"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sinless human nature is capable of temptation, and the King has to begin his career by a battle. 'Of the devil'—then there is a dark kingdom of evil, and a personal head of it, the prince of darkness. He knows His rival, and yet He knows him but partially. He strides out to meet him in desperate duel, as Goliath did the stripling whom he despised; and both hosts pause and gaze. To a sinless nature no temptation can arise from within, but must be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... approved by signs and grunts of AEsop's action, and the page, now really alarmed, made a desperate effort to escape. "Let me pass!" he cried, and tried to rush under AEsop's arm. But AEsop caught the boy in an iron grip, and, though the courageous page drew a dagger and tried to stab his assailant, he was disarmed in a second and seized by the others, who sprang ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Twenty-seventh Tennessee Regiments will ever remember the battle of "Dead Angle," which was fought June 27th, on the Kennesaw line, near Marietta, Georgia. It was one of the hottest and longest days of the year, and one of the most desperate and determinedly resisted battles fought during the whole war. Our regiment was stationed on an angle, a little spur of the mountain, or rather promontory of a range of hills, extending far out beyond the main line of battle, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... laid away in Woodlawn beside her husband, Addie could give free rein to her fancies, untroubled by the darts of the realist. But the family fortunes soon became most desperate. Fortunately John had no children, his one small son having died as a baby. His wife, who had perhaps become tired of the family fortune as it never quite realized itself, tried to prod her shiftless husband into a greater activity. But except for the getting ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... its own school of art; nor have they yet forgotten to be proud of the dark old pictures, and the faded frescos, the pristine beauty of which was a light and gladness to the world. But now, unless one happens to be a painter, these famous works make us miserably desperate. They are poor, dim ghosts of what, when Giotto or Cimabue first created them, threw a splendor along the stately aisles; so far gone towards nothingness, in our day, that scarcely a hint of design ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... main subjects for examination he had succeeded by desperate effort, aided by natural ability, in very quickly mastering two sufficiently well to secure a creditable result; but the third subject, the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, remained nearly untouched, and Kennedy was too good and accurate a scholar not to be aware ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... before. He had desired to make the tour of Europe with his father, and he was sorely disappointed when denied this privilege; for with the family he would be free from restraint, and free from hard study. When he lost his rank as an officer, he became desperate and reckless. To live in the steerage and do seaman's duty for three months, after he had enjoyed the luxuries of authority, and of a state-room in the after cabin, were intolerable. After the cabin offices had been distributed, he told Monroe ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... oars was heard, and the yawl was already twenty feet from the mysterious image. Then followed a desperate struggle to regain the cruiser, ere the gust should strike her. The sullen murmur of the wind, rushing through the rigging of the ship, was audible some time before they reached her side; and the struggles between the fabric and the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... predict the decline of their influence, and to fix the period of their greatness; for I am persuaded, that notwithstanding the readiness with which they have hitherto sacrificed the interest of their country, notwithstanding the desperate precipitation with which they have blindly engaged in the most dangerous measures, they will not be able to continue a year ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... neutralise each other, an active policy might double the principality both in population and extent. Certainly at least the scheme is entertained in the court of Mittwalden; nor do I myself regard it as entirely desperate. The margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try adventurous policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we must not forget, still blindly turns her wheel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... care," she went on with a sort of desperate haste, "whether you hurt people or not. You have been here all this time without even going to see your ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... been made upon them; but their sufferings under Diocletian were still more formidable and disastrous. Paganism felt that it was now engaged in a death struggle; and this, its last effort to maintain its ascendency, was its most protracted and desperate conflict. It has been frequently stated that the Diocletian persecution was of ten years' duration; and, reckoning from the first indications of hostility to the promulgation of an edict of toleration, it may certainly ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... to her mother, instead of herself! And then, again, if the American woman consented to receive her, would not the American woman, as a matter of course, trample upon her with rough words? Once or twice she put the letter aside, and almost determined that it should not be sent;—but at last, with desperate fortitude, she took it out with her and posted it herself. She told no word of it to any one. Her mother, she thought, had been cruel to her, had disregarded her feelings, and made her wretched for ever. She could not ask her mother for sympathy in her present distress. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... God! my God!' I kept thinking; 'if she refuses me! ... I shall die.... I shall die....' I repeated wearily. 'Yes, she will certainly refuse me.... And why was I in such a hurry!'... Wishing to turn my thoughts, I began to write a letter to my father—a desperate, resolute letter. Speaking of myself, I used the expression 'your son.' Bobov came in to see me. I began weeping on his shoulder, which must have surprised poor Bobov not a little.... I afterwards learned that he had come to me to borrow money (his landlord ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... them so hot, that they actually fancy that they can be no worse off beyond the grave than they are on this side of it. They are mistaken: but that is the reason; the misery of disgrace is so intolerable, that they are willing, like that wretched Judas, to try any mad and desperate chance to escape it. ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... the small chance that Palveri would actually call Castelnuovo and check up on Kenneth J. Malone, but he didn't think it was probable. Palveri was too desperate to take the chance of making his boss mad in case Malone's story were true. And, even if the check were made, Malone felt reasonably confident. It's hard to kill a man who has a good, accurate sense of precognition and who can teleport himself out of any ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that with you," she said, with a desperate attempt to imitate the other's previous indifference. "I shouldn't like to deprive you and YOUR FRIEND of the opportunity of making use of it again. As for MY husband, I shall say nothing of you to him as long as you say nothing ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this must be some new adventure, he called aloud to Sancho to come and bring him his helmet. Sancho, hearing himself called, quitted the shepherds, and, prodding Dapple vigorously, came up to his master, to whom there fell a terrific and desperate adventure. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of her assertion that Berne Webster had been pursued by her daughter as late as yesterday afternoon—and, therefore, might have been provoked into desperate action. He had found that scrap of grey paper at Sloanehurst, in ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... The pretty widow Patcham who had just arrived was certainly desperate about Mr. Warrington: her way of going on at the rooms, the night before, proved that. As for Mrs. Hooper, that was a known case, and the Alderman had fetched his wife back to London for no other reason. It was the talk ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... should be a general levy of all men fit to bear arms, and the monastery of Kilbegan was fixed as the place of rendezvous. Several of the cities and leading men refused, however, to take any part in a movement controlled by Ormond, and as a last desperate resort, at the meeting of the bishops held at Jamestown (12 Aug. 1650) the bishops declared that there could be no hope of unity unless Ormond surrendered his trust to some person in whom the entire country had confidence.[63] Very reluctantly Ormond agreed to this ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... it, Mary," said Westonley, as he put his big hand upon the child's head, and then taking up Fraser's letter, he again read it aloud. It described in simple language Gerrard's desperate struggle with the alligator, then went on about his courage and fortitude under agonising pain, for the wounds caused by alligators' claws invariably set up an intense and poisonous inflammation, and take a long time to heal, and concluded by saying, "as long as life lasts, I shall never ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... considered merely in the abstract until the Fenian outburst of the sixties—as Mr. Gladstone freely admitted—opened men's eyes to this among the other serious problems of Irish government. It required all the violence of desperate men to call, attention to a condition of things in which the Church which was established numbered less than one-eighth of the inhabitants of the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the long-bearded Billy was the special protege of the deputy sergeant-major. Now and then there were difficulties concerning him; as, for instance, when an unexpected attack in the rear knocked the major down in the dust before the whole corps. It was only by desperate entreaty that Heppner succeeded in saving the life of the bleating culprit, and then a curious chance led to his reinstatement. The very first night that the goat was turned out of the barracks, two of the horses began to cough the vet. hinted at ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... half-jokingly inquired why he preferred other women to his own Better-Half, that no horse eats hay after being turned out to fresh grass. I'm going on, I repeat, no matter what happens. I'm going on to the desperate end, like my own Dinkie with the chocolate-cake when I warned him he'd burst if he dared to eat another piece and he responded: "Then pass the cake, Mummy—and everybody ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... could give? In times of peace, when the millstones and the hearts of men alike grind placidly, patriotism is a cold virtue, and even in the hot passion of war it is often the magnetism of the individual man—the personal leader—who wakens the enthusiasm of desperate courage rather than the cause in whose name men die. Roland, La Mothe told himself, might have roused such an enthusiasm, or Coeur de Lion, or Joan of Arc, but never that fierce corpse of Valmy. And if the father ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... alike feared that there was to be a race for the capital, and that the South, being near and prepared, would get there first. As matter of fact, the Southern leaders had laid no military plan for this enterprise, and the danger was exaggerated. The Northerners, however, did not know this, and made desperate haste. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... little episode was being performed up stairs, an open carriage, showily caparisoned and drawn by a stylish pair of well-groomed bays, drew up at the door. A desperate effort had evidently been made to get the coachman into some sort of livery, for he wore a tall black hat, with a broad velvet band, and a buckle in front as big as an ordinary sized horse shoe. His coat, too, was ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... sky as might a leaf tossed in a gust of wind. Its rim caught against a rust-red cliff, it rebounded and crumpled. Then it came down, smashing perhaps half a mile away from the smoking crater in which lay the mangled wreckage of the Terran ship. The disabled scout pilot must have played a last desperate game, making of his ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... applied, but without any further success. The progress of the cancers seems to be checked by the fixed air; but it is to be feared that a cure will not be effected. A palliative remedy, however, in a disease so desperate and loathsome, may be considered as a very valuable acquisition. Perhaps NITROUS AIR might be still more efficacious. This species of factitious air is obtained from all the metals except zinc, by means of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... me, Abdul," I exclaimed, "surely this situation is desperate? What can your nation subsist on ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... It was this Vlakfontein which was destined to become notorious in the later history of the war. On the 29th of last May (1901), the 7th Battalion I.Y. lost heavily in a desperate fight at this place. Of the many gallant officers and men killed, all the members of the Battalion, past and present, must specially deplore the death of Surgeon-Captain Welford, one of the kindest and most self-sacrificing of men. Also Captain Armstrong, who joined the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... former subject. "Yes," he said slowly, "I think you're right about those being Tom Blair's tracks." He turned and faced the younger man squarely. "If it is, Ben, it means he's been frozen out from his hiding-place, wherever that is, and he's crazy desperate. He'd do anything now. He wouldn't ever come back ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... softly to herself, and, with a great lump in her throat, sped swiftly through the village and up to the "Great House." The result of her interview with Miss Campion we have seen. Father Letheby has scored again. There were heavy bets of fifteen to one in half-gallons of porter, laid by desperate gamblers, that Father Letheby would make Mrs. Darcy wash her face. It was supposed to be a wild plunge in a hopeless speculation. I am told now, that the betting has gone up at the forge, and is now fifty to one that, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... no better, but Elinor Bayard was of excellent social position herself. Her mother's people ranked with the best in the land, and her father, despite his galanterie, was a man distinguished in his profession and in society. It was driving McLean wellnigh desperate. Not one word of love-making had been breathed between him and the gentle girl who so enjoyed her walks and rides with him, but he knew well that her woman's heart must have told her ere this how dear she was to him, ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... an office building he made one final desperate appeal: "Just come up to the top floor and see ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... cut the cable at the hawse-hole, it did not give us time, but broke straightway of itself. The wind and the sea cast us as the wave receded upon a little rock, and we awaited only the moment to see our barque break up, and to save ourselves, if possible, upon its fragments. In these desperate straits, after we had received several waves, there came one so large and fortunate for us that it carried us over the rock, and threw us on to a little sandy beach, which insured us ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... abruptly. "The cops will get wind of this. They jerk up a circus man on the slightest excuse. It's something of an honor, I believe, to land one of us in jail. The darned rubes talk about it for weeks afterwards, telling how they nailed a desperate character. Everybody connected with a show is a regular devil in their eyes. And that reminds me. I had my lamps on a couple of blue boys down the street as I came up. We'd better ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... lifted from his dreadful fare, That sinner, wiping it with the grey hair Whose roots he had laid waste; and thus he said:— "A desperate thing thou askest; what I dread Even to think of. Yet, to sow a seed Of infamy to him on whom I feed, Tell it I will:—ay, and thine eyes shall see Mine own weep all the while for misery. Who thou ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Let Rome herselfe be bane vnto herselfe, And shee whom mightie kingdomes cursie too, Like a forlorne and desperate castaway, Doe shamefull execution on her selfe. But if my frostie signes and chaps of age, Graue witnesses of true experience, Cannot induce you to attend my words, Speake Romes deere friend, as er'st our Auncestor, When with his solemne tongue he did discourse ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... slave-breaker and made his way back to his own master to seek protection. The master, who would have lost his slave's wages for a year if he had broken the contract with Covey before the year's end, sent Douglass back to his taskmaster. Anticipating the most direful consequences, Douglass made the desperate resolution to resist any further punishment at Covey's hands. After a fight of two hours Covey gave up his attempt to whip Frederick, and thenceforth laid hands on him no more. That Covey did not invoke the law, which made death ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin. They put ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and rode up and over the hill where she could not see the road. But she had no sooner got on top than she remembered that no time had been mentioned, or, if it had, that she had forgotten it. She turned and rode up the hill again, and looking down, saw Stafford riding along the valley in desperate haste, and yet looking about him uncertainly. Her heart beat with a quickened pulse, sending the delicate colour into her face, and she pulled up, and, leaning forward with her chin in her ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Grace realized the consummate cruelty of those hours, the fact that Lily was sent for, not only because the old man cared to see her, but to make Grace feel the outsider that she was. She made desperate efforts to conquer the hated language, but her accent was atrocious. Anthony would correct her suavely, and Lily would laugh in childish, unthinking mirth. She gave ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... invaders, and he gathered an army of about three hundred thousand men to face the Russian forces which did not number more than a hundred and twenty thousand, and which were under the command of General Baron Sievers. The Russian army soon found itself in a desperate position. A series of bitter fights ensued, at some of which the Kaiser himself was present. The Russians were driven steadily back for a week, but the German stories of their tremendous losses are obviously unfounded. They retreated steadily until February 20th, fighting courageously, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Yes, Kate's quick ears had not deceived her. There was the sound of a footstep advancing towards them along the lonely tangled path. Philip instinctively felt for the pistol he always carried in his belt, for there were often doubtful and sometimes desperate men in hiding in woods and lonely places; but before he had time to do more than feel if the weapon were safe, Kate had darted suddenly from his side, and was speeding ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... go crazy if I stop around," Standing went on. "I've been hit a pretty desperate punch, and I haven't the guts to stand up to it. When it came I set my teeth. I wanted to keep sane. I reminded myself of all I owed to the folks working for us. I thought of you. And I tried to bolster myself with the schemes we had for beating the Skandinavians ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... desperate character," added Christy, as he went below to attend to his supper, which he had so ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... followed her. Both maintained a profound silence. She moved on with quick but cautious steps, passed through the Cloisters, and reached the Western side of the Garden. Her eyes flashed with a fire and wildness which impressed the Monk at once with awe and horror. A determined desperate courage reigned upon her brow. She gave the Lamp to Ambrosio; Then taking from him the Key, She unlocked the low Door, and entered the Cemetery. It was a vast and spacious Square planted with yew trees: Half of it belonged to the Abbey; The other half was the property of the Sisterhood ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... my apprenticeship I put up a big greenhouse: unable to manage plants in the open-air, I expected to succeed with them under unnatural conditions! These memories are strung together with the hope of encouraging a forlorn and desperate amateur here or there; and surely that confession will cheer him. However deep his ignorance, it could not possibly be more finished than mine some dozen years ago; and yet I may say, Je suis arrive! What that greenhouse cost, "chilled remembrance shudders" to recall; briefly, six ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... this moment Chatillon, issuing from Dieppe with five hundred picked men, arrived on the field of battle. The king dismounted to fight at his side in the trenches; and then, for a quarter of an hour, there was a furious combat, man to man. At last, "when things were in this desperate state," says Sully, "the fog, which had been very thick all the morning, dropped down suddenly, and the cannon of the castle of Arques getting sight of the enemy's army, a volley of four pieces was fired, which made ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... has generally been remarked that no medium can be maintained. Where hope holds her dominion she is too buoyant to be accompanied by her anchor; and between her and despair there are no gradations. Desperate indeed now became the condition of the misjudging pair. Lady Juliana's name was not even mentioned in her father's will, and the General's marriage rendered his settlements no longer a secret. In all the horrors of desperation, Henry now found himself daily beset by creditors ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... rather tramp and starve. He's awful hard to me and Sanch, and he'll be worse now father's gone. Don't send me back! Let me stay here; folks are good to me; there's nowhere else to go." And the head Ben had lifted up with a desperate sort of look went down again on Sancho's breast as if there was no ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... in tears and pain. * * * * * Who spurns the shrine of Right, nor wealth nor power Shall be to him a tower, To guard him from the gulf: there lies his lot, Where all things are forgot. Lust drives him on—lust, desperate and wild Fate's sin-contriving child— And cure is none; beyond concealment clear Kindles sin's baleful glare. As an ill coin beneath the wearing touch Betrays by stain and smutch Its metal false—such is the sinful wight. Before, on pinions light, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... on the same account; and their friends kept them supplied with food and ammunition. Upon the mountains, in most islands of the group, similar outlaws rove in bands or dwell alone, unsightly hermits; and but the other day an officer was wounded while attempting an arrest. Some are desperate fellows; some mournful women—mothers and wives; some stripling girls. A day or two, for instance, after the man had escaped, the police got word of another old offender, made a forced march, and took the quarry sitting: this time with little peril to themselves. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... father for a moment. 'Tis supposed, continued the Benedictine, that St. Maxima has lain in this tomb four hundred years, and two hundred before her canonization—'Tis but a slow rise, brother Toby, quoth my father, in this self-same army of martyrs.—A desperate slow one, an' please your honour, said Trim, unless one could purchase—I should rather sell out entirely, quoth my uncle Toby—I am pretty much of your opinion, brother Toby, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... wood did move! "However," said he, "if this which he avouches be true, let us arm and out. There is no flying hence, nor staying here. I begin to be weary of the sun, and wish my life at an end." With these desperate speeches he sallied forth upon the besiegers, who had now come up to ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... hang up. This is on the q.t. you know. What? You don't understand? Why, I was sayin' you mustn't let a soul know what's happened. Not a soul. If it should get out an' his kidnappers should find it out they'd kill him easy as a fly an' no mistake. You gotta go slow on this. Yes, lady, they're desperate characters, I'm sayin' it! an' the sooner you get your son outta their han's the better fer his future, lady, fer even if he should escape after they'd been found out they'd probably lame him fer life or put out his eyes or some little old thing like that, so you see, lady, you gotta talk ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... her love might fulfil itself in protection instead of sensual gratification. Yes, vaguely she had believed that. She had even believed that she could put on armour and do battle against—and at this point in her desperate meditation the lady of the feathers shifted her eyes from her own face mirrored to the face beside it. As she did so, a sudden cry escaped from her lips. For a moment she thought she saw the face of the dead Marr, and the hallucination was so vivid that when it was gone and the mirror ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... ON THE KENNEBEC.—The charter having been granted, each company set about securing emigrants. To get them was not difficult, for in England at that day there were many people whose condition was so desperate that they were glad to seek a new home beyond the sea. [16] In a few months, therefore, the Plymouth Company sent out its first party of colonists; but the ship was seized by the Spaniards. The next year (1607) the company sent out one hundred or more settlers in two ships. ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... him. The soldiers fired at him, re-loaded their guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse, and kept firing on at him, as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holy water in front ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a redundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against the tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... Campaign, 1781.—Cornwallis now made a desperate attempt to capture the Americans, but Greene and Morgan joined forces and marched diagonally across North Carolina. Cornwallis followed so closely that frequently the two armies seemed to be one. When, however, the ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... those stairs, and pass through the dark passage leading to the back door. The thieves were in due time captured and transported for another offence; but my parents refused to prosecute them in order that I might escape the ordeal of a public examination. They were desperate ruffians, and the police declared their belief that if they had known I was alone in the house they would ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... interest for me; but I grew only more secretly restless with every one. My companions seemed to find it all amusement, the rides and parades and receptions that were constantly going on; I only saw everywhere the preparation for a desperate game soon to be played. The Secessionists threatened Washington; and said "only wait till the Fourth." The people in Washington laughed at this; yet now and then I saw one who did not laugh; and such were often some of those who should know ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to mother, I believe she has been hoping and praying about it these three months. She thinks that I am such a desperate case, it is the only way I am to be brought in, as she calls it. That's what set me against him at first; but the fact is, if girls will let a man argue with them, he always contrives to get the best of it. I am kind of provoked about it, too. But, mercy on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... himself for some denial, for some pretense of ignorance, at least, and he was taken aback at this ready acceptance of his challenge. Something malevolent in her air increased his uneasiness. The girl was as hard as flint and seemed capable of any desperate action. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... hysterically upon the steel globe. It was not the attack of savages upon a strange thing. It was the assault of desperate, broken men upon a thing they hated. A glass pane splintered and crashed. Spears were thrust into the opening, while mouths opened as if in screams of insane fury. And then, suddenly, the door of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... "There are none," she said, looking at him with desperate eyes. "The box is empty; he must ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... bridle and undoing the girth, so that the saddle would fall off if the horse ever managed to rise. The animal watched her go with melancholy eyes, knowing that it was being deserted. First it neighed, then with a desperate effort it struggled to its feet and trotted after her for a hundred yards or so, only to fall down again at last. Jess turned and saw it, and, exhausted as she was, she positively ran to get away from the look in those ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... lack of settled purpose, so now, after having seen all things apparently set in order before him for progressive accomplishment, he had fallen back once more into that state of disbelief, of that hopeless and desperate awakening properly reserved only for old age, when the individual realizes that what he does is of itself of no consequence, and that what he is or is not stops no single star an atom in its flight, no blade of grass an iota ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... beauty and of power which today floats upon the bosom of the Hudson, a peer among the embattled navies of the world. They made good that declaration against all odds, through hardship, through suffering, through seas of blood, with desperate valor and lofty heroism, worthy ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... have broached out of Socinus a most uncomfortable and desperate doctrine, that late repentance, that is, upon the last bed of sickness, is unfruitful, at least to reconcile the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... desperate and colouring, which he was very unapt to do. "If you please, Mr. Richmond, I was sent to speak to—I forget what her name ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... Losses, was reduced from a very luxuriant Trade and Credit to very narrow Circumstances, in Comparison to that his former Abundance. This took away the Vigour of his Mind, and all manner of Attention to a Fortune, which he now thought desperate; insomuch that he died without a Will, having before buried my Mother in the midst of his other Misfortunes. I was sixteen Years of Age when I lost my Father; and an Estate of L200 a Year came into my Possession, without Friend or Guardian to instruct me in the Management or ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a moment to look at the ship," he said, with the trace of an ungracious bow, "and must get back." The sunlight flung a warm moted veil over Nettie Vollar. She gave him a startled uncalculated glance of almost desperate appeal and his heart responded with a quickened thud. Edward Dunsack was sallow and ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in France have been subjected to as severe a trial as it is possible to impose upon any body of men. The desperate fighting described in my last dispatch had hardly been brought to a conclusion when they were called upon to face the rigors and hardships of a Winter campaign. Frost and snow have alternated ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... several great car-warriors of unrighteous propensities, hath been slain on the field. The slayer of hostile heroes, the son of Subhadra, was a child in years and of childish understanding.[82] He fought in battle against desperate odds. I asked him to open a passage for us in battle. He penetrated within the hostile army, but we could not follow him, obstructed by the ruler of the Sindhus. Alas, they that betake themselves to battle as a profession, always fight with antagonists equally circumstanced ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Sawdust, or any "uplift" of the kind becomes desperately lopsided in his seriousness, and as a very large number of us cultivate New Thought, or practise breathing exercises, or eat sawdust, no doubt the English visitors think us a desperate lot. ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... did look like it. His hair tinged to an unnatural hue by the sulphur of Vesuvius, his square, determined jaw, his heavy, overhanging brow, marked him as one who was capable of any desperate enterprise. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... probable that it never heard the Cheap Jack's softer intonations, for its protuberant bones gave a quiver beneath the scarred skin as he yelled. Then its drooping ears pricked faintly, the quavering forelegs were braced, one desperate jog of the tottering load of oddities, and it set slowly and ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... find it a genuine sacrifice to stop driving a motor car, I should have looked upon him as a polite lunatic. It was only because Jack could drive faster than he dared to let me, and because I was ashamed to tell Molly that after all I was not in a desperate hurry to reach Paris or anywhere else, that I finally tore myself from the driver's seat of the Mercedes. Afterwards, though I had not reached the stage when confession is good for the soul, I sat wondering what there ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Cheese" (Vol. vii., p. 617.).—This phrase is only some ten or twelve years old. Its origin was this:—Some desperate witty fellows, by way of giving a comic turn to the phrase "C'est une autre chose," used to translate it, "That is another cheese;" and after awhile these words became "household words," and when anything positive or specific was intended to be pointed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... moment when they inscribed their initials upon the walls of that melancholy room, to the moment when, with a howl like a madman, Heathcliff drags her from her grave, their affiliation is desperate and absolute. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... out. The outer door is heard shutting behind him. Nicholls closes the door, rear, and comes back and sits in the chair in front of table. He rests his chin on his hands and stares before him, a look of desperate, frightened calculation coming into his eyes. Carmody is heard clumping heavily down the stairs. A moment later he enters. His ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... attempted assassination at Lathrop, California, on the 14th day of August, 1889, by David S. Terry, who had been Chief Justice of the State during a portion of Justice Field's service on that bench. Terry lost his own life in his desperate attempt, by the alertness and courage of David S. Neagle, a Deputy United States Marshal, who had been deputed by his principal, under an order from the Attorney-General of the United States, to protect Justice Field from the assassin, who had, for nearly a year, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... put on trial, and how they were insolent to the judge, and how it was proved they had committed many crimes, and how they were sentenced to fourteen years in State's prison under our criminal syndicalism act. Needless to say, I had never seen one of these desperate men; but I had a quite definite idea what they looked like—dark and sinister creatures, with twisted mouths and furtive eyes. I knew that, because I had seen a couple of moving picture shows in which ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... let us touch the string, And try a song to sing, Though this is somewhat difficult at starting, O! And in our case more than ever, When a desperate endeavour, Is made to sing the praise of ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... superstitious postponement arrived before nightfall on Saturday. A dispatch from Lincoln to McClellan, dated at four o'clock that afternoon, said: "In consequence of General Banks's critical position, I have been compelled to suspend General McDowell's movements to join you. The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper's Ferry, and we are trying to throw General Fremont's force and part of General McDowell's in their rear." The brief words conveyed momentous intelligence. It is necessary to admit that Mr. Lincoln was making his one grand blunder, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... parapet of the little trench saved us. But for this trench we would all have been wiped out; the bullets were peppering the parapet. Such a to-do it was! After about ten minutes of this, Kerr said that I had better go. Then began the most desperate adventure I have so far struck. I made a dash across the open into the communication trench and hurried down it, bent double. I had to duck constantly, for shells were bursting around me every yard of the journey. The dust raised ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... the only person in the audience who seemed to comprehend the deed he had committed, climbed from his seat near the orchestra to the stage, and followed close behind. The assassin was too fleet and too desperate, that fury incarnate, meeting Mr. Withers, the leader of the orchestra, just behind the scenes, had stricken him aside with a blow that fortunately was not a wound; overturning Miss Jenny Gourlay, an actress, who came next in his path, he gained, without ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... countenance had entirely changed. She was pale to the lips, with drawn brows, while about her mouth played a hard, bitter expression, as though her mind were bent upon some desperate resolve. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... his crossing. He had been ordered by Hooker to hold his position without fail and at all hazards. The rebels seemed to be in heavy force on the heights behind and farther up the creek, and evidently they were prepared to make a desperate resistance to the crossing of Hooker. The position of the cavalry was a painful one. Hooker seemed slow in coming, and shot and shell kept continually dropping among them, knocking from their saddles one ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... almost all the way to the little inn; for he was growing desperate now, with the idea that his man ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... making a sudden struggle, I shook myself free with such force that he staggered back, while I bounded forward and snatched the book from the priest's hand, throwing it on the floor, and then, regaining once more the statue of St. Margaret, I stood grasping her with one arm with desperate energy, while I cried: 'A moi, soldiers ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of these Stories, there may be much in them and much Use made of them, even whether exactly such in Fact, as they are related, or no; the best Use I can make of them, is this, if any wicked desperate Wretches have made Bargain and Sale with Satan, their only Way is to repent, if they know how, and that before he comes to claim them; then batter him with his own Guns; play Religion against Devilism, and perhaps they may drive the Devil out of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... mercenary motives. They begin their wretched lives in the society of the most depraved, and are not long in becoming criminals themselves. They are nearly all thieves, and a very large proportion of them are but the decoys of the most desperate male garroters and thieves. The majority of them are the confederates of panel thieves. They are coarse, ugly, and disgusting, and medical men who are called on to treat them professionally, state ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... shepherd walked wearily; the now familiar objects wore a strange look. It was as though he saw them for the first time, yet had seen them somewhere before, perhaps in another world. As he went his face was the face of one crushed by shame and grief, made desperate ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... The picture, which no man save himself had ever seen, was the only possible link between the past and the present—between Scarlett Trent and his drunken old partner, starved and fever-stricken, making their desperate effort for wealth in unknown Africa, and the millionaire of to-day. The picture remained his dearest possession—but, save his own, no other eyes ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lost none of his habitual caution, although he was engaged in what he knew to be a desperate and nearly hopeless enterprise. On leaving the saloon he threw himself flat on the ground, and slowly drew himself along until he reached the shelter of the high grass. Then rising to his hands and knees he crept ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... were suspected and smelt, but were found to be quite fresh. One or two of them were put out to air, but still the smell grew worse and worse, until the most obtuse nose did not dare to go near the infirmary. At last they became desperate. A general and thorough investigation was instituted, and there, in a dark corner, under a hair mattress, and flat as a pancake, lay the poor puffin, alive!—but not with the life wherewith it had lived before it was shot—and emitting an odour that is indescribable, a description of ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... see, this will be the grief of all my life, Louise—of all my life," answered the artisan, weeping. "You in prison—in the dock—you, so proud-when you had the right to be so. No," continued he, in a new access of desperate grief, "no, I should prefer to seeing you under the winding-sheet, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... beleaguering the city and were determined to take it, but ere this might be there was a desperate fight in store for them. When the sun's rays began to fall upon the earth we joined battle, praying to Jove and to Minerva, and when the fight had begun, I was the first to kill my man and take his horses—to wit the warrior Mulius. ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and, as before, he joined me in the evening with nothing on his lips but commendation of the young lady whom he had seen, and complaint at the cruel act which was about to rob them of their treasure; for he said, regardless of my presence or the desperate state of my feelings, "that the matter was now all but settled. Fairman had made up his mind, and was ready to give his consent the very moment the young fellow was bold enough to ask it. And lucky ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... of Tours seems to have continued for several days. Of its details we know nothing, though a Spanish chronicler tells us that the heavy infantry of the Franks stood "immovable as a wall, inflexible as a block of ice" against the desperate assaults of the Moslem horsemen. When the Franks, after the last day's fighting, wished to renew the struggle, they found that the enemy had fled, leaving a camp filled with the spoils of war. This engagement, though famous in history, was scarcely decisive. For some time afterward ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... From 1410 to 1415 France was a prey to civil war between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and to their alternate successes and reverses brought about by the unscrupulous employment of the most odious and desperate means. The Burgundians had generally the advantage in the struggle, for Paris was chiefly the centre of it, and their influence was predominant there. Their principal allies there were the butchers, the boldest and most ambitious corporation in the city. For a long time the butcher-trade of Paris ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... science. They could not answer science with argument, so they had answered her with the axe and the stake; and they were still capable of doing that whenever they thought it desirable. Strange spectacle! What was the "conflict between Religion and Science" but man's desperate struggle against his own reason? Benjamin Kidd had ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... stranger to dissimulation; and she could not conceive that any one beheld the subject of her admiration with less partiality than herself. Her artless love became more fervent than ever. She flattered herself that nothing less than a reciprocal passion could have prompted Mr. Falkland to the desperate attempt of saving her from the flames; and she trusted that this passion would speedily declare itself, as well as induce the object of her adoration ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... been thinking the thing all over last night, and have concluded that we have been in the wrong all this time; that the case of France is desperate; that it has been desperate ever since Agincourt; and that to-day it is more than ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Essex that this treatment would drive Essex to madness. "These same gradations of yours"—so Bacon represents himself expostulating with the Queen on her caprices—"are fitter to corrupt than to correct any mind of greatness." They made Essex desperate; he became frightened for his life, and he had reason to be so, though not in the way which he feared. At length came the stupid and ridiculous outbreak of the 8th of February, 1600/1601, a plot to seize the palace and raise the city against ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... to me hardly possible that Torode would dare to go on living at Herm and playing that desperate game of the double flags, while somewhere one man lived who might turn up at any time and blow him to the winds. And in pondering the matter, the fact that he had spared that man's life became a greater puzzle to me than ever. Depressing, too, the thought that ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... and to shut them down at night, or while sailing. As long as these men were unarmed and themselves armed, they had not the slightest fear of any trouble arising. For the Acadians, though stout, muscular fellows, were all so good-natured and phlegmatic in their faces that no danger of anything so desperate as an attack on their part was to be anticipated. It was decided, however, while they were on deck, to keep them confined to the ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... Scotia; but Braddock was defeated; Niagara and Crown Point remained unreduced; the savages were let loose from the wilderness; many thousand farms were abandoned; the King's subjects inhumanly butchered or reduced to beggary. To all which might be added an impoverishment of finances to a desperate state, the Crown Point expedition having cost, on the part of Massachusetts Bay alone, L76,618 8s. 9-1/2d., besides unliquidated accounts to a large amount for the charge of the sick and wounded, the garrisons at the two forts of William Henry and Edward, and the great ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... your pot-boiling is a desperate and barely sufficient expedient to keep the wolf from the door. So she is planning to ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of stubbed ground, once a wood, 145 Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with—so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!—within a rood, Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the brilliance, the light allusion to past scenes and happenings, the skilful comment on the present, the joyous dominance of a position made supreme by beauty and by gold; behind which were anger and bitterness, and wild and desperate revolt. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... case you can hardly be said to know him," Rawlins murmured. "If you drive him into a corner he will do desperate things. If you tried that game on with him you would regret it for the rest of your life. Good heavens, you are like a child playing about amidst a lot of unguarded machinery. Why ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... 3 One of the seamen, some time sick with a grievous disease, died in a desperate manner. The first death and burial at sea ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... nor yet in Bursley. He would take his lacerating cough on chilly trains to Stafford. He had no ears for reason; he simply could not listen; he was in a dream. After Christmas a crisis came. Constance grew desperate. It was a battle between her will and his that occurred one night when Constance, marshalling all her forces, suddenly insisted that he must go out no more until he was cured. In the fight Constance was scarcely recognizable. She deliberately ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... back, her eyes on her step-son. He had left the threshold and was advancing toward Sophy Viner with a motion of desperate appeal; but as he did so there was a knock on the door. A moment's silence fell on the three; then Anna said: ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton |
