"Hopeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his footstool, to be there welcomed as the bride of a favourite. Another suitor might feel jealousy while he touched this string; but my firm purpose cannot be changed by a passion so childish and so hopeless. Know, lady, that this rival is in my power, and that it rests but with me to betray the secret of his being within the castle to Front-de-Boeuf, whose jealousy will be more fatal ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... concert, and as long as I can remember no one has ever helped them out, but our class is hopeless," Lois said. "Evelin's was the only real voice, except yours, Ange, and you're already cast for the King. Do you think you could take the page's part in 'Good King Wenceslas,' Dot?" ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... But now hath cast me off as never known, And to those cruel enemies, Whom I by his appointment had provok't, Left me all helpless with th' irreparable loss Of sight, reserv'd alive to be repeated The subject of thir cruelty, or scorn. Nor am I in the list of them that hope; Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless; This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard, No long petition, speedy death, 650 The close of all my ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... hopeless, I guess. All the same, I want out." He wet his lips. "Frazer, you're on the Board here. You've got connections higher up. If I could only get a chance to transfer to Ag Culture, go on one of those ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... the witch of the mountain,' replied the sorceress, with a ghastly grin; 'my trade is to give hope to the hopeless: for the crossed in love I have philtres; for the avaricious, promises of treasure; for the malicious, potions of revenge; for the happy and the good, I have only what life has—curses! Trouble ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... perpetually retired before him without giving him the opportunity of coming to a general action, the autumn was gradually passing away, and the flames of Moscow only served to light up, for the French army, the beginning of their hopeless retreat through a country now totally laid waste, and covered with the snows of a Russian winter. This mode of operations, however, was by no means likely to please the population of Russia, infuriated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Mr. Holiday; "it was too late. The disorder was hopeless, and it ended in the great French revolution. But Necker became a very celebrated character in history. We are going to see the chateau where he lived. We shall see the room where his daughter wrote Corinne. I wish you to observe ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... Transvaal burghers became reluctant to offer battle in the Free State, on the ground that there were no positions from which they could successfully check the ever-advancing foe. Many of the Free Staters were discouraged and hopeless; but rest renewed their strength and zeal, and they shortly returned ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... him, an abject, miserable fool, and he repeated it to himself a dozen times in a rush of angry feeling. He despised himself. How could he have got into such a mess? But at the same time, for his thoughts chased one another through his brain and yet seemed to stand together, in a hopeless confusion, like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle seen in a nightmare, he asked himself what he was going to do. Everything was so clear before him, all he had aimed at so long within reach at last, and now his inconceivable stupidity had erected this ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... it all explained to him fully and satisfactorily. He doubted if he could tell the professor in the Biblical Literature class how, because perhaps he hadn't seen the Christ that way; but others understood! That white, strained face of the girl was not hopeless. There was the light of a great hope in her eyes; they could see afar off over the loneliness of the years that were to be, up to the time when she should meet the little brother ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... indeed pitiable. Angelique loved in despair, fought against this hopeless affection, which she could not destroy. She still wished to go to Felicien, to reconquer him by throwing her arms around his neck; and thus the contest was daily renewed. Sometimes she thought she had gained control over her feelings, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... escape the penetration of the marquis; not that he discontinued his usual raillery; on the contrary, he treated me as a sighing, hopeless swain, languishing under the rigors of his mistress; not a word, smile, or look escaped him by which I could imagine he suspected my happiness; and I should have thought him completely deceived, had not Madam de Larnage, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the old story of the few rich {244} dominating and oppressing the many poor. The minority had grown insolent and overbearing, and attempted to rule a hopeless and discontented majority. The reforms of Lycurgus led to some improvements, by the institution of new divisions of citizens and territory and the division of the land, not only among citizens but the half-citizens and dependents. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... been guilty in my house. But the discovery I had made seemed enough of itself to overwhelm him; for, after standing apparently stunned while I spoke, he jerked himself suddenly out of his captors' hands, and made a desperate attempt to escape. Finding this hopeless, and being seized again before he had gone four paces, he shouted, at the top of his voice: "Back! ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... he had been walking round a circle. Worn out and exhausted with fatigue and hunger, he sat down to ponder on what course he should adopt. The Queen of night, at that moment shedding her silvery rays around, only helped to show the hunter how hopeless was his present position. Amidst these mournful reflections, his ear was startled by the sound of footsteps close by; his spirits rose at the prospect of help being at hand; soon he perceived the outlines of a moving white object. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... who had been allowed peeps into her gentler side were gripped with tentacles of affection as firm as was her own relentless adherence to duty. In just one respect might Miss Liz have been rated below par, and this was a hopeless incapacity to see when others were teasing her. She took all in good faith when they looked her straight in the eyes and told the most ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... hinged to the north of the Aisne,—British and Belgian forces on the north, French in the center, Americans on the south and east,—were closing, and when the American forces fought their way through the Argonne to Sedan (forty miles northeast of Rheims) the case was hopeless. Only the armistice saved Germany from the humiliation of a surrender, on a scale vastly greater than the surrender of the French armies near that same ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... fortune would have it, the evil weather foreseen by the captain came upon us in the night, and daylight next morning showed a grey and hopeless sea, with lowering clouds and a slantwise rain driving across all. The tide was low when the ladies came on deck, and the muddy banks of the river looked dismal enough, while the flat meadowland stretched away on all sides into a dim and mournful perspective of ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... worse, has said to his eldest and second daughters, the half sisters of the eldest son, distempered so as he cannot be in the presence of his father without difficulty, that he (the Second King) forenamed on that time was hopeless and that he could not live more than a few days. He did not wish to do his last will regarding his family and property, particularly as he was strengthless to speak much, and consider anything deeply and accurately: he beg'd to entreat all his sons, daughters, and wives that ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... owner of a single warrant might find it of no value to him. To go back utterly into the woods, away from river or road, and there to commence with 160 acres of forest, or even of prairie, would be a hopeless task even to an American settler. Some mode of transport for his produce must be found before his produce would be of value—before, indeed, he could find the means of living. But a company buying up a large ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... men suffered extremely from the coldness of the water, in which they were necessarily immersed up to the waists, in their endeavours to aid Belanger and Benoit; and having witnessed repeated failures, they began to consider the scheme as hopeless. At this time Dr. Richardson, prompted by a desire of relieving his suffering companions, proposed to swim across the stream with a line, and to haul the raft over. He launched into the stream with the line round his middle, but when he had got a short distance from the bank, his arms became benumbed ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... will never do.... The case of Mr. Wordsworth, we perceive, is now manifestly hopeless; and we give him up as altogether incurable, and beyond the power of criticism ... making up our minds, though with the most sincere pain and reluctance, to consider him as finally lost to the good cause of poetry.... The volume before us, if we were to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... for all the scene could be hers forever in memory—imperishable!—and Victor did not mean to detain her. But her face as she turned from the window, the hallowed setting of time and opportunity, and a heart-love hungering through hopeless, slow-dragging months, all had their own way with him. He put out his arms to her and she nestled within them, lifting a face to his own transfigured with love's sweetness. And he bent and kissed her red lips, holding her close in his arms. And in the shadowy twilight, with the ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... broken-spirited wife, and driven his son to sea,—he suddenly experienced religion. "I got it in New Orleans in '59," said Mr. Thompson, with the general suggestion of referring to an epidemic. "Enter ye the narrer gate. Parse me the beans." Perhaps this practical quality upheld him in his apparently hopeless search. He had no clew to the whereabouts of his runaway son; indeed, scarcely a proof of his present existence. From his indifferent recollection of the boy of twelve, he now expected to identify ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the voice of her husband in the yard. He was thrusting the cart under a roof. He would be in the house shortly, and she did not wish that he should find her in tears, that he should learn how weak, how hopeless she was. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... sultan did not refrain from comforting the unfortunate princess, at the same time representing the hopeless condition of her father, till at length she consented to the marriage. This joyful intelligence speedily revived the love-lorn sultan, and the nuptials were celebrated with the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... hopeless state; for just as I was going to throw myself into the sea, I perceived a ship at a considerable distance. I called as loud as I could, and taking the linen from my turban, displayed it, that they might observe me. This had the desired effect; the crew perceived me, and the captain sent his boat ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... that, let the sanctuary be ever so immense and imposing in its somber gloom, the idols ever so superb, all seems in Japan but a mere semblance of grandeur. A hopeless pettiness, an irresistible feeling of the ludicrous, lies at the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... information we have as to the life and habits of Shakespeare would seem to make it an almost hopeless task now to discover the causes of his insomnia. He wrote a marvellous body of literature, and it might be thought this labor itself would suffice as an explanation: that the furnace heat in which the conceptions of Hamlet and Macbeth and Lear were wrought in the crucible of his ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... night or got up o' mornin's worried over the question o' how I was goin' to get the swag to pay my rent. Compared to this'—with a wave of his hand at the raging of the elements along Broadway—'Reading gaol was heaven, sir; and since I was discharged I've been a helpless, hopeless wanderer, sleepin' in doorways, chilled to the bone, half-starved, with not a friendly eye in sight, and nothin' to do all day long and all night long but move on when the Bobbies tell me to, and think about the happiness I'd left behind me when I ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... Here Dr. Brinkley has performed more than 100 major operations, and more than 300 minor operations, each one a success; cured more than 1,000 cases of Influenza, without losing a case; and cured one "hopeless" case of sleeping-sickness. ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... enough to learn better ways,' was Cyril's grave answer. 'As for you, mother, you are hopeless,' with a shake ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... because she had been here before. A sanitorium may be able to restore her to a normal condition. I can't believe it's anything more than some nervous disorder. Now don't worry, my good woman. Just have a room ready, so that she will be comfortable here until we can get her to a sanitorium. It isn't hopeless, I assure you—but I'm mighty glad I happened to be here so that I can take charge of the case. Now here comes Hawkins. We'll bring ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... David. Even the Latin Grammar, over whose tedious pages so many boys have yawned and trifled from generation to generation, even declensions and conjugations, and rules of Syntax, and other matters which, as a general thing, are such hopeless mysteries to boys of nine or ten, were made matters of interest to David when his ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... indeed, he had tried to put love from him, in the name of his high enterprise and its claims upon him. But as he sat tranced in the silence of the Cathedral that attempt finally gave way. His longing was hopeless, but it enriched his life. For it was fused with all that held him to his task; all that was divinest and sincerest ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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; ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... mother's mind was—"Eight weeks more will carry us past the execution." Mrs. Boyce had already possessed herself very clearly of the facts of the case, and it was her perception that Marcella was throwing herself headlong into a hopeless struggle—together with something else—a confession perhaps of a touch of greatness in the girl's temper, passionate and violent as it was, that had led to this unwonted softness of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... liked her as well as he did any woman except Sophia. But to abandon Sophia, and marry another, that was impossible; he could not think of it upon any account, Yet why should he not, since it was plain she could not be his? Would it not be kinder to her, than to continue her longer engaged in a hopeless passion for him? Ought he not to do so in friendship to her? This notion prevailed some moments, and he had almost determined to be false to her from a high point of honour: but that refinement was not able to stand very long against ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... I knewed what at," answered the abashed Jennie in a very small voice, unconsciously making further display of the force of her hopeless feminine heredity. But Peggy switched her small skirts in an entirely ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... from this domestic imbroglio in a spirited foreign policy, and put forward a claim more hollow than Edward III's to the throne of France. There were temptations in the hopeless condition of French affairs which no one but a statesman could have resisted; Henry, a brilliant soldier and a bigoted churchman, was anything but a statesman; and the value of his churchmanship may be gauged from the fact that he assumed the insolence of a crusader against ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... stepmother in this dreadful weather bids the poor girl to go out in the forest, and not to come back till she brings some violets with her. After many entreaties for mercy the orphan is driven out, and goes out in the snow on the hopeless errand. As she enters the forest she sees a little way on in the deep glade, under the leafless trees, a large fire burning. As she draws near she perceives around the fire are twelve stones, and on the stones sit twelve men. ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Ven. J. A. Haydn, LL.D., sends the following experience: "In the year 1870 I was rector of the little rural parish of Chapel Russell. One autumn day the rain fell with a quiet, steady, and hopeless persistence from morning to night. Wearied at length from the gloom, and tired of reading and writing, I determined to walk to the church about half a mile away, and pass a half-hour playing the harmonium, returning for the lamp-light ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... dark, and this other piece in the light, and again this other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last I found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on some bare common, a hopeless number of miles ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... endeavoring to look at the ceiling or anywhere but at her. He drew his open hand nervously down his face, which was of unusual gravity even for him. Finally he cast an appealing glance at his wife, who sat with her hands folded on her lap, but her eyes were unrelenting. After a moment's hopeless irresolution Bartlett bent his head over ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... intrenchments of vested wrongs, and the long reaches of time needed from one milestone of progress to the next, the task of setting up a Christian social order in this modern world of ours seems like a fair and futile dream. Yet, in fact, it is not one tithe as hopeless as when Jesus set out to do it. When he told his disciples, 'Ye are the salt of the earth; ye are the light of the world,' he expressed the consciousness of a great historic mission to the whole of humanity. Yet it was a Nazarene carpenter speaking ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... his head a good deal elevated, add to his distance, as it were, from every one and everything so indelicately thrust on his attention. This movement had an ambiguous makeshift air, yet his companions, under the impression of it, exchanged a hopeless look. His daughter none the less lifted her voice. "If you won't take what he has for you from Mr. Crimble, father, will you take it from me?" And then as after some apparent debate he appeared to decide to heed her, "It may be so long again," she ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... thing that kept Dan Tugwell firm to his moorings at Springhaven was the deep hold of his steadfast heart in a love which it knew to be hopeless. To die for his country might become a stern duty, about which he would rather not be hurried; but to die for Miss Dolly would be a wild delight; and how could he do it unless he were at hand? And now there were so many young officers again, landing in boats, coming in post-chaises, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of his extraordinary story as "false;" declared them to be "moonshine;" expressed his conviction that no sensible person could for a moment believe them; acknowledged that to attempt to verify them in the face of the evidence, or even to reconcile them with each other, would be hopeless; set some down as "arrant nonsense," denounced others as "Munchausenisms," and recommended the jury "not to believe them" with a heartiness which would have been perfectly natural in the mouth of Mr. Hawkins, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... portent, to vindicate the Spirit of Darkness so foully outraged in the hitherto inviolate person of his chosen minister! Verily, even the powers of the midnight are impotent against these invaders from beyond the mighty salt-water! Here, huddled together in confused, hopeless misery and ruin, lie, fettered and prostrate, even priest as well as potentate, undistinguishable victims of crude, unblenching violence, with its climax of nefarious sacrilege. We, common mortals, therefore, can hope for no deliverance from, or even ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... meet the rent was great, but when the deficiency was due to declining productivity of the soil, there was no probability that it would be made up the following year even with all the stock, and with fewer cattle the situation was hopeless. After this process had gone on for a few years nothing was left, not even a yoke of oxen for plowing. Whatever means had been taken to keep up the fertility of the land, attend to the drainage, etc., were of necessity ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... Voltairians, enemies to religion and devourers of 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
... which ended in April, 1894, with the failure of Charles L. Webster & Co. Mark Twain now found himself bankrupt, and nearly one hundred thousand dollars in debt. It had been a losing fight, with this bitter ending always in view; yet during this period of hard, hopeless effort he had written a large portion of the book which of all his works will perhaps survive the longest—his tender and beautiful story of Joan of Arc. All his life Joan had been his favorite character in the world's history, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden innocence. The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among the forest tribes; nor has the sublime courage of the English bull-dog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called Wallace. Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful, is the mermaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,) ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... out coon-songs, to which other piccaninnies danced. But nary a little white bundle of fluff caught hold of my hand. I walked that Square till my feet were sore. It was hot. My throat was parched. I was hungry. My head ached. I was hopeless. And yet I just couldn't give it up. I had asked so many children and nurse-maids whether they'd heard of the baby lost that morning and brought back by an officer, that they began to look at me as though I was not quite right in my mind. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... her first rush of sustaining compassion. Gone was her fear for her father and her tenderness to him. Only this numb coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be accomplished.... Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that strange ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... now, when from that outward bound, Defiant distance brought no sound, She wandered hopeless to the strand, And, hopeless, westward ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... appears to bear the greatest resemblance to the earth. It comes into opposition at intervals of a little more than two years, and can be well seen only for a month or two before and after each opposition. It is hopeless to look for the satellites of Mars with any but the greatest telescopes of the world. But the markings on the surface, from which the time of rotation has been determined, and which indicate a resemblance ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... it apparent to the two women that escape was hopeless. They seemed suddenly to realize it, to give up further ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... terrible nature of the struggle she witnessed, induced her to send for the chaplain of the Poughkeepsie. This divine prayed with the dying man; but even he, in the last moments of the sufferer, was little more than a passive but shocked witness of remorse, suspended over the abyss of eternity in hopeless dread. We shall not enter into the details of the revolting scene, but simply add that curses, blasphemy, tremulous cries for mercy, agonized entreaties to be advised, and sullen defiance, were all strangely and fearfully blended. In ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... "Hopeless," said the Vicar. "Too loose and shambling. As it is, metaphorically, every one throws stones at the lad; no one ever gives him ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... Lundy paced the deck in deep thought. He was sad, and well nigh hopeless. He had seen enough in the fierce look and sullen scowl; and had heard enough of the bitterness, and threatening anger of the negroes, to know that a storm was gathering, which must soon burst in all ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... my friend, so invariably fatal, that I am almost undertaking a hopeless task in attempting ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... he had just married a woman whom he tenderly loved, his prospects at home for honor and happiness were bright, to join the patriot army would take him from his native land, his wife, and all his coveted ambitions, and lead him into a struggle that seemed as hopeless as its cause was just. Yet his zeal for America overcame all these obstacles. Other difficulties now arose. His family objected, the British minister protested, the French king withheld his permission. Still undaunted, he purchased a vessel fitted ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... call his name out. It seemed queer that he was missing. It seemed quite hopeless now. Three or four days dragged on. Everything continued as usual. We went up past the place where we had left them, and there was no news, no sign. They just vanished. No one saw them again, and except for the "riddled" ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the streets. The very children scarcely noticed ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... shut out some horror. He thought she shrank from remembrance of how the secret of Soledad was given to her, for Juan must have been practically a dead man when he gave it up. After a moment she went on in the sad tone of the utterly hopeless. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... answers, and the Howitts, despite the excellence of their intentions, were unlucky in their newspaper speculations. At the end of a few months it was discovered that the manager of the People's Journal kept no books, and that the affairs of the paper were in hopeless confusion. William Howitt, finding himself responsible for the losses on the venture, tried to cure the evil by a hair of the dog that had bitten him. He withdrew from the People's Journal, and, with Samuel Smiles as his assistant, started a rival paper on the same lines, called ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... at me, and they'll sneer at me, and they'll call me a whiskey soak; ("Have a drink? Well, thankee kindly, sir, I don't mind if I do.") A drivelling, dirty, gin-joint fiend, the butt of the bar-room joke; Sunk and sodden and hopeless — ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... friends here'—I know what that means!" muttered Gipsy to herself. "It's brave of her to work to keep her father! Don't I just wish I—" but here she sighed, for the unuttered wish seemed so entirely hopeless and futile. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... dispersed by a stroke of fortune; the multitude of a cowardly and undisciplined people must, upon such an emergence; receive a foreign or a domestic enemy, as they would a plague or an earthquake, with hopeless amazement and terror, and by their numbers, only swell the triumphs, and enrich the ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... "the starving time," cold, famine, and the Indians swept away more than four hundred. When Newport arrived in May, 1610, only sixty famishing creatures inhabited Jamestown. To continue the colony seemed hopeless; and going on board the ships (June, 1610), the colonists set sail for England and had gone well down the James when they met Lord Delaware with three well-provisioned ships coming ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... returned. Many are unwilling to spend a moment's time in waiting for a ticket to be returned to them. Many will leave their books on tables or seats where they were reading, and go away without reclaiming their receipts. While complete observance of this rule is of course hopeless of attainment in a country where free and easy manners prevail, every librarian should endeavor to secure at least an approximate compliance with a rule adopted alike for the security and good order of the library, and the efficient ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... thing; her tales are both atmospheric and, for their length, astonishingly full of character. Also she has an engaging habit of avoiding the expected. Take one of the best in this present book, called "John," for instance. It is the slightest possible thing, just a picture of a schoolboy's hopeless love for a shallow cruel-brained girl eight years older than himself, who is in process of getting engaged to an eligible bachelor. But every figure in the little group lives. And the second part, which tells the return of the boy-lover twelve years later, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... mere word over diseases and devils. These men were the devil's own servants. There are many such to-day, and they never seem to realize until too late that their master will allow them to walk right into a hopeless fix—caught in their ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... however, she began to name him, wind her arm into Susan's, talk of love and home, and the days to come; and as she spoke, she read the workings of her sister's face. That part of the secret grew clear almost at the first glance. Susan loved,—loved William Mainwaring; but was it not a love hopeless and unreturned? Might not this be the cause that had made Mainwaring so reserved? He might have seen, or conjectured, a conquest he had not sought; and hence, with manly delicacy, he had avoided naming Susan to Lucretia; ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ourselves. Tannhaeuser, one suspects, was a knight of ill-furnished imagination, hardly of larger discourse than a heavy Guardsman; Merlin had certainly seen his best days, and was merely repeating himself, when he fell into that hopeless captivity; and we know that Ulysses felt so manifest an ennui under similar circumstances that Calypso herself furthered his departure. There is indeed a report that he afterward left Penelope; but since she was habitually ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and could use it as a weapon against the Minister. But, from the moment when France became actually dangerous, when her councils became demoniac, and her factions frenzied, Whiggism, despairing of turning out the Minister by argument, resolved to make the attempt by menace. Hopeless in the House, it appealed to the rabble, and France was extolled to the skies. We then heard nothing of the "natural enmity," but a vast deal of the instinctive friendship. England and France were no longer to be two hostile powers sitting on their respective shores, with flashing eyes and levelled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Massena searched in vain for an unprotected point. Fifty thousand English and Portuguese regular troops, besides a multitude of Portuguese militia, were collected behind the lines; with the present number of the French an assault was hopeless. Massena waited for reinforcements. It was with the utmost difficulty that he could keep his army from starving; at length, when the country was utterly exhausted, he commenced his retreat (Nov. 14). Wellington descended ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... intervention of a stranger. He was wounded in the struggle, and died immediately after; but his enemies wreaked their vengeance on his remains, which were gibbeted at Cork. The Earl of Desmond was assassinated on the 11th of November, 1583, and the hopeless struggle terminated with his death. He had been hunted from place to place like a wild beast, and, according to Hooker, obliged to dress his meat in one place, to eat it in another, and to sleep in a third. He was surprised, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... O Morn, and let thy dawnings come! Mine eyes roll in vain to find thee, and my soul is weary of this interminable gloom. The past comes back robed in a pall which makes all things dark. The present blotted out, and the future but a rayless, hopeless, loveless night of years, my heart is but the tomb of blighted hopes, and all the misery of feelings unemployed has settled on me. I am misfortune's child and sorrow long since ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... you are there; go to Avignon and Vaucluse; when you come to Petrarch's house, think of me, for there I passed the most hopeless hours ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... Marija, and took 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 ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure, as the serious ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... examples of this change in the social condition of the world, and of the feeling of men. In the Middle Ages cities walled each other out, and the fetters of prejudice and tyranny held the energies of man in hopeless bondage. To-day men and nations seek free intercourse with each other, and much of the force of the intellect and energy of the world is expended in breaking down the barriers established by nature, or created by man, to the ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... how hopeless of achievement was the feat he was about to try. But, as ever, mere obstacles were not permitted ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Quoi donc! N'importe, n'importe!" and many other as senseless words, and growing every moment more hopeless and helpless as mademoiselle ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... comical disappointment passed between them as they gazed upon the sterile flat, dotted with unsightly excrescences that stood equally for cabins or mounds of stone and gravel. It was so feeble and inconsistent a culmination to the beautiful scenery they had passed through, so hopeless and imbecile a conclusion to the preparation of that long picturesque journey, with its glimpses of sylvan and pastoral glades and canyons, that, as the coach swept down the last incline, and the remorseless ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... Mr. Ponsonby very nearly lost his temper, and not without justification. Was he not giving time and consideration and (probably) money to help this hopeless family on to its legs again? And was it not more than mortal middle-aged man could bear, not only to be opposed by the only member with any means, but also to be made sly fun of by her? He gave Julia his opinion very sharply, and no doubt she deserved it. But the worst of it was that did not ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... battle-axes. The Austrian soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder, each grasping a long spear whose point projected far in front of him. The Swiss were armed with short swords and spears and it was impossible for them to get to the Austrians. For a while their cause looked hopeless, but among the ranks of the Swiss was a brave man from one of the Forest Cantons. His name was Arnold von Winkelried (Win'-kel-ried). As he looked upon the bristling points of the Austrian spears, he saw that his comrades had no chance to win unless an opening could be made in that ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... know J'rome gave Minnie somethin' that helped her, and she seemed every mite as sick as the baby," her husband said, in a softer voice. But she turned her hopeless eyes again upon the little, squalid, quivering thing in her lap, and paid no more heed to him. She let Jerome examine the child, with a strange apathy. There was no hope, and consequently no power of effort, left ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the English and Burgundians closed in in safety, the former in front, the latter behind their prey. Clear to the boulevard the French were washed in this enveloping inundation; and there, cornered in an angle formed by the flank of the boulevard and the slope of the causeway, they bravely fought a hopeless fight, and sank down one ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the covering is a canvas tent. Nurses, physicians, and ward attendants are clothed in fur coats and gloves, the patients are kept muffled up to the ears, with only the face exposed; but instead of perishing from exposure, little, gasping, struggling tots, whose cases were regarded as practically hopeless in the wards below, often fall into the sleep that is the turning point toward recovery within a few hours after being placed in ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the premises. There is invariably a cat in a charbonnier's shop, and the animal is generally one that was originally white, but long ago came to the conclusion that all attempts to keep itself clean were hopeless. Its only consolation is that it is never blacker than its master. It is well known that the Persians and Angoras are much esteemed in Paris and are, to some extent, bred for sale. In the provinces, French cats are usually low-bred animals, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... generous still improving mind, That gives the hopeless heart to sing for joy, To him the long review of ordered life Is inward rapture ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... exaggerate almost immeasurably the reach of Hawthorne's relish of gloomy subjects. What pleased him in such subjects was their picturesqueness, their rich duskiness of colour, their chiaroscuro; but they were not the expression of a hopeless, or even of a predominantly melancholy, feeling about the human soul. Such at least is my own impression. He is to a considerable degree ironical—this is part of his charm—part even, one may say, of his brightness; but he is neither bitter ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... elected to the Speaker's chair by the new Assembly, and on every test question the Government were left in a hopeless minority. The vote on the Address in Reply will afford some clue to the political complexion of the House. It referred to the Lieutenant-Governor's advisers as having deeply wounded the feelings ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... The woman, white and hopeless, appeared at the door of the shed-room when the man came, and obediently set about getting his supper; but her lifeless ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... become firmly impressed upon the organism. But psychological experiments have proven that even the best established conditioned reactions can be broken down and others substituted in their place, so that the situation is not so hopeless. When we recollect that for ages the traditional ideals of masculinity and femininity have been conditioning the emotional life of men and women to respond to their requirements with a remarkable degree of success, there is ground for the belief that the same forces of suggestion and imitation ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... a group of towns and a large number of villages. It included castles and mansions and great estates; a considerable portion of the general body voters were associated with the landowners and aristocrats. Lloyd George must have felt it was a pretty hopeless fight, but a fight, nevertheless, which he ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... for his own people and none but they seem to have cared about him. What he discovered (c. 1160-73) was for himself and for Judaism, and only his actual place in the twelfth century makes him a fore-runner of the Polos or of Prince Henry. We may see this from his hopeless strangeness and confusion in Rome, like a Frank in Pekin or Delhi. "The Church of St. Peter is on the site of the great palace of Julius Caesar, near which are eighty Halls of the eighty Kings called Emperors from ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... eyes no longer sparkle, and his breast is void of pride And I think that she has lost him though she's kept him at her side. Oh, I'm sorry for the mother, but I'm sorrier for the lad Who must look on life forever as a hopeless ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... debt, living on mortgaged land, and in many cases under agreements to pay interest on their indebtedness ranging between fifteen and forty per cent. The work of improving their condition was far from hopeless, and he was far from being discouraged. If his people got no other good out of slavery they got the habit of work. But they did not know how to utilise the results of their labour; the greatest injury which slavery wrought upon them was to deprive them of executive power, of the sense of independence. ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... possible victims of his patriotic wrath. One almost feared that reconciliation would be indefinitely postponed by the relentless severity with which he would visit treason with death. But the Southern politicians, finding that further military resistance was hopeless, resorted at once to their old game of intrigue and management, and proved that, fresh as they were from the experience of violent methods, they had not forgotten their old art of manipulating Presidents. They adapted themselves with marvellous flexibility ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... whilst here and there the stain of a pressed flower causes indistinctness; yet the thread of the narrative runs throughout. Noting but his invariable habit of constantly repeating the month and year obviates hopeless confusion. Nor is this all; for pocket-books gave out at last, and old newspapers, yellow with African damp, were sewn together, and his notes were written across the type with a substitute for ink made from the juice of a tree. To Miss Livingstone and to the Rev. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... despair of concluding some arrangement between the two parties. He knew the influence he exercised over Buckingham, and the ascendency he had acquired over De Guiche, and affairs did not look utterly hopeless. On their arrival in the gallery, dazzling with the blaze of light, where the most beautiful and illustrious women of the court moved to and fro, like stars in their own atmosphere, Raoul could not prevent himself for a moment forgetting De Guiche in order to seek ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Stanislaus a tyrant and a traitor at the very moment when he was about to accede to the Confederation. The king thereupon reverted to the Russian faction and the Confederation lost the confidence of Europe. Nevertheless, its army, thoroughly reorganized by Dumouriez, gallantly maintained the hopeless struggle for some years, and it was not till 1776 that the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Your Highness," interrupted the Professor with his frosty smile. "I shall be much surprised if this little scheme actually saves the city. We may find the rock so thick there that our task is hopeless—though I imagine the Quabos picked a thin section for help ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... clearing of the religious situation to-day on both sides of the Atlantic, if the saltless salt could be got rid of, either by removing the unsaltiness in it—though that seems a hopeless task, it's so unsalty, and there is so much of it, and such a large proportion of it, and it's so well content with being just as unsalty as it is. Or, the only other thing is put very simply and vigorously by the Lord in a short intense sentence, "Cast it out." Out with it. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... April 1327 Francesco Petrarca saw in a church of Avignon Laura the daughter of Audibert de Noves, for whom he conceived a romantic but hopeless attachment. Incessantly haunted with the beautiful vision of the fair Laura, he visited in succession the south of France, Paris, and the Netherlands, and after an exile of eight months returned to bury himself in the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... often, I really don't," Irene answered. "But I sometimes wonder if it would make any difference. I can sympathize with a hopeless drunkard, who, in a besotted condition, is able ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... certainty that not one cent of those half-million francs would ever leave his pocket. For he knew what the Committee did not know—the real character of his friend Keith. Keith was a good fellow but a hopeless crank; Keith was perfectly capable of impoverishing himself in order to keep Miss Wilberforce out of prison. As to subscribing to the schemes of a pack of meddling fools who proposed to intern the dear lady—Keith would see them all damned first. This is ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... I've come through much the same experiences, no doubt, as you have. I have been a scouter of my mother's teachings, a thief, and, in heart if not in act, a murderer. No one could be more urgently in need of salvation from sin than I, and I used to think that I was so bad that my case was hopeless, until God opened my eyes to see that Jesus came to save His people from their sins. That is what ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... water. Alec went after them very early, but had not returned by midday. During his absence I was extremely anxious, for, if he should be unable to track, and should return without them, our case would be almost hopeless. If camels are determined to stampede and can get a good start, there is frequently no overtaking them on foot. They are not like horses, which will return of their own accord to water. Camels know their own powers and their own independence of man, and I believe that a camel, if not in subjection, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles |
