"Hopelessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the path was a winding one, in which she soon became bewildered, until at last all sense of her whereabouts was utterly gone. At last even the idea of escaping ceased to suggest itself, and there remained only a dull despair, a sense of utter helplessness and hopelessness—the sense of one who ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... forests of camellias and every precious exotic that blooms, could not impart so much delight as I have known a single rose to give, unfolding in the bleak bitterness of a day in February, when this side of the planet seemed to have arrived at its culmination of hopelessness, with the Isles of Shoals the most hopeless spot upon its surface. One gets close to the heart of these things; they are almost as precious as Picciola to the prisoner, and yield a fresh and constant joy such as the pleasure-seeking ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... broke into loud lamentations, a few threw themselves on their knees, others wept and wailed, while the lords of the magistracy approached nearer to the count in order to make confidential representations of the utter hopelessness and despondency of the two unhappy cities of Berlin ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... The hopelessness of my love was plain, for it was Almos whom she loved, and she believed also that Almos had confessed his love to her; and, with a lover's conviction that everyone must love the one he loves, I felt that Almos undoubtedly loved Zarlah. Indeed, it was probably his affection for ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me," thought the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter her friend, the princess' eyes—large, deep and luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts of warm ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of truth. The mixture of these values is perhaps all we have in mildly pathetic works, in the presence of which we are tolerably aware of a sort of balance and compensation of emotions. The sorrow and the beauty, the hopelessness and the consolation, mingle and merge into a kind of joy which has its poignancy, indeed, but which is far too passive and penitential to contain the louder and sublimer of our tragic moods. In these there is a wholeness, a strength, and a rapture, which still ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... of the river, continuous and at times heavy fighting continued, sometimes assuming almost the proportions of pitched battles. During the last week of the month Mackensen apparently realized the hopelessness, for the present at least, of driving the enemy out of Dobrudja, and shifted some of his forces over to the west bank of the river. The Russians had retired behind the Rimnik River, a small stream which is about twenty-five miles north of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... pathetic, with a vulgar, almost tragic, prettiness and pathos. She was anaemic and painfully thin. Her blouse was puffed out over her flat chest. She looked worn out with the miserable little tediums of life, with constant stepping over ant-hills of stupidity and petty hopelessness. Her work was not, comparatively speaking, arduous, but the serving of hot coffee and frankfurters to workingmen was not progressive, and she looked as if her principal diet was the left-overs of the stock in trade. She seemed to exhale an odor of ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... hopelessness of your retrogression from all good that you should presume to ask such a question," answered Moretti, growing white under the natural darkness of his skin with an impotency of rage he could scarcely suppress, "Your sermon this morning was an open attack on the Church, and the amazing scene at its ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... passed over his face and erased all its brightness and hope. Even the gentleness was gone. He looked haggard and drawn with hopelessness all ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Ernest; "be composed; Fritz will not be so imprudent; he will have left Jack in our house at the rock; and, probably, seeing the hopelessness of his undertaking, he is returned himself now, and is waiting there till the stream subsides a little; do allow me to go, dear father; you have ordered me cold water for my burnt hand, and it will certainly cure it to get ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... break the ice; in other words, if theology had preserved the same commanding interest for the more powerful minds with which it affected them three hundred years ago. But on the one hand, a sense, half serious, half languid, of the hopelessness of the subject has produced an indisposition to meddle with it; on the other, there has been a creditable reluctance to disturb by discussion the minds of the uneducated or half-educated, to whom the established religion is simply ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... know whether I'm a Socialist or an Anarchist," she answered. Hodder thought be detected a note of hopelessness in her voice, and the spirit in it ebbed a little. Not only did she seem indifferent to her father's feeling—which incidentally added fuel to it—but her splendid disregard of him, as a clergyman, had made an oddly powerful ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but as his eyes were lowered to her face, and he saw once more the trembling lips, her unsoiled womanliness, her whole vivid, lonely, gripping charm, a look of suffering crossed his face. He realised the hopelessness of it all, but the admission was like tearing out a thread which had been woven into the whole scheme ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... with Derwent's handsome daughter. But Cassie was always on the watch for him and he could not escape from the machine-works without falling into one of her ambushes. She would carry him off to tea, and he never left without finding himself pledged to return in the evening. In his loneliness, hopelessness, and desolation he found it dangerously sweet to be thus petted and sought after. Cassie made no demands of him and acquiesced with apparent cheerfulness in the implication that he loved another woman. She humbly accepted the little ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... seemed to be a feeling of hopelessness and pain. The earth, like a ruined woman sitting alone in a dark room and trying not to think of the past, was brooding over memories of spring and summer and apathetically waiting for the inevitable winter. Wherever one looked, ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... facts and inferences. He may find common things suggestive of wiser thought—nay, we will venture to say, of truer emotion—than before. For Mr. Spencer is not of that school of "philosophy" which teaches the hopelessness of human effort, and, by implication, the abandonment of moral dignity. From profound generalizations upon society, he rises to make the duty of the individual most solemn and imperative. Above all, he has this best prerogative of really great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... touch of solemnity to the place recall as vividly as possible while you linger at San Rocco the painter's singularly interesting portrait of himself, at the Louvre. The old man looks out of the canvas from beneath a brow as sad as a sunless twilight, with just such a stoical hopelessness as you might fancy him to wear if he stood at your side gazing at his rotting canvases. It isn't whimsical to read it as the face of a man who felt that he had given the world more than the world was likely to repay. Indeed before every picture of Tintoret you may ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... "but I don't think it's any good your waiting at all, because if I see any signs that Mrs. Riddel is waiting for you I may just give her a hint of the hopelessness of it." ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... William pretended to accept the terms offered, and at the same time so worked upon the messenger with fair promises and gifts that on his return he converted his fellow citizens and induced them by representations of the Conqueror's friendly intentions and of the hopelessness of resistance, to make their submission to him, and to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the attempt. From that moment their attitude toward Slone changed as subtly as had come the knowledge of his feeling. The gravity and gloom left their faces. It seemed they might have regretted what they had said about the futility of catching Wildfire. They did not want Slone to see or feel the hopelessness ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... could not go on. Toast and fork and all dropped from her hand into the ashes; and rushing to her mother's side, who was now lying down again, and throwing herself upon her, she burst into another fit of sorrow; not so violent as the former, but with a touch of hopelessness in it which went yet more to her mother's heart. Passion in the first said, "I cannot;" despair now seemed to say, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... from Peter.... I've had no news to end the ache that pins me like a spear-head to the wall of hopelessness. Duncan, I know, is doing all he can. But there is so little to do. And this world of ours, after all, is such ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... period we avoided as much as possible conversing upon the hopelessness of our situation, and generally endeavoured to lead the conversation towards our future prospects in life. The fact is, that with the decay of our strength, our minds decayed, and we were no longer able to bear the contemplation of the horrors ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... which traversed with unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility of all things mortal, the hopelessness of effort, the certain black defeat that waits upon even ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... his amazement and consternation. Nothing she could have done would more effectually have shown him the hopelessness of his ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... paved court, she beheld a desolation, at sight of which her heart seemed to stand still in her bosom. The rugged horror of the heaps of ruins was indeed softly covered with snow, but what this took from the desolation in harshness, it added in coldness and desertion and hopelessness. She felt like one who looks for the corpse of his friend, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... four other organizations. Generally close to the social aim of the church and sometimes directly fathered by the secret societies were the benefit organizations, which even in the days of slavery existed for aid in sickness or at death; in fact, it was the hopelessness of the general situation coupled with the yearning for care when helpless that largely called these societies into being. Their origin has been ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... composure. There were the same outlines, the same characters, he remembered very well; yet there was a difference; not grief had changed them, but life had. The brow had all its fine chiselling and high purity of expression; but now there sat there a hopelessness, or rather a want of hopefulness, that a child's face never knows. The mouth was sweet and pliable as ever, but now often patience and endurance did not quit their seat upon the lip even when it smiled. The eye, with all its old clearness and truthfulness, had a shade upon it that, nine years ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... feelings at that moment? Overflowing with gratitude to a Divine Providence that had supported us in sickness and guided us through all dangers. There had been moments of hopelessness and despair; days of misery, when the future had appeared dark and fatal; but we had been strengthened in our weakness, and led, when apparently lost, by an unseen hand. I felt no triumph, but with a feeling of calm contentment and satisfaction we floated down the Nile. My great joy was in ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... to utter some word of hope that had not come to her. Then the uplifted head drooped wearily, the searching eyes turning away to stare once again straight ahead. His very silence was acknowledgment of the truth, the utter hopelessness of the future. Although living, there lay between them the gulf ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... fetters! our enemies in robes of office, seated on curule chairs, swaying the fate of nations, dispensing by a nod the wealth of plundered provinces! I could reverse the picture. But, as it is, your present miseries and your past deeds dissuade me. Your hopelessness and daring, your wrongs and valor, your injuries and thirst of vengeance, warn me, alike, that words are weak, and exhortation needless. Now understand with me, how matters stand. The stake for which we play, is fair before your eyes:—learn ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... third objection is formulated in the question, "What is the use?" Whether it be grounded in self-satisfied indifference, hostility, or a sense of hopelessness, it forms the most insidious opposition, because it betrays a lack of racial consciousness that cannot be supplied by argument, and exposes a weakness that cannot be remedied by emotional appeal. It is a weakness amounting to an absence, a literal lack, of the very functions ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... little bark. If it had not been for the awning, we could not have endured it; the heat was so oppressive. We had been obliged to give over rowing, as much from the fatigue it occasioned as from the hopelessness ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of her spirit came this time—no intimations—no whisperings. How horrible it all was! To long to be good and noble—to realize that she was neither—to sink lower day by day! Must she decay there like one of these rotting logs? Worst of all, then, was the insinuating and ever-growing hopelessness. What was the use? What did it matter? Who would ever think of Ellen Jorth? "O God!" she whispered in her distraction, "is ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... that inspired by the earthquake he thought: "Is it too late? Can she have married Bodine?" The anguish in her tone combined with her action had revealed both her love and its hopelessness. He said gently, yet firmly: "We must act now and ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... among the Religious was to be more rigorous, and she never expected to be seen again in Florence: dolorous indeed must have been that parting with the world she loved, but so little knew. She viewed the coming years with apprehension and hopelessness. She had not reached the measure of her destiny, but for that, mercifully, she had not very long to wait, and yet there was to be another slight rift in the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... finger away dusty, pulled one of the stockings from the overflowing basket and used it for a dust cloth. She wiped and polished the stamped leather with a painstaking tenderness that had in it a good deal of yearning, and finally left it with a gesture of hopelessness. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... our early pioneer years. Would that a faithful record had been kept of God's faithfulness in answering prayer! Our strength as a mission and as individuals, during those years so fraught with dangers and difficulties, lay in the fact that we did realize the hopelessness of our ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... the room thoroughly—looking everywhere they could think of. They had all but given it up to go on elsewhere, when Dawtie, standing again in the middle and looking about in a sort of unconscious hopelessness, found her eyes on the mantel-shelf, and went and laid her hand upon it. It was of wood, and she fancied it a little loose, but she could ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... were also arrested. Mary Easty, sister of Mrs. Nurse, was tried and condemned. On her condemnation and sentence, she made an affective memorial while under sentence of death, and fully aware of the hopelessness of her case, addressing the judges, the magistrates and the reverend ministers, imploring them to consider what they were doing, and how far their course in regard to accused persons was inconsistent with the principles and ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... believe that from morning till night, from night till morning, Charlotte Bronte in the Parsonage thought of nothing but of getting married, that her dreams pursued, ruthlessly, the casual visitor. The hopelessness of the dream, the undesirability of Charlotte, is what makes her so irresistible to ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... sighed while turning into the forest, and looked back more than once at his retreating form. The loneliness of my position, the hopelessness of my venture, welled up in my heart after that good comradeship, and when the hut was out of sight I went forward down the green grass road, chin on chest, for twenty minutes in the deepest dejection. But, thank Heaven, I was born with a tough spirit, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... friends of Freedom in this country are idle. Some are timid; some are selfish; and many the torpedo torch of hopelessness has numbed into inactivity. We would fain hope that (if the above account be accurate—it is only the French account) this dreadful instance of infatuation in our Ministry will rouse them to one effort more; and that at one and the same time ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had promised, the people had begun to quiet down, however. The anger and hysteria were giving way to a sullen, beaten hopelessness. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... with a fresh and unbroken spirit, it were comparatively easy to die, but it needs an energy and a spirit almost superhuman to resist the pressure which may be placed on those who are committed to a convent. The hopelessness, the silence, the gloom, to say nothing of threats, menaces, and constant and unremitting pressure, are sufficient to break down the firmest resolution. The body becomes enfeebled, the nerves shattered, and the power of resistance ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... Week after week, month after month, I walked and talked with Belgian fugitives, and drifted in that stream of exiled people, and watched them in the far places of their flight, where they were encamped in settled hopelessness, asking nothing of the fate which had dealt them such foul blows, expecting nothing. But I still remember my first impressions of war's cruelty to that simple people who had desired to live in peace and had no quarrel with any Power. It was in a kind of stupor that I ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... one and only letter from Honolulu; two months since she had written to Sibyl. On a blue day of spring, when despondency lowered upon her, and all occupation, all amusements seemed a burden, she was driven to address her friend on the other side of the world, to send a cry of pain and hopelessness to the dream-island ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... not the first lugger, by fifty, that Captain Cuffe had assisted in chasing, and he knew the hopelessness of following such a craft under circumstances so directly adapted to its qualities. Then he was far from certain that he was pursuing an enemy at all, whatever distrust the signals may have excited, since she had clearly come ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it is terrible to have such a rule always before our eyes. The manifold torments of the psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then discovers almost repeatedly throughout all history, this universal inner "hopelessness" of higher men, this eternal "too late!" in every sense—may perhaps one day be the cause of his "going to the dogs" himself. In almost every psychologist we may see a tell-tale predilection in favour of intercourse with ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... some of the driftwood that lay on the shore, but when we tried it in the water it would hardly float its own weight. I felt the hopelessness of this plan, but Ted worked on like a beaver, and I tried to believe he had more hope than I had. But suddenly he looked at me, as he stopped, and I felt that our ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... one of the questions which arise out of great abysses from men who in their hopelessness still long for heaven. No prisoner at the bar, faintly trusting that in the eyes of his judge he might find mercy, could be more anxious than was Thurstane at that moment. The lover who does not yet know that he will be loved is ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... have you try!" cried the woman, quickly. "All I am thinking about is the hopelessness of your undertaking. You simply can't get Tom out of Miller's to-night until the owner of that awful place turns him out at closing time. I know! This has ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... she sat by her window, looking out on the early April sunshine, trying, with the hopelessness of despair, to form some plan for her future. "Why didn't I have a grandmother to leave me an inheritance like Blanche ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the whiskey, and as the strong spirit fired his veins, the utter hopelessness of his outlook muffled him into silence. Dropping his head into his open palms, he sat dully ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... sun — dreading that Phaethon had come to life again, and was driving the chariot of Apollo out of its straight course. Meanwhile Cressida, among the Greeks, was bewailing the refusal of her father to let her return, the certainty that her lover would think her false, and the hopelessness of any attempt to steal away by night. Her bright face waxed pale, her limbs lean, as she stood all day looking toward Troy; thinking on her love and all her past delights, regretting that she had not followed the counsel ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the outlaw gathered himself up for a rush, with a view to sell his life dearly, and he had even begun to draw one of his hands out of the manacles, when the folly and hopelessness of the attempt struck him. He quickly checked himself, and met his jailor (one of the troopers) with a smiling countenance as he entered and laid a loaf and a jug of ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... been able to trample on it, but should have taken it to his lips instead. He remembered that now Stanford wore it. He looked up to the shining stars and felt the overwhelming presence of night like a child; his helplessness, his misery, his hopelessness swept over him in ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Fitzgerald enters, and changes it to one of anxiety. Several voices inquire if he was successful. He shakes his head, and having recounted his adventures, the discovery of where the money went to, and the utter hopelessness of an effort to recover it; "as for the man, Toddleworth," he says, methodically, "he was found with a broken skull. The Coroner has had an inquest over him; but murders are so common. The verdict was, that he died of a broken skull, by ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... day is one of heavy fatigue and a pressing hopelessness. Shalah behaved oddly, for he was as restive as a frightened stag. No covert was unsuspected by him, and if I ventured to raise my head on any exposed ground a long brown arm pulled me down. He would make no ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... length felt like giving up. Once more, however, though now quite hopelessly, he examined the stone in every direction, pressing with all his strength upon every part. And now in this, the very moment of his utter hopelessness, as often happens—at the very time when not expecting it, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... worms, giving occasional satisfied clucks. Across an intersecting road, on up ahead, an old buggy passed, drawn by a jogging horse with hanging head. Like the Mosby turnout—very. And that very morning he had been at his desk, drugged, overwhelmed with the hopelessness of monotony. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... brief walk before sitting down to long hours of study. He was at liberty to go whither he pleased, and not unnaturally his steps, for the hundredth time, perhaps, passed the door through which he could catch a glimpse of the young girl, who, with apparent hopelessness, and yet with such pathetic patience, was fighting a long battle with disheartening adversity. He was later than usual, and the employees were beginning to leave. Suddenly the obnoxious floor-walker appeared at the entrance with a hurried and intent manner. Then he paused a second or two and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... more of her present mission than of the past errors of her people. The faster she walked the more vividly she pictured the possible complications of this meeting. She knew the dull, mean nature of her aunt, and the utter hopelessness of all appeal to anything but her selfish cupidity, and saw in this fatuous essay of Corbin only an aggravation of her worst instincts. Even the dead body of her son would not only whet her appetite for pecuniary vengeance, but give ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hopelessness of interfering now, stood gloomily apart, a great bitterness in his soul at the indiscretion he had committed in telling Richard of the ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... dead." She spoke with the dull hopelessness of utter conviction. "I shall never see him again. I feel it! ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... identified with it—bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh; and, as in a reprobate family an exquisitely delicate and refined sister may feel the whole weight of the debt and shame of the household to lie on herself, so He felt the unworthiness and hopelessness of the race as if they were His own; and, like the scapegoat on whose head the sins of the community were laid in the old dispensation, He went out ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... educate. They utterly fail to give drill and discipline absolutely necessary to that culture, which comes only after hard labor of years. All honor to Dr. Curry when he so bravely declared that the talk of the hopelessness of education or of too much education, or of the inappropriateness of academic education is vain, adding emphatically, "The Negro wants all he can get, and all ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... was hardly more regretted by his immediate subjects than by his Irish allies. All external events now conspired to show the hopelessness of resistance to the power of King Henry. From Scotland, destined to half a century of anarchy, no help could be expected. Wales, another ancient ally of the Irish, had been incorporated with England, in 1536, and was fast becoming reconciled to the rule ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... revolutionist. Although the sentence was commuted to hard labor in Siberia, and although six years later he was freed and again took up his writing, his mind never rose from beneath the weight of horror and hopelessness that hangs over offenders against the Great White Czar. Dostoyevsky, sentenced as a criminal, herded with criminals, really BECAME a criminal in literary imagination. Add to this a minute observation, a marvelous memory, ardent political convictions—and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... latter, submitted also to Lord Lauderdale and others, to exert his influence in France, through those channels which his brother's residence there opened to him, for the purpose of averting the threatened invasion of England, by representing to the French rulers the utter hopelessness of such an attempt. Mr. Sheridan, on the trial, after an ineffectual request to be allowed to refer to his written Statement, gave the following as part of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... terminating their perilous voyage in either way were so slight and distant, that they scarce gave thought to them. When they did, it was only to be reminded of the extreme hopelessness of their situation, and yield to despairing reflections. On that particular day they had no time to speculate upon such remote probabilities as the ultimate ending of their voyage. They found occupation enough,—both for their minds ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... shattered condition of the ship, her crew worked manfully to save her. But, after fighting the flames and working the pumps all day, they were reluctantly forced to abandon the good ship to her fate. It was nine o'clock at night, that the hopelessness of the task became evident. The "Richard" rolled heavily from side to side. The sea was up to her lower port-holes. At each roll the water gushed through her port-holes, and swashed through the hatchways. At ten o'clock, with a last ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... mind; and before Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how, with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce his communication. Her unexpected presence brought him to utter hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to repeat it ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... troops, the inhabitants ridiculed his presumption, and were good enough to warn him of the hopelessness of his enterprise: a garrison composed of the halt and the blind, without an able-bodied man amongst them, would, they declared, be able successfully to resist him. The king, stung by their mockery, made a promise to his "mighty men" that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... him when the morning had tinged the Eastern skies; The gem was found upon him, as red as guilty blood; He stood, his head sunk forward, with listless, shal- low eyes, And hopelessness submerged him like some unholy flood; A Thief he was by calling. The law? The law was great; What chance had he for pity? His fate was sealed and done; He was unclean, an outcast, a menace to the state; A thing to be avoided, a stain ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... been a conservative element in that Church, represented by men who held tenaciously to the more literal interpretation of its ecclesiastical documents and traditions; and, as the discussions went on, it became clear that the hopelessness of a reconciliation with the Establishment was not so universally felt as had been at first supposed. The supporters of the Union movement included almost all the trusted leaders of the Church—men like Drs. Candlish, Buchanan, Duff, Fairbairn, Rainy, ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... foster-father. She recalled the merciless words he had spoken on the mountain when he told her of his father's death. Her tortured imagination pictured the horror of the sequel, in which the son of the murdered man should meet him who had taken his father's life. The fate of it, the hopelessness of escape from its awful consequence, overcame her. Her breath, no longer controlled, came ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Cervera's fleet, followed by the capitulation of Santiago, having brought to the Spanish Government a realizing sense of the hopelessness of continuing a struggle now become wholly unequal, it made overtures of peace through the French ambassador, who, with the assent of his Government, had acted as the friendly representative of Spanish interests during ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his uncertain moods with regard to her. Distrust, disbelief, a sense of hopelessness—all are ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... tribunal as that of the legates really was, it lay within Henry's kingdom and had the air of an English court. But the citation to Rome was a summons to the King to plead in a court without his realm. Wolsey had himself warned Clement of the hopelessness of expecting Henry to submit to such humiliation as this. "If the King be cited to appear in person or by proxy and his prerogative be interfered with, none of his subjects will tolerate the insult. To cite the King to Rome, to threaten him with excommunication, is no more ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... So all these days of waiting had not been in vain; all the cutting hopelessness of seeing her, only to have her turn away her head and fail to recognize him, had been for their purpose after all. And yet Fairchild remembered that she was engaged to Maurice Rodaine, and that the time of the wedding must be fast approaching. Perhaps there had been a quarrel, perhaps— ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... hopeless ruin of what had never, even in its palmiest days, possessed even a slight degree of loveliness. But to Meriem, Geeka was all that was sweet and adorable. She carried to the deaf ears of the battered ivory head all her sorrows all her hopes and all her ambitions, for even in the face of hopelessness, in the clutches of the dread authority from which there was no escape, little Meriem yet cherished hopes and ambitions. It is true that her ambitions were rather nebulous in form, consisting chiefly of a desire to escape with Geeka to some remote and unknown spot where there were no Sheiks, ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... It had grown thin and pallid during the past fortnight; the eyes were set in deep hollows, and wore a painfully sad expression. He looked as if he had passed through some period of illness or sorrow of which the traces could never be wholly obliterated. There was a pathetic hopelessness in his face which was somewhat remarkable in so ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... none ministered, left if not driven—so it seemed at the moment to Hester—to fold themselves in their own selfishness? And was there nothing she, a favored one of the family, could do to help, to comfort, to lift up one such of her own flesh and blood?—to rescue a heart from the misery of hopelessness?—to make this one or that feel there was a heart of love and refuge at the centre of things? Hester had a large, though not hitherto entirely active aspiration in her; and now, the moment she began to flutter her weak wings, she found ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the pearly lamp of heaven. The subtle sorrow of this world of magical moonlight filled his soul. Then the hopelessness and tragedy of all it symbolized were unfolded to him, and, extending his arms in a vague wild sympathy, in a vague wild despair, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... paper, writ in the darkness of oncertainty, and hopelessness, and despair of our forefathers, and which them four old fathers wuz willin' to seal with ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... rightly to read [20] what the inspired writers left for our spiritual instruction. The literal rendering of the Scriptures makes them noth- ing valuable, but often is the foundation of unbelief and hopelessness. The metaphysical rendering is health and peace and hope for all. The literal or material reading is [25] the reading of the carnal mind, which is enmity ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... white and cool, that held her shawl together over her breast—he had a pang of hope and despair at once, at the sudden sense of need of this splendid creature of God to be one with him, and reign with him over these fair possessions; and of hopelessness at the thought that anything so perfect could be accomplished ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... draw the unstable forces or passions of all creatures into harmony with them, and that harmony is redemption. Perdition is consequently never, as the ecclesiastical doctrine makes it always, a state of fixed hopelessness. Though we make our bed in the nethermost hell, God is there. And wherever God is, penitence and grace, reformation and pardon, have a right of eminent domain between him and the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... which, except the earl and lady Arctura were to leave home, he could not hope to enter. It was little more than mechanically therefore that he went vaguely after the sound; and ere he was half-way down the stair, he recognized the hopelessness of the pursuit. He went on, however, to the schoolroom, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... end of ten minutes he hung the receiver on the hook and returned to find Helene standing by the window, all the light gone from her eyes, staring out at the hard brilliant scene with an expression of hopelessness that had relaxed the very ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... astonishment—the light in her eyes which showed that comprehension, freighted with hopelessness, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not hope that I can convey much of this in my writing. I always feel the hopelessness of trying to put on paper the great thoughts, the intense feeling, of which Buddhism is so full. But still I can, perhaps, give something of this life as I have heard it, make it a little more living than it has been to us, catch some little of that spirit of sympathy ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... at Washington, and then he came back to the desk. A persistent office rumor held that he had become head of the FBI purely because he happened to have an initial J in his name, but in his case the J stood for Jeremiah. And, at the moment, his tone expressed all the hopelessness of that Old ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... strength that made him man, had dared covet her in this hour when her husband was gone! He stared at the closed door, beginning to cry out against himself, and over him there swept slowly and terribly another thing—the shame of his weakness, the hopelessness of the thing that for a space had eaten ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... statements in regard to the extent of venereal disease have been found untrue or greatly exaggerated, so do the statements regarding the curability or rather incurability of venereal disease need careful revision. The picture usually painted of the hopelessness of gonorrhea and syphilis is too sombre, too black, and, contrary to the assertions made by laymen and laywomen and physicians who do not specialize in the treatment of venereal disease, I wish to make the statement that every case ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... with a girl whom he would no more have thought of marrying than he would of wedding a real angel. Sometimes he dreamed of going to school and getting an education, "puttin' some school-master's hair-ile onter his talk," as he called it, but then the hopelessness of any attempt to change himself deterred him. But thenceforth Katy became more to him than Laura was to Petrarch. Habits of intemperance had crept upon him in his isolation and pining for excitement, but now he set out to seek an ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... circumstances that, with all brevity of speech and a certain boyish sullenness of manner, looking the while upon the floor, I informed my relatives of my financial situation: the amount I owed Pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from sculpture; the career offered me in the States; and how, before becoming more beholden to a stranger, I had judged it right to lay the case before ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... eloquence like it; for I never witnessed such an intense sense of the reality and force of the cause which had called it forth. I can not recall her words; but I remember, after describing the cruelty and apparent hopelessness of her people's captivity, their groans, their prayers to the Lord, day after day and year after year, their darkness and despair, their still-continued crying unto God for help, she concluded ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is,'' and then burst into tears. Yet this was from a fellow who had offered to get himself into even worse trouble with the courts. He made much of his worrying about not having any home and not being the child of his so-called parents. His attitude was of sorrow and hopelessness about his whole situation in life. As seen again about two weeks later, still more evidences of aberration were found. He contradicted himself then in regard to his previous stories, in regard to his home life, denied he had made self-accusations, and very clearly ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... roughly, "stop taking on so and listen to me. I am going after our child and with God's help I will bring him back." The realization of the hopelessness of it all nearly choked him, but he had to say something to quiet the look of misery and ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... thunder on the rocky bed of the road, and saw that the driver's seat was vacant, the man evidently having been thrown some distance back. The horses—a young pair he had never seen before—held the bits in their mouths; and it was with a hopelessness of checking their terrible speed that he stepped out of the road to give them room. The next instant he saw that they were making straight for the declivity from which the road shot back, seeing in the same breath that ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Grace, an elusive and never-to-be-satisfied pursuit, scandal and possible loss of religion, unhappiness ... At least it was to his credit that he realised the conflict; it is even further to his credit that he grasped and admitted the hopelessness of it. He knew which way he would go; even now he was tired with the thought of the struggle; he sank into his shabby chair with a sigh of weariness; his hand stretched out instinctively for an easy volume. But oh, Maggie! how strange and fascinating at that moment she appeared to him, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... was held in fascinated hopelessness on the barren, mountainous ring, on the inner inverted cone, on the shadow within that smaller crater—on a tiny pinpoint of light that was flashing there!... He hardly knew when he raised one trembling hand and pointed, while a voice quite unlike ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... only escape by night, I remember thinking, and I was getting close up to the trees that hid our little camp, dolefully pondering over my position and the hopelessness of succour from without, when all at once a hideous figure rose up from beneath a tree and confronted me; and as I stopped short, startled by the foul appearance of the man, with his long tangled hair and wild grey beard, I saw Salaman and two of his helpers come ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... corn. A crow sat upon the dead limb of a sycamore, and cawed, and cawed, in noisy unrest. The weight which had been placed upon my breast two months before seemed like a millstone now. The consciousness of hopelessness made it ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... its little limbs had first essayed motion, that its feeble lips might lisp the accents of servility. Days and weeks passed over Paul, but he found no opportunity to tell his story. They kept him purposely that he might forget it, or feel the hopelessness of relating it. Other wretches came and went, till there remained none of the original inmates of his prison, and he learned to mingle with his coarse companions, joining sometimes in their gayety, and the high walls stood forever between his dreams and the sky till the sombre ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... The absolute hopelessness in her voice pierced my heart. I pleaded passionately with her to give up her brother and all the maniacs who followed him. For the time I forgot utterly that the girl, by her own confession, was already with them in sympathy as ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... much to life's hardness. Every burden is heavier because of the sad heart that beats under it. Every pain is keener because of the dispiriting which it brings with it. Every sorrow is made darker by the hopelessness with which it is endured. Every care is magnified, and the sweetness of every pleasure is lessened, by this pessimistic tendency. The beauty of the world loses half its charm in the eyes which see all things in the hue of despondent ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... contrasted what he had written with what was in his mind, he recognized the hopelessness of his attempt. He had not the power to put on paper more than the shadow of what he had seen and of what ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... well as the western part of Nebraska, they used every effort to prevent the settlement of the country so claimed, their hostility being especially directed against the Union Pacific Railroad. The military operations of 1867-68, however, convinced the Sioux of the hopelessness of opposing the progress of the railroad, and the settlement of the immediate belt through which it was to pass, and disposed them to accept the provision made for them by the treaty of 1868. With the exception of the main portion of the Ogallala band, ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... hopelessness came a blessed thought. Uncle had. once promised to show me a priceless original of Hokusai. I asked if I might see it then. He was so elated that without calling a servant to do it for him he disappeared into a deep cupboard ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... this noisy town, when there were peaceful country places, in which, at least, they might have hungered and thirsted, with less suffering than in its squalid strife! They were but an atom, here, in a mountain heap of misery, the very sight of which increased their hopelessness and suffering. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... thought more beautiful—she drew him to a seat. She was all fire and purpose now. The spark of intelligence which was not always visible in her eye burned brightly. She would have looked lovely even to a stranger, but he was not thinking of her looks, only of the hopelessness of the situation, its difficulties and ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... fingers about my heart. The hopelessness of our search would have been depressing enough had it not contained the spice of chase, but to feel that it might be fruitful only to have her snatched off into a world as unknown, as impossible to me as this far off kingdom, was crazing. To me ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Seeing the utter hopelessness of bringing his father-in-law to reason by explanation or argument, Mostyn went on up-stairs. Noticing that the door of his wife's chamber, adjoining his own, was ajar, he pushed it open and went in. The room ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... MacDougal Street. Edgar Allan Poe once strolled on summer evenings through Minetta Lane with his beautiful Annabel Lee. But God pity the sweethearts to-day who must have love in its reeking precincts! It is a lane of ugliness, now; a lane of squalor; a lane of poverty and hopelessness spelled in terms of filth ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... tearing apart his emotions toward Charity and resolving that he must never see her again. In the analytical chemistry of the soul he found that this resolution was three parts hopelessness of winning her, three parts a decent sense of the wickedness of courting another man's woman, three parts resentment at her for treating him properly, and one part a feeling that he would make himself most valuable to her by ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to, so you can't," said Mrs. Burton, in a tone which would reduce any reasonable person to hopelessness. But Toddie, in spite ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... although there comes now and again a little gust of light-heartedness. You know me. For the rest, I hate myself, I am a worm. The empire of myself is lost; I am sitting low on the ground, where my troubles laid me, letting what may run over me. I hate myself both for my abject hopelessness and for my incapacity to take comfort at the hands of those about me. But oh! the deadliness of their life is past description; they have neither breadth nor health in their thoughts. I am not speaking of the old women; their lives are at an end; they sit as little children there, simple of heart; ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... the old man's truly excellent and exemplary son the utter hopelessness of his disease, had also familiarized him with these nightly interruptions to his slumbers. A light was speedily seen to flash across the chamber in which he slept, and presently the principal door of the lower building was unbarred, and unmurmuring, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... chorus, which consists of native virgins, endeavours to console her; and, interchanging hymn and speech with the chorus, Electra discloses her unabatable sorrow, the contumely and oppression under which she suffers, and her hopelessness occasioned by the many delays of Orestes, notwithstanding her frequent exhortations; and she turns a deaf ear to all the grounds of consolation which the chorus can suggest. Chrysothemis, Clytemnestra's younger, more submissive, and favourite ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... impossibility &c adj.; what cannot, what can never be; sour grapes; hopelessness &c 859. V. be impossible &c adj.; have no chance whatever. attempt impossibilities; square the circle, wash a blackamoor white; skin a flint; make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, make bricks without ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the music of the knowledge of death. The Third was conceived as a Song of the Great Pan—his "gaya scienza," Mahler would have liked to call it. In the Fourth he sought to open the heart of a child; in the Sixth, to voice his desolation and loneliness and hopelessness; in the Eighth, to perform a great religious ceremony; in "Das Lied von der Erde" to write his ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Milk ration[27] has been stopped since yesterday; new sorrow. Our Camp a veritable valley of desolation. For the very essence of sorrow and misery, come here! For weeping, wailing mothers, come here! For broken hearts, come here! For desperate misery and hopelessness, come here! What would become of us if we had not our Religion to fall back upon! What, if we had not the assurance that a Good and Merciful God reigns above! What if there was no Love! What, if there was no hope of the Resurrection and Life Everlasting! What, if there is nothing ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... belong to some one already much beloved, who had been found with "transports of infinite joy and tenderness." He woke with a start and sought to retain the phantom, which faded. He could not conceive that was a mere illusion, and as he realized that she had vanished he felt overwhelmed with hopelessness. It was the first stirring "of true love with all its great melancholy and deep mystery, with its overwhelming but sad enchantment—love which like a perfume endows with a fragrance all ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... afternoon we became desperate. Plots were considered for a daring assault to force the gates or scale the stockade. The men were crazy enough to attempt anything rather than sit down and patiently starve. Many offered themselves as leaders in any attempt that it might be thought best to make. The hopelessness of any such venture was apparent, even to famished men, and the propositions went no farther ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Something in the man's voice, some curious note of defeat and hopelessness, told him that Barness ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... full consciousness came, with all the suffering of his hurts, as well as the dreadful anxiety about Elinor and Rika and the seeming hopelessness of escape. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... same old hopelessness before a superior force, this feeling for which he could never find words and vent, unless it some day happened that—he closed his eyes, and there was a compressed, violent expression about his ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... excitement, too, was of a most dangerous kind. It broke not forth in noise and imprecations, but was seen only in the dark looks and the strained nerves that showed a deep determination. The officer expostulated. He reminded them of the hopelessness of escape; that the town was alarmed, and that the government of the prison would submit to nothing but unconditional surrender. He said that all those who would go quietly away should be forgiven for this offense; ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Drive from the soul the hopelessness, Fill it with charity and faith, And fire the heart with ...
— Some Broken Twigs • Clara M. Beede
... too exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed, and in his agony he wished 'to lie in bed forever and ever,' Still he worked faithfully and conscientiously, for his wife and children were very dear to him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who have tasted the depths of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... a certain rude art in the way in which the asserted possibility of two evident impossibilities is made to lead up to and heighten the utter hopelessness of the third. The diamond may be recovered from the depths of the ocean; the flower which has withered and died may spring again even from glacier-ice; but the soul once gone is gone for ever: the great disaster ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... toward her unfortunate husband. He rose to his feet, reeling from the effects of the sudden shock, and the dreary hopelessness of his face touched every heart. "My friends," he said, huskily, "there is little to be said. This sudden revelation has crushed me, till my soul grows faint with the bitterness of a terrible woe. Believe me, I have had no part in ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... evidently much moved. "I am very, very sorry," she added, mournfully. She was thinking of what Will had no knowledge of—the conversation between her and her husband in the darkness; and she was anew smitten with hopelessness that she could influence Mr. Casaubon's action. But the marked expression of her sorrow convinced Will that it was not all given to him personally, and that Dorothea had not been visited by the idea that Mr. Casaubon's dislike and jealousy of him turned upon herself. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and abuses from any and all its members, and often upon the slightest provocation. Should she fall ill, no physician is consulted and no effort is made to restore her health or to prolong life." "The expression of utter hopelessness, despair, and misery" on such a girl's face ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Oswald Garrison Villard, the Editor of the Nation, discussing the subject, The Economic Bases of the Race Question. His discourse was a political and sociological treatise based upon facts of history and economics to show the hopelessness of a program to right the wrongs of the Negroes unless that program has its foundation in things economic, in as much as the present day situation offers no hope that politics will play any particular part in the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... months, at the end of which time, for two reasons, he was loath to leave us. One reason was that he had fallen in love with Anna Roylston, and the other was that he had become one of us. It was not until he became convinced of the hopelessness of his love affair that he acceded to our wishes and went back to his father. Ostensibly an oligarch until his death, he was in reality one of the most valuable of our agents. Often and often has the Iron Heel been dumbfounded by the miscarriage of its plans and operations ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London |
