"Despairing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and said, hurrying her words: "Felix, do not put yourself in bonds that might prove an obstacle to our happiness. I should die of grief for having caused a suicide like that. Child, do you think despairing love a life's vocation? Wait for life's trials before you judge of life; I command it. Marry neither the Church nor a woman; marry not at all,—I forbid it. Remain free. You are twenty-one years old—My God! can I have mistaken him? I thought two months ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... comparison and mutual irritation of feeling. The comparison must not be pressed too far if we cite in illustration the feeling of the great mass of earnest, practical antislavery men in the American conflict with slavery toward the faction of "come-outer" abolitionists, who, despairing of success within the church and the state, seceded from both, thenceforth predicting failure for every practical enterprise of reform on the part of their former workfellows, and at every defeat chuckling, "I told ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Pentaur, "and speaks of some traitor. The other has a rough voice, and says he must follow his master's orders. Now the one who spoke before is crying; do you hear? He is entreating him by the soul of his father to take his fetters off. How despairing his voice is! Knock, Kaschta—it strikes me we are come at the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of grand domestics, whilst a maid-servant brought in their meagre meal at Fairoaks, and his mother was obliged to pinch and manage to make both ends meet? Obstacles seemed for him insurmountable, which would have vanished had he marched manfully upon them: and he preferred despairing, or dallying with his wishes,—or perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet,—to attempting to win gallantly the object of his desire. Many a young man fails by that species of vanity called shyness, who might, for the asking ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he must have been to do that. I knew why she had wanted to hear it again. It had been our favorite book. I remembered how I had read it to her just before I went abroad, and how I had caught her watching me with that hungry despairing look in her eyes. What a young brute I had been to go!... For a time Sue's voice seemed far away. Then I heard her telling how over that story of a young author my mother had talked ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... with his joyous followers, advance to the couple, and make them man and wife before her very eyes; and when she had seen them walk away together upon their path of flowers, followed by the tremendous shouts of the hilarious multitude, in which her one despairing shriek was lost ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... leave of one another and look yourselves out graves from to-day, for we have fallen into a predicament[FN203] from which there is no escape, and never yet hath any been cast away here and come off alive.' So all the folk fell a-weeping and gave themselves up for lost, despairing of deliverance; friend took leave of friend and sore was the mourning and lamentation; for that hope was cut off and they were left without guide or pilot.[FN204] Then all who were in the ship landed on the skirt of the mountain and found themselves on ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... it; that is my cruel fate!" cries the young man, taking both her hands and laying them over his heart with a despairing tenderness. "There are none happy save those incapable of knowing a lasting affection. Oh, Molly!"—remorsefully—"forgive me. I am speaking to you as I ought not. It is all my beastly temper; though I used not to be ill-tempered," says he, with sad wonder. "At home and among our fellows I was ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... you can hear them listening, and some bend over toward their nearest neighbors and murmur their rapture. It is all right for them to murmur, but if you so much as scrooge your feet, or utter a low, despairing moan or anything, they all turn and glare at you reproachfully and go "Sh!" like a collection of steam-heating fixtures. Depend on them to keep you ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the Anglo-Spanish scene had changed again. The Spaniards had been so harassed by the English sea-dogs between the Netherlands and Spain that Philip listened to his great admiral, Menendez, who, despairing of direct attack on England, proposed to seize the Scilly Isles and from that naval base clear out a way through all the pirates of the English Channel. War seemed certain. But a terrible epidemic broke out in the Spanish fleet. Menendez ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... Emancipation Proclamation, and established it on a firm basis in the judgment and consent of all wise and true loyal men, North and South—to the great discomfiture of sundry politicians—the utterances of some of whom not long ago can be no otherwise taken than as the revelation and despairing death wail of disconcerted schemes. Strange that men whose whole lives have been passed in forecasting public opinion for their political uses, should have rushed upon the thick bosses of the great shield of the public will, which begirts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... passions and emotions often change into their opposites according to rule. Parsimony becomes extravagance, and conversely; love becomes hate. Many a man becomes altogether too foolhardy because of despairing fear. So it may happen that terror may become petrifying coldness, and then not one of the typical marks of terror appears. But it betrays itself just as certainly by its icy indifference as by its own ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in our victorious army who did not share so just a sorrow. Rapp and Savary, the aides-de-camp of Desaix, remained plunged in the most despairing grief beside the body of their chief, whom they called their father, rather to express his unfailing kindness to them than the dignity of his character. Out of respect to the memory of his friend, the general-in-chief, although his staff was full, added these two young ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... civilized religious race hiding in some deep cavern, in darkness, their friends slaughtered by the million by the falling stones, coming like arrows and spears, and the pestilence of poisonous gases; their food-supplies scanty; they themselves horrified, awe-struck, despairing, fearing that they would never again see the light; that this dreadful day was the end of the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... on, unfed, uncherished, for years; but the overflow of delight was checked with foreboding—there was the instinctive terror of a basilisk eye gazing into her paradise of joy—the thanksgiving ran into a half-despairing deprecation. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... every reminder of her children! With a quick and characteristic turn she caught herself in the flagrant contradiction involved in her reluctance to leave behind her mere senseless reminders of her son when she was going to his actual self. And then, with the despairing clear sight of one in a crisis of life, she knew that, in very fact, Hiram was no longer the boy who had left them years ago. Away from all that made up her life, under influences utterly foreign ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... It was a despairing cry, such as a newly-engaged man should never have sent after another than his affianced bride. Arthur thought so, too, fighting back his first love with an iron will, and, after that first hour of anguish, burying it so ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... beginning to wear a wistful, dejected look. There was a feeling of departure everywhere, a sense that the year's excitements were over. The procession had gone by, and there was an empty, purposeless air of waiting-about upon things, a sort of despairing longing for something else to happen—and a sure sense that nothing more could happen till next year. Every event in the floral calendar had taken place with immemorial punctuality and tragic rapidity. All the full-blooded flowers of Summer had long since come ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... life—but to order them to march day and night, forever fleeing before the enemy when they did not consider themselves vanquished, when they were animated by that ferocious wrath which is the mother of heroism! . . . Their despairing expressions mutely sought the nearest officers, the leaders, even the colonel. They simply could go no further! Such a long, devastating march in such a few days, and what for? . . . The superior officers, who knew no more than their ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Christian conduct. They contain the one motive adequate to bring that law into realisation. They disclose the very roots of Christian morality, and part of the secret of Christ's unique power and influence amongst men. They come with a message of encouragement to all souls despairing of being able to do that which they would, and of freedom to all men burdened with a crowd of minute and external regulations. 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments'—there are three points to be dwelt upon here—namely, the all-sufficient ideal or guide ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... slow pace, with his eyes fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw. What we have just written seems strange, and yet it is true. The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night. She—that was Marius' whole thought. He meditated of nothing else; he was confusedly conscious that his old coat was becoming an impossible coat, and that his new coat was growing old, that his ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... defenders of the fortress looked over the valley, the great camp was gone. The nizam and Bussy, despairing of the possibility of carrying the position, at once so enormously strong by nature, and so gallantly defended, had raised the siege; which had cost them over two thousand of their best soldiers, including two hundred French killed and prisoners, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... things entered into her talk, or even into her voice or intonations. She had sounded sad, hopeless, despairing. And her last words made me fear she contemplated taking ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... spring after him, and then abruptly stopped. His huge figure slumped in sudden despairing futility as he recognized the tragic hopelessness ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... still louder voice was heard from without, the terrible cry of a people angry, they hardly know with whom, and impatient they hardly knew for what. The day of retribution had arrived. The Opposition reaped that which they had sown. Inflamed with hatred and cupidity, despairing of success by any ordinary mode of political warfare, and blind to consequences, which, though remote, were certain, they had conjured up a devil whom they could not lay. They had made the public mind drunk with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... our eyes met, and the terrible suspicion grew and mastered us, numbing, freezing, paralysing the life within us. I tried to answer, but turned my head away. My mother sank once more upon her knees, weeping, praying, despairing, wailing, while the storm outside continued to moan and sob its ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Maria—electing him as the distinguished stranger above the resident Fletcher—monopolized him and attached him to her side. She would do the honors of her house; she must show him the ruins of the old Mission beside the corral; Don Diego and Clementina would join them presently in the garden. He cast a despairing glance at the placidly smiling Clementina, who was apparently equally indifferent to the evident constraint and assumed ease of the man beside her, and ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... direction for those whom he expected to set upon him. In this state of dread, he went up to his chamber, and sat down alone upon his couch, without a brave man's spirit, and scarce remembering that he had ever been a man, but bathed with sweat, his head dizzy, trembling and despairing, racked by slavish fears and utterly unmanly thoughts. Antonina, who knew nothing of what was going on, and was far from expecting what was about to come to pass, kept walking up and down the hall, on pretence of suffering from heartburn; ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... the phonograph, and the distant, metallic voice repeated the undeniable fact that Rip Van Winkle had been unaware of the select pleasures of Coney Island. The dog whimpered, then raised his head in a despairing bay. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the open, loses direction, blunders hopelessly into an obstruction on the flank, retires in confusion, and makes a blind despairing dash for a shell-crater. Missing this by a fraction it loses all interest in life, wanders pitifully off at an unnatural angle, runs into the hostile force of the Adjutant, and comes finally into contact ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... in the streets furnished fresh fuel for the raging pestilence. Seven thousand English troops were reduced in a short time to three thousand, in a few days more to fifteen hundred men.[267] The hand of death was upon the throat of every survivor. At length, too feeble to man their works, despairing of timely succor, unable to sustain at the same moment the assault of their opponents and the fearful visitation of the Almighty, the English consented to surrender; and, on the twenty-eighth of July, a capitulation was signed, in accordance ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... in angry, passionate, despairing tones. One of her strange moods of silence had come upon Silencieux, and she lay back in her pillows ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... resignation, which his chivalrous heroism does not permit us to despise, had secured some repose for exhausted Russia. By his victories over his enemies of the West he had given her some glory, and hindered her from despairing under the most crushing tyranny, material and moral, which a European ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Hackit heard the sound of a heavy, slow foot, in the passage; and presently Amos Barton entered, with dry despairing eyes, haggard and unshaven. He expected to find the sitting-room as he left it, with nothing to meet his eyes but Milly's work-basket in the corner of the sofa, and the children's toys overturned in the bow-window. But when he saw Mrs. Hackit come towards ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... to and fro in the sunshine. The exercise helped her, through the very fatigue that she felt from it. She forced the rising tears desperately back to their sources; she fought with the clinging pain, and wrenched it from its hold. Little by little her mind began to clear again: the despairing fear of herself grew less vividly present to her thoughts. There were reserves of youth and strength in her still to be wasted; there was a spirit sorely ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... left hand means outward sin and wickedness, which many fall into. Both are alike dangerous to pilgrims: but the Lord "will keep the feet of his saints" (1 Sam. 2:9)-(Mason). Dr. Dodd considers that by the deep ditch is intended "presumptuous hopes," and the no less dangerous quag to be "despairing fears"-(ED). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... not blame me for her wretched and mysterious death. You hold me guiltless of the misery which nerved her despairing arm?" ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... find out any more about it, though the despairing eyes of Beatrice, as she bade her mute farewell, still ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... was round her, and two little hands closed upon my shoulders, clinging to me with a despairing grip, as I fought hard to keep on the surface; but only to be swept here and there, helpless as a fragment of wood, the muddy water the while thundering in my ears and bubbling angrily at ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... father, my child," she urged; "James, if he loves you, will wait for you. Don't marry until the boys are all old enough to be out of trouble. Think, Lizzie, of the misery a step-mother might cause with your brother Jack's impetuous temper, and Sam's hopeless, despairing disposition—each one would be hard for a step-mother to guide. Be a mother to them, my girl; down on your knees, and to make your mother's heart easy, promise before God that you will guide them, and watch over them as long as you are needed. Stay with your ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the gaiety of their hearts to sing, but with no great success; the parrot-kind have many modulations of voice, as appears by their aptitude to learn human sounds; doves coo in an amorous and mournful manner, and are emblems of despairing lovers; the wood-pecker sets up a sort of loud and hearty laugh; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk till day-break, serenades his mate with the clattering of castanets. All the tuneful passeres express their complacency by sweet modulations, and a variety ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... long night the despairing lad paddled steadily on, praying for the day to break. At last it came with a blaze of glory in the east. When it grew light enough to see, he rose ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... for that," broke in Felix, "most thankful! I don't regret what I did that night, Jack. I'd do it again if need be, even knowing that it must end like this,"—with a despairing motion of his ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... who, weakened by exhaustion and loss of blood, had taken more than twenty-four hours to return to the settlement. Ergin, shocked by his friend's wild and blood-stained appearance, pressed him for an explanation, but Kaleshnikoff, with a vacant stare, waved him aside, and with a despairing gesture disappeared into his hut, only a few yards distant. A few minutes later a pistol-shot was heard, and Ergin, instinctively fearing the worst, rushed to his friend's assistance, only to find that the latter had taken his life. Beside the dead man was a sheet ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... spirit, when it left the body, were visible, and what kind of thing it was: whether, for instance, it was really like the little naked babe which is seen in mediaeval illuminations flying out of the mouths of dying men. But, worn out with watching, Godric could not keep from sleep. All but despairing of his desire, he turned to the dying man, and spoke, says Reginald, some such words as these:—"O spirit! who art diffused in that body in the likeness of God, and art still inside that breast, I adjure thee by the Highest, that thou leave not the prison of this thine habitation ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... when he hears tell of the great agony and the torture that his lady has suffered for him. Almost does he lose his reason; for he fears greatly and indeed with justice—that she may be killed or maimed by the torture caused her by the three leeches, who have died in consequence; and he is despairing and disconsolate. And Thessala comes bringing a very precious salve with which she has anointed full gently the lady's body and wounds. The ladies have enshrouded her again in a white Syrian pall, wherein ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... wish, mother, but reason—necessity. Are we not two despairing creatures? What is life to you?—Nothing. What is life to me?—Very little without you, mother; for believe me, but for you I should have ceased to live on the day I doubted my father and renounced his name. Well, I will ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... so attractive, that it was impossible for me to obtain a minute's conversation with Susan alone. I departed, wearied and disheartened with her sad, despairing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... our speed was most remarkable, inasmuch as the distance between us did not vary a hundred yards in an hour. All night we were watching, measuring distances with nautical instruments, &c., hoping at moments that we were nearer, despairing at others that she was gaining from us. We threw overboard fifty or sixty tons of coal, to no avail; we could not get within shot of the 'Livadia,' to capture which I would have given all I possessed. As ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... to the chimpanzee, despite this last despairing attempt at modest evasion, denudes himself before us. And his heart, we find is strangely like our own. His reveries, his sadnesses, his exhilarations, are all ours, too. Like us he cries, "I wish I ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... great hospitals at the base. While she was there, two more cases were brought in. The doctor gave but a glance at the first one and then made a sign; and the bearers passed on with him to the further end of the gallery. He seemed to understand, for he gave a low, despairing cry and the tears sprang to his eyes. He was but a boy. The other had a foot torn off. One of the orderlies gave him two round pieces of wood to hold in his hands while the young surgeon cut away the hanging flesh ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... a work which is likely to be held for all time as his masterpiece, so far as strength of idea, importance of motive, and vivid force of description are concerned. Without violence, even without expression of action, but simply by a pair of haunting eyes, a beautiful, despairing face, and a form confessing utter weariness and abandonment of hope, he revealed all the national shame of slavery, and its degradation of body and soul. Every American cannot but blush to look upon ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... despairing upward glance at me. "Are these children not silly?" she said, with a ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... excited than I had ever seen him before, and talked brilliantly and well—though perhaps not as exclusively to his neighbors as they may have wished. His eyes and his attention seemed everywhere at once: one moment he was throwing remarks across to some despairing couple opposite, and the next he was breaking an embarrassing pause in the conversation by some rapid sally of nonsense addressed to the table in general. He formed a great contrast to his brother, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... her sparkling diadem—ah, wicked soul!—I wildly cried—pitiless Queen!—then, as they lifted the body of the murdered man, his livid countenance was turned towards me, and I saw again the face of Santoris! Dumb and despairing I sank as it were within myself, chilled with inexplicable misery, and I heard for the first time in this singular pageant of vision a Voice—slow, calm, and thrilling with ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... was like to befall us: a barrell of gunpowder was fired in the church, undoubtedly of set purpose, and was conceived to be done by one Tipper, a most virulent Papist, and Sir John Winter's servant, despairing withall of his redemption, being a prisoner before, and having falsified his engagement. The powder-blast blew many out of the church, and sorely singed a greater number, but killed none. The souldiers, enraged, fell upon them, and in the heate of blood slew neere 20, and amongst others this Tipper. ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... "January 16, 1918.—Despairing appeals from Vienna for food supplies. Would I apply at once to Berlin for aid, otherwise disaster imminent. I replied to General Landwehr ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... appearance, strange and inexplicable as her conduct seemed. Though it was quite among the possibilities that she had struck the fatal blow and in the manner mentioned, it was equally clear to his mind that she had not done it in an access of frenzy. He knew a mad eye and he knew a despairing one. Fantastic as her story certainly was, he found himself more ready to believe it than to accept any explanation of this crime which ascribed its peculiar features to ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... Wilder, more despairing grew the cries. Closer and closer the bird drew to the panes, striking them with a twang like the ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... was dumb. I knew not what to say or ask or think. The happenings of this terrible day, which had wrought the defeat of the Union army, had been too much for me. Vanquished, exhausted, despairing, heart-sore from enforced desertion of my wounded friend, still far from safety myself, with no physical desire remaining except the wish to lie down and be at rest forever, and with no moral feeling in my consciousness except that of shame,—which will forever rise uppermost in ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... Mrs. Morris whispered, breathlessly. Next moment she was locked in his arms. Nancy gazed furtively about, peering at the faces, and hoping that one might be her son. After a long scrutiny, she turned a despairing, helpless face to her late travelling companion. Mrs. Morris understood, and came to ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... inhabitants of the province. He repeated his determination to treat them all as enemies, unless they furnished him with the means of expelling their tyrants from the country. He obtained small sums in this manner from time to time. The inhabitants were favorably disposed, but they were timid and despairing. They saw no clear way towards the accomplishment of the result concerning which Louis was so confident. They knew that the terrible Alva was already on his way. They felt sure of being pillaged by both parties, and of being hanged as rebels, besides, as soon as the Governor-general should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... shall we do?" was her despairing question, as the full truth became distinct to ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... Majesty, to know whether, if a new parliament were called, they would agree to pass an act for repealing the Sacramental Test, and establishing a general liberty of conscience. But he received so little encouragement, that, despairing of success, he had recourse to his dispensing power, which the judges had determined to be part of his prerogative. By colour of this determination, he preferred several Presbyterians, and many Papists, to civil and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... is vain to dream of defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, "Well, you know holly—mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this logical method in the comparison of plants or nations. But if he had said to the Teuton, "Well, you know Germany—England's the opposite"—the definition, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only inadequate, but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament, and the gracious promise from the Throne. The complaints of your despairing merchants, the voice of England, has condemned it. Be the guilt of it upon the head of the adviser. God forbid that this committee should share the guilt ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... found that the land ranne towards the North, which was to mee a great displeasure. Neuerthelesse, sayling along by the coast to see if I could finde any gulfe that turned, I found the lande still continent to the 56. degree vnder our Pole. And seeing that there the coast turned toward the East, despairing to finde the passage, I turned backe againe, and sailed downe by the coast of that land toward the Equinoctiall (euer with intent to finde the saide passage to India) and came to that part of this ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... delusive pictures of other men's happiness. Like Bunyan's poor tempted Christian, he, too, at times espied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him, and had to wage a deadly combat with many a doubt and hard, despairing thought. 'You are a wreck, Michael Burnett!' the grim tempter seemed to say to him. 'Better be quit of it all! Before you are thirty your work is over; what will you do with the remainder of your life? You are poor—perhaps ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... knowledge of the country to burst upon the enemy by night, to entrap them into ambuscades, to separate the cavalry from the foot, and by many other stratagems to thin their ranks and harass the stragglers. At length Richard, despairing of dislodging him from his fastnesses in Idrone, or fighting a way out of them, sent to him another deputation of "the English and Irish of Leinster," inviting him to Dublin to a personal interview. This proposal ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the despairing moan of a woman: he had already divined the sex of the futile questioner whom the station-master was bullying; but he had divined it without compassion, and if he had not himself been a sufferer from the man's insolence he might even have felt a ferocious satisfaction ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 'I can't stand him; I loathe him; I can't bear it! If you don't love me, better kill me!' I was angry, and I struck her twice with the bridle, but at that instant Vasya ran in at the gate, and in a despairing voice he shouted: 'Don't beat her! Don't beat her!' But he ran up himself, and waving his arms, as though he were mad, he let fly with his fists at her with all his might, then flung her on the ground and kicked ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... more children on their hands than they can care for, whose health is insufficient to longer endure the pains and burdens of pregnancy, but whose sensual husbands continue to demand indulgence, will echo in despairing tones, while acknowledging the truth, "What shall we do?" We will answer the question for ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... in a despairing and unbelieving world. And probably the world never saw, in any age, such devotion and zeal for an invisible power. It was animated by the hope of a glorious immortality, of which Christianity alone, of all ancient religions, inspired a firm conviction. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... two years they had made a resistance of the most valiant description, and now, despairing of success or rescue, and seeing the hosts of their besiegers increasing day by day, they hoisted a flag upon the walls and sent a deputation to the kings, asking for terms if they submitted. They would have done well ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... his contorted features there was something so despairing that it looked positively like rage, like agony.... And he was in agony, truly. He could not himself have foreseen that such pain could be felt by him, and in a frenzy he implored forgiveness, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the graces of Thackeray, these and that inimitable style, which always tempts and always baffles the admiring and despairing copyist. Where did he find the trick of it, of the words which are invariably the best words, and invariably fall exactly in the best places? "The best words in the best places," is part of Coleridge's definition of poetry; it is also the essence of Thackeray's prose. In these Letters ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... of her boy-brother glimmered up through it, like that of Dives in hell-fire to his guardian-angel as he hung lax-winged and faint in the ascending smoke. The mist thinned, and at length she caught a glimmer of his pleading, despairing, self-horrified eyes: all the mother in her nature rushed to the aid of her struggling will; her heart gave a great heave; the blood ascended to her white brain, and flushed it with rosy life; her body ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... death, and yet each of those strokes might be taken in the wrong direction. It was a terrible thought. Heavier and heavier grew his cramped limbs, harder and harder pressed the merciless sea. He sank—rose—sank again, and as he came up once more, lifted his voice in a despairing cry, feeling ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the day! For, dark and despairing, my sight, I may seal, But man cannot cover what God would reveal; 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... compelled to do so on account of the form of the flower. The tube is large...so that most bumblebee workers could easily reach the nectar if the tube were not curved in the opposite direction from that of most flowers, and if the anthers did not obstruct the entrance." Sometimes small bees, despairing of getting into the tube through the mouth, suck at holes in the flower's sides, because legitimate feasting was made too difficult for the poor little things. The ruby-throated hummingbird, hovering a second above the tube, drains it with none of the clown-like ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... cars and motor lorries, jumped up and pushed on. Every step through the thick mud was taken with an effort. We frequently lost touch with the troops ahead of us and would have to march at the double in order to catch up. I was fast getting into that despondent, despairing frame of mind which often follows great physical weariness, when I remembered a bit of wisdom out of a book by William James which I had read several years before. He had said, in effect, that men have layers of energy, reserves of nervous force, which they are rarely called ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... with a despairing glance. The accident had happened in the worst possible position, as such accidents are invariably supposed to do, the nails being spilt a couple of yards from the wall, in such a position that two sides of the carpet must be unfastened ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... forbidden!" says Perpetua. She confronts her aunt with flaming eyes and crimson cheeks. "I do want to go to the theatre, and to balls, and dances, and everything. I"—passionately, and with a most cruel, despairing longing in her young voice, "want to dance, to laugh, to sing, to amuse myself—to be the gayest ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... my office in a rather dazed and despairing state when Professor Ludwig Stein, proprietor of a magazine called NorthandSouth and a writer of special articles on Germany's foreign relations for the VossischeZeitung, under the name of "Diplomaticus," called ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... hunted out, we officers finding that our quarters had not been plundered, and hurriedly changing our hunting garments for service uniform; and somehow as I stepped out again into the dark night, with sword belted on, and pistols ready to place in my saddle holsters, the helpless despairing feeling began to ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Chancery. In August, 1768, we find him in London about the patent, where he became so utterly wearied with the delays, and so provoked with the enormous fees required to protect the invention, that he wrote his wife in a most despairing mood. She administered the right medicine in reply, "I beg you will not make yourself uneasy though things do not succeed as you wish. If the engine will not do, something else will; never despair." Happy man whose wife ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... French vessel, just ready to weigh anchor. An officer, who at that moment was stepping into the small boat that was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young woman, as, holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with one last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with the deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both mother and child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then instantly put out from land, and bounded away over the billows with ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... Nora; in the semi-dark of the car her face was drawn and despairing. There was not a ray of hope in Scanlon's own breast, and patiently he listened as the quiet voice ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... previously been turned against herself. Then finding himself worsted, the afore-mentioned desperate lover hies himself away, and your humble servant turns up in the nick of time, and rescues the almost despairing warbler, and returns her to the arms of—well—a waiting friend; quite a ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... know," said Sheila in a despairing tone. "I cannot tell you. What I feel is that, with all this trouble, it is better that our life as it was in that house ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... hand, and tremblingly essayed to drop her veil. Her languid insolence had vanished with her good looks. For the moment, she was a broken and despairing woman. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... crumble to pieces of itself. In the personality of their leader, it was thought, lay the secret of the people's strength; and like the Philistines, the enemy struck at the supposed bond of power. Terrible as was the blow of the fearful fatality, the Church soon emerged from its despairing state of poignant grief, and rose mightier than before. It is the faith of this people that while the work of God on earth is carried on by men, yet mortals are but instruments in the Creator's hands for the accomplishment of divine purposes. ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... station, he felt quite certain that five minutes' conversation would set the whole matter straight; and he even wondered if Mr. Phillips could be got to return to the church later in the day to marry him to Bet. Bet's white, despairing face haunted him; and he tried to shut it away from his thoughts, and to dwell on the delightful anticipation of soon setting all her fears ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... despairing glance in Jill's direction, wiped the sweat from my brow, and returned ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... connected with real suffering which recoils from circumstantial rehearsal or delincation, as from violation offered to something sacred, and which is, or should be, dedicated to privacy. Grief does not parade its pangs, nor the anguish of despairing hunger willingly count again its groans or its humiliations. Hence it was that Ledyard, the traveller, speaking of his Russian experiences, used to say that some of his miseries were such, that he ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Hastings was about despairing of being heard, and was beginning to think that possibly her husband might be right and Eugenia in the suds after all, a chubby, brown-faced girl appeared, and after giving her a searching, curious glance, shewed her into ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... again. She thought of going to beseech Serge and ask him what sum he would take in exchange for Micheline's liberty; but the haughty and sarcastic face of the Prince forcibly putting the bank-notes in her hands, passed before her, and she guessed that she would not obtain anything. Cast down and despairing, she entered her office ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... relief columns on the Tientsin road are driving in unwieldy Chinese forces on top of us, and this native soldiery is falling back on the capital to be remarshalled after a fashion—placed on the city walls or flung against us in a despairing attempt to kill us all, and remove the Thing which is making the relieving columns advance so quickly. Crazy with fear, and with ghosts of the chastisement of 1860 etched on every column of dust raised by their retreating soldiery, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... accents of mingled hope and pain. There was a sound in the bushes above me—a louder sound and a rush. Turkey sprang to his feet and vanished. I followed. Before I reached the top, there came a despairing cry from Davie, and a shout and a gabble from Willie. Then followed a louder shout and a louder gabble, mixed with a scream from the bagpipes, and an exulting laugh from Turkey. All this passed in the moment I spent in getting to the top, the last step of which ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Without despairing, however, I undertook the siege of a less implacable heart. The fates were again propitious for a brief period, but again a trivial incident interfered. Meeting my betrothed in an avenue thronged with the elite of the city, I was hastening ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... her head down on the table, pressed her white fingers suddenly against her eyes with a gesture infinitely desolate and despairing, and he knew that she was in tears. Then there was a ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... and Mrs. Borden is clear worn out. She thinks just the sight of Marilla would comfort them. We might go on keeping that Ellen, though the babies won't take to her. I think Marilla charmed them; but they're always been good until now. And there's four more teeth to come through," in a despairing sort ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... the customary exchange of civilities, I arch my eyebrows at an intelligent -looking madaine, and inquire, " Comprendre Anglais." "Non," replies the lady, looking puzzled, while I proceed to ventilate my pantomimic powers to try and make my wants understood. After fifteen minutes of despairing effort, mademoiselle, the daughter, is despatched to the other side of the town, and presently returns with a be whiskered Frenchman, who, in very much broken English, accompanying his words with wondrous ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... de Montsorel Be quick, and send for Inez. Examine the deeds carefully, I implore you. This is the request of a despairing mother. ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... led the way over a wall to the sacred soil of an Englishman's stately home. Bones wanted the wood, because one of his scenes was laid on the edge of a wood. It was the scene where the bad girl, despairing of convincing anybody as to her inherent goodness, was taking a final farewell of the world before "leaving a life which had held nothing but sadness and misunderstanding," to quote the title which was to ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... briny main. After having sworn to these things, and whatever else may cut off the pleasing: hope of returning, let us go, the whole city of us, or at least that part which is superior to the illiterate mob: let the idle and despairing part remain upon these inauspicious habitations. Ye, that have bravery, away with effeminate grief, and fly beyond the Tuscan shore. The ocean encircling the land awaits us; let us seek the happy plains and prospering Islands, where the untilled land ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... seen Nellie in the distance, and was about despairing of making her acquaintance when accident threw her in my way. Directly opposite our house, and just across along green meadow, was a piece of woods which belonged to Mr. Gilbert, and there, one afternoon early in May, I saw ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... way back along the other wall to the front of the cave again. Despairing, she sat down on the chill stone. The events of the last few hours had left her in a state of mental vertigo. The hold-up of the buckboard and her carrying off by the bandits ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the fevered and despairing lamentations of Lizabetha Prokofievna without the least emotion; the tears of this sorrowful mother did not evoke answering sighs—in fact, she laughed at her. She was a dreadful old despot, this princess; she could not allow equality in anything, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thought and he will empty it of its content to our eyes; that is not how we really see things, but it is how we ought to see them if what we believe about the nature of things is true. This irony we find in Mr. Nevinson's pictures of the war, whether it be a despairing irony or the rebellion of an unshaken faith. He has emptied man of his content, just as the Prussian drill sergeant would empty him of his content for the purposes of war; and only a Prussian drill sergeant could consent to this version of man ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... to be really gone we started up bemoaning our horrible fate, until the hall echoed with our despairing cries. Though we were many and our enemy was alone it did not occur to us to kill him, and indeed we should have found that a hard task, even if we had thought of it, and no plan could we devise to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... mouths became dry, and eyes restless. Sweat covered their bodies, and their hairs stood on their ends. Despairing of vanquishing their foe, they became ready to leave the field. Abandoning their wounded brothers and sires and sons and friends and relatives by marriage and kinsmen they fled, urging their steeds and elephants to their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... confessor, and, accompanied by the chaplain, sent him to learn the vavasour's secret. The two priests went to the man and told him that the King had appointed them to hear him. At this announcement, despairing of ever seeing King John, and trusting to the Confessor and the chaplain not to reveal his secret to any but the King, he uttered these words: "While I was alone in the fields, a voice spake unto me three times, saying: 'Go unto King John of France and warn him that he fight not with any of his ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of despairing profligates. ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... dreadful books!" she said, pushing away the notebooks lying before her on the table. "Why did you give them me? No, it was better anyway," she added, touched by his despairing face. "But ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... own, As one who burns, whose fire within him lies And aggravates his grief, while reason dies, With its own martyrdom almost o'erthrown. I strove mine ardent longing to restrain, Her fair calm face that I might ne'er disturb: I can no more; falls from my hand the curb, And my despairing soul is bold again; Wherefore if higher than her wont she aim, The act is thine, who firest and spur'st her so, No way too rough or steep for her to go: But the rare heavenly gifts are most to blame Shrined in herself: let her at least feel this, Lest of my faults ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... made to simulate diseases which were raging among their owners, and had forced down their reluctant throats the remedies which I deemed most likely to suit their supposed complaints. And after a time I rose still higher in my ambition; and despairing of finding another human patient, I proceeded to try my ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... whose account of the matter and of what followed had better now be quoted. "The Pansophiae Prodromus," he says, "having been published, and copies dispersed through the various kingdoms of Europe, but many learned men who approved of the sketch despairing of the full accomplishment of the work by one man, and therefore advising the erection of a College of learned men for this express business, in these circumstances the very person who had been the means of giving the Prodromus to the world, a man strenuous in ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... In one final despairing, attempt to sink the Undaunted, the last German destroyer launched another torpedo. By a wonderful maneuver the British cruiser again avoided the projectile, which sped ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... In despairing patience, his mother carries him like a child into the sun, where he sits by the roadside in the shortening shadows ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... else is the consciousness of his utter helplessness. Succor or sympathy there is none. Penitence for embarking avails not. The final satisfaction of despairing may not be his with a relish. Vain the idea of idling out the calm. He may sleep if he can, or purposely delude himself into a crazy fancy, that he is merely at leisure. All this he may compass; but he may not lounge; for to lounge ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... For one despairing moment, Lance felt almost like hurling himself through the window. Then, he straightened up. His mouth compressed into a thin line. "If I must face the facts, I must. But," his tone edged off into irony, "it sure isn't easy. You'll ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... to be now in a state of great decadence, "oppressed by the Lamas of other sects, the Peunbo (Bonpo) think only of shaking off the yoke, and getting deliverance from the vexations which the smallness of their number forces them to endure." In June, 1863, apparently from such despairing motives, the Lamas of Tsodam, a Bonpo convent in the vicinity of the mission settlement of Bonga in E. Tibet, invited the Rev. Gabriel Durand to come and instruct them. "In this temple," he writes, "are the monstrous idols of the sect of Peunbo; horrid figures, whose features only Satan could ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a man of noble lineage and great wealth, and Auffredy woke from his dream of happiness at once. His strains were now all gloom and sadness, and Elionore heard, with something like astonishment, the melancholy and despairing lays, to which alone he tuned the harp that all delighted to hear. Beatrix, too, whose wishes had not been consulted on a subject so important to herself, appeared quite changed from the tune the tidings first reached her; and her pale cheek and starting ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... had to toil and suffer here she would, if at all possible, do something to escape the suffering in the life to come. But how should she begin? What was she to do? Was there anything that could give her aching heart some comfort, her despairing soul some hope? Was it possible to flee from the suffering in the next world? for that such existed she was sure, and her heart cried ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen
... Christina, feeling her eyes filling with tears, but endeavouring at the same time to conceal her emotion under an affectation of anger, "your opinion of me is not very flattering; and it is not in very good taste, methinks, to play the despairing lover, especially after the conversation you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... at night, as they moaned round the rock, seemed to modulate themselves, to form their sounds to something like a wild cry, and wail forth, "Come home!" Yet that home was now surely farther removed than ever, and the winds seemed only to mock him. More sad and more despairing than Ulysses on the Ogygian shore, he too wasted away ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... hunger and want, I was despairing when that angel-like teacher, one of the purest and best of women, came to my rescue, and thenceforth with her own hands and earnings continued to help supply all my needs—material and spiritual. She taught me the alphabet of school, of life and of heaven; ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... exceed the solemnity with which the old couple had risen from the table, and yet was it—was it a grin with which the father turned away from his unhappy sons? Could it be—could it be a wink with which the aunt abandoned her despairing niece? And were those—were those sounds of suppressed chuckling which floated into the room, just before Balbus (who had followed them out) closed the door? Surely not: and yet the butler told the cook—but no, that was merely ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... rendered the war-cry more inopportune than ever. Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, had been driven from the Mincio to the Oglio, thence to the Adda, thence to Milan. He was now recrossing the Piedmontese frontier, vanquished, despairing and heart-broken. Piedmont, nevertheless, in the silence of her humiliation, set about preparing for a ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... other, this strange being who dominated her movements, stood passively and willingly by, while her despairing and truer self saw the shame and truth. She was a lie. The guests, friends, attendants, bridesmaids, the minister, the father, mother, groom—all were lies. They expressed ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... came home, despairing of ever seeing Honeybird again. They had met ould Davy at the gates, who told them to run on and see what was sitting by the ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... clad in camel's hair. We see him again as the chivalrous youth of the Campanile, the dedicated, absorbed wanderer of the Bargello, the haggard, emaciated prophet of the Friars' Church at Venice, and at last as the despairing and ancient seer of Siena, a voice that is only a voice weary of itself, crying unheeded in the wilderness. And, as it seems to me in all these figures, which in themselves have so little beauty, it is rather a mood of the soul that Donatello has set himself to express than any delight. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... herself to death, heartbroken at the murder of her two sons by Tiberius, and despairing at the thought that her other son, the crazy, debauched, cruel Caligula was alone left to represent her family. The other daughter of Agrippa, Julia, was infamous for her debaucheries, and died in banishment. The family was then represented ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... between it and him, rendered any attempt to scale it, without some aid from above, utterly impossible. He must, then, call for help; but who was there to hear him in this wild place—.and how could he make himself heard above the din of the raging waters which surrounded him? He was nigh despairing again, when he remembered the whistle with which he used to call the pigs, and which he always carried about him; he took it from his pocket, and blew a long, shrill cry—it rose high above all the roar and tumult of the ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... have wholly cut you. But I wrote half a letter to you three months ago; and mislaid it; spent some time in looking for it, always hoping; and then some more time despairing; and we all know how time goes when [we] have got a thing to do which we are rather lazy about doing. As for instance, getting up in a morning. Not that writing a letter to you is so bad as getting up; but it is not easy for mortal man who has heard, seen, done, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... that?" asked Connie, as the siren rose to a shriek and then died off into a despairing ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... sorrows, new pains, new losses, that I need: and whether we know that we need it, or think we need something else, it is all the same; for we cannot escape from life, however reluctant or sick or crushed or despairing we may be. It waits for us until we have done groaning and bleeding, and we must rise up again and live. Even if we die, even if we seek death for ourselves, it is useless. The eye may close, the tide of unconsciousness may flow in, the huddled ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be sorrowful. I have already referred to the instances of His putting aside His need for rest, and His desire for still fellowship with God, at the call of whoever needed Him. It was the same always. If a Nicodemus comes by night, if a despairing father forces his way into the house of feasting, if another suppliant finds Him in a house, where He would have remained hid, if they come running to Him in the way, or drop down their sick before Him through ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Government that the English fleet was so deficiently supplied with ammunition, as to be unable to complete the destruction of the invaders. But enough was done to ensure it. Many of the largest Spanish ships were sunk or captured in the action of this day. And at length the Spanish admiral, despairing of success, fled northward with a southerly wind, in the hope of rounding Scotland, and so returning to Spain without a farther encounter with the English fleet. Lord Effingham left a squadron to continue the blockade of the Prince of Parma's armament; but that wise general soon withdrew his ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the most captivating grace and ease of manner, now inclined to languorous melancholy, now scintillating with a joyous vivacity that was contagious. His sensitive nature, like the most exquisitely constructed sounding-board, vibrated with the despairing sadness, the suppressed wrath, and the sublime fortitude of the brave, haughty, unhappy people he loved, and with his own homesickness when afar from ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... President desires peace, it is our duty to help him secure it. And how? By exerting your influence to convince the German Government of this fact and to persuade that Government to take no steps that would lead in the direction of war. My fear has been that the German Government might, despairing of a friendly settlement, break off diplomatic relations, and thus create a condition out of which war might come without the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... admirably adapted to warn the thoughtless—break the stony heart—convince the wavering—cherish the young inquirer—strengthen the saint in his pilgrimage, and arm him for the good fight of faith—and comfort the dejected, doubting, despairing Christian. It abounds with ardent sympathy for the broken-hearted, a cordial suited to every wounded conscience; while, at the same time, it thunders in awful judgment upon the impenitent and the hypocritical professor: wonders of grace to God belong, for all these blessings ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... were on the point of despairing altogether, then a plausible opening would show itself as if leading towards the land, and we would be tempted to run down it until we found the field become so closely packed, that it was with great difficulty ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... to a fairly respectable little bedroom, of which I was to be sole occupant, unless I felt lonely and would like Rose Jane to sleep with me. I looked at pretty, soft-eyed, dirty little Rose Jane, and assured her kind-hearted mother I would not be the least lonely, as the sickening despairing loneliness which filled my heart was not of a nature to be cured by having as a bedmate ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... along, little boy," said Ivy, and Mat, with a last despairing glance at the feast, was gone, leaving her ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... despairing tone, "how is it that I can never trust you for even a few minutes out of my sight? You grow more rebellious and unmanageable every day. I have given up my home, and slaved and worked for you all, and ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... urgent request that I would see him immediately and alone; and before I had had time to send a reply, he came clattering into the room, trailing his sabre behind him, and dropped into the first arm-chair with a despairing self-abandonment which shook ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... life again, as the magic wand struck the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the wood! It is a moment of rest from every misery; the sufferings of the sick are allayed, and a breath of hope enters into the hearts of the despairing. But, alas! it is but a short respite! Everything will soon resume its wonted course: the great human machine, with its long strains, its deep gasps, its collisions, and its crashes, will be again ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... their horror, the forms of their lost comrades are seen within it: whose hearts are doomed to be torn out living from their breasts to smoke before the shrine of Huitzilopochtli, the war-devil of their enemies. From that high and fearful place their comrades' eyes must be gazing with despairing look towards the impotent Spanish camp, glazing soon in death as the obsidian knives of the priests performed their fiendish work. The disastrous situation of the Spaniards was made worse by the desertion, at this juncture, of the Tlascalan and other allies. Awed by a prophecy sent out confidently ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... my new follower after me. There was less choice but more quiet, and soon I found that Erling knew more of the points of a steed than I did. A Dane is a born horse dealer. So I sent him one way while I went another, and when I was almost despairing of finding what I thought would suit me, he came in search of me, leading a great skew-bald horse, bright brown and white in broad splashes all over him, in no sort of pattern. After him came a man who might be a farmer, and looked as if he cared not whether he sold the ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... philanthropy the Atlantic Ocean of sin, suffering, and despair which floods in to the shores of our industrialism—at high tide nearly swamping its prosperity, and at low tide leaving all its ugliness, squalor, and despairing hopelessness bare ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... so condemn the realists, rhymesters, authors, and their way, Just because they point about us to the errors of to-day; Spare them, though they gaze not upward from our self-wrought piteous plight, For, though blinded and despairing, they are struggling ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... pelt!" growled Hiram at the despairing morning conference under the poplars. "She must be livin' in a hole round here, or else come in a balloon. I tell you, Cap'n Sproul, it's got to be stopped some way or the two families will be in the lunatic asylum inside ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Full fretfully the maiden bore, 40 Till she her lily finger found Crimson'd with many a tiny wound; And to her eyes, suffus'd with watery woe, Her flower-embroider'd web danc'd dim, I wist, Like blossom'd shrubs in a quick-moving mist: 45 Till vanquish'd the despairing Maid sunk low. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... he ever expected to gratify, but the idea of which lends a sort of grace to his life. When he meets some young woman fit to be his wife he will forget all about it, but till then he will go about fancying himself a despairing lover. And then such a young man as John Eames is very apt to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... clerk, was preferable to imprisonment in Samory's stronghold. Many were the means by which I sought to make time pass more rapidly, but the hours had leaden feet, and while the tiny ray struggled through above, my mind was constantly racked by bitter thoughts of the past, and a despairing ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... expressed in making it sound. Strange to say, through the love of this rarest friend, I gained, at the very moment of becoming homeless, a real home for my art which I had hitherto longed for and sought for in the wrong place.... At the end of my last stay in Paris, when, ill, miserable, and despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eye fell on the score of my 'Lohengrin,' which I had totally forgotten. Suddenly I felt something like compassion that this music should never sound from off the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... dramatic group overflowing with humour. Note no fewer than ten faces in the background, servants, etc., all expressing interest according to their class and degree. The five chief characters express drunkenness in five different fashions: the hopeless, combative, despairing, affectionate, etc. Wardle's ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... late: ere the echoes of her cry had ceased, Meynell's soul had gone to its last account. He had approached too near the edge of the precipice: the snow gave way beneath his feet; a moment more, and he lay a bleeding corpse upon the ice-bound rocks below. Atawa's despairing shrieks brought out the inmates of the huts. They were obliged to use force, to separate her from the lifeless body; she rent her hair, and tried to lay violent hands upon herself, long refusing all sustenance. From her incoherent words, they at length gathered something of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... tree trunk with stunning force, and rebounded, and swung clear, and then dangled halfway between earth and the jungle roof. It was minutes before his head cleared, and then he felt at once despairing and a fool. Dangling in his parachute harness when ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various |
