"Forlorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do? Nothing beyond throwing my stick in the hope of stunning the oojoobwa. It was a forlorn hope, but I did it; and it saved Egbert's life, though not in the way I had intended. The stick missed the snake and fell immediately in front of Egbert. It was enough. His grand intellect worked with the speed of lightning. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... of the Greeks. He had heard of them, As he had heard of his aspiring soul — Never to the perceptible advantage, In his esteem, of either. 'Faith,' he said, Or would have said if he had thought of it, 'Lives in the same house with Philosophy, Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn As orphans after war. He could see stars, On a clear night, but he had not an eye To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words, But had no ear for silence when alone. He could eat food of which he knew ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... in the hallway. We, uh, started talking ... sort of. She seemed, well ... worried about me. She got upset. Emotional. You know? I guess I looked pretty forlorn and frightened. I am ... I guess. When you get right down to it, ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... liable to founder at any moment; indeed the wonder to me was that she remained afloat so long, for she had by this time sunk so deep that her channels were completely buried, only showing when she rolled heavily away from us. Poor old barkie! what a desolate and forlorn object she looked as we pulled away from her, with little more than her bulwarks showing above water, with the seas making a clean breach over her bows continually, as she rolled and plunged with sickening sluggishness ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... instinct is strong, and surmounts all ordinary difficulties. No doubt the widowhood I had caused in the case of the woodpeckers was of short duration, and chance brought, or the widow drummed up, some forlorn male, who was not dismayed by the prospect of having a large family of half-grown birds on his hands at ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... so persuade you, hate in yourself the sins of vanity and wrath by which you are most easily beset. I have spoken on the topic more to alarm your own conscience than to express my opinion. I know as well as my father that, in these forlorn and desperate days, the whole customs of our nation, nay, of every Christian nation, may be quoted in favour of bloody quarrels for trifling causes, of the taking deadly and deep revenge for slight offences, and the slaughter of each other for emulation of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... but my appearance in the heart of the Cordilleras wet, forlorn looking and alone aroused his sympathy. After a difficult attempt at opening a conversation, the beautiful child I had met looking on all the time, I was given to understand that he desired me to ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... ragged and desolate than McGinty's, where smoke was rising sullenly from underground fires and the smell of burning wood filled the air, the ground turned up and dotted at intervals with piles of frozen gravel that had been hoisted from the shafts by windlass, forlorn little cabins and tents scattered indiscriminately, a vast number of empty bottles and cans sown broadcast, and, early as it was, a line of sluices upon ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... city of Europe in the early part of last century. But under Russian influence it became a provincial town in spirit, if not in size. It once had the character of prodigal splendor; within late years it became a forlorn, neglected city, not the least effort being made by the Russian authorities to modernize its appearance and improvement. From a sanitary point of view it became one of the least progressive cities of Europe. And yet, as the armies march into the capital, there are still signs ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... pathways raised on each side, with all sorts of faded tints—mellow, subdued reds, sombre greys, a patch of green here and there, and all more or less dingy, and "quite out of fashion." There is a rather forlorn tone over it all, especially when we have a glimpse of Ordnance Terrace, at Chatham, that abandoned, dilapidated row where the boy Dickens was brought up dismally enough. At that moment the images of the Pickwickians ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... him! Mr. Alwynn remembered a certain passage in his own youth, a long time ago, when somebody (a very foolish somebody, I think) would not have him either; and it was with that remembrance still in his mind that he met Dare, who had come as far as the lodge gates to meet him, and whose forlorn appearance touched Mr. Alwynn's heart the moment ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... one's own field superior is far more effective than reducing other people's fields to inferiority. If you cultivate your own garden and grow a specially large cabbage, people will probably come to see it. Whereas the life of one selling small cabbages round the whole district is often forlorn. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... this worn, forlorn old Field of Play, Whose Green-keepers in turn are Night and Day, How Champion after Champion with his Pomp Abode his destin'd ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... and who always put away all suggestions of death from him whenever it was possible. It was very disagreeable to him to have to look at eight coffins,—and still more disagreeable to see eight weeping widows surrounded by forlorn and fatherless children—and he gabbled over the funeral service as quickly as he could, keeping his eyes well on the book lest he should see some sobbing child looking at him, or some woman dropping in a dead faint before he had time to finish. He was afraid of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Besides, a luminous world would not do me one bit of good. I want—-" she stopped abruptly with something like a low sob. "There, there," she resumed hastily dashing away a few tears. "I have occupied your thoughts too long with my forlorn little self. I did not mean to show this weakness, but have been betrayed into doing os, I think, because you impressed me as being honest, and I thought that perhaps—perhaps your man's reason might have thought of some argument or probably conjecture relating to the subject that, for causes ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the port only as forlorn and insignificant. It did not matter. One consolation remained: he would never see ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... A low hot wind began to rise, and fan his cheek with pestiferous kisses, and enervate his frame with its poisonous embrace. His head and limbs ached with a dull sensation, more terrible than pain; his sight was dizzy, his tongue swollen. Vainly he looked around for aid; vainly he extended his forlorn arms, and wrung them to the remorseless heaven, almost frantic with thirst. The boundless horizon of the desert disappeared, and the unhappy victim, in the midst of his torture, found himself apparently ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... you so," said he, like a lad in a nightmare, his hair standing on end; and then in he sprang, with the forlorn hope of bringing her out. Ah! there was a dark story told of the victim once sucked ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn; While on my ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... it fell. I happened along that way two or three days after the tornado, when I saw a remnant of the swarm, those, doubtless, that escaped the flood and those that were away when the disaster came, hanging in a small black mass to a branch high up near where their home used to be. They looked forlorn enough. If the queen was saved, the remnant probably sought another tree; otherwise ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... up to line Fifth Avenue and help cheer the visiting King of the Belgians. So had such of the rest of Our Square as were not at work. The place was practically deserted. Nevertheless, Plooie prowled about, uttering his cracked and lugubrious cry in the forlorn hope of picking up a parapluie to raccommode. I was one of the few left to hear him, because Mendel, the jeweler, had most inconsiderately gone to view royalty, leaving my unrepaired glasses locked in his shop; otherwise I, too, would have been on the Fifth Avenue ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in England and France, cost Italy the flower of her youth. The Italian Army was continually on the offensive during those months against the strongest natural defences to be found in any of the theatres of war. On countless occasions Italian heroes went forth on forlorn hopes to scale and capture impossible precipices, and sometimes they succeeded. Through that bloody series of offensives the Italians slowly but steadily gained ground, and drew ever nearer to Trento and Trieste. Only those who went out ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... himself on the way. He actually protects himself from evil, and brings courage not only to himself, but to those who hear him. I do not hold for false cheerfulness that is sometimes affected, but a brave show of courage in a forlorn hope will sometimes win the day. It is infinitely more likely to win than a too serious realization of the danger of defeat. The show of courage is often not a pretense at ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... long," added Sam, who did not relish being left alone in such a forlorn looking spot, and in the intense darkness which had now settled ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some starved fragment of ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in the erection of these forlorn dwellings. But, in the present case, such a kind of shelter had been disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended. The only reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... passing shortly after into the hands of the Sidney family, with whom it has remained ever since. Of the Sidneys, one only is known wherever the English language is spoken—the gallant young knight, Sir Philip, who, when still below the age of thirty, lost his life while fighting for a forlorn cause in the Netherlands. Of all the brilliant array of statesmen, soldiers and writers who graced the reign of Queen Elizabeth, none gave greater promise than did young Sidney. Nothing is more characteristic of him than the oft-told ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... But some can lift it, to behold a far different, a far more stirring vision, and to such the deeper causes of the Terror are revealed. For they behold a vast multitude, stained with care, haggard, forlorn, striving, dying, toiling even to their death, that the passing whim of a tyrant may be gratified. Louis commanded; Versailles arose, a palace of rare delight for princes and nobles, for wits and courtly prelates, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... speeches were abhorrent to her. Sometimes the woman took offence at her for being high; at others, she forced on her advice upon her dress, or tried to draw out confidences either on lovers or the affairs of the family. Charlotte was sadly forlorn, and shut herself up in her pantry, or in her own little attic with Jane's verbenas which cook had banished from the kitchen, and lost her sorrows in books hired at the library. She read, and dreamt, created leisure for reading, lived ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... part of him there. Come with me, poor forlorn little one. Heaven is my witness," said the Englishman, in a low voice, as, before he rose, he touched the turf above the gentle Corporal's breast, "that ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... reels, Tortured in life's budding springtime, toiling on with stifled cries, Seeing, through its tears refracted, rippling cascades, azure skies; Skies and birds and flowery meadows made for children wealthy-born, While God's outcasts, with their parents, robbed and drudging, live forlorn, Men in whom the fires of hope have sunk into a sordid spark, Mothers rearing helpless infants ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... best pleasures for relief, My heart, still sickening back to you, Finds none like memory of its grief; And, though 'twere very hell to hear You felt such misery as I, All good, save you, were far less dear! Than is that ill with which I die Where'er I go, wandering forlorn, You are the world's love, life, and glee: Oh, wretchedness not to be borne If she that's Love ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... superb canopy we rode for a couple of hours to our journey's end. The mountains round about us dark, lonely, and sad; the landscape as we saw it at night (it is not more cheerful in the daytime), the most solemn and forlorn I have ever seen. The feelings of almost terror with which, riding through the night, we approached this awful place, the centre of the world's past and future history, have no need to be noted down here. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... worlds are hidden in the lap of Night, sightless, forlorn wanderers. They move in darkness, unseeing and unseen, though smitten by the rays of ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... fleeting, wav'ring sprite, Friend and associate of this clay! To what unknown region borne, Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more, with wonted humour gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.' p. 72. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... weft of aerial vapour, that showed a delicate blue against the rose-flushed west. The long lines of leafless trees, the faint outlines of the low distant hills, seemed wrapped in meditative silence, dreaming wistfully, as the earth turned her broad shoulder to the night, and as the forlorn and chilly sunset faded by soft degrees on the horizon. As the day thus died, the frost made itself felt, touching the hedgerows with rime, and crisping the damp road beneath my feet. The end drew on with a mournful solemnity; but the death of the light seemed ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... comprehensive one, and includes all sects and parties—is very easily summed up. I have faith, and I wish to diffuse faith in the existence—yes, of beautiful things, even in those conditions of society, which are so degenerate, degraded, and forlorn, that, at first sight, it would seem as though they could not be described but by a strange and terrible reversal of the words of Scripture, "God said, Let there be light, and there was none." I take it that we are born, and that we hold our sympathies, hopes, and energies, in trust for the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... they came to the place where the seven Princesses sat crying and wringing their hands. At the sight of them the young Princes were very much astonished, and still more so on learning their story; and they settled that each should take one of these poor forlorn ladies home with ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... called upon either to overthrow white-headed Bob of the ring, or long-headed Bob of the administration; and at Basingstoke we suddenly found ourselves, bag and baggage, wife, maids, and children, standing in a forlorn and disconsolate manner, at the door of the station-house; while the train pursued its course, and had already disappeared like a dream, or rather like a nightmare. There were at least half-a-dozen little carriages, each with one horse; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... choke in his throat, bent down to her hand, and kissed it; then shouldered his rod, and marched away. Looking back once, he saw her still sitting there, gazing after him, forlorn, by that great stone. It seemed to him, then, there was nowhere he could go; nowhere except among the birds and beasts and trees, who did not mind even if you were all mixed up and horrible inside. He lay down in the grass on the bank. He could see the tiny trout moving ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... behind him. The little forlorn sound hurt him, but it pleased him, too. So he could hurt her, if only by rudeness? Well, that was a satisfaction. "Shut the door," he ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... Spaniards would certainly die unless soon rescued; still Ovando said he was sorry, but did not offer to send relief. Instead, scoundrel that he was, he did send a small caravel, very small indeed, so that it could not accommodate the forlorn men, and could not carry them any provisions. The captain, one of Roldan's rebels, was carefully instructed merely to see if Columbus and his shipmates were still alive, and then to come back and report. The Roldan rebel ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... earlier she had appeared back from one of her desultory rambles, accompanied by this most forlorn of all forlorn dogs, explaining that she had met him on the road, and he had ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... leavest forlorn, Oh, he shall come to shade my brother's grave with moss, To plant what thou didst love—the mystic cross, To hope, ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... Bessie, forlorn and unhappy, helped in the work of packing, and longed for someone to talk to. She didn't want to tell Zara, who had troubles enough of her own to worry her, and Eleanor, of course, was too busy, with all the work of seeing that everything was done properly. She ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... of Sheol, anguish-torn, I've hurtled Beauty to a State forlorn, Beauty the Curse, - yet if a Curse it be, With ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... mother in the world. When her little ones are four or five days old, she leaves them unprotected in their nest, and scampers away to enjoy herself, returning once or twice, perhaps, to nurse her forlorn babies, and then leaving them to shift for themselves. Many little ones, thus neglected, die of cold and hunger, or are swooped up by hawks and owls. It is a strange fact that the mother hare makes no attempt to protect ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... would understand, Polly, that just having things does not necessarily make one happy; I often think it must be nicer to be poor and to have to help like you and Mollie do. This afternoon I was feeling quite forlorn myself, as I had a kind of headache and no one came to see me, and then just like magic from out our haunted chamber there appeared well, I can hardly call her a good fairy, she was too homely, but at least ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... and she floated away on the first of the ebb; and as she moved, her main-sail, unbrailed, spread itself out and became a vast pinion. Like a dream of happiness she lessened and faded, and Lousey Hard was as lonely and forlorn as ever. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... fierce and hungry. Sammy Jay nearly fell from his perch. He opened his mouth to scream with fright. Then he remembered just in time and closed it without a sound. It was the hunting-cry of Hooty the Owl. Sammy Jay sat huddled in a little, forlorn, shivering heap, while twice more that fierce cry rang through the Green Forest. Then a shadow floated over the big pine-tree. Hooty the Owl had flown away without seeing him, and ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... else will tell you differently, soon," said Marian, "for I'll never give my consent to that arrangement. However, I'd just as lieve walk out there, if only to convince you what a forlorn old place it is." ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... bright fancies had all fled, and his heart was suddenly very heavy. He looked back across the sea toward Hastings, longingly, and thus verified the skipper's prediction. If Uncle Richard had only been there to greet him, he thought, chokingly, it would not have mattered so much, but now, it was all forlorn and dreary enough. ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... can behold such beauty, and be silent? Desire first taught us words. Man, when created, At first alone long wander'd up and down Forlorn and silent as his vassal beasts: But when a heav'n-born maid, like you, appear'd, Strange pleasures fill'd his eyes and fir'd his heart, Unloos'd his tongue, and his first talk ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... cried Lucile, surveying the scene with delight. "I'd begun to be rather disgusted with London this morning, everything looked so dreary and forlorn. I wonder what can be keeping Dad and Mother," she added, turning to the hotel entrance, while her foot tapped impatiently. "They said they'd be with us right away—oh, here they are! Speaking ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... the noble pageant of our life; The burning seal that stamps man's high indenture To vain attempt and most forlorn adventure; Romance and purple seas, and toppling towns, And the wind's valiance crying o'er ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... presence beside her, upon the feeling of William Ashe was both sharp and deep, for they seemed already to imply a peculiar relation, a special link between them. Had it not, indeed, begun in that very moment at St. James's Place when he had first caught sight of her, sitting forlorn in her white dress?—when she had "willed" him to come to her, and he came? Surely—though as to this he had his qualms—she could not have spoken with this abandonment to any other of her new English acquaintances? To Darrell, for instance, who was expected at Grosville ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of frowsy humanity that had just been released from overpacked emigrant boarding-houses poured up it. There were apparently representatives of all peoples and languages among that unkempt horde—Britons, Scandinavians, Teutons, Italians, Russians, Poles—and they moved on in forlorn apathy, like cattle driven to the slaughter. One wondered, from the look of them, how they had raised their passage money, and how many years' bitter self-denial it had cost them to provide for their transit ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... means of saving the Juno, and had since risked her life on the ice. Every one could see by a glance at her that she must have a remarkable character; but as to her uncommon beauty there prevailed different opinions in feminine circles. It was, at all events, a pity that she was so forlorn; and the Becks, it was thought, were now morally ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... him fit for command. He picked out the best officers with a sure eye: generals and colonels, like Carleton; captains; like Delaune, a man made for the campaigns in Canada, who, as we shall see later, led the 'Forlorn Hope' up the Heights of Abraham. Wolfe had also noted in a third member of the great Howe family a born leader of light infantry for Quebec. Wolfe was very strong on light infantry, and trained them to make sudden dashes with a very short but sharp surprise ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... they mainly addressed their exertions was the education of emigrant children whose fathers had perished in the convulsions of their country, or who were unable to obtain instruction for them. The forlorn situation of these friendless children, in a country with whose language they were unacquainted, had attracted the notice of Mr. Burke, with whom the project originated, and who applied to Government ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; the more so, because our forlorn condition evidently gave a new zest to the enjoyment of our friends, and stimulated them to increased vigor in their aquatic flirtations. Alone, unintroduced, melancholy, and a little sheepish, we hired ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... dry moat before the town walls. The English regiments during these operations bore the brunt of the fighting and lost heavily, Colonels Harwood and the Earl of Oxford being killed and Colonel Morgan dangerously wounded. After exploding a mine, a forlorn hope of fifty English troops rushed out from one of the tunnels and made good their footing upon the ramparts. Others followed, and the garrison, fearing that further resistance might entail the sacking of the town, surrendered (August 23) with ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... This is the maiden all forlorn, That milk'd the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That kill'd the rat, That ate the malt, That lay in the ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... from the effects of two cups of wine that he had taken. Had it been in past days, he would have now had Hsi Jen and her companions with him, and with all their good cheer and laughter, he would have been enjoying himself. But here was he, on this occasion, dull and forlorn, a solitary being, gazing at the lamp with an absolute lack of pleasure. By and by he felt a certain wish to go after them, but dreading that if they carried their point, they would, in the future, come and tender advice still more immoderate, and that, were he to put on the airs of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... especially verse. But she did not and could not read enough. Of the shelf-ful of books which in thirty years had drifted by one accident or another into the Lessways household, she had read every volume, except Cruden's Concordance. A heterogeneous and forlorn assemblage! Lavater's Physiognomy, in a translation and in full calf! Thomson's Seasons, which had thrilled her by its romantic beauty! Mrs. Henry Wood's Danesbury House, and one or two novels by Charlotte ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... providing due supervision and police regulation for the Gipsies, with compulsory education for their children, we readily dedicate these local illustrations to the furtherance of his good work. The ugliest place we know in the neighbourhood of London, the most dismal and forlorn, is not Hackney Marshes, or those of the Lea, beyond Old Ford, at the East-end; but it is the tract of land, half torn up for brick-field clay, half consisting of fields laid waste in expectation of the house-builder, which lies just outside ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... silver penny had spun a line from Saint Peter's key to Saint Katherine's nose; and as to the dust—why, you could make soup of it. I've dusted Saint Katherine many a time with my hands, for I had them, if I'd nought else: and trust me, the poor Saint looked so forlorn, I fairly wondered she did not speak. Had I been the image of a saint, somebody would have heard of it, I warrant you, when that spider began scuttering up and down ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... if 'twa'n't for you and Marry," she returned wearily, crouching in a forlorn heap, with elbows on knees and chin in palms. "It's hard enough for women that's got their own young ones, and can mind 'em and make 'em mind. I can't do nothing with ours, and when I go to pa he just gets cross and lights out. And then he comes ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... loathsome, they gave her her choice, either to be put to death by the youths of the place, or go to the woods to die or be farther devoured as might happen. The little girl chose the woods. In this forlorn condition she determined to cast herself on the mercy of the missionaries; and although she had never been at the station, she believed from what she had heard, that could she reach the place, she should receive that protection and help which her unnatural relatives refused to give. With this ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... gimble me with a blue eye that lurked beneath grizzled brows, quite as painful a proceeding as if he used an iron tool. I almost pity myself when I think of what a forlorn stranger I was in their company. They two, indeed, were of one kind, and I of another sort who could never understand them,—nor they me. To what depths of despair they reduced me they never knew, and yet they were doing it all for my good! They only managed to convince ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon as settled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party with which he had been content to stand than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were falling: and at last, after subsisting for four years on the mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled then to define his position anew, and claim the yet more humiliating mercy of a ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... turn away and hurry on, as some selfish people would have done, but pitied and called the poor cat. It looked so forlorn, and gave a frightened glance in her face. Gaining courage from what it saw there, it trusted her, and jumped up, curled its tail over its back, and trotted contentedly after her. The lady went on. When she looked back now and then, there ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... for embezzlement, the City merchant's son who is reduced to being the tout of a low bookmaker, the preacher who began as a youthful phenomenon and ended by embezzling the Christmas dinner fund, the forlorn brute whose wife and children have fled from him, and who spends his time between the police-cells and the resorts of the vilest. If you could know the names of the tramps who yell and make merry over their supper in the murky kitchen, you would find that people of high consideration ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... to "Smith" and Smith declared off Brown's declaration. In inquiries after "solvent acceptors," Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk was still more abroad. In the mystification of his brains, all answers seemed to be delivered "per contra." Forlorn hopes on three-and sixpenny stamps were converted into the circulating medium; "good actors" were considered "good men" in the very reverse of Shylock's acceptation of the term; and astonished indorsers succeeded in "raising ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... long ago have asked him if he had ever observed the turrets of my possessions in the West, without alluding to Spain, if I had not feared he would suppose I was mocking his poverty. I hope his poverty has not turned his head, for he is very forlorn. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... so thin a glimmer could control and disperse such solid blackness. When Jones and I entered we found a little company of our acquaintances seated together at the triangular foremost table. A more forlorn party, in more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion here in the ship's nose was very violent; the uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud. The yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and round and tossed the shadows ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my own proper and natural means, if it befall me, as oft-times it does, accidentally to meet in any good author, the same heads and commonplaces upon which I have attempted to write (as I did but just now in Plutarch's "Discourse of the Force of Imagination"), to see myself so weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat, in comparison of those better writers, I at once pity or despise myself. Yet do I please myself with this, that my opinions have often the honour and good fortune to jump with theirs, and that I go in the same path, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... beneath blue skies, he would see the most beautiful pictures before his eyes. Sometimes they were the clouds that drew them for him, and sometimes the trees. He would, perhaps, be feeling particularly forlorn and tired, and would fling himself down to rest, and then in a moment—just for all the world as though the skies were sorry for him and wanted to help him forget his troubles—he would see the white drifts overhead shift and ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... it expressed the double offence of being aristocratic and being outlandish. We were aristocrats, and it was vain to deny it; could we deny our boots? whilst our antagonists, if not absolutely sans culottes, were slovenly and forlorn in their dress, often unwashed, with hair totally neglected, and always covered with flakes of cotton. Jacobins they were not, as regarded any sympathy with the Jacobinism that then desolated France; for, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a vague sadness in his bearing. Involuntarily, the scene and conditions were changed, and, instead of poor Margaret, she herself had passed away and was lying out there in a new-made grave in bleak and dreary Woodland. She thought how her own bairns would be as motherless and forlorn as the child before her, and yet not quite, either, for they had a father who loved them in his own quiet undemonstrative way. This should have consoled her in the sorrows she had conjured up, but, like a woman, she thought of the father helpless and lonely when she had gone, with the children ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... ranger! dark, forlorn, mysterious stranger! Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore! Tell us of that world of wonder—of that famed unfading "Yonder!" Rend—oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears be o'er! Doth ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... forlorn and hungry that Nat could not help but pity him. Coming to the city to earn his living had ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... not go back to her own—all the human nature in her revolted at the thought of exposing herself to the sympathy of her former colleagues. Nothing was to be gained by lying sleepless in bed, gazing at the discolored wallpaper and the forlorn furniture. She slipped out gently and dressed herself, the absence of any apparatus for a bath making her heart heavier with reminders of the realities of poverty. It was not easy to avert her thoughts from her ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... immeasurably inferior to Glencoe, to whose terrors I have not seen the smallest approach. We have passed, both in the mountains and elsewhere, a great number of new settlements and detached log houses. Their utterly forlorn and miserable appearance baffles all description. I have not seen six cabins out of six hundred, where the windows have been whole. Old hats, old clothes, old boards, old fragments of blanket and paper, are stuffed into the broken glass; and their air is misery and desolation. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... I said, "in pearls bedight, Art thou my pearl for which I mourn, Lamenting all alone at night? With hidden grief my heart is worn. Since thou through grass didst slip from sight, Pensive and pained, I pass forlorn, And thou livest in a life of light, A world where enters sin nor scorn. What fate has hither my jewel borne, And left me in earth's strife and stir? Oh, sweet, since we in twain were torn, I have been a ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... son Tom, and, I may say, for the British army. Ghuzni, the strongest fortress in Afghanistan, was taken by assault in three-quarters of an hour, by the four European regiments of the army—viz., the Queen's, 13th Light Infantry, 17th regiment, and Bengal European regiment. The storming party, or forlorn hope, consisted of the Light Companies of the four regiments. The whole right in front—ergo, our company (the Light Company of the Queen's) was the first in. I may well remember it, as it was the first time I smelt gunpowder and saw blows ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... suspect that it had come up rather than gone down in the world. No matter: we were not dupes, but perhaps the full sweetness and sadness of the story never came home to us with such enfolding charm as on the gray autumn afternoon when we stood beside the pseudo relic in the forlorn little garden of the orphan asylum on the bank of the turbid Adige. The house which is pointed out as Juliet's is less palatial than we expected, though it is a lofty old brick edifice with rounded windows, a stone balcony and a large courtyard: on the keystone of the arched entrance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... cleverness born of desperation, Mrs. Sampson solved her difficulty by asking Miss Catherine Penwick to fill the vacant place. Miss Catherine Penwick was the last forlorn and fluttering leaf on the bare branches of a lofty but expiring family tree. The Penwicks had come over in the Mayflower, or at a period yet more remote, and the acme of the prosperity and social distinction of the name was coincident with the second administration of President Washington. Since ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... pillows of his mother's easy chair, a little brother of theirs, clad in dirt and rags, crawled over the reeking floor, and occupied himself in devouring eagerly every bit of potato skin or apple paring that came in his way. Was there ever a more forlorn looking specimen of a baby! It was its birthday, too—there are more babies in the world than we think for whose birthdays might be celebrated on the same day. But this one knew nothing about it—dear me! neither did ...
— Three People • Pansy
... more forlorn than before We sat down on the stretchers: Anna Petrovna, fat, heavy, phlegmatic, silent; Marie Ivanovna silent too but with a look now of expectation in her eyes as though she knew that something was coming for her very shortly; Trenchard near her, trying to be cheerful, but conscious ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... to know in the end, so I may as well tell you now," Christine said hopelessly. She sat down on the rug by the fire, a forlorn little figure enough in her ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... which made the deepest impression on Annie was a visit to a charity-school at the old convent of San Antonio. It was kept by some kind ladies, and twenty-five girls were taught and cared for in the big, bare place, that looked rather gloomy and forlorn to people from happy Boston, where charitable institutions are on a noble scale, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Disgrac'd, undone, forlorn, made Fortune's Sport, Banish'd your Kingdom first, and then your Court; Out of my Places turn'd, and out of Doors, And made the meanest of your Sons of Whores; The scene of Laughter, and the common chats Of your salt Bitches, and your other Brats; ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... hordes was not a dash wholly without system—such an inference would be a great mistake. There was no pretence of alignment or order—there never is in such attacks—forlorn hopes, receiving the signal, rush on, each individual to his own endeavor; here, nevertheless, the Pachas and Beys directed the assault, permitting no blind waste of effort. They hurled their mobs at none but the weak places—here a breach, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fight at the depot, in proof of which she pointed to her torn dress, her crumpled bonnet, and scratched face. Maggie laughed aloud in spite of herself, and though Mr. Carrollton's eyes were several times turned reprovingly upon her she continued to laugh at intervals at the sorry, forlorn appearance presented by her grandmother, who for several days was confined to her bed from the combined effects of fasting, fright, firemen's muster, and her late ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... came in through the open window to her. There was a look of melancholy upon her face, and her gaze rested steadily upon the floor. It was clear that she was troubled about something. Just then a minister entered the room. Noticing her forlorn appearance, he said cheerily, ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... present at that moment. Then they adorned the elephant and raising the throne on his back, gave him the crown in his trunk; and he went round about examining the countenances of the folk, but stopped not over against any of them till he came at last to the forlorn King, the exile who had lost his children and his wife, when the beast prostrated himself to him and placing the crown on his head, took him up and set him upon his back. Thereupon the people all prostrated themselves and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the South, the East, the West, The thrall, the master, all of us in one; There was no section that he held the best; His love shone as impartial as the sun; And so revenge appealed to him in vain; He smiled at it, as at a thing forlorn, And gently put it from him, rose and stood A moment's space in pain, Remembering the prairies and the corn And the glad voices of the field ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... departing from duty and fidelity to his God. He begged her to recall Samuel to life, that he might be comforted and instructed by him. She pretended to comply with his request; but, before she could commence her usual mysterious operations, Samuel arose! and the forlorn, wretched, and heart-broken king listened to his tremendous doom, as it was uttered by the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... chewed salt junk all Day with grief forlorn, Because the Hearl of Buncle, The lovely maiding's Uncle, Regarded ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... morning in early spring, a rather forlorn group of three youngsters might have been seen on the doorstep of Mountjoy Preparatory School, casting nervous glances up and down the drive, and looking anything but a picture of the life and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... neither looked to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He might have been a zealot—he was never a hypocrite; he might have been eccentric—he was never ridiculous. He was a Hercules rather than an Adonis. In his warfare he fired hot shot; he did not send in flags of truce; he led forlorn hopes; he did not follow in the wake of charges. When he went forth with his sledge-hammer logic and his saw-mill philosophy, all who stood in the path of his righteous wrath went down before him, with nothing by which to recognize them except the pieces he had left of them. When he ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... on which the church stands commands a view of the country. The simplicity of Prince Nicolas' palace is thus accentuated, for it is situated on perfectly open ground, and there is no garden or any railings round it. Naked and forlorn, it gives the spectator a sad impression of poverty. On another side is the old Church of Niksic, ridiculously small and half-ruined. The Russians did a good deed, for the comparison is absolutely absurd if a comparison can be drawn ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... you, my dear. Politics least of all. You could be a soldier, if you chose. You could fight as your father and your grandfather and the others of your house have done. You could lead a forlorn hope in the field. You could suffer and starve and go on fighting. You could die splendidly, but—politics, no! That wants a tougher shell than you have. And a soldier's wife! Of what use to ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... he was to the instruction of his adopted child, Edward Forster was nevertheless aware that more was required in the education of a female than he was competent to fulfil. Many and melancholy were his reveries on the forlorn prospects of the little girl (considering his own precarious life and the little chance that appeared of restoring her to her friends and relations), still he resolved that all that could should be done; the issue ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... totally despise conventionalisms—Checkmate—Brandy-punch for six—You've thrown away all your hearts"—and a hundred others, many of them demands for something from the culinary department. Occasionally a forlorn wight, who neither played chess nor cards, would venture on deck to kill time, and return into the saloon panting and shivering, in rough surtout and fur cap, bringing a chilly atmosphere with him, voted a bore for leaving the door open, and totally unable to ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... of July 15, 1779, General Wayne took post in a hollow, within two miles of the fort on Stony Point, and there remained unperceived until midnight, when he formed his men into two columns, Lieutenant-Colonel Fleury leading one division and Major Stewart the other. At the head of each was a forlorn hope of twenty men. Both parties were close upon the works before they were discovered. A skirmish with the pickets at once ensued, the Americans using the bayonet only. In a few moments the entire ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... in his embarrassment, denounced the invaders, and urged Alva to make short work with prisoners. At the same time, he did not give up the scheme that had begun so badly, the scheme for the conquest of Flanders by a forlorn ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... not thus when his oaken spear Was true to that knight forlorn; And the hosts of a thousand were scatter'd like deer, At the blast of the hunter's horn; When he strode on the wreck of each well-fought field With the yellow-hair'd chiefs of his native land; For his lance was not shiver'd on helmet or shield— And the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... Twenty Years at Hull House, Miss Jane Addams tells of a visit to a western state where she had invested a sum of money in farm mortgages. "I was horrified," she says, "by the wretched conditions among the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind.... The farmer's wife [was] a picture of despair, as she stood in the door of the bare, crude house, and the two children behind her, whom she vainly tried to keep out of sight, continually thrust forward their faces, almost ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... constant effort to efface its signs and evidences. She was left with no outlook in life but to get through twenty, thirty, forty years somehow, and come to a little peace at last, when everything would be forgotten; and her one forlorn hope was that Guthrie would not discover her crime—would keep up the neglect with which he had treated his old friends, and not ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... applied to this departure. They did not consider that irresistible impulse of patriotism and ambition, which, on the news of the disasters of the republic, had urged him to return to France. They perceived only the forlorn state in which he had left the unfortunate army, which had felt sufficient confidence in his genius ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... heightened by its adoption. It has ever appeared to us to have purposed showing at one view, humanity in its highest, its divinely perfected state, the manhood taken into Godhead; and humanity in its lowest, its most forlorn, most degraded state, in the person of a demoniac: and this contrast seems acknowledged—abhorrently felt, by the reluctant spirit within the sufferer, whose attitude, starting from the effulgence and the power which is yet to heal him, being ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... conditions she came to like Africa fairly well, for she was a chilly little thing who loved its ample, all-pervading sunshine, and made a good many friends, especially among young men, to whom her helplessness and rather forlorn little face appealed. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... be lost. The neutrality of Greece was lost, but Constantine would not see that. He hoped, although 170,000 fighting men are not easy to hide, that the Kaiser also would not see it. It was a very forlorn hope. The Allies also cherished a hope. It was that Constantine not only would look the other way while they slipped across his country, but would cast off all pretense of neutrality and join them. So, as far as was possible, they avoided giving offense. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... incessant strain, both mental and physical, were proportionately cast down. Every one anticipated tremendous fighting on the next day. Make the attempt, they must at all hazards. But there were not wanting those who spoke of "forlorn hopes" and "last chances." Want of sleep and rest had told on all ranks. For a week they had grappled with a savage foe. They were the victors, but they ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... the instincts of a soldier, but a certain nobility of character which was conspicuous in the father. When the father held a high command at Corfu, he made a point of seeking out and paying attention to the forlorn and uninteresting, who are usually overlooked by others. Those who have been richly endowed by Nature have little difficulty in gaining the smiles of society; but in all classes there are a few unfortunate ones, who are not specially gifted and attractive, and who consequently ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... speculatively, as if there were something about her that he found hard to understand. Her agitation had subsided, leaving her with a piteous, forlorn look—the look of the wayfarer who is almost too ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... them all the more forlorn. The others, some forty in number, their companions in misfortune, included most of the Barbican prentices, who were of the Eagle faction, special enemies alike to Abenali and to the Dragon, and these held aloof from Headley ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... air, Thy tempering. With like safety guided down, Return me to my native element: Lest from this flying steed unreined (as once Bellerophon, though from a lower clime), Dismounted, on th' Aleian field I fall, Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn. Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound Within the visible diurnal sphere: Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues; In darkness, and with ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... occurred over questions of finance which resulted in the resignation of the Ministry. And ever since those days, that is for twenty-seven consecutive years, successive Diets in Japan have been fighting a forlorn fight for the power which can never be theirs save by revolution, it being only natural that Socialism should come to be looked upon by the governing class as Nihilism, whilst the mob- threat has been very acute ever since the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... for one of the finest of Mr. Sambourne's "junior cartoons" on the occasion when the great ex-Chancellor had said: "I am like the traveller lost in the snow, who begins to get stiff while the snow-flakes cover him." This picture of the aged and forlorn statesman, accompanied only by his faithful hound, is perhaps the best of the artist's achievements of dignity and pathos—worthy of being named with "Dropping the Pilot" of Sir John Tenniel. His passion ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... In this forlorn condition I walked out of my lodging, not knowing what course to take, and by chance went towards the castle, where there was a great crowd to witness a spectacle given by the sultan of Egypt. As soon as I came up, I wedged in among the crowd, and by chance happened ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... circuit through the woods, and now the firing is near at hand, coming slowly toward them. They have only to wait and they will be among the forlorn hope. Ah, with what fervent joy Jack marks the Union banner, flapping its twin streamers among the hurtling pines! They are near it; they are under it! Their own guns are no longer available; hundreds are lying at hand; they seize them. The line is firing in retreat. It is a sadly ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... direction of the Musical Festival. She sat down among them, shocked by this indifference to the Musical Festival. At the back of her head had been an idea that all the cars for Hanbridge would be crammed to the step, and all the cars from Hanbridge forlorn and empty. She had vaguely imagined that the thoughts of a quarter of a million of people would that evening be centred on the unique Musical Festival. And she was shocked also by the conversation—not that it was in the slightest degree improper—but because it displayed no interest whatever ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... outdone, Jude, Tige and Don followed suit, and first one and then another was swept off his feet and carried downstream. They landed below me. This left Ranger, the pup, alone on the other shore. Of all the pitiful yelps ever uttered by a frightened and lonely puppy, his were the most forlorn I had ever heard. Time after time he plunged in, and with many bitter howls of distress, went back. I kept calling, and at last, hoping to make him come by a show of indifference, I started away. This broke his heart. Putting up his head, he let out a long, melancholy wail, which ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... lightning and impetuous rage, Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep. Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe. Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend From off the tossing of these fiery waves; There rest, if any rest can harbour ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of vagabondage had bred in him a certain restlessness, and he did not care to linger in any one place. An inexplicable force urged him on. He was conscious that he entertained a most foolish, most forlorn secret hope,—that of finding some yet unknown consolation,—of receiving some yet unobtained heavenly benediction. And he repeated ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirp of the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, the church bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonely penury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their souls alive. "Yes," they said, "we're working when we can get the work, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine |
