"Disheartening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as haled into night court, as cross-examined by domineering and incredulous magistrates, who would send him to the Island as a suspicious person. He began to be haunted by the impression that he was being followed. The parcel became a weight to him, a disheartening and dragging weight. He was now sure he was being followed. He squinted back over his shoulders, only to catch sight of a nocturnal "bill-sniper" placarding vulnerable areas with his lithographed laudations of a vaudeville ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... camped for the winter in the midst of the wilderness, 400 miles from the nearest settlement or postoffice, from which we were separated by a region of mountainous country, rendered nearly impassable in the winter by deep snows, and beset for the entire distance by hostile Indians. Disheartening as the prospect was, we felt that it would not do to give way to discouragement. A few venturesome prospectors from the west side of the Rocky Mountains had found gold in small quantities on the bars bordering the stream, and ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... during the voyage, anticipated. Indeed, clouds rested over the range of mountains that intersects the island lengthways. The rain had fallen somewhat heavily, and the aspect of the place was so decidedly dismal and disheartening, that, as the two squires landed, ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... the Indian war. They considered that the sacrifice of blood and treasure in such a conflict would far exceed any advantages that might possibly be reaped by it. The result of Harmar's campaign had been very disheartening, and the government was in straitened circumstances, both as to men and means. But by strenuous efforts, President Washington induced Congress to pass an act, on the second day of March, 1791, for raising and adding another regiment ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... heard the disheartening news, and I write to say that I am sorry toto corde. I don't yet know the full extent of the calamity, the length of your exile, the place, or the conditions under which you will have to live. Perhaps you or Nelly can find time ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Century an excellent idea and title. I must say a mass of Wordsworth over again, like Main's, is a little disheartening,—still the best selection from him is what one wants. There is some book called A Century of Sonnets, but this, I ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... of so doing, it is a little unfair to class them with the lazy, unpatriotic, degenerate young gentlemen who have the opportunity and do not seize it. Captain Ross-Ellison was doing his utmost to provide the opportunity—with disheartening results. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... only in the streets. There are not even any kago, or palanquins, except one for the use of the same physician. The paths are terribly rough, according to the testimony of the strong peasants themselves; and the distances, particularly in the hottest period of the year, are disheartening. Ponies can be hired; but my experiences of a similar wild country in western Izumo persuaded me that neither pleasure nor profit was to be gained by a long and painful ride over pine-covered hills, through slippery gullies ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... which the steamer will be compelled to burn coal is not very great; but the trouble of working the vessel in and out, against adverse winds and currents, and amid storms and calms, is sometimes excessive, while the delay and cost are disheartening. They have also the trouble of warping into and out of the docks, which is not the ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... day had long given place to night, ere they verified this last piece of intelligence, and acquired some definite aim for their exertions; but neither liked to compare notes with the other, nor express his own disheartening reflection that Nina might be wandering so late, bewildered, lonely, and unprotected, through the labyrinths of ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... shown once for all in the fact that the exquisite picture of virtue, the whole-hearted attack on vice, the genial humour, the sunny portraits of humanity, the splendid cheerfulness of Tom Jones, that 'Epic of Youth,' came from a man in middle age, immersed in disheartening struggles, and fighting recurrent ill health. Superficial critics have called Fielding a realist because his figures are so full-blooded and alive that we feel we have met them but yesterday in the street; to eyes so shortsighted life itself must ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... went. In the meantime, despite her ape-like study of her companions, she remained where the other sex was concerned a disheartening failure. A further incident ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Cecilius Calvert. The Virginians protested against this grant "within the Limits of the Colony", claiming that it would interfere with their Indian trade in the Chesapeake, and that the establishment of the Catholics so near their settlements would "give a generall disheartening of the Planters".[269] But their complaints availed nothing. Not only did Charles refuse to revoke the charter, but he wrote the Governor and Council commanding them to give Lord Baltimore every possible assistance in making his settlement. ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... The disheartening part of it was that he needed about a dozen more men than he had; for the rock wall which was the rim of the Frying-pan seemed alive with shooters who waited only for a fair target. Then the Native Son, crouched down between a rock and a clump of brush, turned his ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... difficult piece of business. (To MARIANNE) As far as your mother is concerned, she is not altogether unreasonable and we might succeed in making her give to the son the gift she reserved for the father. (To CLEANTE) But the most disheartening part of it all is that your father ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... length spreading his wings at the same time over both heads of this unfortunate family. She had been having one of her most disconsolate days, and was sitting alone in her little room, gloomily pondering over her disheartening trials, without being able to see one ray of light in the dark future, when she received a call from one of her husband's chief creditors; who announced that those creditors, at a recent meeting, having ascertained her meritorious conduct ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... fascinations over me. I declare you're spoiling the eyebrows that I admire by letting them twist themselves into a frown! After the trouble I have taken to clear your mind of prejudice against an unfortunate man, it's disheartening to find you so hard on the poor fellow's faults and so ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... once to question him about Westmore, and the change in his face showed that his work was still a refuge from all that made life disheartening and unintelligible. Whatever convictions had been thwarted or impaired in him, his faith in the importance of his task remained unshaken; and the firmness with which he held to it filled Justine with a sense of his strength. The feeling kindled her own desire to escape again into ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... number who have just emerged from their school course, or have fairly entered on the business of life; and we warn the really acute and discriminating observer to look forward (in the majority of instances) to a disheartening result from his investigation! We are convinced that the net product of our immensely expansive, patient, and ardently sought schooling will, in a large proportion of all the cases, be found to consist in the imperfect acquirement and uncertain tenure of knowledge, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the heart of this heroic nation now struggling for all that we ourselves hold dear, but against odds such as we were never forced to face, perceive this truth with a disheartening but ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... account to exactly the same breadth, using the cover of an old glove-box as a gauge, wrote very neatly on the outside the date, the name of the creditor, and the amount of the debt, and with an indiarubber band enrolled it in a company of its fellows. Miss Joliffe found drawers full of such disheartening packets after his death, for Martin had a talent for distributing his favours, and of planting small debts far and wide, which by-and-by grew up into a ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... unassailable, and the troops better massed; and, if Lee had made an unsuccessful assault, Hooker would have been in better condition to make a sortie upon the arrival of the Sixth Corps in his vicinity, than after the bloody and disheartening work at Fairview. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... It was disheartening to find bitter criticism of this policy from the outside, and depressing to find the enemies of watchful waiting "boring from within" through his own Cabinet officers. Lindley Garrison, his own Secretary of War, had no sympathy for this idealistic ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... was saying, "my work is disheartening. Half my parish are animals, brutalised by starvation, degraded out of all likeness ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... If such were the disheartening influence of the day on those who had nothing to apprehend, what must its effect have been on the poor captives! Woful indeed. The two monks suffered a complete prostration of spirit. All the resolution which Father Haydocke had displayed ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... determined by his environment. During two centuries Russia has been coming slowly out of the middle ages—indeed, out of perhaps the most cruel phases of mediaeval life. Her history is, in its details, discouraging; her daily life disheartening. Even the aspects of nature are to the last degree depressing: no mountains; no hills; no horizon; no variety in forests; a soil during a large part of the year frozen or parched; a people whose upper classes are mainly given up to pleasure ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... attached to its seed. However hard Mr. Hammond tries to get rid of thistles from his fields, fresh seeds are constantly blown into them from thistles on the road-side banks, or in the fields of farmers not so careful as himself. It is very disheartening to a good farmer to have careless neighbours. When Mr. Hammond hears that a new tenant is coming to a neighbouring farm, he always hopes that he will be a "clean" farmer—that he will try to keep ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... scraps of hide were scattered all around, for the wolves had been making merry over it, and had hollowed out the entire carcass. It was covered with myriads of large black crickets, and from its appearance must certainly have lain there for four or five days. The sight was a most disheartening one, and I observed to Raymond that the Indians might still be fifty or sixty miles before us. But he shook his head, and replied that they dared not go so far for fear of their ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... room, before he gained his balance. After him went Mac Strann with an agility astonishing in that squat, formless bulk. His long arms were outstretched and his fingers tensed, and in his face there was an uncanny joy; his lip had lifted in that peculiarly disheartening sneer. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... been floated in Europe by Baron Erlanger, also a Frankfort financial magnate, and by birth a Hebrew. In the conversation that ensued between this lady and Baron Rothschild, the latter said: "Madam, my sympathies are entirely with your country; but is it not disheartening to think that there are men in Europe who are lending their money and trying to induce others to lend it for the strengthening of human slavery? Madam, NONE BUT A CONVERTED JEW ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... and also disheartening, part of the process was, that, owing to the general activity on board, he came again and again to the same faces in different parts of the vessel, but he so frequently missed seeing others that hope was kept alive by the constant turning up of new faces. Alas! none of them bore ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... disheartened. The three generals had an enemy flushed with its first victories, while the country through which they passed was mountainous and muddy. If the column had been captured so soon after the Paardeberg disaster, the relief of Kimberley and the relief of Ladysmith, it might have been so disheartening to the remaining Boer commandos that the war might have been ended at that time. It was a magnificent retreat and well worthy to be placed in the Boer's scroll of honour with Cronje's noble stand at Paardeberg, ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... the party was broken up, the fire which had burned hitherto in but a single beacon was scattered upon a thousand hills. Nevertheless, the first breaking up of the party was eminently disheartening to its living members. But it was not by external violence that it was broken, but by the development within itself of a distinctive Romeward bias. Dr. Newman lays his hand upon a particular epoch ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... know—I think you're tricking me. This isn't the way we came. It doesn't look to me like a road at all—I think you're going over the open country. I——" The girl paused. It was disheartening—to go through so much and then to fail at last. She peered ahead into the dim light, trying to see what lay beyond the bright lights of the car. It did look like open country. Ahead lay a hill—a tall hill. Would Pachuca try to make it or would he climb around ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... initial disorder of her first attempt as follows: "I must confess that the first four weeks were disheartening; the children could not settle to a task for more than a few moments; they showed no perseverance, no initiative; at times they followed one another like a flock of lambs; when one child took up an object, all the others wanted to imitate him, sometimes they rolled ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... stand here, 'tis highly necessary to raise the militia everywhere to defend the frontiers." A boy whom he sent out on horseback met more fugitives, and came back on the fourteenth with reports as vague and disheartening as the first. Innes sent them to Dinwiddie.[232] Some days after, Dunbar and his train arrived in miserable disorder, and Fort Cumberland was turned into a hospital for the shattered fragments of a routed ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... militia were impatient to return home, were disobedient to orders, and were deserting in large numbers—it is said "by half and even by whole regiments." Then followed the Americans' defeat at White Plains, the surrender of Fort Washington, the evacuation of Fort Lee, and the steady disheartening of the American forces. The ineffectual attempts to increase the militia, the indisposition of the inhabitants to farther resistance, the retreat of General Washington through New Jersey at the head of less than three ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... attacked. It presently yielded, and Redwald, who had obtained a good notion of the place, rushed with his chief villains to the chamber he knew to be Dunstan's; yet he began to fear failure, for the absence of all the inmates was disheartening. No, not all, for there was the loud laughter within the very chamber ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... very much annoyed with the way the Med Service had been operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct the results of incompetence in directing Med Service in the twelfth sector. But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... "at separate tables," by a German lad just beginning to ignore English. The shambling elderly waiter who was part of the furniture in 1861 is very likely dead; and for the credit of our country I hope that the recreant American whom I heard telling an Englishman there in those disheartening days, of our civic corruptions, may have also passed away. He said that he himself had bought votes, as many as he wanted, in the city of Providence; and though I could deny the general prevalence of such venality at least in my own stainless state of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... exclaimed. "We are not tired of thanking him, but he hates being thanked. If he would only get into some terrible scrape, Giulia and I would set out to rescue him at once; but you see he gets out of his scrapes before we hear of them. It is quite disheartening not to ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... and then just fails at last. This must be the case where conditions are so fine and subtle and so easily disturbed, and where our own ignorance of many necessary factors is so profound. This makes it none the less disheartening at times! ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... and had won legal games without a trump in his hand—although he had worked out the obscure law of divorce, as if it had been a Californian gold mine, Maitre[1] Garrulier, the celebrated, the only Garrulier, could not check a movement of surprise, nor a disheartening shake of the head, nor a smile, when the Countess de Baudemont explained her affairs to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... would advance Germany's request for an armistice, if it looked toward peace—this in reply to Page's message that Great Britain would not receive such a proposal in a kindly spirit—seemed to lay the basis of further misunderstandings. The interview was a disheartening one for Page. Many people whom the Ambassador met in the course of this visit still retain memories of his fervour in what had now become with him a sacred cause. With many friends and officials he discussed the European situation almost like a man inspired. The present writer recalls two ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... refused to be done. Hence he was hemmed in, shut up, incarcerated in stubborn circumstance, from a long reaching range of duties, calling aloud upon his conscience and heart to hasten with the first, that he might reach the second. What rendered it the more disheartening was, that, having discovered, as he hoped, how to compass his first end, the whole possibility had by his sister's behaviour, and the consequent disappearance of Lenorme, been swept from him, leaving ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... The first care of us who remained was to fulfil the commission assigned us. A young friend, of whom mention has been already made, joined me that evening. He had been two days in search of me, and was greatly exhausted by anxiety and fatigue. Rumours of various kinds were rife. But, what was most disheartening was that the courage of the people was fast subsiding. Men who were most eager for deeds of any daring two days previously, began to exhibit symptoms of hesitation, doubt, and even indifference. But a far sadder disaster had elsewhere befallen. Mr. O'Brien, after a night of ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... people; noted the remarks and efforts of a few ecclesiastics, laics, and Catholic periodicals (and, alas! how very few) made in behalf of the sacred obligation of education, and endeavored to compare the results with the efforts, and the observation made is sadly disheartening. ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... the pleasant summer weather brought many sunshiny days and starlit nights, the cold, damp, and dismal days took all the poetry out of this roving life, and sodden forests and relentless foes brought dreary and disheartening hours. Trust me, boys, this so-called "free and jolly life of the bold outlaw," which so many story-papers picture, whether it be with Brian Boru in distant Ireland, nine hundred years ago, or in Sherwood Forest with Robin Hood, or with some "Buckeye Jim" on our own Montana hill-sides to-day, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... disheartening. They were one hundred and fifty miles from their nearest cache, and nearly three hundred from the nearest settlement, already greatly used up, needing rest and plenty of food; in a country that forbade any ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... homeless, destitute, and exposed to hardships and privations of every kind, there were only three suicides in two months. The decrease, therefore, in the suicide rate was more than 97 per cent. This surprising result of a disheartening and depressing calamity was due partly to the excitement of life under new and extraordinary conditions, and partly to the feeling, which every man had, that he was enduring and working with a host of sympathetic comrades, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Continent. Evil tidings indeed came fast upon him. Almost at the same time at which he learned that one of his armies had raised the siege of Londonderry, and that another had been routed at Newton Butler, he received intelligence scarcely less disheartening from Scotland. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... yard has a sad, forsaken appearance; if it had run to seed and ended in nothing, or had been neglected and closed up by an army of hypochondriacs, it could not have been more gloomy, barren, or disheartening. The ground should be looked after, and the stones preserved as much as possible. It is a question of shoes v. gravestones at present, and, if there is not some change of position, the shoes will in the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... liberty to go whither he pleased, and not unnaturally his steps, for the hundredth time, perhaps, passed the door through which he could catch a glimpse of the young girl, who, with apparent hopelessness, and yet with such pathetic patience, was fighting a long battle with disheartening adversity. He was later than usual, and the employees were beginning to leave. Suddenly the obnoxious floor-walker appeared at the entrance with a hurried and intent manner. Then he paused a second or two and concealed himself behind a show-case. Roger now saw that his eyes were fixed ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... steadily falling behind in proportion to the urban population in the country at large. There are many localities where there is also an actual loss in population, and in the North and Middle West the States generally are making no rural gain. But the most disheartening element in the movement of population from the point of view of rural communities is the loss of the most substantial of the older citizens, who move to the city to enjoy the reward of years of toil, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... the doctor. "In this latitude these intense heats are invariably followed by storms, and the latter come with the suddenness of lightning. Notwithstanding this disheartening clearness of the sky, great atmospheric changes may take place ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... and east the horizon was as level and uniform as that of the sea; apparently spinifex everywhere; no hills or ranges could be seen for a distance of quite thirty miles. The prospect was very cheerless and disheartening. Windich went on the only horse not knocked up, in order to find water for the horses. I followed after his tracks, leading the two poor done-up horses. With difficulty I could get them to walk. Over and ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... there are natures in which all deep emotion is so entirely associated with the ideal, that real and particular manifestations of it are repugnant to them as something alien; and this without the least insincerity, though with a vicious and disheartening inconsistency. Rousseau belonged to this class, and loved man most when he saw men least. Bad as this was, it does not justify us in denouncing his love of man as artificial; it was one side of an ideal exaltation, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the ground cold. It destroys the good physical condition of the soil that may have been secured by much tillage, causing the soil particles to pack together. It compels plant-roots to form at the surface of the ground. It delays seeding and cultivation. An excess of water is more disheartening than absolute soil poverty. The remedy is only in its removal. The level of dead water in the soil must be below the surface—three feet, two and one half feet, four feet,—some reasonable distance that will make possible a friable, aerated, warm, friendly feeding-ground ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... a close. On hearing that he did, he seemed to lose interest in Joseph's story of Azariah's relations to his neighbours, nor did he seem unduly afflicted at hearing that only the most orthodox views were acceptable in Galilee. His indifference was disheartening, but being now deep in his biography, Joseph related perforce the years he spent doing his father's business in northern Syria, hoping as he told his story to awaken the sage's interest in his visit to Jerusalem. The Sadducees did not believe ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... There had been no murder, no robbery, no flight or hiding on the part of the Weggs to escape an injured enemy; nothing even mysterious, in the light of the story they had just heard. It was dreadfully humiliating and thoroughly disheartening, after all their earnest endeavor to investigate a crime ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... all standing round a blazing fire. But the rain now commenced again, and fairly poured down through the trees, rendering the prospect of cooking and eating our supper there in the woods, and of passing the night on the ground without tent or cover of any kind, rather disheartening. We had been told of a bark shanty a couple of miles farther down the creek, and thitherward we speedily took up our line of march. When we were on the point of discontinuing the search, thinking we had been misinformed or had passed it by, we came ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Gardiner was disposed to rejoice, under the impression that his greatest labour had been achieved. A better look at the state of things around him, however, taught the disheartening lesson of humility, by demonstrating that they had in ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted proprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have never been quite sure what—perhaps reversion to the native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest's uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... gratitude to God. But there are many more to whom such a confession of the Church's inability to appreciate and unwillingness to meet the spiritual needs of a civilization wonderfully unlike anything that has preceded it would be most disheartening. Least of all is there valid ground for hope in the case of those who fancy that if they can only annihilate this project, the day will speedily come when they can revise the Prayer Book in a manner perfectly conformable ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... chosen the count of Mansfield for his successor, and the nomination was approved by the king. He entered on his government under most disheartening circumstances. The rapid conquests of Prince Maurice in Brabant and Flanders were scarcely less mortifying than the total disorganization into which those two provinces had fallen. They were ravaged by bands of robbers called Picaroons, whose ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... was more disheartening than ever. All about towered the crystal mountains, their bases leaden-hued and formless in the ghostly gloom, while their middle parts showed deep gleams of ultramarine, brightening to purple higher up, and a few ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... curled spray almost to our feet. I dropped my burden, and reeled over in a deathly faint. When I came to my senses—I could not have been unconscious more than a few minutes—the chilly gray dawn had driven away the shadows of the night. A bleak and disheartening prospect met my eyes in every direction. Straight in front the sea rolled to the horizon, still tossing and tumbling. Behind me, and to right and left, stretched a flat, dreary, marshy coast, scarred with rocks, thickets ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... for Pauline Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie falls to working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quite independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a disheartening disability for flight. But even this second effort, I'm afraid, is doomed to failure, for more than once I've seen Dinkie back away and stand regarding his incompetent flier with a look of frustration on his face. He is always working over machinery—for he loves anything with ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... and the surrounding huts removed, a decent walk made, and the whole enclosed, this monument of former days might form an attractive object: as it is, the struggle to escape entanglement in every sort of dirt, while fighting one's way to the ruined amphitheatre, is almost too disheartening. When these circumstances accompany a visit to antiquities in out-of-the-way places, such as Saintes, and distant and anti-commercial towns, such as Poitiers, one has no reproach to make to the inhabitants; but what is to be said for rich and flourishing ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... way, then another, in the never-ending labyrinth, always in darkness and silence. We seemed to get nowhere; and I for one was about to give up the disheartening task when suddenly a sound smote our ears that caused us first to start violently, then stop and gaze at each other in ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... important for literature this heritage may prove to be will not appear until this institution—and others with like purposes—has fully developed by cultivation, training, and careful fostering the artistic impulses so abundantly a part of the Negro character. A race which has produced, under the most disheartening conditions, a mass of folk-poetry such as Negro Folk Rhymes may be expected to create with unlimited opportunities for self-development, a literature and a distinctive music of ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... repulsed an army sent against them, and surrounded its camp. We can imagine the clattering of the hoofs on the hard stones of the Via Latina as five anxious messengers, who had managed to escape before it was too late, hurried to Rome to carry the disheartening news. All eyes immediately turned in one direction for help. There lived just across the Tiber a member of an old aristocratic family, one Lucius Quintius, better known as Cincinnatus, because that name had been added to his others ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... left New York finally and went out West to make their way, but it was a most disheartening experience. Giles Murdaugh's influence was far-reaching and all doors were closed to them. They changed their name and went on, but Ralph had been a student rather than an athlete; he was not strong enough to attempt the rough work which was ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... the hills and down the narrow ways, And up the valley where the free winds sweep, The earth is folded in an ermined sleep That mocks the melting mirth of myriad Mays. Departed her disheartening duns and grays, And all her crusty black is covered deep. Dark streams are locked in Winter's donjon-keep, And made to shine with keen, unwonted rays. O icy mantle, and deceitful snow! What world-old liars in your hearts ye are! Are there not still ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Arts and Sciences, Civilization, Peace, Order, Christianity, and Humanity, I appeal to you to strike from your limbs the chains that bind them! Come forth from that loathsome prison, Party Caucus; and in this hour—the most gloomy and disheartening to the lovers of Free Institutions that has ever existed during our Country's history—arouse the drooping spirits of our countrymen, by putting forth your good strong arms to assist in steadying the rocking pillars of the mightiest Republic that ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... most disheartening; the boats were no longer available; the water was gaining on the vessel; and the rockets and blue lights, as they darted into the air, served but to show them the rugged face of the high rocks, which appeared to afford no footing by which ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... night with one of the men who had destroyed the mystery of Mongolia. In 1916, Coltman and his former partner, Oscar Mamen, had driven across the plains to Urga, the historic capital of Mongolia. But most unromantic and incongruous, most disheartening to a dreamer of Oriental dreams, was what I learned a few days later when the awakening had really come—that among the first cars ever to cross the desert was one purchased by the Hutukhtu, the Living Buddha, the God of all ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... so disheartening that Cyril did not leave the house again for another fortnight. His first visit was to Mr. Wallace. The sight of a watchman at the door gave him quite a shock, and he was grieved indeed when he heard from ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... I did have a new and not unpleasant sense of housewifely dignity while engaged at this task, and undoubtedly assumed an air calculated to serve as an impressive exponent to my emotion. The poor scarlet stockings lengthened, meanwhile, but it was a disheartening and almost imperceptible growth. Where the article should have been most voluminous, at the calf of the leg, it grew, in spite of me, more alarmingly narrow at every round. This was after I had graduated from under Grandma Keeler's ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Or, to avoid the disheartening task of reviewing an array of bloodless "-ologies," let us put the question to ourselves thus: Be it supposed that a young man or woman who wants to take a course, of at least a year's length, in the elements of anthropology, joins some university which is thoroughly in touch ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... as disheartening. When the Union was set up, native employees of the government in the railway, post office, telegraph and civil service systems were discharged in large numbers and their places were given to Europeans. Enforced labor of natives ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... is piteous, disheartening, shameful, and terrible. It seems as if during three months of 1871 "human nature," as Carlyle says of it in his "French Revolution," "had thrown off all formulas, and come out human!" It is the story of those whom the French call "the people,"—we "the mob," or "the populace,"—let ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it always is God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... and cold, and blankly disheartening it was! He had now completed fifty miles, though he knew it not; but it seemed to him as if he had been full a hundred. His feet, rubbed raw, and stiffened by the cold, were beginning to retard his pace alarmingly. His face and lips were pale; a sensation ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... up—a phenomenon unescapably visible, but disconcertingly hard to explain. What forces combined to produce him in the first place, and how has he managed to hold out so long against the prevailing blasts—of disheartening misunderstanding and misrepresentation, of Puritan suspicion and opposition, of artistic isolation, of commercial seduction? There is something downright heroic in the way the man has held his narrow and perilous ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... many as ten per cent. were so trained and improved. That this should be the maximum proportion will surprise those who have been misled by the ad captandum statements sometimes put forward to the public, no doubt with laudable and benevolent motives. This amount of success, disheartening as it seems at first, is not to be despised; but the strength of an appeal, whether to the charitable public or to the State, to provide for the training of idiots, lies in elevating them to the highest level of which ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... commanding interests to drop his routine even for a day or so means a busy time catching up later on; and in the case of Jim, who had lost all told the better part of two weeks, the accumulation was almost disheartening, particularly to Harvey. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... called McGowan's Pass, dividing this northern portion, is the valley which, by means of its darkly wooded hillsides, sheltered the secret messengers passing between the scattered parties of the American troops who, during the few days intervening between their disheartening rout on Long Island and the battle of Harlem Plains, rallied about the range of hills extending from Fort Washington to Bloomingdale." A small part of the "Old Boston Road" is still to be seen in this portion of the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... disheartening example," he said, "if it did not show the strength and peace that ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... possesses a strength which is almost terrifying, combined with a beauty as terrifying in its way. If he will but develop his immense genius instead of meddling with social and political questions, and getting into prison on that score with disheartening regularity, something incalculably great may be the outcome. It is said that he is now banished in polite exile to the Crimea. If he can be kept there or elsewhere out of mischief, the Russian government will again ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... many of their men, struck deep into my heart: My thinned ranks told the woeful tale of the fierce struggles, indescribable by words, through which my division had passed since 7 o'clock in the morning; and this, added to our hungry and exhausted condition, was naturally disheartening. The men had been made veterans, however, by the fortunes and misfortunes of the day, and as they went into their new places still confident of final success, it was plain to see that they felt a self-confidence inspired by the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... considerable part of that patriotic feeling which, after a suspended animation of several years, awoke in the spring of 1861 and asserted itself with such unexpected power, and which sustained the country during four years of a peculiarly disheartening war. How pleasant and spirit-stirring was a celebration of the Fourth of July as it was conducted in Webster's early day! We trust the old customs will be revived and improved upon, and become universal. Nor is it any objection to the practice of having an oration, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... wild, barbaric, outre name of Smith. Richard Smith, I believe. And his suggestion—I tell it to you in confidence, relying on your honor not to steal my stolen thunder—was, very briefly, to put before my distinguished relation the sad, disheartening effect it would have on the popularity of the trolley stock in the banks and on the stock exchange if it became generally noised abroad that the road carried no insurance and maintained no proper insurance fund. What ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... since Milton died, his name is become the mark, not of a biography nor of a theme, but of a style—the most distinguished in our poetry. But the task of literary criticism is, at the best, a task of such disheartening difficulty, that those who attempt it should be humoured if they play long with the fringes of the subject, and wait for courageous moments ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... he really had any mission at all, whether he had not rather yielded to deceitful suggestions, believed in the reality of phantoms, and been deceived by chance appearances. He saw the spiritual and moral features of his friends and disciples, deformed as in a convex mirror; he felt a disheartening certainty that all he had hoped of them was vain. Then again that sad, tender little song returned, no longer beseeching but full of pity, of a pity comprehending all his bitter struggle, the sorrowing pity of some unknown spirit that was also suffering and complaining of God, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... but Judson writes: "We had never before seen a place where European influence had not contributed to smooth and soften the rough features of uncultivated nature. The prospect of Rangoon, as we approached, was quite disheartening. I went on shore, just at night, to take a view of the place and the mission-house, but so dark and cheerless and unpromising did all things appear, that the evening of that day, after my return to the ship, we have marked as the most gloomy and distressing that we ever passed." ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... possible to navigate it further. Accordingly, on the following morning, three men were despatched along the south bank, while Mr. Hunt and three others proceeded along the north. The two parties returned after a weary scramble among swamps, rocks, and precipices, and with very disheartening accounts. For nearly forty miles that they had explored, the river foamed and roared along through a deep and narrow channel, from twenty to thirty yards wide, which it had worn, in the course of ages, through the heart of a barren, rocky country. The precipices on each side were often two ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... dinner if I see a dog looking wistfully at it. I therefore spent the whole day staggering about our rolling ship with sherbet and food and medicines, treating dysentery and fever. During my short snatches of sleep I dreamt of these horrors too. But it was terribly disheartening work, owing to their fanaticism. Many of them listened to me with more faith about food and medicines because I knew something of the Koran, and could recite their Bismillah ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... completely nonplused. We landed on Elcho Island and spent a day or two there. Being still under the impression that Cape York was higher up, I steered west, and soon found myself in a very unpleasant region. We explored almost every bay and inlet we came across, but of course always with the same disheartening result. Sometimes we would come near being stranded on a sandbank, and would have to jump overboard and push our craft into deeper water. At others, she would be almost swamped in a rough sea, but still we stuck to our task, and after passing Goulbourn Island we followed the coast. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... around Vincennes, on the east side of the Wabash, is a sandy plain. A gentleman who escaped the ravages of fever in that place, and who was much engaged in nursing the sick and consoling the dying, stated to me that nothing was so disheartening as the cloudless sky and burning sun that continued unchanged for weeks in succession. Mortality prevailed to a great extent along the banks of the Wabash. Hindostan, a town on the east fork of White river, 38 miles from Vincennes on the road to Louisville, was begun the ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... would come to a knowledge of the truth through the ministrations of the Rev. Samuel McClanahan, who was said to be very powerful in argument; but he had found fault with Mr. McClanahan's logic on Fast Day in a way that was quite disheartening, and he evidently did not intend to come forward this communion at all. Her father had spoken several times in a very hopeless manner of Lloyd's continued resistance of the Holy Spirit, and Marg'et Ann thought with a shiver ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... immediate neighborhood. Four of Andrew Crist's children are now dangerously ill with the disease. Some in other families have died; and others are sick. The outlook, both as to health and peace, is very disheartening. But we are admonished in the Divine Word not to fear. The people of God have a better portion than this world can give—"an enduring substance, which death ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... but well-dressed women, with white veils and great fans, were passing and repassing; the perfect absence of resemblance in any dwelling-house, or shop, or wall, or post, or pillar, to anything one had ever seen before; and the disheartening dirt, discomfort, and decay; perfectly confounded me. I fell into a dismal reverie. I am conscious of a feverish and bewildered vision of saints and virgins' shrines at the street corners—of great numbers of friars, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... to look on Kenkenes once again made the dawns more welcome, the days longer and the sunsets more disheartening. Vainly she summoned pride to her aid; vainly she ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... pieces by an outbreak of revolution, though of course nobody said so. But I lived mainly (though not entirely) among the bien pensants people, who looked on all anti-governmental manifestations with horror. Perhaps the restless discontent which destroyed Louis Philippe's government is the most disheartening circumstance in the whole course of recent French history. That the rule of Charles Dix should have occasioned revolt may be regrettable, but is not a matter for surprise. But that of Louis Philippe was not ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the resorts around the plaza in search of gossip that was rumored to be in circulation at Loring's expense. He found the gossipers easily enough, but had greater difficulty in reaching their authorities. It proved disheartening work, for the further he went the less he learned—each tale bearer having apparently added to the pile of his informant, as Petty should have had sense enough to know would be the case. But at last he "lit" on something tangible: The hardy giant who led the rush the night of the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... proved quite un-negotiable, so at 8.30 p.m. last night, to the intense disappointment of all, instead of forging ahead, we had to retire half a mile so as to get on a stronger floe, and by 10 p.m. we had camped and all hands turned in again. The extra sleep was much needed, however disheartening ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... to be known, or because they have heard that money is easily made in that way, or because they think they will chance that among a number of other things. The ignorance of technique which they often show is not nearly so disheartening as the palpable factitiousness of their product. It is something that they have made; it is not anything that has grown out of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mr. Reed with disheartening enthusiasm as Wallie placed the biscuit, butter, and molasses before ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... "of African descent" to "tear off the corner!" Probably never before in the history of the United States has a portion of the citizens been so openly and crassly discriminated against by action of the general government. It was disheartening, and on top of it came the celebrated "German plots." It was alleged in various parts of the country with singular unanimity that Germans were working among the Negroes, and it was further intimated that this would make ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... more to my interest than to the reader's for something to happen? Here have I been tramping along since breakfast-time, and now it is late in the afternoon, but never a feather of her dove's wings, never a flutter of her angel's robes have I seen. It is disheartening, for one naturally expects to find anything we seek a few minutes after starting out to seek it, and I confess that I expected to find my golden mistress within a very few hours of leaving home. However, had that been the case, there would have been no story, as the novelists say, and ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... spectators, and posters rapidly replaced without giving his name a chance of being known. When one has worked twenty of talent and life, this obstinate refusal of the public to comprehend is wearying and disheartening, and one ends by thinking: "Perhaps after all they are right." Fear paralyses and words fail. Our acclamations and enthusiastic greetings somewhat cheered him. "Really do you think so? Is it well done? 'Tis true I have given all I knew." And his feverish hands anxiously clutched ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... to continue the search for Somerset in advance, and their scanty provision of flour being nearly exhausted, Frank Jardine, reluctantly abandoning the idea of getting into the Settlement, determined to return to the cattle, and with them, head the supposed bend of the Escape. Disheartening as this was, there was nothing else to be done in the present state of the country. Distance ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... Clamart Station. I find to-day a contradiction of the statement that insurgents were butchered at Moulin Saquet. It is true, nevertheless. The Commune, wishing, no doubt, to keep the whole truth from their followers fearing its disheartening effect, state enough for their purpose, which is to represent the Versailles Government as assassins. It says that 15 of the National Guards were killed with knives. The fact is as I stated it. The redoubt was taken by surprise, and the soldiers gave no quarter. The number I gave as that of ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... for the first time two pictures signed by Dor appeared on the walls of the Salon. But the canvases passed unnoticed. The Parisians would not take the would-be painter seriously, and the following year's experience proved hardly less disheartening. Of four pictures sent in, three were accepted, one of these being a historic subject, the other two being landscapes. The first, "La Bataille de l'Alma," evoked considerable criticism. The rural scenes ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the financial burden, and so vexatious and disheartening the bickering and ingratitude, that Penn thought seriously of selling his governorship; and it was in the market for several years awaiting a purchaser. Indeed, in 1712, he had so far perfected a bargain to transfer his proprietary rights to ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... his men was now dreary and disheartening. In addition to the rigors of a long winter, in a high northern latitude, they had to apprehend the suffering which would arise from a scarcity of provisions. The vessel had been victualled for six months, and that time having now expired, and their stores falling short, while, at the same time, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... elements of executive ability myself gave the worst part of it to Nasmith, the Vice-Consul-General. Modifications became necessary every few minutes, and Leval and I were running around like stricken deer all day, seeing the disheartening number of government officials who were concerned, having changes made and asking for additional trains. During the afternoon more and more Germans came pouring into the Consulate for refuge, until there were ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... stole away to the sunken garden. Here the marks of vandalism were less noticeable. Nevertheless, few signs of beauty remained. Neglected vines drooped spiritlessly from the ledges: such fruit-trees as had been spared were sickly and untended; time and the elements had all but completed the disheartening work. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... principle and conscience. Such is the case wherever and whenever they are demanded as necessary, or when their introduction involves a denial of the truth, an admission of error, an infringement of Christian liberty, an encouragement of errorists and of the enemies of the Church, a disheartening of the confessors of the truth, or an offense to Christians, especially the weak. Such conditions, they maintained, prevailed during the time of the Interim, when both Pope and Emperor plainly declared it to be their object ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... result from this disheartening folly? Is Wellesley a man likely to submit, like some of his predecessors, to be made a cypher in his Government? Is Plunket disposed to see the whole detail of daily business, and the whole character and temper of the Secretary's office fall back into the old channels; and that after ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... astonished to see with what celerity every thing, even moderately valuable in the scientific publications of this country, finds its way into their pages. This ought to encourage our men of science. They have a larger audience, and a wider sympathy than they are perhaps aware of; and however disheartening the general diffusion of smatterings of a number of subjects, and the almost equally general indifference to profound knowledge in any, among their own countrymen, may be, they may rest assured that not a fact they may discover, nor a good experiment ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... Government and the House met, General Owen's term of three years was coming to a close. It is not to be wondered that the condition of the forces was unsatisfactory, their numbers reduced, recruiting stopped, equipment wearing out, schools of instruction held only at rare intervals. It was a disheartening time for all of us. Enthusiasm lacked, and the officers and men ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... surreptitious lowering of lids that would betray their insincerity. When they appealed to him for an opinion of some phase of the subject, he answered with caution. He tried to turn the talk to his experiences on the Shonkin range, and found the wild man cropping up with disheartening persistency. He shifted often in the saddle, because of the deep sunburns which smarted continually and maddeningly. He wondered if the boys had used all of that big box of carbolic salve which used to be kept in a corner of the mess-box; and was carbolic salve good for sun-blisters? ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... devouring, of a translated copy of "Robinson Crusoe" (and it is a most remarkable circumstance that the book which has for its avowed purpose the disheartening of restless adventurers, should have made wanderers and voyagers innumerable), gave form and fixedness to his purpose of rambling; and, in company with his youngest brother, the boy set out one fine morning, without any intention but the somewhat vague one of "traveling ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... interested me. His father was a merchant, who, having been ruined by unlucky transactions, died, leaving a numerous family without the means of support. His children were obliged to commence life alone and unaided, which, in a country where labor is so cheap, is difficult and disheartening. Our friend chose the profession of a machinist, which, after encountering great obstacles, he succeeded in learning, and now supports himself as a common laborer. But his position in this respect prevents him from occupying that station in society for which he is intellectually fitted. His own ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor |
