"Despair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little bit about it? Yet, mark you, only "a little bit." You can never tell another one what it means to see Him. When once the sight has come, every word you utter about it, or Him, seems so lame and weak that you despair of ever being able to let out at your lips what has gotten into you. But let me try, even if lamely, in the eager yearning that it may help you know if, thus far, you have missed seeing Him, and maybe—so much better—help you to see Him. For until you have—well, nothing, absolutely ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... himself, if he lived by your side, as I have lived. You smile at that? Well—you are too young to know yourself, but I am not—I know—I know—I thought I knew too well, and must pay dear for knowing how one might love you and live. But it is not too well, now. It is life, not death. It is hope, not despair—it is all that life and joy can mean, in ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... sick and feverish. I was more than disgusted with myself. I was in despair. If she had hated me before—and she had said she did—what must she do now? It seemed to me that I had sunk so far beneath her that it would take years to get back. It didn't seem worth while making any plea for myself. You see, I was young and had serious streaks ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... The News of it immediately alarm'd the Court, and all around; and the sad Effects of it soon after gave all Europe the like Alarm. France only, who had not disdain'd to seek it sooner by ungenerous Means, receiv'd new Hope, from what gave others Motives for Despair. He flatter'd himself, that that long liv'd Obstacle to his Ambition thus remov'd, his Successor would never fall into those Measures, which he had wisely concerted for the Liberties of Europe; but he, as well as others of his Adherents, was gloriously deceiv'd; ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... has felt indisposed, but is better, thanks to a draught "composed of laudanum, nitre and other savoury drugs." When their letters do not arrive promptly they are in despair. "Stage after stage without a line!" complains Theodosia the mother, in one feverishly incoherent note. And Theodosia the daughter, even at nine years old, had her part in ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... hardly followed her pointing finger. Her friends—the comrades of her youth, the Inseparables with their secret oath—one and all held themselves aloof, struck by the perfidy they were only just beginning to take in. Smitten with despair, for these girls were her life, she gave one wild leap and sank on her ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... "Well, all right—don't despair. Other people have been obliged to begin with less. I have a small idea that may develop into something for us both, all in good time. Keep your money close and add to it. I'll make it breed. I've been experimenting (to pass away the time), on a little preparation ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... bliss I now plunged into the abyss of despair. I had let her go without a word. I did not even know her name. I had caught her to myself from the ocean only to suffer her to drown herself among the half-million inhabitants of Bombay. What must she think of me? I asked the wharfinger if he knew her, but he had never seen her before. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... in despair toward the station. It was then she saw the boxed lion on the platform. She returned to ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... burst upon his ears that roused him, and sent all the blood back to his heart. It was his own name, called out in a voice of anguish and almost of despair ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... He surprised him still more by indicating some intention to retain forcibly at Berlin the young Duke of Wurtemberg, under pretext, 'that Madam his Mother intended to have him taken to Vienna,' for education. To anger this young Duke, and drive his Mother to despair, was not the method for acquiring credit in the Circle of Swabia, and getting the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fallen under the spell of the San Tome mine. But it was another form of enchantment, more suitable to his youth, into whose magic formula there entered hope, vigour, and self-confidence, instead of weary indignation and despair. Left after he was twenty to his own guidance (except for the severe injunction not to return to Costaguana), he had pursued his studies in Belgium and France with the idea of qualifying for a mining engineer. But this ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... I thought my boy would escape, but he hasn't! It's the end!" cried the wretched woman. "What will Mr. Evringham say! To think how I blamed Fanshaw! Zeke'll lose his place and go downhill, and I shall die of shame and despair." Her sobs again shook her from head ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... publication of her renowned journal of fashions, La Gazette Rose. This was a tragic blow both for the Parisians themselves and for all the world beyond them. There would be no more Paris fashions! To what despair would not millions of women be reduced? How would they dress, even supposing that they should contrive to dress at all? The thought was appalling; and as one and another great couturier closed his doors, Paris began to realize that her ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... world that the nature of woman is inconstant. My offence also hath been great; perhaps she is acting so, because she hath no longer any love for me owing to my separation from her. Indeed, that girl of slender waist, afflicted with grief on my account and with despair, will not certainly do anything of the kind, when especially, she is the mother of offspring (by me). However whether this is true or false, I shall ascertain with certitude by going thither. I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and of manliness, let us hear no more of necessity. Once in an age necessity may be the defence of statesmanship forced to confess its own blindness, but it is far more often the plea of tyranny, of ambition, of cowardice, or despair. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... trail had been a "bloody one," Daniel often reflected. He had seen two of his boys fall under the tomahawk, and his brothers too. He had seen Rebecca's grief and terror at bloodshed; her anxiety in the lonely life of the wilderness. He had seen her despair when the very ground in which they had taken root was torn from under their feet. He had known the suffering of winter winds, the desolation of the forest. He had suffered innumerable hardships. All these things he lived ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... did repeated attempts upon the part of our telegrapher succeed in winning a response from the other end of the line. After several days of futile endeavor to raise Pellucidar, we had begun to despair. I was as positive that the other end of that little cable protruded through the surface of the inner world as I am that I sit here today in my study—when about midnight of the fourth day I was awakened by the sound ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... time of despair, it occurred to the fourth mate to send a man to the foremast, hoping, but scarce daring to think it probable, that some friendly sail might be in sight. The man at the fore-top looked around him; it was a moment of intense anxiety; ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... over to Senior Alley. It was deserted. The rest of her classmates were still in the study hall. She found Angela's history book on her bed and started to study, but gave it up in despair. They had covered over half of a thick book that year and there was no way of ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... another, in hatred and despair. The inevitable had arrived. For months she had fronted it in bravado, not concealing from herself that it lay in waiting. For years he had been sure that though the inevitable might happen to others it could not happen to him. There it was! He was conscious of a heavy weight in his stomach, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... rites govern not only the fate of those who depart, but also the happiness of those who stay, for they raise in the very background of life the great image upon which their eyes linger in consolation or despair. ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... upon the poor boy. Lonely as his life had been, he had never known what it was to be absolutely alone. A kind of despair seized him—no violent anger or terror, but a ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... artists in dealing with the same subjects. Herod is throned in one corner of the composition; before him stand a group of men and women, some imploring the tyrant for mercy, some defying him in impotent despair, and some invoking the curse of God upon his head. In the "Adoration of the Magi," again, Giovanni shows originality by the double action he has chosen to develop. On one side the kings are sleeping, while an angel comes to wake them, pointing out the star. On the other side ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... wear it;" and off went the hat at one fell blow, as Dolly threw her crook in one corner, her posy in another, and sat down an image of despair. ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... began the descent, and in a few minutes was on the ground. He had managed to carry his crutch under his arm, and now, panting, but triumphant, he went quickly on. A new courage was rising within him—a courage that often comes with despair and indifference to consequences. No matter what happened, he ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... was only a girl in spite of her little feminine ferocities and her pride and her gameness. She had passed through a terrible experience, had come out of it to apparent safety and had been thrown back into despair. It was natural that sobs should shake her slender body as she leaned against the quartz wall of her prison and buried her ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... the sagging gate. A man was just coming through it, who proved, as they came near, to be John Massey. His good-natured, friendly face was pale under its sunburn and drawn into unfamiliar lines of anger and despair. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... water as yet. The Captain invaded Mr. Kendal the next morning in despair at Maria having recurred to the impossibility of leaving her mother, and wanting him to wait till he could reside in England. This could not be till his son was grown up, and ten years were a serious ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... foul as Bingley-on-the-Sea. The asphalt on the Bingley esplanade is several degrees more depressing than the asphalt on other esplanades. The Swiss waiters at the Hotel Magnificent, where Sam was stopping, are in a class of bungling incompetence by themselves, the envy and despair of all the other Swiss waiters at all the other Hotels Magnificent along the coast. For dreariness of aspect Bingley-on-the-Sea stands alone. The very waves that break on the shingle seem to creep up the beach reluctantly, as if it revolted them to ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... forgotten his ideal? Oh, no! On the contrary, his passion grows stronger every day. This is proved by his frequent allusions to her whom he never names, and by those words of restless yearning and heart-rending despair that cannot be read without exciting a pitiful sympathy. As before long we shall get better acquainted with the lady and hear more of her—she being on the point of leaving the comparative privacy of the Conservatorium for the boards that ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... precipitate retreat from a place, where he had incautiously and innocently raised such a rebellion. On relating this anecdote to us, Lander declared, that, with a good supply of needles in his possession, he would not despair of obtaining every necessary article and accommodation throughout the whole of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... matrimony as an earthly paradise, in which he was to be secure of a response of affection showing itself in a communion of intelligent interests. In proportion to the brilliancy of his ideal anticipation was the fury of despair which came upon him when he found out his mistake. A common man, in a common age, would have vented his vexation upon the individual. Milton, living at a time when controversy turned away from details, and sought to dig down to the roots of every question, instead of urging the hardships of his ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... agitation and distress. Cambyses stood smiling by, highly enjoying the spectacle. Psammenitus alone appeared unmoved. He gazed on the scene silent, motionless, and with a countenance which indicated no active suffering; he seemed to be in a state of stupefaction and despair. Cambyses was disappointed, and his pleasure was marred at finding that his victim did not feel more acutely the sting of the torment with which he was endeavoring ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... stranger. But I have said it, and I would not take it back. I have seen in his eyes,—they were brooding, thoughtful eyes,—I have seen in them at times a look—Oh, I cannot tell you what it seemed like to me. I can only say that it had something like despair in it,—sadness, unhappiness,—and I could not help feeling that I was the cause of it. When I was a tiny girl he never carried me in his arms. My mother always did that. When I was thirteen years old he hired me out as a servant in a farmer's ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... replied, unable to restrain his tears, "alas, I believe that Christine really does love him! ... But it is not only that which drives me to despair; for what I am not certain of, madame, is that the man whom Christine loves is ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... damnation to despair and die, When Life is my true happiness disease? My Soul, my Soul, thy Safety makes me fly The faulty Means that might my Pain appease. Divines and dying men may talk of Hell, But in my ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... Souls. Various reasons have been assigned as the cause of the destruction of his book—some have said, it was religious remorse for having written the novel at all; others, rage at adverse criticism; others, his own despair at not having reached ideal perfection. But it seems probable that its burning was simply a mistake. Looking among his papers, a short time after the conflagration, he cried out, "My God! what have I done! that isn't what I meant to burn!" But whatever the reason, the precious manuscript ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... one who loves another fear to hurt him? And the more he loves him, the more he fears hurting him? Lacking this fear, love is insipid and superficial, of the mind only and not of the will. By states of misfortune states of despair in danger are meant, in battles, for example, duels, shipwreck, falls, fires, threatening or unexpected loss of property, also of office or standing, and similar mishaps. To think about God only then is not to think from God but from self. For then the mind is as it were imprisoned in the body, ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... decried and denounced him as an imbecile. What treachery can be worse than the attempt to destroy the confidence of the soldiers in their leader, when their lives depend upon his judgment and skill, and there can be only dejection and despair when that judgment and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was in his fifty-third year), he appears to have made an excellent husband to Pilia and a very affectionate father to his daughter. His unwearied sympathy with the varied moods of Cicero—whether of exultation, irritation, or despair—and the entire confidence which Cicero feels that he will have that sympathy in every case, are creditable to both. It is only between sincere souls that one can speak to the other as to a second self, as Cicero often alleges ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... more than a year before, when Crayshaw, having been invited by John to spend the holidays with his boy, the two had quarrelled, and even fought, to such a degree that John at last in despair had taken Johnnie over to his grandfather's house, with the declaration that if he so much as spoke to Crayshaw again, or crossed the wide brook that ran between the two houses, he would fine him half-a-crown every time ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... had been a very handsome vehicle in its day, with heavy silver mountings and luxurious upholstery. The silver mounting was Billy's pride and despair. No fussy housekeeper ever kept her silver service any brighter than Billy did the trimmings of the old carriage, but in late years there never seemed to be room in any carriage house for Miss Ann's coach and it took much rubbing to obliterate the stains ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... roots that grew in the forest. To say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rose is too haughty for heaven's dew She becometh a spider's gray lair; And a bosom, that never devotion knew Or affection divine, shall be filled with rue And with darkness, and end with despair." ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... But the bandit lunged at her. Mercedes ran, not to try to pass him, but straight for the precipice. Her intention was plain. But Rojas outstripped her, even as she reached the verge. Then a piercing scream pealed across the crater—a scream of despair. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... their eyes on the baby. His little fists, and nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were thrust with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as though he were striving to creep into some hole away from life. There was a sort of dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back to the place whence he had come. His head, covered with dingy down, quivered with his effort to escape. He had been alive so little; that little had sufficed. Martin put his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... change in the quality of its trouble. That hunger for affection too long withheld was for the time displaced by an almost physical sense of an implacable past which still engirdled her. It intensified her consciousness of error to a practical despair; the break of continuity between her earlier and present existence, which she had hoped for, had not, after all, taken place. Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... their liberties, and their happiness. And when they have achieved all those purposes their work will be yet incomplete. They must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the love of liberty. Then, and not till then, when universal darkness and despair prevail, can you perpetuate slavery and repress all sympathy and all humane and benevolent efforts among free men in behalf of the unhappy portion of our ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the quiet of despair he threw him prone upon the dungeon floor and held his peace, no longer gnawing on his thongs or beating on the rock. A single moonbeam straggled through the slatted window, and by its light he saw a spider spinning out a web. Then, looking dully around, he ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... acquired a great love for Nature, though not of the intimate kind that poets have by instinct. "In moments of grief and despair," he wrote in later life, "I do not, as some do, crouch back to the bosom of the great Mother; she has, it seems, no heart for me when I am sorry, though she smiles with me when I am glad." But he has told me that he is able to enjoy a simple village scene in a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... goodness physically considered; morally there is.' BOSWELL. 'But may not a man attain to such a degree of hope as not to be uneasy from the fear of death?' JOHNSON. 'A man may have such a degree of hope as to keep him quiet. You see I am not quiet, from the vehemence with which I talk; but I do not despair.' MRS. ADAMS. 'You seem, Sir, to forget the merits of our Redeemer.' JOHNSON. 'Madam, I do not forget the merits of my Redeemer; but my Redeemer has said that he will set some on his right hand and some on his left.' He was in gloomy ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Then abruptly he started back. It was Billie Brookton's voice. Instead of being glad to hear it, he was bitterly, bleakly disappointed, and felt chilled to the heart with cold. Surprised at his own despair, he waked up, with a great start, just in time to brace his feet against the bottom of the berth and save himself from being thrown out by a shuddering bound of the ship. From overhead he heard a sigh of pain or weariness, and the top berth creaked with some movement of its occupant. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... trust and hope that such a fearful consummation will not be necessary. The others have submitted; and Clarke is but a shadow of himself, owing to the unwholesome nature of the place in which he is confined. I do not despair yet of bringing him to reason and submission. He is not like Dalaber. There is no stubbornness about him. He will speak with sweet courtesy, and enter into every argument with all the reasonableness of a great mind. But he ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... recognised the danger of the age behind its loud and forced "shipwreck gaiety," behind its big-mouthed talk about progress and evolution, behind that veil of business-bustle, which hides its fear and utter despair—but for all that black outlook they are not weaklings enough to mourn and let things go, nor do they belong to that cheap class of society doctors who mistake the present wretchedness of Humanity for sinfulness, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... abyss. Immermann intensely disliked it. He was, as he said, a lover of men; the worship of nature drained and exhausted the sympathies, the wills and the spirits of men. The passages in which Klingsor himself, in his moments of despair, and Merlin expose the emptiness of this philosophy, are among the best philosophic statements of the play. They are, how ever, too exhaustive. But they are good philosophy, if they are bad drama and poetry. Klingsor says of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... says Villebon, speaking of the success at Oyster River, "is of great advantage, because it breaks off all the talk of peace between our Indians and the English. The English are in despair, for not even infants in the cradle were spared." [Footnote: "Ce coup est tres avantageux, parcequ'il rompte tous les pour-parlers de paix entre nos sauvages et les Anglois. Les Anglois sont au desespoir de ce qu'ils ont tue jusqu'aux ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... we could swim on for some hours, perhaps till day-break. Poor chance! but hope is so firmly rooted in the heart of man! Moreover, there were two of us. Indeed I declare (though it may seem improbable) if I sought to destroy all hope—if I wished to despair, I could not. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... reeking bars; waiters and chambermaids pass to and fro, with dishes and tankards and bottles in their hands. All is noise and bustle, and eating and swilling, and disputation and slang, wild glee, and wilder despair, amongst those who come back from the race-course to the inns in the county town. At one of these taverns, neither the best nor the worst, and in a small narrow slice of a room that seemed robbed from the landing-place, sat Mrs. Crane, in her iron-gray ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kept them dancing in the ring on the green all night; for sure enough, we were more liked, and more lucky in obtaining a congregation than the parson." "Away, away with these fellows to the country of Despair!" said the terrific king, "bind the four back to back and cast them to their customers, to dance bare-footed on floors of glowing heat, and to amble to all eternity ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... smile and she looked at him in despair. The very charm of his personal appearance awakened resentment in her; his deft and easy complaisance angered her because it could be effective. She hated the superficial excellence in him which made him a pleasant companion. He had refused to discuss her identity further, except to prevent her ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... that the ex-President, whose fortunes were on the tiptoe of desperate hazard, was beginning to despair. He may have scanned the meager forces at his disposal and felt that he was asking the gods for more than they could grant. A few minutes earlier he had put forth the suave suggestion that Hozier should be given the speediest chance of securing the girl's safety. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... ado about nothing,—for no law and no Church in Christendom would have hesitated to declare the nullity of a marriage which had never been consummated, and which was celebrated while one of the parties took the other for some one else,—but Clara's shattered reason, Tyrrel's despair, and Etherington's certainty that he has the cards in his hand, are all incredible and unaccountable—mere mid-winter madness. Nevertheless, this, Scott's only attempt at actual contemporary fiction, has extraordinary interest and great merit as such, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... New Year's night, an old man stood at his window, and looked, with a glance of fearful despair, up the immovable, unfading heaven, and down upon the still, pure, white earth, on which no one was now so joyless ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... green vines and timbers, denotes unexpected happiness from what was seemingly a cause for loss and despair. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... position was such, that to see her face he had to turn his head; but her delicate hands rested on the arm of his chair, clasped now, and again twisted with anguish, and then stretched out with upward palms appealing for pity, or drooping in despair. She could see his profile, and watch the growing uneasiness, the shame of innocence brought face to face with dirt unspeakable, the mortal terror of a pure boy in the presence of Phryne. With this sport Sister Claire ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... in his verse the grief of a heart, disillusioned and broken by the cruelties of fate, that evoked in vain the remembrance of yesterday's lost loves, vanished in the mists of eternal despair. ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... as if from some supreme collapse, and her ashen face became quite distorted. "You are right, it was certain," said she; "still one always hopes." And with a gesture of despair she added: "It is all ended now. Everything fails me, my last ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... sir," continued Aramis, who, seeing his captain become appeased, ventured to risk a prayer, "do not say that Athos is wounded. He would be in despair if that should come to the ears of the king; and as the wound is very serious, seeing that after crossing the shoulder it penetrates into the chest, it ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... of distress amongst the labouring classes, affecting also such of the lower middle class as principally traded with workpeople, they at once jumped at the conclusion that the same thing was bound to go on for ever. Perhaps it was with a feeling of despair, therefore, that the father of Dutch Social Democracy, F. Domela Nieuwenhuys, gradually drifted into anarchism, or, as he prefers to call it, Free Socialism, and finally abandoned all political action. The younger generation, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... proceeded to the unprecedented and unconstitutional course of killing the Budget. This was exactly what Mr. Asquith and his first lieutenant had been waiting for. Lloyd George saw the fruits of his labor destroyed in a day, but he watched the process, not with despair, but with grim satisfaction. ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... granted to him. The Count talked freely and well on a variety of questions till eleven o'clock, and then proposed to show his guest to his bedroom. Dieppe accepted the offer in despair, but he would have sat up all night had there seemed any chance of the Count's becoming ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... and night comes on; One lingering moment more and thou art gone, Lost in the rising sea of clouds that cast Their inundations o'er the darkening air; And wild the night wind wails the lightless world's despair. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... finding his pretty blushing girl on arriving at Woolwich, poor Tom only found his French master, livid with rage and quivering under his ailes de pigeon. We pass over the scenes that followed; the young man's passionate entreaties, and fury and despair. In his own defence, and to prove his honour to the world, M. de Blois determined that his daughter should instantly marry the Count. The poor girl yielded without a word, as became her; and it was with this marriage effected almost before his eyes, and frantic with wrath and despair, that young ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had seen me cut the cables, and thought my design was only to let the ships run adrift, or fall foul on each other; but when they perceived the whole fleet moving in order, and saw me pulling at the end, they set up such a scream of grief and despair that it is almost impossible to describe or conceive. When I had got out of danger I stopped a while to pick out the arrows that stuck in my hands and face; and rubbed on some of the ointment that was given me at my first arrival, as I have formerly mentioned. I then took off my spectacles, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... in Mary's face pressed more like knobs than ever against the tight-drawn skin, or that the spirits of the airy, hopeful, buoyant Norma flagged. Indeed, had not the warm-hearted, loving little creature, repaid them with quick devotion, filling their meagre lives with new interests and affections, despair or worse—regret for their generous impulse—must now have ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... that there was now time to load. The remainder, hemmed about, pressed against the wall, were fast meeting with a like fate. They stood no chance against us; we cared not to make prisoners of them; it was a slaughter, but they had taken the initiative. They fought with the courage of despair, striving to spring in upon us, striking when they could with hatchet and knife, and through it all talking and laughing, making God knows what savage boasts, what taunts against the English, what references to the hunting grounds to which they were ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... the simple faith of your mother,—her innocent credulity. Love and despair simplify our souls and remove from them the proud tinsel with which we clothe them in moments of happiness and pride; love and despair render us by their mystery, timid and respectful, like the simplest of creatures. I feel what ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... grief, no sorrow, no despair, No languor, no dejection, no dismay, No absence scarcely can there be, for those Who love ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... du Chien—a picture of straggling despair—by the Milwaukie and Prairie du Chien Railroad, and the Northwestern Railroad, two hundred and twenty-two miles, we reached Chicago, and passed through a crowd of beautiful towns, in a State scarce a generation since reclaimed from the Indians. Familiar railroads transported us ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... in effecting deliverance and salvation is denied. How little an absolute righteousness existed in the elect, sufficiently appears from the fact, that, in the second part, it forms a main object of the Prophet to oppose their want of courage, their despair and distrust of God. Farther—The ungodly could not by any means consider the sufferings of the righteous ones as vicarious, because they themselves suffered as much; and as little could they despise the godly on account of their ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... hard on them that their niece should turn out a little wild harum-scarum creature, such as they had never dreamt of— really unable to move without noises that startled Lady Jane's nerves, and threw Lady Barbara into despair at the harm they would do—a child whose untutored movements were a constant eye-sore and distress to them; and though she could sometimes be bright and fairy- like if unconstrained, always grew abrupt and uncouth when under restraint—a ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... four o'clock upon a damp, drizzling afternoon—a November afternoon—that hung like a living misery over the black slush of the Birmingham streets, and would in itself have sufficed to bring the lightest hearted, happiest mortal to the very gates of despair, when Augusta, wet, wearied, and almost crying, at last entered the door of their little sitting-room. She entered very quietly, for the maid-of-all-work had met her in the passage and told her that Miss Jeannie was ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... sullen battle for Tallente, a battle with luck against him, with his back to the wall, with despair more than once yawning at his feet. The house in Charles Street was closed. There had come no word to him from Jane, no news even of her departure except the somewhat surprised reply of Parkins, when he had called on ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tending downwards, on the other hand, convey the opposite ideas of dejection and despair. This is illustrated in these figures of Flaxman's, who was a great master of ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... women, too!" said Lord Blyston, with admiring despair. "He's been away from them so ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. He felt: This had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth. And it was not long until he walked again in long strides, started to ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... house was dim and darkened; Gloom, and sickness, and despair, Dwelling in the gilded chambers. Creeping up the marble stair, Even stilled the voice of mourning— For a child lay ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... Ordinary was out of the way to-day, I hope, my Dear, you will, upon the first Opportunity, quiet my Scruples—Oh Sir! my Father's hard heart is not to be soften'd, and I am in the utmost Despair. ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... others, was subject to those fluctuations that fill the struggling practitioner alternately with hope and despair. The work came in paroxysms with intervals of almost complete stagnation. One of these intermissions occurred on the day after my visit to Nevill's Court, with the result that by half-past eleven I found myself wondering what I should do with the remainder of the day. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... rather delays the impatience of the audience for the catastrophe, and does not contribute to it, but by the mother's orders to the daughter at the end of the scene to repair to the great church. In the last scene I should wish to have Theordore fall into a transport of rage and despair immediately on the death of Adelaide, and be carried off by Austin's orders; for I doubt the interval is too long for him to faint after Narbonne's speech. The fainting, fit, I think, might be better applied to the Countess; it does not seem requisite that she should die, but the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... endowment of McGill College was the first step towards the fulfilment of his hopes. But between the dream and its ultimate realisation lay long and troubled years of baffling difficulty and bitter discouragement, and at times, despair. ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... beloved, an enigma, the unknown sense of which contains the light of life. Do not fear to give yourself to me. I shall desire you always, but I never shall know you. Does one ever possess what one loves? Are kisses, caresses, anything else than the effort of a delightful despair? When I embrace you, I am still searching for you, and I never have you; since I want you always, since in you I expect the impossible and the infinite. What you are, the devil knows if I shall ever know! Because I have modelled a few ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in array at the gates." Then came "a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity"—a day of "breaking down the walls and of crying to the mountains." Amidst this general alarm and mourning there were, however, found some whom a wild despair made reckless, and drove to a ghastly and ill-timed merriment. When God by His judgments gave an evident "call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth—behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... I would have you say," said Sybil. "Speak of one who is my father, if no longer your friend: you know what I would have you do—save him: save him from death and me from despair." ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... day, he became himself a speech-writer and professor of rhetoric; his weakly constitution and natural timidity preventing him from taking a part in public life. He made away with himself in 338, after the fatal battle of Chaeronea, in despair, it is said, of his country's fate. He took great pains with his compositions, and is reported to have spent ten, or, according to others, fifteen ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... a very different life from that which this fine, clever high-spirited boy had imagined for himself, and he looked forward to the prospect with settled despair. But he seemed now to regard himself as a victim of destiny, regretting nothing, and opposing nothing, and caring for nothing. He told Walter with bitter exaggeration "that he must indeed thank him for giving up the scholarship, as ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... and, not forgetting that courteous salute which the young then always rendered to honourable age, he went slowly upstairs, feeling suddenly a great weariness and despair. If Katherine had only been true to him! He was sure, then, that he could have fought almost joyfully any pretender to her favour. But he was deserted by the girl whom he had loved all her sweet life. He was betrayed ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... by sea. The Florentines, desirous to supply themselves in the same manner, loaded four vessels with provisions, but, upon their approach, they were attacked by seven of the king's galleys, which took two of them and put the rest to flight. This disaster made them despair of procuring provisions, so that two hundred men of a foraging party, principally for want of wine, deserted to the king, and the rest complained that they could not live without it, in a situation where the heat was so excessive and the water bad. The commissaries therefore determined ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... he had heard a voice saying to him, "If thou hadst faith as a grain of mustard seed, thou wouldst say to this mountain, 'Be thou removed from there,' and it would move away." Was not the mountain that of his sufferings, the temptation to murmur and despair? "Be it, Lord, according to thy word," he had replied with all his heart, and immediately he had felt ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... of England Puritans toward the Separatists from that church was the attitude of the earnest, patient, hopeful reformer toiling for the removal of public abuses, toward the restless "come-outer" who quits the conflict in despair of succeeding, and, "without tarrying for any," sets up his little model of good order outside. Such defection seemed to them not only of the nature of a military desertion and a weakening of the right side, but also an implied ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... exert their power often when least expected, and are ever stamped by the same indelible impression of their divine origin. Without these occasional glimpses at those qualities which are so apt to lie dormant, we might indeed despair of the destinies of our race. We are, however, in safe and merciful hands; and all the wonderful events that are at this moment developing themselves around us, are no other than the steps taken by Providence ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... hair, which she had unbraided before she was carried off from the Riverola mansion, floated over her shoulders, and enhanced the expression of ineffable despair which ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... disappoint her? She did not yet know that those who are most sincere find it more difficult than the others to say what they think. Words, in their souls, are like climbing plants which, sown by chance in the middle of a roadway, waver and grope, send out tendrils here and there in despair and end by entangling themselves with one another. Whereas most people, just as we provide supports for flowers, bestow certainties and truths upon their words to which they cling, the sincere refuse to yield ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... desperate burst of speed, his clothing tattered with bullet holes, the Lieutenant gained his trench and leaped down to its cover. His face, wearing an expression of mingled hope and despair, he rushed to the bomb-proof dug-out where sat his Colonel and brother officers. They looked up at him with cold eyes. One glance and Throckmorton's heart failed him. ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... on they went through days and days of unutterable blackness, of suffering and despair. On, until direction and space were lost to measure. For her a new, pitiless, far-off heaven looked down on a new agonized earth. The days ran into months, and no day had in it a ray of hope, a ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... and many bright deeds to be done in India, if only you will do them. Though many great and glorious conquests have been made in the history and literature of the East, since the days when Sir William Jones[16] landed at Calcutta, depend upon it, no young Alexander here need despair because there are no kingdoms left for him to conquer on the ancient shores of the ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... tail, and held on like grim death. The astonished mule lashed out wildly and furiously, but Sam, with his body laid close on her back, his hands grasping her tail, and his legs and feet pressing tight to her flanks, held on with the clutch of despair. ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the luminous darkness, the cool night wind brushing his face, a seething rage against Tex Lynch dominated him. Now and then the thought of Mary Thorne came to torture him. Vividly he pictured the scene at the ranch-house which Mrs. Archer had described, imagining the girl's fear and horror and despair, then and afterward, with a realism which made him wince. But always his mind flashed back to the man who was to blame for it all, and with savage curses he pledged himself to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... him. I confess to the belief that Satan is a gentleman compared with some of his very humble servants. We are told that he is a fallen angel who found pride a stumbling-block—that he tripped over it and plunged down to infinite despair; but tho' he fell further than a pigeon could fly in a week, the world is full of frauds who could not climb up to his level in a month; who can no more claim kinship with him in their cussedness than a thieving hyena can ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... or military one, but a pacific laissez-faire for the purposes of trade. France envisages the complete ruin of German industry and commerce, and believes that Foch is the man to do it. At this the Italians smile quietly and counsel the timorous Germans not to despair. Rome chooses to hold to the thesis that a prosperous Italy depends on a prosperous Germany, and no outsider is qualified to dispute such a point of view. Somehow Italy manages to suggest a similar thought to England. A prosperous England depends on ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... of the fair prophetesses also received a bullet in her breast, and being carried to a cottage in the rear expired. Sir A. Campbell now determined to advance on Ava; and nothing was wanting in the troops, or forgotten by their commander, to ensure success. But the enemy did not yet despair. The stockades at Meaday were made as strong as art could make them; and at Melloone, on the west bank of the Irrawaddy, the reserve under Prince Memiaboo was augmented to 15,000 men. The British troops arrived at Meaday on the 19th of December; and they found it just evacuated by the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was an elasticity of mind about Captain Ducie that would not allow him to despair utterly for any length of time. In the course of a few days, as he began to recover from his first chagrin, he at the same time began to turn the affair of the Diamond over and over in his mind, now in one way, now in another, looking at it in this light and in that; trying ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... sat in silence, another voice uttered a wail of infinite terror and despair. "I didn't do it! Don't kill me! It was not my work." And then, still more horrible to hear, a sound like the gurgling of blood came from the psychic's lips, mixed with babbled, frantic, incoherent words. I had a perfectly definite ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough,"[56] he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are souls, and those are leaves; he makes no confusion of one with the other. But when ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... hope that they would succeed. So much afraid of them was the Sultan, Rosamund said, that both she and they were watched day and night, and of any folly their lives would pay the price. When they heard all this the brethren began to despair, and their spirits sank so low that they cared not ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... womanly delicacy, has been my first duty; my second to free myself entirely from it. But a war against one's own nature cannot be carried on without occasional defeat, even if ultimately successful. When grief and pain are gaining the upperhand and I am well nigh in despair, my only help lies in remembering my friend Pythagoras, that noblest among men, and his words: 'Observe a due proportion in all things, avoid excessive joy as well as complaining grief, and seek to keep thy soul in tune and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... replied Tom, but the next day, when the government agent called again, his face wore a look of despair. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... Account it, even by 'vantage of the night To fly destruction. Wiser him I deem Who 'scapes his foe, than whom his foe enthralls. 95 But him Ulysses, frowning stern, reproved. What word, Atrides, now hath pass'd thy lips? Counsellor of despair! thou should'st command (And would to heaven thou didst) a different host, Some dastard race, not ours; whom Jove ordains 100 From youth to hoary age to weave the web Of toilsome warfare, till we perish all. Wilt thou the spacious ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... in a way, under my care—but I couldn't locate her in any Italian city. Then I learned that she had come to the United States and took up the search on this side. It's a long story; the gist of it is simply that I looked up every possibility, and finally gave up in despair. That was more than four years ago. I have no idea that all this has any connection ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... play-room tent of Dicky's, where she knew that she could be alone, pinned the curtains together so that no one could peep in, and threw herself down upon the long cushioned seat where Dicky was wont to take his afternoon nap. There, in grief and despair, she sobbed the afternoon through, dreading to be disturbed and ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... their barges on the shore, and, protected by their immense bucklers, sword in hand, routed the Bulgarians with great slaughter. Cities and villages rapidly submitted to the conqueror. The king of Bulgaria in his despair rushed upon death. Sviatoslaf, laden with the spoils of the vanquished and crowned with the laurels of victory, surrendered himself to rejoicing and to all the pleasures ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... without industrial skill—knowing nothing but to sell unskilled labor in a market crowded by a million others like himself or herself, and thus forced into that wretched life seen in all the great cities of America and Europe, the description of which is enough to make us cry out in despair, How long, O Lord, how long? Wherein does this white slavery differ from African slavery, except that the master cares nothing for the slave, is not bound by self-interest to take care of him, and cannot flog ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... In her present despair, she was ready to seize any floating straw. The idea came to her that she might have some unexpected reversionary interest in her mother's money, on which she ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... wished to send it her through the Countess of Nottingham: but she was prevented from giving it by her husband who was an enemy of Essex, and so he had to die without mercy: the Queen, to whom the Countess revealed this on her death bed, fell into despair over it. The ring is still shown, and indeed several rings are shown as the true one: as also the tradition itself is extant in two somewhat varying forms; attempts have been made to get rid of the improbabilities of the first by fresh fictions in the second.[292] They are both ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... one another in a pale despair. They had reached the moment when, in dealing with a sick man, the fictions of love drop away, and ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I was ready to die with grief. I cried out in agony, and threw myself upon the ground, where I lay some time in despair. I upbraided myself a hundred times for not being content with the produce of my first voyage, that might have sufficed me all my life. But all this was in vain, and ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... some of the time they paddled straight onward, with sinking hearts, knowing not toward what they were going, and at others rested with the inaction of despair. When the position of the bright spot which meant the sun told that it lacked but an hour of sunset, and the clouds seemed to be thickening rather than dispersing, the Black Beaver gave a long and hideous howl. His wife ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... we lay, our bows split with the shock, our engine-room in fearful disorder, our men drunk with ferocity and with despair. The other warships were yet some distance away; but they opened fire upon us at hazard, and, of the first three shells which fell, two cut our decks; and sent clouds of splinters, of wood, and of human flesh flying in the smoke-laden air. At ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... utter despair of his position came over Haynes. How suddenly it had come! And even Haynes, with his four years at West Point, could hardly realize how the Coventry had been pronounced and carried out in so very few minutes after ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... not changed Camors's habits: he dined at home, instead of at his club, that was all. She believed herself loved, however, but with a lightness that was almost offensive. Yet, though she was sometimes sad and nearly in tears, she did not despair; this valiant little heart attached itself with intrepid confidence to all the happy chances the future might have in store ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Ibsen is able to make us feel in "Ghosts." But we know something better than Ibsen, for Mrs. Pettingrew is no "Mrs. Alving." She is a plain, hard-featured woman who takes in sewing for a living, and she is quite unlettered, but she is a general in the army of spiritual forces. She does not despair, she does not give up like the half-hearted mother in "Ghosts," she does not waste her strength in concealments; she stands up to her enemy and fights. She fought the wild beast in Nelse's father, hand to hand, all his life, and he died a better man than when she married him. Undaunted, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... homes, and a chance for the boy are good bricks to build with in such a structure as we are rearing. They last. Just now we are laying another course; more than one, I hope. But even if it were different, we need not despair. Let the enemy come back once more, it will not be to stay. It may be that, like Moses and his followers, we of the present day shall see the promised land only from afar and with the eye of faith, because ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... the Panther," the author seems to have had in his eye the proposal made at a grand consult of the Catholics, that they should retire from the general and increasing hatred of all ranks, and either remain quiet at home, or settle abroad. This plan, which originated in their despair of James's being able to do anything effectual in their favour, was set aside by the fiery opposition of Father Petre, the martin of the fable told by ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... morn, such morn as mocks despair; And she that bare the promise of the world Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, At random o'er the wildering waters hurled; 10 The reek of battle drifting slow alee Not ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... new philosophy, it is with the more seriousness that I here acknowledge the deepest respect for that true practical philosophy of life — that well-balanced mixture of stoicism and epicurism — which enables Germans to endure and to ENJOY under circumstances when other men would probably despair. ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... ransom whose rigours waste away My frame and cause me languish; yet, if he would but hear, It rests with him to heal me; and I (a soul he hath Must suffer that which irks it), go saying, in my fear Of spies, "How long, O scoffer, wilt mock at my despair, As 'twere God had created nought ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... full light, offered to the gaze a crude, unfinished study, nor yet because a laden palette was cast upon the floor to consort with tubes and brushes, but because the presiding genius of the place Max—Max the debonair, Max the adventurous—was seated on a chair before his canvas, a prey to black despair. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... and the reason it epitomised him. There was none of life's dilemmas—little dilemmas that irritate ordinary people or in which ordinary people display themselves pusillanimous; or tragic dilemmas that find ordinary people wanting and leave them in vacillation and despair—there was none of any sort that Harry, receiving with his comic, "Mice and Mumps! Mice and Mumps, old girl!" did not receive with the assurance to her that, though this was a nuisance, he had metal and to spare to settle such; that, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... whose presence is being made especially palpable just now, and whose reclamation is a perplexing, yet still a hopeful problem. In the case of the adult Arab, there is a life's work to undo, and the facing of that fact it is which makes some of our bravest workers drop their hands in despair. With these young Arabs, on the contrary, it is only the wrong bias of a few early years to correct, leaving carte blanche for any amount of hope in youth, maturity, and old age. Being desirous of forming, for ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... his brother should miss him and return in search of him? And now the officer came up, and began to question him, speaking very slowly, and in an extremely loud tone. Notwithstanding, poor Will could only understand a word here and there, and at length, in despair, he determined ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... when she died his world went black as midnight. It was as if in the midst of a monster, interminable cavern his one starlike light had gone out in his hand. For days he beat his head against the wall, crying defiant curses against his God; but in the end he sank into voiceless despair. Then it was, as he lay prone and passive, that he began to hear mysterious whisperings and tappings on the walls of his cavern of despond. He rose and listened. He groped his way towards the dim light. He returned to the world of men. His faith in the Scriptures was weakened; ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... its darkening and falling away; to hope its return, often against all evidence; to pardon its injustices and sometimes its foul actions—how many are capable of such abnegation? Augustin went through all that. He was in despair about it. And then, the nostalgia of predestined souls took hold of him. He had an indistinct feeling that these human loves were unworthy of him, and that if he must have a master, he was born to serve another Master. He had a desire to shake off the platitude of here below, the melancholy fen ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... be over in Aheer—little troubles we must always encounter, and bear with fortitude. Our servants and friends are much rejoiced at our success with En-Noor, and they promise me farther success in Soudan and Bornou. Alas! God alone knows what is reserved for us; but we must not despair after these, events of Aheer. At first all was black, without one solitary ray of light; now, all the Sultans of Aheer are determined they say, conjointly, to afford us protection: whilst the people are showing ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... terrible stroke of all. I could see the hunter shrink in his saddle, a death-like pallor over-spreading his cheeks, while his eyes presented the glassy aspect of despair. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... not want to enter the class-rooms, and who resisted like donkeys: it was necessary to drag them in by force, and some escaped from the benches; others, when they saw their parents depart, began to cry, and the parents had to go back and comfort and reprimand them, and the teachers were in despair. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... their goodness to him. The glowing language in which this is done goes against the grain with us when we read continuously the events of his life as told by himself. His last grievous words had been expressions of despair addressed to Atticus; now he breaks out into a paean of triumph. We have to remember that eight months had intervened, and that the time had sufficed to turn darkness into light. "If I cannot thank ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the Life of Heyne,—the great German scholar, pushing his way from the depths of poverty and obscurity, by force of patient industry and genius, to a proud position and a national fame. "Let no unfriended son of genius despair," exclaims Carlyle. "If he have the will, the power will not be denied him. Like the acorn, carelessly cast abroad in the wilderness, yet it rises to be an oak; on the wild soil it nourishes itself; it defies the tempest, and lives for a thousand years." The whole outward life of Carlyle ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... their feelings. Norman had told his friend scores of times that it was the first wish of his heart to marry Gertrude Woodward; and had told him, moreover, what were his grounds for hope, and what his reasons for despair. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... opened in the disrupturing mass beneath, at the instant, as if to receive them; while a mountain billow of ice, that must overwhelm them with certain destruction, is rolling down, with angry roar, within a few rods of the spot. A groan of despair burst from the exhausted man at the rope; and his grasp was about ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... unconscious gesture—half of scorn, half of despair—and paced the room slowly up and down. A life of toil—a life rounding into worldly success, but blank of all love and heart's comfort—was this to be the only conclusion to his career? Of what use, then, was it to ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Meadows was silent a moment, then reached out for her hand, which she gave him. They had no children; and, as he well knew, Doris pined for them. The look in her eyes when she nursed her friends' babies had often hurt him. But after all, why despair? It was only four years from their ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... short time the article reached Vienna, and in a still shorter time Mr. Beckendorff reached the Residence, and insisted on the author being immediately given up to the Austrian Government. Madame Carolina was in despair, the Grand Duke in doubt, and Beckendorff threatened to resign if the order were not signed. A kind friend, perhaps his Royal Highness himself, gave Sievers timely notice, and by rapid flight he reached ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... not) was written in 1618, and in 1622 he coll. his poems as Juvenilia. The same year he pub. a long poem, Faire Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, in which appears the famous lyric, "Shall I wasting in despair." Though generally acting with the Puritans he took arms with Charles I. against the Scotch in 1639; but on the outbreak of the Civil War he was on the popular side, and raised a troop of horse. He was taken prisoner by the Royalists, and is said to have owed his life ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... was he sincere? Was [v.04 p.0904] he as melancholy as his poetry implies? Did he pose as pessimist or misanthropist, or did he speak out of the bitterness of his soul? It stands to reason that Byron knew that his sorrow and his despair would excite public interest, and that he was not ashamed to exhibit "the pageant of a bleeding heart." But it does not follow that he was a hypocrite. His quarrel with mankind, his anger against fate, were perfectly genuine. His outcry is, in fact, the anguish ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... poem—that it is a love poem to his dead lady; a song of praise for her watch over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from destruction—saves him from hell. He is going eternally astray in despair; she comes down from heaven to his help, and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, interpreting for him the most difficult truths, divine and human, and leading him, with rebuke upon ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... about in sight of land with contrary winds, having twice sight of the Cape of Good Hope, yet could not possibly get beyond it, till the 19th April, when, by the blessing of God, we doubled the Cape to our no small comfort, being almost in despair, and feared we must have wintered at Mosambique, which is usual with the Portuguese. The 27th April, we crossed the tropic of Capricorn, and came to anchor at St Helena on the 9th May, in lat. 15 deg. S. We remained here watering till ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... more than a hundred women was collected; these were mostly seated on boxes or other fragments of furniture that had been saved; one and all had their faces turned towards the waste of waters, where their homes had been. I shall never forget their looks of mute despair; there was no crying, no noise, their very silence was a gauge of the utter misery that ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... a slight movement. She made a long stride towards it. Willems turned half round. His legs seemed to him to be made of lead. He felt faint and so weak that, for a moment, the fear of dying there where he stood, before he could escape from sin and disaster, passed through his mind in a wave of despair. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... privateer. A heavy gale was blowing at the time, and I, with other passengers, had just been removed, when all further communication between the ships was prevented by the fury of the wind and sea. I was almost driven to despair when I found that the ships had separated during the night. It was the opinion of our captors that only a few men having been put on board, the crew had risen and retaken the vessel. They searched in vain for her. It was ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... the slightest sound he rose and hastened to the door, convinced they were about to liberate him, but the sound died away, and Dantes sank again into his seat. At last, about ten o'clock, and just as Dantes began to despair, steps were heard in the corridor, a key turned in the lock, the bolts creaked, the massy oaken door flew open, and a flood of light from two torches pervaded the apartment. By the torchlight Dantes saw the glittering sabres and carbines of four gendarmes. He had advanced ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... long to see America and the East Indies revolted, totally and finally—the revenue reduced to half—public credit fully discredited by bankruptcy—the third of London in ruins, and the rascally mob subdued! I think I am not too old to despair of being witness to ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley |
