, justified in part by the undeniable natural advantages of the city, kept the flame of hope alive in the hearts of investors, or, perhaps, suffered it to be gradually diminished rather than extinguished by one icy blast of despair. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... in so heavy towards the reef that our situation was become unsafe. We could effect but little with the oars, having scarce strength to pull them, and I began to apprehend that we should be obliged to attempt pushing over the reef. Even this I did not despair of effecting with success when happily we discovered a break in the reef, about one mile from us, and at the same time an island of a moderate height within it, nearly in the same direction, bearing ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear— Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair, Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... ladies laughed over his comical despair, and when Lieutenant McVeigh entered and heard the cause of it he set things right by promising to speak a good word for Delaven to the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... born in this confounded Britain! I should have got on all right with Parisian readers. But I don't despair even here. They can reject my MSS., but they can't take out my brains. I daresay I shall stumble across some man at last with courage enough to stand by me in the beginning and help me force open the British ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... an unconscious gesture—half of scorn, half of despair—and paced the room slowly up and down. A life of toil—a life rounding into worldly success, but blank of all love and heart's comfort—was this to be the only conclusion to his career? Of what use, then, was it to have ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... had the time I would go to you and see. I find Miss Wildmere just about where I left her, only more beautiful and fascinating, and besieged by a host. Absence makes my chance slight indeed, but I do not despair. She so evidently enjoys a defensive warfare, wherein it is the besiegers who capitulate, that she may maintain it until my exile abroad is over. This is to my mind a more rational interpretation of her freedom than that she is waiting for me; and thus I reveal to you that modesty is my ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... suffer fearful life-in-death, until A victim suffer'd from the sons of men, To soothe the cravings of insatiate hell; An agony for age undergone— An agony for ages to be borne, Hope, still elusive, baffled by despair. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Ah, my friend! I begin quite to despair. Il est positivement ensorcel![10] I never before knew him so insistent, so obstinate, so pitiless, and so indifferent to me. He has quite changed since that ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... dollars to planters and traders. But his inventive ability and perseverance, at least in his creation of the cotton gin, brought him little more than a multitude of infringements upon his patent, refusals to pay him, and vexatious and expensive litigation to sustain his rights.[48] In despair, he turned, in 1808, to the manufacture in New Haven of fire-arms for the Government, and from this business managed to get a fortune. From the Canton and Calcutta trade Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a Boston shipper, extracted ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus |
