"Forlorn hope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to render my position more comfortable, ending in a forlorn hope that intense and continued sitting might, by some undefined process of evaporation, cure the evil. This suggested a speculation, half pleasing and half painful, as to what would be my mother's feelings could she ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the mountain unoccupied? The mountain without the Austrians was in itself difficult enough to conquer! Lannes was despatched like a forlorn hope with a whole division. He crossed the peak of the Saint-Bernard without baggage or artillery, and took possession of Chatillon. The Austrians had left no troops in Piedmont, except the cavalry in barracks and a few posts of observation. There were no obstacles to contend with except those ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... announced, and the asperity of Miss Jemima's feelings softened a little by that, especially as she reflected that her father would be obliged to lead Mrs. Mellen into the dining-room. But that dreadful Elsie destroyed even that forlorn hope. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... got to go down," he said to himself, "I'll see that it's a tremendous smash anyhow, and that we ain't alone in it." For he had in him the stuff that makes a man lead a forlorn hope with a certain joy in the very hopelessness ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... The most forlorn hope of the Bourbons was now in a considerable army posted between Fontainebleau and Paris. Meanwhile the two armies approached each other at Melun; that of the King was commanded by Marshal Macdonald. On the 20th his troops were ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to the verge of the cliff. What was to be done? surrender to the Indians, attempt to dash through their line, or leap the cliff? Each way promised death. But death by fall was preferable to death by torture. And a forlorn hope of life remained. The horse was a powerful one, and might make the descent in safety. Gathering his reins tightly in his right hand, while his left grasped his rifle, McCullough spurred the noble animal forward, and in an instant was over the brow of the cliff, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... keen old eyes flickered between the two men and the girl. "My daughter. Mr. Thompson is the latest leader of the forlorn hope at ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... air, with the strong wind blowing keenly and the red gleam of sunset already beginning to fail, he flung off his clothes on the damp beach, and as one who rushes on a forlorn hope in the teeth of an enemy, he ran down the rough uneven shore, hardly noticing how much it hurt his feet, and plunged boldly into the hideous yeast of seething waves. The cold made him shiver and shiver in every limb; his teeth chattered; he was afraid of cramp; the slimy seaweeds that his feet touched, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... assume a little as he led the procession, for he forgot at times that he was a peaceable servant of the sanctuary, and fancied, as he marched mace in hand to the music of the organ, that he was a daring officer leading a forlorn hope. That very afternoon he had had a heated discussion in the vestry with Mr Milligan, the bass, on a question of gardening, and the singer, who still smarted under the clerk's overbearing tongue, was glad to emphasise his adversary's defeat by ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the Spirit grop'd about, To find th' inchanted hero out, And try'd with haste to lift him up; But found his forlorn hope, his crup, 1560 Unserviceable with kicks and blows, Receiv'd from harden'd-hearted foes. He thought to drag him by the heels, Like Gresham carts, with legs for wheels; But fear, that soonest cures those sores 1565 In danger of relapse to worse, Came in t' assist him with it's aid And ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Percival found life not worth living. He sat on the hot deck in solitary state, gloved in white chamois, with a newspaper over his white-clad knees, engaged in the forlorn hope of trying to keep clean while the ship was coaling. Finding this an impossibility, he took refuge in the deserted-writing-room, where all the port-holes were closed and the air as dead as that of an ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... render him, whether the power were united with the disposition or not. This showed adroitness, with great knowledge of human nature; and more winning and captivating manners than those of Mr. C. when called forth, were never possessed by mortal! In conformity with this almost forlorn hope, Mr. Coleridge explained to the American captain the history of the ruin; read to him some of the half defaced Latin and Italian inscriptions, and concluded with extolling General Washington, and predicting the stability of the Union. The right keys, treble and tenor, were touched at the same moment. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... hand for an instant like one who is dazzled—then he led forward his wife, as men have led on a forlorn hope. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... troops to land at Portland, and through Maine invade Canada, our neutrality would be lost. The neutrality of Greece was lost, but Constantine would not see that. He hoped, although 170,000 fighting men are not easy to hide, that the Kaiser also would not see it. It was a very forlorn hope. The Allies also cherished a hope. It was that Constantine not only would look the other way while they slipped across his country, but would cast off all pretense of neutrality and join them. So, as far as was possible, they avoided giving offense. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... they drew 4-1/2 miles nearer to the One Ton Depot, and there they made their last camp. Throughout Tuesday a severe blizzard held them prisoners, and on the 21st Scott wrote: 'To-day forlorn hope, Wilson and Bowers going ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... swallow up the rest. Its approach was regarded by the Queen with ominous reluctance. At length, however, the moment for the meeting of the States General at Versailles arrived. Necker was once more in favour, and a sort of forlorn hope of better times dawned upon the perplexed monarch, in his anticipations from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to me, "M. Marston, you have been later on the spot than any of us. What can you tell of this M. Dumourier, who, I see from my letters, is appointed to the forlorn hope of France—the command of the broken armies of Lafayette ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... great advantage for me. No one there cherished the forlorn hope that boys of our sort could make any advance in learning. It was a petty institution with an insufficient income, so that we had one supreme merit in the eyes of its authorities—we paid our fees regularly. This prevented even the Latin Grammar from proving a stumbling block, and the most ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... tranquil, whatever Matter might suffer. As the novelist says, "Lighting upon a grain of gold or silver betokens that a mine of the precious metal must be in the neighbourhood." It had been otherwise with my first Expedition: a forlorn hope, a miracle of moral audacity; the heaviest of responsibilities incurred upon the slightest of justifications, upon the pinch of sand which a tricky and greedy old man might readily have salted. It reminds me of a certain "Philip ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the most familiar objects of her daily life; for had they not been impressed on her mental vision by the strength of despair? The Austrian soldiers at the frontier could not detain them, though without passports, for even they would not prevent a dying child from being conveyed on a forlorn hope. Such grief could scarcely be rendered more or less acute by circumstances. They arrived at their inn in a gondola, but only for Clara to die in her mother's arms within ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... to speak of these things, however, just then, for the storm, or rather the squall, burst forth again with increased violence, and the pass was still before them—so like the men of a forlorn hope who press up to the breach, they braced themselves to renew the conflict, and pushed on. The truth of the proverb, that "fortune favours the brave," was verified on this occasion. The storm passed over almost as quickly as it had begun, the sky cleared up, and, before ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... lead and dropped it over the side of the ship, in the almost forlorn hope that possibly she might lie over some hole on the bottom. The soundings proved to be, as indeed he expected, but a little ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Maternal authority was at length hinted at, only hinted at, and the spoiled child declared that she had not had her own will and way for sixteen years to give up quietly in her seventeenth. One last resort, one forlorn hope,—one expedient, which had never failed to overcome her childish stubbornness: "Would she grieve her parents so much as to oppose this their darling wish?" And Ivy burst into tears, and begged to know if she should show her love to her father and mother by going away from them. This drove ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... won by their blood and pain is settled on the land. She had fashioned Cyril Harjohn for one of her soldiers. He would have been a martyr, in the days when thought led to the stake, a fighter for the truth, when to speak one's mind meant death. To lead some forlorn hope for Civilisation would have been his true work; Fate had condemned him to sentry duty in ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... deed as I was in word? Also I feared that if I should run now there was a warrant out for me, I might by so doing make them afraid to stand, when great words only should be spoken to them. Besides I thought, that seeing God of His mercy should choose me to go upon the forlorn hope in this country; that is, to be the first, that should be opposed, for the gospel; if I should fly, it might be a discouragement to the whole body that might follow after. And further, I thought the ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... head. Yet he added, with the instinct of a business man ready to nurse a forlorn hope, "There would be no harm in trying. I don't believe, though, that you have the ghost ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... which Miss Matty had written to him about the time of the panic, in which I suspect she had exaggerated my powers and my bravery as a defender of the house. But now that the days were longer and more cheerful, he was beginning to urge the necessity of my return; and I only delayed in a sort of odd forlorn hope that if I could obtain any clear information, I might make the account given by the signora of the Aga Jenkyns tally with that of "poor Peter," his appearance and disappearance, which I had winnowed out of the conversation of Miss ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fought with weapons may run away. You might have let me go with Barrios if you had cared for me. I would have carried one of those rifles, in which Don Jose believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in the ranks of poor peons and Indios, that know nothing either of reason or politics. The most forlorn hope in the most forlorn army on earth would have been safer than that for which you made me stay here. When you make war you may retreat, but not when you spend your time in inciting poor ignorant fools to kill ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... raced the few yards intervening between the ring of death and the doorway. Together they waited to see if their forlorn hope would work.... ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... disturbances. My 'Warburg' was procured directly from the inventor, not from the common chemist, who makes the little phialful for 9d. and sells it for 4s. 6d. Some years ago a distinguished medical friend persuaded Dr. Warburg, once of Vienna, now of London, to reveal his secret, in the forlorn hope of a liberal remuneration by the Home Government. Needless to say the reward is to come. I first learnt to appreciate this specific at Zanzibar in 1856, where Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton used it successfully in the most dangerous remittents and marsh-fevers. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... key they had none to unlock the great fortresses of the empire, none to unloose the enthusiasm of the native population. Yet such was the desperation of their circumstances, that a coup-de-main on the capital seemed their best chance. The whole army was and felt itself a forlorn hope. To go forward was desperate, but to go back much more so; for they had a thousand rivers without bridges in their rear; and, if they set their faces in that direction, they would have 300,000 light cavalry upon their flanks, besides ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... day, at dawn, he went out with eighty men to an outpost that had been an abandoned farm. It was rather a forlorn hope. They had one machine gun. At nine o'clock the enemy opened fire on them and followed it by an attack. The major in charge went down early. At two Cecil was standing in the loft of the farmhouse, firing with a revolver on men who beneath him, outside, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... struggle beneath his notice, found himself at last, with fury and amazement, to be a fellow-sufferer caught in the same toils. There seems no reason to believe that Falieri consciously staked the remnant of his life on the forlorn hope of overcoming that awful and pitiless power, with any real hope of establishing his own supremacy. His aspect is rather that of a man betrayed by passion, and wildly forgetful of all possibility in his fierce attempt to free himself and get the upper hand. One cannot but feel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not in the man to give up. He must stagger on till he could no longer stand. He must fight so long as life was in him. He must crawl forward, though his forlorn hope had vanished. And he did. When the worn-out horse slipped down and could not be coaxed to its feet again, he picked up the bundle of rugs and plowed forward blindly, soul and body racked, but teeth still set fast with the primal instinct never ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... course," said Durland. "But it's a forlorn hope. There's a limit to human endurance. Even regular troops would call what Bean's brigade did before sunset a hard day's work. Just think of it—they were in motion before daybreak this morning, ready for their dash ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... had been one long nightmare of heat. It had been years according to all accounts since the unhappy Londoners had so sweltered beneath the scorching rays of an almost tropic sun. Often, when tossing on her little bed or when seated by her small window which gave on a sort of court, with the forlorn hope of finding some air stirring, had she thought with longing of the pleasant garden at Tunbridge Wells and ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... she sobbed hysterically. It seemed that she was making an appeal to someone in whom she had only a forlorn hope. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... were fully conscious that it was a forlorn hope. They had been driven out of the valley once by superior numbers and equipment, directed by a leader of great skill and energy, but now they had come back to risk everything in a daring venture. The Union forces, of ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... you of your brother Stephen's talk with me about accompanying him on his northwest voyage. I mentioned to you what were my objections to the scheme. It was a desperate adventure; a sort of forlorn hope; to be pursued in case my wishes in relation to Jane should be crossed. I had not then any, or much, apprehension of change in her resolutions. So many proofs of a fervent and invincible attachment to me had she lately given, that I could not ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... position makes me the reluctant bearer of the last stern message uttered by retributive justice. How infinitely more enviable the duty of the Amicus Curiae, my gallant friend and quondam colleague, who in voluntary defence has so ingeniously, eloquently and nobly led a forlorn hope, that he knew was already irretrievably lost? Desperate, indeed, must he deem that cause for which he battles so valiantly, when dire extremity goads him to lift a rebellious and unfilial voice against ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... under, it appears that Jameson (with or without the orders of Rhodes) forced the hand of the conspirators by invading the country with a force absurdly inadequate to the work which he had taken in hand. Five hundred policemen and two field-guns made up the forlorn hope who started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal border upon December 29, 1895. On January 2 they were surrounded by the Boers amid the broken country near Dornkop, and after losing many of their number killed and wounded, without food and with spent horses, they were compelled to ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to have been in love. The third, it is now ascertained, never existed; and his love-making to the new, or second Leonora, goes to shew how little of real passion there was in the praises of the first (the Princess Leonora), or probably of any lady at court. He even professed love, as a forlorn hope, to the countess's waiting-maid. Yet these gallantries of sonnets are exalted into ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... of the case, therefore, it was determined by the senior officer, who acted in concert with the other captains present, that a bold stroke should be attempted to save the honour of the day, which was to try and carry the forts by assault—a "forlorn hope" in ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... imperative for the weaker combatant. But the Germans were well across it when they entered Brussels, and with the fall of Namur the hinge upon which depended the defence of the northern frontier of France was broken. It was to an almost forlorn hope that the British Army was committed when it took its place on the left of the French northern armies at Mons to encounter for the first time since Waterloo the shock of a first-rate European force. But for its valour and the distraction ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... followed may be imagined. Father and husband were kept long in suspense. Even when many weeks had elapsed without bringing tidings of the vessel, there still remained a forlorn hope that some of her passengers might have been rescued by an outward-bound ship, and might return, after a year or two had gone by, from some distant port. Burr, it is said, acquired a habit, when walking upon the Battery, of looking wistfully down the harbor at the arriving ships, as if still ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... no describing the looks and tones that have power over an aching, heavy-laden heart; but in an hour or so John Barton was talking away as freely as ever, though all his talk ran, as was natural, on the disappointment of his fond hope, of the forlorn hope of many. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... once put them in possession of the facts. At first their simple minds could hardly grasp the enormity of the injustice to our employer, but once the land lay clear, they would gladly have led a forlorn hope in Don Lovell's interests. Agitation over the matter was maintained at white heat for several days, as we again angled back towards the Cimarron. Around the camp-fires at night, the chicanery of The Western Supply Company gave place to the best stories at our command. "There ought to be ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... valde voluit; and he threw a fervor into the most temporary topic, as if his eternal salvation depended upon it. He had not merely, as the French say, the courage of his opinions, but his opinions became principles, and gave him that gallantry of fanaticism which made him always ready to head a forlorn hope,—the more ready, perhaps, that it was a forlorn hope. This is not the humor of a statesman,—no, unless he holds a position like that of Pitt, and can charge a whole people with his own enthusiasm, and then we call it genius. Mr. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... resolved to abide the will of God. It was the first attempt, near Bedford, to apprehend a preacher of the gospel, and he thus argued with himself—'If God, of his mercy, should choose me to go upon the forlorn hope, that is, to be the first that should be opposed for the gospel, if I should fly it might be a discouragement to the whole body that should follow after. And I thought that the world thereby would take occasion at my cowardliness, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... appreciated, the devoted men, women and children were imprisoned in the snow until the first relief party reached them, February 19th, with scant provisions, brought in at life's peril on snowshoes. A "Forlorn Hope" had tried to force its passage over the snowy heights. Fifteen brave men and women determined to see if they could not win their way over and send back help. Out of the fifteen seven only survived and reached the Sacramento Valley, and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... majesty in the object of its idolatry, and not finding the divinity lodged within, the unreasonable expectation raised would probably end in mortification on both sides!—There is little to distinguish a king from his subjects but the rabble's shout—if he loses that and is reduced to the forlorn hope of gaining the suffrages of the wise and good, he is of all men the most miserable.—But enough ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... marrying me to pay your debts," he declared. "You could not have built a more forlorn hope. I should not pay your debts if I did marry you. I will give you five thousand pounds ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... that the government of Canada is a manageable affair, and unless I think I can go to good purpose I will not go at all." Sir Francis Hincks says: "All Sir Charles Metcalfe's correspondence prior to his departure from England is indicative of a feeling that he was going on a forlorn hope expedition," and Hincks adds that such language can be explained only on the assumption that he was sent out for the purpose of overthrowing responsible government. It is certainly established by the Peel correspondence that the British ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... laying himself down not far from the pavilions of the grand Christian cavalier Crissie, fell fast asleep. When he had thoroughly slept an hour or two, another adventurous and all-hazarding blade of the forlorn hope of the lavishingly wasting gamesters, having also lost all his moneys, sallied forth with sword in his hand, of a firm resolution to fight with the aforesaid Gascon, seeing he had lost as well ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... artisans. In war, in diplomacy, in literature, in production of wealth, these refugees gave what they took from France to her enemies; for they carried with them that bitter sense of wrong which made them henceforth foremost among those enemies, the forlorn hope of every attack on their ancient fatherland. Large numbers of officers, and those among the ablest, emigrated; among them pre-eminent Marshal Schomberg, 'the best general in Europe.' The fleet especially suffered: the best of the sailors emigrated; the ships ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 'n' ever; I'm awful sorry!" Then, feeling that the magnitude of this sacrifice atoned for everything, he went to watch for Van,—the forlorn hope to which he ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... justifiable, for he soon found that he was leading a forlorn hope. As morning after morning the men assembled in the dark meeting-room behind a saloon, and sat about in their overcoats complaining and whining, quoting their wives and relatives, more and more they grew disconsolate and discouraged. There were murmurs of rebellion, words of antagonism. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... For this defiance of the statu quo, this constant effort to alter the existing balance, this premature challenge to the powerful, is the whole nature and inmost secret of the psychological adventure which is called man. It is his strength to disdain strength. The forlorn hope is not only a real hope, it is the only real hope of mankind. In the coarsest ballads of the greenwood men are admired most when they defy, not only the king, but what is more to the point, the hero. The moment Robin Hood becomes a sort of Superman, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... visiting King of the Belgians. So had such of the rest of Our Square as were not at work. The place was practically deserted. Nevertheless, Plooie prowled about, uttering his cracked and lugubrious cry in the forlorn hope of picking up a parapluie to raccommode. I was one of the few left to hear him, because Mendel, the jeweler, had most inconsiderately gone to view royalty, leaving my unrepaired glasses locked in his shop; ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sunshine that beckons on the blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; it is the victorious and blessed leader of integrity's forlorn hope; it is the potent alchemy that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden manna that nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice that speaks to hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... maintaining the nationality of Corsica. Retiring to Corte, and thence, almost as a fugitive, to Vivario, in the heart of the mountains, though he might still have maintained a guerilla warfare against the French, he resolved to abandon a forlorn hope, and, pressed by a large body of the enemy's troops, embarked in an English frigate at Porto Vecchio, with his brother Clemente ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the Kid with the idea that a battle might possibly take place somewhere in the vicinity of Stevensville or Ridgeway; as he knew that the leader of the Irish Republican Army, or forlorn hope, as so small a body of men might be termed, would attempt to intercept a junction of the enemy somewhere near one or the other of these points, as both lay on the line between Chippewa and Port Colborne, taking the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... displeasure at more persons than one, when he peruses what Captain Carteret has to say as to the propriety of sending out the Swallow on this voyage. One can scarcely help inferring from his words, that he had been intended as a mere forlorn hope, in navigating the difficult and dangerous ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... lacking in hospitality if any two people in her drawing-room are not made known to each other. No matter how interested you may be in a chat with a friend, you will see her bearing down upon you, bringing in tow the one human being you have carefully avoided for years. Escape seems impossible, but as a forlorn hope you fling yourself into conversation with your nearest neighbor, trying by your absorbed manner to ward off the calamity. In vain! With a tap on your elbow your smiling hostess introduces you and, having spoiled your afternoon, flits off in search ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... sister, and was involved more or less personally in the crime committed there. Might it not be simply as his accessory after the fact? If only I could believe this! If my knowledge of him and of her would allow me to hug this forlorn hope, and behold, in this shock to her brain, and in her look and attitude on leaving the club-house, only a sister's horror at a wilful ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... to mention also numbers of the worthier clerics who hated but could, not break their bonds. Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead both the remonstrant layman and the better sort of monk up to the then well-nigh forlorn hope of combating Antichrist in his stronghold: Luther broke those chains for ever off the necks of groaning nations,—freeing to this day from that bitter bondage not alone Germany, Sweden, France, and England, but the very ends of the earth from ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... hearing or finding something that might be useful to her Nihilist friends, or had she known that Lord Ashiel intended to leave some document in Gimblet's keeping, and come with the idea, already formed, of stealing it? Such a plan seemed to partake too much of the nature of a forlorn hope to be likely, but whether or no she had expected to find that letter, Gimblet could hardly help admiring the rapidity with which she had possessed herself of it ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the last stages of life, for no one would give me food, I went to a pool of water in a ravine amongst the hills, and for the last fortnight have been living there on water and the gums of trees. Seeing I was about to die, as a forlorn hope I ventured in this direction, without knowing whither I was going, or where I should come to; but God, you see, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... that perilous slope a great tree was revolving, and to this, as his forlorn hope, clung a half-clad man, plainly alive, since he was looking upward, and—yes, waving a hand and uttering a cry for aid ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... in the stern of the vessel, called a cabin. There my ears could distinguish the loud entreaties of the crew vainly urging my attendants to propose a day's delay. Then one of the garrison, accompanied by the Captain who shook as with fever, resolved to act forlorn hope, and bring a feu d'enfer of phrases to bear upon the Frank's hard brain. Scarcely, however, had the head of the sentence been delivered, before he was playfully upraised by his bushy hair and a handle somewhat more substantial, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Obedience is better than sacrifice, or Hosea by The Knowledge of God is more than burnt-offerings.(299) Nor are there grounds for thinking that the Prophet had in view only the Ten Commandments; while finally to claim that he spoke in hyperbole is a forlorn hope of an argument. In answer to all these evasions it is enough to point out that the question is not merely that of the value of sacrifice, but whether during the Exodus the God of Israel gave any charge concerning sacrifice; as well as the fact that others than Jeremiah had either explicitly questioned ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... bare daylight of the river, this lonely and sudden blasphemy came as though a person in a dream might declare himself to a waking audience of skeptics. The cry, sharp with forlorn hope, rang like an appeal. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... wet and fog, and a heavy rain, with thick mist, came up in the afternoon. That night, for the first time, the Hassler missed her anchorage, and lay off the shore near an island, which afforded some protection from the wind. A forlorn hope was detailed to the shore, where a large fire was kept burning all night, that the vessel might not lose her bearings and drift away. In the morning all was right again, and she kept on her course ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... destiny for Mrs. Humphry Ward's heroines. It is terrible, and just. They ought to be caught, with their lawful male protectors, in the siege of a great city by a foreign army. Their lawful male protectors ought, before sallying forth on a forlorn hope, to provide them with a revolver as a last refuge from a brutal and licentious soldiery. And when things come to a crisis, in order to be concluded in our next, the revolvers ought to prove to be unloaded. I admit that this invention of mine is odious, and quite un-English, and such as would never ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... are many varieties. The courage of the soldier and the courage of the martyr are not the same, and it by no means follows that either would possess that of the other. Not a few men who are capable of leading a forlorn hope, and who never shrink from the bayonet and the cannon, have shown themselves incapable of bearing the burden of responsibility, enduring long-continued suspense, taking decisions which might expose them to censure ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... that some high Plan betides, As yet not understood, Of Evil stormed by Good, We the Forlorn Hope ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... indignant refusal. Then curiosity conquered. Besides, she wanted above all things to gain time: and while she read, her husband watched her keenly, with God knows what of forlorn hope ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... slept soundly until daylight. Even then the situation was little better, for the guides were still at sea. About the time that Clark decided, to return to the river, miles away, and take a fresh start, he fired a shot in the forlorn hope of getting a response from some section of the compass. A distant shot came in answer and he pushed on and soon came up with the colonel and Tarlton returning home after a night in the temporary elephant camp. The ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... well for a woman to tell herself that she will encounter some anticipated difficulty without fear,—or for a man either. The fear cannot be overcome by will. The thing, however, may be done, whether it be leading a forlorn hope, or speaking to an angry husband,—in spite of fear. She would do it; but when the moment for doing it came, her very heart trembled within her. He had been so masterful with her, so persistent in repudiating her ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... wrought many changes. The doctor himself had altered in no essential; he was at that period of man's life—between fifty and sixty—when ravaging time seems to give him a respite for a couple of lustrums. As soon as Lynde could regain his self-possession he examined Dr. Pendegrast with the forlorn hope that this was not HIS Dr. Pendegrast; but it was he, with those round eyes like small blue-faience saucers, and that slight, wiry figure. If any doubt had lingered in the young man's mind, it would have vanished as the doctor drew forth from his fob that same fat little gold watch, and ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "left" wing of the Credit Mobilier brigade in the raid on the Treasury, under Oakes Ames, was desperately wounded and received honorable mention from Schuyler Colfax, since dismissed the service. He headed the "forlorn hope" in the attack on the Washington pavements. Was again badly wounded; this time in the—no, I mean, from behind by his own men. In this attack a private named de Golyer used a $5,000 dollar bill for wadding, which was found when the wound was probed. This wound is still open, as well ...
— The Honest American Voter's Little Catechism for 1880 • Blythe Harding
... The Round-Table was merely an interrogation covering a forlorn hope. It failed because you remained loyal to ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... with his own hand, and with these words: "You'd better think it over carefully, my boy. It's the most idiotic thing I ever heard of, and there isn't one chance in a million. It won't do you any good to fail, even on a forlorn hope like this." ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... news and Jack walked away to hide his quivering lip. To examine the islands again was a forlorn hope because already it seemed certain that nothing alive moved on any of them. The brig passed them closer than before as she made a long reach before turning out to sea. It was the intention to sail in to engage Blackbeard very early the next morning ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... so directly; but he had lost reckoning of everything but these poor devils' dreadful need of doctoring, and he was like a man roused out of a dream. If a holy war had been proclaimed already, then he was engaged on a forlorn hope. But ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... I loved him; he was my only relative. That he might live near me was the last forlorn hope of my life. Before you condemn me, remember how few people exist in this world for me to love. I have no friends. I was so cold, so dreary! There was nothing left to me but your child and this one brother. How could I part with either of them? That ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... members, and gives to each the task for which he is fitted best. When its aim was to convert savage hordes and build up another Paraguay in the Northern wilderness, it sent a Jogues, a Brebeuf, a Charles Garnier, and a Gabriel Lalemant, like a forlorn hope, to storm the stronghold of heathendom. In later times it sent other men to meet other needs ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... always courageous. We call it courage in a soldier merely to face death—say to lead a forlorn hope—although he has a chance of life and a certainty of "glory." But the suicide does more than face death; he incurs it, and with a certainty, not of glory, but of reproach. If that is not courage we must reform ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... in order of battle on both sides the road, the horse in the open fields on the wings; the foot were drawn up, one regiment in the road, one regiment on each side, and two regiments for reserve in the suburb, just at the entrance of the town, with a regiment of volunteers advanced as a forlorn hope, and a regiment of horse at the head-gate, ready to support the reserve, as ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... to the Lady Abbess in two words something of the greatest importance. The abbess sent word in reply, that the thing was impossible, until she had obtained permission from the Archbishop of Paris. The princess retired once more to her carriage, and now, as a forlorn hope, took her station at the door of the church to watch for ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... him a trial. But, if he is a failure, and we learn nothing by experience, the next incumbent may be a hundred-fold worse. Furthermore, in many places, selection by trial is an impossibility, as in marriage, in the presidency of a bank, or in a general to lead a forlorn hope. There must ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Peter, rather touched by this devotion; "it's a forlorn hope, and I'm going to lead it. All I ask is that if Mother asks where I ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... of these facts we may see how tremendous was the question at stake with the Puritans of the seventeenth century. Everywhere else the Roman idea seemed to have conquered or to be conquering, while they seemed to be left as the forlorn hope of the human race. But from the very day when Oliver Cromwell reached forth his mighty arm to stop the persecutions in Savoy, the victorious English idea began to change the face of things. The next century saw William Pitt allied with Frederick of ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... now that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks, and months pass, and winter surprises them ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... considering that the question was one of honour, like that of leading a forlorn hope; but, on my saying that I had planned the enterprise and thereby was entitled by right to be the first to venture down, quite apart from the fact of my supplying the rope, he yielded gracefully. Thereupon, without any more fuss, I got over the railings of the balcony, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... horrors speaks eloquently of a forlorn hope! Sweep the walls with light, Kennedy; all those filthy things are nocturnal and they will retreat before us ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... laughing and talking, and busy unpacking those very weighty parcels. Boys who had changed into uniform with the others and gone down to the gate, though not really expecting any one as they were from out back and had no city friends, but still feeling lonesome, and, perhaps, having a forlorn hope that there might be some one, had helped rather bewildered girls, carrying their baskets and finding the man they wanted—these boys now looked longingly around at these groups, hoping some one would invite them to join in; and how their faces brightened when one of their tentmates, looking ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... realizing that he had come upon a powerful will underneath the sunny and so human surface, he had ceased to protest, to bear down upon her mind with his own iron force. When he realized that all his reasoning was wasted, that all worldly argument was vain, he made one last attempt, a forlorn hope, as though to put upon record what he believed to be ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... a forlorn hope for the final effort of the field. With great exertion and consummate skill upon the part of its Commander, a battery had been placed in position on the summit of the slope. Officers and men worked nobly, handling the pieces with coolness and rapidity. What they accomplished, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the century of Alaric and Attila—and within that space, those fifteen years, what a revolution in all the sentiments, the hopes, the aspirations of men! The Consul Bonaparte has become the Emperor Napoleon, the arch-enemy of Liberty and of the human race. France, the world's forlorn hope in 1800, is, in 1815, the gathering place of the armies of Europe, risen in arms against her! Emperors and kings, nations, cities, and principalities, statesmen like Stein, philosophers like Fichte, poets like Arndt ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... phrase of his—willingly, and it seemed to her that the traits with which he had been endowed were rare and precious ones. She recognized the steadfast, unflinching courage, and the fine sense of honor which had sent him out on that forlorn hope. Unyielding and undismayed he had gone down to death—she felt sure ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... tornado of German shells was almost more than flesh and blood could stand. Meanwhile the old Vindictive ran alongside the mole and dropped her eighteen special gangways bang against it. In a moment her forlorn hope—her whole crew was one great forlorn hope—swarmed on to the mole, over the splintering gangways, while her guns roared defiance at the huge German batteries. The ground swell made the Vindictive roll and ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... fear of starvation seven of them resolved to desert their companions on this lonely island near Wilson's Promontory, and treacherously sailed away with the boat while the others were asleep. It was the sad, sick, and betrayed remnant of this forlorn hope, that Bass found on that wave-beaten rock on the 3rd January. For five weeks the wretched men had subsisted on petrels and occasional seals. Small prospect they had of being saved; the postponement of their doom seemed only ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... dared, he spent what remained of the summer, examining every creek and bay, marking the soundings, taking the bearings of the possible harbours, and risking his life, as every hour he was obliged to risk it in such a service, in thus leading, as it were, the forlorn hope in the conquest of the New World. How dangerous it was we shall presently see. It was towards the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... were leading a forlorn hope. With all my old company behind us, we were thundering upon an enemy as thick as ants, covering the face of the earth. Down came Black Lamoral, and the hoofs of every mad charger went over me. For a time I was dead; ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... wounded said, with the exception of some units, notably Leicesters and Black Watch, who had apparently disappeared. Perhaps all that had been intended had been achieved. After all, the real battle—none could be more real and more costly to those taking part in it than a containing attack, forlorn hope as it often is—the decisive battle was further south at Loos. But the changed mood of the wounded now coming in was noticeable. Our fighting men hate to be beaten, and the story was of confusion and lack of support. Our own gas, ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... burdened as lightly as possible. Their horses were brought along in the train of the Viceroy's party which moved out upon the open road to the pass at the same time. These last went forward with great ostentation, the forlorn hope secretly, lest some from the buccaneers ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... reassure himself that the moccasins still stood guard. He looked! Dire to relate, the red moccasins had deserted their post—abandoned their trust! Nothing—no one left him to look to now for help! Down he crouched again at the foot of the old oak tree, hiding himself in its deepest shadow, in the forlorn hope that the monster might pass by without discovering his presence. On came the huge bulk of shaggy blackness—now in the shadow of a tree, now in the belt of moonlight, slowly, steadily, trudged he along—his head bent down with the air of ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... this feeling, and having, at the same time, their attention frequently turned to the chance of such a calamity, they are better prepared to meet it when it occurs. How few of the officers in your western armies, ever hesitate to march, at the head of their men, on a forlorn hope? and how many even court the danger for the sake of the glory? Nay, you tell me that, according to your code of honour, if one man insults another, he who gives the provocation, and he who receives it, rather than be disgraced in the eyes of their countrymen, will go out, and quietly shoot ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... be conscious of need of expression, or capable of it if it were, becomes conscious now and finds a voice. The silent sap of the years is being laid aside for open assault; the men are gathering under arms in the trenches, and the forlorn hope is ready, no longer trifling with little solacements of the time of weary waiting, but looking forward to mere death or the ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... the lashing of the water-proof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... under the curving boughs. The brook fairly smoked with the rain, by this time, but when did one fail to get at least three or four trout out of this best half mile of the lower brook? Yet I had no luck I tried one fly after another, and then, as a forlorn hope,—though it sometimes has a magic of its own,—I combined a brown hackle for the tail fly with a twisting worm on the dropper. Not a rise! I thought of E. sitting patiently in the saw mill, and I ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... present our fault is over-keenness. On our first Sunday in camp our company commander stood us to attention and asked for three volunteers—for some unnamed forlorn hope. The whole company advanced two paces. He took the first three in the first platoon and handed them over to a sergeant. They were marched off on their perilous mission with nine men from other companies. The dauntless twelve. We that were left behind composed explanations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... promiscuous trade with America and the Colonies, and managed, by the straining of ends, to meet their expenses and show a small margin of profit. You undertake the labour of a slave in Egypt, and run the risk of a forlorn hope when you try to make a living wage in London as your own master. The price of freedom in a free country is beyond the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston |
