"Desperation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the fight among the teepees the squaws and young boys seized the weapons of slain warriors, and from their hiding places in the brush fought with the desperation of fiends. Several instances are related by survivors of the fight, in which the she devils met soldiers or scouts face to face, and thrusting their rifles almost into the faces of the white men fired point blank at them. Several of our men ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... warrior maid Marphisa, and that their names were frequently coupled in the pagan camp, she at once felt the pangs of jealousy. Unable to endure it longer, she armed herself, changing her usual vest for one whose colors denoted her desperation and desire to die, and set forth to meet and slay Marphisa, taking with her the spear left her by Astolpho, whose magic properties she did not know. With this she overthrew Rodomont and caused him to depart from his ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... coat and a face which I had not thought could exist outside bad dreams. His wicked little eyes glared insolently at me, and he strolled by with his hat stuck at a rakish angle; and for the life of me, would you believe it? I could not remember the magic words. Turning in desperation I commanded him without further delay to "hot hoop." He appeared surprised. He made no sort of motion to comply with my order. "Hut hop!" I cried, purple with vexation, and still the abominable article of headgear remained jauntily perched over his square ugly face. Advancing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... it!" cried the manager, in desperation. "We open with New York at St. Louis next week for four games. I'll let Matson see what he can do, though I reckon I'll be roasted and laughed at ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... to turn, and look round, lest the slightest movement of my body so near his arm might disturb him; but poor Sir Samuel, driven to desperation by his wife's hysterical cries, pushed down ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... themselves unable to stand against the might of Spain, what chance, she constantly asked herself, would such a mere boy as her George have? Thus she was swayed by first one form of terror and then the other until her reason threatened to give way altogether under the strain, and in sheer desperation she sought, quite unavailingly, to find distraction in preparing George's wardrobe for the voyage. As for George, he saw the terrible struggle through which his beloved mother was passing, read her every thought, realised her every fear, and ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... place puts toyes of desperation Without more motiue, into euery braine That lookes so many fadoms to the sea And heares ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... movement in the sea of heads, and knew only too well what it betokened. With a frightful yell of mingled hatred and execration, the seething human mass bore down upon him! His own followers and friends did what they could for him, but that was very little. His case was desperate. Desperation, however, inspires some people with an almost superhuman energy. Life was sweet, and that day he fought for his life. The very shouting and hooting of the mob, the roar of the angry multitude, which might well have filled even a brave man with panic, stimulated ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a kind of desperation. No new event had happened, but she could not rest. She felt that she must do something or die, and what could she do? She spent the early morning in the nursery, and then went out. This time she was reasonable, not like that former time when she went out to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... his visit and his warning he had thrown a sop to his conscience. He had approached Harlan Thornton with something like desperation. Under his calmness he had long-hidden, consuming passion for Madeleine Presson—a love that had grown through the years, and now waited a fitting time of expression and the endorsement of assured position. If he had any doubts ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and most untiring men in the Colony were commissioned to find out the truth regarding the fate of Caroline. Bigot was like a stag brought to bay. An ordinary man would have succumbed in despair, but the very desperation of his position stirred up the Intendant to a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and generous hospitality they welcomed the first white men to their land, and were ever faithful in their friendship, till years of wrong and robbery, and want and insult, drove them to desperation and to war. They were barbarians, and their warfare was barbarous, but not more barbarous than the warfare of our Saxon, Celtic and Norman ancestors. They were ignorant and superstitious. Their condition closely resembled the condition of our British forefathers ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... last time. The rapidity of Philip's movements, and the fierceness of his attacks, had deprived his warriors of the moral power to withstand reverses. His operations for two months had been those of a desperate man; and when desperation is followed by misfortune there ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... plain of sand, until, seeing a few antelopes in the distance, they camped on the margin of a small stream. All now, that were capable of the exertion, turned out to hunt for a meal. Their efforts were fruitless, and after dark they returned to their camp famished almost to desperation. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... The centre of the enclosure was occupied by an inner fort, which was Suleiman's own residence. On Gessi attacking it, his first shell set fire to one of the huts, and as the wood was dry, the whole encampment was soon in a blaze. Driven to desperation, the brigands sallied forth, only to be driven back by the steady fire of Gessi's troops, who by this time were full of confidence in their leader. Then the former broke into flight, escaping wherever they could. Suleiman was among those who escaped, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... together for a few moments. Ruth gazed upon the cow until it became so fixed upon the retina of her eye that, when she tried to admire an old Florentine cabinet near it, she still saw its portrait; and when, in desperation, she turned away to look out of the window across the sky and sloping park, the shadow of the cow hung like ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... committed; as we have yit in memorie of one Thomas Scot of Abotishall, quho was Justice Clerk to James the Fift, of happie memorie, quho being strukin with a terror of conscience, at the hour of his death, for his evill cariage in that place, dyed in desperation, crying, 'I am damned! I am damned!'"—(Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 596.) A proof of Scott's iniquitous proceedings is embodied in the Act of Parliament rescinding the forfeiture of John Lord Glammys, on the 15th of March 1542-3, upon a pretended Confession, being "fraudfullie ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... anguish was so great that he could no longer endure it; and, in desperation, he had made his escape, as we have narrated. His case was a hopeful one, and his father cheerfully remitted to Mr. Walker the amount contained in the lost purse, with the mortifying confession of his ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... Captain Paul eyed him very earnestly. His wild, lonely heart, incapable of sympathizing with cuddled natures made humdrum by long exemption from pain, was yet drawn towards a being, who in desperation of friendlessness, something like his own, had so fiercely ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... turn aside to her task even while he complimented her with an allusion to the labours of Hercules. It did not seem uncalled-for, when she began by raising a huge sheet of paper that had been thrown in desperation to veil the confusion upon the table, and which proved to be the Ordnance map of the county, embellished with numerous streaks of paint. 'The outlines of the old Saxon wappentakes,' said Louis: 'I was trying to make them out in blue, and the Roman ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... At last; in desperation, the Crown Prince deliberately broke off the point of his pencil, and went to the desk where Miss Braithwaite sat, monarch of the American pencil-sharpener which was the beloved of ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to hide frae 't," cried Annie. "Guid kens," she went on in desperation, "that I wadna touch a grain ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... smoke curling, whistles tooting, wheels crunching, as the rotary bucked the bigger drifts and the smaller ploughs eliminated the slighter raises, a triumphant procession toward that thing which Martin knew he could attack with all the seeming ferocity of desperation and yet fail—the fifty-foot ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... desperation of her situation gave her strength for a fresh trial, and she struggled up again, and almost gained her seat, when the pony began a series of circles which threw her down and made her dizzy with trying to keep up ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... minutes earlier their fire had ceased, and what to make of it we did not know. We found that an exposure of our hats on our gun-muzzles drew no fire; yet, driven by sheer desperation, and expecting that every man of us would get shot full of holes, we simultaneously sprang over the rock, and dropped flat on the summit—amid utter silence, about the most happily surprised lot of men in all Mexico! The enemy had decamped. But where? And with ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... For God's sake, stop reading, your Excellency. Couldn't you find something else to read about?" cried the other Official in sheer desperation. He snatched the paper from his colleague's hands, and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... "Little Crow," "Sitting Bull," "Crazy Horse," "Spotted Tail," "Red Cloud," "Gall," "John Grass," names that in multiple impressed but by their fantastic suggestion; but their original pulse-accelerating meaning had long since passed. Now and then a prairie mother, driven to desperation, might incite temporary rectitude in the breast of an incorrigible by a harrowing reference to one or to another; yet to the incoming swarms of land-hungry settlers they were mere supplanted play actors, fit heroes for fiction, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... silence he dug a grave in the little garden behind his lowly cottage, and then, with all the coolness which is lent by desperation, he proceeded again to where the body was hanging, and cut it down. He had brought another paper with him, and this he affixed in exactly the same place as the one he had destroyed. It was laconical enough, for it had but one word, ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... showery weather having, therefore, wellnigh driven our shearers to desperation, out comes the sun in all his glory. He is never far away or very faint in Riverina. All the pens are filled for the morrow; very soon after the earliest sunbeams the bell sounds its welcome summons, and the whole force tackles to the work with an ardour ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... him? The roar of the fire was appalling. On all sides it was raging and so dense was the smoke, and so overcome was he with his strenuous exertions, that he felt his strength rapidly weakening. Again and again, he nerved himself to the contest, and flung aside the falling embers with the desperation of despair. At last, after an almost superhuman effort, he flung out his hand to ward off another burning missive, when all power deserted him, and with a cry he fell forward full upon a ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... the vehemence of his ambition. Not knowing to what extremities he might proceed, and shuddering at the ruin he might inflict upon my figure-head, I now endeavoured to draw off his attention from it, and holding out my arm in a fit of desperation, signed to him to commence operations. But he rejected the compromise indignantly, and still continued his attack on my face, as though nothing short of that would satisfy him. When his forefinger swept across my features, in laying out the borders of those parallel ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... hour's rest was all they needed; so the good woman bade them "rest good!" and hurried downstairs, to fling herself into a Berserker fit of cooking. "Not a thing in the house!" she soliloquized, as she sifted flour and beat eggs with the energy of desperation, "except cookies and doughnuts; and Marthy always has everything so nice, let alone what they're used to at home. I'll make up a sheet of sponge-cake, I guess, first, and while it's baking I can whip up some chocolate frosting and mix a pan of biscuit. Le' me see! I might ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... nothing under sixteen francs a yard. "But cheap, cheap, CHEAP stuff," she expostulated—"stuff you would make lampshades of, or dusters. It's only for a fancy dress." The idle little girls assumed a special air. Fanny looked round the shop in desperation. It was like all the shops in Metz—the window dressed, the saleswomen ready, the shelves scrubbed out and polished, the lady waiting at the pay ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... the natives were coming toward the camp. They came along at a swinging trot, a sense of desperation and dedicated purpose in their manner. One ran slightly ahead. The other two followed behind him, ...
— Shepherd of the Planets • Alan Mattox
... combatants and exclamations from the lookers-on: [Greek: olophurmos, boe, nikontes, kratoumenoi, alla hosa en megalo kinduno mega stratopedon polyeide anagkaizoito phthengesthai.] Then after a struggle, in which desperation gave energy to the Athenians, and ambitious hope inspired their foes with more than wonted vigour, the fleet of the Athenians was finally overwhelmed. The whole scene can be reproduced with wonderful distinctness; for the low shores of Plemmyrium, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... measures necessary to be taken in order to save Jem. She felt as if they were her duty, her right. She durst not trust to any one the completion of her plan: they might not have energy, or perseverance, or desperation enough to follow out the slightest chance; and her love would endow her with all these qualities independently of the terrible alternative which awaited her in case all failed and Jem was condemned. No one could have her motives; and consequently no one could have her sharpened brain, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... all the business they could handle, and as is always the result in such cases their owners became arrogant under their prosperity and raised their prices, making not the slightest attempt to help the public out of its dilemma. Undoubtedly something had to be done and in desperation a committee from Parliament sent for Stephenson that they might discuss with him the feasibility of building a railroad from Manchester to Liverpool. The committee had no great faith in the enterprise. Most of its ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... a swelling heart. Supposing Ruth should be sent for, and hear the whole story? Miss Elton was at the door; she ran up to her in desperation. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... cool night air swept up the stairs, and Georgie saw the panel of light from the open drawing-room door diminish in width, and presently the door shut with a soft thud, leaving him in the dark. At that his desperation seemed pressed and concentrated into a moment of fictitious courage, for he unerringly reasoned that they had left the drawing-room window open, and that perhaps in a few moments now they would have finished their meal ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... windows, which overlooked a paved court, he threw himself into a chair, and strained his gaze in search of the wrecked pleasure-craft, to which one other figure clung with the might of desperation. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... him, down to the very silver buttons of his cloak, and sent him to graze with Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. Muckle honour redounded to your lordship thereby.—We were tauld the loon threw himsell into the Thames in a fit of desperation. There's enow of them behind—there was ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... lady. Let Mamma go anywhere, provided that I can go where I like. My torture has no bounds, I am dying of it every instant. Do you want a proof of my despair? There are times when I hope to marry A—— and be something at Nice with P——; that gives the measure of my discouragement, my desperation. ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... into confusion and distraction; the man, in the utmost terror, fright, and distress, ran away with what goods he could get off, as if the house were on fire, to get into the Friars[14] or the Mint; the family fled, one one way, and one another, like people in desperation; the wife to her father and mother, if she had any, and the children, some to one relation, some to another. A statute (so they vulgarly call a commission of bankrupt) came and swept away all, and oftentimes consumed it too, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... temper of these little captives, there are heroic differences of opinion. Mr. Ford records the "implacable desperation" of a juvenile which was brought to the Mission. It was taken very young, and kept four months, and many means were used to tame it; but it was so incorrigible, that it bit me an hour before it died." Yet, in face of this and other evidence, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of Turin procured a number of troops and sent against them; but in most of the skirmishes and engagements the Waldenses were successful, which partly arose from their being better acquainted with the passes of the valleys of Piedmont than their adversaries, and partly from the desperation with which they fought; for they well knew, if they were taken, they should not be considered as prisoners of war, but tortured ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... afraid it is not so much courtesy as it is desperation, for if I should act in accordance with my feelings, I should blow my brains out without any delay," said Captain Dinsmore. "I should not say as much as this to any but a generous enemy; but I feel that I am ruined, and that there is nothing more ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... fell before his axe, whether it was fine-leaved and short-thorned, or rough and spiny; and the cattle ate them all. Mesquite and cat-claw and ironwood, tough as woven wire and barbed at every joint, these were all that were left except cactus and the armored sahuaros. In desperation he piled brush beneath clumps of fuzzy chollas, the thorniest cactus that grows, and burned off the resinous spines; but the silky bundles of stickers still lurked beneath the ashes, and the cattle that ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... ensuing eve, Lothair and Theodore, disguised as huntsmen of Charolois, would contrive to meet in safety beneath her window, and for the rest she must dare to descend. It was a bold, a very perilous plan. It was the project of desperation. But there are moments in life when desperation becomes success. Nor was the spirit of the Lady Imogene one that would easily quail. Hers was a true woman's heart; and she could venture everything for love. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... Learn from her life, a living truth. Learn from the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born. See every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the fairest stem, and know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To desperation!' ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... Josephine that her husband had landed at Frejus, and would shortly be with her, she was in a state bordering on panic. She shrank from facing his anger; from the revelation of debts and unwifely conduct which was inevitable. Her all was at stake and the game was more than half lost. In her desperation she took her courage in both hands and set forth, as fast as horses could take her, to meet Napoleon, that she might at least have the first word with him; but as ill-luck would have it, he travelled by a different route and she ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... soldiers asked for water from the inhabitants, the latter had to take a drink first. "Before tasting the water both man and wife had to drink first, and as this scene was repeated on innumerable occasions, it was delightful to observe the comic desperation with which the people took their ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... was all right," shouted Jane. "Don't you suppose she knows how to—Dear me! what's the use of trying to talk here?" She fell on the mantel-piece and dusted its vases in silent desperation. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... desperation,—for the King's hired foreign soldiers were now ravaging the country,—the barons dispatched a messenger to John's sworn enemy, Philip, King of France. They invited him to send over his son, Prince ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... heard Nicholas draw a slow venomous breath; and the talk died on Mary's lips. Beatrice stood up abruptly, in desperation; she did not know what to say; but the movement checked Nicholas, and he glanced at her a moment. Then Mary recovered herself, put her hand sharply on her husband's, and slid out an indifferent sentence. Beatrice saw Ralph's eyes move swiftly and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... "Here!" exclaimed Grace, in desperation. "Have a candy—do—two of them. But don't cry. She reminds me of the twins," she added, with just the suspicion of moisture in her own eyes. The lost child gravely accepted two chocolates, one in each hand, and at once proceeded to get about as much on the outside of her face as went in her mouth. ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... a more furious combat than that between the hostile brothers. Each was exasperated to bitter hatred of the other, and they fought with a violence and desperation that could end only in the death of one of the combatants. As it proved, the curse of OEdipus was in the keeping of the gods, and both fell dead,—the fate for which their aged father had prayed. But the duel had decided nothing, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... youthful, elated desperation had a tidal recurrence. She could dare anything that lay before her sooner than she could choose to go backward, into humiliation; and it was even soothing to think that there would now be as much ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... In her desperation, she tried to hold old Mr. Thorpe responsible for the fresh canker that gnawed at her soul. But for that encounter in his library, she might have proceeded with confidence instead of the uneasiness that now ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... undiluted agony, all the shame and suffering of the past months swept over him once more, concentrated in a last supreme moment. And, as though this were not enough, while he still wrenched at his neck, tearing his shirt-collar in his desperation, her face rose before him—but not the face he had known and loved. He saw it as he had seen it for the last time, disfigured by hatred of him, horribly vindictive, as it had been when she spat on the ground at his feet. This vision gave him an unlooked-for ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... were crowded with people, and a riot broke out, and oh! such lamentations, such wails!—and finally the people became desperate, and roared and yelled that the government should make peace, and prevent the French from corning to Vienna and bombarding the city; and in their desperation they grew quite bold and brave, and thousands of them marched to the house of Minister Thugut, whom they call the real emperor of Vienna, and tried to compel him to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... desperation I went out to the man. He addressed me in husky tones, and said that he desired to express his deep sympathy with me in my affliction, also that he was 'a member of the Fourth Estate.' Seven years ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... desperation again I aimed, and fired when Jana was not more than thirty feet away. This time the bullet must have gone wide to the left, for I saw a chip fly from the end of the animal's broken and deformed tusk, which stuck out in that direction several feet clear ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... you possessed a yearly income of two hundred thousand pounds, you suffered your only son to be educated on the charity of your injured brother, your sordid love of gold rendering you indifferent to the wants of your motherless child. Destitute of a home without money, and driven to desperation by an act of imprudence, which my compassion for the son of that generous uncle urged me in an unguarded hour to commit, I seek you in my dire necessity to ask the loan of a small sum, to save me from utter ruin. This you refuse. I now ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... painfully conscious that the time for sending samples had more than expired, and that the people in Spain might reasonably expect some of the actual riches of which there had been so many specimens and promises. In something approaching desperation, he decided to fill the empty holds of the ships with something which, if it was not actual money, could at least be made to realise money. From their sunny dreaming life on the island five hundred natives were taken and lodged in the dark holds of the caravels, to be sent to ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... hard upon him,") whispered Ursula, in a parenthesis, afraid that this irony should drive the pupil to desperation. ("Hard upon him! he will never find it out,") Phoebe whispered back in the ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the men stood aghast, helpless and despairing, waiting a terrible death. Then a woman with a vision of blood and moans, dying men and ravished women before her, with a courage born of desperation and a wit sharpened with intense fear, boldly stepped to the window ledge, and in the glare of bursting flames and the sound of dying groans "cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... 'In desperation I acted upon her advice, and resigned my parish work. It seemed to me that I was parting with the last shred of my happiness when I did so. I made weak health my excuse, and indeed I was far from well; but I had the anguish ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... animosities of a more distant city, compromised his independence by accepting the captaincy or lieutenancy of communes hostile to his natural enemies, and thus became the servant or ally of a Republic. In his desperation he emancipated his serfs, and so the folk of the Contado profited by the dissensions of the cities and their feudal masters. This new phase of republican evolution lasted over a long and ill-defined period, assuming different ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Ree and the latter nodded for him to go ahead. In another minute then, a match, the closeness and desperation of which delighted the savages beyond ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... in his agony to the boy, who was struggling up, half stunned, from where he lay between the thwarts; and in his desperation Mike did do something, for, as Daygo put out all his strength, tore Vince's clinging hands from his jersey, and hurled him right out from the boat, Mike seized the old ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... affliction or pain, would have imagined him capable of rejecting in disdain all the minor chances of present security and future prosperity which his unbounded power and wealth might have procured for him, even in a famine-stricken city, and rising suddenly to the sublime of criminal desperation, in the resolution to abandon life as worthless the moment it had ceased to run in the easy current of all former years? Yet to this determination had he now arrived; and, still more extraordinary, in this determination had he found others, of his own patrician ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... before him, and he cursed himself for his blind follies. He just missed a train at Chiswick station, and in desperation he took a cab to Gunnersbury and caught a Mansion House train. He got out at St. James' Park, and pulling his coat collar up he hastened across to Pall Mall. He chose the shortest cut to Jermyn street, and on the north side of St. James' Square, in the shadow ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... said Bones at last in desperation, "go to the storeman, and let him bring all the paints he has so that I may show Bosambo a ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... lava bed. Drawing his revolver, he fired signal shots from where he stood. It could not be far, he knew, from the junction of the two great desert trails—the Calabasas road and the Gap road. He felt sure Nan could not have got much north of this, for he had ridden in desperation to get abreast of or beyond her, and if she were south, where, he asked, in the name of God, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... be so doubtful? You said you'd make me love you, and you've done it. Will you believe me now?" And, with a sort of desperation, she threw herself into his arms, clinging there in eloquent silence while he held her close; feeling, with a thrill of tender triumph, that this was no longer little Rose, but a loving woman, ready to live ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... long, and sharp, reminding one in a disagreeable way of the fangs of an animal of prey; the lips, a rich scarlet, were too thin, and tightly drawn for a judge of faces to admire; the chin was clear-cut and firm—a face on the whole, I decided, that might drive a man, snared by its beauty, to desperation. There was passion and power both ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... as we approached Lu Ting Ch'iao, and that meant a long evening cooped up in a noisy, ill-smelling inn, so in desperation I took refuge under a large tree just outside the town where bushes screened me from the passers on the road. My men had long since made up their minds that I was rather mad, so they left me in peace, only posting one of the soldiers in a temple near by to keep watch and ward; but there ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... pall of darkness, he fought with infernal desperation. The rain came fiercely in great gusts of tearing wind. There was the strength of a madman to-night in Carl's powerful arms. Relentlessly he bore his assailant to the ground and raised his knife. The lightning flared brilliantly again. With a great, choking cry of unutterable horror, Carl fell back ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... he becomes at last an instrument in the hand of God, a humble Paul, the great preacher, Peter Williams, who, though he considers himself a reprobate and a castaway, instead of having recourse to drinking in mad desperation, as many do who consider themselves reprobates, goes about Wales and England preaching the word of God, dilating on his power and majesty, and visiting the sick and afflicted, until God sees fit to restore to him his peace of mind; which he does not do, however, until that mind is in a ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... is capable of any act of desperation to save his wife and himself, and Citizen Chauvelin must not ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... bread-and-water as you could surrounded by all your luxuries, but for the sake of my child, who, at that time, was almost starving, for I had to bestow all the pittance I could scrape together to procure it a nurse and a lodging. It was Flavio induced me to steal the lace. I did so in a moment of desperation, when I fully believed he would have murdered me if I had refused to obey him. I had it by me so long; for, in the first instance, I did not venture to offer it for sale; and latterly, I thought it would be difficult to procure the full price. At last I heard that you were searching ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other Picture, and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colours, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam? With all his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdroeckh desperation enough for this. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... line struggled past—tired, hopeless, bewildered, idiotic and thoughtless to the last. Then some half dead Eciton straggled from the circle along the beach, and threw the line behind him into confusion. The desperation of total exhaustion had accomplished what necessity and opportunity and normal life could not. Several others followed his scent instead of that leading back toward the outhouse, and as an amoeba gradually flows into one of its own pseudopodia, so the forlorn hope of the great Eciton army passed ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... and the truth of the awful manner in which Pomponio had accomplished his evasion disclosed. Stupefied, the commandant and his men gazed at, the traces of the deed, the pools of half-dried dark blood and the two pieces of bone, eloquent of the fortitude he must have possessed, the desperation he was in, to perpetrate such ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... between me and you goes on. At present, you see, they don't know but what it may be a temp'ry thing as'll soon blow over; but if they finds that you've got a sort of spite again' me, and are always down upon me and drivin' me to desperation, as you may say, they'll be pretty certain to have a try to get me over on their side. You see, sir, I'm about as strong as e'er a man aboard here, and if them chaps are up to mischief they'll nat'rally prefer to have me with 'em ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... can tell how by appeals, as well as by charging of sin, to sink and drown the sinner whose soul he has leave to engage. Suppose, therefore, that some distressed man or woman should after this way be engaged, and Satan should with his interrogatories and appeals be busy with them, to drive them to desperation; the text last mentioned, Eph. 3: 18,19, to say nothing of the subject of our discourse, yields plenty of help for the relief of such a one. Says Satan, Dost thou not know that thou hast horribly sinned? Yes, says the soul, I do. Says Satan, Dost thou not know that thou art one of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... wink at it," replied his foe. "Still further," continued the warlike mountaineer in sheer desperation, "you must not even ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... was kneeling by the hearth where she had just set a saucer of milk. With one hand she was loosening very gently from her shoulder the claws of Minny, the cat, who clung to her breast, scrambling, with the passion and desperation of his kind. Her other hand restrained with a soft caressing movement Joey's approaches to the saucer. Joey, though trembling with excitement, sat fascinated, obedient to her gesture. Joey was puny and hairless as ever, but in ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... implore you!" Landless cried in desperation. "You cannot save me, you cannot help me. It is you that would make the bitterness of my fate. Let me die believing that you have escaped these fiends, and then, do what they will to me, I shall die happy, blessing with my last breath the generous woman who lets me give—how ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... In the courage of desperation Fred promptly decided that he would ignore the Scammon rascal. Nor did Fred change his mind. Besides, this afternoon he was due at Duxbridge for his first ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... back at half-past ten—"Just in time," said Mr. Stevens, "to look in at a roof-garden before we go to bed." So we "looked," and it sure was worth a passing glance, and then some. It's one o'clock in the morning now, and I sail at nine, so I'm writing at this hour in desperation, or you won't get ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... neck, who set out for the Holy Land. On reaching Spain, he found the King of Castile engaged in war with the Moors, and thinking any contest with Saracens consistent with his vows, he joined the Spaniards against the Moors. But being overpowered by the enemy's horsemen, in desperation he took the heart from his neck, and threw it before him, shouting aloud, "Pass on as thou wert wont, I will follow or die." He was almost immediately struck down, and under his body was found the heart of Bruce, which was intrusted to the charge of Sir Simon Locard of Lee, who conveyed ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... then I might have made shift to do with ye, but the fact is we've illness in the house, and I'm fair at my wits' end. It breaks my heart to turn gentlemen away and me that keen to get the business started. But there it is!" He spat vigorously as if to emphasize the desperation of his quandary. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... than she suffered from pain. There was the dark shadow of her life. You may be sure that a lover was often compelled to part with a nice little heap of crowns in order to pass the night with her, and was reduced to desperation by a refusal. Now for her it was a joyful thing to feel a youthful desire, like that she had for the little priest, whose story commences this collection; but because she was older than in those merry days, love was more fully established in her, and she soon perceived ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... to the town in a state of desperation, and went at once to the Courts of Justice to denounce the two knaves who had ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... world is familiar with the name of the Abbe Geoffroy of satirical memory, who drove the most popular actors and authors of the time to desperation. This pitiless Aristarchus must have been most ardently enamored of this disagreeable profession; for he sometimes endangered thereby, not his life, which many persons would have desired earnestly perhaps, but at any rate his health and his repose. It is well, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... founded their hopes of escape probably on the chance of a breeze springing up, of which there were already some signs, while our aim was to get on board before the wind filled her sails. The rebels fought with desperation, and never relaxed their fire till we were alongside. Two or three of our men had been struck. One lost the side of his face by a round-shot which shaved him more cleanly than he would have wished, and spoilt his beauty for life. With loud shouts and cries ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... is pressing, the harvest will be good, if present indications continue. Rye is the principal crop and this is harvested about July 12th. I think, however, Germany can last, and in very desperation may try a great offensive which may break the French lines and change the whole position. The people here, although tired of war, are well disciplined and will see ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... rumour went round that the Ballance Ministry meant to abolish the Property Tax and bring forward Bills embodying a Progressive Land Tax, and Progressive Income Tax, the proposal was thought to represent the audacity of impudence or desperation. When the rumour proved true, it was predicted that the farmers throughout the length and breath of the country would rise in wrath and terror, scared by the very name of Land Tax. Nevertheless Parliament passed the Bills, with the addition of a light Absentee Tax. The ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... those dreams. And very soon must come the end of all. Barely two weeks remained to her in the Park,—barely two weeks in which the miracle that she awaited could be wrought. What miracle could move him when her love had failed? And yet—Once, in her desperation, she suggested to Claire and Seth that she should remain all winter in the Park; but they rose up together against any such scheme. It was absurd, they agreed. They would be delighted to have her with them ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... friendship, were so soon to be engaged in deadly strife? and that that capital, where so many great potentates came to honor Napoleon, should, in a year or two, know him no more, and even struggle with all the energy of desperation to obliterate every vestige of the improvements with which he had so enriched and beautified the city? This was the world; for the world is insincere. This was the world; for the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... can inflict. I have nothing to thank this demon for, beyond a few fleeting—oh, how fleeting—hours of false delight. He has wrought only woe and loss to me. Even now, as I sit here in the stillness of desperation, afraid of I know not what, trembling with a strange dread of some impending doom, gazing in fright backward along the shores of the years whereon I see the wrecks of a thousand hopes, the destruction of every noble aspiration, the ruin of every ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... "Impossible!" said the Generals with one voice, after trying it for a couple of months. "Try it one other ten days," said the Kaiser with a gloomy fixity; "let us all die, or else do it!" They tried, with double desperation, another ten days; cannon booming through the winter midnight far and wide, four score miles round: "Cannot be done, your Majesty! Cannot,—the winter and the mud, and Guise and the walls; man's strength ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... a deed. Hudson had been seen lurking about, and it was believed by the police that he had done away with Beddoes and had fled. For myself I believe that the truth was exactly the opposite. I think that it is most probable that Beddoes, pushed to desperation and believing himself to have been already betrayed, had revenged himself upon Hudson, and had fled from the country with as much money as he could lay his hands on. Those are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... what bitterness of mind, did I blame even Thee for my shame, accusing Thee in my madness! Full often did I repeat the lament of St. Anthony: "Kindly Jesus, where wert Thou?" The sorrow that tortured me, the shame that overwhelmed me, the desperation that wracked my mind, all these I could then feel, but even now I can find no words to express them. Comparing these new sufferings of my soul with those I had formerly endured in my body, it seemed that I was in very truth the most miserable among men. Indeed that earlier betrayal had become a little ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... understood the order, and those who did would not obey. The Mexican soldiers, who stood at about three paces from us, levelled their muskets at our breasts. Even then we could hardly believe that they meant to shoot us; for if we had, we should assuredly have rushed forward in our desperation, and, weaponless though we were, some of our murderers would have met their death at our hands. Only one of our number was well acquainted with Spanish, and even he seemed as if he could not comprehend the order ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... waiter and a breathless pack of local worthies. I saw it outdistancing them all, dodging past coast-guards, doubling on its tracks, leaping breakwaters, unluckily injuring itself, losing speed, and at last, in a splendor of desperation, taking to the open sea. But suddenly I had another idea. Perhaps ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... course, but the condition of the peasants without land was even worse than if they had remained serfs. Excessive taxation, heavy redemption charges, famine, crop failures, and other ills drove the people to desperation. Large numbers of students espoused the cause of the peasants and a new popular literature appeared in which the sufferings of the people were portrayed with fervor and passion. In 1868-69 there were numerous demonstrations and riots ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... such a measure would only urge to desperation a girl of Zura's temperament and that, to my mind, people could not be made good ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... of none: there was no other that might be termed a plan. We might gallop forward, and openly attack the camp? Sheer desperation alone could impel us to such a course, and the result would be ruin to all—to her among the rest. We could not hope to rescue her—nine to a hundred—for we saw and could now count our dusky foemen. They would see us ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... matter. Then, indeed, did Hadrian send against them his best generals, of who Julius Severus was the first to be despatched, from Britain, of which he was governor, against the Jews. He did not venture to attack his opponents at any one point, seeing their numbers and their desperation, but by taking them in separate groups by means of the number of his soldiers and his under-officers and by depriving them of food and shutting them up he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... Philadelphia or Washington have come here and fought Indians and Mexicans; and been driven about from pillar to post, living on potatoes and dry corn? Good respectable people suffer a great deal of tyranny ere they put their property in danger. But when Texas, in her desperation, rose, she was glad of the men with a brand on their body and a rope round their neck, and who did not value their lives more than an empty nut-shell. They did good service. Many of them won back fair names ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... eventually to consummate the ruin of a man he hated; a circumstance which, if it could have come to his knowledge, would perhaps have in some measure consoled him for his untimely end. This poor Hawkins was surely entitled to some pity, since his being finally urged to desperation, and brought, together with his son, to an ignominious fate, was originally owing to the sturdiness of his virtue and independence. But the compassion of the public was in a great measure shut against him, as ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Judges on his side. I am more afraid of the debts than of the House of Lords. It is scarcely to be imagined to what debts will swell, that are daily increasing by small additions, and how carelessly in a state of desperation debts are contracted. Poor Macquarry was far from thinking that when he sold his islands he should receive nothing. For what were they sold? And what was their yearly value? The admission of money into the Highlands will soon put an end to the feudal modes ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... right. I promise." He flashed up a blue desperation of young eyes as he asked: "How ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was not the silence of daylight—struck upon Charles with dismay. "You fellows there!" he called out again, in desperation. "What's the good of ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood |
