"Hopelessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sud-ley from his revery, and the glance of indignant reproach which he cast on his wife. No man, however meek, or however bowed down with sorrow, will bear unmoved a gratuitous mention of his debts; it seems to wound him with all the rancor of insult, and to enrage him with the hopelessness of adequate retort or reprisal. It is an indignity, like taunting a ghost with cock-crow, or exhorting a clergyman to repentance. He flung himself all at once into the conversation, to bar and baffle any renewed allusion to that ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... democracy (Jimmy was the son of a carpenter and a grocer's daughter) suggested power; suggested it as a block of granite or a bull-dog suggests it. His compact, sturdy frame and well-poised head, with its close, brown curls, seemed a protest in themselves against hopelessness. On the third day he smiled; it was in recess that she detected him at it. An organ-grinder's monkey in the school-yard called it forth, a sweet, glad smile, which lit up his dense features as the sun at twilight will pierce through ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... with the rockets flying and bullets going, and working parties shovelling for dear life in the darkness. We all tumbled about into shell-holes or ditches in turn, where the water is very cold. I suppose the utter hopelessness of it all prevents one getting ill. The mails are late, so I have not received your letter to-night. This morning, when walking with the General, we came upon a Frenchman, woman, and boy in the fire zone 600 yds. from ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... little hopelessly, to make her impulse real to them. She spoke of the inflexible honor of the McCraes, of the great respect which had for generations attached to their name. Then suddenly, as if she saw the utter hopelessness of making them understand, she seemed with a gesture to give up abstractions and obscurities and to find in the depth of her mother's heart ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... reached a position where he could put his head in the doorway. As he did so, Skimmer and Mrs. Skimmer each gave a little cry of hopelessness and despair. But no sooner had his head disappeared in the hole in the old apple-tree than Scrapper the Kingbird struck him savagely. Instantly Mr. Blacksnake withdrew his head, hissing fiercely, and struck ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... speak, might chance to utter some word of hope that had not come to her. Then the uplifted head drooped wearily, the searching eyes turning away to stare once again straight ahead. His very silence was acknowledgment of the truth, the utter hopelessness of the future. Although living, there lay between them ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... this brief interpretation of our poet in this day of darkness and hate and hurt and war and woe and want, of seeing hopelessness and helplessness, than with these heartening lines from ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... knew that the Raja could not govern his realm without him, and he was well acquainted with his master's character. He said to himself, "This will not last long;" but he remained dumb, simulating hopelessness, and hanging down his head, whilst Subichar alternately scolded and coaxed, abused and flattered him, in order to open his lips. Then, with tears in his eyes, he muttered a request to take leave; and as he passed ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... had scarcely died away when the Sarci reached the gate. Each man as he arrived threw down his faggot, and the pile soon reached the top of the wall. Then Beric led the way up and stood on the Roman work. The sentries, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, had already fled, and the Sarci poured in. A confused clamour of shouts and cries rose from the town, above which sounded the yells of the exulting Iceni. Beric gave the signal for the Sarci to scatter, and the tribesmen at once began to attack the houses. Placing ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... stories of the hopelessness of getting a room. Yet she had no choice but to make the try. She had got a seat on the train where there were none. Perhaps she could trust her luck to provide her with a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... been induced to allow the departure of Agnes, from seeing the utter hopelessness by any argument or persuasion of removing a barrier that was so vitally interwoven with the most sensitive religious nerves of her being. He saw in her terrified looks, in the deadly paleness of her face, how real and unaffected was the anguish which his words gave her; he saw ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... seemed to know how to meet every emergency and face every trouble. A minute ago she had been reflecting with relief that he was not in Poland, and now it seemed as if her heart must break had he been anywhere else. She forgot for the moment all the dangers that surrounded them; the hopelessness of their love, the thousand reasons why they should not meet. She forgot that a whole nation stood between them. But it was only for a ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... and beat no shores, but frozen cleave with frozen roots to their gulfy basin. All things are on the steep-sloping path to final evanishment, uncreation, non-existence. He is filled with horror—not so much of the dreary end, as at the weary hopelessness of the path thitherward. Then a dim light breaks upon him, and with it a faint hope revives, for he seems to see in all the forms of life, innumerably varied, a spirit rushing upward from death—a something in escape from the terror of the downward cataract, of the rest that knows not ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... young man means anything by his attentions. There had been a little paragraph beginning, "L.'s hands are not as white as she could wish, and she asks us what she is to do. We can only recommend," etc. Poor L. had tried every recommendation in faith and in vain, and was in a fair way to learn the hopelessness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... you!" he told Hastings, speaking over Mrs. Brace's head, and smiling a deprecatory recognition of the hopelessness of contending with an ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... no period of our life upon the desert island were we so unhappy as we were that day,—never so utterly cast down, never so broken-spirited, never looking on the future with such hopelessness. ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... not the first lugger, by fifty, that Captain Cuffe had assisted in chasing, and he knew the hopelessness of following such a craft under circumstances so directly adapted to its qualities. Then he was far from certain that he was pursuing an enemy at all, whatever distrust the signals may have excited, since ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... scope and purport of his doom, and that God's tremendous logic made the justice of his doom unanswerable. He understood that the law which he had himself set up was to be binding now. He must execute himself, as he had executed Everard Barradine. It is for this, the hour of hopelessness and despair, that God has been waiting. Now it is God's good time. God has slowly taught him his worthlessness and infamy, so ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... from his day's work too much exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed, and in his agony he wished "to lie in bed forever and ever." Still he worked faithfully and conscientiously, for his wife and children were very dear to him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who have tasted the depths ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... The hopelessness of attempting to impart instruction to the silly son is farther illustrated by the story in a Sinhalese collection: A guru was engaged in teaching one of his disciples, but whilst he was teaching the youth was watching the ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... however. The eyes of the whole world were on that array of America's ocean might—the eyes of one foreign nation in particular. Washington knew of the policies of that nation, and wished to impress upon is the hopelessness of them. More than a game, this concentration of sea and air-borne fighting power was a gesture for the continued peace of the world—a gesture strong ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... quinine and the whiskey, and as the strong spirit fired his veins, the utter hopelessness of his outlook muffled him into silence. Dropping his head into his open palms, he sat dully ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... away by the noise of the downpour, the boy felt himself isolated and alone. For the first time since his capture, his courage was wavering, not so much because of the peril of the moment, but because of the general hopelessness of the situation. ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... books there is no end," sighed a preacher in times when industrious readers might presumably have kept the run of current literature. Our advantage over Solomon is the utter hopelessness of reading the new works, not to speak of standard acres in the libraries. In this holiday season, chief hatching-time of books, it is pleasant to see them flocking out in numbers so vast. "Germany published ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... were reconciled and that he had resumed his studies. The letter was brave and cheerful, there was not a hint of whining or complaint in it. Mary was proud of him, proud of his courage and self-restraint. She could read between the lines and the loneliness and hopelessness were there but he had done his best to conceal them for her sake. If he felt resentment toward her, he did not show it. Lonely and hopeless as she herself was, her heart went out to him, but she did not repent her decision. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... technical and industrial training, and, worst of all, had unconsciously led him to see in labour drudgery and degradation instead of beauty, dignity, and civilising power. At first there was a halt in this man's life. He cursed the North and he cursed the Negro. Then there was despair, almost utter hopelessness, over his weak and childlike condition. The temptation was to forget all in drink, and to this temptation there was a gradual yielding. With the loss of physical vigour came the loss of mental grasp and pride in ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... Edgar Allan Poe once strolled on summer evenings through Minetta Lane with his beautiful Annabel Lee. But God pity the sweethearts to-day who must have love in its reeking precincts! It is a lane of ugliness, now; a lane of squalor; a lane of poverty and hopelessness spelled in terms of ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... accompanied by a dreary monotone of lamentation. She bewailed her lost youth, her brief courtship, the struggles of her early married life, her premature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence, the disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of the future. She rehearsed the unending plaint of those long evenings, set to the music of the restless wind around her bleak dwelling, with something of its stridulous reiteration. The young man listened, and replied with softly assenting eyes, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... like beating one's hand against some adamantine barrier. She had the sensation that all she said, felt, suffered, passed unnoticed; the man before her was waiting for information, that was all. It was intolerable, and the hopelessness of any pleading ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... me you had found a great secret,' I replied; 'that you had become sure of Almighty God. If that is true, there is no room for hopelessness; despair's out ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... of Ireland remains a perplexing one. We have two Irishmen in our mess, one a Unionist, the other a Nationalist. The impression one gets from them at least is the hopelessness of our being ever able to settle the Irish problem. It is largely, of course, a question of temperament. The Ulsterman with us is all for the "strong hand" policy, but I pointed out to him the absurdity of our adopting Prussian tactics, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... of the vast interior, at the foot of the sumptuous pedestal of Athor, he distinguished another supplicant, kneeling. But there was a hopelessness in the droop of the bowed head and a tenseness in the interlaced fingers of the clasped hands, which proved that Athor's ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... absorbed in her work, but raised far, above this life and its passions, think of so poor and humble a being? He had been overpowered with the intensity of his emotion, and, his resolution broken, he had hurried on, knowing, poor fool that he was, the hopelessness and folly of it. Like a sudden, severe storm, coming after a day of intense, sultry heat, leaving the air refreshed, and the birds singing melodiously their evening hymns, so it was with Pedro. After his wild outburst, he was once more ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... hopelessness well nigh overwhelmed her. Through the utter desolution of her life rang the haunting, words of the Cantata she'd heard sung last Eastertide ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... tears relieved her, or that she felt the full hopelessness of her condition; but she turned back; and hurrying with nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction; partly to recover lost time, and partly to keep pace with the violent current of her own thoughts: ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... considering the danger and apparent hopelessness of the attempt, without looking at the wild force of the water, and the grinding roll of the big wheel, without even waiting to fling off their coats—Julian and Kennedy, actuated by the strong instinct to save a fellow-creature's life, had both ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... your aid, sir. I may be mad to ask it for him—I think I am; but, night after night, through the long dreary hours of watching and weeping, the thought has been ever present to my mind; and though even I see the hopelessness of human assistance availing him, the bare thought of laying him in his grave without it makes my blood run cold!' And a shudder, such as the surgeon well knew art could not produce, trembled through ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... only escape by night, I remember thinking, and I was getting close up to the trees that hid our little camp, dolefully pondering over my position and the hopelessness of succour from without, when all at once a hideous figure rose up from beneath a tree and confronted me; and as I stopped short, startled by the foul appearance of the man, with his long tangled hair ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... French drama, if not in the hands of Racine, still even in the hands of Voltaire, and much more in the hands of such men as Lagrange-Chancel and the elder Crebillon, was true to no sentiment save one purely literary, artificial, and barren. He insists on the hopelessness of the stage, unless men prepared themselves at every part for a grand return to nature. We have seen what is his counsel to the actor. He preaches in the same key to the scene-painter and the maker of costumes. Scene-painting ought ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... stared at the garments flung here and there, their pockets turned inside out. My first frenzy had already flickered out. Every moment I was beginning to realise the immense intelligence of the plans of my enemy, to see more and more clearly the hopelessness of my position. With an effort I rose and hurried hobbling into the study again. On the staircase was a housemaid pulling up the blinds. She stared, I think, at the expression of my face. I shut the door of the study behind me, and, seizing a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... had then expected or what I now so much desired. Besides, it would be a great debt, so large that I should have hesitated about incurring it. We had been a long while in getting clear of the other, and the apparent hopelessness of discharging one nearly three times as great, and that, too, from my individual earnings, was such, that in the end I concluded it would be better for me to avoid the debt by doing without the machine, than to have it only on condition of buying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the commonest complaints of teachers in our secondary schools that they have to begin teaching Latin or French to boys who have no knowledge whatever of grammar. Fancy the hopelessness of trying to teach an English boy the construction of a Latin or French sentence when he does not know what a relative or demonstrative pronoun means! This is the fate of so many a master that quite a number of them resign themselves to giving up a good part of their French or Latin hour ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... feel the hopelessness of this unguided search, do not look at a map of the Pacific, but go there. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square leagues of sea, thousands of islands, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... not bitter weeping. It was rather the sense of utter vacancy and hopelessness, with but one fixed purpose—that she would see his face again, and be the nearest to him when he was laid in the grave. She hastily wrote to the housekeeper and to the clergyman that she was coming, and Miss Wells's kind opposition ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heartbroken in her downtrodden hopelessness. Rosalie literally quaked with sympathy. She poured forth her pity in such words as the poor woman had never heard spoken by a great lady to a humble creature like herself. The villagers found ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... into a whisper, and I did not catch another word. The two men soon took a reconnoitring glance at the weather; and after looking up the street and down the street, and up at the sky, where nothing was visible but a thick mass of gray clouds, they seemed to awake to the thorough hopelessness of the case, and walked off, muttering ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... friends, that I am not one of those who know God only as they find Him identified with the woods and fields and streams. If this were so, I should turn from the grave of this beloved friend, and go my way in utter heart-sickness and hopelessness; for Nature would but mock me to-day with her fulness of summer life. These forest-clad mountains, that waving grain, those woods, pulsating with the hum of insects and with the song of birds, all speak of life, while we stand ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... standpoint quite independent, honestly felt that one so volatile and strangely handsome might sooner or later cloud the young woman's life with tribulation. He knew the quality of his own love, but perceived the hopelessness at present of showing it in any way. For at this juncture there appeared no possibility of serving her. He was, however, a patient man and now summoned hope that in the future it might yet fall within his reach to be of vital ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the yacht's deck. There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he was not sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved curtain. He faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame, misery, hopelessness—he did not know which emotion was stinging him most poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently while they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His humiliation in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... flash of fire burst out, a few yards in front. His horse fell dead under him and, before he could extricate himself from it, he was surrounded by Austrians. An officer shouted to him to surrender and, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, he ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... such a mandate as there is of her obtaining French Savoy, which she likewise covets. Under no conceivable conditions would France consent to the Bosphorus passing under Italian control; according to French views, indeed, Italy is already far too powerful in the Balkans. Recognizing the hopelessness of attempting to overcome French opposition, Italy has confined her claims to the great rich region of Cilicia, which roughly corresponds to the Turkish vilayet of Adana, a rich and fertile region in southern Asia Minor, with a coast line stretching from Adana to Alexandretta. ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... of his speech was too great for his weak and exhausted frame to bear. Captain de Meudon had come to Ireland in 1798 to aid in the rebellion; he had seen its failure, but had remained in Ireland trying vainly to give to the disaffection some military organization. He had realized the hopelessness of his efforts. He was ill, and very near to death. Now I stood by his bedside in a little ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... irony, and form yourself to urbanity" is the counsel of Friedrich Schlegel. The unbridgeable chasm between Ideal and Life could not be spanned, and the baffled idealist met this hopelessness with the shrug of irony. The every-day enthusiasm of the common life invited only a sneer, often, it is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... paper, writ in the darkness of oncertainty, and hopelessness, and despair of our forefathers, and which them four old fathers wuz willin' to seal ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... years seemed only to have ripened and perfected her exquisite beauty, but with the rounded smoothness, and the fresh, pure colouring of youth was mingled a weird indescribable expression of stern hopelessness, of solemn repose, as if she had deliberately shaken hands for ever with all that makes life bright and precious, and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and desperate conflict, which she well knew could have ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... felt a great hopelessness. She was too expensive—that was the irremediable difficulty. Suddenly he hated her. He wanted to throw her down and kick at her—to tell her she was a cheat and a leech—that she was dirty. Moreover, she must give ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... has been a tremendous and exaggerated growth of the ego, and we have regarded ourselves as masters of everything, and subject to nothing. Agnosticism led to sensualism, and sensualism had its foundation in hopelessness. We are materialists because we have no faith. This thing, however, is being changed. We are coming to recognize spiritual forces, and I put my hope for the future, not in a reduction in the high cost of living, nor in any scheme of government, but in a ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... ill-health, separation from Grace, an elusive and never-to-be-satisfied pursuit, scandal and possible loss of religion, unhappiness ... At least it was to his credit that he realised the conflict; it is even further to his credit that he grasped and admitted the hopelessness of it. He knew which way he would go; even now he was tired with the thought of the struggle; he sank into his shabby chair with a sigh of weariness; his hand stretched out instinctively for an easy volume. But oh, Maggie! how strange and fascinating ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... poetry is as morbid as Mr. Moore's is careless and dissipated. He has more depth of passion, more force and impetuosity, but the passion is always of the same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things. There is nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. There is nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in his ministering to the broken-hearted girl. That broken heart would be whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and aimlessness in life were very real in the present. If the picturesque seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone by, it was much duller to her now. She was shocked at the change in her grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her intercourse ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Dr. Cricket, who soon brought a better color to the little face, and handing the child, rolled in a blanket, to the mother, bade her keep it cool. The woman looked blankly at the rising wave of heat outside; Dr. Cricket too looked out, and felt the shadow of her hopelessness fall on himself. "Here," he said suddenly, pressing a bill into her hand, "take that; get your baby dressed and onto the Coney Island boat as ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me," thought the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter her friend, the princess' eyes—large, deep and luminous (it seemed as ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... unconquerable desire of revenge. The chorus, which consists of native virgins, endeavours to console her; and, interchanging hymn and speech with the chorus, Electra discloses her unabatable sorrow, the contumely and oppression under which she suffers, and her hopelessness occasioned by the many delays of Orestes, notwithstanding her frequent exhortations; and she turns a deaf ear to all the grounds of consolation which the chorus can suggest. Chrysothemis, Clytemnestra's younger, more submissive, and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... not by love; and those who refused to submit had either to fly the country or to perish by the hands of the executioner. Nevertheless during these sad years the Prince of Orange and Lewis of Nassau, in spite of the apparent hopelessness of the situation, were unremitting in their efforts to raise fresh forces. William at Dillenburg exerted himself to the uttermost to obtain assistance from the Protestant princes of the Rhineland. With the Calvinists he was, however, as ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... of faith had grown to manhood. Then he became a child of faith in his own experience, as well as in his father's. Following meant separation. It meant believing God against the unlikeliest circumstances, against nature itself, hoping in the midst of hopelessness. Everything spelled out "hopelessness." God alone spelled out "hope." He took God against everything else. It meant going to school to God, until he could be used as God planned. And Abraham consented. He followed. He helped God in His need. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... scraps of German and a little operatic Italian; but these I was never taught at school. Instead, I was taught lying, dishonorable submission to tyranny, dirty stories, a blasphemous habit of treating love and maternity as obscene jokes, hopelessness, evasion, derision, cowardice, and all the blackguard's shifts by which the coward intimidates other cowards. And if I had been a boarder at an English public school instead of a day boy at an Irish one, I might have had to add to these, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... the world, Judith's ingenuous display of feeling had in its very sincerity a something pitiable. How could she strip from her soul every fold of reserve and stand unloved and unashamed, sanctified, as it were, by the very hopelessness of her passion? How could women make of their whole existence a thing to be rejected, reflected Kitty, who, giving nothing, could not understand. She looked again at the bronzed face beside her, so bold in outline, so expressive in detail. Yes, she was beautiful, and yet, what ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... of a letter from Mr Fonblanque! But we must return from the English debates to the progress of the drama in Servia, where the commissioners found the Servians, in defiance of the great powers, and in spite of the hopelessness of aid from Constantinople, preparing for national resistance. The Prince refused to abdicate, alleging that the firman by which he had been appointed had never been revoked, and that universal anarchy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... which acknowledges the evils that are in the world, but instead of looking for a "new heaven and a new earth" it looks for release in unconsciousness. It is the religion of doubt, and hopelessness, and despair. It makes the worst ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... for very hopelessness made bold Did off my hat ere time there was for thought, She with a gracious sweetness, calm, not cold, Acknowledged me, but brought my chance to nought 'This vale of imperfection doth not hold A lovelier bud among its loveliest wrought! She turns,' ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... long tale to tell, and even then only those who have lived in the country and had practical experience could fully comprehend the hopelessness of working a small farm, unless you are of a wholly sordid nature. Iden's nature was not sordid; the very reverse. The beginning, or one of the beginnings, of the quarrel between father and son arose because of this; Grandfather Iden ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... Quickly he saw the hopelessness of it; what was to happen was plain, inevitable! Broad along the beam, stretching out to leeward, the great dazzling 'ice-blink' warned him of a solid barrier, miles long, perhaps! The barque lay to the wind, at mercy of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... it's a necessity? If a nation's existence depends on it?" she asked. "Oh, Michael, I don't know! I don't know! For a little I am entirely English, and then something calls to me from beyond the Rhine! There's the hopelessness of it for me and such as me. You are English; there's no question about it for you. But for us! I love England: I needn't tell you that. But can one ever forget the land of one's birth? Can I help feeling the necessity Germany is under? I can't ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Centralia picturesquely desolate. It had not that quality of hopelessness which lures to melancholy. New houses were going up. The last straw was ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... his hair as he went to where mechanics of the fleet looked over their treasure-trove. He'd come up to the fleet again to gloat and do great things for people who needed him and knew it. But he faced the hopelessness of people to whom his utmost effort seemed mockery because it was so far ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... he was anything but a pleasant companion. But he was losing the mastery over himself, and often a trifle was sufficient to start him off afresh on the dreary theme. Once, in a fit of hopelessness, he made her what amounted to reproaches ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... make him feel her loving sympathy. Again, she would be so wrought upon by the steady agony of those fixed eyes that she would leave him abruptly to hide herself and shudder, tearless, at the utter misery and hopelessness of it all. She wondered at her mother's calm until she noticed, after a few weeks, how the face was withering with that shriveling which comes from within when a living thing is ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... thousand miles away. The case, then, still stood exactly where it had stood from the beginning. Six days had passed since the murder and I was not one inch nearer the truth. Six days! I realized it with a dull feeling of hopelessness. Every day now that was allowed to pass only lessened the chance of our ever finding ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... at the hopelessness of her tone, so taken aback at her words, that I could not answer her for a moment: it seemed inconceivable to me that she could be saying such things. Poor pretty Lesbia, whom Charlie had loved and whom I considered a mere fragile butterfly. She was quite pale now, and her eyes ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... long hot summer. There followed days of hopelessness. There followed a wild desire for crisp muslin curtains, birds to wake me in the morning, a porcelain tub, pretty gowns, tea on somebody's broad veranda. There were days in mid-July when if I had met Bob Jennings, ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... his soul. This hopelessness, helplessness, embittered every moment. His love increasing with the passage of time rendered his position hateful in the extreme. The feeling within that he had talent which only required opportunity stung him like a scorpion. The days went by, and everything remained the same. Continual brooding ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... ample texts for discourses; and a demand for change began to spring up which was no longer a reflection of foreign sympathies. An article in the Edinburgh of January 1808, which professed to demonstrate the hopelessness of the Peninsular War, roused the wrath of the Tories. The Quarterly Review was started by Canning and Scott, and the Edinburgh, in return, took a more decidedly Whig colour. The Radicals now showed themselves behind the Whigs. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a more serious cause of hopelessness, in the complexity of modern civilization. Its very teeming life, its wealth, its multiplicity of activities and passions, overwhelm the mind in its moments of fatigue like a devouring chaos. One longs for the day when the house of {170} civilization ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... If she had thrown herself violently against the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more breathless than she was by the compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her. The hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults with her selfish passion filled her with a vague fear. In her rage of the previous night she had not seen the wood in its profound immobility. Left alone with the majesty of those enormous ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... was badly damaged, and at 3:45 was seen to retire under a terrific fire from the Turkish battery. This vessel ran in toward the shore. For a full hour the Allies tried to protect her with their guns, but it was apparent that she was destined for destruction. Eight effective hits showed the hopelessness of the situation for this vessel. She then withdrew toward the mouth of the Dardanelles, which she reached in a few minutes under a hail of shells. The forts continued firing until the Allies were out ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in heaven, Drive from the soul the hopelessness, Fill it with charity and faith, And fire the heart with kindliness, For Jesus ...
— Some Broken Twigs • Clara M. Beede
... entirely to his science from childhood, and the opposition of his parents only stimulated him in his efforts to overcome difficulties. He soon grasped the hopelessness of the old deductive methods of reasoning, and decided that no theories ought to be indulged in until preparations had been made by the accumulation of accurate observations. We may claim for him the title of ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... you were walking down again as my wife!" This was what Dr. Gerald had surprised her by saying, when the wedding music had finally entered into his soul, driving away for the moment his doubt and fear and self-distrust; and I can well believe that the hopelessness of his tone stirred her tender heart to its ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... deep breath, and watched now with a growing sensation of hopelessness as he saw each effort made, and every one after deliberate and careful gathering up of the rope and hanging it in rings upon the left arm. But no matter how he tried Dale's casts grew more and more erring, till, quite in despair, he stood fast, resting his weary arm, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... surprised. We put it to the vote at once, so as not to let Denny cool. H. O. and Noel and Alice voted with us, so Daisy and Dora were what is called a hopeless minority. We tried to cheer their hopelessness by letting them read the things out of the Golden Deed book aloud. Noel hid his face in the straw so that we should not see the faces he made while he made poetry instead of listening, and when the Wouldbegoods was by vote dissolved for ever he sat ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... kind of a duel. His hair dishevelled, his eyes gleaming, he was in a deadly scuffle. In the sketches was the landscape of heavy blue, as if seen through powder-smoke, and all the skies burned red. There was in these notes a sinister quality of hopelessness, eloquent of a defeat, as if the scene represented the last hour on a field of disastrous battle. Hawker seemed attacking with this picture something fair and beautiful of his own life, a possession of his mind, and he did it fiercely, mercilessly, formidably. His arm moved with ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... all at Snow Hill, and how it is gradually changing each year! Instead of the hopelessness and dejection that were there a few years ago, there are now light and buoyancy in the countenances and movements of the people. The negroes are getting out of debt and buying land, ceasing to mortgage their crops, building houses with two or three rooms, and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... in the soul, he has implied the veracity of all religions, caring only for the subjective zeal of the believer, not for the objects of his belief.(912) In opposing the mechanical view of the universe, he is so overwhelmed with the mystery which belongs to it, that the soul recoils in the hopelessness of speculation, to rest content with work rather than belief. And his readers, attracted by his power of satire and depth of insight, expressed in a style full of force by reason of its peculiarity, return to their daily life after imbibing his teaching, excited to greater ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... on Friday or Saturday. I fear I shall not see you until April 21. Will you tell Armitage that I will, if convenient to him, sleep at Westminster that night instead of going straight to Cambridge? The hopelessness of ever showing my gratitude to you or of ever making you realise how much I love you oppresses me. I don't know what I should do if I had not One Higher than I am to confide in—if I could not leave you in His hands—if I could not gain strength and ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... her astonishment—the light in her eyes which showed that comprehension, freighted with hopelessness, was stealing ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... have sunk under my accumulated persecutions. I will not say that so it was, for there is an elasticity in early youth that recovers itself against much—yet I was at that time heavy indeed with exceeding hopelessness. All I can say to the sneerer is, I wish, that at the next conclave of personages who may be assembled to discuss the destinies of nations, there may be as much of the milk of human kindness and right feelings among them as there was between me and the labouring ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... in due course. I would only mention here that, through my earlier experiences of the world, I had become fairly impervious to deception, and my desire for closer acquaintance with these circles speedily gave way to a complete hopelessness and an entire lack of ease in their sphere ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... far as I can remember it, of extraordinary freedom and lightness." She spoke with a sincere cynicism, an easy grimness that appeared quite dreadful to Ellen. The girl looked appealingly at her, asking her not to give the sanction of her impressive personality to such hopelessness about life, but had the ill luck to catch her in the act of a practical demonstration of her dislike for her fellow-creatures. Now that the train had puffed out of the station the station-master, a silver-haired old man with a red face on which amiability clung like a lather, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of moving more than slightly in any direction. Its long snout, with its sprouting pair of horns, was almost level with the surface of the ground and its small bright eyes leered wickedly at its noisy enemies. It struggled clumsily upon their approach, but nothing could relieve the hopelessness of its plight. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... who claim to set up morality as a religion, while declaring "the personal Deity of theology illusory," are engaged in an impossible task; and it is because of the inherent hopelessness of their enterprise that we must raise our voice in warning to any who may be tempted to put faith in their fair promises. The ethicist's intentions are admirable; but he sets about their realisation in a manner which dooms him and them to failure. Let us have practice without ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... lay in the room below, with Uncle Loveday and Mrs. Busvargus for watchers. Now and again my uncle would steal softly upstairs, and as softly return with hopelessness upon his face. The clock downstairs gave the only sound I heard, as it marked the footsteps of the dark angel coming nearer and nearer. Twice my mother's lips parted as if to speak; but though I bent down to catch her words, I ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was hardly more regretted by his immediate subjects than by his Irish allies. All external events now conspired to show the hopelessness of resistance to the power of King Henry. From Scotland, destined to half a century of anarchy, no help could be expected. Wales, another ancient ally of the Irish, had been incorporated with England, in 1536, and was fast becoming reconciled to the rule of a Prince, sprung from ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the wood was speedily accomplished, but the poor lads who were keeping watch, often said afterwards that it seemed to them almost a lifetime, such was the crowd of fearful and wretched thoughts and forebodings, such the anxiety, and hopelessness of their situation. There in the silence of the wood lay their young companion, stretched lifeless, and they were the cause. The least rustle amongst the leaves they mistook for a movement of the ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... looking at her, but she turned her head away with a petulant gesture of repulsion; and lest her eyes might feel the call of his she covered them with her hands. Her hopelessness, her loathing of him enclosed her like a wall ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the absence of the re-enforcements they expected, produced an alarmed and anxious council; Leonidas dissuaded the confederates from retreat, and despatched messengers to the various states, urging the necessity of supplies, and stating the hopelessness of opposing the Mede effectually ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the afternoon when it was crossed by working men and women returning to their quarters from the docks and factories. Never in any light a picturesque or even cheery procession, there were days when its unwholesome, monotonous poverty and dull hopelessness of prospect impressed him more forcibly. He remembered how at first the spectacle of barefooted girls and women slipping through fog and mist across the greasy pavement had offended his fresh New World conception of a more tenderly nurtured ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of a widowed mother, also called Sally, the name in both cases being (as in that of her daughter whom we know) Rosalind, not Sarah. This mother married en secondes noces a former sweetheart; it had been a case of a match opposed by parents on the ground of the apparent hopelessness of the young man's prospects. Mr. Paul Nightingale, however, falsified the doleful predictions about his future by becoming a successful leader-writer and war correspondent. It was after the close of the American Civil War, in which he had gained a good deal of distinction, that he met at Saratoga ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... inconceivable persuasion. But on the German side of the Alps, where no political agitation affects the religious judgment, or drives men into disputes, those eminent thinkers who agree with Doellinger are withheld by various considerations from publishing their views. Sometimes it is the hopelessness of making an impression, sometimes the grave inconvenience of withstanding the current of opinion that makes them keep silence; and their silence leaves those who habitually follow them not only without means of expressing ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... about London, seeking in vain for work; forcing himself to call on Uncle Donald; being thrown down the front steps by haughty footmen; sleeping on the Embankment; gazing into the dark waters of the Thames with the stare of hopelessness; climbing ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... were now turned toward her unfortunate husband. He rose to his feet, reeling from the effects of the sudden shock, and the dreary hopelessness of his face touched every heart. "My friends," he said, huskily, "there is little to be said. This sudden revelation has crushed me, till my soul grows faint with the bitterness of a terrible woe. Believe me, I have had no part in this wicked deception, but only considered ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... his attempt to explain; and there were a few remarks so uncomplimentary that the man of cloth sank back in sheer hopelessness. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... to which he had given so much rose up to give in her turn the might of hope and renewing. His eyes wandered again to the distant mountains and over the fertile plain lying between, and all the outspread richness called to him that at least there was no ruin here, no hopelessness, no decay. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... apart his emotions toward Charity and resolving that he must never see her again. In the analytical chemistry of the soul he found that this resolution was three parts hopelessness of winning her, three parts a decent sense of the wickedness of courting another man's woman, three parts resentment at her for treating him properly, and one part a feeling that he would make himself most valuable to her by ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... must have hurt! He had been forced to read the confession of love of another man for his wife. The wonder was that he had not taken the next train back and knocked down the writer. It must be that he understood the hopelessness of such a passion. Perhaps he had smiled! Only that was not like Covington. Rather, he had gripped his jaws and ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Foreign and papal tribunal as that of the legates really was, it lay within Henry's kingdom and had the air of an English court. But the citation to Rome was a summons to the King to plead in a court without his realm. Wolsey had himself warned Clement of the hopelessness of expecting Henry to submit to such humiliation as this. "If the King be cited to appear in person or by proxy and his prerogative be interfered with, none of his subjects will tolerate the insult. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the kiss she had bestowed as he had believed she would be; perhaps this was because he had mistaken its meaning and motive. It stood in his eyes as the expression of forgiveness and pity,—he never knew that it was full of regretful renunciation, and the hopelessness ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... rain swept against the panes, and tears stole from under the girl's long lashes—tears for her empty, vapid life, for the hopelessness of the future, for the humiliations of the present, for the lack of a love that should be ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... is very sad. He confessed to me yesterday the utter hopelessness of the two people's ever understanding ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... "Thou hast sinned against special promise; for thee the Saviour prayed; but now it is clear that thou hast outsinned the Mediator's grace and the Intercessor's prayers"; and at the thought black despair and utter hopelessness would enter his soul, as if to make it ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... it is well to recall that Dostoyevsky in 1849 underwent the agony of sentence to death as a revolutionist. Although the sentence was commuted to hard labor in Siberia, and although six years later he was freed and again took up his writing, his mind never rose from beneath the weight of horror and hopelessness that hangs over offenders against the Great White Czar. Dostoyevsky, sentenced as a criminal, herded with criminals, really BECAME a criminal in literary imagination. Add to this a minute observation, a marvelous memory, ardent political convictions—and we can ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... was profoundly affected, his infatuation was as spurious as her pretense of one. He was a dilettante in love, as he was in art. His aesthetic sense, which would have died of an honest passion, fattened on the very hopelessness of his beginning an affair with Natalie. Confronted just then with the privilege of marrying her, he would have drawn back ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for whom he periled so much, into what depths of hopelessness and woe are they again plunged! But the deeper and blacker for the loss of their dearly sought and new-found freedom. How long must wrongs like these go unredressed? "How long, O God, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... sent to me, and begged me at least to show respect to your person and to vindicate in a humble letter both your innocence and my own. They said that the affair was not as yet in a position of extreme hopelessness, if Leo X., in his inborn kindliness, would put his hand to it. On this I, who have always offered and wished for peace, in order that I might devote myself to calmer and more useful pursuits, and who for this very purpose ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther
... shame," Martha admitted to me with a great hopelessness in her black eyes. "And nothing ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and his companions in the effort to make the turn. He had gone straight on, therefore, and a few rods had carried him into the midst of Abbey's cavalry regiment. A minute was enough to surround his car, and a line of troops in front of him made him see the hopelessness of escape. ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... at the two men. Hulagur's hand was on his sword hilt, his eyes darting from one of those silent watchers to the next. But the utter hopelessness of the Tatar position was too plain. Only Menlik made no move toward any weapon, even his spirit wand. Instead, he sat quietly in the saddle, displaying no emotion toward the Apaches ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... the tree, had been looking at the house, turned towards him with a start, gazed with faded, expressionless eyes at the intruder, then made a limping attempt to get away. She seemed, however, to realize directly the hopelessness or the difficulty of the undertaking, stopped, hesitated, tottered back slowly; then, after blinking dully, fell suddenly on her knees amongst the white ashes, and, bending over the heap of smouldering coals, distended her sunken cheeks in a steady effort to blow up the hidden ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... brief words he set us right, Pulz, Perdosa, and I listening intently; the others indifferent in the hopelessness of being able to comprehend. Of course, we went wrong again in our next day's experiments; but Darrow was down two or three times a week, and gradually we edged ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cried, overwhelmed with pity for him, pity for herself, with the misery and the hopelessness of it all. "Andor, I beg of you, pull yourself together. Someone might come . . . they must not ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... vender, with the face and spare figure of Julius Caesar, turned aside from such idle talk with a shrug of hopelessness. He affected to be more interested in lighting his slender pipe over the chimney of the lamp which hung suspended ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... hopelessness of the economic situation, the nerve of Germany will break. There is a suicide point in the German character. The German has been sustained since the war by victories somewhere. No defeats were brought home to the German people. Viewed from inside the German Empire ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... of misery passed over his face and erased all its brightness and hope. Even the gentleness was gone. He looked haggard and drawn with hopelessness all ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... which way she was steering. If to the westward, we had a good chance of being seen by her; but if not, she might pass us by unheeded. This uncertainty was, perhaps, still more painful to endure than our previous hopelessness. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... it. He turned away with a sob in his throat and looked into Verdayne's eyes with such an expression of utter hopelessness that the older man felt his own eyes moisten with the fervor of his sympathy. That poor, humble ranchman possessed something that was denied the Boy, prince of the blood ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... Whittier was poor, and his gift of versification, which had already given him quite a reputation, was not considered in those days of much consequence as a means of livelihood. If they did not at first realise, both of them, the hopelessness of their love, they found it out after Miss ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... not seem to be listening. She was looking over his head up the river, in the direction from whence the message had come, and there was a singular hopelessness in her eyes. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... hopelessness in her voice Jean uttered the sound and threw her arm about Ellen's waist. Together they watched the departing vessel with that desperation of heart that hopes, even while the brain knows there is no hope. A quarter of an hour passed, but the ship did ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... conquest was not, however, to be reckoned by the amount of spoil taken. Its effect on the struggle was enormous. It raised the spirits of the Chilians to the highest pitch, whilst it brought home to the mind of the Spanish government the hopelessness of continuing a struggle against an enemy so well led, and capable of carrying out the ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... found with "transports of infinite joy and tenderness." He woke with a start and sought to retain the phantom, which faded. He could not conceive that was a mere illusion, and as he realized that she had vanished he felt overwhelmed with hopelessness. It was the first stirring "of true love with all its great melancholy and deep mystery, with its overwhelming but sad enchantment—love which like a perfume endows with a ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... mingled anger and hopelessness, he swept the scribbled sheets and all the writing paraphernalia with a crash to the floor, and, burying his face in his hands, gave utterance to a smothered groan. It was a cry, not of surrender, but of protest—of infinite, exasperated protest, of protest against ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... had never been in love. The moment in which he saw Angela was the moment in which he was to experience the most ardent passion, and also at the same time the crushing pain of utter hopelessness. For no man who had appeared before the pure angel-child, lovely Angela, in the way the Chevalier had done, could dream of hope. He attempted to speak, but his tongue seemed to be numbed by cramp. At last, controlling himself ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... we might, if unmolested from the shore. But, imagine twenty or thirty resolute swimmers to put off together for different parts of the vessel, protected by the long muskets these Arabs carry, and you will easily conceive the hopelessness of any defence. The first man among us, who should show his person to meet the boarders, would be shot down ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... it, Jason," she said weakly, and the little man threw up his hands with a gesture that spoke his hopelessness over her sex in general, and at the same time an ungracious acceptance of the terrible calamity she had perhaps left dangling over his head. He clicked the blade of his Barlow ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... reaches the uttermost bound of society, and pervades the whole mass. If its channels are slimy with corruption, what limit can be set to its malign influence? The turbulence of elections, the virulence of the press, the desperation of bad men, the hopelessness of efforts which are not cunning, but only honest, have driven many conscientious men from any concern with politics. This is suicidal. Thus the tempest will grow blacker and fiercer. Our youth will be caught up ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... attempts to overcome sin, without first crying, "Create within me a clean heart, O God," feels still more deeply that sin is spiritual slavery. When he comes to know sin in reference to the obligation to be perfectly holy, it is with vividness and hopelessness. He sees distinctly that he ought to be a perfectly good being instantaneously. This point is clear. But instead of looking up to the hills whence cometh his help, he begins, in a cold legal and loveless temper, to ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... acknowledge him—only to her, taking him once in his arms. That was all. She had no hope, thought indeed she had no desire for herself. But a kind word to him would be welcome as light. The love that covers sins had covered the multitude of his, and although hopelessness had put desire to sleep, she would gladly have given her life for a loving smile from him. But mingled with this longing to see him once with his child in his arms, a certain loyalty to the house of Lossie also influenced her to listen to the solicitation of Lady Clementina, and ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald |
