"Desperado" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... walked together through the streets on their way to the Hippodrome. Emile was a bad advertisement for the secrecy of his profession, for he looked a typical desperado. His velvet coat had the air of having been slept in for weeks, and had certainly never been on terms of acquaintanceship with a brush; and, besides the usual Anarchist badge, a red tie, a blood red carnation flamed defiance in ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... the desperado reigned, A tyrant on the waves; While they whose blood his hands had stained, Went down to ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... and frying pan, and his old pipe—" the pipe she did not replace, but put it with the other things in her trunk. "And here—why, it's a revolver and a belt of cartridges—like Vil Holland's! And a hat like his, too! And I thought he was a desperado because he wore them!" She jumped to her feet and, hurrying to the mirror, tried on the hat, pinching the crown into a peak, tilting it this way and that, and arranging and rearranging the soft roll brim. "It ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... by way of satisfying her momentary passion for revolutionism. This one, though he was a fat, gay, little man, with a doll-like face and childish nose, which almost disappeared between his puffy cheeks, had the reputation of being a thorough desperado; and at public meetings he certainly shouted for fire and murder with all his lungs. Still, although he had already been compromised in various affairs, he had invariably managed to save his own bacon, whilst his companions were kept under lock and key; and this they ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the drama's "fireworks" were not epigrams, and so the smell of the sulphur still purifies the air. All the long series of "London successes," with their array of genius and furniture, have faded like insubstantial pageants, but the rude vault piled with flour-barrels for the desperado's torch is fixed as by chemic process. Consider the preparation of the brain for that memory. What! I should actually go to a play—that far-off wonder! "The Miller and his Men" cut in cardboard should no longer stave off my longing for the living passion of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... supporters halted under protection of a pile of lumber and held consultations. In the station was an unterrified desperado who was an excellent shot and carried an abundance of ammunition. For thirty yards on either side of the besieged was a stretch of bare, open ground. It was a sure thing that the man who attempted to enter that unprotected area would be stopped ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... betrothed in a pocket-book, and remarked that it did not do her justice. The cut of his head stood out from among the passengers with an air of startling strangeness. The first natural instinct was to take him for a desperado; but although the features, to our Western eyes, had a barbaric and unhomely cast, the eye both reassured and touched. It was large and very dark and soft, with an expression of dumb endurance, as if it had often looked ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Scriptures; so therein that short but sweet digression, against black-mouthed Parker, wherein the gracious author takes out his own soul, and sets before thine eye, the image of God impressed thereon; for while he deals with that desperado by clear and convincing reason, flowing natively from the pure fountain of divine revelation, he hath the advantage of most men, and writers too, in silencing that proud blasphemer of the good ways of God, with arguments taken from what he hath ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... formerly consisting of upwards of a hundred pieces, but lately suffered to fall into decay. These batteries received extensive additions after the alarm caused by the descent of the notorious Paul Jones in 1778. This desperado, who was a native of Galloway, and had served his apprenticeship in Whitehaven, landed here with thirty armed men, the crew of an American privateer which had been equipped at Nantes for this expedition. The success of the enterprise was, however, frustrated by one of the company, through whom the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... him, clutching the handle of his big Colt's revolver, and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. He was flushed and panting. A glitter was in his eyes, the glitter of the old desperado spirit returned. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... His face was dark, his eye was dark and penetrating and passionate; his mouth was reckless and weak, his build was graceful, and his voice was low and even—the voice of a gentleman; he was the refined type of the Western gentleman-desperado, as Crittenden had imagined it from fiction and hearsay. As the soldier turned away, the old Sergeant saved him the question he was about ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... you think I don't know those wild mountaineers? They are perfectly chivalrous, and I could feel a great deal safer in leaving my wife in care of that desperado than with ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... impartiality of the law than both of them. Esther's being a lady had, she thought, nothing whatever to do with her stealing a necklace, if she happened to like necklaces. She considered herself a lady, but she could also see herself, under temptation, doing a desperado's deeds. Not stealing a necklace: that was tawdry larceny. But she could see herself trapping Esther in a still place and cutting her dusky hair off so that she'd betray no more men. For she began to suspect that Alston Choate, too, was caught in the lure of Esther's inexplicable charm. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... buggy, although all the evidence seemed to indicate that I was absolutely afoot and weary at the time, and didn't have the outfit concealed about my person. I languished in the calaboose for twenty- four hours, and might have remained there indefinitely if the real desperado hadn't been captured in the nick o' time. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... teeth. The sun gleamed on the barrel of Andy Lanning's rifle, and these men rode back in silence, feeling that they had witnessed one of those prodigies which were becoming fewer and fewer around Martindale—the birth of a desperado. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... section. He had not yet been able to fathom just what nature of men they were or what their business was, but he suspected the latter to be something illegal, and despite the poor showing they had made in the fight on the boat it was apparent that there was in them at least a tinge of the desperado. The swamps of Southern Florida, he knew, were favorite hiding places for scores of bad men. These men probably spent a good deal of time on the river which he must use, and therefore he had no wish to make them ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... remarked Bill Black, presently. Bill could not keep quiet for long. He was a typical Texas desperado, had never been anything else. He was stoop-shouldered and bow-legged from much riding; a wiry little man, all muscle, with a square head, a hard face partly black from scrubby beard and red from sun, and a bright, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... straight back for the nearest town. There he asked for tidings of a certain Black Jack, and there he got what he wanted in heaps. Everyone knew Black Jack—too well! There followed a brief summary of the history of the desperado and his countless crimes, unspeakable tales of cunning and ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... inevitable effect. A great number of adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very much the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the individual adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed the forty-niners in California for ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and tries any of his four-flush desperado games he'll have his hands full," said Bo, grimly. "And that without my cowboy protector! But I just wish Riggs would do something. Then we'll see what Las Vegas Tom ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... this murderer of their companion, came over them in a blind wave of fury. The sun, now well above the horizon, shone warmly down upon them. They were in the midst of an infrequent Winter thaw. The full current of the river was between them and the desperado. It might be days, a week, before ice would again form; yet, connecting the island with the western bank, it was even now in place. Blair had but to wait until cover of night, and depart in peace—on foot, to be sure, but in the course of days a man could travel far afoot. Doubtless he ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Winston, you shall not face that desperado alone," she said, obstinately. "There is no telling what he may do—murder you, perhaps, or at least knock you down in order to escape. Winston talks as if he were the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... was brave enough now; a very desperado in the daylight. I laughed at Falkenberg for his superstition, and told him science had disposed of all such ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... happened showed the folly of putting any trust in a desperado. It was through Clancy's efforts that Katz had been freed from his dangerous predicament in Captain Hogan's bungalow. But Katz did not give any consideration to that when the time came for him to turn the tables and secure the ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... of the British public, which on one occasion had presented him with a testimonial for his capture of a desperado who had been terrorizing the East End of London. But Merrington disdained such tokens of popular approval. He regarded the public, which he was paid to protect, as a pack of fools. For him, there were only two classes of humanity—fools and ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... This gentle, sad little woman, in the rusty black gown, the daughter of his oldest friend, the wife of Benton Sharp! Benton Sharp, one of the most noted "bad" men in that part of the state—a man who had been a cattle thief, an outlaw, a desperado, and was now a gambler, a swaggering bully, who plied his trade in the larger frontier towns, relying upon his record and the quickness of his gun play to maintain his supremacy. Seldom did any one take the risk of going "up against" ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... on the deck, Solomon saw the Tory desperado "Slops," one time of the Ohio River country, with his black pipe in his mouth. Slops paused in his hauling and reeving to shake a fist at Solomon. They were heaving the anchor. The sails were running up. The ship had begun to move. What was the meaning of this? Solomon stepped to the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... helping a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape through some of the meshes of the law. "You're a lucky {p.199} scoundrel," Scott whispered to his client, when the verdict was pronounced. "I'm just o' your mind," quoth the desperado, "and I'll send ye a maukin[111] the morn, man." I am not sure whether it was at these assizes or the next in the same town, that he had less success in the case of a certain notorious housebreaker. The man, however, was well aware that no skill could have ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... The desperado broke out in fresh denials and curses, but he feared the ridicule of the Indian would bring the laughter of his admirers down on him. Nor was he keen to try a pistol duel. He remembered too well the attack he had once headed on an emigrant train that Scott was guarding, and from which ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... known as Sulphur Creek, has the honor, or the dishonor if you choose, of being the first desperado of the Yellowstone, but one so much greater than its two petty imitators of human times that there is no comparison of misdeeds. Sulphur Creek stole the lake from the Snake River and used it to create the Yellowstone River, which in turn created the wonderful ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... higher and higher, till at last a pistol shot resounded, and the ladies that had crowded to the front windows plainly distinguished the cry, "The Judge is killed! Jim Burns has shot Judge Pierce!" and the mob rushed toward the mouth of Danville street in pursuit of the desperado, a noted ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... her father died she read in the paper of a young desperado, handsome and well-dressed, who held up a New York jeweller at the point of a gun and relieved him of five thousand dollars' worth of diamond rings. The story was made remarkable by a detail. An old woman was sitting at the corner, grinding a hand-organ, and as the robber ran past her, ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... Polly, who had not cried yet, began to do so. The elder Toodles, who appeared to have been meditating a rescue, unclenched their fists. The younger Toodles clustered round their mother's gown, and peeped from under their own chubby arms at their desperado brother and his unknown friend. Everybody blessed the gentleman with the beautiful teeth, who wanted ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the long, low range of buildings, under that tall chimney, was so plainly in view. Still less relishing the idea of a tramp through the woods themselves, the certain haunt—somewhere—of some skulking desperado. No, they would take the shore itself—open to the wide firmament, clear of all snares, and free from ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Oh, for my quiet hole! for Furry, and Oddity, and my peaceable companions!" thought I. "What folly it was to venture into the world with such a guide as this desperado, Whiskerandos!" ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... to see her picture in the "studio" at the House by the Lock, I was doubly surprised to see it in a locket worn by a young desperado on the other side of the world. Impulsively I withdrew my hand which held the ornament, with the feeling that the man had no right to it—that I could not return it to ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... saddle of each girl there was a double-barreled pistol, loaded and ready for instant use; and it was not there for ornament. Both girls had been trained to use the rifle and the pistol; and never, since Iola's frightful experience with the Mexican desperado, Padilla, some three years before,[1] had either girl been permitted to ride, even a short distance from the house, without having one or both of these weapons with her. Consequently, trained and armed ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... confused while James eyed the pattern of the gun. Then he heard the man's contemptuous laugh and saw him pull the trigger. The hammer refused to move. It was so rusted that the weapon was quite useless. For a moment the desperado's eyes sought the pale face of his would-be slayer. A devilish smile lurked in their depths. Then he held out the pistol for the other to take, while his whole ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Desperado Walked on the Prado, And there he met his enemy. He pulled out a knife, a, And let out his life, a, And fled for his own across ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pull there in front of the livery barn. You might git hit. They's a ring-tailed desperado in the Red Front, an' he's mighty ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... was asked if he thought Jimmy Governor (a notorious desperado who had given the New South Wales police much trouble) ought to be hanged. "Baal. No fear hang ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... The nation rose and conquered it with votes. With desperate disloyalty, Slavery struck down all political safeguards, and appealed to arms. The nation has risen again, ready to meet it with any weapons, sure to conquer with any Twice conquered, what further claim will this defeated desperado have? If it was a disturbing element before, and so put under restriction, shall it be spared when it has openly proclaimed itself a destroying element also? Is this to be the last of American civil wars, or only the first one? These are the questions which will haunt men's minds, when the cannon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... ill, which perhaps retards it a little; and the season, at any rate, is at the very dullest. By the first conveyance I will send a certain Lady two copies of it. Little danger but the Edition will sell; Fraser knows his own Trade well enough, and is as much a "desperado" as poor Attila Schmelzle was! Poor James, I wish he were well again; but really at times I am very anxious about him.—The Book will sell; will be liked and disliked. Harriet Martineau, whom I saw in passing hitherward, writes with her accustomed enthusiasm about ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... inferior form. The proper smoking is a briar, and, remember, it is not smart to have a new pipe. So soon as he buys it, the Blade takes his pipe home, puts it on a glowing fire to burn the rim, scrapes this away, burns it again, and so on until it looks a sullen desperado of a pipe—a pipe with a wild past. Sometimes he cannot smoke a pipe. In this case he may—for his stomach's sake—smoke a cigarette. And, besides, there is something cynical about a cigarette. For the very young Blade there are certain makes of cigarette that burn well—they ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... of a perfect desperado, he then stretched himself out in the shadow of a small tree, drank deeply from a whiskey flagon which he produced, and pulling his hat over his eyes, was soon asleep and snoring. It was a long time before I could believe the evidence of my own senses. Finally, I approached ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... likely to be of a desirable class. The banks of the Mississippi River had long been hiding-places for pirate bands, whose exploits were notorious, and the "half-breed tract" was a known place of refuge for the horse thief, the counterfeiter, and the desperado of any calling. The settlement of the Mormons in such a region, with an invitation to the world at large to join them and be saved, was a piece of good luck for this lawless class, who found a covering cloak in the new baptism, and a shield in the fidelity with which the Mormon ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... The desperado replaced one of the weapons and patted the other with grisly affection. In the excess of my admiration I made bold to reach for it. He relinquished it to me with a mother's yearning. And all too legible in the polished butt of the thing were notches! ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... in chase of at this moment, our own ship included. She is called le Feu-Follet, which is not Wing-and-Wing, but Will-o'-the-Wisp, or Jack-o'-Lantern, in English; and which you, in Italian, would call il Fuoco Fatuo. Her commander is Raoul Yvard than whom there is not a greater desperado sailing out of France; thought it is admitted that the fellow has some ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... two foreigners sprang at him. One, swinging the porter off his feet, seized the newcomer's right arm, and, helped by his comrade, endeavored to force him back into the vehicle. The effort failed, however, so the second desperado drew a knife and plunged it deliberately into the unfortunate man's neck. It was a fearsome stroke, intended both to silence and to kill, and, with a gurgling cry, its victim collapsed in the grip of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... friend, Wild Bill, remained in Deadwood during the summer with the exception of occasional visits to the camps. On the 2nd of August, while setting at a gambling table in the Bell Union saloon, in Deadwood, he was shot in the back of the head by the notorious Jack McCall, a desperado. I was in Deadwood at the time and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting and found that my friend had been killed by McCall. I at once started to look for the assassian and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop and grabbed ...
— Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane • Calamity Jane
... "This desperado is the very man for us!" they exclaimed unanimously, and in rapture; and now their most ardent wish was to enroll Abellino in ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... in the express car had been brought to a close by Jim Cummings leaping from the car, the train moved on, and left him alone, the possessor of nearly $100,000. The game had been a desperate one, and well played, and nervy and cool as he was, the desperado was forced to seat himself on a pile of railroad ties, until he could regain possession of himself, for he trembled in every limb, and shook as with a chill. He pulled himself together, however, and picking up his valise, with its valuable ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... whom the nation really wanted. He had headed some one of the many small riots against Rome which were perpetually sputtering up and being trampled out by an armed heel. There had been bloodshed, in which he had himself taken part ('a murderer,' Acts iii. 14). And this coarse, red-handed desperado is the people's favourite, because he embodied their notions and aspirations, and had been bold enough to do what every man of them would have done if he had dared. He thought and felt, as they did, that freedom was to be won by the sword. The popular hero is as a mirror which reflects ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... would meditate upon the artistry of crime, And he would tell of cracking cribs and cops and doing time; Or else when he was flush of funds he'd carelessly explain He'd biffed some bloated bourgeois on the border of the Seine. So gentle and polite he was, just like a man of peace, And not a desperado and the terror of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... room now, Farrington with his trusty lieutenant, and behind them the one-eyed Italian desperado whom Poltavo remembered seeing in the power house one day, when he had been allowed the privilege ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... billiard and "ping-pong" tables, the latter game being then the rage in every settlement from Dawson to the coast. I mention the bar, as it was the scene of a somewhat amusing incident, which, however, is, as a Klondiker would say, "up against me." About this period a "desperado" of world-wide fame named Harry Tracy was raising a siege of terror in the State of Oregon, having committed over a dozen murders, and successfully baffled the police. We had found Dawson wild with excitement over the affair, and here again Tracy was the topic of the hour. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... he had come near pulling it all down again, like an ungrateful clock, in order to introduce a chapter in which Richard Skill (who was always being decoyed somewhere) should be decoyed on board that lonely hulk by Lord Bellew and the American desperado Gin Sling. It was fortunate he had not done so, he reflected, since the hulk was now required for very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prisoners at once, all except Hinkey," Sergeant Noll reported back to his chum and to Lieutenant Prescott. "The leader of the gang is a half-popular fellow with some classes here in the mountains. Despite the fact that he's a desperado, he is often surprisingly good-natured, and always game when he loses. His name is Griller—Butch Griller, he's called. His crew are called the Moccasin Gang, because Griller has always preferred that ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... the way we English bury our heads in the sand when we hear unpleasant truths. The last thing Fischer wants is advertisement, and yet he goes to some of his Fourteenth Street friends and unearths a popular desperado to get rid of me. The fellow happens most unexpectedly to fail, and now Fischer has to face a good many awkward questions and a good deal of notoriety. No, I don't think ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the keenest satisfaction. "I could have cried. I called him a worm, a bug, a boll-weevil; but he said he had a family and didn't intend to be shot up by some well-dressed desperado." ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... sang out a deriding voice that set the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all the evenin' papers—oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated ruffian!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... coterie gathered at the home of Jasper Staggs. Old Jasper, in his earlier days, had been a town marshal, and it was his boast that he had arrested Steve Day, the desperado who had choked the sheriff and defied the law. This great feat was remembered by the public, and old Jasper nursed it as a social pension. But it did not bring in revenue sufficient to sustain life, so he made a pretense of collecting difficult accounts while his wife and "old maid" daughter ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... frame tightened. He saw the beginning of the grooves in the barrel of the pistol and the gray cones of the bullets at the side in the cylinder; he saw the cruel, black, drunken eyes of the young desperado. It was all in a flash. He had not a chance for his ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... and liquor usually comes at this time. This is the time, too, of sexual temptation, if not actual indulgence. The temptation to do something startling is almost irresistible; robberies will be planned, hold-ups thought of, abductions contemplated; the life of a desperado entertained. The moral character seems to be in a ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... challenged Wilkes, who was then Sheriff of London and Middlesex, received the following laconic reply: "Sir, I do not think it my business to cut the throat of every desperado that may be tired of his life; but, as I am at present High Sheriff of the city of London, it may happen that I shall shortly have an opportunity of attending you in my official capacity, in which case I will answer for it that you shall have no ground to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... "are the two best companies of the regiment to be kept at bay by a single desperado? Shame on ye, fellows! If his hands are too many for you, lay him ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... everywhere lauded for her brave part in the capture of the famous desperado. But Cap was too sincerely sorry for Black Donald to care for ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... a comrade in that fashion was abhorrent even to the slack conscience of this desperado. So he grudgingly hefted the burden of the senseless figure and plodded under its weight to ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... stood six feet in his boots. His long drooping mustache was a sandy color like his goatee. His eyes, a light blue, were shifty and piercing, eyes that had the look of a snake charming a bird. In appearance Craig was a typical desperado. He swaggered about with gun at belt, a ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... enlistment had been complied with; that their pay was going on; that they had no special favor to expect, and certainly were not in the way to obtain any by such a rude manner of application. As the fellow became outrageously insolent, the Captain drew his sword, which the desperado snatched out of his hand, broke in two pieces, threw the hilt at him, and made off for the barrack, where, taking his gun, which was loaded, and crying out "One and all!" five others, with their guns, rushed out, and, at the distance ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... lion without a saint, is a favourite Persian epithet, when applied to a desperado, a fellow ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Brocken, with long hair white as snow, appeared close to me, and at the same moment there was the flash of a pistol close to my ear, and I recognized 'Mountain Jim,' frozen from head to foot, looking a century old with his snowy hair. It was 'ugly' altogether, certainly a 'desperado's' grim jest, and it was best to accept it as such, though I had just cause for displeasure. He stormed and scolded, dragged me off the pony—for my hands and feet were numb with cold—took the bridle, and went off at a rapid stride, so that I had to run to keep them in sight ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... formation, is entitled to no merit, though it may demand our applause: but moral, or acquired courage, is a very different thing. A man who is fortunate in the world and has a sacrifice to make, if he conducts himself with spirit, is also more entitled to our admiration than a mere desperado. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... will show that caution which becomes his delicate situation, and prove by his subsequent benevolence that he regrets his misfortune. But if, after once having stained his hands with human blood, he will act the desperado, and become a leader in such outrages as may end in a repetition of his former act—then, we say, he is worthy of reproach, and ought to be viewed as the common enemy ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... only afraid that they will blow her up," Will said; "but probably, as they have not done so already, her captain and most of her officers are killed, for it would require a desperado to undertake that job." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty |
