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More "Desperation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consultations (these confessions, these takings of our particular cases into thy consideration) thou intendest all for physic; and even from those sentences from which a too late repenter will suck desperation, he that seeks thee early shall receive thy morning dew, thy seasonable mercy, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... to the Khord Mohul complain of their being in want of every necessary of life, and are at last drove to that desperation, that they at night get on the top of the zenanah, make a great disturbance, and last night not only abused the sentinels posted in the gardens, but threw dirt at them; they threatened to throw ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... that should the slaves, goaded by wrongs unendurable, rise in desperation, and pour the torrent of their brutal revenge over the beautiful Carolinas, or the consecrated soil of Virginia, New England would be called upon to arrest the progress of rebellion,—to tread out with the armed heel of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... might tell her if he had let drop any word concerning his journey—if he had made one. She had at first hung long about the servants' entrance, watching the workmen who were that day walling in the wing of black cellars my lady had wished to close before she left the place, and at length, in desperation, had appealed to a young stone-mason, with a good-humoured countenance, and he had interceded for her with a ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Secretary of State with the desperation of an expiring cause; in this great final battle, were Jefferson driven from the Cabinet, his faithful organ must scurry to the limbo of its kind. It assailed the Administration for ingratitude and meanness, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... desperation by being overlapped and turned away from Germany, the Germans made a supreme effort to escape toward the south-west, thus completing their circle round the bull's-eye, as Jellicoe began to round them up from the inner. Their destroyers spouted forth an immense grey smoke ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... means tramps of miles into the country, sails on the lovely Ujina Bay and climbs over the mountains. In the afternoon the boy is so in evidence, we almost fall over him if we step. Yesterday in desperation I tied an apron on him and let him help me make a cake. Even at that, with a dab of chocolate on his cheek and flour on his nose, his summer sky eyes were weepy whenever he spoke of his "Mutter." I have done everything for him except lend ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... on her shoulder turned her towards him. Her eyes met his with a dash of desperation.... He was unconscious how his own were blazing ... how queerly white his face had ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and awaited with sullen apathy that fate which could not be far distant. The only thing which puzzled the philosophical navigator was his inability to detect what useful end could be attained by his death. At length, remembering that fish must be fed, his theory and his desperation were ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... satisfied; and then there comes the stinging thought that it is not all complete yet, and we go groping, groping in the dark, to find out where the lacking thing is. Shipwrecked sailors sometimes, in their desperation, drink salt water, and that makes them thirstier than ever, and brings on madness and death. Some publicans drug the vile liquors which they sell, so that they increase thirst. We may make no mistake about how to satisfy the desires of sense or of earthly affections; we may be quite certain that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... bravery of desperation I began to explain that I hadn't stumbled into the thing; that I had acted open-eyed; for my own ends ... "My own ends." I repeated it several times. I wanted him to understand, and I did explain. I kept nothing from him; neither her coming, nor her words, nor my feelings. I had ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... entered upon unrestricted submarine warfare, a last resort of desperation. Ten ships were reported sunk and eight lives lost that day. Neutral vessels and belligerents were destroyed without discrimination, and in the first six days the tonnage of the vessels sunk by German U-boats was 86, tons, including 45 ships of all nationalities. The ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... of a duck," he said to Mr. Blakeley, referring to Blythe. "I think he's out of luck and rather discouraged. He doesn't say much. I think he took this job in desperation not knowing exactly how he was going to go ahead with it. He expects to get three hundred dollars for what he's undertaken. He means to divide evenly, he said, but of course that will leave him with only twelve dollars, if the whole troop goes up. ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... end a life which was worse than useless. "No, no," said his friend, "don't do that. If your affairs are so desperate, retire into a convent, become a Capuchin." "Ah, non!" was the indignant answer; "I am desperate; but I have not yet arrived at such a pitch of desperation." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... advantage of the necessities of these poor animals, and shoot them down one after another, without intending to make the smallest use of either the flesh, skins, or horns. In shooting by night, animals are more frequently wounded than killed; the flowing life-stream increases the thirst, so that in desperation they come slowly up to drink in spite of the danger, "I must drink, though I die." The ostrich, even when not wounded, can not, with all his wariness, resist the excessive desire to slake his burning thirst. It is Bushman-like ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... that it was a shame to bring in horses so utterly exhausted . . . another that they must have stumbled on the Court by accident . . . another that there was powder on De Lacy's sleeve. . . And so it went; until Beatrix, in sheer desperation, gathered her skirts about her and fled into ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... In the midst of the unusual horrors that surrounded him, while clinging to the unfamiliar mizzen shrouds on which in desperation the poor monkey had found a temporary refuge, the electric fire showed him the dark figure of his old familiar friend standing not far off. With a shriek of not quite hopeless despair, and an inconceivable ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... it!" cried the manager, in desperation. "We open with New York at St. Louis next week for four games. I'll let Matson see what he can do, though I reckon I'll be roasted and laughed at ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... and I love you; but do you not see, when a heart, the kindest in the world, could conceive and execute such a terrible revenge, that the condition of the mind is abnormal? But let us change the gloomy subject. The dreadful time has put 'tricks of desperation' in your brain. And it is not the least of the crimes of the Oligarchy that it could thus pervert honest and gentle natures, and turn them into savages. And that is what it has done with millions. It has fought ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Eustace had given Gaston the key, on his departure, and thither the faithful Squire hastened, without looking back to see whether he was followed by many or few—in fact, rather ready to die with Sir Eustace than hoping to rescue him. The ten Englishmen and some eight Frenchmen, infected by the desperation of his manner, followed him closely as he rushed up the slope, dashed through the moat, and in another moment, opening the door, burst into the court. There stood a party of the garrison, upon whom he rushed with a shout of "Death, death to the traitor!" ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ditch of desperation, Jim Duff now strode over to where Tom stood. No one opposed him, ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... him, and he cursed himself for his blind follies. He just missed a train at Chiswick station, and in desperation he took a cab to Gunnersbury and caught a Mansion House train. He got out at St. James' Park, and pulling his coat collar up he hastened across to Pall Mall. He chose the shortest cut to Jermyn street, and ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... falsehoods pass without a protest? Was not her life a perpetual complicity, and did she not aid and abet him by the simple fact that she was not disgusted with him? Then again perhaps she was disgusted and it was the mere desperation of her pride that had given her an inscrutable mask. Perhaps she protested in private, passionately; perhaps every night, in their own apartments, after the day's hideous performance, she made him the most scorching ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... as it'll come out, sooner or later, I might as well tell you now," he said, with rather an air of desperation, and as though driven to it. "Have you heard any rumors that Mr. ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... come and whither they were gone. He himself had wounds not healed, and he told how, day by day, the mad bravery of the Germans, and the fury of his Black Forest men-at-arms, had risen again and again to very desperation, to sink before evening in a new defeat; until, at last, as the Seljuk swords still killed and killed, a terror had fallen upon the host in the passes, and men had thrown away their armour and fled like rats from ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Fleming's, gained by his victor's compassion and lenity a fearful advantage, and made a remorseless use of it. Having only his left hand to oppose to the maniac attempts of my father, even the strength of Wallace could not prevent the assailant, with all the energy of desperation, from throwing down the ladder, on which his daughter was perched like a dove in the grasp of an eagle. The champion saw our danger, and exerting his inimitable strength and agility, cleared himself and me from the ladder, and leaped free of the moat of the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... floor, until ten of the great stages were submerged. But there were more than twice as many stages yet above, and they counted them with unexpiring hope, telling one another, with the assurance of desperation, that long before the flood could attain so stupendous an altitude the rain would surely cease, and the danger, as far as they were ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... (as he considered it) stared him in the face. His mind was so affected by his troubles that both his wife and daughter, toward the last, considered him to be hardly responsible for his own acts. In this state of desperation and misery, he—" Here Mr. Frank began ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Judges on his side. I am more afraid of the debts than of the House of Lords. It is scarcely to be imagined to what debts will swell, that are daily increasing by small additions, and how carelessly in a state of desperation debts are contracted. Poor Macquarry was far from thinking that when he sold his islands he should receive nothing. For what were they sold? And what was their yearly value? The admission of money into the Highlands will soon put an end to the feudal modes of life, by making those men landlords ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the girl cried in desperation. She was only a dozen yards from the lane which led to freedom, so she made a quick little feminine rush in the hope of avoiding this dreadful sentinel who barred her passage. He caught her round the waist, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... evidently been driven to desperation by the prospect of the utter and tremendous ruin that threatened him; and "desperation;" the absence of all hope, is recognised, both by the popular mind of Italy and by its theoretic theology, as a sufficient ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... given no answer. Are you still complaining of the cold, Aunt Jane?" she cried, in desperation, turning toward Mrs. Whitney. "I find it quite warm over here. Mr. Glover and I are still watching the freight train. Come ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... roses in a garden, but we pluck one. I plucked one, and alas, messieurs, it pricked my finger. She was a chambermaid, her name Annette, her figure ravishing, her face an angel's, her heart — alas, messieurs, that I should have to own it! — black and slippery as a patent leather boot. I loved to desperation, I adored her to despair. She transported me — in every sense; she inspired me. Never have I cooked as I cooked (for I had been promoted at the hotel) when Annette, my adored Annette, smiled on me. Never' — and here his manly voice broke into a sob — 'never shall ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... law of New York was born out of sheer desperation. The Army of Destruction went up to Albany well-organized, well provided with money and attorneys, with three senators in the Senate and two assemblymen in the lower house, to wage merciless warfare on the whole wild-life cause. The ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... she, with a charming smile, "till a few weeks past, I have often mourned over myself; and it seemed to me that I must, in the desperation of my singular and cold nature, lay open my breast, in order to search there for the heart, which, senseless and cold, had never betrayed its existence by its stronger beating. Oh, sire, I was full of trouble about myself; and in ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... jongleur or instrument player by whom they were attended; they often abounded in extravagant hyperboles, trivial conceits, and grossness of expression. Ladies, whose attractions were estimated by the number and desperation of their lovers, and the songs of their troubadours, were not offended if licentiousness mingled with gallantry in the songs composed in their praise. Authors addressed prayers to the saints for aid in their amorous intrigues, and men, seemingly rational, resigned themselves ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... advised Czarnecki to provoke one of the commission to strike him, when he should be able to prosecute him for attacking an employe and by that means get rid of the investigation. Czarnecki used the most insulting language to Mr. Schuch, and in a fit of desperation seized hold of his arm, with the intention of putting him out of the room by force. The committee-man being on his guard, the manoeuvre failed. Czarnecki, seeing himself foiled, his iniquity discovered, and his ill-gotten wealth likely to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... Ree and the latter nodded for him to go ahead. In another minute then, a match, the closeness and desperation of which delighted the savages ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... burying head and shoulders, and compelling me to do the work over. The air grew foul and sluggish, but I was toiling for life, and dug at the debris madly, reckless of what might fall from above. Better to be crushed, than to die of suffocation, and the very desperation with which I strove proved my salvation. For what remained of the roof held, and I struggled through into the firmer gallery beyond, faint from exhaustion, yet as quickly reviving in the fresher air. I had reached the end of the passage before I comprehended the truth. ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... I who had seen that so great men in the generation of the ungodly were opposed to me, I surely in desperation should have cast aside my ministry. For one cannot conceive how difficult it is for one man to oppose himself alone to the unanimity of all churches; to impugn the judgment of the best and most amicable ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... by one fleshless arm in a sort of frenzy of desperation, and swung her into the library. Then he turned to his audience of two with ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... and sullen fellow. He probably rated Glaucus soundly about his gay life and gaming habits, and ultimately swore he would not consent to his marriage with Ione. High words arose; Glaucus seems to have been full of the passionate god, and struck in sudden exasperation. The excitement of wine, the desperation of abrupt remorse, brought on the delirium under which he suffered for some days; and I can readily imagine, poor fellow! that, yet confused by that delirium, he is even now unconscious of the crime he committed! Such, at least, is the shrewd conjecture of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... loosen'd, When her own bonds she knits; 'tis not the maiden alone who Leaves her father and mother behind, when she follows her husband. So it is with the youth; no more he knows mother and father. When he beholds the maiden, the only beloved one, approaching. Therefore let me go hence, to where desperation may lead me, For my father already has spoken in words of decision, And his house no longer is mine, if he shuts out the maiden Whom alone I would fain take home as my bride ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... mother earth I have seen the dead men lie as thick as kindlings in a wood-yard. Sir, across this very fair green there were no less than three desperate charges, unremembered and unsung, of which I may say without boasting that Magna Pars Fui. But for the desperation of our last charge the battle ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... for the first time in his life, he had lost a battle. He could not bear the sight of the boatswain's placid features, unruffled by anything like anger or malice. He felt that he had not even provoked his powerful adversary. He howled in his anger, and then he cried in his desperation. Suddenly he seized a wooden belaying-pin from the rail, and shied it at the boatswain's head. Peaks caught it in his hand, as though he had been playing toss-ball with his victim; but the next instant his anaconda fold encircled the youth again. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... had been seized with another inspiration of desperation. Steptoe had been partly responsible for this situation. Van Loo knew that Jack and Steptoe were not friends. He had certain secrets of Steptoe's that might be of importance to Jack. Why should he not try to make friends with this powerful ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... their early adventures and experiences. Finally, looking at his watch, to his amazement he discovered it was midnight. What to do he knew not. He didn't dare to go home. If he went to a hotel, his wife might discover him before he discovered her. Finally, in desperation, he sped to the menagerie, hurriedly passed through and went to the cage of lions. Entering this he closed and locked the door, and gave a sigh of relief. He quieted the dangerous brutes, and lay down with his head resting on the mane ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... without the least encouragement to hope for life, and on the last died with great resignation, receiving his death as a punishment justly due to his want of submission in the divine will, and that forward petulance which drove him to desperation in not succeeding to his wishes just at the time that to his impetuous passions, and short-sighted reason, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... who still exert as much power over popular thought as priests do, and are to receive State pay as popular instructors, shall also receive the best obtainable secular education before being subjected to purely professional training in the theological seminaries. The desperation of the fight made against him by the clergy is due to their well-grounded belief that in order to get a young man in our time to swallow a fair amount of Catholic theology, he must be caught early and kept ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... propose more trenchant terms. The Elamite might have gone so far as to grant the extradition of Nabo-bel-shumi, but if he had yielded the point concerning Nana, a rebellion would have broken out in the streets of Susa: he preferred war, and prepared in desperation to carry it on to the bitter end. The conflict was long and sanguinary, and the result disastrous for Elam. Bit-Imbi opened its gates, the district of Kashi surrendered at discretion, followed by the city of Khamanu and its environs, and the Assyrians approached Madaktu: Khumban-khaldash ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was affected by a sensitive conscience. But if there was one man whom he despised to the bottom of his soul, it was Pratinas. Pratinas had lorded it over him and patronized him, in a way which drove the mild-tempered man of learning to desperation. The spirit of evil entered into the heart of Pisander as he left the room. The average chatter of Pratinas and Valeria had been gall and wormwood to him, and he had been glad enough to evade it; but here was Pratinas with a secret which he clearly did not wish ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... and Milo, stood to be consuls, and that not only with the usual and now recognized disorders of bribery and corruption, but with arms and slaughter, and every appearance of carrying their audacity and desperation to the length of actual civil war. Whereupon it was proposed, that Pompey might be empowered to preside over that election. This Cato at first opposed, saying that the laws ought not to seek protection from Pompey, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as an isolated operation, but in relation to the universal war, that such an attempt is here considered. England stood everywhere on the defensive, with inferior numbers. From such a position there is no salvation except by action vigorous almost to desperation. "It is impossible for us," wrote with great truth the First Lord of the Admiralty to Rodney, "to have a superior fleet in every part; and unless our commanders-in-chief will take the great line, as you do, and consider the king's whole dominions ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must now stand or fall by nature. My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling rumour of the streets, and at each ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colours had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cosy look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of colour, Margret noticed, wondering ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and once more the stones were hurled in mad desperation. There was an-other crash, and the door tottered and came away from the lock. Then Tom threw his weight against it and it ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... cried Connie in desperation, as he strove to master an almost overwhelming impulse to turn and fly from the spot. "Crazy as a loon," thought the boy, with a shudder, "and I've got to take him clear to Fort Norman, alone!" "I'm a stump, I'm a stump," chanted the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... to run away, there we are struck with terror. Therefore, as we may expect it to happen with those who err in the greatest matters, we convert natural confidence (that is, according to nature) into audacity, desperation, rashness, shamelessness; and we convert natural caution and modesty into cowardice and meanness, which are full of fear and confusion. For if a man should transfer caution to those things in which ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... instant might he not forget his fallen condition, and disregard not only his safety but her reputation, by pressing into the palace and claiming the right of speech with her? Rasher deeds were not seldom done under the promptings of desperation. Trembling beneath the sway of such imaginings, each footfall that resounded in the hall seemed like the light and buoyant step of him who had trodden with her the sands of Ostia—each figure that passed by bore, for the instant, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you want?" Her desperation sounded in her voice. She looked at him with eyes of wild appeal. Her defiance was all gone. The smile went out of Hyde's face, and suddenly she saw the primitive savage in possession. She had seen it before, but till that moment ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... anguish was so great that he could no longer endure it; and, in desperation, he had made his escape, as we have narrated. His case was a hopeful one, and his father cheerfully remitted to Mr. Walker the amount contained in the lost purse, with the mortifying ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... thing am I, whom all Repose, All Joys, and every good of Life abandon'd, That fatal Hour thou gavest thy self away; And I was doom'd to endless Desperation: Yet whilst I liv'd, all glorious with my hopes, Some sacred Treasures in thy Breast I hid, And near thee still ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Popolo and were hooted and goaded on by the excited screams of the populace all the way down the narrow Corso, which is a mile long. It is a wonder that the poor creatures in their fright did not dart into the howling crowd, but they did not. They kept straight on their way, stung to desperation by the fireworks on their backs. At the Piazza di Venezia the street narrows into a very small passage, which divides the palazzo from its neighbor opposite. Here sheets (or, rather, sails) were hung across this narrow place, into which ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... ship. He agreed with me as to that, but told me he was perfectly at a loss what measures to take, for that there were still six-and-twenty hands on board, who, having entered into a cursed conspiracy, by which they had all forfeited their lives to the law, would be hardened in it now by desperation, and would carry it on, knowing that if they were subdued they would be brought to the gallows as soon as they came to England, or to any of the English colonies, and that, therefore, there would be no attacking them with so small a number as ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... and had seized a tower called Herta, situated on the bank of the Danube. There he plundered his neighbors in wild license and made himself king over his vagabonds. Now Pitza came upon him when he was nearly reduced to desperation and was already thinking of surrender. So he rescued him from the hands of Sabinian and made him a grateful ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... Naseby, nor Napoleon at Waterloo made a more desperate fight for empire than did the one-man power at Albany to retain the sceptre it has wielded for so many years over the politics and placemen of this State."[658] In their desperation both sides appealed to the President-elect, who refused to be drawn into the struggle. "Justice to all" was his answer to Weed. "I have said nothing ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... which had been entrusted to Scherirah, and had thrown themselves into the palace. Alroy sallied forth at the head of these fresh troops. His presence decided a result which was perhaps never doubtful. The division of Abidan fought with the desperation that became their fortunes. The carnage was dreadful, but their discomfiture complete. They no longer acted in masses, or with any general system. They thought only of self-preservation, or of selling their lives at the dearest cost. Some dispersed, some escaped. Others ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... the spring, and began to run. She emerged from the village, she entered the forest at a run, no longer looking at or listening to anything. She only paused in her course when her breath failed her; but she did not halt in her advance. She went straight before her in desperation. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... deeper pit than any she had dreamed of. In desperation she cast about for means to climb out of it. The secrecy of this meeting—that must go. But, even so, was there escape? The bell? Before she could be half-way across the room, he would be holding her in his ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... heat of the Arizona day and was miles away towards the Gila before Feeny awoke to a realizing sense of what had happened. Then he came out and blasphemed. There in that wretched little green safe were locked up thousands enough of dollars to tempt all the outlawry of the Occident to any deed of desperation that might lead to the capture of the booty, and with Donovan and his party away Feeny saw he had but half a ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... passersby for twenty-five cents. An advertisement in the newspapers of one unfilled job brought a thousand men to block the streets at daylight before a factory door. In the crowds men swore and knocked each other about. Working-men driven to desperation went forth into quiet streets and knocking over citizens took their money and watches and ran trembling into the darkness. A girl of Twenty-fourth Street was kicked and knocked into the gutter because when attacked by thieves she had but thirty-five cents in her purse. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... the other hand, stimulated by so many victorious recollections, confident in the talents of their accomplished leader, and undismayed even by the desperation of their circumstances, charged the mass of the Welshmen with their usual determined valour. It was a gallant sight to see this little body of cavalry advance to the onset, their plumes floating above their helmets, their lances in rest, and projecting six ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... cheered by the meditated treachery of the negotiation and its result, derided the furious Indians, and thanked them for the stratagem of the negotiation, which had given them time to prepare the fort for their reception. Goaded to desperation by these taunts, and by Duquesne, who harangued them to the onset, they often rushed up to the fort, as if they purposed to storm it. Dropping dead under the cool and deliberate aim of the besieged, the remainder of the forlorn hope, raising ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... into which they have brought themselves, it does not seem that those of the South who are in earnest have lost any of their desperation, or gained a better opinion of their foes. Their journals still trumpet the loudest lies and the mass still believe that sooner or later their shattered bark will outride the battle and the storm, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... presumably killed, but I cannot find any account of the dogs having been seen in the act of killing a tiger, though I can easily conceive that a hungry tiger, and an equally hungry pack of wild dogs may have come into collision over a newly killed animal, and that the dogs may then in desperation have ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... in desperation—a desperation half exasperation and half enchantment. If only Matthew would sometimes appear serious—there is something so restful about appearances. Instead of which he always remained ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... Desperation was with him now; he was gone too far to draw back. Trailing his fingers along the matting covering of the wall, he retraced his steps, came to the open door, and reentered the apartment of the dragon. He complimented himself, fearfully, upon ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... early in the morning, perhaps, and then to sit like statues all day lest the lofty and beautiful structure on their heads should tumble into ruins. But how restrain him—this untutored Kickapoo? In her desperation a wild and wonderful scheme occurred to her. He had become savagely fond of raspberry jam. She would offer him a bribe of an unlimited quantity of this delicacy to go into some room and stay there, and once there, she would quietly lock the door. She canvassed in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... In his desperation, just as his heart seemed sinking to the lowest ebb, Leoni's words recurred to him. He had used the gold, while now, as the doctor had told him, he had his sword; and at this thought he drew in his breath through his teeth with a sharp ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... a slow venomous breath; and the talk died on Mary's lips. Beatrice stood up abruptly, in desperation; she did not know what to say; but the movement checked Nicholas, and he glanced at her a moment. Then Mary recovered herself, put her hand sharply on her husband's, and slid out an indifferent sentence. Beatrice saw Ralph's eyes move swiftly and sideways and down again, and a ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... occasional columns for an advertisement or words for a picture. And it is equally certain (it is proved by twenty anecdotes, but no one who knows Shaw needs any anecdotes to prove it) that in those days of desperation he again and again threw up chances and flung back good bargains which did not suit his unique and erratic sense of honour. The fame of having first offered Shaw to the public upon a platform worthy of him belongs, like many other public ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... am a lonely woman; I'm lonely to desperation. I don't belong in New York and I don't belong in France, and I don't like Pittsburgh. I'm lonely! I've always been lonely ever since I left Pittsburgh. There doesn't seem to be any definite place anywhere for me. And I haven't a real ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Denmark Veazie. He was goaded to desperation by wrong and injustice. By Despotism, his name has been recorded on the list of infamy, but future generations will number him ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... on!" cried Shirley. "How steadily they march in! There is discipline in their ranks. I will not say there is courage—hundreds against tens are no proof of that quality—but" (she dropped her voice) "there is suffering and desperation enough amongst them. These ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and the man began to grow restless. He had, of course, no idea whatever of the length of time he had been in the cabin, and he knew that he must be thinking of an immediate escape. In desperation, he tried to get out of bed, but the task was beyond his power. At that a terrible feeling of hopelessness assailed him. His only chance was to reach the valley where he had little fear of capture; but wounded, as he was, that seemed out of the question, and he saw himself caught like a rat ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... your symptoms, Morgan. If I diagnose correctly, they mean nascent 'desperation.' Now, so long as I am in the world, you ought ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... can tell me about this woman?" Burke inquired in desperation before the plaintive outburst. He hoped to distract her from ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... somewhat dazed by the blow on his head, Jack realized that the unprincipled twain in their desperation would stop short of no crime in order ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... the soldiers, being near to their homes and anxious to see their wives and children, are likely to seize the opportunity afforded by a battle and scatter in every direction. "In their advance," observes Tu Mu, "they will lack the valor of desperation, and when they retreat, they ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... escape. She knew what time the night trains left the station, and, abandoning her trunk and everything else that she had with her, she furtively—but ready, if need were, to fight for her liberty with the strength of desperation—slipped down the broad stairs over their thick carpet and pushed open a little glass door. Thank heaven! people came in and went out of that house as if it had been a mill. No one discovered her flight till the next morning, when she was far on her way to Paris in an express ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... 'Abd-el-K[a]dir became the recognized chief of the Arab insurgents. The Dey of Algiers had foreseen danger in the youth, who was forced to fly to Egypt in fear of his life. When he returned, a young man of twenty-four, he found his country in the hands of the French, and his people driven to desperation. His former fame and his father's name were talismans to draw the impetuous tribes towards him; and he soon had so large a following that the French deemed it prudent for the moment to recognize him (1834) as ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... ejaculated, as, under a sense of the utter desperation of the case, he struck his hands together, and then threw them above his head. But it did no good to fret and scold, and blame his son-in-law; the error had been committed, and it was now too late to retrace a step. Six or seven thousand dollars would inevitably be lost; ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... thanks. The vicar hated late hours, and the Kendals felt every song a trespass upon their hosts, but the musicians had their backs to the world, and gave no interval, so that it was eleven o'clock before Mr. Kendal, in desperation, laid his hand on his daughter, and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of savage beasts and reptiles; but they met them with a courageous recklessness born of desperation, and by virtue of the very madness of the chances they took, they came through unscathed and with the minimum ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at home! What's to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in her still—even if he has to ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... after he left Ailsa, and had asked for proofs of his heirship to the marquisate of Toxeter. Delcombe had been able to satisfy him, and he had been gravely friendly, but that was all. At last, in desperation, Ailsa decided to write to Diana. The mail left that morning, and would reach Johannesburg in three days. Diana was full of resource, and she might think of a plan. Ailsa decided to tell her as much as she could without betraying ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... quiet desperation which grows more and more intense through the following scenes.] What should I do? What was it intended for ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... fallen and the stores were shutting up. Soon everything would be closed; and that night he felt that he would perish. And so at last desperation seized him. ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... in a mood of desperation, he took a long shot at a flying grouse and missed it. One cartridge now remained, and it was absolutely necessary to reserve that for something large. Down the valley lay a big wide meadow, and here he believed he might find a moose ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... with a scythe and spectacles that glowed. He turned on will-power to increase the load And slow me down—and I abruptly slowed, Like coming to a sudden railroad station. I changed from hand to hand in desperation. ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... a tradition derived from the Wyandotte towns, after the peace, that but one of the warriors engaged in this battle ever returned to his nation. It is certain that the chief who led on the Wyandottes with so much desperation, fell in the action. Throughout this bloody engagement the coolness and bravery of Proctor were unsurpassed. But his conduct after the battle has always, with those acquainted with it, elicited the warmest commendation. He brought ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... seized their arms, and ran towards the threatened point. Unawed by the overwhelming force advancing against them the sentries took their places at the top of the breach, and defended it with such desperation that they kept their assailants at bay until assistance arrived, when the struggle assumed a more equal character. The citizens defended themselves by the same means that had before proved successful, boiling oil and pitch, stones, flaming hoops, torches, and missiles of all kinds were ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... hunger, rather than be starved ourselves; but I did not consider that this might have brought ten thousand of them down upon us the next day; and though we might have killed a vast number of them, and perhaps have frighted the rest, yet their own desperation, and our small number, would have animated them so that, one time or other, they would have ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... again, breathing hard with restrained rage and desperation; evidently she was at a loss for words to convey her indignant wrath: and at last in sheer inability to express the vehemence of her feelings she fastened on one word and repeated ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... be too hard upon him,") whispered Ursula, in a parenthesis, afraid that this irony should drive the pupil to desperation. ("Hard upon him! he will never find it out,") Phoebe whispered ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... lounged into the dining-room with an artfully simulated air of casually examining it. At the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in the sweetest and freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered. Then, partly with the desperation of a timid man, and partly through the working of a half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with a simple inquiry for her father. Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip, smiled slightly, and preceded him with great formality to the office. Opening the door, without raising her lashes to either ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... himself how he did it, but in a kind of desperation he took aim at the rhinoceros, ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... boy, 'is proof to you of how the meekest may be driven to desperation by the shackles I speak of, and which I pray you never lay ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... over and touched his hand, but made no comment. They had been over that statement of desperation too many times already. But it kept nagging at him—something in the room, something in the room! Something so common that nobody ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... starting, that there is not much more to be done in this part of the country. What with the civil wars, and the bands of soldiers without a leader, and others like ourselves who do not mean to starve, the peasants have been wrought up into a state of desperation. They have little left to lose, but what they have got they are ready to fight to the death for, and, lately, at the first alarm they have sounded the bells and assembled for miles round, and, equipped with scythes and flails, ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... win for itself a way to union; but old Mr. Raincliffe had spoken seriously to them, and altogether forbade their further meeting until Robert had spoken to his father. He went home that very night, and, nerved to a sort of desperation, did speak to his father, ending with the usual declarations that his choice was unalterable. Perhaps it was; but, whether or not, Richard Dryce went the very way to make it so when he laughed that discordant laugh, and, with a taunt ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... was learned that for some time he had been facing financial ruin owing to certain speculations that had in a month's time swept his supposed wealth into complete destruction. With the cunning and desperation of a man who battles for his very life when he saw his money, which was all the life he ever valued, slipping from him, he had put off the evil day to the last moment. Sunday afternoon, however, he had received ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... animate a man who, already once condemned, finds himself subjected to a second trial? The torture scarcely ended begins again, and Hope, though reduced to a shadow, regains her sway over his imagination, which clings to her skirts, as it were, with desperation. The exhausting efforts must be recommenced; it is the last struggle—a struggle which is more desperate in proportion as there is less strength to maintain it. In this case the defendant was not one of those who are easily cast down; he collected all his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... taken home for burial. The desire for flight was upon him, and he said he must carry his dead with him till be himself should die. That night he left Monte Carlo for Rome, bearing with him those dear remains of wife and child; and the good doctor seeing his desperation and full of pity for so vast a woe, went with him. 'Perhaps,' he told me, 'had I not gone, Georges would not himself have reached Rome alive.' They traveled night and day, for the young man would not rest an instant. His design was to have the body of his ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Rosalie Murray was transmuted into Lady Ashby. Most splendidly beautiful she looked in her bridal costume. Upon her return from church, after the ceremony, she came flying into the schoolroom, flushed with excitement, and laughing, half in mirth, and half in reckless desperation, as ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... itself up for a fresh attack Tom, in his desperation, stooped down and picked up the nearest thing to him—to wit, a good-sized fir-cone, which he hurled at the dog with all his might. It was very light, and did not hit its mark, but the young poacher's dog was a bad character, and must have known it. Certainly it had had stones ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... not one of those people—I won't mention names!—whose own emptiness forces them to take an intense interest in the doings of others, and who, the moment they are alone with their thoughts, are bored to desperation, just as there are people who have no talent for making a home home-like, and are only happy when they ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... appearance of the precious documents, we started the baggage also, under the charge of a surroudjee, and remained alone. Another hour passed by, and yet another, and the Bey was still occupied in sleeping off his hunger. Mr. Harrison, in desperation, went to the office, and after some delay, received the passports with a vise, but not, as we ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... other room came a shout and a rush of feet. In desperation Jack stepped back, and with a run fairly dove at the opening. His head and shoulders passed through, then he stuck. Behind him the door flew open. With a desperate wriggle he struggled through, and fell in a heap to the ground just as the negro reached the window and made a wild ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... "You are certainly the shrewd man they describe you as. Now continue to be frank long enough to answer this one question: Did you figure this out as the last card to throw at me, knowing that the very desperation of the case might warm me up and tempt me to tackle it for the sake of the fight ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... OHIO: ...."The position in which my regiment found itself was immediately in front of a battery, which belched forth a stream of canister upon us with terrible rapidity. In addition to this, the enemy, whenever driven from other points, rallied around this battery, and defended it with desperation. It cost a struggle to take it; but we finally succeeded, and the colors of the Sixty-fifth Ohio were the first planted upon the yet smoking guns. Captain Smith, of my regiment, was placed in charge of the captured ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... boys came up, another blow from a stick fell on his head; and this served to rouse him to desperation, for he turned round, with one blow knocked down the fellow who had struck him, and then commenced a furious attack upon his persecutors. For a moment they drew back, and then closed upon him again. Blows from sticks and hands rained upon him, but ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... consideration of his costume. Never before had he murmured at his wardrobe; now everything seemed unworthy of the magnitude of the occasion. Finally, after many doubts and inward struggles, and much bewilderment and desperation, the thing was done. He issued forth in a blaze of splendor, preceded by two servants bearing rare and costly presents. His raiment was a masterpiece of artistic effect. He wore furs from Russia, and cotton from Bombay; his breast sparkled with various orders of nobility; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... help hiding behind the corner of the passage and listening—(she was humiliated to the very depths of her being at having to stoop to such means: but fear mastered her).—She heard a dry chuckle of laughter. Then whispering, so low that she could not make out what was said. But in her desperation Anna thought she heard: her terror breathed into her ears the words she was afraid of hearing: she imagined that they were speaking of the coming masquerades and a charivari. There was no doubt: they would try ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... cried the manager, in desperation. "We open with New York at St. Louis next week for four games. I'll let Matson see what he can do, though I reckon I'll be roasted and laughed at for ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... adjustment of the tariff, on imports alone, perhaps we should be justified in saying one million and a half, or not far short of two millions sterling, import and export duties combined, would go far to remedy the desperation of Spanish financial embarrassments—the perfect solution and clearance of which, however, must be, under the most favourable circumstances, an affair of many years. It is not readily or speedily that the prodigalities of Toreno, or the unscrupulous, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... which roam among the rugged crags, are exceedingly difficult to catch. One of the sheep darted into a cleft. With a quick movement born of desperation Torrence rushed before the opening, but scarcely had he reached the spot before the frightened sheep, in attempting to ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... has any thing to do with my affairs," said the poor lad; and folding his arms on the table, he laid his head upon them, with the sullen dejection of the overburdened lama, when it throws itself down to die in desperation. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... did not seek this discussion! He challenged me... and he shall hear the truth! For all these months the thing that has been driving me to desperation has been the knowledge that my father was the business associate and ally of a master of infamy like ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... further confirmed. They began to yield to despondency, and had the gloomy prospect of certain death before them. Thirst then became intolerable; and in spite of being warned against it by instances of the terrific effects ensuing, some in desperation resorted to salt water. Their companions had soon the grief of learning what they would experience by following their example; in a few hours raging madness followed, and nature ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... half-hour's time we arrived at the station in London, and when Budd was lifted out onto the platform, he showed his still impenitent desperation by actually trying to escape a third time, handcuffed and with his ankles tied as he was, by hopping ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... seek succor at the fort. They chose the latter course, and bore away for the St. John's. A few casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternizing in the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... fixedly at him I said to him, "What would you do if some one told you Sophy were dead?" He uttered a loud cry, got up and struck his hands together, and without saying a single word, he looked at me with eyes of desperation. "Answer me," I continued with the same calmness. Vexed at my composure, he then approached me with eyes blazing with anger; and checking himself in an almost threatening attitude, "What would I do? I know not; but this I do know, I would never set eyes ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... then, urged to desperation by her own cowardice, she raised them and looked in his face to answer. And as she looked, she saw for the first time how changed it was. Its bloom was gone, the lines were set and hard: Ted looked years older than ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... population to arms. Men with wives and families and properties, however inconsiderable in value such properties may be, are unwilling to risk their all, at the tap of the drum, until wrought up to it by desperation. There is a feeling of respect for authority, a regard for that which is believed to be law, a peculiar sense of duty towards the State in most men, which prevents them from assuming a position even of firmness in the assertion of their rights. In a colony there are thousands who bring with ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... servants were all out; for, of course, Arthur, browsing about in his brown dressing-gown in a brown study, would not hear or answer a bell. Thus there was no one to help me in the house, except my brother, whose help must be my ruin. In desperation I thrust two shillings into the horrid thing's hand, and told him to call again in a few days, when I had thought it out. He went off sulking, but more sheepishly than I had expected—perhaps he had been shaken by his fall—and I watched the star of sand splashed on his ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... comprehended the presence of the masses of men she had seen as she left the town, the meeting of the leaders at d'Orgemont's house, and all the other events of the night, wondering how she herself had escaped so many dangers. The attack, prompted by desperation, interested her so keenly that she stood motionless, watching the living pictures as they presented themselves to her sight. Presently the struggle at the foot of the mountain had a deeper interest for her. Seeing the Blues ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... sheer desperation he turned nurse to Squawk and ran errands for its mother, wondering the while how it was that some ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... prisoner who is thinking of escape. She knew what time the night trains left the station, and, abandoning her trunk and everything else that she had with her, she furtively—but ready, if need were, to fight for her liberty with the strength of desperation—slipped down the broad stairs over their thick carpet and pushed open a little glass door. Thank heaven! people came in and went out of that house as if it had been a mill. No one discovered her flight till the next morning, when she was far on her way to Paris in an ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... when the bulls came rushing by us but again stopped, and others joining them, the whole began to fight with the greatest desperation. The only chance we had of getting out of our disagreeable position was to kill the bulls and make our way through them. We fired and loaded as fast as we could, and seven lay stretched ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... This time they are not hung quite perpendicularly, are shorter, and some lean, a little, which affords rest; others have one side higher than the other: to these my already aching palms cling with desperation. So have I seen insects adhere, through sheer force of fear, to a shaken stem, or a perilous branch ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... party, and it was snowing hard. The girls had returned wet and cold from school and decided upon spending the rest of the day indoors. Janet, as usual, had found a book to read, but Phyllis, after playing with Galahad and Boru, had insisted upon interrupting, until in sheer desperation she had given it up and they ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... than had ever before been achieved in this almost perpetual war for independence. The troops, perfectly enthusiastic, replied with a shout that they were ready to live or die with their chieftain, and eagerly demanded to be led upon the foe. Whether from hope or from desperation they were confident and cheerful. Some doubt was felt as to the Walloons, who had so lately transferred themselves from the archduke's army, but their commander, Marquette, made them all lift up their hands, and swear solemnly to live or die that day at the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... understand it.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} That it is possible to draw yet other lessons from the works above mentioned,—I am much more ready to prove than to dispute. That one may be driven by a Wagnerian ballet to desperation—and to virtue! (once again the case in "Tannhauser"). That not going to bed at the right time may be followed by the worst consequences (once again the case of "Lohengrin").—That one can never be too sure of the spouse one actually marries (for the ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... down behind him, and the chance of coming off honourably without killing or being killed, (the hope of which issue has cheered the sinking heart of many a duellist,) seemed now altogether to be removed. Yet the very desperation of his situation gave him, on an instant's reflection, both firmness and courage, and presented to him one sole alternative, conquest, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... liked me, I would think, 'He doesn't like me! He hates, he despises me. He does, he does, he does!' And I would go on that way, with my teeth shut, and my breath held, I don't know how long." Bartley broke out into a broad laugh at this image of desperation, but she added, tenderly, "I hope I never made you ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... not light the gas, but took off in the dark her "good" hat and her "best" gloves and her long black cloth coat of an ugly "store-bought" cut, which was her best and worst. Then, in an abandon of grief which bespoke real desperation in a careful girl like Mary Alice, she threw herself on her bed—without taking off her "good" dress—and buried her head in a ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... to wrestle with my lot? Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven, Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away? And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... should overlook the possibility that his very successor may undermine the whole superstructure which he has been rearing, and become in every respect as great a monster as the wretch who before drove the colonists to desperation and rebellion. Experience is the beacon of past times set up for the guidance of future; and those who shape their course by it, shall avoid striking on the rocks to which it forbids approach. Woe to the pilot who disregards this friendly admonition, and runs on incredulous of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... remained motionless until roused by a short roar of agony. They then plunged into the jungle with their drawn weapons, where they speedily found Sadhu Sing holding in his arms the lifeless corpse of his bride, where a little farther lay the body of the tiger, slain by such a blow over the neck as desperation itself could alone have discharged.—The brideless bridegroom would permit none to interfere with his sorrow. He dug a grave for his Mora, and erected over it the rude tomb they saw, and never afterwards left ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... ultimate emancipation, have given many signs of willingness to employ even it, if needs must be, as a means of effectually achieving their 'independence.' They have baited their hooks with it to fish for European aid—they have threatened it armed, as a last resort of desperation, if conquered by the North. Knowing as well as we that the days of slavery are numbered, they have used it as a pretense for separation, they would just as willingly destroy it to maintain that separation. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... condition; the idea that any one could have believed that such a man as the Cardinal possessed her full confidence; that she should have employed him to deal with a tradesman without the King's knowledge, for a thing which she had refused to accept from the King himself, drove her to desperation. She sent first for the Abbe de Vermond, and then for the Baron de Breteuil. Their hatred and contempt for the Cardinal made them too easily forget that the lowest faults do not prevent the higher orders of the empire from being defended by those to whom they have the honour to belong; ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... strongly inclined just then to jump up and rush out of the room, so trying was this mad conversation to my nerves; but I thought of his daughter Demetria's white, pathetic face, and restrained the impulse. Then in sheer desperation I began to talk madly as himself. I thought I would make him sick of warlike subjects. Everywhere, I cried, we had defeated, slaughtered, scattered to the four winds of heaven, the infamous Colorados. From the sea to the Brazilian frontier we have been victorious. With sword, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... looked around in desperation. "What can we do now? He won't come close enough for us to even ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... "struck" too late. I reeled in my line, and after a few minutes began once more to cast. Now, however, try as I might, I could not get the line out to the distance required; it would not fall straight and true. In desperation I endeavoured to overcome the difficulty by sheer strength. I swung my arms aloft; my old hickory rod creaked and groaned with the increasing strain, then snapped immediately the tension was released with the return of the line; and, a second afterwards, the grilse took ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... last expression, which had the angry snap of an enraged woman. Some high natures might have answered back her scorn; a lower one might have complained; and still another would have left her in the woods. Barton said nothing, but, with a cold, stony face, walked on by her side. If, in his desperation, he wanted this killing thrust, which must ever rankle and never heal, to enable him to overcome and subdue his great passion, he had got it. That little hand, that emphasized her words with a gesture of superb disdain, would never have to repeat the blow. It raised about ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... turned to wring it dry with her red and blistered hands, a look that was perilously near disgust was on her face—for though she had done her duty heroically and meant to do it until the end, there were brief moments when it sickened her to desperation. She was the kind of woman whose hands perform the more thoroughly because the heart ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the Tiber, and end a life which was worse than useless. "No, no," said his friend, "don't do that. If your affairs are so desperate, retire into a convent, become a Capuchin." "Ah, non!" was the indignant answer; "I am desperate; but I have not yet arrived at such a pitch of desperation." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... In desperation (and from the curious way the base of upper petals are soldered at basal edges) I fancied the real form of upper sepal, upper petal and lower sepal might be as represented by red lines, and that there had ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... muttered Rachel, lashed up to desperation; "please not out here, before the servants ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nightfall, limiting myself to holding the ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hand should be immediately put to death, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the pair left behind to await a realization of all that the loss meant to them. One running swiftly as a fine young creature can run when spurred by desperation, and the other, lamely but doggedly, as an old determined man, rushed down the rough side of the slope, leaped into the roadway and ran irrationally after the fugitive mounted upon a camel, fleeter than ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... o'ercome my hesitation, And gone within the cavern's vault profound, When I heard wails of hopeless lamentation, Despairing shrieks that shook the walls around, Curses, and blasphemy, and desperation, Dark crimes avowed that would even hell astound, Which heaven, I think, in order not to hear, Had hid within ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... his seat with the strength of desperation. He must! The money must go to Republic that night—to Barbara! Barbara! Barbara! The horse's feet seemed to have beaten out the word for ages. For ages he had been riding—riding—riding towards some point out there ahead in ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... When in desperation we finally made up our minds, we began picking our dubious way up among a mass of rocks that threatened to become a stone avalanche at any moment. None of us liked it, but none of us knew how little the others liked it till that evening. In the expansion of ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... CAROLINE did make the splice late that night, we could neither test nor speak. Reuter was at Norderney, and I had to do the best I could, which was not much, and went to bed early; I thought I should never sleep again, but in sheer desperation got up in the middle of the night and gulped a lot of raw whiskey and slept at last. But not long. A Mr. F- washed my face and hands and dressed me: and we hauled the cable out of the sea, and got it joined to the telegraph station, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mysterious certainties of thought. The mind lives in a universe of type. There is no other art in which so desperate adventures are made. Indeed, the normal mental state of the abundant writer is a marvellous phenomenon. The literary faculty is born of the marriage of chronic desperation with chronic trust. This may account in part for that peculiar condition of mind which is both engendered and required by abundant writing. A bold abandon, a desperate guidance, a thoughtless ratiocination, a mechanical swaying of rhetoric, are the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... publication of this "Advice." John Child, a Baptist minister, one of Bunyan's friends, to escape persecution, conformed, and became terrified with awful compunction of conscience. His cries were fearful: "I shall go to hell"; "I am broken in judgment"; "I am as it were in a flame." In a fit of desperation he destroyed himself ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the head and back. It is a thick heavy covering, and in the first onset the tiger tore the blanket from the man's body, which was probably the means of saving his life. The man turned round, terribly scared, as may be imagined. In desperation he struck at the tiger with his sickle, and according to his own account, he succeeded in putting out one of its eyes. He said it was a young tiger, and his bleeding wounds, and the persistency with which he stuck ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... mode of thought was another American visiting London for the first time. Goaded to desperation by the incessant necessity for tips, he finally entered the washroom of his hotel, only to be faced with a large sign which read: "Please tip the basin after using." "I'm hanged if I will!" said the Yankee, turning on his heel, "I'll ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... victory, it seems more like a piece of good fortune than the result of their fighting. When they see a conflict coming, they shrink from it and look for some way to evade it. They are filled with fear of the outcome. Sometimes they fight in desperation and win; and when they see that they have won, they are surprized. They were almost sure that they would lose the battle; they were almost certain of defeat, but in some way they won. That victory, however, does not give them much ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... of this industrial warfare are replete with lesser battles where thuggery joined hands with desperation in the struggle for wages. Evidence is not wanting that local leaders have frequently incited their men to commit acts of violence in order to impress the public with their earnestness. It is not an inviting picture, this matching of the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... knew the utter desperation of Hal Dozier. For the man had fired while Andrew's back was turned. The bullet had followed the warning cry as swiftly as the strike of a snake follows its rattle. Luck and his sudden leap forward had unbalanced the nice aim of Dozier, and perhaps his mental agitation had contributed ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... my bay oss Desperation in the park. There was me, Lord George Ringwood (Lord Cinqbar's son), Lord Ballybunnion, Honorable Capting Trap, & sevral hother young swells. Sir John's carridge there in coarse. Miss Hemly lets fall ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... town in New England, the body of a beautiful girl was drawn from the river in which she had drowned herself,—a young girl only fifteen, who came to the city, far from home and parents, and fell a victim to the temptation which brought her to shame and desperation. Many thus fall every year who are never counted. They fall into the ranks of those whom the world abandons ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... indifference. Then when, for a moment, he imagined himself free from observation, his expression abruptly changed. His hands clenched tense between his buckskin knees, his eyes glanced here and there restlessly, and an indefinable shadow of something which Virginia felt herself obtuse in labelling desperation, and yet to which she discovered it impossible to fit a name, descended on his features, darkening them. Twice he glanced away to the south. Twice he ran his eye over the vociferating ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the latter nodded for him to go ahead. In another minute then, a match, the closeness and desperation of which delighted the savages beyond measure, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... like your symptoms, Morgan. If I diagnose correctly, they mean nascent 'desperation.' Now, so long as I am in the world, you ought ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... For the Palestinian Jews, on the other hand, the breach between Judaism and the rest of the world was deepened. By this destruction of its symbol their national religious exclusiveness was heightened to desperation. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... windows, which overlooked a paved court, he threw himself into a chair, and strained his gaze in search of the wrecked pleasure-craft, to which one other figure clung with the might of desperation. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... others). This comes of their desperation. We First ruin them out and out, d'ye see; Which tempts them to steal, as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of being bored to this point of desperation, and his mother and elder sister saved themselves from any danger of this kind by voluntarily living the lives of recluses. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... had taken. Early in February a small party of them hovered about the fortified house of Joseph Bradley at Haverhill, till, seeing the gate open and nobody on the watch, they rushed in. The woman of the house was boiling soap, and in her desperation she snatched up the kettle and threw the contents over them with such effect that one of them, it is said, was scalded to death. The man who should have been on the watch was killed, and several persons were captured, including the woman. It was the second time that she ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... to hear or care. In our desperation we slapped him and dragged him along between us. Finally his legs moved a little, and he began ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... described the same mistake on the part of some of his bees. At the base of this cell, was an extraordinary quantity of the peculiar jelly or paste, which is fed to the young that are to be transformed into queens. The poor bees in their desperation, appear to have dosed the unfortunate drone to death: as though they expected by such liberal feeding, to produce some hopeful change in ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... forward from her posture of anxiety and terror, grasps a powder horn from over the mantel piece, jerks out the stopple with her teeth, and holding it over the fire, cries, with desperation: ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... damped the powder. Before Ignacio could draw his other pistol, the Carlist grappled him fiercely, and a terrible struggle commenced. Their feet soon slipped upon the wet rock, and they fell, still grasping each other's throats, foaming with rage, and hate, and desperation. The fire, now nearly out, afforded little light for the contest; but as they rolled over the smouldering embers, clouds of sparks arose, their clothes and hair were burned, and their faces scorched by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... be mentioned for the liberty of multitudes of Britons, now languishing in the prisons of Spain, or obliged by hardships and desperation to assist the enemies of their country? What have the Spaniards suffered that can be opposed to the detriment which the commerce of this nation feels from the detention of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... certain road may be the shortest way for him, but if he knows that it abounds in natural obstacles, or that the enemy has laid an ambush on it, he will not follow that road. A hostile force may be open to attack, but if he knows that it is hard-pressed and likely to fight with desperation, he will refrain from ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... the sight of fine forest trees, however, and detested Brighthelmstone Downs, "because it was a country so truly desolate," he said, "that if one had a mind to hang one's self for desperation at being obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to fasten the rope." Walking in a wood when it rained was, I think, the only rural image he pleased his fancy with; "for," says he, "after ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... gold, and establishes his empire, which lasts exactly three days. At his final overthrow the crystal wall of Heaven rolls back, disclosing a gap into the abyss; the rebels, tortured with plagues and thunder, fling themselves in desperation over the verge. They fall for nine days, through Chaos. Chaos is the realm of a king of the same name, who reigns over it with his consort Night. It is of immeasurable extent, quite dark, and turbulent with the raw material of ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... in the hands of fate is in some sort conducive to courage. Doubtless many an act of valor which has won the world's applause was precipitated in a degree by desperation and the lack of an alternative. The appearance of stolidity with which the cluster of witnesses—those whose testimony was yet to be given as well as those who had told the little they knew—noted the uncontrolled agitation, the wild eyes, the hysteric sobs, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of their marriage, in desperation, the Reverend Raphael advertised his ability and readiness to 'prepare young men for college.' He obtained but one pupil one Alfred Whyte, the son of a retired brewer. You perceive that he had the same ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... monstrous; still more monstrous, the coldness, egoism, and cruelty that had required and thus requited them. The pen which he had taken shook in his hand. He was amazed to find his resignation fled, but it was gone beyond his recall. In a few white-hot words, he bade adieu, dubbing desperation by the name of love, and calling his wrath forgiveness; then he cast but one look of leave-taking on the place that had been his for so long and was now to be his no longer; and hurried forth - love's prisoner - ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bade Davis do, and to think what might happen because of it. I, Roscoe Paine, no longer even a country banker, was at the helm of "Big Jim" Colton's bark in the maelstrom of the stock market. It would have been funny if it had not been so desperate. And desperate it was, sheer reckless desperation and nothing else. I must have been crazier than ever, more wildly insane than I had been for the past month, to even think of such a thing. It was not too late ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... like Runkle, if he keeps to his present promise, should go as high in the Navy as it is possible for an enlisted man to go," declared the Admiral. "But, Captain, the organization and desperation of our country's enemies worry me. It is plain that some very desperate scheme is afoot for making trouble between England and our country. That would drag us in against all of the Entente Allies if the success of the plot should ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... In extremes of desperation one clutches at the semblance of a straw. A last, wild hope had flashed to Kano's mind. "Come nearer, Tatsu San," he whispered, forcing his face into the distortion of a smile. "Lean nearer. The real motive of my summons has not ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... tolerably expert in both. Swords were chosen. We were placed on the ground, and the conflict began. My antagonist was evidently a master of his art; but there is no weapon whose use depends so much upon the mind of the moment as the sword. He was evidently resolved to kill or be killed; and the desperation with which he rushed on me exposed him to my very inferior skill. At the third pass I ran him through the sword arm. He staggered back with the twinge; but at the instant when he was about to bound on me, and perhaps take his revenge, a scream stopped us all; a female, wrapped in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... be so doubtful? You said you'd make me love you, and you've done it. Will you believe me now?" And, with a sort of desperation, she threw herself into his arms, clinging there in eloquent silence while he held her close; feeling, with a thrill of tender triumph, that this was no longer little Rose, but a loving woman, ready to ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... ground forward, when, from the after part of the vessel, a determined band, led by the captain, pressed us hard. Twice we were driven back almost to our own ship, many of our men losing the number of their mess, but, finally, determined courage got the better of desperation. Inch by inch we drove the pirates aft—the chief of them, to do him justice, keeping always in the front rank, and I believe he killed, with his own hand, more of our people than did all his crew together, though he himself did not receive a scratch. ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... only," continued Honora, in desperation, "it was only to leave Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Kame there to spend the night. They all said we had plenty of time to go and get back to Quicksands by six o'clock. But coming back the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... impatiently, and rose, glancing at the clock. It was nearly nine. A feeling of desperation ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... devotion worthy of a better object, rallying round him, kept them at bay. At last the voice which had been heard so loud was silent, and though fire-arms flashed on each side, his figure was not to be seen. Yet the pirates did not give way, they even seemed to fight with more desperation than before, as if to make amends for his absence, or to revenge his loss. Nothing, however, could withstand the determined courage of the English; though, had not the pirates incautiously lost the post which Zappa had so ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... and I was anxious. Why haven't you written a line to us? You could do that without trouble, surely. Don't you ever think of us at all any more? (He waits for an answer, but Eileen remains silent with her eyes closed. Carmody starts to walk up and down, talking with an air of desperation.) You're not asking a bit of news from home. I'm thinkin' the people out here have taken all the thought of us out of your head. We're all well, thank God. I've another good job on the streets from Murphy and one that'll last a long time, praise be! I'm needin' it surely, ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... panel, then another, and I could see through the gaps a medley of tossing weapons and wild faces without. Short shrift for me if they came through, so in the obstinacy of desperation I set to work to pile old furniture and dry goods against the barricade. And as they yelled and hammered outside I screamed back defiance from within, sweating, tugging, and hauling with the strength of ten men, piling up the old Martian lumber against the opening till, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... had remained at Westminster nearly a week after the massacre, attending the public meetings, which, as we have before intimated, followed that event; when he returned to Guilford, and, with feelings bordering on desperation, learned the extent of his misfortunes. But the bitterness of his feelings, as great as it was, at being stripped of all his property through such a series of wrongs, soon became wholly merged in anxiety and grief for his sick and sorrow-stricken parent, and in the exasperating thought that her ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... fury of the yelling crowd were irresistible. Seizing the weapons of their dead and wounded assailants, they fought with the blind energy of desperation. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... more successful couplet brought a still more tempestuous response, and the invocation of the baggage-carrier was unheard and unheeded. Driven to desperation, and forgetful in the emergency of every sense of propriety, Cuff, in ludicrous undress as he was, started from his place, rushed upon the stage, and, laying his hand upon the performer's shoulder, called out excitedly: "Massa Rice, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... over. "Well, you ARE sick!" he exclaimed presently. "All I can say is that if you're working out a plan for cold poison, or for any other act of desperation, you had better give it right up. You can't get a dose of the commonest kind of cold poison for nothing, you know. Look here, Searle"—and the worthy man made what struck me as a very decent appeal. "If you'll consent to return home with me by the steamer ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... Fear gave him the necessary agility to climb over several low walls, and afterwards he blundered into the overgrown cloisters of the ruined Franciscan convent in one of the by-streets. He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes with the recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for his scratched body and his torn clothing. He lay hidden there all day, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth with all the intensity of thirst engendered by heat and fear. Three times different bands of men invaded the place with shouts and imprecations, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... young man who was slain by Cole-be was to be revenged, and a body of the southern or Tag-a-ry natives gave battle to those of Sydney for that purpose several days after. The contest was carried on with much desperation on both sides; three natives were killed, and several others wounded, among whom was Bennillong, who, having perfectly recovered of his late dangerous wound, appeared and fought on this occasion as the friend ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... called her into the room after recovering outwardly from her hour of desperation, she saw that the woman was already aware of the blow that had fallen upon the household. What they said to each other need not be recorded here, but there was more in the conversation than the mere words uttered, and it was one of several talks ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... went by Dan became more hungry, and with this empty feeling came one of desperation. He must escape, be ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... Greek, compared with—Goethe, let us say? Not for a moment. It was in the desperation of his attempt to be so, that he seized upon Greek tragedy and made it dance to Christian cymbals! This is, let it be clearly understood, the hidden secret of his mania for Dionysus—Dionysus gave him ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... not a different question. The real suit," exclaimed the engineer, unable to control his anger, "will be the one that I will bring against that rabble who no doubt propose to themselves to tire me out and drive me to desperation—so that I may abandon every thing and let them continue in possession of what they have stolen. We shall see if there are lawyers and judges who will uphold the infamous conduct of those village ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... gravely. "I gave no thought to her until I came home and saw her. And it was not for love of her that I should have married her, Nell, but in sheer desperation. You see, it did not matter to me whom I married if I could not ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... had Madame des Ursins shown more activity than during the six months which intervened between the return of the Court to Madrid and the battle of Almanza. Her position was as delicate as it was perilous. It was necessary to stigmatise flagrant defections, but without driving anyone altogether to desperation. She profited by the confidence she had won to bring about happily an important reform. Spain, composed of divers kingdoms successively annexed, had not yet attained unity. More than ever, after the experiences of 1706, was seen the necessity of a centralisation ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... cold, and exhausted, Tara of Helium clung to the tree in growing desperation, for once she had dozed and almost fallen. Hope was low in her brave little heart. How much more could she endure? She asked herself the question and then, with a brave shake of her head, she squared her shoulders. "I ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... exemplary man. According to the metaphysics of hypocrisy it is held that he is doing a work of public utility. And this man who has ruined hundreds, thousands of men, who curse him and are driven to desperation by his action, goes to mass, a smile of shining benevolence on his smooth face, in perfect faith in good and in God, listens to the Gospel, caresses his children, preaches moral principles to them, and is ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... for their guineas. After trying two pastrycooks in vain, they became so hungry, perhaps from the smell of the cake in the shops, as Cyril suggested, that they formed a plan of campaign in whispers and carried it out in desperation. They marched into a third pastrycook's - Beale his name was - and before the people behind the counter could interfere each child had seized three new penny buns, clapped the three together between its dirty hands, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... of fear, but fear crystallising more and more into desperation. Anything was better than further suspense. Night came again. Again the dinner bell sounded. Choosing my opportunity I strolled across the quadrangle and secreted myself in one of the offices. Through a chink I watched the sentries. For half an hour they remained stolid and obstructive. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... the party early on the morrow. The order reached him late in the evening, and before breakfast-time on the following day he was directed to start with his party for town, thence by rail to his distant post. That night, in desperation, he made his plan. Twice before he had strolled down to the post and with yearning eyes had studied every feature of the colonel's house. He dared ask no questions of servants or of the men in garrison, but he learned ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... these produce the first two in a seemingly hopeless way; poverty appears to be incurable above the rest. It is poverty that prevents fortifying the will by increasing physical stamina and moral courage, it is poverty that drives a man; to drink or desperation, and it is poverty that prescribes the unfavorable surroundings that do so much to keep a man down. Poverty is a danger flag that indicates the probability of deeper degradation and calls for the individual or group that is better off ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... we were liberally supplied with means of defence. Lupite was faithful, and I could rely on my other fighting neches. So Marcel and Cy set out, and—well, there's nothing more to tell," she said wearily. "They've both disappeared, vanished. And they should have been back more than a year ago. In desperation I sent the message by Lupite. He's not returned either, and, one by one, all our own Indians have deserted me. Oh," she went on passionately, "it's no accident that's happened. Marcel has been killed, murdered by ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... in from the sea like a visible reverie, and blurred the whole valley with its whiteness. I find that particularly good to look at from the trolley-car which visits and revisits the river before finally leaving it, with a sort of desperation, and hiding its passion with a sudden plunge into ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... amiable Prefect found. Having himself plenty of scruples, plenty of humanity, and a horror of civil war, he found a colleague with none of these difficult to manage. Nothing, for instance, was further from the Prefect's wish than to spy upon his Royalist neighbours and to drive them to desperation. The very word Chouan represented to General Ratoneau a wild beast to be ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... developed muscular system, a large heart and lungs, are accessory conditions. We do not associate corpulence or surplus of vitality with a long, slender neck. The character of cerebral manifestations is represented by the baser faculties of mind, such as Combativeness, Destructiveness, Desperation, Turbulence, Hatred, and Revenge. If unrestrained, these culminate in violent and criminal acts; if regulated, they are employed in personal defense. When unduly excited, they lead to dissipation, obscenity, swearing, rowdyism, and licentiousness; when perverted, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... men among the slain to wonder whence the swift smiters had come and whither they were gone. He himself had wounds not healed, and he told how, day by day, the mad bravery of the Germans, and the fury of his Black Forest men-at-arms, had risen again and again to very desperation, to sink before evening in a new defeat; until, at last, as the Seljuk swords still killed and killed, a terror had fallen upon the host in the passes, and men had thrown away their armour and fled like rats from a burning granary, so that their leaders could not hold them. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... it!" exclaimed he, excitedly, the fever of joy in his eyes. "He killed her when he found that she had been to you. Perhaps, goaded to desperation, she confessed to him. Imagine the devilish delight he took in sniffing out her life after that! We have him now! Dorothy, you know as well as I that he and he alone had an object in killing her. You have only to tell the story of her visit ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... unpleasantly crammed; and Mrs. Tynn, who was a staid, old-fashioned housekeeper, accustomed to nothing beyond the regular, quiet household maintained by the late Mr. Verner, was driven to the verge of desperation. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... striking with such headlong impetus that I went backward as if shot, crashing against the table, then to the floor, dropping my weapon as I fell. There was no noise, no sound, while for an instant, with strength of sheer desperation, I held back the snapping jaws that breathed hot fire into my very face. With a bound backward of its great body the beast jerked free from my grip, and the next instant had sunk its dripping fangs, deep and hard, into the flesh of my shoulder. As the ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Tromp fought with courage and desperation, endeavouring while retreating to protect the merchantmen. Already in the distance we could see the frigates playing havoc among the traders, which were thrown into the wildest confusion, numbers running against each other, some hauling down their ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... of their classmates. During the rest of the year they seconded Mary's efforts warmly, and the whole house got interested and plied Mary with questions about the work of the society, until, in sheer desperation, she admitted that she knew very little about it, and set herself to get some definite information. The head of the committee, pleased with Mary's sudden enthusiasm, sent her to one of the faculty trustees, and for a few days Mary, who was entirely a creature ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... has caught up the speaker with a decisive rally. Her natural strength is returning, prompted by something akin to desperation. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... entered the forest at a run, no longer looking at or listening to anything. She only paused in her course when her breath failed her; but she did not halt in her advance. She went straight before her in desperation. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... solemnity. "Div ye think, Cosmo, whaur heid or hert or fit or han' cud du onything to waur aff want or tribble frae you or the laird,'at Grizzie or mysel' wad be wantin' that day? I beg o' yer grace ye winna lay to oor chairge what we war driven til. As Grizzie says, we war jist at ane mair wi' desperation." ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... woman should look at her, and then he would have her all to himself." It was with some purpose of this kind, Mrs. Dyson suggested, that Peace stole a photograph of herself out of a locket, intending to make some improper use of it. At last, in desperation, the Dysons moved to Banner Cross. From the day of their arrival there until the murder, Mrs. Dyson never saw Peace. She denied altogether having been in his company the night before the murder. The letters were "bare ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... spend another night in the bed led her to active measures of reform. With disgustful desperation, she emptied the room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried from one needed reform to another. She drew others into ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... was going to the Brazils to give the Portuguese physic (of which they are fond to desperation) with the Danish consul. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... first time that it was impossible to consider putting into any port of the Republic of Mexico, since to do so would cause international complications and compel the revocation of the captain's license. In desperation the Hummel interests offered the captain five thousand dollars in cash to disregard his instructions and put into Tampico, but the worthy sea-dog was adamant. It was probably worth five thousand dollars to him to see three gentry of this pattern ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... nearer still. "Naturally it will be supposed by all who are watching us that I am goading you to desperation. Act, then, your part. Up, and attempt to strike me. Then when I return the blow—and I shall strike heavily that no make-believe may be suspected—collapse on your oar pretending to swoon. Leave the rest to me. Now," he added sharply, and on the word rose with a final laugh of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... perhaps go and throw herself into the Seine. In New York, such suicides are not common; but there is a moral suicide, which is common. Thousands on thousands of poor girls have thrown themselves into this stream, in the last agony of desperation; sinking down in the dark current of sin, to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... on the subject of his beard render such a supposition far from probable. In any case, it is a difficult subject to discuss. The unhappy husband underwent the cruellest sufferings. In order to forget them, he hunted with desperation, exhausting horses, hounds, and huntsmen. But when he returned home, foundered and overtired, the mere sight of Mademoiselle de Pontalcin was enough to revive his energies and his torments. Finally, unable to endure the situation any longer, he applied ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... British and this, together with the beheading of the king (an impious act in the eyes of Negroes), induced Toussaint to join the Spaniards. In 1793 British troops were landed and the French commissioners in desperation declared the slaves emancipated. This at once won back Toussaint from the Spaniards. He became supreme in the north, while Rigaud, leader of the mulattoes, held the south and the west. By 1798 the British, having lost most of their forces by yellow fever, surrendered ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... rather widely apart they managed to fill it; they always looked alike. To-night they so exactly resembled peas in a pod that one had a sense of ache and almost fatigue in watching them. This fatigue and irritation rose to desperation when they spoke. The Bells were poor, and their dresses bore decided signs of stint and poverty. They wore white muslin jackets, and pale green skirts of a shining substance known as mohair. Their mother fondly imagined that the shine and glitter of this fabric could not be ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... same pretty development of the shoulder through that troublesome scarf—the same hasty confusion in drawing it on again, and referring to the watch to see what time it is—displays the mind ever intent on the great object of their career. But they seldom marry (unless, in desperation, their cousins), for they despise the rank which they affect to have quitted—and no man of sense ever loved a Tiptoe. So they continue at home until the house is broken up; and then they retire in a galaxy to some provincial ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... leant back in his chair. Both the matter and the manner of his narration had, as time went on, impressed me favourably. He was an old duffer and pedant, but behind these things he was a country-bred man and gentleman, and had showed courage and a sporting instinct in the hour of desperation. He had told his story with many quaint formalities of diction, but also with ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... have always had the most implicit faith in his honesty, and would have unhesitatingly confided my fortune to his keeping. Almost on my knees have I besought and implored him to confess that in a moment of desperation he had taken the money, promising him pardon and forgetfulness; but I could not move him. I have loved him; and even now, in spite of the trouble and humiliation that he is bringing upon me, I cannot bring myself ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... and although she was secretly blaming her husband for having fallen into such drear despair, and denying that he had any excuse for his last rash act, she was inveterate in her abuse of all who could by any possibility be supposed to have driven him to such desperation. The masters—Mr. Thornton in particular, whose mill had been attacked by Boucher, and who, after the warrant had been issued for his apprehension on the charge of rioting, had caused it to be withdrawn,—the Union, of which Higgins ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in Ruhleben camp was terrible. It was every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. If one, in desperation, approached the authorities for a word of suggestion to improve this or that, officialdom merely shrugged its shoulders and candidly admitted impotence to recommend a remedy. So we had to depend essentially upon our own exertions ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... there, another search for a home, another set of explanations, pretences, fears, lies,—things of which he was so weary. But there was something else, something worse than any of these things, that made Fritzing mop his forehead with so extreme a desperation: Annalise had demanded the money due to her, and Fritzing ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... and, riding along the wheeling ranks, marshalled them in order, arose the acclamation of female voices; and the warriors, who looked back at the sound, saw that their women—their wives and daughters, their mothers and their beloved (released from their seclusion, by a policy which bespoke the desperation of the cause)—were gazing at them, with outstretched arms, from the battlements and towers. The Moors knew that they were now to fight for their hearths and altars in the presence of those who, if they failed, became slaves ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the very point of the war that ought to make any neutral take sides. If the Belgians had not received bread from the outside world, then Germany would either have had to spare enough to keep them from starving or faced the desperation of a people who would fight for food with such weapons as they had. This must have brought a holocaust of reprisals that would have made the orgy of Louvain comparatively insignificant. However much the Germans hampered the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... cold, and his illness had been so sharp that Elizabeth in desperation had summoned his sister; but even then David had absolutely refused any further medical advice, and had also resisted all his friends' entreaties that he would be moved to the vicarage or the Wood House to be properly nursed. "His old diggings were good ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lame horse, of his effort to hire another team, and finally how in desperation he had engaged Ves Young as a last resort. The captain's face was serious but there was the twinkle under his heavy brows. He ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... half standing in their birch canoe, paddling with the desperation of men facing doom, one with his sound paddle, the other with his broken one, were the Indians that Manikawan had ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... In a sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath the chandelier, and armed with a handful of matches proceeded to the unheard-of extravagance of lighting it, not here and there, but throughout as high as she could reach, standing perilously on ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the stopper with a reckless desperation, saturated his handkerchief, and worked at his breast as if he were driving ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dey of Algiers had foreseen danger in the youth, who was forced to fly to Egypt in fear of his life. When he returned, a young man of twenty-four, he found his country in the hands of the French, and his people driven to desperation. His former fame and his father's name were talismans to draw the impetuous tribes towards him; and he soon had so large a following that the French deemed it prudent for the moment to recognize him (1834) as Em[i]r of Maskara, his native ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... would pass here with their teams and horses, the Indians lay in ambush and, pouring in a destructive fire, rushed furiously to a close engagement. The English ranks were broken, and the scattered troops were everywhere attacked. Seeking the cover of trees, the English fought with desperation. The combat now became a trial of skill in sharp-shooting, on the issue of which life or death was suspended. The overwhelming superiority of the Indians, as to numbers, left little room for hope on the part of the English. Every instant they were shot down behind their ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... in wonder, and almost in affright as he clutched at his blazing head in the very desperation of his feelings, and she could not account for the difference in his demeanor. Mike was usually such a merry good companion. Perhaps it was herself that scattered her sadness and dullness all about her; or was Mike sick? She ventured ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
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