"Desperation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myself to holding the ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hand should be immediately put to death, and that the houses ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... The passions of a mighty people never raged more fiercely than whilst that last cause was before his court,—save in open war; and there was almost war then. He well-knew nothing would so force them to desperation,—the desperation of unlicensed barbarism or the immovable determination of truth and justice driven to the wall. He knew, or if he did not, was so ignorant that he was incompetent, that in such a contest on such fundamental principles, such a decision must end in revolution and civil war. If ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Philadelphia or Washington have come here and fought Indians and Mexicans; and been driven about from pillar to post, living on potatoes and dry corn? Good respectable people suffer a great deal of tyranny ere they put their property in danger. But when Texas, in her desperation, rose, she was glad of the men with a brand on their body and a rope round their neck, and who did not value their lives more than an empty nut-shell. They did good service. Many of them won back fair names and men's respect ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... panic-stricken flock flapped away in confusion the captive tugged frantically at his tether, crying shrilly and struggling to follow them. In his desperation he paid no heed whatever as the big, brown dog dashed out and triumphantly dragged the bodies of the two victims to land. He was horrified by the terrible noise, and the killing; but his attention was chiefly engrossed by the fact that the flock ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you I'm going to?" said Nancy, laying down her paint-brush with an air of desperation. "I sha'n't do it a bit more for your asking so often. ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... moment had arrived—the time of trial—and she would not fail. Her hand was steady and her head clear, as is the case with finer natures when confronted with deadly danger. This simple girl suddenly became like one of the women of tragedy, fighting, still and strong, with a desperation beyond all symbols—the fight with death. But Sir Tom took it differently. A woman can nurse her child, can do something for him; but a man is helpless. At first he got rid of his anxieties by putting a cheerful face upon the matter, and denying the possibility ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... cotton had not been burned by their own soldiers, but might have been much better in many cases, without any real detriment to the rebel cause. The sacrifice of the property of their own people, by the rebel authorities, was evidence of the desperation of the condition of the rebellion, and was so regarded by not a few at that time. Those were terrible days. One could see anxiety written on every face among the whites. The slaves even looked worried at times, though the ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... and teetered under us as we dragged 'Scolding Sairy' from her stand in the larboard waist, clearing a lane for her between the bodies. Our feet slipped and slipped as we hove, and burning bits of sails and splinters dropping from aloft fell unheeded on our heads and shoulders. With the energy of desperation I was bending to the pull, when the Malay in front of me sank dead across the tackle. But, ere I could touch him, he was tenderly lifted aside, and a familiar figure seized the rope where the dead man's hands had warmed it. Truly, the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... neighborhood is from mere casual observation. For instance, I have a slight acquaintance with (1) Thomas Spavin, who commonly wears an air of injured innocence, and is groom to Mr. Joseph Green, of Our Street. "I tell why the brougham 'oss is out of condition, and why Desperation broke out all in a lather! 'Osses will, this 'eavy weather; and Desperation was always the most mystest hoss I ever see.—I take him out with Mr. Anderson's 'ounds—I'm above it. I allis was too timid to ride to 'ounds by natur; and Colonel Sprigs' groom ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in a fit of desperation, Thompson seized the keg of gunpowder, which he had still preserved from the hands of the enemy, threw it into the blazing lighthouse, hoping to end his own sufferings and destroy the savages. In a few moments ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them ; (*) and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... am, indeed, a brute!" And as she continued to sob drearily, I was beside myself. What could I do? She looked so like a little child, and I was so big, to have hurt her seemed cruel and shameful. I was in a state of desperation. I begged her and implored her not to weep; but it seemed to me she only sobbed the harder. What did one do, I wondered, with a weeping maiden? Had it only been a child I would have known, for I had ever a way with children; but before a weeping ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... bright, even to keenness; physically he was lazy and a shirk; morally his status is best represented by the algebraic sign 0-0; spiritually he was at times profoundly reverent and aspiring, or again, outrageously blasphemous, and reckless almost to desperation. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... one, and alas, messieurs, it pricked my finger. She was a chambermaid, her name Annette, her figure ravishing, her face an angel's, her heart — alas, messieurs, that I should have to own it! — black and slippery as a patent leather boot. I loved to desperation, I adored her to despair. She transported me — in every sense; she inspired me. Never have I cooked as I cooked (for I had been promoted at the hotel) when Annette, my adored Annette, smiled on me. Never' — and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... what his burning eyes might reveal, he hardly dared raise them from the ground; and yet to keep them long from her face was an utter impossibility. The whispered comments of the young men behind him, their admiration, and astonishment drove him to desperation. And the high-nosed dowager, whom it was his privilege to escort to his father's table, arose from it convinced that Sir Thomas's heir had lost in his travels the few ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the men stood before the counter in a dense mob, all hungry, each holding in his hand a five-franc note, when we had no change, not a franc, not a sou; when, in desperation, I used to volunteer to collect change from any one who had it, giving chits in exchange for small coins. Such crises do not arise now, ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... induce me to consent to an exchange; at one time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. But I resisted all these overtures, and sat there in desperation; each time asking him, with tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket. At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time; and was full two hours getting by easy stages to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... use lamenting over spilt milk but, for my part, I regret that Parliament did not give a fair hearing to Glendower's complaint against Lord Grey. The refusal to do so was a high-handed one. It has driven this man to desperation, and has enlisted the sympathies of all Welshmen who have English neighbours; for they cannot but say, among themselves, 'If he is to be plundered and despoiled, and his complaints refused a hearing, what is to prevent ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... Mr. Bacon tried every expedient in his power, short of a total sacrifice of his little property, to raise the money, but in vain. Except for a circumstance new in his life, he would, in his desperation, have accepted Dyer's offer of six hundred dollars for his farm, and thus prevented Mary's departure for Lowell—that circumstance was his perfect sobriety. Not since the day when Mr. Green charged upon him the responsibility of his child's banishment from ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... been trying to imagine how, with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce his communication. Her unexpected presence brought him to utter hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to repeat it ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... hillside fell before his axe, whether it was fine-leaved and short-thorned, or rough and spiny; and the cattle ate them all. Mesquite and cat-claw and ironwood, tough as woven wire and barbed at every joint, these were all that were left except cactus and the armored sahuaros. In desperation he piled brush beneath clumps of fuzzy chollas, the thorniest cactus that grows, and burned off the resinous spines; but the silky bundles of stickers still lurked beneath the ashes, and the cattle that ate them died ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... receive that beloved clay. He pictured her as he had seen her every day for ten years, and a rush of vain regret brought the big tears to his buttermilk eyes; the chords of memory twanged in his breast and he paused on the outskirts of San Pasqual with hands upraised, fists clenched in an agony of desperation. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... back windows, which overlooked a paved court, he threw himself into a chair, and strained his gaze in search of the wrecked pleasure-craft, to which one other figure clung with the might of desperation. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... futile, and the arguments urged against it by Mr. Gholson and Mr. Hunter are so convincing, that we can hardly persuade ourselves that the authors of it did not intend it to make the way easier, not to independence, but to reunion. It is said to argue desperation on the part of the chief conspirators at Richmond, and it undoubtedly does; but we see in what we believe to be the causes of their despair something more hopeful than the mere exhaustion it indicates. It is simply incredible ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Her desperation could have added the cry—And give me freedom! That was the secret in her heart. She had struck on the hope for the detested yoke to be broken ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Henry Delcombe. What he had to tell her was faintly reassuring. Carew had gone to see him after he left Ailsa, and had asked for proofs of his heirship to the marquisate of Toxeter. Delcombe had been able to satisfy him, and he had been gravely friendly, but that was all. At last, in desperation, Ailsa decided to write to Diana. The mail left that morning, and would reach Johannesburg in three days. Diana was full of resource, and she might think of a plan. Ailsa decided to tell her as much as she could without betraying any confidence. She said no word of the tragedy. That only concerned ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of evening the pirates ran alongside of his ship. As already remarked, the crew of Le Grande had sworn to stand by their captain; but in order to cut off all means of escape in the event of defeat, and therefore to make them fight with greater desperation, their chief, at the moment they were climbing the sides of the ship, caused the boat to be suddenly scuttled, and sunk. Indeed the boarding of the Spaniard was hastened by the necessity of leaping from their own vessel, already ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Misery hereafter, the precise Degree of that being fixed along with the Decree of my Damnation: Though this Persuasion of being set apart for everlasting Torment, has more often the Effects of Desperation and Self-Murder; and indeed the two Extremes of Presumption and Despair, are the natural Brood and Offspring of these Doctrines, as the reverend and learned Dr. Trapp has abundantly evinced, in ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... trial. Far different from Eugene Pearson, who had no cares and no temptations to commit crimes, and who had practiced a scheme of vile deception and ingratitude for years, Thomas Duncan had been found in a moment of weakness and desperation, and under the influence of wily tempters, had yielded himself up to their blandishments, and had done that which had made him a felon. As to Eugene Pearson, the trusted, honored and respected official of the bank, who had deliberately ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... solecism or a murder. He withdrew the move to emerge. She was hurt and desperate. He at once knew himself defeated. He thought how annoying it was to have a woman in the house who was so marvellously absorbed in his being. She was wrong; but her unreasoning desperation triumphed over ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... closely connected with all these bright days, over which so fearful a pall had fallen. It would be very natural if she should refuse even to see her—and, indeed, Ester almost hoped she would. It seemed to her that this was a woe too deep to be spoken of or endured, only she said with a kind of desperation, "Things must be endured;" and there was a wild thought in her heart, that if she could but have the ordering of events, all this bitter sorrow should never be. There came a low, tremulous knock as an interruption to her thoughts, and Maggie's swollen ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... feel you are in the deepest and gloomiest doubt, pray the prayer of desperation; cry out, "Lord, if Thou dost exist, let me know that Thou dost exist! Guide my mind by a way that I know not into Thy truth," and God will ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... hesitated; then the vision of what he must return to, otherwise, decided him. In desperation he accepted. "It's a drowning man's straw," he said, a little breathlessly. "I'm sure I shouldn't. But ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... was not jesting? Perhaps he thought the poor girl loved him with her whole soul, and would be happy to possess these fragments of a broken heart. Yet he had not told her anything. Czipra had seen him in desperation over that letter: as far as the faithful, loving girl was concerned, it would have been merely an insult, if the idol of her heart had offered her his hand the next moment, out of mere offended pride; and, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... offered it in various Courts of Europe, but always without success. Things were becoming awkward. The firm had borrowed heavily to pay for the stones, and anxiety seems to have driven Bohmer to the verge of desperation. Again he offered the necklace to the King, announcing himself ready to make terms, and to accept payment in instalments; but again ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... and to die striking with his fellows. Behind him was the wall; of the half circle which he faced, well-nigh all were old soldiers and servants of the colony. We were swordsmen all. When in his desperation he would have thrown himself upon us, we contented ourselves with keeping him at sword's length, and at last West sent the knife in the dark hand whirling over the palisade. Some one had shouted to the musketeers to ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... up, Jinny. I—I'll send your father," pleaded Mrs. Pendleton, in desperation as she watched the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... intrepidity, our young friend would have given the wealth of Europe to have found himself at that moment one single mile away from the bed on which he lay. His best policy was now to affect sleep, and he did so with an apparent reality borrowed from desperation. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... disinclination to injure her. Whenever he saw her, he drew near his bicker and looked angry; but still he would not taste till she was brought to it, and then he cocked his tail, set up his birses, and began lapping furiously as if in utter desperation. His good nature, however, was so immovable, that he would never refuse her a share of what was placed before him; he even lapped close to the one side of the dish, and left her room,—but mercy! how he ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... in the south-east, and extending as far as the eye could reach. We knew it was a forest, and that when we gained it, we were certain of having, plenty to eat; but it was very far off, at least twenty miles, and were much exhausted. In the evening we were almost driven to desperation by hunger, and we found that the approach to the forest would prove long and difficult, as it, was skirted by a bed of thick briars and prickly pears, which in breadth, could not be less than three leagues, and that a passage must ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... watched the struggle between them go on. Sometimes it seemed to Roger there was not a topic he could bring up which would not in some way bring on a clash. One night in desperation he ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... an exceedingly rapid movement, and uttering a cry of desperation, had rushed to his grandmother, and covered her body with his own. The assassin fled, stumbling against the table and overturning the ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... stones on the road, but I forbid you to hold a pen for literary composition; and once back home, you must renounce railway travelling as long as it produces uncomfortable sensations." All this was said imperatively, and although it drove my husband almost to desperation, I thanked Mr. Haden in my heart for his courageous and timely interference, and Gilbert did the same after recovering from ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... characteristic of a writer who at his ethical best might be defined as something of a plebeian Sidney. There are touches of criminal heroism and redeeming humanity even in the parts of Sextus and Tullia: the fearless desperation of the doomed ravisher, the conjugal devotion of the hunted parricide, give to the last defiant agony of the abominable mother and son a momentary tone of almost chivalrous dignity. The blank verse ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... She felt that she could not, dare not, stand out against Judith. For her own sake she could not have done so, but the thought of Lionel Hezekiah nerved her to desperation. She struck her thin, bleached ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... agility to climb over several low walls, and afterwards he blundered into the overgrown cloisters of the ruined Franciscan convent in one of the by-streets. He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes with the recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for his scratched body and his torn clothing. He lay hidden there all day, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth with all the intensity of thirst engendered by heat and fear. Three times ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... to school again Mrs. Conway sat down to answer the letter—by no means an easy task—and she sat with the paper before her for a long time before she began. At last, with an air of desperation, she dipped her pen into the ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... in Elizabeth's gesture, and a desperation in her face that made Mrs. Eveleigh go away and leave her without a word. In a moment she ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... thoughts, to know her feelings, to understand her grief or her joy. But she knew all that was at the bottom of his heart. He had told her himself, impelled by a sudden thought, going to her in darkness, in desperation, in absurd hope, in incredible trust. He had told her what he had told no one on earth, except perhaps, at times, himself, but without words—less clearly. He had told her and she had listened in silence. She had listened leaning over the rail till at last her ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... his sister to get a divorce, but she remained steadfast and silent. In desperation Rabbi Gershon asked a friend of his, Rabbi Mekatier, to take Israel to a mad woman, who told people their good and bad qualities, and whose stigmatization, he thought, might have an effect upon his graceless brother-in-law. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... public road, the angel reminded me. My will fluttered from side to side, now turning its ear to my conscience, now turning away and hearkening to my impulse. At last, weary of the strife, I determined to settle it by a just contempt of trifles—and, half in desperation, bit into ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... he cried, turning to Gertie. "You wouldn't treat a gentleman like that, would you, missy? You wouldn't play football with an honest, loving heart, I'm sure. Oh, come on," with pretended desperation, "let's have a cigar, and try to forget all about it. A twopenny one; same as you sell to members of the House ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... thousand dollars to pay, more than he could possibly raise. He tried everywhere, but to no purpose. He could neither borrow nor collect that sum. In a moment of desperation, he put one hundred dollars into his pocket, and went to a regular establishment near here, and staked that sum at play. In two hours he came away with twelve hundred dollars in his pocket, instead of one hundred. And thus ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... M'riar's capacity for mere dread was full to the brim. She was on the brink of the reaction of fear, which is despair—or, rather, desperation. Was she to wait for another appalling knock, like that, to set her heartstrings vibrating anew? To what end? No—settle it now, under ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... think that, so late as 1780, it should, for a long time, have been entirely successful. The preparatory course of exercises for admission to the mystic brotherhood has been described as a series of "purgation, starvation, and desperation," lasting for forty days! and ending in "physical regeneration" and an immortality on earth. The celebrated Lavater, a mild and genial, but feeble man, became one of Cagliostro's disciples, and was bamboozled to his heart's content—in fact, made to believe that ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Indian was of herculean size and strength, and of wonderful agility. He was well armed, and thoroughly understood the use of his rifle. His bravery had already given him renown, and it was certain that under the circumstances he would fight with the utmost desperation. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... the man began to grow restless. He had, of course, no idea whatever of the length of time he had been in the cabin, and he knew that he must be thinking of an immediate escape. In desperation, he tried to get out of bed, but the task was beyond his power. At that a terrible feeling of hopelessness assailed him. His only chance was to reach the valley where he had little fear of capture; but wounded, as ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... crowd this part with an account of the lesser part of the rogueries with which they plagued them continually, night and day, it forced the two men to such a desperation that they resolved to fight them all three, the first time they had a fair opportunity. In order to do this they resolved to go to the castle (as they called my old dwelling), where the three rogues and the Spaniards all lived together at that time, intending to have ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... last bawled, with the accents of one driven to desperation, "if there a'n't no dodging you, then there a'n't. Here's for you, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... cold. At that moment she probably exaggerated in her mind the effect of her appearance. She plunged down into pessimism about herself. A sort of desperation came upon her. Underneath all her conquering charm, hidden away like a trembling bird under depths of green leaves, there was a secret diffidence of which she had occasionally been conscious during her life. It had no doubt been born with ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... had turned her horse's head to obtain a better view of the hunt, alarmed by the animal's menacing appearance, tried to get out of his way. But it was too late. Hemmed in on all sides, and driven to desperation by the cries of hounds and huntsmen in front, the hart lowered his horns, and made ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... contents of which had been made known to her—and of the money, that she knew or surmised was kept in the vault. When the effect of the chloroform wore off, and the General waked to find her at the vault; a struggle evidently took place, and in desperation at the thought of being detected, she killed him. You do not understand all the bearings of even slight circumstances in a case like this, but we who make a study of such sad matters, know the significance of the disappearance of the will; the destruction ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a book published at that time entitled, "The Glory and Shame of England." Her glory was the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies, and her shame the degraded and outraged condition of those very miners and factory men. In their desperation, they organized trades unions, went on strike, fought terrible battles, often destroying property and sometimes even killing their employers. Those who have read Charles Reade's novel, "Put Yourself in his Place," have not forgotten the terrible scenes depicted. While those starving men sometimes ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... observe that I have large hands. Their size and strength served me well on this occasion. At the moment that the rope tightened about my throat I reached up and grasped the Brahmin's left thumb. Desperation gave me additional strength, and I snapped it like a stick ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... was not free from that careless life-contemning desperation, which sometimes belongs to forcible natures.... He was too heedless of his good name and too blind to the truth that though right and wrong may be near neighbours, yet the line that separates them is of an awful sacredness."—JOHN ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... something so full and satisfying in the words. Not once before in years had there been occasion to use them; it might be years again before another opportunity presented. They had an official sound, a sound of adventure and desperation. And so they whispered them, neighbor nodding to neighbor in deep understanding as it went round the room, like a pass-word in secret conclave: "He's ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... are again! Glad to be back in the old home. How are you, dear? How are you, pet? Miss Briggs, I see you are flourishing! How have all these young people been behaving while I was away? What about dinner? I'm so hungry that I shall eat the Mouse in desperation if I am kept waiting. Well, little Mouse, glad to see your father back again, eh? Come upstairs with me while I change my coat ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... confusion, to spread cynicism and scandals, together with complete disbelief in everything and an eagerness for something better, and finally, by means of fires, as a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at a given moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those your words which I tried to remember accurately? Is that the programme you gave us as the authorised representative of the central committee, which is to this day utterly unknown to us and ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hat is drawn down over his eyes, and he is apparently asleep. The rear door of the car opens, and the conductor enters with a young lady, heavily veiled, the porter coming after with her wraps and travelling-bags. The lady's air is of mingled anxiety and desperation, with a certain fierceness of movement. She casts a careless glance ...
— The Parlor-Car • William D. Howells
... of horror came over me. I renewed my efforts with the energy of desperation. I leant to one side, then to the other, almost wrenching my knees from their sockets. My feet remained fast as ever. I could not ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... harbor. He hovered about the wharves, conversing with the sailors and captains, and sometimes carrying his little bundle with him. But the thoughts of home were too strong for him, and he could never quite summon up resolution enough to run away. In a fit of desperation he wrote a letter to his brother, telling him of his wish to go to sea, and informing him that he should first ask his father's permission, and if that were not granted he should go without it. This letter he dropped where his father ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Interests far more precious than my own depended on the caution which must now guide my slightest actions. There was no possible treachery which Sir Percival might not attempt against me. In the danger and desperation of his position he would be staggered by no risks, he would recoil at no crime—he would literally hesitate at nothing ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... means tramps of miles into the country, sails on the lovely Ujina Bay and climbs over the mountains. In the afternoon the boy is so in evidence, we almost fall over him if we step. Yesterday in desperation I tied an apron on him and let him help me make a cake. Even at that, with a dab of chocolate on his cheek and flour on his nose, his summer sky eyes were weepy whenever he spoke of his "Mutter." I have done everything for him except ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... unconscious. The others rested in their places, scarcely venturing to stir a limb, their roving, wolfish eyes the only visible evidence of remaining life, every hope vanished, yet each man clinging to his assigned post of duty in desperation. There was but little firing—the defenders nursing their slender stock, the savages biding their time. When night shut down the latter became bolder, and taunted cruelly those destined to become so soon their hapless victims. Twice the maddened ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... anything that looks like victory. Even the splendid courage of its hero Milos, who counters an imputation of treachery by riding in full daylight into the Ottoman camp and murdering the Sultan, even this courage is rather near to desperation. The Marko cycle—Marko whose betrayal of his country seems wiped out by his immense prowess—has in a less degree this utter defeat of Servia as its background. But Servian history before all this has many glories, which, ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... a large stone, though whether they really would have used them in their desperation I can not say. But in a moment all ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... good deal, and didn't exactly know what to say, and at length, in a sort of desperation, determined to forego the pleasure of indulging in a harangue, and went straight to the root of the business by producing from his pocket two small boxes, and presented them in the name of the Hollowmell miners to Miss Mabel ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... no more, for they moved from the window into the room; but they left me a different man. It was not so much the hope of reward as the desire for vengeance that urged me; my clerk's wits returned once more, and in the very desperation of my affairs gave me the courage I sometimes lacked. I recognized that I had not to do with a King, but a dog; but that none the less that way lay revenge. And I rose up and slunk again into the main street and passed through the crowd and up the Rue St. Martin and by St. Merri, a dirty, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... and held it as a shield while he reached vainly to grip at the thrusting spear. Dimly he saw the flash of white and gold where the girl, Luhra, threw her own body upon the armed figure and clung in desperation to the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... sent against them; but in most of the skirmishes and engagements the Waldenses were successful, which partly arose from their being better acquainted with the passes of the valleys of Piedmont than their adversaries, and partly from the desperation with which they fought; for they well knew, if they were taken, they should not be considered as prisoners of war, but ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... abandon caution and speak his mind. Him, almost as much as Kirk, the existing state of things had driven to desperation. Though in a sense he was only a spectator, the fact that the altered conditions of Kirk's life involved his almost complete separation from Mamie gave him what might be called a stake in the affair. The brief and rare glimpses which he got of ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... morning the fire from all the batteries continued with unabated warmth, though one after the other our guns were becoming useless. I continued working away at mine with gloomy desperation. I was suffering from my wounds, from fatigue, and from hunger too, for our provisions had almost failed us. I could have gone on, however, as long as a man remained alive to help me work my guns. At last a shot came through the embrasure at which ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Captain Cai, and, speaking under stress of desperation, he found himself of a sudden wondering at his own fluency. "It don't become me to repeat all the—sentiments ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the son of Jesse, consulting witches in his desperation, and fighting the Philistines in bloody conflicts, near Mount Gilboa, defeated and wounded, he committed suicide by falling on his sword. Thus ended the career of the first king of the ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... she weighs her anchor, set your house, that is to say, your state room, as much in order as if you were going to be hanged; place every thing in the most convenient position to be seized without trouble at a moment's notice; for be sure that in half an hour after sailing an infinite desperation will seize you, in which the grasshopper will be a burden. If any thing is in your trunk, it might almost as well be in the sea, for any practical probability of your getting ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... troops, all who fought them that day will most freely admit the courage they showed. At El Caney, where they were nearly hemmed in, they made a most desperate defence; at San Juan the way to retreat was open, and so, though they were seven times as numerous, they fought with less desperation, but still ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... Lutheran states were left at the mercy of the Catholic League. Brandenburg openly espoused the imperialist cause and aided Ferdinand's generals in expelling the Danish king from German soil. Only the lack of naval control of the Baltic and North seas prevented the victors from seizing Denmark. The desperation of Christian and the growingly suspicious activity of Sweden resulted in the peace of Lubeck (1629), by which the king of Denmark was left in possession of Jutland, Schleswig, and Holstein, but deprived of the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... neck; and eyes, had they been agreeable in expression, that would have been irresistible: fortunately for my susceptible heart, the only sentiment they evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation, singularly unnatural to be detected there. The canisters were almost out of her reach; I made a motion to aid her; she turned upon me as a miser might turn if any one attempted to assist him in counting ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... desperation to his study for the priesthood—in the recognition that the single-mindedness of his aims, and his fidelity to the cause, had been more than questionable of late. His passion for Sue troubled his soul; yet his lawful abandonment to the society of Arabella ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the traces of a rout. Every few yards now were the evidences of desperation: loads of potio, garments, water bottles emptied and cast aside in a gust of passion at their emptiness. At intervals also they passed more men, gaunt, incredibly cadaverous, considering that only the day before they had been strong and well. They sat or lay inert, watching the safari ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... a sort of subject prince. Returning from this distant expedition, Nadir Shah was beginning to push his conquests over Northeastern Asia when he was slain by a conspiracy among his Persian followers, driven to desperation by his savage tyranny. His dominions fell to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... hard experience, have been widely diffused among our hitherto peaceful people, and when we shall have nearly a million of trained troops ready to spring to arms at an hour's call; troops who will fight a foreign foe with double the courage and desperation which has characterized the present war. If he cannot subdue the rude Mexicans, can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for a moment gazing with widened and terrified eyes. She had now no time to lose. The lapping waters of a tiny brook were calling her to prompt and hazardous action. She fell to her knees and clasped her hands in a clutch of desperation. "God, give me strength right now ter ack like a man," she prayed. "Hit seems like ther fust time I'm called on, ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... country town. His rebuff had simply ruined him with the malicious provincials among whom he had come to live, thinking to rule over them. It was so real a disaster that he was not long in feeling the consequences of it. He betook himself in desperation to a wealthy old maid, and met with a second refusal. Thus failed the ambitious schemes with which he had started. He had lost his hope of a marriage with Mlle. d'Esgrignon, which would have opened the Faubourg Saint-Germain of the province ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... you, Miss Ellen," said Margery, in a sort of desperation, setting down one iron and taking up another; "don't talk in that way, or you'll upset me entirely. I ain't a bit better than a child," said she, her tears falling fast on the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... desperation. "Have a candy—do—two of them. But don't cry. She reminds me of the twins," she added, with just the suspicion of moisture in her own eyes. The lost child gravely accepted two chocolates, one in each hand, and at once proceeded ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... morale. Our people are not afraid of that. We know that we may have to pay a heavy price for freedom. We will pay this price with a will. Whatever the price, it is a thousand times worth it. No matter what our enemies, in their desperation, may attempt to do to us—we will say, as the people of London have said, "We can take it." And what's more we can give it back and we will give ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this subjection, sometimes she would remark that she suffered from pleasure more than she suffered from pain. There was the dark shadow of her life. You may be sure that a lover was often compelled to part with a nice little heap of crowns in order to pass the night with her, and was reduced to desperation by a refusal. Now for her it was a joyful thing to feel a youthful desire, like that she had for the little priest, whose story commences this collection; but because she was older than in those merry days, love was more fully established in her, and she soon ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... certain to take the last of this handful of braves who resisted so heroically in the morning. With daybreak the Russian generals again challenged General Partouneaux, who was standing upright in the snow with the 400 or 500 of his brigade, remonstrating with him, and he, with desperation in his soul, surrendered. The other two brigades of his division that had been separated from him also laid down their arms. The Russians took about 2 thousand prisoners, that is, the survivors of Partouneaux's ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... a sudden stroke had separated them for ever—as though it were the last look of some beloved thing just wrenched from his grasp. This very feeling, had none other prompted, made him more anxious for its recovery; and he would have urged his suit with all the energy of a reckless desperation, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... over the barrens and through the forest in winter, you find the same wandering, unsatisfied creature. And if you are a sportsman and a keen hunter, with well established ways of trailing and stalking, you will be driven to desperation a score of times before you get acquainted with Megaleep. He travels enormous distances without any known object. His trail is everywhere; he is himself nowhere. You scour the country for a week, crossing innumerable trails, thinking the surrounding woods ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... do, and Colonel Faversham insisted I should tell him when I would be his wife—he talked of our being married within a week or ten days. Oh dear! how hard I tried to make him understand; but I couldn't succeed, and at last in desperation a fresh idea occurred to me: I would run away! I told him to come for his answer the next morning—oh, I know I was horrid ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... seized with despair, he did not yield. On the contrary, he was nerved to such desperation that he put forth a tremendous effort, which quickly increased the space ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... Poppy, in her desperation almost clutching at the tempting food. "I—I—thank you very much," she stammered. "I love plain buns. There's miffing I like so much." But when she had it she hesitated to begin to eat it; it seemed ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... such an edict would have no immediate force in the remoter States controlled by the Confederate government, nor at the time did it produce any remarkable sensation except to arouse bitter animadversion at the North and renewed desperation of effort at the South; but it immediately began to reduce the workers on intrenchments and fortifications along the Confederate front and to increase those of the Federal forces, while soon also providing actual troops for the Union armies; and, since it was subsequently ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Spirit, to their parents and to their fellowmen. Children should obey their parents and guardians, and submit to them in all things. Disobedient children occasion great pain and misery. They wound their parents' feelings and often drive them to desperation, cause them great distress and final admission into the place of evil spirit. The marriage obligations should generate good to all who have assumed them. Let the married be faithful to each other, that when they die ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... savage affair, the energy of desperation being fully developed on either side. Weapons were little used, for the two parties closed in a fierce struggle, or else struck out with their fists; and as the two parties were pretty well balanced for numbers, the fight was ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... battle array, gazing on the group which barred their passage down the glen, the more experienced sportsmen began to augur danger. The work of destruction, however, now commenced on all sides. Dogs and hunters were at work, and muskets and fusees resounded from every quarter. The deer, driven to desperation, made at length a fearful charge right upon the spot where the more distinguished sportsmen had taken their stand. The word was given in Gaelic to fling themselves upon their faces; but Waverley, on whose English ears the signal was lost, had almost fallen a ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... motherhood reserves joys for you which I shall never know. It may be that the feeling of a mother for the child of a man whom she adores, as you adore Felipe, is different from that with which she regards the offspring of reason, duty, and desperation! ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... spent, winded, yet still in desperation struggling onward, he won the top of the cliff, swung to the left along the path that led to the bridge, and—more dead than alive—rushed onward ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... most gravely also in that book, debate of the rise of these temptations, namely, blasphemy, desperation, and the like; showing that the law of Moses, as well as the devil, death, and hell, hath a very great hand therein: the which, at first, was very strange to me; but considering and watching, I found it so indeed. But of particulars here, I intend nothing; only this methinks I must let fall before ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... just as Bannister had declaimed it. The audience listened in silence, quite unable to comprehend the situation. There was no applause. Evidently sentiment was dormant, or it was still with Tom. Colonel Sommerton, feeling the desperation of the moment, reached forth at random, and seeing Barnaby's old black face, it amused him, and he chanced to grab a thought as if out of the ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... my words?—Surely I do not feel it! The spirit of benevolence and truth allows, nay commands me to hate the vice; but not its poor misgoverned agents. They are wandering in the maze of mistake. Ignorance and passion are their guides, and doubt and desperation their tormentors. Alas! Rancour and revenge are their inmates; be ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... rather abruptly on the small grimy town clinging to the river-banks, with old Martin's long yellow-brick house dominating it, about two hundred yards above the mills. Suddenly under the rug he felt Alicia's hand seize his with a sort of desperation, for all the world as if she were clinging to something to support her. Indeed, he was sure she did not know it was his hand she squeezed. The cobbled streets, the muddy-looking water, the dingy, staring factories, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... hours I ever passed. At other times, I might have been tempted to derive amusement from the mishaps of my friends under similar circumstances; but at present, some of the party had been reduced to such desperation, that I began sometimes to doubt the favourable issue of our journey. By nine o'clock the land gates are closed, and this we had heard already strike. The sea gate is open for another hour. It was not till after this, that, having gained the coast road ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... cold increased, and although we were spurred on to almost superhuman efforts by sheer desperation to thwart the fate we knew would be ours should we falter by the way, gradually our strength failed us, and although we tried to encourage each other to quicker progress, it took every vestige of our will power to drag our benumbed feet from step ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... drowned herself because he didn't love her. I do know who you are; you are a devil disguised as a woman! He may have caused your daughter's death, but he did not do it intentionally, but you—you would murder him in cold blood if you could. You have come all the way over here to drive him to desperation. You—you are a ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... the panting soldiers, and on Kosciusko, who was inspecting them. Some of them, no longer upheld by desperation, were sinking with wounds and fatigue; these the good general sent off in litters to the medical department; and others, who had sustained unharmed the conflict of the day, after having received the praise and admonition ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... for a deaconess in his church, he is firmly convinced that the strait and narrow way for me does not lie in the direction of New York. However, I have already whispered to my confidential hole-in-the-ground that nothing but the extremity of old-maid desperation will ever induce me to accept the vocation of a deaconess. Thus do a man's children play hide and seek with the beam in his eye while he practises upon the mote in theirs! But if, some day when the heavens are doubtful between sun and rain, you espy a little ruffled ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Jewish war of more than three years' duration, which terminated in the destruction of Jerusalem, two cities on the lake of Gennesaret were besieged by Vespasian. One of these was Tiberias: the other Tarichæ. Both had been defended with desperation; and from their peculiar situation upon water, and amongst profound precipices, the Roman battering apparatus had not been found applicable to their walls. Consequently the resistance and the loss to the Romans had been unexampled. At the latter siege Vespasian was present in person. Six ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She dared not speak out openly to anybody, she dared not flatly refuse Inglesby's pretensions, for that would be to invite the avalanche. What she proposed to herself was to hold him ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... drinking, and sleeping; whose pleasures consist in nursing her baby, and playing with a brace of puppies; and her miseries in attempting to manage six republican servants—a task quite enough to make any "Quaker kick his mother," a grotesque illustration of demented desperation, which I have just learned, and which is peculiarly appropriate in these parts? Can I find it in my conscience, or even in the nib of my pen, to write you all across the great waters that my child has invented two teeth, or how many ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... purposes, it is not less acceptable, however, when the fog has come in from the sea like a visible reverie, and blurred the whole valley with its whiteness. I find that particularly good to look at from the trolley-car which visits and revisits the river before finally leaving it, with a sort of desperation, and hiding its passion with a sudden plunge into ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... started back, uttering a shriek of terror, and then with that unaccountable courage of desperation, she aimed one of the pistols at the Wallachian's breast, who instantly fell backwards on one of his comrades, who followed close behind. The other pistol she ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... were cut down at once. The others, drawing their swords, began to defend themselves, trying at the same time to retreat to the door, through which, however, many others were still pressing in. For a few minutes a severe fight went on, and the numbers and desperation of Carpadon's followers began to tell, and, in spite of the efforts of Malchus and the Numidians, they would have been forced to fall back and allow the others to pass out, had ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... the cause of Charles, the aggrieved inhabitants, who might otherwise have been passive in the quarrel, assuming arms in self defence, harassing his march by cutting off small parties, and falling back before the main body upon the city itself, thus augmenting the numbers and desperation of those who had resolved to defend it. The French, few in number, and those the choice soldiers of the country, kept, according to the King's orders, close by their respective standards, and observed the strictest discipline, a contrast which increased ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... few minutes there was a struggling mass in front of the gates. Our men, finding them closed and no way to escape their assailants, fought with the desperation ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... were on the alert, like those of a prisoner who is thinking of escape. She knew what time the night trains left the station, and, abandoning her trunk and everything else that she had with her, she furtively—but ready, if need were, to fight for her liberty with the strength of desperation—slipped down the broad stairs over their thick carpet and pushed open a little glass door. Thank heaven! people came in and went out of that house as if it had been a mill. No one discovered her flight ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... appearances and to their hostess. Through two courses, at least, there was dead silence between them. It seemed as though every eye in the room were on them and every mind were speculating. At last, in sheer desperation, Barbara turned to him with the first smile he had seen on her face in days. There was no smile in her eyes, however, ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... won't you? you silly thing!" I shrieked, and in my desperation I made a grab through the bars at his tail-feathers. A whole handful came out, and that seemed to make him wilder than before. He beat himself against the top of the cage and screamed so loud that I thought it would be better to leave before any ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston |
