"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new facts? It was this part of Weisse's lectures, it was the protest of the historical conscience against the demands of the Idea, that interested me most. I see as clearly the formal truth as the material untruth of Hegel's philosophy. The thorough excellence of its method and the desperate baldness of its results, strike me with equal force. Though I did not yet know what kind of thing or person the Idea was really meant for, I knew myself enough of ancient Greek philosophy and of Oriental religions to venture to criticize Hegel's representation ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... combat is above seven thousand three hundred. The French own the loss of three thousand; I don't believe many more, for it was a most desperate and rash perseverance on our side. The Duke behaved very bravely and humanely;(1038) but this will not have ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Suwarrow was a great military genius. He gained battles without tactics, and in defiance of them. He had astonished the Austrian generals by the fierce rapidity of his movements; he had annihilated the French armies in Italy by the desperate daring of his attacks. Wherever Suwarrow came, he was conqueror. In his whole career he had never been beaten. The soldiery told numberless tales of his eccentricity—laughed at, mimicked, and adored him. The nation honoured him as the national warrior. But the failure of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... distress, I involuntarily thought of the old Joe Miller about the Tartar: "Why don't you let him go?" "Because he has caught me." It looked just like that. The furious splashing in the water below, and Mr. U—— grasping his line with desperate valour, but being gradually drawn nearer to the edge of the steep bank each instant. "Keep up a good light, but not too much," cried F—— to me, in a regular stage-whisper, as he rushed to the rescue. So I pulled up one tussock ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... one was at home. I met Mrs. St. John in her chair; she had heard it imperfectly. I took a chair to Mr. Harley, who was asleep, and they hope in no danger; but he has been out of order, and was so when he came abroad to-day, and it may put him in a fever: I am in mortal pain for him. That desperate French villain, Marquis de Guiscard,(22) stabbed Mr. Harley. Guiscard was taken up by Mr. Secretary St. John's warrant for high treason, and brought before the Lords to be examined; there he stabbed Mr. Harley. I have told all the particulars already to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... those illuminating pages, those vividly depicted scenes enacted on the crowded stages of the golden-lined bars of the famous Feather River! Bret Harte reads her graphic and pathetic account of the fallen woman and the desperate men being driven out of camp, and lo! we have the gripping tale of The Outcasts of Poker Flat; and from another of her recitals came the inspiration that set him to work on that entertaining story, The Luck of Roaring Camp. And her ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... them not to go on down the river, assuring them that a few miles more of such river as that now ahead of them would consume the last of the scant rations and then it would be too late to try to escape. In fact each party thought the other was taking the more desperate chance. By a mistake the duplicate records were wrongly divided, each party having portions of both sets. This afterwards made gaps in the river data below the Paria as far as Catastrophe Rapid. Powell entered the Maid of the Canyon and pulled away while the departing men stood on an ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the field. The decisive battle of the war was fought in the heart of Jungaria, and the star of Genghis rose in the ascendant. The Naimans fought long and well, but they were borne down by the heavier armed Mongols, and their desperate resistance only added to their loss. Their chief died of his wounds, and the triumph of Genghis was rendered complete by the capture of his old enemy, Chamuka. As Genghis had sworn the oath of friendship ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... week with father's brother in Hubbard. Then we went to Sharon, Pennsylvania, where father had a temporary job. A Welshman, knowing his desperate need of money, let him take his furnace for a few days and earn enough money to move on to Pittsburgh. There father found a job again, but mother was dissatisfied with the crowded conditions in Pittsburgh. She wanted to bring up her boys amid ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... through catclaw and ocatillo, the appearance swooped and fell, the blend disjoined and shaped to semblance of a very small red pony bearing a very small blue boy. The pony's small red head was quite innocent of bridle; the bit was against his red breast, held there by small hands desperate on the reins; the torn headstall flapped rakishly about the red legs. Making the curve at sickening speed, balanced over everlasting nothingness for a moment of breathless equipoise, they took ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... this Thrilling the wilderness to life As with the bodily shape of Fear? What but a desperate sense, A strong foreboding of those dim Interminable continents, forlorn And many-silenced, in a dusk Inviolable utterly, and dead As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... give one sigh. He waved his hat in a desperate hope of being seen. No, they were in the carriage. The ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been accepted by many generations of men as a picture of the world, with its temptations, its sins, its moral bankruptcy, and its illusionary and unsatisfying pleasures. Preachers have always been fond of allusions to the husks and swine, and the desperate hunger which there is nothing to satisfy in the Far Country. The story is true, God wot; it gives many a man a wholesome fright, and keeps him at home, and its note of forgiveness for a wasted life has proved the salvation of ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... against group, faith against faith, race against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men too despondent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as rabble-rousing slogans on which dictators could ride to power. And once in power they could saddle their tyrannies on whole nations and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... provide the means for such enormous expenditure, Buckingham multiplied the grievances of monopolies; if he pillaged the treasury for his eighty thousand pounds' coat; if Rawleigh was at length driven to his last desperate enterprise to relieve himself of his creditors for a pair of six thousand pounds' shoes—in both these cases, as in that of the chivalric Sandricourt, the political economist may perhaps acknowledge ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... boats, which had been carried to the other side. A bridge is quickly constructed. But by the time the army crossed over, the Frenchmen are in full flight. Only a few shots from the field-pieces are sent after them. Conscious that the state of their affairs is desperate, deprived of the support of the Germans, knowing the enemy with whom they have to deal, believing themselves secure no where, they take refuge in Pavia and await the result. The boldest of the Confederate youth had cut off from them a considerable herd of cattle, on which the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... final rebellion. A Danish fleet sailed up the Humber under Edgar, Gospatric, and Waltheof. This last calamity is said to have killed Ealdred, the archbishop. He had endeavoured to make peace between conquerors and conquered, and he saw that now a desperate struggle was inevitable. The whole of Northumbria rose as the Danes made their way up the Ouse. The Norman garrisons in York set fire to the houses near them, and the whole city was burnt down. The minster was either wholly or partially destroyed. On the site of ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... that he would not comb or cut his hair until he had conquered the whole country. He led his men to victory after victory, and at length fought his last great battle at Hafrsfjord (to the south of Stavanger). The sea-fight was desperate and long, but Harald's fleet succeeded in overpowering that of the enemy, and Sulki, King of Rogaland, as well as Erik, King of Hardanger, were slain. Then Harald cut and dressed his hair, the skalds composed poems in honour of the event, and for ever after he was known as Fairhair. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... submit and join them, was much more indefensible than that of shooting picquets, and that while they persisted in the one practice, he should certainly persevere in the other. As to the challenge of McIlraith, he said that he considered it that of a man whose condition was desperate; but concluded with saying that if he, McIlraith, wished to witness a combat between twenty picked soldiers on each side, he was not ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... made the other guy desperate, because he made a dive and let his needle ray burn out a slashing beam that zipped across over my head. My forty-five blazed twice. He missed but I didn't, just as the throb of the stun-gun rang the air again. I whirled to face my stun-gun coming out ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... poured in to relieve Boston of the sufferings inflicted upon her when the port was closed by the despotism of the British crown—we see the beginning of that which insured the cooeperation of the colonies throughout the desperate struggle of the Revolution. And we there see that which, if the present generation be true to the memory of their sires, to the memory of the noble men from whom they descended, will perpetuate for them that spirit of fraternity in which the Union began. But it is not ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... of Natural History,' October 1852, and November 1855.) The males are said to be polygamists (4. Noel Humphreys, 'River Gardens,' 1857.); they are extraordinarily bold and pugnacious, whilst "the females are quite pacific." Their battles are at times desperate; "for these puny combatants fasten tight on each other for several seconds, tumbling over and over again until their strength appears completely exhausted." With the rough- tailed stickleback (G. trachurus) ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Udaipur we passed the ruins of Ontala. Here, in the stormy time when Jehangir had seized Chitor, there happened a desperate deed. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... United States, and sometimes more, and they were always able to make up or nearly make up the deficiencies of western Europe. Russia and Roumania are now themselves on the verge of famine. Even before their own situation became so desperate, they could get little wheat to the western Allies, because the enemy territory and the battle-lines made a ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... probably needless to add that the specific object of the Act—the Puritanic observance of Sunday—was by no means attained. On Sunday, the 8th December, 1907, the police made a desperate attempt to enforce the law; every place of amusement was shut up; lectures, religious concerts, even the social meetings of the Young Men's Christian Association, were rigorously put a stop to. There was, of course, great popular ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the first usual civilities had passed, "glory be to God, gintlemen, this is desperate fine weather for ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... for his companion, whom it seemed impossible to help, despite the desperate effort he was making to do so. He saw the grizzly lumbering after Jack, giving no heed to the shots he sent after him, but steadily gaining upon the fugitive, whose fate hung in the passing of the seconds. Fred knew what it meant when his friend abruptly changed his ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the two in the armory itself, which for a considerable time contained more patients than any other in that hospital. "Armory Square" being near the Potomac, usually received the most desperate cases, which could with difficulty be moved far. There could be no operating room connected with this ward, and the operations, however painful or dreadful, were of necessity performed in the ward itself. The scenes presented ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... made, in fact, such desperate efforts to learn all about poetry that her system got quite out of order. But although she did not in the course of the day hit upon anything, she quite casually succeeded in her dreams in devising eight lines; so concluding her toilette ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... strong and natural picture of the progress of anger. It is worth studying as a lesson in metaphysics. Whenever association suggests to the mind of Achilles the injury he has received, he loses his reason, and the orator works himself up from argument to declamation, and from declamation to desperate resolution, through a close linked connection of ideas ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... insulted in the streets by the crowd. He at once acquainted Sir Hugh Gough, who was at Hongkong, with the occurrence, and issued a notice, on May 21, 1841, advising all foreigners to leave Canton that day. This notice was not a day too soon, for, during the night, the Chinese made a desperate attempt to carry out their scheme. The batteries which they had secretly erected at various points in the city and along the river banks began to bombard the factories and the ships at the same time that fire- rafts were ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... misery, and, though Sunday was long and lonely, Monday stretched to an intolerable length. He became greatly disturbed, and could neither work nor sit still, so active was his imagination. He tried to sleep, but could not, even though his nerves were twitching for want of it; and at last, in desperate resolution, he set himself the task of walking to Grant's tomb and back, in the hope that physical weariness would benumb his restless brain. This good result followed. He was in deep slumber when the bell-boy rapped at ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... (my servant and I) were not left long alone in the Desert. The next day a party of natives surprised us, and, after some desperate fighting, we were taken prisoners, sold as slaves from tribe to tribe into the interior, and at length fell into the hands of some traders on the western coast, who gave us our freedom. Unwilling, however, to return home without some definite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... with Jacob there was no thought in my mind that Sergeant Corney had the slightest idea of joining in what was a most desperate venture, and I even fancied he felt a certain sense of relief in having such a good excuse for not sticking his nose into the Indian encampment. But now I understood that all the while he held firm to the determination to do whatsoever ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... meant, what it would mean to the man before him. He was vaguely aware that in abler hands than his own, this knowledge which he possessed would have been molded into a terrible weapon, but he was impotent to use it; with every advantage his, he felt only the desperate pass in which he had placed himself. If Gilmore and Marshall Langham could juggle with John North's life, what of his own life when the judge ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... and unhappy about them; God only knows what the result of this state of things will be." After entering into further details, he concludes by observing, "At all events I stand relieved from reproach, having so repeatedly cautioned them against what appeared to me a desperate situation." ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... "English moneys, desperate Russian intrigues, Treaties made and Treaties broken—If instead of Pragmatic Sanction with eleven Potentates guaranteeing, Maria Theresa had at this time had 200,000 soldiers and a full treasury ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... serious kinds of charm practised by the female sex. But in the matter of the effect of movies on the young mind those reformers may be right. It seems to me you've gathered in some foolish notions about life, Mr. Phillips. Desperate villains dropping envelopes and generally scattering clues along their tracks would be interesting things, a darned sight more interesting than eminent reformers. Only there aren't any. They don't exist outside of novels and ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... situation of greater interest than this can be conceived. At one end of the hall, a fearful multitude of the most desperate and powerful men in existence, waiting for the assault; at the other, a little band of disciplined men, waiting with arms presented, and ready, upon the least motion or sign, to begin the carnage; and their tall and imposing commander, holding ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of which were two sufferers for whom the Saviour showed his sympathy as he perfected their faith and relieved their distress. They were strangely contrasted in circumstances, alike only in their desperate need. One was Jairus, a man of prominence in his community, "a ruler of the synagogue," a person of comparative wealth and power and social position, whose home for twelve years had been brightened by the presence of a little daughter, an only ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... this time regained much of her old confidence and buoyancy, declared that she must be first to cross the bridge. She gained the middle, when she felt a sickening sag. She turned and shouted to the others to go back. She made a desperate effort to reach the far end, but the bridge gave way, and she was hurled into the swirling rapids. She was stunned for a moment; but the instinct to live was strong. As she swung to and fro, whirled here, flung there, she ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... matter how mad and ungodly, have always a redundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against the tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... dancing on the bank for a few minutes after my embarkation—the kangaroo dog having a charcoal burner's antipathy to the bath—but at last becoming desperate, he had plunged in, and was rapidly approaching whilst I judiciously gauged the height of the root, and meanwhile balanced the unsteady bark under my feet. When the root was within six inches of the wire, Pup's chin and forepaws were on the gunwale; in three seconds more, I was ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... skies The shouts redoubling rise: Earth shudders at the dreadful sound, And all is listening, trembling round. Torrents, that from yon promontory's head Dash'd furious down in desperate cascade, Heard from afar amid the' lonely night, That oft have led the wanderer right, Are silent at the noise. The mighty ocean's more majestic voice, Drown'd in superior din, is heard no more; The surge in silence sweeps along ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... thought Would seem the sweeter, by delay of death Thus granted. But the band devoted stood, Proud of their promised end, and life forsworn, And careless of the battle: no debate Could shake their high resolve. (15) In numbers few 'Gainst foemen numberless by land and sea, They wage the desperate fight; then satiate Turn from the foe. And first demanding death Volteius bared his throat. "What youth," he cries, "Dares strike me down, and through his captain's wounds Attest his love for death?" Then through his side Plunge blades uncounted on the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... astounded and blinded with streams of gravy and wads of stuffing, he attempted to rise, but blow after blow from the fat pig fell upon his bewildered head. He seized a carving-knife and attempted to defend himself with blind but ineffectual fury, and at length, with a desperate effort, rose and took to his heels. Dick Hardy, whose wrath waxed hotter and hotter, followed, belaboring him unmercifully at every step, around the table, through the hall, and into the street, the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... jail. Were not this Prisoner at once got out, Schiller's honour and peace of conscience were at stake. And so, before his (properly Streicher's) Landlord, the Architect Hoelzel, could get together the required 300 gulden, and save this unlucky friend, the half-desperate Poet had written home, and begged from his Father that indispensable sum. And on the Father's clear refusal, had answered him with a very unfilial Letter. Not till after the lapse of seven weeks, did the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in desperation again rose, and killed every Spaniard in the district. Ovando then began a war of extermination and the Indians were killed off by thousands, Cotubanama resisted heroically but in vain, and after being beaten in a number of desperate battles he withdrew to the island of Saona, southeast of Santo Domingo. Here he was surprised and captured by the Spaniards, his remaining warriors mercilessly shot and he himself taken to the city of Santo Domingo ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... must have happened: in the final struggle with death the owner had attempted to resist his fate, when several soldiers had immediately pounced upon him, with the inevitable result that, in his desperate struggling, the spine had been broken; a strange, yet very natural accident, under the circumstances. The arms being tied together at the elbows behind, the spine had been at great tension, like a set bow, so that a violent assault could ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... from him, and went into the kitchen again, with her head held high to hide the fact that her cheeks were burning. He hadn't any right to do that to her. Why, any amount of men might be making desperate love to dream-Marjories—Mr. Logan, for instance,—only his love-making would probably be exceedingly full of quotations, and rather ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... serving one. The man who thinks he is serving God a little is deceived; he is not serving God. God will not have his service. The devil will monopolize him before he gets through. A divided heart loses both worlds. Saul tried it. Balaam tried it. Judas tried it, and they all made a desperate failure. Mary had but one choice. Paul said: "This one thing I do." "For me to live is Christ." Of such a life God says: "Because he hath set his love upon Me therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because he hath known My name." ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... by actors. There was no fireplace in my bedroom, and if there had been I couldn't have afforded a fire. But that mattered little; what I had to do was to set forth and discover some way of making money. Don't suppose that I was in a desperate state of mind; how it was, I don't quite know, but I felt decidedly cheerful. It was pleasant to be in this new region of the earth, and I went about the town like a tourist who ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the most substantive motive, that can conduct him to virtue. It is thus, by its supernatural remedies, by its wretched panacea, superstition, far from curing those evils which render man decrepid, which bend him almost to the earth, has only increased them; made them more desperate; in the room of calming his passions, it gives them inveteracy; makes them more dangerous; renders them more venomous; turns that into a curse which nature has given him for his preservation; to be the means of his own happiness. It is not by extinguishing the passions ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... rebellious instrument, made me sometimes find the very word, expression, or cry that I required to give a voice to the unutterable. I had used no language, but I had cried forth the cry of my soul; and I was heard. When I rose from my chair, after this desperate but delightful struggle against words, pen, and paper, I remembered that, spite of the winter cold in my room, the perspiration stood upon my forehead, and I used to open the window to ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... dawns with its full day and unclouded brightness—and most of all that I can here and now pray for those whom He has taught me to love. I cannot conceive this world without prayer. It is {129} worth while making any efforts, however desperate, to learn to pray. When the Day dawns, how wonderful it will be to look back and trace the path through which He has ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority seemed to his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up into the lofts, as he saw the poverty, as he studied the desperate necessities which gradually bring the poor to criminal acts, as he estimated their long struggles, compassion filled his soul. The judge then became the Saint Vincent de Paul of these grown-up children, these ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... of inspection to British H.Q. Found much to put right. Issued an Order of the Day to soldiers of all ranks. The Germans, hearing of my presence, made desperate attempts to bomb me, but failed. Food at the Front ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was nothing further that could be done for Emil Crawford for hours and in the hazardous sally to Crawford's laboratory he knew that Ruth's cool courage and quick wits would at least double their chances for success in their desperate mission. He provided her with a reserve hood and tunic of lead cloth, then handed ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... they endeavour to keep their stripes concealed. When brought to bay, however, there is little to reproach them with on the score of cowardice, and it will be matter of rejoicing if you or your elephants do not come off second best in the encounter. Even in the last desperate case, a cunning old tiger will often make a feint, or sham rush, or pretended charge, when his whole object is flight. If he succeed in demoralising the line of elephants, roaring and dashing furiously about, he will then try in the confusion to double through, unless he is too badly wounded ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... be; but the landlord sees plainly that he may not have the power of the fishing; and if he has full power to rent the land as he pleases, and can lay on the land what should come from the fishing, then that would render our case more desperate still. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... also the safeguard of conduct in the soul,—Temperance, in the broadest sense; the Temperance which we have seen sitting on an equal throne with Justice amidst the Four Cardinal Virtues, and, wanting which, there is not any other virtue which may not lead us into desperate error. Now, observe: Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as in Love or in Faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in any way but as it ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the start on matters of military organisation; for instance, it had early and long retained a superiority in cavalry which was not a mere result of good fortune. But here, too, there was an inherent advantage in the very fact that the South had started upon a desperate venture. There can hardly be a more difficult problem of detail for statesmen than the co-ordination of military and civil requirements in the raising of an army. But in the South all civil considerations merged themselves in the paramount necessity of a military ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... mind where no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... back, shaking his head sadly. "No," he said, his voice breaking—"no, my Father, you must not embrace me now. I may have been a brave man once. But now I am a coward. Let me tell you everything. My wounds were bad, but not desperate. The brancardiers carried me down to Verdun, at night I suppose, but I was unconscious; and so to the hospital at Vaudelaincourt. There were days and nights of blankness mixed with pain. Then I came to my senses and had rest. It was wonderful. I thought that ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... circling well out in the middle of the field toward the Robinson goal, now some thirty yards distant measured by white lines, but far more than that by the course they were taking. Behind them streamed a handful of desperate runners; before them, rapidly getting between them and the goal, sped White, the Robinson captain and quarter. To the spectators a touch-down looked certain, for it was one man against two; the pursuit was not dangerous. ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... terror to the awful scene, the U.S. Frigate Mississippi, which had grounded, was set on fire to save her from capture. She was soon wrapped in flames and lighted up the sky for miles around. This good old gunboat which had been in so many battles went up with a terrific explosion. This desperate enterprise consisted of four ships, and three gunboats, the latter being lashed to the port side of the ships. But only the Hartford, which flew the Admiral's dauntless blue, and her consort, the little Albatross, succeeded in running past the batteries. ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... fair town nothing then, The coming of the wandering men With that long talked-of thing and strange. And news of how the kingdoms change, The pointed hands, and wondering At doers of a desperate thing? Push on, for surely this shall be Across ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... needful light. Otherwise the fight in the pass would in all probability be delayed till after sunrise, when the Amakoba would see how small was the number of their foes. Terror, doubt, darkness—these must be our allies if our desperate ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... fire, Chester sprang to his feet, and, leaning out, grasped the barrel of the weapon in both hands. With a desperate effort, he wrenched it from the soldier's hands, just as he was about to pull ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... prodigality of eloquent anger! Why now I see thou'rt weak—thy case is desperate! The cool ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... before us, externally, as the most desperate of bookselling speculations. The publisher, far from drinking his wine out of the skull of his author, is in danger of having neither wine nor ordinary cup, and is forced into the most reckless charlatanerie to save himself from utter ruin and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... compelled into a very narrow compass, and presenting such a formidable phalanx, that their antlers appeared at a distance, over the ridge of the steep pass, like a leafless grove. Their number was very great, and from a desperate stand which they made, with the tallest of the red-deer stags arranged in front, in a sort of battle array, gazing on the group which barred their passage down the glen, the more experienced sportsmen began to augur danger. The work of destruction, however, now commenced on all ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... fought, in command of the clan, at the disastrous battle of Flodden, from which both narrowly escaped but most of their followers were slain. Some time after his return home he successfully fought the desperate skirmish at Druim-a-chait, already referred to, pp. 114-118, with 140 men against 700 of the Munros, Dingwalls, MacCullochs, and other clans under the command of William Munro of Fowlis, on which ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... with a smashing blow that landed on Kazan's head, and once more the old battler fell limp upon the sand. McTrigger's breath was coming in quick gasps. He was almost winded. Not until the club slipped from his hand did he realize how desperate the fight had been. Before Kazan recovered from the blow that had stunned him Sandy examined the muzzle and strengthened it by adding another babiche thong. Then he dragged Kazan to a log that high water had thrown up on the shore a few yards away and made the end of the babiche ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... victualls failed them altogether at once: and they had nothing for their more assured refuge but their shooes and leather ierkins which they did eat. (M416) Touching their beuerage, some of them dranke the sea water, others did drinke their owne vrine: and they remained in such desperate necessitie a very long space, during the which part of them died for hunger. Beside this extreme famine, which did so grieuously oppresse them, they fell euery minute of an houre out of all hope euer to see France againe, insomuch that they were constrained ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... resided across the border. Hence Perk sometimes chose to call himself a Yankee; and yet for a period of several years he had been a valued member of the Northwestern Mounted Police, doing all manner of desperate stunts up in the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... duties and power. After the military operations which were carried on as far as the last town in Isabela, being tired and somewhat sick, I was put in charge of these military headquarters, which I found to be very much mixed up, the town, moreover, being desperate on account of the assaults committed by my predecessor, Rafael Perca, who was appointed by the Colonel, and who was formerly 2d Captain of the steamer Filipinas. After arriving and taking charge, having received numerous complaints against him, I had him arrested and I found that he had been ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... as the greatest wonder in history how a poor Man, who preached in Palestine for about two years, who scarcely had a hundred followers at the end of His mission, who was crucified and died a shameful death, whose cause seemed a quite desperate episode, scornfully rejected or fearfully abandoned by all those who knew it—how this poor Man replaced successively the mightiest gods the human imagination ever invented: Zeus in Olympus, Jupiter in the ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... was making heavy mechanical strokes that barely kept his lips above the water-line. He felt the current slacken perceptibly, but he was too much exhausted to take advantage of it, and drifted forward with it, splashing feebly like a dog, and holding his head back with a desperate effort. A huge, black shadow, only a shade blacker than the water around him, loomed up suddenly on his right, and he saw a man's face appear in the light of a hatchway and ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results. The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, a la Powderly, who will ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... Adrian's book before me, looking out at my Pleasant garden, and my mind went irresistibly back to the old days and then wandered on to the present. Tom was dead: I flourished, a comfortable cumberer of the earth; Jaffery was doing something idiotically desperate somewhere or the other—he was a war-correspondent by trade (as regular an employment as that of the maker of hot-cross buns), and a desperado by predilection—I had not heard from him for a year; and now Adrian—if ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... to me eligible. I thirsted after an acquaintance with new scenes; my present situation could not be changed for a worse; I trusted to the constancy of Ludloe's friendship; to this at least it was better to trust than to the success of my imposture on Dorothy, which was adopted merely as a desperate expedient: finally I determined to embark ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... had church-singing at last become that the clergymen arose in a body and demanded better performances; while a desperate and disgusted party was also formed which was opposed to all singing. Still another band of old fogies was strong in force who wished to cling to the same way of singing that they were accustomed to; and they gave many ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... McRae went down, he arose from his bed, ill as he was, and determined to rejoin her, as his own boat, the Mississippi, was not ready. When he reached the St. Charles, he fell so very ill that he had to be carried back to Brother's. Only his desperate illness saved him from being among the killed or wounded on that gallant little ship. A few days after, he learned the fate of the ship, and was told that Captain Huger was dead. No wonder he should cry so bitterly! For Captain Huger was as tender and as ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Talbot made desperate efforts for a foothold, and in succession interviewed all the big men. They were sorry but they were firm. Each had been hard hit by the fire; each had himself to cover; each was forced by circumstances to grasp every advantage. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... clothes, and studying books provided by her, and dislike her so heartily all the time. She felt instinctively that this was wrong and mean, and whenever the feeling of remorse was strong within her she made a desperate effort to please her grim and difficult relative. But how could she succeed when she was never herself in her aunt Miranda's presence? The searching look of the eyes, the sharp voice, the hard knotty fingers, the thin straight lips, the long silences, the "front-piece" ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... then, has the precious waistband or girdle, studded and buckled and placed for brave outward show, practically worked itself, and in spite of desperate remonstrance, or in other words essential counterplotting, to a point perilously near the knees—perilously I mean for the freedom of these parts. In several of my compositions this displacement has so succeeded, at the crisis, in defying and resisting ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... petition Herzl later submitted to the Kaiser, many of the pregnant passages were deleted by the Kaiser's advisers. All passages that referred specifically to the aims of the Zionist movement, to the desperate need of the Jewish people and asking for the Kaiser's protection of a projected Jewish land company for Syria and Palestine, had been removed. The audience with the Kaiser took place on Monday, November 2nd. The Kaiser ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... he heard the sound of a voice, speaking very low, and another voice answered it. At that Georgie's heart sank, for this proved that there must be at least two burglars, and the odds against him were desperate. After that came a low, cruel laugh, the unmistakable sound of the rattle of knives and forks, and the explosive uncorking of a bottle. At that his heart sank even lower yet, for he had read that cool ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... thought cross my mind that there was a shadow of blame—or wrong; I should have been far more on the alert had I thought so. I was always of a dreamy, sentimental, half-awake kind of mind; I thought of nothing more than a woman, desperate, perhaps, with an unhappy love, throwing the love-letters and presents of a faithless lover into the sea—nothing more. I repeat this most emphatically, as I should not like any suspicion of indolence or indifference to rest ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... is a very great villain; and it seems that Mr. Skelton and the wretched Flack creature are little less. As for Jack Dysart, it is all too sorrowful to think about. How must he feel! Surely, surely he could not have known what he was doing. He must have been desperate to go to Delancy Grandcourt. It was wrong; nothing on earth could have propped up the Algonquin, and why did he let his best friend ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... inference that followed seemed to be hardly less clear. But one intelligible object, in the opinion of Sir Patrick, could be at the end of her journey to the north. The deserted woman had rallied the last relics of her old energy—and had devoted herself to the desperate purpose of stopping the marriage ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... uncertain light Tom could see that he was pallid and panting, evidently exhausted in some desperate struggle: there was blood on his face, his clothes were torn, and by all odds he was the angriest man that ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... desperate, lost his understanding, was plunged in a revolt that knew no bounds. Inarticulate, he moved with her at the Marsh in violent, gloomy, wordless passion, almost in hatred of her. Till gradually she became ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... little body laid in its narrow grave, and thought how short a time ago life was strong within it, and that it was my hand that had sent her to her watery grave, my agony grew so intense that I wonder it did not kill me, or drive me to some desperate act of madness. It did not; and pity for myself soon hardened my heart against the sufferings of others. I ceased to weep for Julia; she was dead indeed; but was not death a blessing compared to such a life as mine would be? My aunt had lost her child; but was not her sorrow ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... brigadier-general at twenty-six. Though repeatedly wounded, he survived twelve years of constant fighting with no {21} more serious casualty than a broken arm which he carried away from the siege of Orbitello. By the time peace was signed at Muenster he had become a soldier well proved in the most desperate war which had been fought since Europe ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... then took up their stand in twelve different places, leaving considerable intervals between one and another, and Jacob, a sword in his right hand and a bow in his left, advanced to the combat. It was a desperate encounter for him. He had to ward off the enemy to the right and the left. Nevertheless he inflicted a severe blow, and when a band of two thousand men beset him, he leapt up in the air and over them and vanished from ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... underestimated his friend's powers. Mr. Stokes, rudely disturbed just as he had got into bed, was the incarnation of wrath. He was violent, bitter, and insulting in a breath, but Mr. Henshaw was desperate, and Mr. Stokes, after vowing over and over again that nothing should induce him to accompany him back to his house, was at last so moved by his entreaties that he went upstairs and ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... This desperate aspiring to paradise lost, this deformed dream of the beautiful, is not less tenacious on the part of the man. He turns towards the woman; and this preoccupation, become insensate, persists even when the dreadful shadow of the two red posts of the guillotine is thrown upon ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... chaffing us," Dick answered knowingly. "Stole the stuff, did they? That is, stole it in earnest? Nonsense! They're too nice girls for that! But I guess even nice girls, like some decent fellows, find enjoyment, once in a while, in making believe they are doing something desperate. Of course they ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... breast, and holding it in both hands, walked to the edge of the dais, whereon priests, disguised as fiends, began to leap at it, striving to reach it with their fingers and snatch it from her grasp. One by one they leapt with the most desperate energy, each man being allowed to make three attempts, and Alan noted that this novel jumping competition was watched with the deepest interest by all the audience, at the time ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... pass and disappear, Then closing, body and huge members heaved With energy and agony and fear. See how the thighs were strained, how tortured here. See, limb from limb sprung, pain too sore to bear. Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes Have worn since—oh, with what desperate surprise! These arms, uplifted still, were raised in vain Against alien triumph and the inward pain. Unlock your arms, and be no more distressed, Let the wind glide over you easily again. It is a dream you fight, ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... ruin his reputation! To cause him to be sent away from Corinth! To wreck his career! To deprive him of a companion so fitly qualified to help him realize to the full his splendid ambition! Small wonder that the daughter of the church had determined upon a desperate measure. ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and now stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obliged to turn his head backward to see her—"Mr. Henderson, do you know you are getting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his said that was not such a desperate thing to do if he chose ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mend his fences, build a barn, or get in a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in the assistance or his friend? He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... work, and I doubt whether all the laborious prose written, in history and criticism, on the revival of learning, will ever express better than this short poem the inexhaustible thirst of the Renaissance in its pursuit of knowledge, or the enthusiasm of the pupils of a New Scholar for his desperate strife to know in a short life the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... for ten shillings, and a polite but urgent request that the amount should be paid without further delay. She crushed it angrily in her hand, then stuffed it into her pocket and stood thinking. What was she to do? What could she do? All sorts of desperate schemes came running through her mind, and she gave each its ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... had not done so. She had had time and opportunity to tell him frankly of her own feeling, but she had not done so. She did not know why. Now she could not. Philip had given her to understand his desperate determination to marry her, and, after all she had said and done, she had no right to refuse him. If she told him the truth he might kill Lawrence or her, or both of them. These tragic idealists, she exclaimed to herself, what a tangle they can make ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... confirmed my belief that he was, indeed, the celebrated foreigner the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and history even YOU must be acquainted with, though you may not be what I have heard my friend Chevy Slime call himself, "the most literary man alive." A desperate follower of the star of Austerlitz from his youth, a martyr to the cause in the Chateau d'If, Monte Cristo has not deserted it now that he has come into his own—or ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... under the circumstances. He continued that automatic paddling, and, assisted by the current, was rapidly leaving his enemies in the rear when they called to him again, moving at the same time down the bank in a fashion which showed that they meant business. The hunter, not yet ready to make the desperate dash which he had reserved for the last final effort, if he should be driven to the wall, ceased work again ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... about a good many things," said David, speaking now after a desperate effort. "In the first place, there are two fellows here who say I ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... scruple—he wished so to leave what he had forfeited out of account. He wished not to do anything because he had missed something else, because he was sore or sorry or impoverished, because he was maltreated or desperate; he wished to do everything because he was lucid and quiet, just the same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been. Thus it was that while he virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting it: "You've been chucked, old ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... consequence of a proclamation (May 11) offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was apprehended at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, but after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the arresting party, Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, was wounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately, that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for some time, and died in great agony ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... felt in a desperate hurry, yet he took time to glance into the most of the hundred and fifty tents, tearing along past the lines of them. He also took time, after our brief inspection was finished, to pause, get ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... not!" replied the Jew, rendered desperate by paternal affection; "my daughter is my flesh and blood, dearer to me a thousand times than those limbs thy cruelty threatens. No silver will I give thee unless I were to pour it molten down thy [v]avaricious throat—no, not a silver penny will I give thee, [v]Nazarene, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... their camp were pursued by the Romans. There the women, with loud cries, armed themselves, and made a desperate resistance, catching at the swords with their naked hands, and suffering themselves to be ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... the little, nervous, overworked, almost desperate creature, fighting like a little animal in her bay of life against the odds which would drive her from it, and he felt in a horrible perplexity. He felt also profane. Why could not he be left out of this? he inquired, with ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... paralysis; the difficulty of vivisection underground; the desperate coiling of the victim: all these things tell me that the Cetonia-grub, as regards its nervous system, must possess a structure peculiar to itself. The whole of the ganglia must be concentrated in a ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... for thee! 'Tis the last desperate resource of those Cheap souls to whom their honor, their good name Is their poor saving, their last worthless keep, Which, having staked and lost, they stake themselves In the mad rage of gaming. Thou art rich And glorious; with an unpolluted heart Thou canst make conquest of whate'er ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... sewing, this great idea weighed heavily upon her. It would be the very first step she had ever taken without her mother's approval, and away from the influence of Agnetta's decided opinion it seemed doubly alarming—a desperate and ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... child," exclaimed Miss Upton, prolonging her troubled stare, "perhaps Providence helped me nearly trip up that slab-sided gawk. Perhaps I set down here for a purpose. Desperate folks cling to straws. I'm the huskiest straw you ever saw, and I might be able to give you some advice. At least I've got an old head and you've got a young one, bless your poor little heart. Why don't we go somewheres where we can talk ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... Making a desperate effort to act like an experienced and trusted attendant of the prison, I roamed about and tried not to appear roaming. I successfully passed two guards, and reached the desired spot, which was by good luck ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... autumn of unusual mildness had set in with the New Year and had continued without a break for fifteen days. A heavy fall of snow with a blizzard blowing sixty miles an hour had made the trails almost impassable, indeed quite so to any but to those bent on desperate business or to Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police. To these gallant riders all trails stood open at all seasons of the year, no matter what snow might fall or blizzard blow, so long ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor |
