"Despair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after three centuries of occupation, the Portuguese, both in East and West Africa, have naturalized a multitude of native words, supplying them with a Lusitanian termination. The practice is very useful to the traveller, and the despair of the lexicographer. During the matumbe the relations "wake" the toasted, swaddled, and aromatized corpse with a singular vigour ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... that Voice of the river, the old, familiar arguments of desolation and despair. I leant over the parapet; in another moment I should have been gone, when I became aware that some one was standing near to me. I did not see the person because it was too dark. I did not hear him because of the raving of the wind. But I knew that he was there. So ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... betrayed or shown hatred to such a ruler as Nero. But he who had made Nero what he became, and afterwards deserted and betrayed him whom he had so corrupted, was allowed to survive as an instance that Vinius could do anything, and an advertisement that those that had money to give him need despair of nothing. The people, however, were so possessed with the desire of seeing Tigellinus dragged to execution, that they never ceased to require it at the theater and in the race-course, till they were checked by an edict from the emperor himself, announcing that Tigellinus could not live ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... life which they knew was wholesome, regular, still free from urban corruption, the experience of a plain, prosperous and law-abiding people. None of these writers, though like Hawthorne they might deal with sin or like Poe with horror and a lover's despair at death, struck any tragic note. No tragedy was written, no love-poetry, no novel of passion. No literature is so maiden-pure. It is by refinement rather than power that it is most distinguished, by taste and cultivation, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have thought must be the main business of a statesman—the determination of the proper relations of classes to one another—we have handed over to the chances of competition. We have abandoned the problem in despair, instead of attempting to solve it; with the result, that our population—so it seems to me—is daily degenerating before our eyes, in physique, in morals, in taste, in everything that matters; while we console ourselves with the increasing aggregate of our ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... equipment right. Let the mind master the body. Let the nerve sufferer get hold of himself and fill his brain with faith thought instead of fear thought, with courage instead of cowardice, with strength instead of weakness, with hope instead of despair, with smiles instead of frowns, with occupation instead of sluggishness, and ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... and resolute. Despite the flood of rage and despair that surged in Poluski's quivering frame, she reminded him of a glimpse he caught of her in that last desperate moment when the door of the hotel was battered open by the insurgents and her mind was already fixed on death as a blessed relief ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... of trench exhaustion, trench despair, but there was no sign of it in a regiment that had been through all the hell and mire that the British army had known since the war began. To no one had Neuve Chapelle meant so much as to these common soldiers. It was their first real ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... thought into the immediate touch of the Infinite. This is the mystery which is for a poet to realise and to reveal. It comes out in Keats' poems with struggling gleams through consciousness of suffering and despair: ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... positively I need no introduction to you, Apollo has already presented you to me. And as for the Doctor's letter, I will read it after dinner; for as Seneca—" "I beg your pardon a thousand times, Sir," said Walter, who began to despair of ever coming to the matter which seemed lost sight of beneath this battery of erudition, "but you will find by Dr. Hebraist's letter, that it is only on business of the utmost importance that I have presumed to break in upon the learned leisure ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my way to the old man's side with never a doubt but that the great wheel would yield on the instant to the power of my young and vigorous muscles. Nor was my belief mere vanity, for always had my physique been the envy and despair of my fellows. And for that very reason it had waxed even greater than nature had intended, since my natural pride in my great strength had led me to care for and develop my body and my muscles by every means within my power. What with boxing, football, ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... plans of ours this dashed away. But our disappointment is truly an infinitesimal drop in the great waves of triumph and despair surging to-night in thousands ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to turn out of our path into a tangle of bushes; and there, instead of one, we found four snakes. We turned on the other side, and there were two more. In short, everywhere we looked, the dry leaves were rustling and coiling with them; and we were in despair. In vain we said that they were harmless as kittens, and tried to persuade ourselves that their little bright eyes were pretty, and that their serpentine movements were in the exact line of beauty: for the life ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... There exists a most intimate sympathetic and telepathic connection between mother and child. The child is affected not only by the outward expression of the mother's fear and anxiety, but likewise by the hidden doubt and despair in the mother's ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... with Him, to accept the chastening joyfully and courageously. Then He takes from me joy, and courage alike, till I know not whom I serve, a Father or a tyrant. Can it indeed help us to doubt whether He be tyrant or no? Again I know not, and again I sicken in fruitless despair, like one caught in a great labyrinth of ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for its mother called, "John," and held out her arms imploringly toward the dim shadowy form of her lover standing upon the hill crest. Then John's form began to fade, and as its shadowy essence grew dim, despair slowly stole like a mask of death over Dorothy's face. She stood for a moment gazing vacantly into space. Then she fell to the ground, the shadow of her father hovering over her prostrate form, and the words, ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... did, that all this was being done for himself, and not for her, she being quite past having anything done for her. Her only recognition of the reverential and considerate tenderness which he showed her was an occasional air of wonder that cut him to the quick. Shame, sorrow, and despair had incrusted her heart with a hard shell, impenetrable to genial emotions. Nor would all his love help him to get over the impression that she was no longer an acquaintance and familiar friend, ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... on amazed, and "How about Belle Isle now?" they said bitterly to Drake. He, poor fellow, was having his first despondent chill, and sneering at himself for having it, after all his fine talk about "backbone"; and finding reasons for despair thicken, the harder he tried to make elbow-room for hope, till altogether confounded at the muddle, he flung up thought, with "Brain's full and stomach's empty, and it's ill talking between a full man and a fasting," and set ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... their people as his property, but that, not wishing to abuse his privileges, he would set them free in exchange for the value of twenty slaves in English merchandise. This decision, which Richard Lander tried in vain to shake, plunged the brothers into the depths of despair, a state of mind soon succeeded by an apathy and indifference so complete that they could not have made the faintest effort to recover their liberty. Add to these mental sufferings the physical weakness to which they were reduced by want of food, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... for a moment to make some brave retort, but it was a useless attempt. Her lips trembled, her eyes filled, and, with a cry of grief and despair which might have moved a wild beast, she fled to her room, and, throwing herself upon her bed, burst into such scalding bitter tears as few women are ever ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... She came in July, 1573, to visit Archbishop Parker, and wished to come again in the following May, with a larger train than before. The steward, entrusted with the task of finding more room where there had never been enough, was in despair, and made out his list of lodgings for the archbishop, or, perhaps, the Queen's chamberlain, to see. The Lord Treasurer was to be "wher he was"; the Lord Admiral "at y^e nether end of the great chamber"; the "maydes of honnor wher they wer"; the "La Stafforde wher she was"; the "gentylmen ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... whatever others may say of him, I shall never forget that I owe to his hard earnings the education that enables me to do or be any thing, and I shall not wantonly or rudely cross him. I do not despair of gaining his consent; my father has a great partiality for pretty girls, and if his love of contradiction is not kept awake by open argument, I will trust to time and you to bring him round; but, whatever comes, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... poured out the story of Magda's passionate repentance and atonement, of her impetuous adoption of her father's remorseless theory, mistaken though it might be, that pain is the remedy for sin, and of the utter, hopeless despair which had overwhelmed her now that she believed ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... to have had Del Mar so nearly in our grasp and then to have lost him. We looked from one to another, in despair. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... chance to be in attendance. Be sure and carry an opera-glass. Without this precaution, you will not be able to study to your satisfaction the faces of the members, for the House is by no means brilliantly illuminated. If for any reason this last expedient does not succeed, must we despair for this evening? We are on the ground, and our engagements may not leave another so good opportunity. I have alluded to the presence of policemen in the lobby. Do I dream, or has it been whispered to me, that half a crown, opportunely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... car in the lane and walked together toward the sagging gate. A man was just coming through it, who proved, as they came near, to be John Massey. His good-natured, friendly face was pale under its sunburn and drawn into unfamiliar lines of anger and despair. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... lest anyone should attempt to enter. Walter paced up and down in despair, vowing that it was a trick to get a spy into the house. Edmund sat down in the large arm- chair with a calm resolute look, saying, "I must surrender, then. Neither I nor my horse can go further without rest. ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Turkey; but one ought rather to be surprised that there are so few. Every man of the present day, if we go deep enough into the contradiction between his conscience and his life, is in a state of despair. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... had brought her clothes she had turned very pale, and had felt as if she had undertaken what she would not have strength to carry through. And now that the decisive moment had nearly come, this feeling increased almost to despair. ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... that, when it should be dried up destruction would betide them, adding, "Wherefore we come to thee, expecting thy counsel and what may bring us deliverance for thou art the chiefest and the most experienced of us." The Crab bowed his head awhile and said, "Doubtless ye lack understanding, in that ye despair of the mercy of Allah Almighty and His care for the provision of His creatures one and all. Know ye not that Allah (extolled and exalted be He!) provideth all His creatures without account and that He foreordained their daily meat ere He created aught of creation and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... paused; some of the animals in the advance might have veered to the right or left on seeing the Indians, but the pressure from behind prevented. The savages saw their fate, and it inspired them with more dread than an encounter with white foes. Finally, they halted in despair, and their fate overtook them. Riders and steeds were overthrown as by a flash of lightning. The dark, shaggy herd did not stop, but dashed on. Tom, in awe and excitement, halted his horse, and watched the terrible sight. He could not but sympathize with his late ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... he found a torrid sun, and the thermometer at 93 in the shade, his courage failed him, and, with all his preconceived ideas overthrown by the burning experience of one day, despair seized on him, and his expressions of horror and astonishment were coupled with lamentations over the green fertility of Jersey. The colonel was obliged to report himself at head-quarters in his full uniform, which was evidently tight and hot; and after changing his apparel three times in the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... in despair, "you talk like a child. I'm trying to realise that you women—some of you who appear so primed with doubtful, worldly wisdom—are practically as innocent as the day ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... arise popular organisations bred of the wildness of despair which enjoy the moral sanction which the law has failed to secure "When citizens," said Filangieri long ago, "see the Sword of Justice idle they snatch a dagger." So long as the Government sate ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. When the great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his shoulders in comic despair. His speech was finally delivered from the perilous eminence of a booking-clerk's stool, an elevation which Jan so gravely mistrusted that he felt impelled to rise erect on his hind feet, placing both fore paws beside his lord's raised heels, and thereby providing the camera men with the most ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... place more than a year before, when Crayshaw, having been invited by John to spend the holidays with his boy, the two had quarrelled, and even fought, to such a degree that John at last in despair had taken Johnnie over to his grandfather's house, with the declaration that if he so much as spoke to Crayshaw again, or crossed the wide brook that ran between the two houses, he would fine him half-a-crown ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... to me quietly, Rosmer—because now I can speak of it. During the last year of her life she came twice to see me, to tell me what she suffered from her fears and her despair. ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... passed; then another; dumb, dreary despair had settled upon his mind. Insensibly he fell into a half-frozen stupor. He was beginning to think, in a numb way, that it did not make any particular difference to ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... it was in the dead of night. I was in bed, the old woman and the girl were at my side. I rose slowly and calmly. You know, all men who have ever suffered much, know the strange anomalies of despair—the quiet of our veriest anguish. Deceived by my bearing, I learned, by degrees, from my attendants, that Gertrude had some weeks since betrayed sudden symptoms of insanity; that these, in a very few hours, arose to an alarming ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fighting and much ruthless destruction of human life united the island sovereignties in his own person, routed the forces of the King of Oahu in the Nuuanu Valley, and drove them in hundreds up the precipice, from which they leaped in despair and madness, and their bones ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... difficulty, he succeeded in calming these children of Belial. Then drawing his father aside, under the shade of a great oak, he began—"Dearest father mine, it was fear of you, and despair of the future, that drove me to this work; but if you will now give me three hundred florins, I will go forth into the wide world, and take honourable service, wherever it is to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... his lantern went out, and he gave a cry of despair, for he had nothing wherewith to ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... in my misery and despair, even hungry, weak and cold and in pain as I was, I could not but feel a gleam of pleasure at the enchanting beauty of the woodland scene about our hiding place. I gazed up at the bits of blue sky ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... information ere the King should come home, and have to interfere with a high hand; and Malcolm's arguments about his obligations as a captive, too, had their effect. He perceived his own incapacity to act; and in his despair at nothing being done consented to risk Malcolm in the search, while he himself should proceed to the King, only ascertaining on the way that Lilias was not at Whitby. And so, in grief and anxiety, the cousins parted, and Malcolm alone durst speak ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after failure, sorrow after sorrow must be recorded in the great story; but do not despair. In amazing manner, through blood and iron, Otto von Bismarck, our blond Pomeranian giant, will face, fight and finally conquer the bewildering cross-forces of his time—till "German national faith" ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... of this cruel death, amidst the silence of her Voices, she understood at length that she would not be delivered. Cruelly awakened from her dream, she felt heaven and earth failing her, and fell into a deep despair. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Cerda, the wife of Auditor Bolivar, died [44] in her exile, from anxiety and grief and despair. She asked for a confessor from the Society, which was not granted to her. The Dominican friar who served as parish priest in the village where she was an exile refused to absolve her unless she would comply with certain conditions, with which those fathers are wont to fetter and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... words broke from her in such a tone of despair that I was startled. It was grievous that damage should have come to the dear old house. But why should she say her "life was over?" I asked myself the question; but suddenly the answer seemed to come, like a whisper in ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... cleared my mind of madness. Instead of the dark forest, forty rods away, marking the end of everything, I need not entirely despair until the girl reached ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... and clung together. Though Arithelli's lips burnt, they scorched with the fires of despair rather than with those ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... desperate prayers, but could not; trembling yet, full gently he drew his arm from under that drooping head, and, stealing soft-footed to the river's marge, stood there staring down at the rippling waters, and his heart was rent with conflicting passions—amazement, fear, anger, joy, and a black despair. And of a sudden Beltane fell upon his knees and bowed him low and lower until his burning brow was hid in the cool, sweet grass—for of these ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... pitiable story, I did what I could to comfort him, and said, "Do not despair; I have heard already of that wicked woman, and think I shall be able to find some means of making her restore to you a part at least of ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... work of a child, was the day's labor which the energetic emperor had performed! The letters, traced so carefully and elaborately, made an awful impression on the beholders—a whole history of secret despair, stifled tears of grief, and bitter imprecations, spoke from this crumpled sheet of paper. The generals turned pale, as if imminent danger was hovering over them—as if Fate had sent them its Runic letters, which they were unable to decipher. They left the room in silence, but murmured still, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... I myself belonged to that happy age (i.e., below 15) I had no dearer wish than to possess a friend of similar tastes. I have sought, hoped, waited, grieved, and been at last disillusioned, overcome by desire and despair, and have not found that friend. Even later the hope often reappeared, but always in vain, and I cannot boast of that sure recognition which one reads of in the autobiographies of Urnings. I do not know personally a single fellow-sufferer. It is also doubtful ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... down the side of Nebo Mountain—"Old Nebo"—mounted on an ox. Sun-kissed and rich her coloring; her flowing hair was like spun light; her arms, bare to the elbows and above, might have been the models to drive a sculptor to despair, as their muscles played like pulsing liquid beneath the tinted, velvet skin of wrists and forearms; her short skirt bared her shapely legs above the ankles half-way to the knees; her feet, never pinched by shoes and now quite bare, slender, graceful, patrician in their modelling, in strong ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... I came here, having, as I thought, finished my work, or rather the first Part (something like three or four volumes, 8vo), but I find so much original matter here, and so many emendations to make, that I am ready to despair. However, there is nothing for it but to penelopize, pull to pieces, and stitch away again. Whatever may be the result of my labor, nobody can say that I have not worked like a brute beast,—but ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... waiting in sullen acquiescence to the dictates of a higher power, flecks of black soared in stately circles, or whirled in erratic courses, that were either manifestations of abject surrender to the inevitable, or else a show of frenzied despair, one could not tell which. The soaring flecks of black were flocks of graceful ibises sailing hour after hour on tireless wings and indistinguishable from vultures save for the long, outstretched necks and legs; for, outlined ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... seek the help of those who undoubtedly became freebooters the moment they crossed the Transvaal border. Certainly Dr. Jameson's reported words seemed to echo with reproach and disappointment—the reproach of a man who has been deceived; but whatever his feelings were at that moment of despair, when his lucky star seemed at length to have deserted him with a vengeance, I happen to know he never bore any lasting grudge against his Johannesburg friends, and that he remained on terms of perfect friendship even with the five members of the Reform Committee, with whom all the negotiations ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... painted panel, know of life but a single exquisite instant, eternal indeed in its beauty, but limited to one note of passion or one mood of calm. Those whom the poet makes live have their myriad emotions of joy and terror, of courage and despair, of pleasure and of suffering. The seasons come and go in glad or saddening pageant, and with winged or leaden feet the years pass by before them. They have their youth and their manhood, they are children, and they grow old. It is always dawn ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the first graying light of July dawn that Peter dragged himself up the rough side of a ridge and looked down into a narrow strip of plain on the other side. Just as Nada had given up in weakness and despair, so now he was almost ready to quit. He had traveled miles since the owl fight, and his wounds had stiffened, and with every step gave him excruciating pain. His injured eye was entirely closed, and there was a strange, dull ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Georgia went bone dry. There, as in Alabama before 1915, there had been pretended prohibition, but now the bars of leading clubs were being closed, and convivial men were looking into the future with despair. One of the gentlemen was a justice of the Supreme Court of the State, and I remember his wistful declaration that prohibition would fall ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... rougher waters, encountering an Atlantic swell, caused by the previous storm. How the ship rolled! Walking on deck became impossible, while sitting in our deck chairs was nearly as bad, for they threatened to slide from under us. In despair we sought our berths, but to get into them in such a sea was a matter of difficulty, which practice in smooth waters had not taught us. Tuesday evening we bade adieu to the coast of Scotland, but ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... it was an original and piquant adventure which the Russian colonel had experienced, the more piquant because it had threatened him with death, and at one moment his life had been in extreme danger. It had delighted him for once to experience all the horrors of death, the palpitation, the despair of a condemned culprit; to acquire in his own person a knowledge of the great and overpowering feelings, which he had read so much about in books, and which he had not felt in reality even in the midst ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... fixing on her a look of despair, 'I cannot. My heart is hard and heavy; I remember when it used to feel and care about these things; but it is dead now, and my soul is lost for ever. Anne, even if Jesus is willing to pardon me, I ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... An expressive phrase, meaning do not despair, there is hope yet.—Nil desperandum! As ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... mature sensualist, we will always have with us, but stretch out your mighty arm, buttressed as it is by fabulous wealth, and save from the lair of the libertines, the innocent, whose only crime is poverty and a hopeless despair. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... help, after all, is in the personal influence that the visitor can acquire over the growing child. When we think what personal influence has done in our own lives, how it has moulded our convictions, our tastes, our very manner of speech, even, we should not despair of the children, if we can {93} attach them to us and give them a new and better outlook upon life. The time when we can be of the greatest help to them is during the disorganized period that comes between the school days and the settling down in life. Many a young ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... such machinery must be put into successful operation before any limitation of national armaments can be effected. The war has shown to what a catastrophe competitive national arming has led, and would probably again lead the most civilized nations of Europe. Shall the white race despair of escaping from this hell? The only way of escape in sight is the establishment of a rational international community. Should the enterprise fail after fair trial, the world will be no worse off than it was in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... so vast and multifarious, that it might seem but the result, on his part, of a proper modesty, conscious of the limited range of his powers, and of the brief and fleeting term of his life, were he to despair of being ever able effectually to grapple with it. "But," to borrow from one of the most ingenious of our Scottish metaphysicians, "in this, as in other instances in which nature has given us difficulties with which to cope, she has not left us to be wholly ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and gain became alternate. Wine was brought in; I played in furious scorn of consequences. I saw the board covered with gold. I swept it into my stake; I soon saw my stake reduced to nothing. My eyes were dazzled, my hand shook, my brain was on fire, I sang, danced, roared with exultation or despair. How the night closed, I know not; but I found myself at last in a narrow room, surrounded with squalidness, its only light from a high-barred window, and its only furniture the wooden tressel on which I lay, fierce, weary, and feverish, as if I lay on the rack. From this couch of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... there were many persons in the house, whose cry for life was strong as despair, and who clung to it with all the awakened powers of reason and instinct. The ear of man could hear nothing so strongly calculated to stifle the demon of cruelty and revenge within him, as the long and wailing shrieks which rose beyond the elements, in tones that were carried off rapidly upon ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... enterprise so difficult that it had hitherto defeated the whole world required a careful selection of attendants, and I looked with despair at the prospect before me. The only men procurable for escort were the miserable cutthroats of Khartoum, accustomed to murder and pillage. in the White Nile trade, and excited not by the love of adventure but ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... name to the house skirted the country road for some hundreds of yards, while a carriage drive of commonplace propriety led up to a square stone house, which could by no possibility have been termed either beautiful or picturesque. Mrs Saville's face fell into an expression of martyr-like despair, and the colonel looked fierce and frowning; but, like many good things, and people also, Yew Hedge showed its worst points on the surface, and modestly hid its Virtues out of sight. There was a large flower and vegetable ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... along his warehouses, so that those who ran might read. "Never despair," "Nothing without labour," "He who spends all he gets, is on the way to beggary," "Time lost cannot be regained," "Let industry, temperance, and economy be the habits of your lives." These texts were printed in large type, so that every passer-by might read them; while ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... thing to consider is the central idea. There are only a few ideas in the world, but their ramifications are countless, and one need never despair of a theme. Your story may be one of either failure or success, but it must have the true ring. Given the man and the circumstances, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... above her, so high that she shrank from him; there seemed a whole heaven of height between them. It would fill her with a kind of despair to see him at times sit lost in thought: he was where she could never follow him! He was in a world which, to her childish thought, seemed not the world of humanity; and she would turn, with a sense of both seeking and finding, to the chief. She imagined ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... chair displaying its usual tendency to climb the chimney flue, and stood in the doorway, looking at her with haunted, hungry eyes. There was a sort of despair in Joe those days, and now he was tired and shaken from ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thirty years old, though the handwriting is like that of the old ladies of our grandmothers' time. It is given of course, in the full sense, literatim, and is offered for the encouragement—or the despair—of the Spelling Reform Association. The little touch of pathos makes one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... 17th verses of the 7th chapter of Revelation[2] than with any ten times as many verses in the whole Bible, and would not exchange the whole noble enthusiasm with which they inspire me, for all that this world has to offer. As for this world, I despair of ever making a figure in it I am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay. I shall never again be capable of entering into such scenes. Indeed, I am altogether unconcerned at the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... on every side yet not distressed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... object, even though it should be denied all expression for ever—necessary to the life that it troubled and raised, and enriched, with a vision of withheld completeness that was dimmed by the tears of her half "divine despair." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... sharply round and looked at both of them. Gania's face was full of real despair; he seemed to have said the words almost unconsciously and on the impulse of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... send for my birth-day present; but then my birth-day did not come for weeks yet. A work-box lined with rose-pink, perhaps; but that was to arrive when my sampler was finished—and oh, what a large piece was still to be sewed. I tired myself trying to think, and at last gave it up in despair. ...
— Bluff Crag - or, A Good Word Costs Nothing • Mrs. George Cupples
... the French had been admitted into the town. Trivulzio had been to visit King Charles at Teano, and had offered, in the name of his troops and of the Capuans, to surrender Capua; he had even added, says Guicciardini, that he did not despair of bringing King Ferdinand himself to an arrangement, if a suitable provision were guaranteed to him. "I willingly accept the offer you make me in the name of your troops and of the Capuans," answered Charles: ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... known the Puna as well as I afterwards did, I should have shaped my course by the flight of birds. But unluckily I pursued the fresh track of a herd of vicunas, which led me directly into a swamp. My mule sank, and was unable to extricate himself. I was almost in despair. Nevertheless, I cautiously alighted, and with incredible difficulty I succeeded in digging out with a dagger the mud in which the animal's legs were firmly fixed, and at length I got him back to a solid footing. After ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... to despair: the struggle was never beyond her powers of endurance. She had possessed her share of woman's loveliness, but that was now all gone. Her colour quickly faded, and the fresh, soft tints soon deserted her face and forehead. She became thin, and rough, and almost haggard: thin till her cheek-bones ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... while the fourth and last merchant, who stood next to me, was being dealt with, just as in our despair we were about to throw ourselves into the gulf before them all, fortune gave us our opportunity. This unhappy man, having probably some inkling of the doom which awaited him, broke suddenly from the hands of his ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... consternation and almost despair at the repeated pruning of his force, now begged for at least a part of McDowell's corps, which, he said on April 10, was "indispensable;" "the fate of our cause depends upon it." Accordingly Franklin's division was sent to him; and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... in old, thin clothes, while the money that would make home worth living in goes into your register. Where are the boys—our husbands and sons—who once held steady jobs and did good work?" She raised an accusing hand, with despair in her pinched face. "Oh! I needn't tell you—they're rebranding farmers' calves or hiding from the police! Don't you know of one who walked to his death through the big trestle, dazed with liquor? For these things the men who tempted ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... day's horrors. If the written examination had slain its thousands, the viva voce slew its tens of thousands. Even Richardson stumbled; and Heathcote, when his turn came, gave himself up for lost. The Doctor's impassive face betrayed no emotion, and gave no token, either for joy, or hope, or despair. He merely said "That will do" after each victim had performed; and even when Coote, after a mighty effort, rendered "O tempora! O mores!" as "Oh, the tempers of the Moors," he quietly said, "Thank you; ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... ninth year (Michaelmas, 1843) I began to despair of the Church of England, and gave up all clerical duty; and then, what I wrote and did was influenced by a mere wish not to injure it, and not by ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... unexpected favour at your hands, Which God doth know if ever I shall requite it— Necessity makes me to take your bounty, And for your gold can yield you naught but thanks. Your charity hath helped me from despair; Your name shall still be ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Creed, in despair, adjourned his court, setting a new date for trial, explaining that this Turrentine matter ought to be looked into, and he believed it was not a proper day for him to be otherwise engaged. Then he sought old ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... still do many things that were possible before their blindness. Self-reliance and helpfulness—minus self-pity—this is the formula I use when urging the pupils to make the most of life; for when a man is sorry for himself, he is on the road to despair, and his condition is well nigh hopeless. When the pupils are able to read and write once more, after having given up all hope of ever doing so, their confidence is restored, and a way is opened to new and hitherto undreamed-of possibilities. Old aims and pursuits, relinquished when the eyesight ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... and, with a gesture of despair, Penelope sank forward on a little table beside her chair and sobbed hysterically, her face ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... consequently a great part of the nation. He made the same request to the commander of the fort. Accordingly we were no sooner informed of the death of the Stung Serpent, than the commander, some of the principal Frenchmen, and I, went in a body to the hut of the Great Sun. We found him in despair; but, after some time, he seemed to be influenced by the arguments I used to dissuade him from putting himself to death. The death of the Stung Serpent was published by the firing of two muskets, which were answered by the other villages, and ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke or minded what we did, but if every person we met 'cut us dead' and acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all."[5] This recognition the worker gets partly through the records which ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... his sons, following, drew us forward to receive the tributes prepared for us. Neville bowed low and began his address. At first he spoke with feeling and eloquence, but by and by he lost the thread. He cast a look of despair upon the crowd, which did not conceal its disposition to laugh, turned again quickly towards us, passed his hand twice across ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the office door and paused. Roderick's sympathy seemed to have suddenly vanished. In the very face of the other young man's despair, he turned upon ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... safety. Of course the Committee felt bound to bear whatever expense might necessarily be incurred. Here some of the passengers were kept for several days, strictly private, long enough to give the slave-hunters full opportunity to tire themselves, and give up the chase in despair. Some belonging to the former arrivals had also to be similarly kept for the same reasons. Through careful management all were succored and cared for. Whilst much interesting information was obtained from these several arrivals: ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... of natives cherish and revere as a most precious, almost sacred, inheritance. The successful champion of their menaced liberties found clustering around him the grateful hearts of all his countrymen, who, in their hour of dread at the danger of their time-honoured constitution, had clung in despair to him as the only leader capable of heading the struggle and leading the people, by wise and constitutional guidance, to the victory which they desired but could ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... on her own acknowledgment, secluded herself, without other comfort than the love and forgiveness of her father, until her child was born. The father's mercy and the father's recent death filled many verses, happily too vague in their commonplace expression of penitence and despair to give any hint of the marriage story in Madeira to any reader who looked at them ignorant of the truth. A passing reference to the writer's estrangement from her surviving relatives, and to her approaching departure from ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, HERE lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... wedding night—and I've come to wish you joy of it. You've played with many a woman's heart in your time, and driven more than one good lad to despair—maybe 'twill ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... her back until I was within a fathom of her. Yet even this short distance seemed more than I could now swim, for, with my clothes on and my jacket buttoned over me, my arms were not free enough to let me swim with any ease, and I began to despair and to flounder about in such eagerness to reach the boat, that I sank twice under the waves and got my mouth ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... relinquished his advantage, recalled his troops, and hastened to the scene of action. He found the six weary diminutive battles of the French encompassed by sixty squadrons of the Greek cavalry, the least of which was more numerous than the largest of their divisions. Shame and despair had provoked Alexius to the last effort of a general sally; but he was awed by the firm order and manly aspect of the Latins; and, after skirmishing at a distance, withdrew his troops in the close of the evening. The silence or tumult ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... single attic, to-morrow be treading the tapestries of her own drawing-rooms. Thus the golden Fate turns and keeps turning; it is only when, through frigidness or fear, we refuse to revolve with it, that there ensues the discord of despair. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... do not believe that religion means happiness, quit the pulpit and raise potatoes. Potatoes feed the body at least. But unfaithful words or speech of needless despair feed nothing at all. It is "east wind." Put beauty, hope, joy, into your preaching, therefore. Make your listeners thrill with gladness that they are Christians. Even the men of the world have wisdom enough to make things profane as attractive ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... said curtly. I gave up the paper in despair and looked hard out of the window. I knew the man was staring at me and compassing a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... chauvinisme, and shows these old civilizations in no danger of, becoming effete yet. It is like the hell of fire beneath our feet, which the geologists tell us is the life of the globe. Were it not for it, who would not at times despair of the French character? As long as this fiery core remains, I shall believe France capable of recovering from any disaster to her arms. The "mortal ripening" of the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... joy went up all over the land at the news of this victory. From the despair caused by the defeats of Brandywine and Germantown, the nation now rose to the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Apuur, who probably flourished a little before the rule of the kings of the twelfth dynasty, depicts the terrible state of misery and corruption into which Egypt had fallen in his time, but his despair is not so deep as that of the man who was tired of his life or that of the priest Khakhepersenb. On the contrary, he has sufficient hope of his country to believe that the day will come when society ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."* Like his predecessor, he, too, inveighed against the perversity and unfaithfulness of his people. The abandoned wickedness of Gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. In the bitterness of his heart, he demands of Jahveh why He should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on His servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which Jahveh ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... looking down at the fire; she had the air of having half-a-dozen reasons to choose from. But the one she produced was unexpectedly simple; it might even have been prompted by despair at not finding others. "I like her because YOU made her!" she exclaimed with a laugh, moving again away from ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... I was his junior in Congress, his junior in the diplomatic line, and lately his junior in our civil government. I had written him the enclosed letter before the receipt of yours. I had intended it for some time, but had put it off, from time to time, from the discouragement of despair to make him believe me sincere. As the information by the last post does not make it necessary to change any thing in the letter, I enclose it open for your perusal, as well that you may be possessed of the true state of dispositions ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson |
