"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wait for the men who will win me — and I will not be won in a day; And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild, But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child; Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat, Them will I gild with my treasure, them will ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... to adjust the lamp-shade, and now stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obliged to turn his head backward to see her—"Mr. Henderson, do you know you are getting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his said that was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the bright steel flashed in the wavering light as she poised it in act to strike—the next, I had caught her murderous hand and forced it down, and was struggling with her for the mastery of the weapon. She held it with a desperate grip—she fought with me breathlessly, clinging to me with all her force—she reminded me of that ravenous unclean bird with which I had had so fierce a combat on the night of my living burial. For some brief moments she was possessed of supernatural strength—she ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... there is always time to think of her wedding and that she is in no hurry to leave us. Meantime she entertains herself with this Michael as if she did not fear his passion, and neither has Michael the desperate air of a man who knows the definite engagement of Natacha and Boris. And my step-daughter is not a coquette. No, no. No one can say she is a coquette. At least, no one had been able to say it up to the time that Michael arrived. Can it be that she is a coquette? They are mysterious, these ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... sterling of interest to pay, and for this we must have taxes. But, why not sweep the national debt away, as France did in her day of royal overthrow? A single sitting of the Convention settled that question. Why not follow the example? Then will come the desperate expedient, and all will be ruin on the heads of the most helpless of the community; for the national debt is only a saving bank on a larger scale, and nine-tenths of its creditors are of the most struggling ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Negro. The Rhode Island Assembly in 1778 resolved to raise a regiment of slaves, who were to be freed at enlistment, their owners in no case being paid more than L120. In the Battle of Rhode Island August 29, 1778, the Negro regiment under Colonel Greene distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor, repelling three times the assaults of an overwhelming force of Hessian troops. A little later, when Greene was about to be murdered, some of these same soldiers had to be cut to pieces before he could be secured. Maryland ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... things, and I want you to understand. So Churchill doesn't like the whole business. But he's under the shadow. He's been thinking a good deal lately that his day is over—I'll prove it to you in a minute—and so—oh, he's going to make a desperate effort to get in touch with the spirit of the times that he doesn't like and doesn't understand. So he lets you get ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... doing me an injury, without a thought of their own necks. They might have been thrown out and killed, but they did not hesitate because of that. The one thought was to do me some way—any way. Hartwick always was a desperate fellow, but I did not fancy Harlow could be such a chap. However, he was driving that horse, and the way he drove was proof enough that he is careless of life ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... marshal thereafter; Of Canelious, right ugly, is the first, Who from Val-Fuit came across country there; The next's of Turks; of Persians is the third; The fourth is raised of desperate Pinceners, The fifth is raised from Soltras and Avers; The sixth is from Ormaleus and Eugez; The seventh is the tribe of Samuel; The eighth is from Bruise; the ninth from Esclavers; The tenth is from Occiant, the desert, That is a tribe, do not the ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... a desperate fight now for about a quarter of an hour between man's two best slaves—fire and water; and John Willows looked anxiously on, asking himself the question, which was to win. At the end of the above-mentioned time, in spite of the inflammable nature of the old building, the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... and she wavered slightly under his black eyes. The fight was becoming a little too desperate even for her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... better understanding of things than they imagined they had. They were almost universally disgusted with the Innovation, while the advocates for it were yet endeavoring to make the world believe, that the opposition to it arose from a few men only, of "no property" and "desperate fortunes," who were "endeavoring to bring things into confusion, that they might have the advantage of bettering their fortunes by plunder." Little did they think that it was then known, as it now appears in fact, that those who were assiduously watching for places, preferment and ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... desperate hurry," observed the Honourable John, ignoring the epithets with which we assailed him. He was never offended, and never perturbed. When the vials of our wrath were poured upon him, as they had been pretty freely during the holiday, they ran off him like the proverbial ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... that visit especially, because this was the last time I saw the Nelson bungalow. On arriving at the Straits I found cable messages which made it necessary for me to throw up my employment at a moment's notice and go home at once. I had a desperate scramble to catch the mailboat which was due to leave next day, but I found time to write two short notes, one to Freya, the other to Jasper. Later on I wrote at length, this time to Allen alone. I got no ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the courtier, laughing, in order that he might seem to comprehend the quotation, "your majesty may be perfectly right in relying on the good feeling of France, but I fear I am not altogether wrong in dreading some desperate attempt." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all countries in the world!" she culminated—a desperate note invading her wrath. "The one place where he should not be allowed to sow his wild oats—if the modern anaemic young man has enough red blood in his veins—for that sort of thing. And it's your obvious duty to be quite frank with ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the roadway of the bridge was guarded by a low stone wall; the other side was naked and open and bare to the deep, slow-moving water beneath. It was a dangerous place to attack a desperate man clad ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... around. Since the time they were both five Nellie Tanner had supplied in full all the feminine requirements he had ever desired. And she did at this moment. But Nat Burns had seen a great deal of her in the last three months, he remembered, taking advantage of Code's desperate ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... Batavia, several rafts of spars for masts, and if the plan of building ships at Pinang should be encouraged large supplies of frame-timber for the purpose may be obtained from this river, provided a sense of interest shall be found sufficiently strong to correct or restrain the habits of treachery and desperate enterprise for which these people have in ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Liberal peer. Why, being the kind of Gallio I am, I should have been, like a second Daniel, thrown among these lions, I could not understand. They were not the least likely to convert me to their own desperate intensity of feeling. If Lady Moyne wanted to convert me a far better plan would have been to invite me to her house after the politicians had gone away. Circe, I imagine, did not attract new lovers by parading those ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... portmanteau out upon the wayside, a wonder to all beholders; or to leave the door ajar, so that any thievish tramp or holiday schoolboy might stray in and stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least desperate, his mind inclined; but he must first insure himself that he was unobserved. He peered out, and down the long road; it lay dead empty. He went to the corner of the by-road that comes by way of ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in this way, it usually is possible to fill her place with a convenient young sister, or even with an elderly aunt. But when a man is wanted, and, especially, as in the case in point, a clever man, the matter very readily may become desperate. Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith certainly was dismayed, yet was she not utterly cast down. She had faith in her own quick wits, which had rescued her in times past from other social calamities, though never from one ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... from drink, for which he had a propensity, and, as if under a vow, he went naked for nearly two years. He also meditated suicide, and was probably only prevented from committing it by the influence of a white friend. He sought honourable death in desperate encounters with all the enemies he could find, and in this period acquired his name, or title, from a very destructive attack he made upon a party of another tribe. He lived a year or two with the Pawnees, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... who tasted liquor in all our town in those days. To have been betrayed into taking too much just once would have been to lose one's character; and when my father heard of Stephen's being seen a good many times when he was not able to take care of himself, it seemed to him that it was a desperate case. I think he would as lief have laid me down in the graveyard beside my little brothers, as have thought of giving ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... existence of many of them. This stoppage, however, had likewise been nearly productive of fatal consequences to the whole party. In fact, another mutiny was within an ace of breaking out, which, if not checked at the moment, could only, in their desperate situation, have ended in irretrievable and total destruction. Bligh mentions, in his printed narrative, the mutinous conduct of a person to whom he gave a cutlass to defend himself. This affair, as stated in his original manuscript journal, wears a ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... way. Then she would divide her years between the little studio in England and Kami's big studio at Vitry-sur-Marne. No, she would go to another master, who should force her into the success that was her right, if patient toil and desperate endeavour gave one a right to anything. Dick had told her that he had worked ten years to understand his craft. She had worked ten years, and ten years were nothing. Dick had said that ten years were nothing,—but that was in regard to herself only. He had said—this ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... there could be no further joy in life for him when his protector was slain. Nature, grief, despair, foreboding, terror,—these were my allies; with these I hemmed him in, and drove him to his last desperate resolve. Know that your oppressor died childless, heartbroken, weeping, groaning in spirit; the time of his mourning was short, but it was a father mourning for his son; he died by his own hand, bitterest, most awful of deaths; that death comes lightly, by comparison, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... they were out of it, and the order was Dennis, Early, Richards, and Lang. At the beginning of the second mile, Early, whose duty it was to have gone up and helped Dennis make the pace at the third half-mile, had manifestly had enough of it, and, after two or three desperate struggles to keep up, was passed by Richards. When, therefore, they came to the mile and a half, Dennis was leading Richards by some fifteen yards, and those who knew the game expected to see the Harvard man try to overtake Dennis, and in so doing ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... unite. Johnston's assistants in command were Beauregard and Bragg, both able and experienced officers. On the morning of April 6, the Confederates fell upon Grant's outposts and drove them headlong against the main body. Desperate valor was shown in the ensuing attack, and before the afternoon it seemed that nothing could save the Union army and its commander from complete disaster. The river was in high flood, two impassable creeks flanked the Federals, while ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... of Namur, in Flanders, these fellows happened to be both in the trenches when the French made a desperate sally and were beaten off at last with much loss and in such confusion that their pursuers lodged themselves in one of the outworks, and had like to have gained another, in the attack on which a young cadet of the regiment in which Blunt served was killed. Blunt observing it, went to ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... fact, such desperate efforts to learn all about poetry that her system got quite out of order. But although she did not in the course of the day hit upon anything, she quite casually succeeded in her dreams in devising eight lines; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... citizen. You will be at the mercy of the successful general whose triumph may make him the idol of the armed millions that alone can accomplish our subjugation. In the South, butchery and rapine by hordes of desperate negroes—in the North anarchy and political intrigue, to be merged into dictatorship and the absolutism of military power. Such would be the results of your triumph and ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Austin can administer the calomel to-morrow, then. . . . And do ring up Daisy Craig; tell her mother I'm desperate, and that she and Drina can occupy the same ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the gross receipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for I was worn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed kept me from repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns for another's gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to mangle his victim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will often take a short cut to wealth by means of murder, when, if he would enter politics, he might accomplish his purpose ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Life, the Water of Immortality, the Fountain of Youth—a favourite and wide-spread myth during the Middle Ages. In the romance of Sir Huon of Bordeaux the hero boldly encounters a griffin, and after a desperate fight, in which he is sorely wounded, slays the monster. Close at hand he discovers a clear fountain, at the bottom of which is a gravel of precious stones. "Then he dyde of his helme and dranke of the water his fyll, and he had no ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... he dreaded only second to death. He had already twice suffered the horrors of delirium tremens, and he now had good cause for fearing another attack. It was to this Ginsling referred when he said if he broke off suddenly it might lead to serious consequences. So, after what seemed to be a desperate struggle—the better instincts of his nature endeavoring to overcome the craving of his appetite and the sophistry of his tempter—he concluded he would just take a little now to help him over this ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... reported himself. He had read the 'Anabasis,' some Herodotus, three plays of Euripides, and was now making some desperate efforts on Aeschylus and Sophocles. Any Plato? David made a face. He had read two or three dialogues in English; didn't want to go on, didn't care about him. Ah! ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... things necessary? Were they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war: they are the sad, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... points, and four minutes of time to play. The struggle had ceased to be a turning of tricks and test of speed. Henceforth, it was man against man, pound for pound. Suddenly, the opposing team braced itself and began a steady drive down the gridiron. With desperate energy, the Sunrise eleven fought for ground, giving way slowly, defending their goal like true Spartans, dying by inches, until only three yards of space were left on which to die. The rooters shrieked, and the girls sang of courage. Then ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... coins, with each fresh debasement, passed out of the country or at any rate out of circulation, the base coins becoming the medium of exchange. Thus the foundations of commercial stability were sapped, while foreign trading operations were thrown into desperate ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... assuring them that they were certain to reach the wells that afternoon, and always bearing an air of confidence in the future before them. But when they were alone together, and looked into each other's eyes, it was evident that they thought they were in a very desperate position. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Maya, Bobbie made one step out of his hiding-place, caught hold of the worm, bit it in two, and began calmly to eat the one half, heedless of its desperate wriggling or the wriggling of the other half in the grass. It was ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... which, so far as human aspiration and desert were concerned, classed the black man and the ox together. And the Negro knew full well that, whatever their deeper convictions may have been, Southern men had fought with desperate energy to perpetuate this slavery under which the black masses, with half-articulate thought, had writhed and shivered. They welcomed freedom with a cry. They shrank from the master who still strove for their chains; they fled to the friends that had freed them, even though those friends ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... gazing absently in front of him! Recollections of mean and envious criticisms, ugly underhand slanders, petty intrigue, his own shame-faced patronage! And then the vision of a lovely, white-faced woman making her desperate self-accusal, and of a terrible, vulgar mother trying to hold her back with threats and pleadings! He turned at last to the two men, his ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... she said, with a desperate anger at his immobility. "When I saw you with her to-day, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... upon religion as a painful necessity at some remote and desperate emergency of the future; but, after the hours spent with Hemstead, it seemed a source of joy beyond all the pleasures of her highly favored life. She was like one who had been living in the glare of artificial light, brilliant enough, it is true, but who ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... notified his consciousness of the presence of the new-comers with a short nod of recognition; but he was too much occupied to welcome them with words. He seemed in a desperate ill-humour with his official visitors, and replied to all their queries with a significant elevation of his broad shoulders, and a brief "No" or "Yes," ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... blockade increased in strictness, under Commodore Rowley. Decaen's situation was growing desperate. Fortunately for him, the French squadron brought in three prizes in January, 1810, slipping past Rowley's blockade, much to that enterprising officer's annoyance. The situation was temporarily relieved, but the assistance thus afforded was no better than ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... abilities is first carried away by his passions, it is necessary that sentiment and taste varnish the enormities of vice, and give a zest to brutal indulgences: but when the gloss of novelty is worn off, and pleasure palls upon the sense, lasciviousness becomes barefaced, and enjoyment only the desperate effort of weakness flying from reflection as from a legion of devils. Oh! virtue, thou art not an empty name! All that life can ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... order for the repayment of an olde and desperate debt of three thousand marks, a debt so desperate, as foure yeeres left out of their accounts, and by the opinion of them all, not thought fit to be dealt with, for too much offending the Emperour, or impeaching his other ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... their destination. These brave officers had reached Hispaniola after a voyage of four days, little short of miraculous, accomplished as it was in a frail canoe. They immediately made the governor acquainted with the desperate condition of Columbus and his companions. Ovando, in a spirit of malice and injustice, detained these officers, and after a delay of eight months, under pretext of ascertaining the real condition of affairs, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... abruptly. "The cops will get wind of this. They jerk up a circus man on the slightest excuse. It's something of an honor, I believe, to land one of us in jail. The darned rubes talk about it for weeks afterwards, telling how they nailed a desperate character. Everybody connected with a show is a regular devil in their eyes. And that reminds me. I had my lamps on a couple of blue boys down the street as I came up. We'd better go up ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... that if Patoff had mimicked Miss Dabstreak in the first half of his speech, he had imitated me in the second portion of the sentiment. I do not like to be made game of, because I am aware that I am naturally pedantic. It is an old trick of the schools to rouse a pedant to desperate and distracted self-contradiction by quietly ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... carried on and provided against destruction of human life and property. This was the position for instance at the Beaver in the mountains while the Canadian Pacific was under construction. For the time being it was a terminus, and all manner of lawless, desperate and disorderly characters were there to prey upon the navvies, many of whom were foreigners and a good many of whom were just as reckless and offensive as could be imagined. To keep these rough men in order, and there were several hundreds of them mostly armed, there ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... bent upon engaging in a struggle which the pain in his wrist, and shame for having allowed himself to be disarmed, would have made desperate, Cornelius took a decisive step, belaboring his jailer with the most heroic self-possession, and selecting the exact spot for every ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... homemade breads and jams, honey and hot scones spread out upon a spotless cloth around a centre piece of daffodils and early garden flowers. For a rejected suitor I felt singularly cheerful; for a blighted being I made a most excellent meal; and for the desperate misogynist I had determined on becoming I surely felt too much placid satisfaction at Mrs. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... Desperate now, the lad placed her on the floor, and, thrusting his head from the window, perceived that he could clamber up the two or three feet of rain spout that ran close by, and gain a position on the roof just overhead. ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... engineer must have been miserable and desperate when he sent me to fetch Grindhusen. He was so little used to trouble that the moment anything went wrong he felt the need of some one to confide in. And now when he was going about day after day, thoroughly disheartened and full of pity for ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... I ever do that was good to you, except marry Mr. Grandcourt?" said Gwendolen, starting up with a desperate resolve to be playful, and keep no more on the perilous edge of agitation. "And I should not have done that unless it had pleased myself." She tossed up her chin, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... my mind to get taken on," she concluded. "Et me voila! I did all sorts of desperate jumps that day. I felt desperate. If I hadn't got it, there was only the Morgue. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... force, amounting to fifteen thousand men, in the vicinity of Northampton. He received orders from the houses to rescue, by force[c] if it were necessary, the persons of the king, the prince, and the duke of York, from the hands of those desperate men by whom they were surrounded, to offer a free pardon to all who, within ten days, should return to their duty, and to forward to the king a petition that he would separate himself from his evil counsellors, and rely once more on the loyalty of his parliament. From Northampton Essex ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... distance. How might that audience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not Anno Domini, but many years B.C. The African deserves no pity. His hideous crime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many such monsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But for American citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at a holiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age, unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and women ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Perhaps the most ironic strength of these kinds of archival electronic resources is that many of the teachers AM interviewed were desperate, it is no exaggeration to say, not only for primary materials but for unstructured primary materials. These would, they thought, foster personally motivated research, exploration, and excitement in their students. Indeed, these materials have done just that. ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... This desperate profanation was emulated in the provinces. Fouche, in Lyons, ordered a civic festival in honour of one Chalier. An ass, with a mitre on its head, and dragging a Bible at its tail, formed a characteristic portion of the ceremony; the Bible was finally ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... men from over the Missouri border. Accordingly, in 1857, the free-state men so vastly outnumbered the slavery contingent, that even pro-slavery men had to acknowledge it. Then the slavery party made its last desperate effort. Toward the close of that year the Lecompton Constitution was framed by a convention chosen at an election in which the free-state men, perhaps unwisely, had refused to take part. When this pro-slavery instrument ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... defined as the offspring of FICTION and LOVE. Men of learning have amused themselves with tracing the epocha of romances; but the erudition is desperate which would fix on the inventor of the first romance: for what originates in nature, who shall hope to detect the shadowy outlines of its beginnings? The Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus appeared in the fourth century; and this elegant prelate was the Grecian Fenelon. It has been ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... me, the heat tormented me, the dry air made me shrivel and gasp; and, as he lay on the grass, the great salmon whirled his desperate nose once more to the river, and leaped, leaped, leaped, even under the mountain of air. He could leap upwards, but not forwards, and yet he leaped, for in each rise he could see the twinkling waves, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... each side the strife was bloody and desperate. Bold men grasped each other by the throat, and they held their swords to each other's breasts, scowling one upon another with the ferocity of contending tigers, ere each gave the deadly plunge which was to hurl both into eternity. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... movement. The baronet, incapable of saying more, pointed to a chair for him to sit down; then sinking into another himself, took out his handkerchief, and wiping away the large drops which stood on his forehead, panted for respiration. At last, with a desperate kind ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... assault on Lee's left, under Jackson, with his best troops. The charge was furious, and a bloody struggle ensued; but Jackson succeeded in repulsing the force. It fell back in disorder, but was succeeded by a second and a third line, which rushed forward at the "double-quick," in a desperate attempt to break the Southern line. These new attacks were met with greater obstinacy than at first, and, just as the opponents had closed in, a heavy fire was directed against the Federal column by Colonel S.D. Lee, commanding the artillery at Lee's centre. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... indignation and impatience. They considered M'Dougal as acting, if not a perfidious, certainly a craven part. He was continually repairing to the camp to negotiate, instead of keeping within his walls and receiving overtures in his fortress. His case, they observed, was not so desperate as to excuse such crouching. He might, in fact, hold out for his own terms. The Northwest party had lost their ammunition; they had no goods to trade with the natives for provisions; and they were so ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... said, annoyed not only at my own clumsiness but at the absence of anything of Anne's old heroic spirit. "For his sake, at least, you must keep your head. Why, my dear woman, one look at your face, grown as desperate as it sometimes appears now, would ruin Julian with the whole world. Even I, knowing the whole story, would find it hard to forgive him if you should fail to continue to be the splendid triumphant creature whom we know ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... idea, and I don't think I shall trouble my head with the question," replied the captain. "We have given them provisions enough to keep them alive for several days, and they can make their way to some town. I don't consider their condition as at all desperate. If Captain Ringgold thinks it necessary, he will ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... every move I made, but later, as her headache grew worse, she got desperate. So then I put my hand down into the shoe-bag and found the key, where it had slipped ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... ordinary expression, it must be confessed, was of a chastity to make one desperate—a sublime coldness—an ignorance of all possibilities of human passion, such as would have made the moon-bright eyes of Phoebe or the sea-green eyes of Athena appear by comparison more liquidly tempting than those of a young girl of Babylon sacrificing to the goddess Mylitta within the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... his life in order to become the President of the United States; because the power of that office is temporary, limited, and subordinate. The prize of fortune must be great to encourage adventurers in so desperate a game. No candidate has as yet been able to arouse the dangerous enthusiasm or the passionate sympathies of the people in his favor, for the very simple reason that when he is at the head of the Government he has but little power, but little wealth, and but little glory to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the firemen carried round and round, in and out, like crazy creatures. I am sure I saw one fellow, with a white pail, pitch through the same window into the red-hot flames fifty times. The poor girl-boy, being desperate, just pitched in, determined to burn herself, while the woman in yellow and the ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... particular fish appeared to have no show on earth—or rather in the water—and after fourteen leaps he was hauled up to the boat in such short order that if we had gaffed him, as we used to gaff Marlin, we would have had a desperate fight to hold him. But how easy to cut him free! He darted down like a blue streak. I had no fair sight of him to judge weight, but Captain Dan said he ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... of every Christian mind. Whereupon, falling into consideration that the Mermaid, albeit a very strong and sufficient ship, yet by reason of her burden not so convenient and nimble as a smaller barque, especially in such desperate hazards; further, having in account how great charge to the adventurers, being at 100 livres the month, and that in doubtful service, all the premises considered, with divers other things, I determined to furnish the Moonlight with revictualing and sufficient ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... at Franspoort. To the right and left of us some desperate fighting went on for several days, and at Donkerhoek a fierce battle took place, but we ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... insurmountable obstacles to an eventual marriage. For it had not been the purpose of Israel to marry at once, but at a future day, when prudence should approve the step. So, oppressed by his father, and bitterly disappointed in his love, the desperate boy formed the determination to quit them both for another ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... themselves to wayfarers, and in such a case the traveller was never seen again alive. Tales of Robin Hood began to take shape. The by-ways and thickets were peopled with men, innocent or guilty, but all alike desperate. One Richard, we read, whose fellow at the plough fell dead in an epileptic fit, fled in terror of the judges to the woods, and so did many a worse man than Richard. We find constantly the same tale of the sudden quarrel, the blow with a stick or a stone, the thrust ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... her capacious lap, and the precious Scorpion snatched out of her arms. Polly's firm, muscular young fingers tightly held the dog's mouth, and in an instant Scorpion and she were out of sight. Notwithstanding all his fighting and struggling and desperate efforts to free himself, she succeeded in carrying him to a little deserted summer pagoda at a distant end of the garden. Here she locked him in, and allowed him to suffer both cold and hunger for the remainder ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... the office, an' I sat until it was long after dark. I couldn't believe 'at she was desperate enough to marry me; I could see the gulf between us plain enough, an' the higher you are the plainer you can see the difference; but I could see that unless Jabez changed his ways, why, the oldest man the' was couldn't tell how far Barbie would go. I didn't think a ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... c. 2. He observes, (c. 5,) that the desperate sallies of two Gallic legions were like a handful of water ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... my mind that he understood the girl's desperate ruse, and that he was waiting for the issue. I picked furiously at the ropes which bound my hands, and a long strand uncoiled and ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... made such an avowal, it might occasion an irreconcilable breach with her husband. At Kenilworth, again, she might plead her cause with her husband himself, whom Janet, though distrusting him more than the Countess did, believed incapable of being accessory to the base and desperate means which his dependants, from whose power the lady was now escaping, might resort to, in order to stifle her complaints of the treatment she had received at their hands. But at the worst, and were the Earl himself to deny her justice and protection, still at Kenilworth, if she chose ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side—a piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed to me sufficiently Jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind. "Do you see that?" I said to the coachman.—"I see," was his short answer. He was wide awake,—yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... —— May bowl!" he groaned, and then sat down in the chair beside his couch to feel of his head, which seemed a gigantic bass drum, hollow and reverberating. Like a flash his desperate flirtation with the wife of his own squadron chief came back to his ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... whence they had arisen at my cry. I sat down upon a stone, and feeling that I was fast going into a state of distraction, tried to collect my faculties, and to consider what was best to be done, or, indeed, if anything could be done. With the sense of my desperate condition came also a horrible sense of the ludicrous. What would my principals in London think of their continental agent shivering, without a rag on, upon the desolate banks of the Danube? Here was I, a man well known upon 'Change, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... to shelter old eyes from the glare. When she was very tired with doing her work Mrs. Prettyman would totter out into the garden. She was getting terribly lame now, yet afraid to acknowledge it, knowing, with the desperate wisdom of poverty, that once to give in, very often ended in giving up altogether. So her lameness was 'blamed on the weather,' 'blamed on scrubbing the floor,' blamed on anything rather than the tragic, incurable ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... conduct of the war. After two years of hard conflicts—Aquillius is said to have fought in person with Athenion, and to have killed him in single combat—the Roman general at length put down the desperate resistance, and vanquished the insurgents in their last retreats by famine. The slaves on the island were prohibited from bearing arms and peace was again restored to it, or, in other words, its recent tormentors were relieved ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... KIDD— His cruellest acts were kindness, compared with the deeds I did! Never a pitying pang felt I for youth, sex, age, or rank— All who fell into my clutches were doomed to pace a protruded plank! Yet the desperate demon of those days is now a Churchwarden mild, Holding the bag at Collections—and all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... Which Skipper Bill, as a Desperate Expedient, Contemplates the Use of His Teeth, and Archie Armstrong, to Save His Honour, Sets Sail in a Basket, But Seems ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... in his own moral condition which alone will allure him to virtuous conduct. To expose children to public ridicule or contempt tends either to make them sullen and despondent, or else to arouse their resentment and to make them reckless and desperate. Most persons remember through life some instances in their early childhood in which they were disgraced or ridiculed at school, and the permanence of the recollection is a test of the violence ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... effect, until the flight of the American militia on that side exposed the battery to certain capture. The sailors then spiked their guns, and marched off unmolested. The sailors of the "Carolina," on that day of desperate fighting, were in the centre of Jackson's line, between the Creoles and the swarthy Baratarians under Dominique Yon. Here they worked their howitzers, and watched the scarlet lines of the enemy advance and melt away before ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... could equal mine in its degree and strength. This was not in her nature. She was one taught to subdue her nature, to repress the tendencies of her heart, to submit in silence and in meekness. She had invariably done so until the insane urgency of her mother made her desperate. But for this desperation she had still submitted, perhaps, had never been my wife. In the fervent intensity of my own love, I fancied, from the beginning, that there was something too temperate in the tone of hers. Were I to ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... thrilled by the desperate fight of the heroic old Cat. Her whole race went up higher in his esteem that day; and the fact that the house Cat really could take to the woods and there maintain herself by hunting was all that was needed to give her a place in his ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... let him fall prostrate before the foot of our throne, with his hands bound behind his back. Should he hesitate, swift destruction shall be poured on his head, on his whole race, and on his country." [146] The desperate extremity to which the Palmyrenian was reduced, called into action all the latent powers of his soul. He met Sapor; but he met him ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... impious crests—have quelled Outrage and bloody power, and, in despite Of what the People long had been and were Through ignorance and false teaching, sadder proof 215 Of immaturity, and in the teeth Of desperate opposition from without— Have cleared a passage for just government, And left a solid birthright to the State, Redeemed, according to example given 220 By ancient lawgivers. In this frame of mind, Dragged by a chain of harsh ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Caffie's at a quarter past 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 believe the Monte ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... came to pass that on a certain night in August, about two in the morning, Paul Coquenil found himself alone in the baron's spacious, silent library before a massive safe. The opening of this safe is another matter that need not be gone into—a desperate case justifies desperate risk, and an experienced burglar chaser naturally becomes a bit of a burglar himself; at any rate, the safe swung open in due course, without accident or interference, and the ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... her! ah! the fearful, madd'ning thought, Unto a wilder grief his soul it wrought; With desperate pride he wrestled with his pain Lest she should see it in his face again. But ah! what slender chain of love is this That can be broken ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... fuse to a barrel of gunpowder, and fling it into the midst of them. Unfortunately the missile caught in a branch, and was thrown back into the fort, exploding with disastrous consequences to the besieged. The savages taking advantage of the confusion, forced their way into the fort;—one more desperate struggle,—then all was over. Only four Frenchmen and four Hurons fell alive into the bands of the Iroquois, who, terrified at a victory which had cost them so dearly, returned to their villages as fast as possible, not daring to carry out the projected invasion of a country ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... custom of atchieving, or attempting, some desperate and perilous adventure, without either necessity or cause, was a peculiar, and perhaps the most prominent, feature of chivalry. It was not merely the duty, but the pride and delight, of a true knight, to perform such exploits, as no one but a madman would have ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... of manoeuvres and positions and battle joined. I told him of sieges and assaults, of starvation and hardship in trenches, and of sentinels freezing in the snow. I told him of routs and surprises, and desperate last stands and faint hopes, and the pitiless pursuit of fugitives and the dead upon the field. I told, too, of the past, of invasions and massacres, of the Huns and Tartars, and the wars of Mahomet and the Caliphs, and of the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... melodrama on the detectives. Another arrest which was watched by the writer took place at dead of night in a dirty lodging-house in an East End street. A house-to-house search had been instituted by forty or fifty armed detectives. They expected desperate resistance when they found their quarry. And at last they came upon the man they sought sleeping peacefully on a truckle bed. A giant detective lifted him bodily. A great coat was bundled over his night shirt, and he was sent off ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... fellows that made life miserable to the miners returning to the coast. The bushrangers traveled in gangs of all the way from five to fifteen or twenty, and sometimes more, and each gang was led by the most desperate man among them. They used to 'stick up' solitary travelers, or travelers in groups of a dozen or more. They lay in wait at turnings of the road or near the summits of hills, and generally took their victims by surprise. ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... be no question as to the identity of these kites. They were the Gap Gang, and in desperate plight. Their lugger was gone, and their leader dead. At sixes and sevens among themselves, they had quarrelled with the only man who might somehow have saved them. Behind them lay the gallows; before them the sea—and ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... rising ground, desired quarter, which Alexander, guided rather by passion than judgment, refused to grant, and charging them himself first, had his horse (not Bucephalas, but another) killed under him. And this obstinacy of his to cut off these experienced, desperate men, cost him the lives of more of his own soldiers than all the battle before, besides those who were wounded. The Persians lost in this battle twenty thousand foot, and two thousand five hundred horse. On Alexander's side, Aristobulus says there were not over four and thirty ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... bomb throwers; assumed organisation where in the nature of things it could not exist; spoke of the social revolutionary party one moment as of a perfectly disciplined army, where the word of chiefs was supreme, and at another as if it had been the loosest association of desperate brigands that ever camped in a mountain gorge. Once Mr Verloc had opened his mouth for a protest, but the raising of a shapely, large white hand arrested him. Very soon he became too appalled to even try to protest. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... because I was desperate. I tell you I wanted to die. What is the use of living if one is persecuted like this? There is nothing to live ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Hines and two of his classmates at once securely bound a handkerchief about Peter John's face, a task that was not accomplished without a desperate struggle. ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... fair number of travellers bound from the West through Weston to Bristol must use it. The gang could not lie in perpetual guard over it. Why had they set a trap on this particular night, then? The smugglers were a lawless and desperate body, but they did not, as a rule, descend to foot-paddery or robbery. As long as no one interfered with them they were seldom the first to break the peace. Then, why had they lain in wait for me, who had never injured them? Could it possibly be that I had been betrayed? ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for every day was too short for them; what with reading all the morning, and starting out in the afternoon in strange garments (which became shabbier and more ragged very rapidly as the weeks slipped on) upon all manner of desperate errands; walking unheard-of-distances, and losing their way upon the mountains; scrambling cliffs and now and then falling down them; camping all night by unpronounceable lakes, in the hope of catching mythical trout; trying ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of desperate laugh, as if the notion of so much misery and such various mutilation were too grotesque not to be amusing. "Well, what can you do?" he went on. "If you don't strike, the men think you're afraid of them; and so you have to begin hard and go on hard. I always ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... General Banks's critical position, I have been compelled to suspend General McDowell's movements to join you. The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper's Ferry, and we are trying to throw General Fremont's force and part of General McDowell's ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... blurted her last desperate problem: "He's learnin' all kind of new things. Me, I ain't learnin' anything. When Chuck comes home he'll just think I'm ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... under circumstances of perpetual jolting and interruption? If we can only confuse him all through the drive, between Nature as it is, when he looks up at the view, and Nature as it is not when he looks down again at our sketch-books, we shall drive him into the last desperate refuge of paying us compliments, and shall slip through his professional fingers with our pet feathers ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... himself. After his lonely existence he was suddenly in the vortex of the whirlpool. He had promised his life to Sir John Dacre and to his country to be staked upon a hazard, which he thought to be hopeless, and knew to be desperate. He did not think of swerving from this promise, for he felt that he must be true to his order and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... Whenever I have made a fool of myself before, I have been for sticking it out, and trying to turn all mankind—that is, you—into a a fool too, so that I shouldn't be an exception. But this time, I think, I had a kind of inspiration. I felt that my case was desperate. I felt that if I adopted my folly now I adopted it forever. The other day I met a man who had just come home from Europe, and who spent last summer in Switzerland. He was telling me about the mountain-climbing over there,—how they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... his head. "I can't say what French Pete 'll do. He 's been fooled on the iron, and fooled on the oysters, and he 's that disgusted he 's liable to do 'most anything desperate. I would n't be surprised to see him go off with Nelson towards Redwood City, where that big thing is that I was tellin' you about. It 's somewhere ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... was lost to him for evermore. He was now a prisoner, branded, hopeless. He would never be able to withstand the influences that had closed around him and upon him. He supposed that he should become desperate, become a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Democratic Party of the North sympathized with the South in its attempts to dissolve the Union. During the entire period of the war, New York, Ohio and Indiana were divided States, and Indiana was only kept in line by the active and desperate fidelity of Oliver P. Morton. In the presence of these difficulties Mr. Lincoln recommended the purchase of all the slaves in the States not in rebellion; then he suggested the deportation of the manumitted slaves and the free blacks, to Central America, and for this ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... the railway station and who must be about due to arrive. I did not know who or what it might be, but even the thought of someone else made me feel safer, for in so ticklish a piece of business as this, in dealing with at least a pair of desperate men such as we knew them to be in the ominously quiet little house, a second and even a third line of re-enforcements ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... were enforced; or it might be he owned the land up here, and took me for a poacher who hadn't any right to be fishing on his preserves; then again, he looked so ugly and black that I even figured whether he could be a desperate fugitive from justice who'd been hiding in the Pontico Hills country, and hated to see anybody coming ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... chiefs renowned for valour chose; Down to the strand he speeds with haughty strides, Where anchor'd in the bay the vessel rides, Replete with mail and military store, In all her tackle trim to quit the shore. The desperate crew ascend, unfurl the sails (The seaward prow invites the tardy gales); Then take repast till Hesperus display'd His golden circlet, in ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... he was through with the wasp, 'I don't know. I don't know,' and he seemed, somehow, helpless and desperate, as if he had come to the end ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... won by fair means, he must be conquered by foul," said the desperate villain; "but if we offer him rather more than the count has already promised for his share of the booty, of course he will consult at once ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth |
