"Despondence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that one short week. She stared at her reflection with a sudden interest, seeking for signs of age. Eight days ago she had possessed no friend in all the world; now, friends seemed to have sprung up around her miraculously, and all at the bidding of Don. From such lonely despondence as she had never known he had lifted her into a new and brighter world. She had seen the studio of the great Claude Chauvin; she was actually going to work there on three days of every week. On the other three she was to ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... annuity of fifty pounds which he enjoyed as poet-laureat to her majesty apparently his sole resource; and having taken up his melancholy abode in an obscure lodging in London, he pined away under the pressure of penury and despondence. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... roseate cells, Brightly the joyous stream shall flow, To balsam every mortal woe! None shall be then cast down or weak, For health and joy shall light each cheek; No heart will then desponding sigh, For wine shall bid despondence fly. Thus—till another autumn's glow Shall bid ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... positive certainty, of such a doom produced a scene of despondence—mingled with angry excitement on the part of those who called themselves "betrayed"—that it would be difficult to paint. Harsh revilings were freely used; and threats of throwing the delinquents ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... the other, cried, "Oh, Sir, we are all lost; not one of us can escape; and with all my skill it is not in my power to effect our deliverance." Having spoken thus, he lamented like a man who foresaw unavoidable ruin; his despondence threw the whole ship's crew into consternation. I asked him what reason he had thus to despair? He exclaimed, "The tempest has brought us so far out of our course, that to-morrow about noon we shall be near the black ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... he, who still renews The hope, from Error's deeps to rise forever! That which one does not know, one needs to use; And what one knows, one uses never. But let us not, by such despondence, so The fortune of this hour embitter! Mark how, beneath the evening sunlight's glow, The green-embosomed houses glitter! The glow retreats, done is the day of toil; It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring; Ah, that no ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Through despondence dread, Still support our tread; Though our heavy burdens bow us, How to bear them bravely, show us! Such adversity Is but the path ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... child of 14 summers, brought up by her old miserly grandfather, who gambled away all his money. Her days were monotonous and without youthful companionship, her evenings gloomy and solitary; there were no child-sympathies in her dreary home, but dejection, despondence akin to madness, watchfulness, suspicion, and imbecility. The grandfather being wholly ruined by gaming, the two went forth as beggars, and ultimately settled down in a cottage adjoining a country churchyard. Here Nell died, and the old grandfather soon afterwards ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... as they will of the pleasure that's found. When venting in verse our despondence and grief; But the pen of the poet was ne'er, I'll be bound, Half so pleasantly used as in signing a brief. In soft declarations, though rapture may lie, If the maid to appear to your suit willing be, But ah I could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Despondence seized him. To the lowliest place Alone he stole, and sadly took his seat In dust and ashes. She, his bosom friend The sharer of his lot for many years, Sought out his dark retreat. Shuddering she saw His kingly form like living sepulchre, And in the maddening haste of sorrow said ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... instead of an order from Bishop Laud for his seizure, he found a copy of the charter of Massachusetts, and letters from the governor and company, inviting him to embark with them for New England. The sudden transition of feeling from despondence to joy, may be better imagined ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... the thick china with a sort of aggrieved despondence. (It was almost the expression of a bereaved mother looking at one of her neighbor's children and thinking it a healthy, ugly brat whom nobody would have missed!) She stared at the bare walls and the bare tables of the restaurant, and found the place, by comparison ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain, Are mingled together like sunshine and rain; And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge, Still follow each ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... their ground as before. The combat lasted a whole day, and the slaughter of the enemy was terrible. Another day of combat followed, with like results, and the confidence of the Persian monarch was changed into despondence ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the Pandavas were not able to even look at Bhishma. And afflicted with fear, the Pandava host cast its eyes around, and not beholding any protector, looked like a herd of kine afflicted by cold. Slaughtered or retreating in despondence being crushed the while, loud cries, O Bharata, of oh and alas arose among the troops of the Pandavas. Then Bhishma the son of Santanu, with bow always drawn to a circle, shot therefrom blazing arrows that resembled virulent poison. And creating continuous lines ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... my sensations were, or the despondence of my mind, when I thus saw myself wandering alone, and leaving, forsaking, as it were, the dearest of friends. These may certainly be numbered among the bitterest moments of my life. Often was I ready to return, and drag him along with me, though at ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... indeed may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh; but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady directress, or intendant, or what you will, pitches on a gentleman and lady to walk a minuet; which they perform with a formality that approaches to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner from the aforesaid lady directress; so they dance much and say nothing, and thus concludes our assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... in literature, and considered himself to have met with a fatal rebuff from the reading world. His mind vacillated between various projects, verging, I think, toward a mercantile profession. I combated his despondence, and assured him of triumph if he would persevere in a literary career. He wrote numerous articles which appeared in 'The Token;' occasionally an astute critic seemed to see through them, and to discover the ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... undoubtedly embarrassed by personal enemies who controlled the Welsh vote, but the real cause of his defeat was military disasters, financial embarrassments, and the emancipation proclamation. "All our reverses, our despondence, our despairs," said Curtis, "bring us to the inevitable issue, shall not the blacks ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... adorned: she looked patient yet sad. I lost sight of her, and in about a quarter of an hour she returned bearing the pail, which was now partly filled with milk. As she walked along, seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose countenance expressed a deeper despondence. Uttering a few sounds with an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head and bore it to the cottage himself. She followed, and they disappeared. Presently I saw the young man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field behind the ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... courtyard, suffered Bertram to pause for a minute, and look upon his companions in affliction. When he had cast his eye around, on faces on which guilt, and despondence, and low excess, had fixed their stigma; upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the thief, the bankrupt debtor, the "moping idiot, and the madman gay," whom a paltry spirit of economy congregated to share this dismal habitation, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Aroused the black republic on his elms, Sweeping the frothfly from the fescue, brush'd Thro' the dim meadow toward his treasure-trove, Seized it, took home, and to my lady, who made A downward crescent of her minion mouth, Listless in all despondence, read; and tore, As if the living passion symbol'd there Were living nerves to feel the rent; and burnt, Now chafing at his own great self defied, Now striking on huge stumbling-blocks of scorn In babyisms, and ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... the surgeon with a fixed regard; his countenance changed; a torrent of tears gushed down his cheeks; his head sunk upon his bosom; he heaved a profound sigh, and remained in silence with all the external marks of unutterable sorrow. The company were, in some measure, infected by his despondence, concerning the cause of which, however, they would not ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... self-murder in his desperate hand—and yet, though he put his life in my power, though he told me I could preserve him, and told me he had no other reliance or resource, could I leave him to his dreadful despondence, refuse my assisting hand to raise him from perdition, and, to save what, after all, I am well able to spare, suffer a fellow-creature, who flung himself upon my mercy, to offer up his last accounts with an action blacker than any which had preceded it?—No, I cannot repent what I have ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... July 31st. That was now but a fortnight off, and Audrey, in a state of feverish nervousness, had completed her last clean copy. She had worked hard each afternoon, and conscientiously, only to be filled at the last with despair and despondence. She had read, re-read, written and re-written it, until she knew every word by heart, and all seemed stale, dull, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... persons, and both had noble countenances. But there was an air of manly confidence on the brow of the Scot—a radiancy of hope, which amounted even to cheerfulness; while, although pride and effort had recalled much of Conrade's natural courage, there lowered still on his brow a cloud of ominous despondence. Even his steed seemed to tread less lightly and blithely to the trumpet-sound than the noble Arab which was bestrode by Sir Kenneth; and the SPRUCH-SPRECHER shook his head while he observed that, while the challenger rode around the lists in the course of the sun—that is, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... hopes to be old, there seems to be a most unnatural Misunderstanding between those two Stages of Life. The unhappy Want of Commerce arises from the insolent Arrogance or Exultation in Youth, and the irrational Despondence or Self-pity in Age. A young Man whose Passion and Ambition is to be good and wise, and an old one who has no Inclination to be lewd or debauched, are quite unconcerned in this Speculation; but the Cocking young Fellow who treads upon the Toes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... blundering way, attempted to wrest power from the Directors, but proved unequal in prestige and ability to the task;—a more powerful and more subtle political craftsman was needed. Then in the gloom of the public {260} despondence three sudden flashes electrified the air, flash on flash. Massena, with the last army of the Republic, turning sharply right and left, beat the Austrians, destroyed Suvaroff in the mountains of Switzerland about Zurich. Before the excitement had subsided, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston |
