"Hopeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... despairing farewells been breathed! How many brief attachments have been linked and as suddenly unlinked, between those who had never met before, who were never, never to meet again—and yet, to whom forgetfulness had become forever impossible! What hopeless love may have been revealed during the moments so rare upon this earth; when beauty is more highly esteemed than riches, a noble bearing of more consequence than rank! What dark destinies forever severed by the tyranny of rank and ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... For his good care and promptness; but for that, 'Tis a vain labour e'en to fight 'gainst heaven; Applying fire to stone— [COUGHING.] uh, uh, uh, uh! Making a dead leaf grow again. I take His wishes gently, though; and you may tell him, What I have done for him: marry, my state is hopeless. Will him to pray for me; and to use his fortune With ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... him up as hopeless, and he continued his duties and went into the fight of the San Juan hills with the hole still through his ribs. Another cowboy named Heffner, when shot through the body, asked to be propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge-belt ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... Mr. Jenks was saying. "I must get off this island, and that's the only way we can do it. I have large interests at stake. If we wait for a reply to this wireless message we may all be killed, though I appreciate that Mr. Swift is doing his best to aid us. But it is hopeless!" ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... I have felt many sorrows. I have made few improvements. Since my resolution formed last Easter, I have made no advancement in knowledge or in goodness; nor do I recollect that I have endeavored it. I am dejected, but not hopeless. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... true one; the term Brahmanism represents what is common to the Hindu castes and sects; it is their greatest common measure, as it were. But yet the fact remains that Hindus speak of themselves as such, not as Brahmanists, and it is hopeless to try to supersede a current name. Sir M. Monier Williams employs the term Brahmanism in a more limited and more legitimate sense. Dividing the history of the Hindu religion into three periods, he calls them the stages of Vedism, Brahmanism, and Hinduism respectively. The first ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... grants," said Mr. Hawke, a government official whose evidence is given in the appendix to Durham's Report, "remain in an unimproved state. These blocks of wild land place the actual settler in an almost hopeless condition; he can hardly expect during his lifetime to see his neighbourhood contain a population sufficiently dense to support mills, schools, post-offices, places of worship, markets or shops, without which ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... slain by others, be they human beings or gods or Danavas. The Yadavas, therefore shall fall by one another's hand.' After he of Dasharha's race had said these words, the Pandavas became stupefied. Filled with anxiety all of them became hopeless of life!" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... acquaintance, are you there? Dear companions, hug and kiss, Toast Old Glorious in your piss; Tie them, keeper, in a tether, Let them starve and stink together; Both are apt to be unruly, Lash them daily, lash them duly; Though 'tis hopeless to reclaim them, Scorpion's rods, perhaps, may tame them. Keeper, yon old dotard smoke, Sweetly snoring in his cloak: Who is he? 'Tis humdrum Wynne,[16] Half encompass'd by his kin: There observe the tribe of Bingham,[17] For he never fails to bring 'em; And that ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... crowds; the strong spirit of the morning was hers, and the sadness of the sunset and the wakeful watches of the night. Her face was in the clouds of evening, in the sea-coal fire by night; her spirit in the dreams of summer morns, in the hopeless breakers on the stormy shores, in the useless, endless effort of the sea. Her eyes made some strange shining through his dreams; and he would wake with a cry that she was going from him, in the deepest hours of the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... swings his arms, pounds with his fist, raises his voice, and thunders his denunciation. His speech takes on a threatening tone. He shouts and bawls; the jury must be waked up. They sit stolid and unmoved. He tries to catch their eye, there is no gleam of interest. Perhaps he has rather a hopeless feeling that the art of oratory is not what it is reputed to be. The jury look particularly unresponsive. Even that one little juror, with the clever, smart face, who is leaning forward with such an expression ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... was thankful to hear him say that, and they said the same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the tears run down ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... into one of oxygen and hydrogen, it immediately acted, and in seven minutes caused explosion of the gas. This result was obtained several times, and when larger proportions of olefiant gas were used, the action seemed still more hopeless. ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... the vessel which carried these tidings was Pascal, prepared to give a different version of the late transactions, and revolving, with Afra, the means by which he might best employ such influence as he had on behalf of his friend. Theirs was a nearly hopeless errand, they well knew; but the less hopeful, the more anxious were they to do what ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... so hopeless as that?" said Lady Earlscourt, in a low voice, and Phyllis smiled in response—the smile of the guest when the hostess ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... to the Nightingale and The Grecian Urn, all of which had been produced within a period of about 18 months. This book was warmly praised in the Edinburgh Review. His health had by this time completely given way, and he was likewise harassed by narrow means and hopeless love. He had, however, the consolation of possessing many warm friends, by some of whom, the Hunts and the Brawnes, he was tenderly nursed. At last in 1821 he set out, accompanied by his friend Severn, on ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... can conduct the lightning from the roof, but I cannot throw off my sorrows! Was I not unhappy enough from my feelings alone, without calling around me my thoughts, like greedy vultures? What does the sick man gain by knowing that his disease is incurable?... The tortures of my hopeless love have become sharper, more piercing, more various, since my intellect has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... were by no means escaping unscathed. The Red Bones, assailed from every quarter and milling about in hopeless disorder, were fighting now with desperate frenzy. Their own clubbers and stabbers were charging out and smashing skulls or piercing abdomens, their arrows rose in all directions at once, and some into whose veins the wurali had struck sprang in the last moments of life on nearby foes ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... of thought?) was fought about Eynsham Abbey. Old Abbot Geoffrey died, and at his election the Abbey had been under the See of Lincoln; but since then King Henry had claimed the gift of abbacies, a claim his son was not likely to bate. A suit with the Crown, Hugh's friends argued, was hopeless or not worth the trouble; but this argument seemed sacrilegious to the intrepid bishop. What? Allow God and the Queen of Heaven to be robbed? Who ever agreed to let Lincoln be so pilled? He is but a useless and craven ruler who does not enlarge instead of lessen the dignities ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clews, and clearing up those mysteries, which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings; of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... whole situation in these southeastern countries because of their utter disorganization and their hopeless embroilment in conflict with each other, was too impossible. Whatever degree of peace the capitals of these countries recognized as the diplomatic status of the moment, the frontiers had no illusions. There ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Jurgis into her room, which was a tiny place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a dressing stand and some dresses hanging behind the door. There were clothes scattered about on the floor, and hopeless confusion everywhere—boxes of rouge and bottles of perfume mixed with hats and soiled dishes on the dresser, and a pair of slippers and a clock and a whisky bottle on ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... regain his spirits sufficiently to feel able to say very much. He quieted down, but he was still down at heart and crushed in feeling, and could do little else but listen in a hopeless sort of way. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... De Wilton's blood. Unwittingly, King James had given, As guard to Whitby's shades, 525 The man most dreaded under heaven By these defenceless maids: Yet what petition could avail, Or who would listen to the tale Of woman, prisoner, and nun, 530 Mid bustle of a war begun? They deem'd it hopeless to avoid The convoy of ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... the Fourth we never got a chance for the tennis courts, and it was utterly hopeless to appeal to the prefects," said Ingred. "I always used to feel there ought to be some way of ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... unnecessary measure, darkly iniquitous, threatening the total destruction of all they held dear. English lukewarmness was hotly resented, but the certainty that England must herself receive a dangerous if not a mortal wound, was scant comfort to men who felt themselves on the eve of a hopeless struggle for political, nay, even for material existence. This was before the vast demonstrations of Belfast and Dublin, before the memorable function in the Albert Hall, London, before the hundreds of speakers sent forth by the Irish Unionist Alliance had visited England, spreading ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... be more apparent than real. Merely being too attractive has often been confounded with a love of flirtation and conquest, unbecoming always in a man, and excused in a woman on the ground of her helplessness. It could easily be shown that to use personal attractiveness recklessly to the extent of hopeless beguilement is cruel, and it may be admitted that woman ought to be held to strict responsibility for her attractiveness. The lines are indeed hard for her. The duty is upon her in this poor world of being as attractive as she can, and yet she is held responsible for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... armies and fleets to all the points of heaven that the wind blows from, who took and burned many happy cities, wasted many fields and valleys, blotted out from the memory of men the names of nations, made their men's lives a hopeless shame and misery to them, their women's lives disgrace, and then came home to have flowers thrown on them in showers, to ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... the various passions and motives seems hopeless, an unknown personage presents himself, coming from no one knows where, and it ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... same time deplorable, this hopeless medley of exact knowledge and gross superstition may appear to us at the present day, it was the means of bringing a prosperity to the cities of Chaldaea which no amount of actual science would ever have produced. The neighbouring barbaric peoples were imbued with the same ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and training of which he has just spoken. With his advantages of birth, air, fortune, education, and military rank, he can scarcely fail in his suit, should he seriously attempt one; and it will be no more than prudent to command my own feelings, lest I become the hopeless victim of a serious passion. Young as I was, all this I saw, and thus I reasoned; and when I parted from my companion I fancied myself a much wise man than when we had met. We separated in Duke Street, with a promise on my part to call at the Major's lodgings half an hour ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... was absent at the East, having raised a large sum of money for the seminary, and came back only to find his labor almost hopeless. For several years, however, he and his children stayed and worked on. Mrs. Stowe opened her house to colored children, whom she taught with her own. One bright boy in her school was claimed by an estate in Kentucky, arrested, and was to be sold at auction. ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... to most minds is perhaps less the mere existence of the unseen than the want of definition, the apparently hopeless vagueness, and not least, the delight in this vagueness as mere vagueness by some who look upon this as the mark of quality in Spiritual things. It will be at least something to tell earnest seekers that the Spiritual World is not a castle in the air, of an architecture unknown to ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... this there is possibility, and of all this there is danger. But if possibility of evil be to exclude good, no good ever can be done. If nothing is to be attempted in which there is danger, we must all sink into hopeless inactivity. The evils that may be feared from this practice arise not from any defect in the institution, but from the infirmities of human nature. Power, in whatever hands it is placed, will be sometimes improperly exerted; ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... the beginning of February 1660, Trumeau called to see his cousin. He had not been there for nearly a month, and Quennebert and the widow had begun to think that, hopeless of success, he had retired from the contest. But, far from that, his hatred had grown more intense than ever, and having come upon the traces of an event in the past life of his rival which if proved would be the ruin of that rival's hopes, he set himself to gather ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... seem, there are quite a number of such degenerates in our prisons to-day; middle-aged and elderly men being the chief offenders of this class. In my opinion segregation for life is the only course, and my years of experience among such a class have convinced me of this, their case being absolutely hopeless when this stage has been reached, and no cure ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... neither are they likely so to do. It is the hard cases, where men are apt to lay violent hands on themselves, that put the moralist on his mettle to restrain them by reasons. Why should not the solitary invalid destroy himself, he whose life has become a hopeless torture, and whose death none would mourn? Why should not a voluntary death be sought as an escape from temptation and from imminent sin? Why should not the first victims of a dire contagion acquiesce in being slaughtered like cattle? Or if it be deemed perilous to commit the departure ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... priests? Fortunately, we have yet four Sundays before us, from now until the voting-day, and the patron will go to high mass and communion in our four more important parishes. That will be a response! If such a man is not elected, universal suffrage is hopeless!" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... keep alive. And with scarcely a single exception, these homes of poverty were also homes of degradation. Across the way from Thyrsis was an idiot man; upon the next place lived an old man who was a hopeless drunkard, and had one son insane, and another tubercular; and then down in the meadows below the woods lived the Hodges—a name of direful portent. The father would work as a laborer in town for a day or two, and buy vinegar and make himself half insane, and then come home ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... back, and your body straight. It is best to perform this exercise before a mirror, and when you begin to think you have mastered it, close you eyes, give ten upward springs and then look at yourself. A hopeless wreck, eh? Not quite so bad as that, but, before, you unconsciously corrected your position by the eye, and you must learn to do it entirely by feeling. You will probably improve very much on a second trial, because your shoulders will begin to be sensitive. Why not practise this exercise before ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... friends grew cool, And laughter seized each sober fool; When Candour started in amaze, And, meaning censure, hinted praise; When Prudence, lifting up her eyes And hands, thank'd Heaven that she was wise; When all around me, with an air Of hopeless sorrow, look'd despair; 330 When they, or said, or seem'd to say, There is but one, one only way Better, and be advised by us, Not be at all, than to be thus; When Virtue shunn'd the shock, and Pride, Disabled, lay by ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... banner of the Guelphs. The Germans had made another onset on Denmark, but again King Valdemar defeated them. The bishop intrenched himself in Hamburg, and made a desperate resistance, but the King carried the city by storm. The beaten and hopeless man fled, and shut himself up in a cloister in Hanover, where daily and nightly he scourged himself for his sins. If it is true that "hell was fashioned by the souls that hated," not all the penance of all the years must have availed to save him from the torments ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... 90 degrees, he made the following remarks concerning a tribe of Esquimaux in his vicinity, which we quote as being peculiarly applicable to our view of the subject:—'It was for philosophers to interest themselves in speculating on a horde so small and so secluded, occupying so apparently hopeless a country—so barren, so wild, and so repulsive, and yet enjoying the most perfect vigour, the most well-fed health, and all else that here constitutes not merely wealth, but the opulence of luxury, since they were as amply furnished ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... week? Curious entities, or non-entities, space and tithe? When you see a metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of these accidents, so as to lay his dry, clean palm on the absolute, does it not remind you of the hopeless task of changing the color of the blackamoor by a similar proceeding? For space is the fluid in which he is washing, and time is the soap which he is using up in the process, and he cannot get free from them until he can wash himself ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and a sigh of hopeless exhaustion had once more rested both his elbows on the table; his head fell heavy and almost lifeless downward in ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... that the world is eternal—a very important point of doctrine; next that the soul is immortal; next a definition of the workings of Divine Providence, Fate, and Fortune—a fairly skilful piece of dialectic dealing with a hopeless difficulty. Next come Virtue and Vice, and, in a dead and perfunctory echo of Plato's Republic, an enumeration of the good and bad forms of human society. The questions which vibrated with life in free Athens ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved, nor will by me at least be thought worthy of esteem.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 198. Against this Baretti has written in the margin:— 'Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... entered in the Court a suit for breach of promise. The contest over the widow finally was referred to the authorities in London, who declined to pass upon "so delicate a matter." Mr. Pooley, probably then finding his cause hopeless, withdrew his case in Court, and by 1625, the charming widow had married ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... on!" called Robin Getley, whose father was a burgess, as Nick Attwood came slowly up the street, saying his sentences for the day over and over to himself in hopeless desperation, having had no time to learn them at home. "Stratford Council has had a quarrel, and there's to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Dahomey—in the case of Naples with what indignation did they speak of the ruin of families by the detention of its head or some loved member in a prison. Who have not heard their condemnations of the tyranny that would compel honourable and good men to spend their useful lives in hopeless banishment." ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... with a man who regarded money as the chief end and aim of life, and severe and constant physical labor as the only means of obtaining that end. For two years Edward struggled with his hopeless condition, toiling early and late to ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... awhile on the island, and with the help of Captain Valls he would try to straighten out Jaime's business affairs, if it were still possible. The captain was a good business man, and he knew how to disentangle the most hopeless complications. He and Jaime had quarreled the day before, but that was no matter; Valls was ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... who had the heart to oversee the work? Better leave the men squatting in content by the roadside, under the straggly banana trees, than urge them to work. It meant more effort on the part of the officials and effort was so useless. All so futile and so hopeless. He nodded in recognition of the salutes given him by groups of paroled prisoners, chewing betel nut under the ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... happy for the good, a wretched for the bad; temporary woes prevailing on the earth; the speedy advent of Christ for a vindication of his power and his servants; the resurrection of the dead; the final translation of the accepted into heaven, and the hopeless dooming of the rejected into the abyss, these are the features in the book before us which we are ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the 'Powers' of the hospital—all were sorry; yet they could not understand to the point of quite forgiving their vagaries. The twain were outcast, wandering each in a dumb world of his own, each in the endless circle of one or two hopeless notions. It was irony—or the French system—which had ordered the Breton Roche to get well in a place whence he could see nothing flatter than a mountain, smell no sea, eat no fish. And God knows what had sent Gray there. His story ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... and then demanded in ringing tones what those of the upper classes intended to do about the situation which he had been eloquently portraying, a portly old gentleman whose breath would have proclaimed that he had had a cocktail at the Reading Room before service, heaved a loud, hopeless sigh. She saw Thornton nudge Armitage with his shoulder and the replying grin wrinkle Jack's face. Swiftly her eyes turned sideways to the Prince. He was sitting half turned in the seat regarding her with worshipping gaze. She thrilled under the contrast; compared to the men in front ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... the table, a slender, desolate figure, her face hidden in her arms, but hearing my footstep, she lifted her head with a weary gesture and, looking into the beauty of this pale, tear-wet face, I read there a hopeless terror that went far ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... waste time in securing food, because, being local peasants, they are supplied by their own villages and families. In Moscow and Petrograd food is far more difficult to secure, more time is wasted on that hopeless task; even with that waste of time, the workman is not properly fed, and it cannot be wondered at ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... by Alexander the Great changed the course of trade and diverted it to other routes, thus depriving the country of much of its revenue; the invasions of the Arabs left the empire a hopeless wreck. Iran blood dominates the country at the present time, it is true, but the religion of Islam does not encourage any material development, and the industries are now purely local. There is no organization of trade, nor ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... the day after he quitted Lansmere Park, arrived on foot at his father's house. He had walked all the way, and through the solitudes of the winter night; but he was not sensible of fatigue till the dismal home closed round him, with its air of hopeless ignoble poverty; and then he sunk upon the floor feeling himself a ruin amidst the ruins. He made no disclosure of what had passed to his relations. Miserable man, there was not one to whom he could confide, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... youth! An absurd period, excusable only on the score of its brevity. A parlous condition! A traitorous guide, froward, inspired of all manner of levity, pursuant of hopeless phantasms, dupe of roseate and pernicious myths (love-at-first-sight, and the like), butt of the High Gods' stinging laughter, deserving of nothing kinder than mockery from the aged and the wise—which ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... produced so many representations of children that it would be a hopeless task to attempt a complete enumeration of them, and the book makes no pretensions to exhaustiveness. The aim has been merely to suggest a convenient outline of classification, and to describe a few characteristic examples in each group. The nature of the undertaking has, of course, necessitated ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... problem. It is with him that law, obligation, right, command, obedience, sanction, have their origin and their explanation. Ethics is an important supplement to social or political law. But it is still a department of law. In any other view it is a maze, a mystery, a hopeless embroilment. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... already forming in the hollows that our hips made where we lay. Until noon there was little heard but the thick breathing of weary men. Occasionally one tossed and shouted blasphemous warnings anent imaginary and bursting shells; whereat those within hearing whined in a tired and hopeless anger, and, if close ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... much as if those frequent visits to town had been at the "dead" man's suggestion and with his entire consent. But the more I reflected upon the extraordinary details of the tragedy and its astounding denouement, the more hopeless and maddening ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... describe in detail all the plans made by Trenck to regain his freedom; first because they were endless, and secondly because several were nipped in the bud. Still, the unfortunate man felt that as long as his money was not taken from him his case was not hopeless, for the officers in command were generally poor and in debt, and were always sent to garrison work as a punishment. After one wild effort to liberate all the prisoners in the fortress, which was naturally discovered and frustrated, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... said gravely, "thou hast heard much talk of the troubled state of these times and of the nation's affairs. Thou hast lived long enough to see how hopeless some amongst us feel it ever to hope for unity amongst ourselves. We are torn and distracted by faction and feud. Families are banded together against families, and brothers strive with brothers for the inheritance each claims as his own. Each lord of some small territory tries to wrest ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... scattered books on the library table, Ted dashing off a popular waltz with her head turned carelessly aside to watch the attentive Keith; all these to Julia were glimpses of a life so free, so full, so invigorating as to fill her with hopeless longing and admiration. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... countenance. His arm dropped and for a moment his face was the battle-ground of fierce, contending wills and furious passions. Then his whole body writhed as if in a convulsion, his arms sprang straight up in the air and a cry of mortal agony, of defeat, despair and hopeless, futile wrath rang through ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... Westminster bridge. I found that many of them had been there from twelve the preceding night; peers and peeresses in their robes, gently moving, not hastening, to the desired spot. After waiting some two hours with exemplary patience, and finding my case entirely hopeless, I wisely took the precaution of driving to the water-side at Chelsea, for the purpose of procuring a boat. As it is possible that some of the distinguished artists of the day may wish to convey my appearance to posterity, I ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... gathered with painstaking effort scattering in every direction, especially to lose the children and the grandchildren of our faithful families. But when we saw them in the comfortable homes and open spaces of the suburbs, who could wish them to return to the hopeless atmosphere of the tenements? From this time forward the churches of the surrounding boroughs grew rapidly, largely at the expense, however, of the ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... Mac turned a hopeless but nervy eye upon Del Delano's face. In it he read disgust, admiration, envy, indifference, approval, disappointment, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... could not have shocked them more. She stood erect and looked at them. Her tall form, in its crushed white gown, her deathly white face, her black eyes gleaming with the lurid light of despair, her pale quivering lips, her air of hopeless grief, shocked even these men, used to the daily sight of real or pretended mourners. With a motion of her hand she prevented them coming closer to the dead child, and then by an imperative utterance of the word, "Go," sent them from the room. With her own hand she laid Martha ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and unruffled, grilled his rabbit, refusing to take offence or to be moved at Shad's remarks, evidently intended to goad him into what his experience told him would certainly prove a hopeless ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... upon their salaries, it will be a plain violation of the Constitution; and the victims cannot be relied on for their loyalty to the government. If the government wastes precious time in such small matters, while events of magnitude demand attention, the cause is fast reaching a hopeless condition. The able-bodied money-changer, speculator, and extortioner is still seen in the street; and their number ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... that he had not had the longing, and not to any inherent lack of his own nature. He felt that he had had a double loss in both the hunger and the satisfaction of it, and now, after all, had come at last this absurd and hopeless affection which had lately possessed him. To-night the affection, instead of seeming to warm the heart of a nobly patient and reasonable man, seemed ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... laugh. "It's quite true," says he. "For the last two or three years Mother and I have been doing our best to marry her off. We gave up the United States as hopeless, and carted her all over Europe. No use. Even younger sons wouldn't have her. Now we're back again, trying the dodge of staying longer in one place. But I fail to see any ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... adopted he lost interest in his work, came late and left early, or disappeared for two or three days at a time without troubling himself to account for his absences. At last even those who had been cynical enough to smile over his disgrace at the temperance supper began to speak of him as a hopeless failure, and he lost the support of the feminine community when one Sunday morning, just as the Baptist and Methodist churches were releasing their congregations, he walked up Eubaw Avenue with a young woman less known to those sacred edifices than to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... and got a clear view of the work before her. The studding-sails and royals had been taken in twenty minutes earlier; the bowlines were now all hauled, and the frigate was brought close upon the wind. Still the chase was evidently hopeless, the little Feu-Follet having everything as much to her mind as if she had ordered the weather expressly to show her powers. With her sheets flattened in until her canvas stood like boards, her head looked fully a point to windward of that of the ship, and, what ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... or I certainly should, being ashamed of the truth. K * *, I hope, has appeased your magnanimous indignation at his blunders. I wished and wish you were in the Committee, with all my heart.[82] It seems so hopeless a business, that the company of a friend would be quite consoling,—but more of this when we meet. In the mean time, you are entreated to prevail upon Mrs. Esterre to engage herself. I believe she has been written to, but your influence, in person or proxy, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... whose peculiarly repulsive countenance was so remarkable that when we came away from the jail I interrogated one of the workers concerning her. To my amazement, I was informed that the woman (Nell) was regarded as a hopeless case, and also that she had enjoyed musical educational advantages, her people having sent her to Paris to complete certain accomplishments. There, in that wicked capital, she became very gay, soon acquired the absinth habit, and rapidly descended in the social scale, and now she was ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... the skipper, moving away. He was inclined to make little of the occurrence, since the solution seemed so hopeless; but he did not permit himself to blink the fact that mystery had already crept into the cruise, and that mystery of a deadly sort. It was only in so far as it concerned him in person that he belittled ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Cincinnatus. To his credit account, which is considerable, stands his wonder-working faith in the recuperative forces of his country when its fortunes were at their lowest ebb. With buoyancy and confidence he set himself the task of rescuing his fellow-countrymen when it looked as hopeless as that of Xenophon at Cunaxa. He created an army out of nothing, induced his men by argument, suasion, and example to shake off the virus of indiscipline and sacrifice their individual judgment and will to the well-being of their fellows. He enjoined nothing upon others ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... refusal of his request to copy her picture he fumed and fretted at the prospect of Somerset's return before any impression had been made on her heart by himself; he swore at Dare, and asked him hotly why he had dragged him into such a hopeless dilemma as this. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... preface to Androcles and the Lion (a disquisition just about as long as God the Invisible King) he propounds the question, "Why not give Christianity a trial?" and opens the discussion thus: "The question seems a hopeless one after 2,000 years of resolute adherence to the old cry of 'Not this man, but Barabbas.' Yet it is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his millions of money, and his moralities and churches ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... Peyronnet increases, and the Ministers run the hazard of their places by attempting to save them. I fear that is hopeless. The Spanish Radicals seem to find it would be dangerous to pass ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... became an established fact from the Pillars of Hercules to the mouths of the Nile and the Orontes, but, as if it were the final decree of fate, it weighed on the nations with all the pressure of an inevitable necessity, and seemed to leave them merely the choice of perishing in hopeless resistance or in hopeless endurance. If history were not entitled to insist that the earnest reader should accompany her through good and evil days, through landscapes of winter as well as of spring, the historian might be tempted to shun the cheerless ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... as of a child worn out with hopeless crying had reached our ears. Turkey immediately began to climb the ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Austrian uniform, is it possible to repress a sad smile at the simple optimism of courts? In 1811 illusions were universal. "Amid all our triumphs," says General de Segur, "when even our enemies, at last resigning themselves to their fate, seemed hopeless, or had rallied to the side of our Emperor, what pretext was there for gloom, or for any foreboding of a total or partial eclipse? It was pleasanter to trust in his star, which dazzled us from its height, so many wonders had it wrought!... And how many of us, despite the ever-shifting sky of France, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... made, but it worked well. Whatever Jack's parentage may have been (and he was named after the stormy month in which he had been born), the blood that ran in his veins could not have been beggar's blood. There was no hopeless, shiftless, invincible idleness about him. He found work for himself when it was not given him to do, and he attached himself passionately and proudly to all the belongings of ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Brandon's stronger nature the sun would go till noon and there would burn for life. The sun, however, had not reached its noon with Brandon, either; since he had set his brain against his heart, and had done what he could to stay the all-consuming orb at its dawning. He knew the hopeless misery such a passion would bring him, and helped the good Lord, in so far as he could, to answer his prayer, and lead him not into temptation. As soon as he saw the truth, he avoided ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... harsh tone of command towards these men and women, whose labor is extorted from them without remorse, from youth to age, and whose hopeless existence seems to me sadder than suffering itself, affects me with an intolerable sense of impotent pity for them.... Then, too, the disrepute in which honest and honorable labor is held, by being thus practiced only by a degraded class, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... little girl had been deepened by the unforeseen manner in which her fate had been entrusted to him. The thought of Bessy, softened to compunction by the discovery that her love had persisted under their apparently hopeless estrangement—this feeling, intensified to the verge of morbidness by the circumstances attending her death, now sought expression in a passionate devotion to her child. Accident had, in short, created between Bessy and himself a retrospective sympathy ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... first and incomparably her best novel, brought her L30; Cecilia, her next, L250; then came Camilla; and her last novel, The Wanderer, which she wrote after ten years' absence with her husband in France, actually sold 3,600 copies in six months at two guineas a copy, and was an absolute and hopeless failure. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... room, and, shivering slightly, drooped her head again on her hand. Week after week went slowly by, and she was removed to Mrs. Wood's house, but no improvement was discernible, and the belief became general that the child's mind had sunk into hopeless imbecility. The kind-hearted miller and his wife endeavored to coax her out of her chair by the chimney-corner, but she crouched there, a wan, mute figure of woe, pitiable to contemplate; asking no questions, causing no trouble, receiving no consolation. One bright March ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... those three, thus wordlessly, no one marking them, fought a tragic battle of hopeless love with ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... civilized warfare the Confederates should have surrendered, and allowed us to restore peace in the land. I claim also that when we took Atlanta they were bound by every rule of civilized warfare to surrender their cause, which was then hopeless, and it was clear as daylight that they were bound to surrender and return to civil life; but they continued the war, and then we had a right under the rules of civilized warfare to commence a system that would make them feel the power of the Government, and make ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... out, boys; she's going down!" Worn out with want of rest, their hands and feet half flayed, the men staggered out and went desperately to work again. The brakes of the pumps hung far above their heads, and after toiling for three hours one of the standards broke and things looked hopeless. By six o'clock next day there were four and a half feet of water in the hold, and still the struggle was kept up with dogged resolution. At ten o'clock the water had risen to six feet, and all the time the hurricane ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... when it comes to living we seem to belie our convictions. We live as though we thought the spirit a doubtful matter. There are those who take pride in calling themselves materialists, but they are hardly as hopeless as those who are so indifferent that they have no opinion whatever. The man who thinks and cares is quite apt to come out right, but the mindless animal who only enjoys develops no recognizable soul. The seeking first ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... all this story, I confess I lost in sympathy for Clement what I gained for his mother. Virginie's life did not seem to me worth the risk that Clement's would run. But when I saw him—sad, depressed, nay, hopeless—going about like one oppressed by a heavy dream which he cannot shake off; caring neither to eat, drink, nor sleep, yet bearing all with silent dignity, and even trying to force a poor, faint smile when he caught my anxious eyes; I turned round again, and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... There is every hope of righting earth's wrongs and of curing earth's pains if the reason and skill of man which have already done so much are free to do the rest; but if they are to strive against omnipotence, hopeless indeed is the future of the world. It is in this sense that the Atheist looks on good as 'the final goal of ill,' and believing that that goal will be reached the sooner the more strenuous the efforts of each individual, he works in the glad ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Bulldogs—i.e. to look like the larger variety seen through the wrong end of a telescope—if not actually achieved, is being rapidly approached, and can no longer be looked upon as merely the hopeless dream of a ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... go in up to his knees, up to his middle, up to his chin. But as he progressed he forgot his surroundings, his auditory; all he felt was the fate of his poor heroine, the pitiful farm-drudge, sunk in hopeless wrong and misery. He read in his very best manner, with abundant feeling and full conviction, and for a moment his hearers felt with him. Then came a last elegiac paragraph, and here Abner's voice grew husky, his ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... with tide and slip past them even now," said Kenulf, though I think he knew that this was hopeless, for if we rowed, the sound of our oars would betray us, and if not we should be on a shoal before long, whence any escape would ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... a weekly paper called "The Rehearsal, or a Review of the Times," in which he attacked Locke and Hoadly. He did all he could for the cause of the exiled James, but he gave up the work when he found it hopeless, and died in Ireland. He wrote many virulent theological works, as well as a host of political ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... by himself, leaving Jake to watch the proceedings from the vantage ground of the rise toward the house. He was quite quiet, and the boys stole occasional apprehensive glances at him. They knew this mare; they knew that she was a hopeless outlaw and fit only for the knacker's yard. At last Jacob ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Wak'd by the watchful fears of conscious guilt, On their frontiers await the coming foe. Now at the near approach of threatening Death, Full many a thinking, sighing, aching heart, Indulges secretly the hopeless wish For Life, and Peace.... Alas! it cannot be: To advance is to encounter dreadful danger; But to recede, inevitable death; His own associates would deal the blow: Thus led by Fate, behold upon the plain, The adverse bands in view, and in ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... enlarge upon my various attempts and various failures. I forbear to comment upon mistakes which I was in time wise enough to retrieve. Pushing out as I did, without compass and without experience, on the boundless ocean of learning, what could I expect but an utter and a hopeless shipwreck? ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... annoy the "Cockneys" and the "Lakers," Byron was no doubt influenced in its favour by the audacity of the plot, which not only put septentrional prejudices at defiance, but was an instance in point that love ought not "to make a tragic subject unless it is love furious, criminal, and hopeless" (Letter to Murray, January 4, 1821). He would, too, be deeply and genuinely moved by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... This great and hopeless grief was to the mistress a certain proof that Cayrol was right. Jeanne had loved and still loved another man than her husband. But why had she not said anything, and why had she allowed herself to be married to the banker? ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... support peerages, should find all their hopes frustrated. But he had chosen the good part; and he called up all the force of his mind for a battle far harder than that of Plassey. At first success seemed hopeless; but soon all obstacles began to bend before that iron courage and that vehement will. The receiving of presents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The private trade of the servants of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it gone. Now if you simply proceed to look here and there, ransacking the house without any plan, that would be motor exploration. But if, finding this trial and error procedure to be laborious and almost hopeless, you sit down and think, "Where can that hammer be? Probably where I used it last!" you may recall using it for a certain purpose, in a certain place, go there and find it. You have substituted mental exploration ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... larger than any man else was Able to bear to the battle-encounter, The good and splendid work of the giants. He grasped then the sword-hilt, knight of the Scyldings, Bold and battle-grim, brandished his ring-sword. Hopeless of living, hotly he smote her, That the fiend-woman's neck firmly it grappled, Broke through her bone-joints, the bill fully pierced her Fate-cursed body, she fell to the ground then: The hand-sword was bloody, the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as the faculty had examined the Regent; they judged his case hopeless. He was hastily extended upon the floor, and bled, but he gave not the slightest sign of life, do what they might to him. In an instant, after the first announcement, everybody flocked to the spot; the great and the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... he had begun for the purpose of getting possession of the Nashville pike, and though reinforced until two-fifths of Bragg's army was now at his command, yet he met with repulse after repulse, which created great gaps in his lines and taught him that to overwhelm us was hopeless. ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... "It's hopeless, Avice. You haven't tried a bit. And you know it isn't hard—you did a far more difficult piece of translation ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... mysterious temple, and still the same restless thoughts, the same recurrent questions vex me snow as they did then, and still remain unanswered. In a few days we shall see each other again. Once more I shall gaze upon your stern image, upon your three huge granite faces, and shall feel as hopeless as ever of piercing the mystery of your being. This secret fell into safe hands three centuries before ours. It is not in vain that the old Portuguese historian Don Diego de Cuta boasts that "the big square stone fastened over the arch ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... all I heard, for they began to move, having had enough sugar and water, I suppose; and they sauntered away to pay their bill at the hatch put up at the doorway. It was hopeless to attempt to follow them; but although I am not so quick in stays as I was, I slewed myself round to have a squint at them. One was a slight little active chap, with dapper legs, and jerks like a Frenchman all ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... instructions that I suppose explains his wishes. You see he did not really think of dying; we all considered him improving until that fatal hemorrhage. The business is left to Eugene. Then there are legacies and incomes,"—with a rather hopeless sigh. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... grandeur and prestige. But again she rose, in a semblance of her martial spirit, when her native sons, gathering fresh courage and inspiration from the waning powers of the mother-country in the early years of the century just closed, organized that federation which, after long years of almost hopeless struggle, lifted the yoke of Spanish misrule from New Granada and proclaimed the Republic of Colombia. Cartagena was the first city of Colombia to declare its independence from Spain. And in the great war which followed the "Heroic City" passed through ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... only seest in me, so stripped and bare, The lyric secret waiting to be born, The patient term allowed Before it stretch and flutteringly unfold Its rumpled webs of amethyst-freaked, diaphanous gold. And what hard task abstracts me from delight, Filling with hopeless hope and dear despair The still-born day and parch-ed fields of night, That my old way of song, no longer fair, For lack of serene care, Is grown a stony and a weed-choked plot, Thou only know'st aright, Thou only know'st, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... Philip the Fair attacked the mighty knights of the Temple, the most powerful of the religious orders of knighthood which had fought the Saracens in Jerusalem. The Templars, having found their warfare hopeless, had abandoned the Holy Land and had dwelt for a generation inglorious in the West. Philip suddenly seized the leading members of the order, accused it of hideous crimes, and confiscated all its vast wealth and hundreds of strong castles throughout France. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... he might command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern—for it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers—F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... hour to wake you this morning. I heard him say, 'Now, master dear, the bugle will sound in a minute or two; it's wake you must, or there will be a divil of botheration over it.' I looked in, and there you were. Hoolan was standing by the side of you shaking his head gravely, as if it was a hopeless job that he had in hand, and if I had not emptied a water-bottle over you, you would never have been on ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... experiences with a kind of magical enchantment. Life prefigures itself before us as a spiritual drama in which we are, at once, the actors and the spectators. The story of living goes on perpetually. The days and the years inevitably turn the pages and open new chapters. Nothing is ever hopeless, because new combinations and groupings create new results. The forces that determine his daily life are partly with man and partly with God. They lie in both the Seen and the Unseen. We are always an inhabitant of both realms, and to recognize either alone and be blind ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... Executive was brought to an end. I again reviewed the alternative courses of action which had been proposed, concluding that the only one consonant with international policy and compatible with our firm-set historical traditions was intervention as a neutral to stop the war and check the hopeless sacrifice of life, even though that resort involved "hostile constraint upon both the parties to the contest, as well to enforce a truce as to guide the eventual settlement." The grounds justifying that step were the interests of humanity, the duty ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... why Westermarck is so eager to prove liberty of choice on the part of Australian women is because he has set himself the hopeless task of proving that the lower we go the more liberty woman has, and that "under more primitive conditions she was even more free in that respect than she is now amongst most of the lower races." "As man in the earliest times," ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... thoroughly was the original copy altered, interlined, and rearranged. This strange production, almost illegible, was sent to the unfortunate printers; with infinite difficulty a proof-sheet was obtained, which, being sent to the author, was presently returned in almost as hopeless a chaos of corrections as the manuscript first submitted. Whole sentences were erased, others transposed, everything modified. A second and a third followed, alike torn to pieces by the ravenous pen of Balzac. The despairing printers labored by turns, only the picked men of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... well-trained and educated Negro may now do, and how ready to acknowledge him a Southern white man may be, let me return once more to the plantation I spoke of in the first part of this chapter. As the years went by, the night seemed to grow darker, so that all seemed hopeless and lost. At this point relief and strength came from an unexpected source. This Southern white man's idea of Negro education had been that it merely meant a parrot-like absorption of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, with a special tendency to imitate the weaker elements of the white ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... a hopeless love among your scrapes, then," said Deronda, whose voice seemed to get deeper ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... freely exercised, and large portions of the Declaration, not thereby affected, have proved to be so inapplicable to modern conditions, as disclosed by the war, that the document, so far from providing reliable guidance, is now a mere source of hopeless confusion. ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... in the Reichsrat of the hopeless state of decay prevailing in Austria-Hungary was, of course, due to the Russian Revolution. If it was not for the Russian Revolution, the Austrian Emperor and Clam-Martinic would perhaps have continued their reign of absolutism ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... ears, to catch the points on the river whence the yells arose. For the banks he cared nothing. The danger was from the canoes. By the keenness of his faculties, the chief ascertained that there were four canoes out, and that they would have to run the gauntlet between them, or escape would be hopeless. By the sounds he also became certain that these four canoes were in the rice, two on each side of the river, and there they would probably remain, in expectation that the fugitives would be most likely to come down in ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... rotten. One of my men, after long sickness, which I did not understand, died here. He was one of the Batoka, and when unable to walk I had some difficulty in making his companions carry him. They wished to leave him to die when his case became hopeless. Another of them deserted to Mozinkwa. He said that his motive for doing so was that the Makololo had killed both his father and mother, and, as he had neither wife nor child, there was no reason why he should continue longer with them. I did not object to his statements, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint, Their bend of weary knees and their con- tortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins, A real perpetual ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... meals must be waiting for him at the manse. His visits were understood to be quite unfinished, and he left every house pledged to return and take up things at the point where he had been obliged to break off, and so he came at last in this matter of visitation into a condition of hopeless insolvency. His adventures were innumerable and always enjoyable—falling off the two fir trees that made a bridge over our deeper burns, and being dried at the next farm-house—wandering over the moor all night and turning ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... insuperable obstacles to its natural development impressed them more and more forcibly, miserable and anxious times took their place. Their love was no sooner acknowledged than both came to realize how mad and hopeless it was, and that no reiteration of its intensity and no argument could ever give them a ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... conceived, been executed with greater rapidity, the career of Lafayette would have terminated, and his followers must either have been captured or slain. Washington himself seems to have considered that his case was hopeless. By means of glasses he had discovered Lafayette's peril, | and he caused his bridge across the Schuylkill to be broken down, lest the British, after annihilating this detachment, should fall upon himself ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is a certain order of eclecticism. It is not the eclecticism of the Bolognese painters, for example, illustrating the really hopeless attempt to combine the supposed and superficial excellences, always dissociated from the essence, of different points of view. It is a free choice of attitude, rather, due to the release of the individual from the thraldom of conformity that ruled even during the romantic epoch. ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... be established. They suffered from incompatibility of temperament and perpetual discordance of will; and the more they advanced in years the deeper they plunged into a state of serious difference and hopeless bitterness. The king was a man of subtlety and full of fence; he knew how to recoil for a better spring, how to affect humility and gentleness in his deep designs, how to yield and to give up in order to receive double, and how to bear and tolerate for a time his own grievances in hopes ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town—at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the theatre—he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church, sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she always ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... these, and many other small matters, Caroline was quite relieved to plead guilty, and to promise to do her best by personal supervision; and Ellen set herself to devise further ways of reduction, not realising how hopeless it is to prescribe for another person's household difficulties. It is not in the nature of things that such advice should be palatable, and the proverb about the pinching of the shoe ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... insupportable as before. It seemed hanging in a thick, heavy layer right over the earth; over the dark blue sky, tiny bright fires seemed whisking through the finest, almost black dust. Everything was still; and there was something hopeless and oppressive in this profound hush of exhausted nature. I made my way to a hay-loft, and lay down on the fresh-cut, but already almost dry grass. For a long while I could not go to sleep; for a long while Yakov's irresistible voice was ringing in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... line of activity for a man of my attainments. I began to read a little on the side. Then I didn't know whether to have contempt for us fools who live and endure the eternal folly, or whether I ought to pity Basswood Junction and Princeton, because life is all so awfully hard and hopeless. Meantime, Old Mr. World went right on—didn't stop ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... anxiety; three pounds goes but little way in the world when there is nothing behind it, but to a man who has counted his exchequer in pennies it seems a good starting-point. Fortune had done him a whimsically kind turn when last he trod these lanes as a hopeless adventurer, and there might yet be a chance of his finding some work and making a fresh start; as he got further from the farm his spirits rose higher. There was a sense of relief in regaining once more his lost identity and ceasing to be the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... on halting at a village in that part of Bohemia which pushes itself deep into the heart of Saxony, between Seibnitz and Hernhut, that we had accomplished scarcely one-fourth of our pilgrimage; and that, with scarce four hours of daylight before us, it was utterly hopeless to think of compassing the remaining three-fourths. Having ascertained, therefore, that good quarters were to be had at Schlukenau, a considerable town through which it would be necessary to pass, we made up our minds to halt there ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... twenty shillings an acre for crown-lands, has not only had the effect of deterring capitalists from embarking in so hopeless a speculation, but has grievously wronged the existing land-owners, by raising the price of labour. When land was sold at five shillings an acre, a fund was accumulated in the hand of the local Government that served to pay for ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... they are supported and carried through the temptation, they may sing praise to him, and not ascribe any thing to themselves—remembering how often they were fainting, and almost giving over the cause as desperate and hopeless. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... again. There were heavy bets of fifteen to one in half-gallons of porter, laid by desperate gamblers, that Father Letheby would make Mrs. Darcy wash her face. It was supposed to be a wild plunge in a hopeless speculation. I am told now, that the betting has gone up at the forge, and is now fifty to one that, before a month, she'll have a lace cap and "sthramers" like the maids at ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... reversed, producing an effect exactly opposite to that which is desired. It is true, this last difficulty is never of more than a few moments' continuance, else indeed would the condition of the mariner be hopeless; but it is of constant occurrence, and so irregular as to defy calculations and defeat caution. In the present instance, the Montauk would seem to fly through the water, so swift was her progress; and then, as a furious surge overtook her in the chase, she settled heavily into the element, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... again bet nineteen dollars alce on the first card. Again he won, and we went the length of the street, Runt wagering nineteen dollars alce on the first card for ten consecutive times without losing a bet. In his groggy condition, the prospect of losing Pickett's money was hopeless, and my brother and I promised him that he might come back the next morning and try to ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... amusement that Master had justifiably compared the man to a balky horse. Another seven days passed; the doctor, suddenly ill, meekly consented to wear the bangle. Two weeks later the physician in attendance told me that his patient's case was hopeless. He supplied harrowing details of the ravages inflicted ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Hopeless at length, and desperate, he set forth alone and on foot, in the vain hope of escaping the pursuit ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... view, "totality" does not mean the hopeless task of a quantitative summation. It means rather consistency of mode of response in reference to the plurality of events which occur. Consistency does not mean literal identity; for since the same thing does not happen twice, an exact repetition of a reaction involves some ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... a rare enterprise to surprise Breda," Captain de Heraugiere said; "but I fear it is hopeless to ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... physical and mental lassitude weighed on Saxham. His soul was sick with the long, hopeless struggle. He would end it. He would die, and take away the shadow from Lynette's pure life, and leave her free. His will devised to her everything he possessed, leaving her untrammelled. Let her learn to love once more, let her marry a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... struggled valiantly to keep pace with what her mother always had done, and had required of her at home; but she learned long before she quit struggling that farming with George was hopeless. So at last she became so discouraged she began to drift into his way of doing merely what would sustain them, and then reading, fishing, or sleeping the remainder of the time. She began teaching her children while very small, and daily they had their lessons ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... him a great object of interest, and paid him much attention. Even those who were tired of being asked to contribute to his support, who resented the fact of his having a helpless wife and great family; who always insisted that with his little pension and hopeless lameness, his fingerless left hand and failing sight, he could support himself and his household if he chose,—even those persons came forward now to greet him handsomely and with large approval. To be sure, he enjoyed the conversation of idlers, and his wife had a complaining way that was the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... to them, an old man who seemed weak like his doorbell. He stood in his black cap, holding his hands against his breast to keep them from shaking, and looked very old indeed,—broken, hopeless, as if he were sick of this world and done with it. Nowhere in France had Claude seen a face so sad as his. Yes, he would say a prayer. It was better to have Christian burial, and they were far from home, poor fellows! ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... hopeless eyes and strove gamely to meet his, then, failing, broke away, and turned back to the door. "I knew you couldn't understand. I—I—oh, God, I love him so!" With a cry like that of a wounded animal she fled out into the night, where she could give vent to her anguish unseen; for she had never ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... had postponed until his evening round of visits a number of calls that were not pressing. When he came out to his buggy, Harry Aldis stood at the horse's head, at the carriage steps beside the driveway, his chin sunk on his breast, in an attitude of hopeless misery. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the 'Coon said they must do as Mr. Owl ordered, unless Mr. 'Possum wanted to change doctors, which was not a good plan until the case became hopeless, and that would probably not be before some time in the night. Mr. 'Coon said, though, there was no reason why that nice chicken should be wasted, and as it would still be fresh, he would rig up a hook and line and see if he couldn't save it. So he got out his fishing ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... word," he said, earnestly, "I thought you did. And now I have made you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were anybody but myself; I am a hopeless lout." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... that lad was never cut out for a railroad man," says Ben. "He lets his emotions excite his head too much. Oh, I give him a good talking to, by doggie! I says to him: 'Why, you poor little hopeless, slant-headed, weak-minded idiot, you'—you know I always talk to Ed like he was my own brother—'what did you expect?' I says. 'I'm quite sorry for your injuries; but that was the first chance I'd ever had to make a report and I couldn't write one of these continuous ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. In his view not only the religious life of the nation, but (what he regarded as synonymous) the church itself, was in an almost hopeless state of decay, as we see from his first and only charge to the diocese of Durham and [v.04 p.0883] from many passages in the Analogy. And though there was a complete remedy just coming into notice, in the Evangelical revival, it was not of a kind ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... only because of the angering equality it bespeaks, but also, and chiefly, because the men that could write it best are those that mingle something akin to a curse with the kiss they secretly press upon some trifling souvenir, men to whom it has brought suffering, or to whom only a hopeless longing after ideal love is represented by the token—which is rarely the evidence of triumph, but rather of regret, the reminder of something lost ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... recklessly wisped up in the grasp of as thankless a thievin' black-hearted slieveen as ever stepped, and not yet, perhaps, utterly out of reach, though every fleeting instant carried it nearer to that hopeless point. However, she and her neighbours stood the test unshaken. Mrs. Ryan rolled her eyes deliberatively, and said to Mrs. M'Gurk, "The saints bless us, was it yisterday or the day before, me dear, you said you seen a couple of them ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane |
