"Despair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... behind him—stealing upon him! He turned. All was dark in the wood, but to his fancy the darkness here and there broke into pairs of green eyes, and he had not the power even to raise his bow-hand from his side. In the strength of despair he strove to rouse courage enough, not to fight—that he did not even desire—but to run. Courage to flee home was all he could even imagine, and it would not come. But what he had not was ignominiously given him. A cry in the wood, half a screech, half a growl, sent him running ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... no ready answer, yet the echo of utter despair in her voice stirred me to my own duty as swiftly as though she had thrust a knife into my side. Do? We must do something! We could not sit down idly there in the swamp. And to decide what was to be attempted was my part. If Kirby, and whoever was with him, had stolen the missing ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... and Angela. The suspense began to diminish into "wanhope" or despair; and the brothers and sisters continued to say that they were sorry above all for Phyllis, whose gentle sweetness had made her one ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... bank in search of a more propitious spot. Then we followed down again. Each place promised at a distance, and baulked hope at hand. At last, in despair, we came to a halt opposite the widest and shallowest part, and after no end of urging, one of the porters stripped, and, armed with his pole, ventured in. The channel lay well over to the farther side; thrice he got to its nearer edge and ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... become a poet whom they should see honored. But this was regarded only as the crowning mark of the most unbearable vanity; and from house to house it was repeated. I was a good man, they said, but one of the vainest in existence; and in that very time I was often ready wholly to despair of my abilities, and had, as in the darkest days of my school- life, a feeling, as if my whole talents were a self-deception. I almost believed so; but it was more than I could bear, to hear the same ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... body also arose. He stretched out his arms longingly towards her, but a second wave came up, covered him, and drew him down again. "Alas, what does it profit me?" said the unhappy woman, "that I should see my beloved, only to lose him again!" Despair filled her heart anew, but the dream led her a third time to the house of the old woman. She set out, and the wise woman gave her a golden spinning-wheel, consoled her and said, "All is not yet fulfilled, tarry until the time of the full moon, then take the spinning-wheel, seat ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... remembrance made the blood stir in his veins. She had loved him passionately, madly, for three months; then, becoming pregnant in the absence of her husband, who was a governor of a colony, she had run away and concealed herself, distracted with despair and terror, till the birth of the child, which Mordiane carried off one summer's evening, and which they had not ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds, a severing ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... passion, half despair—James reiterated, 'There's no staying here. I must be gone. I ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... our mode of passing it to the best advantage. Perhaps in rational philosophy none could be better chosen than this scheme of migration, which would draw us from the immediate scene of our woe, and, leading us through pleasant and picturesque countries, amuse for a time our despair. The idea once broached, all were impatient to put ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... spring to his feet, but a gesture from the Mochuelo checked him. The Carlist cavalry had now passed the defile, and were no longer visible on the platform. The Mochuelo turned away and walked in the direction of the bivouac, and Herrera mechanically followed him, rage and despair in his heart. When out of earshot of the sentries the guerilla paused, and, leaning his back against a tree, folded his arms on his breast. His features, still pale, had assumed an expression of calm dignity, strongly contrasting with the hushed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... arrows and slings, and demonstrated sufficiently by their gestures that the Dutch were by no means welcome visitors, and that they were not to expect being permitted to land peaceably. As the boat approached the shore, the natives seemed to become frantic with despair, made frightful faces, tore their hair, and howled in a horrible manner; and at length, as borrowing courage from the increase of danger, they hurried into their canoes and put off from the shore, as if to meet that danger the sooner which was evidently unavoidable. As the Dutch continued ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... tenantry, and a staunch Tory in politics. The new evangelical school of Newton and Romaine she detested bitterly, as much in fact as she detested Popery. The nephew, however, came under Newton's influence and was converted. His aunt was in despair. She could not conquer her affection for him, but she almost raved when she reflected that the inheritor of her estates was a pious Methodist, as she called him. She had a good-looking, confidential maid who had lived ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... Lorraine's native element and my own; or at least don't at all mind her having been dipped in it. It has tempered and plated us for the rest of life, and to an effect different enough from the awful metallic wash of our Company's admired ice-pitchers. We artists are at the best children of despair—a certain divine despair, as Lorraine naturally says; and what jollier place for laying it in abundantly than the Art League? As for Peg, however, I won't hear of her having anything to do with this; she shall ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... entered their souls, that, even in the supreme moment when they clasped their first-born in their arms, the name which rose from heart to lip, and which they bestowed upon him, was in itself a cry of anguish and despair. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... yet he did not despair. He still trusted in that parent-power who smiles even under frowns, and often pours his richest showers from the blackest clouds. Cheered with this hope, he put the letter into his pocket, and set out to ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... thing—like a crazed pythoness. Her wild, fair hair fell loose about her; her blue eyes blazed steely flame; her face was crimson with the intensity of her rage, and shame, and despair, from forehead to chin. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... to fight for life. For that sin, forgive me, and for whatever else I have done wrong. Let no knowledge of the crime they are committing come to these men. Fierce men, fighters, toilers, full of hate, full of despair, full of rage, how can they be other than blind? Forgive them, as I forgive them without malice. And most of all, Lord God, forgive this most ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... of Vaudreuil. Scene in the Redoubt. Panic. Movements of the Victors. Vaudreuil's Council of War. Precipitate Retreat of the French Army. Last Hours of Montcalm. His Death and Burial. Quebec abandoned to its Fate. Despair of the Garrison. Levis joins the Army. Attempts to relieve the Town. Surrender. The British occupy Quebec. Slanders of Vaudreuil. Reception in England of the News of Wolfe's Victory and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... I utterly despair of being able to describe the prospect around us; and can only say that extensive mountain-peaks lay in lines below, and might be compared to those made upon embossed maps, but that the whole scene was vast, savage, and abandoned to sombre desolation—both the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... flattered with an uninterrupted series of victories; it reduced James to the lowest ebb of despondence, as it frustrated the whole scheme of his embarkation, and overwhelmed his friends in England with grief and despair. Some historians allege that Russel did not improve his victory with all advantages that might have been obtained before the enemy recovered their consternation. They say his affection to the service was in a great measure cooled by the disgrace of his friend the earl of Marlborough; that he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the Rover tore his hair, He curst himself in his despair: The waves rush in on every side, The ship is sinking beneath ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... suicide on account of domestic infelicity, left a short poem, Quejas, which is unique in the older Spanish-American literature by reason of its frank confession of feeling. The reflexive and didactic poet Numa P. Llona (1832-) was the author of passionate outpourings of doubt and despair after the fashion of Byron and Leopardi (Poesias, Paris, 1870; page 300 Cantos americanos, Paris, 1866; Cien sonetos, Quito, 1881). The gentle, melancholy bard, Julio Zalumbide (1833-1887), at first a skeptic and afterwards a devout believer in Christianity, wrote ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... vividly I recall the scene which followed, the more carefully I restore its different features, and separate the many threads of sensation which it wove into one gorgeous web, the more I despair of representing its exceeding glory. I was moving over the Desert, not upon the rocking dromedary, but seated in a barque made of mother-of-pearl, and studded with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... lived and breathed, and the Vision in the midst of them. Without intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a romance, conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others and my own, and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy and despair had their end in bliss. O, had I the burning fancy of my early youth, with manhood's colder gift, the power of expression, your hearts, sweet ladies, should ...
— The Vision of the Fountain (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ingersoll. Carnivorous, avenger, believer and pagan. Continent, promiscuous, changeable, treacherous, vain, Proud, with the pride that makes struggle a thing for laughter; With heart cored out by the worm of theatric despair. Wearing the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat; I, child of the abolitionist idealism— A sort of Brand in a birth of half-and-half. What other thing could happen when I defended The patriot scamps who ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... strolling along in a perfectly reasonable manner suddenly lay down, threw a fit, and went into a comatose state from which he recovered only after a day or two in Ancon or Colon hospitals. The doctors gave it up in despair. As a last resort the case was turned over to a Z. P. sleuth. He chose him a hiding-place as near as possible to the locality of the strange manifestation. For half the morning he sweltered and swore without ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... against them, but the mountaineers held their fastnesses so well that, in despair of conquering them, the few who survived their second onslaught slew themselves rather than return to Ayuthia to suffer a like fate to that which the monarch had awarded the others. Maddened at these repeated defeats, the ruler himself headed a large army ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... jumped again, in a kind of ecstasy—rubbed his hair desperately and wildly about—again looked into the glass—there it was, rougher than before; but eyebrows, whiskers, and head—all were, if anything, of a more vivid and brilliant green. Despair came over him. What had all his past troubles been to this?—what was to become of him? He got into bed again, and burst into a perspiration. Two or three times he got into and out of bed, to look at himself—on each occasion ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... started in southern New Jersey, but they failed. The soil was sandy and poor, and the work unfamiliar. Thrown upon his own resources, in a strange and unfriendly neighborhood, the man grew discouraged and gave up in despair. The colonies were in a state of collapse when the New York managers of the Baron de Hirsch Fund took them under the arms and gave them a start on a new plan. They themselves had located a partly industrial, partly farming, community in the neighborhood. They persuaded several large clothing contractors ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... her hands in despair; then she hastily crossed the room, snatched out one of the arrows, and strove to break it. Paaker sprang from his seat, and wrenched the weapon from her hand; the sharp point slightly scratched the skin, and dark drops of blood flowed from it, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hand, during the spring, a few more ambitious seals won their way ashore in high winds; but they did not remain long in the piercing cold, moving uneasily from place to place in search of protecting hummocks and finally taking to the water in despair. Often a few hours of calm weather was the signal for half a dozen animals to land. The wind sooner or later sprang up and drove them ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... accustomed to crumple paper contemptuously, and putting down my verses on the table, appointed me to return in a week for an answer as to the object of my visit. I took my leave. The next seven days appeared to me seven centuries. My future prospects, my favor, my mother's consolation or despair, my love,—in a word, my life or death, were in the hands of M. Didot. At times, I pictured him to myself reading my verses with the same rapture that had inspired me on my mountains, or on the brink of my native ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... see. And there was y-buried Isaiah the prophet. Also, straight from NATATORIUM SILOE, is an image, of stone and of old ancient work, that Absalom let make, and because thereof men clepe it the hand of Absalom. And fast by is yet the tree of elder that Judas hanged himself upon, for despair that he had, when he sold and betrayed our Lord. And there beside was the synagogue, where the bishops of Jews and the Pharisees came together and held their council; and there cast Judas the thirty pence before them, and said that he had sinned betraying our Lord. And there nigh ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... exclamations, True Blue and others of the best seamen encouraged the rest, while the commissioned and warrant-officers kept their eyes on any who seemed to despair of success, and ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... unwisely amorous. I myself have not loved a lady, and pursued her with a great deal of under-age protestation, whom some three or four gallants that have enjoyed would with all their hearts have been glad to have been rid of. 'Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out. Away, away, my lord. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... hazard with even less warranty. It is, that Teufelsdrockh, is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytize. How often already have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and Despair, or Love and Hope only seared into the figure of these! Remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his: "How were Friendship possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible; except ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... some men might have given up the attempt in despair, and saved themselves across the border. But I have always valued myself on my fidelity, and I did not shrink. If not to-day, to-morrow; if not this time, next time. The dice do not always turn up aces. Bracing myself, therefore, to the ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... do? I could not find the gypsy, and was almost in despair. On the morning of the fourth day, the invalid suddenly rose in ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and Dana King's admiring gaze upon her, it was possible for Isobel to walk out upon the stage. Somehow or other she got through her part—miserably, she knew, for again and again Mr. Oliver made her repeat her lines and once, in despair, stopped everything to ask her if she was ill, and did not wish to have Miss Lee take her part. Isobel did not intend giving up her part to anyone; she gritted her little white ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... probable direction and distance to which a man might be thrown in such an accident, went to a certain spot and sought carefully around it in all directions. For some time he sought in vain, and was on the point of giving up in despair, when he observed a cap lying on the ground. Going up to it, he saw the form of a man half-concealed by a mass of rubbish. He stooped, and, raising the head a little, tried to make out the features, but the light of the fires ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... refusal to treat with the house of Bourbon. The d'Hauteserres considered it fortunate that Bonaparte escaped that danger, believing that the republicans had instigated it. But Laurence wept with rage when she heard he was safe. Her despair overcame her usual reticence, and she vehemently complained that God had deserted the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... am not tired. There is for my great good-for-nothingness not that excuse. I am—a wastrel of my gifts." It was, she saw, one of the crises of despair under which many artists suffer, but its intensity was most painful. "You are good to me, Brigitte," he said, brokenly, taking her left hand and holding it to his forehead, which was cold and damp. "You are ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... the dupe of a stratagem; and after galloping across the country, struck the road that he had been decoyed from following; then urging his horse in the direction which he supposed the principal abductors had pursued, he at length in despair left it, and again clearing fence and brook, held his course towards the city of Montreal, where he arrived betwixt midnight and dawn, and with the butt of his riding-whip knocked ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... rope of 22,400 men around Santiago, with its 26,000 Spanish soldiers, and then Spain succumbed in despair. In a semi-circle extending around Santiago, from Daliquiri on the east clear around to Cobre on the west, our troops were stretched a cordon of almost impenetrable thickness and strength. First came General Bates, with the Ninth, Tenth, Third, Thirteenth, ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... night encampments being made behind breastworks of felled timbers. There was therefore no chance for a surprise; and their great inferiority in number made it hopeless for the Cherokees to try a fair fight. In their despair they asked help from the Creeks; but the latter replied that they had plucked the thorn of warfare from their (the Creeks') foot, and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the fine old mansion which, with pillared porticos and mighty chimneys, dominated the whole section. Layson's heart was filled with confidence whenever he went to the stables to view the really startling beauty of the lovely animal on which his hope was pinned; it sunk into despair, when, seated in his study in the house, away from her, he counted up the cost of all which he would lose if she did not run ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... did not heaven well know Rebellion, once forgiven, would greater grow, I should, with Belial, chuse ignoble ease; But neither will the conqueror give peace, Nor yet so lost in this low state we are, As to despair of a well-managed war. Nor need we tempt those heights which angels keep, Who fear no force, or ambush, from the deep. What if we find some easier enterprise? There is a place,—if ancient prophecies And fame in heaven not err,—the blest abode Of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... shot of double canons, in so great a number, and so terrible, that it darkened the whole ayr; wherewith, although I was in my native country, yet stood I amazed, not knowing what it meant. Thus, as I abode in despair, either to return or to continue my former purpose, I chanced to see coming towards me an honest citizen, clothed in a long garment, keeping the highway, seeming to walk for his recreation, which prognosticated rather peace than perill; of whom I demanded the cause of this great shot; ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... imaginations of hell and of purgatory and fleeting glimpses of paradise, never put before us the picture of a soul that was lost and found heaven, after a cycle of despair. Nor could Madeleine Lannoy ever explain her feelings at that moment, even to herself. To begin with, she could not quite grasp the reality of this ray of hope, which came to her at the darkest hour of her misery. She stared at the man before her as she would on an ethereal vision; ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... . his head drooped, . . while Theos, whose every nerve throbbed in responsive sympathy with the passion of his despair, strove to think of some word of comfort, that like soothing balm might temper the bitterness of his chafed and wounded spirit, but could find none. For it was a case in which the truth must be told, . . and truth is always hard to bear if it destroys, or attempts to destroy, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... history we see this passion portrayed with the most complete and graphic fidelity in all its influences and effects; its uncontrollable impulses, its intoxicating joys, its reckless and mad career, and the dreadful remorse and ultimate despair and ruin in which ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Chili, there was no looking to the past without regret, nor to the future without despair, for I had learned by experience what were the views and motives which guided the councils of the State. Believe me, that nothing but a thorough conviction that it was impracticable to render the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the timid buck, when he is brought to the death-struggle, and has no choice but yielding his life or putting himself upon the defensive, by the aid of his splendid antlers, and with all the courage of despair. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... sailors jumped out, and we started on at once for my wife and children. To my horror, they were gone from the place where I left them. Overpowered with fear, I supposed they had been found and carried off. There was no time to lose, and the men told me I would have to go alone. Just at the point of despair, however, I stumbled on one of the children. My wife it seemed, alarmed at my long absence, had given up all for lost, and supposed I had fallen into the hands of the enemy. When she heard my voice, mingled with those of the others, she thought my captors were ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... hair!" she murmured, "you're Nina's despair and my endless punishment. I'd twist and pin you tight if I dared—some day I will, too. . . . What are you looking at so curiously, Captain Selwyn? ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... and strain had congested even the lung substances, and a chronic inflammation was the result. If we analyze the sputa we find fibrin and even lung muscle. Does all this array of dangerous symptoms cause an Osteopath to give up in despair? It should not, on the other hand he should go deeper on the hunt of cause. He may find trouble in nerve fiber of pneumogastric nerve, atlas or hyoid, vertebra, rib, or clavicle, may be by pressing on some nerve ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... growled Roger. "You should be that telepathic for your exams. Why didn't you read my thoughts when I beat my brains out trying to explain that thrust problem the other night?" He turned to Tom, shrugging his shoulders in mock despair. "Honestly, Tom, if I didn't know that he was the best power jockey in the Academy, I'd say he was the dumbest thing to leave Venus, including the dinosaurs in ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... you along with it in resistless sympathy. The excitable Hungarians can literally become intoxicated with this music—and no wonder. You cannot reason upon it, or explain it, but its strains compel you to sensations of despair and joy, of exultation and excitement, as though under the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... pretend to think the fate of slavery and the Confederacy turned on it. Grant was not quite so well prepared for battle on Saturday as on Sunday, and no part of the Army of the Ohio could or would have come to his aid sooner than Sunday. Grant, however, says he did not despair of success without ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Monastery of the Holy Virgin. One whom we seek is within; let us enter." Esther drew back into the room, and saw Nicholas standing behind her, his face haggard with despair. "Jehovah, then, is not ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... qualifications for the office of secretary, which he had thus far filled to his own satisfaction. To-night he could not command his ideas—he could not fix his attention. He wrote a paragraph, and then he dreamed; he planned a proposition, and then he forgot it again; and, in despair, started up to pace the floor, and disperse intrusive thoughts by exercise. These thoughts would intrude again, however; and he found himself listlessly watching through the window a waving treetop, or a sinking star, while his pen dried ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... say, if you knew all," said Lady Delacour; and she heaved a deep sigh, threw herself back in the carriage, let fall her mask, and was silent. It was broad daylight, and Belinda had a full view of her countenance, which was the picture of despair. She uttered not one syllable more, nor had Miss Portman the courage to interrupt her meditations till they came within sight, of Lady Singleton's, when Belinda ventured to remind her that she had resolved to stop there and change dresses ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... months than in ten years of Jurgen's company. Anaitis nagged and sulked for a while when her Prince Consort slackened in the pursuit of strange delights, as he did very soon, with frank confession that his tastes were simple and that these outlandish refinements bored him. Later Anaitis seemed to despair of his ever becoming proficient in curious pleasures, and she permitted Jurgen to lead a comparatively normal life, with only an ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... he was giving it up in despair, and coming to the conclusion he might just as well hasten back to his little charge and share his fate with him, when he caught sight of a stout elderly lady standing in a state of flurry and trepidation on the kerb of one of the most ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... unaffected voice, yet one with a marked character; something like Tennyson's, which was even more striking. Both were far removed from the now fashionable intonation, which is the admiration and despair of American swells. It is only the fin de siecle form of the demnition dialect of the Forties and the La-ard and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... poetical enthusiasm for rebels, robbers, and highwaymen. I was put out of conceit of my subject, and what was worse, I was lightened of my purse, in which was almost every farthing I had in the world. So I abandoned Sir Richard Steele's cottage in despair, and crept into less celebrated, though no less poetical and airy lodgings ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... held the household of the offender equally responsible with him for the offence, independently of the facts in the case. However, it was certainly also common enough for a bereaved wife to perform suicide, not through despair, but through the wish to follow her [289] husband into the other world, and there to wait upon him as in life. Instances of female suicide, representing the old ideal of duty to a dead husband, have occurred in recent times. Such suicides are usually performed according to the feudal ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the lonely cottage, while blessed with liberty, to gilded palaces, surrounded with the ensigns of slavery you may have the fullest assurance that tyranny with her whole accursed train, will hide her hideous head in confusion, shame, and despair. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of all was miserable in the extreme; they were clothed in rags, and the faces of the Europeans had a dull, hopeless look that told alike of their misery and of their despair of any escape from it. They looked up listlessly as he entered, and then an Italian said, "Cospetto, comrade; but I know not whether your place is with us, or with the Moslems across there. As far as colour goes I should put you down as a Nubian; ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... but it must be admitted that in this respect we are very far from satisfactory results, and that a system which produces bloated luxury plus extreme boredom at one end of the scale and destitution and despair at the other, can hardly be called the last word, or even the first, in civilisation. The career has been opened, more or less, to talent. But the handicap is so uneven and capricious that only exceptional ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... the eyes were, and yet they were not sad. Whatever thoughts lay hidden in that boy's mind—he was only ten years old, remember—they were certainly not thoughts of melancholy or despair. "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," and "the back is fitted to the burden," are phrases so common that we almost smile to repeat them or believe in them, and yet they are true. Any one whose enjoyments have been narrowed down by long ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... seen them. But Spenser's are too often mere names, with no bodies to back them, entered on the Muses' musterroll by the specious trick of personification. There is likewise, in Bunyan, a childlike simplicity and taking-for-granted which win our confidence. His Giant Despair,[296] for example, is by no means the Ossianic figure into which artists who mistake the vague for the sublime have misconceived it. He is the ogre of the fairy-tales, with his malicious wife; and he comes forth to us from those regions ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... opinions of her family—of his determination not to allow it to enter as a factor in either his life or hers. And Betty had come to Stornham—Betty whom he had detested as a child—and in the course of two days, she had seemed to become a new part of the atmosphere, and to make the dead despair of the place begin to stir with life. What other thing than this was happening as she spoke of making such rooms as the Rosebud Boudoir "look as they ought to look," and said the words not as if they were part of a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "Despair not in calamities of a gladdening that shall wipe away thy sorrows; For how many a simoom blows, then turns to a gentle breeze, and is changed! How many a hateful cloud arises, then passes away, and pours not forth! And the smoke of the wood, fear is ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... fair hair about her pure cheeks,' and so forth, in a style in which the vulturine nose must needs scent carrion, just because the roses are more fragrant than they should be in a world where all ought to be either vultures or carrion for their dinners. As for his despair, had he not good reason to be in despair? By his own sin he has hurled himself down the hill which he has so painfully climbed. He is in the Tower—surely no pleasant or hopeful place for any man. Elizabeth is exceedingly wroth with him; and what is worse, he deserves what he has got. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... reprimanded by officials, civic and clerical, and to wear, henceforward, upon her breast, the letter "A" in scarlet. Her fate is more enviable than that of her undiscovered lover, whose vacillations of dread and despair and determination to reveal all but move Hester to deeper pity and stronger love. She is beside him when he dies in the effort to bare his bosom and show the cancerous Scarlet Letter that has grown into his flesh while she wore hers outwardly.—Nathaniel ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of fever, and I spent the greater portion of the morning on my hard bed, getting up from time to time to try to move the agente to procure an animal, on which I might make the journey to El Triunfo. Finally, in despair, after difficulty in securing a foot-messenger, I sent a letter to Don Enrique, asking him to send an animal for my use. During the afternoon, a fine mule and a letter came from El Triunfo. "Sir: The boy brought me your letter, and I send you a good mule ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... and numerous howsoever their sins may be. This is an article of faith, and without holding it you could not die a good Catholic. Some doctors, it is true, have before now maintained the contrary, but they have been condemned as heretics. Only despair and final impenitence are unpardonable, and they are not sins of our life but in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that had elapsed were not without their signs and symptoms, their minor accidents and incidents, in regard to the subject that filled his thoughts. Harry had fifty times been tossed alternately from the height of hope to the depth of despair, from the extreme of felicity to the uttermost verge of sorrow, and he began seriously to reflect, when he remembered his desperate resolution on the first night of his arrival, that if he did not "do" ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... was nothing to be done with them or with the people in them. They were decaying together, and the sooner they decayed, the better would it be for Ireland. All his counsels that day were counsels of despair. What was the good of working and building when this was the material out of which a nation must be made? What was the good of trying to make sure foundations when impatient, undisciplined people like John Marsh came and threw one's work to the ground? Was it not better ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... resist that appeal? He heard her sigh—he heard the rustling of her dress as she moved away in despair. The very thing that he had shrunk from doing but a few minutes since was the thing that he did now! He joined Agnes in the corridor. She turned as she heard him, and pointed, trembling, in the direction of the closed room. 'Is it so terrible ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... faith, and by this faith alone, can the world be lifted out of its present confusion and despair. It was this faith which prevailed over the wicked force of Germany. You will remember that the beginning of the end of the war came when the German people found themselves face to face with the conscience of the world and realized that right was everywhere arrayed against the wrong that their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... de Guienne, in 1472, broke up the formidable combination. Charles the Bold at once broke truce and made war on the King, marching into northern France, sacking towns and ravaging the country, till he reached Beauvais. There the despair of the citizens and the bravery of the women saved the town. Charles raised the siege and marched on Rouen, hoping to meet the Duke of Brittany; but that Prince had his hands full, for Louis had overrun his territories, and had reduced him to terms. The Duke of Burgundy saw that the coalition ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... the Republican Convention, which was to be held in the town hall in the evening, Anderson went in despair and humility to Harry Squires, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... upon—the hearty favour of the mother, and one gift that is inimitable and that never failed him throughout life, the gift of a nature essentially noble and outspoken. A happy and high-minded anger flashed through his despair: it won for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the despatch of an embassy to Rome. The Carthaginians were well aware that the generals neither would nor could grant this request, which had been refused once already; but the consuls were confirmed by it in the natural supposition that after the first outbreak of despair the utterly defenceless city would submit, and accordingly postponed the attack. The precious interval was employed in preparing catapults and armour; day and night all, without distinction of age or sex, were occupied ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... human knowledge, the vast accumulation of works already printed, and the ever-increasing flood of new books poured out by the modern press, the first feeling which is apt to arise in the mind is one of dismay, if not of despair. We ask—who is sufficient for these things? What life is long enough—what intellect strong enough, to master even a tithe of the learning which all these books contain? But the reflection comes to our aid that, after all, the really important books bear but a small proportion to the mass. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... wonderful, hidden significance in this uncanny scenery. The reader feels that the wild, fantasmal imagery is in itself a kind of language, and that it in some way expresses a brooding thought or passion, the terror and despair of a lost soul. Sometimes there is an obvious allegory, as in the Haunted Palace, which is the parable of a ruined mind, or in the Raven, the most popular of all Poe's poems, originally published in the American Whig Review ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... with the darkness and the bitter cold and our stores running low, we resolved to let the wind take us with what swiftness it might to whatsoever land it listed; and so ran westward, with darkness closing upon us, and famine and a great despair. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... after which I must long toil before they can be realized. How poor the scene around, how tame one's own existence, how meagre and faint every power, with these beings in my mind! Often I must cast them quite aside in order to grow in my small way, and not sink into despair. Certainly I do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, and with such ignorant dulness that they blunt the senses and corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... them for good. They have to give way to characters of another kind, who bear the form without the nature of women. Commencing with Lady Macbeth, the conception falls lower and lower, through Goneril and Regan, Cressida, Cleopatra, until in the climax of this utter despair, "Timon," there is no character that it would not be a profanity to call by ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... the picture of the young, strenuous doctor, in the utter innocence of his professional ambition, who has discovered a new disease, and is delighted when he finds people suffering from it and cast down to despair when he finds that it does not exist. The point is worth a pause, because it is a good, short way of stating Shaw's attitude, right or wrong, upon the whole of formal morality. What he dislikes in young Doctor Paramore is that he has interposed a secondary and false conscience between ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... body which God has lavished on her,—have increased my admiration to love, my love to absolute idolatry! How dare I conceal my emotion from you any longer? I cannot live without Lenora; the very thought of even a short temporary separation from her overwhelms me with despair. I long to be with her every day, every hour; I long to hear her voice and read my happiness in her eloquent eyes! I know not what may be your decision; but, believe me, if it shall be adverse to my hopes, I shall not long survive the ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... paramount object should be to make the pupil understand the meaning and feel the spirit of the piece. If he is timid and diffident he should be encouraged. Tell him that even Daniel Webster could not make a declamation at the first attempt; but that he did not despair; he did not cease his efforts; he persevered ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... revolving mass of heads and legs of boy and dog in mute despair, then she rose to her feet and started ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... being lost during the confusion of the flight. After a perilous voyage to Thrace, Delos, Crete and Sicily (where his father dies), he is cast up by a storm, sent by Juno, on the African coast. Refusing to remain with Dido, queen of Carthage, who in despair puts an end to her life, he sets sail from Africa, and after seven years' wandering lands at the mouth of the Tiber. He is hospitably received by Latinus, king of Latium, is betrothed to his daughter Lavinia, and founds a city called after her, Lavinium. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... corner he saw a shabby man lurking in the shadow of the side street; as the hansom passed, a policeman ordered him to move on. Farther on, Woburn noticed a woman crouching on the door-step of a handsome house. She had drawn a shawl over her head and was sunk in the apathy of despair or drink. A well-dressed couple paused to look at her. The electric globe at the corner lit up their faces, and Woburn saw the lady, who was young and pretty, turn away with a little grimace, drawing her companion ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... it is true, in which the Russians had been beaten, and the little Welsh had very much distinguished themselves, but no Sebastopol had been taken. The Russians had retreated to their town, which, till then almost defenceless on the land side, they had, following their old maxim of "never despair," rendered almost impregnable in a few days, whilst the allies, chiefly owing to the supineness of the British commander, were loitering on the field of battle. In a word, all had happened which the writer, from his knowledge of the Russians and his own countrymen, had ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the country alone we can find That happy resource, the relief of the mind, When, drove to despair, our last efforts we make, And drag the old fish-pond, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... cleared. The search began at once. Each day they set out for the forest and hills with hope buoying their hearts; and each night they returned with downcast looks, despair in their hearts, and with their brooding anger against each other a dark flame ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... that snare! If you sow falsehood, you must reap despair. For others true, you say? And do you doubt That each of them, like us, is sure, alike, That he's the man the lightning will not strike, And no avenging thunder will find out, Whom the blue storm-cloud scudding up the sky On wings of ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... of youth, and hope, and joy; may not the context hold good in art and literature. Strictly speaking, we are but in our ninth year, although our volumes number seventeen. If we continue to partake as largely of the gale of public favour as hitherto, we shall not despair of an evergreen old age. We know the value of this favour, and shall strive to maintain it accordingly. It is to us like ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... something to lay hold of, for some clear-minded, clean-hearted adviser who could tell him what to do; how he should clamber out of this pit of humiliation into which nothing more culpable than an honest zeal for civic righteousness had precipitated him. In his despair he told himself that there was no one, and then suddenly he remembered—Patricia would know, and she would understand better than any one else in a populous world how to point the way out of the labyrinth. He must go to her and tell ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... unwilling to part with his lands without being roundly paid for them. When argument with him proved fruitless, it is said that General Washington, realizing the gravity of the situation, rode up several times from Mount Vernon to discuss the situation with "stubborn Mr. Burns." At length, in despair, he remarked: "Had not the Federal City been laid out here, you would have died a poor planter." "Ay, mon," was Burns's ready response, "and had you no married the widder Custis wi' a' her nagres ye'd ha'e been a land surveyor the noo', an' a mighty poor ane at that!" It is ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Camilla from me!' The accents of rage and despair were in Ravengar's voice as he uttered these words. 'He's taken her from me! She was my typewriter, you know. I fell in love with her. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... were compelled to make out the best meal we could upon raw salt beef washed down with water so brackish that we could scarcely swallow it. Reduced to such a condition as this, it will scarcely be wondered at that I should be brought to something very nearly approaching despair when my observations that day revealed the disconcerting fact that, thanks to our excessive drift during the gale, we were still fully six hundred miles from our port of destination—a distance which we scarce dared to hope might be covered, even under the most favourable circumstances, in less ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Elsie was almost in despair; but Herbert, who was lying on a sofa, reading, suddenly shut his book, saying, "I tell you what, Elsie! tell us one of those nice fairy stories we ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... dragged her, suffocating, down into the mud-depths of the diffidence in which he wallowed; had tugged her, gasping, to the Olympian heights from which he viewed a world of love, all rosy-red; had flung her, well-nigh senseless from exhaustion, upon the saw-teethed rocks of despair; and had taken her paddling in the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... over. Edward will be in despair. How are we to have her here with Miss Foster? Her behaviour the last two months has ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her not,—but know her name; Ruahmah! It was she alone who wrought This wondrous work of love. She won the King To furnish forth this company. She led Our march, kept us in heart, fought off despair, Watched over you as if you were her child, Prepared your food, your cup, with her own hands, Sang you asleep at ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... her head, but the weight of her despair bowed it down. She said to herself: "This is the end...he won't try to appeal to me again..." and she remained in a sort of tranced rigidity, perceiving without feeling the fateful lapse of the seconds. Then the cords that bound her seemed to snap, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... real and vivid presence in his life. War had burnt away his glittering, clever frivolity. Betty was the adventure, Betty was the tinsel; Joan was the grave, predestined woman of his man. For the first time in his life he found himself face to face with the cleanness of despair. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... I ever do to disillusion you?" he cried in despair. "Oh! what can I ever do? This ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... when I offer you some of the prettiest things I have got, you say it does not signify how you are dressed. What can I do to please you, Molly? I, who delight in nothing more than peace in a family, to see you sitting there with despair upon your face?' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... impulse, advanced to their Commander, who frowned as they did so. A cry of despair went up from the pinioned men, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... of it comes of indignation at not being understood and another great part from despair of being understood—and that while all the time the person thus indignant and despairing takes not the smallest pains to understand the neighbor whose misunderstanding of himself makes him ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... again he returned to the boat, as though some clue might there be found to the missing ones; but as often he turned back in despair, trusting now only to the flashes of the lightning to aid him in his search. The sharp twigs and branches tore his face and hands as, bending low, he forced himself where the tangled undergrowth stood thickest. Soon his ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... amend in thyself or others, bear thou with patience until God ordaineth otherwise. When comfort is taken away, do not presently despair. Stand with an even mind resigned to the will of God, whatever shall befall, because after winter cometh the summer; after the dark night the day shineth, and after the storm followeth a great calm. Seek ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... believe weather has a greater influence on our lives than we are aware of. Statistics go to prove this; for instance, more marriages take place during the five months, June to September, than in the other seven colder months. From gaiety to despair,—more suicides take place at the fall of the year than at any other period. Rodent slaughter commenced this chapter and suicide ends it; this puts me in mind of the Marriage Service, which commences "Dearly" and ends ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... In despair, when premonitory symptoms warned him that his stomach was not so strong as of old, he filled his pipe and struck up a smoke. The people fed on noisily and watched. Few of them could boast of intimate ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... Rubicon. Shall trousers deter us from the passage? Shall a coat be synonymous with cowardice? No,—we rise superior to the occasion; we pant to be free; we in-breathe the spirit of liberty, as we don our blouses. We loop our long tresses under such head-coverings as would drive any artist hatter to despair; to us they prove a weighty argument against hats in general, as we feel their heavy rims press on our tender brain-roofs. However, when the saucy eyes of Mon Amie look out sparkling from under her begrimed helmet, the effect is not bad; on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... through, considerately. "But I wonder to how many other women you have talked such nonsense about beauty and despair and eternity," said Freydis, "and they very probably liking to hear it, the poor fools! And I wonder how you can expect me to believe you, when you pretend to think me all these fine things, and still keep me penned in this enclosure like an old ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... did not build very much upon what he said. He had often seen him play a great many cunning tricks to catch rats and mice, as when he used to hang by the heels, or hide himself in the meal, and make as if he were dead; so that he did not altogether despair of his affording him some help in his miserable condition. When the Cat had what he asked for he booted himself very gallantly, and putting his bag about his neck, he held the strings of it in his two forepaws and went into a warren where was great abundance ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... grows and grows. He tells thee of it; and thou—thou seest between him and thee a barrier, high and fearful as a wall with sharp knives on top. For thine eyes it is impassable. Thine heart is sad; and thy words to him will pierce his soul with despair. But think again. Be true to thyself and to thy star. Speak another word, and throw down that high barrier, as the wall of Jericho was thrown down. Thou canst do it. All will depend on the decision of a moment—thy whole future, the future ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... quite forgotten to put them down again when he came in. Now, no coaxing would get them down without manual assistance. He sat clawing with one foot after another, lacerating his shins and his garments in vain. At length in despair he dropped his fork again, and under cover of this diversion attempted to stoop and adjust the ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... in utter despair I rose, pulled off my loose coat so as only to retain shirt and breeches, bathed my face in a bucket just outside, and could not resist the temptation to sprinkle a few drops on Pomp's face as he lay there fast asleep ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... in the attack. Dick felt himself swept along as if by a torrent. His courage and the courage of those around him was all the greater now, because hope, sanguine hope, had suddenly shot up from the very depths of despair. Their ranks had been thinned terribly, but they forgot it for the time and rushed upon ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... names, all English, and as many inscriptions, all English too, of a kindred character to the one he had read. Milord's first impulse was to throw himself head foremost down the mountain side; but, fortunately, raising his eyes in his despair, he discovered a final plateau, so steep that neither cat nor lizard could climb it. Lord K. became a bird and flew up, and what did he see? Oh, the vanity of human ambition! Upon the last round of the most ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... over it and pride and an unearthly understanding, virgin and unafraid. There was something slightly subservient, consciously inferior, in Charlotte's attitude to life. She had loved it secretly, with a sort of shame, with a corroding passion and incredulity and despair. Such natures are not seldom victims of the power they would propitiate. It killed her in her effort to bring ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the subject, took up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, something that had developed in connection with it. He asked inane questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some girl. And poor Dick—his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of the waning of his opportunity! It was cruel. He was becoming more and more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and wishing to go or for us to go. He was horribly ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... tiny as playthings. After going a long way, and walking for a quarter of an hour, the party came upon another staircase; and, having descended this, found itself once more surrounded by the drawings. Then despair took possession of them as they wandered at random through long halls, following Monsieur Madinier, who was furious and mopping the sweat from his forehead. He accused the government of having moved the doors around. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... not succeed; and since his death, notwithstanding all I can say to him, he does nothing but idle away his time in the streets, as you saw him, without considering he is no longer a child; and if you do not make him ashamed of it, I despair of his ever coming to any good. He knows that his father left him no fortune, and sees me endeavour to get bread by spinning cotton; for my part, I am resolved one of these days to turn him out of doors, and let him ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... noble, loyal crew, Though slaughtered in the bloody fray, Would yet their monarch's word obey. Now I, my sister, fain would know The cause of this thy fear and woe, Why like a snake thou writhest there, Calling for aid in wild despair. Nay, lie not thus in lowly guise: Cast off thy weakness ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the technicalities of the sects. I will speak as a person with experience and declare that I have been through the distresses of despair and the conviction of sin and ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... prisoner. He had certainly moved with extreme caution, and he wondered that he had not received some intimation of the presence of the enemy before it was too late to retreat. But, as we have before hinted, Tom was a philosopher; and he did not despair even under the present reverse of circumstances, ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... thither, that he may not be obliged to spend his vacant hours in a comfortless hotel. Many of my acquaintances are already there for the winter; I wish that I could hear that you, my dearest friend, had any intention of making one of the crowd—but of that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and that your beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling the loss of the three of whom we shall ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... strike it right. Now I admit it seems to me They show great inconsistency. But they imply I am to blame; Of course that makes my anger flame, And in a fiery fit of pique I stay at ninety for a week. Or sometimes in a dull despair, I give them just a frigid stare; And as upon their taunts I think My spirits down to zero sink. Mine is indeed a hopeless case; To strive to ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... movement toward him, as if she would with it jerk a reeking dagger from her breast. 'Go, go!' she repeated, sobbing and beseeching. Then she hid her aching head with a loud outbreak of tears. Emil slipped away heartbroken and in despair. He was in such a state, when he reached his own room, that he would have put a ball through his head, had there been at that moment a pistol at hand." How Rosalinde then became pregnant and in spite of her resistance toward Emil, still married him to restablish her honor, how though ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... scene," said the Minister, rising with his subject and kindling to a glow. "Pass to another scene. Enter Jerusalem. Go about Judea after the martyrdom of Stephen, and see what chaos, terror, and despair succeed. Even the Jews are divided into cliques and juntos, at war with each other, and enraged at their rulers. And where are the poor trembling Christians, that on the day of Pentecost flocked in such ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... its trim and perfect repair, after our visits to so many time-worn places, with their long succession of hoary traditions. The great library, with its thousands of volumes in the richest bindings and its collections of rare editions, might well be the despair of a bibliophile and the pictures and furnishings of rare interest to the connoisseur—but these things one may ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... staircase with the agility of a man of half his years, and hopefully opened the door of his chamber, which Jim had carefully closed after him. His first glance was directed at the bureau, but despair again settled down sadly upon his heart when he saw that it was bare. There was no trace of the ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... in the deep where darkness dwells, The land of horror and despair, Justice hath built a dismal hell, And laid ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... but who do possess this instinct, and who can talk most sympathetically, while knowing scarcely anything about the individual addressed. There are others who are deficient in this gift, who can only say "Really" and "Indeed." These "Really" and "Indeed" and "Oh" people are the despair of the dinner-giver. The gay, chatty, light-hearted people who can glide into a conversation easily, are the best of dinner-table companions, even if they do sometimes talk too much about the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... there's a Being all-loving, Whose nature is justice and pity: Could you say where you think he is roving? We have sought him from city to city. We have called unto him, our eyes streaming With the tears of our pain and despair: We have shouted unto him blaspheming, And ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... could see him—while, if he had gone to Athens.... Surely they would not have to wait a year? No—Savile would find out some splendid arrangement that would make it all right. She loved Woodville too much not to be hopeful; he cared too much for her not to feel, almost, despair. The conditions of their present existence were far harder for him, though she never knew it, and did not dream how much ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... balm and rapture to me. I have LIPPED HER, God knows how often, and oh! is it even possible that she is chaste, and that she has bestowed her loved "endearments" on me (her own sweet word) out of true regard? That thought, out of the lowest depths of despair, would at any time make me strike my forehead against the stars. Could I but think the love "honest," I am proof against all hazards. She by her silence makes my dark hour; and you by your encouragements dissipate ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... Kathlyn turned in despair toward the station. It was then she saw the boxed lion on the platform. She returned to the conductor ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... his Lordship's faculty: I am inclined to believe he might be melancholy enough when he writ this Introduction: The despair at his age of seeing a faction restored, to which he hath sacrificed so great a part of his life: The little success he can hope for in case he should resume those High-Church Principles, in defence ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and he expects him by the next Fleet, which drives his Daughter to Melancholy and Despair: But, Madam, I find you retain the same gay, cheerful Spirit you had, when I waited on your Ladiship.—My Lady is mighty good-humour'd too, and I have found a way to make Sir Jealousie believe I am wholly in his Interest, when my ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... ones. During one of them he was seized with a sudden fit of repentance for the loose life he had been leading in London; the better man in him made himself heard, and he fell into such an abyss of misery and despair as to remind us of the great conversions of the Puritan epoch. In fact, his companions, when he again saw them, wondering at his altered countenance, called him a Puritan. "Once I felt a feare and horrour in my conscience, and then the terrour of Gods judgementes did manifestly teach me that ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... accept this proposal you will see your son alive, and soon. If you refuse—he is in the hands of desperate men, who will never give him up except on their own terms; they will wait until, driven to despair, you will offer them, through the press, a fortune, and—even then you may receive, after long waiting, only a corpse. As to the search you are making, we know your men and their methods, and they are capable of taking a bribe if it is large enough. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of Memory and Imagination, we find many great classes of Emotions testifying to the attitudes which the mind takes toward its experiences. They are remarkably rich and varied, these emotions. Hope gives place to its opposite despair, joy to sorrow, and regret succeeds expectation. No one can enumerate the actual phases of the emotional life. The differences which are most pronounced—as between hope and fear, joy and sorrow, anger and love—have special ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin |
