"Disheartening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have us think as important as any thing lately done in that way. After the making of which, he expects that we are to carry over this leaden trophy to England, and is much mortified accordingly at our disheartening remark, that "it was so easy to write upon lead!" Upon seeing that we are indisposed to be cheated, he resolved to humiliate us in the eyes of our friend, which he does effectually by merely glancing at a small urceolus with a painting on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... quick succession, the last containing the disappointing and disheartening intelligence that Windham, with the greater part of his troops, had been driven into the entrenchment, plainly showing that the city and cantonment were in the possession of the enemy, and suggesting the possibility of the bridge of boats having ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... came John A. Quarles, of Kentucky, with his wife, who had been Patsey Ann Lampton; also, later, Benjamin Lampton, her father, and others of the Lampton race. It was natural that they should want Jane Clemens and her husband to give up that disheartening east Tennessee venture and join them in this new and promising land. It was natural, too, for John Quarles—happy-hearted, generous, and optimistic—to write the letter. There were only twenty-one houses in Florida, but Quarles counted stables, out-buildings—everything with a roof ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... permission by a silent bend of the head. The letters, however, were but short and freezing answers from what appeared to be distant connections or former friends, or persons to whom the deceased had applied for some situation. They were all very disheartening in their tone. Leonard next endeavoured to refresh Helen's memory as to the name of the nobleman which had been last on her father's lips; but there he failed wholly. For it may be remembered that Lord L'Estrange, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It was a disheartening beginning. But as the hours slipped by they had better success. One horse, two, three could be towed on separate ropes behind the raft. And in the morning there was a cockleshell of a boat oared in by one of the men who had ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... was talkative, and his honest chest-voice sounded pleasantly; but the matter of his discourse might have been more cheerful. Here, as elsewhere, the evil of the times was pressing upon men and disheartening them from labour. Farms lying barren, ill-will between proprietor and tenant, between tenant and hind, departure of the tillers of the soil to rot in towns that have no need of them—of such things did honest Pammenter speak, with many a sturdy malediction of landlords and land-laws, whereat Sidney ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... expert in science, a classical scholar, an author or a critic in letters, a leader in political or ecclesiastical or municipal life, and yet to discover that he is as stupid as any sot in the things of his own soul, is one of the saddest and most disheartening sights you can see. Much sadder and much more disheartening than to see stairs and streets of people who can neither read nor write. And yet our city is full of such stupid people. You will find as utter spiritual stupidity among the rich and the lettered and the refined ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... The disheartening effect throughout the Confederacy may be guessed by the following extract from a diary kept by Mr. I. D. Jones, the ...
— History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: Beverly Ford. • Daniel Oakey
... there can be anything new in the drama—that it was almost criminal to slight it. Nothing was made of it. It almost escaped attention. Instead, we got a crew of comic opera Scotchmen singing songs, and an absurd picture of Robert Burns, who was injected pell-mell into the "romance." It was disheartening. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... retrace (As in a map the voyager his course) The windings of my way through many years. Short as in retrospect the journey seems, It seemed not always short; the rugged path, And prospect oft so dreary and forlorn, Moved many a sigh at its disheartening length. Yet feeling present evils, while the past Faintly impress the mind, or not at all, How readily we wish time spent revoked, That we might try the ground again, where once (Through inexperience as we now perceive) We missed that ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of war. When the realization comes it comes with panic swiftness. The crowd of refugees which hurried by all roads out of Antwerp during the night of the 9th of October bound for anywhere, and fleeing from the destroyers of Louvain, was one of the most disheartening spectacles of the war. There were some bright spots in the prevailing darkness. One of these was General Sir Henry Rawlinson, of the Seventh Division, who took over the command at Ostend. 'I came into contact continuously with him for the next month,' says Air Commodore ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... brown, depressing landscape to the rich beauties of the Sind Valley and Kashmir. But to make the journey the other way round, and to pass into the gloomy region after being spoilt by the luxuries of Kashmir, is sadly disheartening at first. ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... suggestion, the failures had been too many: every one to whom he broached the subject declared it to be impossible, prophesying that the extension of the settlement westward would forever be obstructed by their unscalable heights. Blaxland, however, was not intimidated by these disheartening predictions; and, in 1811, he started out on a short journey of investigation, in company with three Europeans and two natives. On this trip he found that by keeping on the crowning ridge or dividing water-shed between the streams ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... my native city, the more I recalled to myself doubtingly the circumstances, prospects, and hopes with which I had left home; and it was with a very disheartening feeling that I now returned, as it were, like one shipwrecked. Yet, since I had not very much with which to reproach myself, I contrived to compose myself tolerably well: however, the welcome was not without emotion. The great vivacity ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... densest part of dense forests, can drive his way through the worst tangle of vegetation, and has a hearing and eyesight so keen that usually he sees the hunter long before the latter sees him. A hunt after bongo means long hours or even days of hunting the forests, with hardships of travel so disheartening that comparatively few white sportsmen attempt to go in after the elusive antelope. Kermit Roosevelt, however, with the good fortune that has followed his hunting adventures, succeeded in killing a cow ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... had not been so woebegone she would have laughed at this string of disheartening reasons for her being so falsely encouraged to compete with gifted creatures like Rosamond Merton, but her gloom was too deep and too real to see the funny side ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... South that the largest number of our people live; it is there that they encounter the greatest hardships; it is there the problem of their future usefulness as American citizens must have full and satisfactory, or disastrous and disheartening demonstration. Consequently, the colored statesman and the colored editor must turn their attention to the South and make that field the center of speculation, deduction and practical application. We all understand the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... replied with a disheartening composure, although from under the parasol with which he shaded her she met his eyes so kindly that his heart beat quicker. But before he could speak on she looked away to his fretting horse and then across to the battery, where a growing laugh was running through the whole undisciplined command. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... to reach the Grand Duke was not quenched by this terrible calamity. He understood that Ivan Ogareff, having obtained his seal and commission, would try to reach the Grand Duke before he, himself, could possibly get there, carrying a false message, which would betray all Siberia. Michael, after disheartening trials in finding a trusty companion, finally succeeded and pushed on towards Irkutsk, only hoping he might reach the place before Ogareff should betray the city. At last, after a most painful fourteen days' journey, he is at the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... certainly disheartening. They were one hundred and fifty miles from their nearest cache, and nearly three hundred from the nearest settlement, already greatly used up, needing rest and plenty of food; in a country that forbade any extended tramping inland to cut off ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... said I, after listening to this disheartening recital—"supposing that your relatives will not help you, have you any plans laid to meet such a contingency? 'Hope for the best and provide for the worst' is a favourite motto of your friend Bob; and I really think it is singularly ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... were compelled to abandon Fort Duquesne, in the Ohio Valley, which the English now named Pittsburg, in honor of War Minister Pitt; and Frontenac (Kingston), the marine arsenal of the French at the foot of Lake Ontario, surrendered and was destroyed. The effect of these losses was disheartening to the French, though before the season's campaign closed Montcalm defeated the English, under General Abercrombie, in an attack on the French post on Lake Champlain, afterward named Ticonderoga. When the year 1759 opened, the English were ready to resume operations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... leave that point. Sure enough, they discovered, this side of Adairsville, three rails torn up and other impediments in the way. They "took up" in time to prevent an accident, but could proceed with the train no further. This was most vexatious, and it may have been in some degree disheartening; but it did not cause the slightest relaxation of efforts, and, as the result proved, was but little in the way of the dead game, pluck and resolutions of Fuller and Murphy, who left the engine and again put out on foot ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... rewards, so that if soldiers are not to have promotion, they will lose their spirit." Thirty-two of the rebel vessels grounded, and fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who took from them many excellent pieces of artillery. The result was most conclusive and most disheartening for the patriots. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to work up enthusiasm for the various avenues to well-being his discussion with Johnson opened. But they remained disheartening prospects. He imagined himself wonderfully smartened up, acquiring style and value in a London shop, but the picture was stiff and unconvincing. He tried to rouse himself to enthusiasm by the idea of his property increasing ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... scarcity of water, and a crew so universally diseased that there were not above ten foremast men in a watch capable of doing duty, and even some of these lame and unable to go aloft; under these disheartening circumstances, I say, we stood to the westward; and on the 9th of June, at daybreak, we at last discovered the ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... greatly to be dreaded. What good, what happiness, could be presaged for such a one as he was? What comfort could he offer to the father? And then he was called on to compare, as it were, the prospects of this unfortunate with those of his own darling; to contrast all that was murky, foul, and disheartening, with all that was perfect—for to him she was all but perfect; to liken Louis Scatcherd to the angel who brightened his own hearthstone. How could he answer to such ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... even during those few next days of disheartening search for work. We often read how purpose can be so powerful that it compels. No doubt if Susan's purpose had been to get temporary relief—or, perhaps, had it been to get permanent relief by weaving ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... parts of Indiana, disease triumphed. The country around Vincennes, on the east side of the Wabash, is a sandy plain. A gentleman who escaped the ravages of fever in that place, and who was much engaged in nursing the sick and consoling the dying, stated to me that nothing was so disheartening as the cloudless sky and burning sun that continued unchanged for weeks in succession. Mortality prevailed to a great extent along the banks of the Wabash. Hindostan, a town on the east fork of White river, 38 miles from Vincennes ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... It was a disheartening discovery, but the three Rover boys did not stop to think it over. Throwing open the bolted door, Tom and Dick joined Sam, and in the darkness made their way to the rear of the room in which they had held Cuffer and Shelley prisoners. In a minute more they were ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... give up hope of final escape, but pressed on for a time. However, the acclivity they were ascending grew steeper as they advanced, and they were obliged to stop now and then to rest. On one of these occasions they heard a commotion in the jungle just ahead of them. This was disheartening! ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... companies, both 17th and 59th, worked like heroes, and so particularly did the Norfolks and Bedfords; but it was most disheartening work. No sooner was one parapet fairly complete than another fell in; and when this was mended the first one would collapse again under the incessant downpour. And all this time wire entanglements had to be put up in front under hostile fire, trenches connected up and drained, support trenches ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... It must be disheartening work learning a musical instrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... according to Secretary of War Knox, were opposed to the further prosecution of the Indian war. They considered that the sacrifice of blood and treasure in such a conflict would far exceed any advantages that might possibly be reaped by it. The result of Harmar's campaign had been very disheartening, and the government was in straitened circumstances, both as to men and means. But by strenuous efforts, President Washington induced Congress to pass an act, on the second day of March, 1791, for raising and adding another regiment to the military establishment ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... and heart, in nerves and his very marrow, his work possesses a strength which is almost terrifying, combined with a beauty as terrifying in its way. If he will but develop his immense genius instead of meddling with social and political questions, and getting into prison on that score with disheartening regularity, something incalculably great may be the outcome. It is said that he is now banished in polite exile to the Crimea. If he can be kept there or elsewhere out of mischief, the Russian government will again render the literature of its own country ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... his men was now dreary and disheartening. In addition to the rigors of a long winter, in a high northern latitude, they had to apprehend the suffering which would arise from a scarcity of provisions. The vessel had been victualled for six months, and that time having now expired, and their stores ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... deep emotion is so entirely associated with the ideal, that real and particular manifestations of it are repugnant to them as something alien; and this without the least insincerity, though with a vicious and disheartening inconsistency. Rousseau belonged to this class, and loved man most when he saw men least. Bad as this was, it does not justify us in denouncing his love of man as artificial; it was one side of an ideal exaltation, which stirred the depths of his spirit with ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... next best solution of my difficulties, I took the type-written pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them to read what I had said, and give me the benefit of their advice. The experience was rather disheartening. Each and every man had his own prejudices and his own hobbies and preferences. They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their most beloved criminal. With some of them, Napoleon and Jenghiz Khan were candidates ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... when one sunny mid-afternoon I caught sight of Renson dejectedly trudging down across what might be called the "Maiden" of Paraiso, back of the two-story lodge-hall. I took leave of my ebony hostess and descended. Renson's troubles were indeed disheartening. Back in the jungled fringe of the town he had fallen into a swarm of Martiniques, and Renson's French being nothing more than an unstudied mixture of English and Spanish, he had not gathered much information. Moreover negro ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of his failure and distress; and when Eve, Mme. Chardon, and David each secretly sent money to their poet, it must be plain to the reader that the three hundred francs they sent were like their very blood. The overwhelming news, the disheartening sense that work as bravely as she might, she made so little, left Eve looking forward with a certain dread to an event which fills the cup of happiness to the full. The time was coming very near now, and to herself she said, "If my ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... of surrender scarcely entered his mind for a moment—or, if it did so, was speedily banished. Under the pressure of circumstances so adverse that they seemed calculated to break down the most stubborn resolution. General Lee did not falter; and throughout the disheartening scenes of the retreat, from the moment when he left Amelia Court-House to the hour when his little column was drawing near Appomattox, still continued to believe that the situation was not desperate, and that he would be able to force his ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the plaza in search of gossip that was rumored to be in circulation at Loring's expense. He found the gossipers easily enough, but had greater difficulty in reaching their authorities. It proved disheartening work, for the further he went the less he learned—each tale bearer having apparently added to the pile of his informant, as Petty should have had sense enough to know would be the case. But at last he "lit" on something tangible: The hardy giant who led the rush the night of the wreck was now well ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... words or actions, becloud their children's sky! One way in which parents do this is by telling the faults of their children to visitors, in the presence of the children. There is scarcely anything more disheartening to a child than this. He feels humiliated and hurt. He feels, and justly feels, that he has been mistreated. It sinks down into his soul and rankles there. It discourages him, and if it is often repeated he comes not to care if he is at fault. Constant reproof and ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... weather. The men who were not soaked to their necks in surf and bog were doing picket duty alongshore, sleeping in their boots. Consequently, in three weeks, half Pepperrell's force became deadly ill. At this time, within two days, occurred both a cheering success and a disheartening rebuff. A French man-of-war with seventy cannon and six hundred men was seen entering Louisburg. As if in panic fright, one of the small English ships fled. The French ship pursued. In a trice she was surrounded by the English fleet and captured. The flight of ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... afraid you've had a very poor lunch, Dan. It's disheartening to see you picking at a few beans and drinking soda water. I wonder ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... trouble her; abroad or at home, finding inexhaustible varieties of amusement; seeing new places, making new acquaintances—what a disheartening contrast did Cecilia's happy life present to the life of her friend! Who, in Emily's position, could have read that joyously-written letter from Switzerland, and not have lost heart and faith, for the moment at ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... for any fate, Lafayette started on the long, wearisome journey northward. There were rivers deep and swift to cross; the roads were bad and the wintry storms made them worse. Floating ice crowded the fords. Rain and hail and snow and slush made up a disheartening monotony. ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... those solemn hours, in which he has felt with clearer insight and deeper faith his sacred truths, he labours to win to his own belief those whom he loves, will he be checked by their indifference or their laughter! And will he not bear back to his meditations a painful and disheartening sorrow, a gloomy discontent in that faith which takes in but a portion of those whom he wishes to include in all his blessings? Will he not be enfeebled by a distraction of inconsistent desires, when he feels so strongly that the faith which fills his ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... since they had already reached unknown regions, where every thing presented to them an aspect of such gloomy novelty! how many steps they had taken, and how many more they had yet to take! The very idea of return was disheartening; and yet they were obliged to march on, to keep constantly marching! and they complained that ever since they left France, their fatigues had been gradually increasing, and the means of supporting ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... accomplish." Hence, too, no half-formed and then abandoned projects were among the stepping-stones of his career. A plan or an idea, once conceived, was certain to be shaped, developed and matured; and whatever the result, it left up disheartening effect, no feeling of distrust, to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... intrenchment. But the enemy had no stomach for that kind of work, and veered off to the south, where they occupied two little hills, whence they could enfilade a portion of our position. We answered their fire as best we could, but it was cruel, disheartening work. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Jameson received a letter from the High Commissioner again ordering us to desist in our advance. Dr. Jameson informed me at the same time of the most disheartening news, viz., that he had received a message stating that Johannesburg would not or could not come to our assistance, and that we must ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... all the children in a row on leaving, and the pastor, with a huge bunch of keys, accompanied us to see his church, which, funnily enough, we could only reach by the help of a small boat—all very well in the summer when boats can go, or in the winter when there is ice to cross, but rather disheartening at the mid-seasons, when crossing becomes a serious business and requires great skill. There was a "church boat" lying near by, a great huge cumbersome sort of concern that twelve people could row at a time, and two or three times as many more stand or sit in, and on Sundays ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... but the stirring of adolescent blood when he fancied that he loved Eva Thornhill. The home life of others had not impressed him as a dream fulfilled. The gradual disillusionment of the many was disheartening, and Latimer's worn, unhappy face was a constant reminder. Arthur Latimer! That blithe Southerner—believer in men—and women! Philip knew what had made him seek forgetfulness in the law and politics. The success of his friend, who had reached his goal, on the supreme bench, had gratified Danvers, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... it. I therefore spent the whole day staggering about our rolling ship with sherbet and food and medicines, treating dysentery and fever. During my short snatches of sleep I dreamt of these horrors too. But it was terribly disheartening work, owing to their fanaticism. Many of them listened to me with more faith about food and medicines because I knew something of the Koran, and could recite their Bismillah and ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... hair-breadth escapes of a life of adventures, instead of disheartening young people, seem frequently to recommend a trade to them. A tender mother, among the inferior ranks of people, is often afraid to send her son to school at a sea-port town, lest the sight of the ships, and the conversation and adventures of the sailors, should entice him ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... as the only other likely weak place, but on climbing up and again testing the mortar with the point of his knife, the result was disheartening, for the cement of the good old times hardened into something far more difficult to deal with than stone. In fact, he soon found that he would be more likely to escape by sawing through the bars or digging ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... rather of the decline than of the progress of a state. We, who have so long been eager in the pursuit and accumulation of riches, are now to show more generous energies in the free spending of our means to gain the invaluable objects for which we have gone to war. There is nothing disheartening in this prospect. Our people, accustomed as they have been during late years to the most lavish use of money, and to general extravagance in expense, have not yet lost the tradition of the economies and thrift of earlier times, and will not find it difficult to put them once more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... poorly, and the trial of it is that I cannot see any positive prospect of a definite, speedy recovery. But it will come; I have never seriously doubted it. God won't let me finish off in this disheartening manner—disheartening, I mean, to my comrades, and to those I have to leave with the responsibility of keeping the Banner flying. God will still do wonders, in spite ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... the unsatisfactory and disheartening turmoil in which we are at present. It's the mad bull and the china shop, and, nota bene, we are the china shop. People want to see if Italy has cut off our noses, or what! A very kind anxiety certainly, but so horribly fatiguing that my heart sinks, and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... had been made habitable, and here the missionaries had taken up their abode. Cheerless it seemed and disheartening to Philip and Della, as they saw no progress at all made in the objects of their long journey, but every effort consumed in ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... she returned to Rome, in 1764, and continued her studies for a time, but her interests were again sacrificed to her father's unreasonable capriciousness, and she was taken to Bologna and then to Venice. This constant change was disheartening to Angelica and of the greatest disadvantage to her study, and it was most fortunate that she now met Lady Wentworth, who became her friend and afterward ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... disheartening, and might have deterred me from any further prosecution of the matter, had the question of republication in Great Britain rested entirely with me; but I apprehended the appearance of a spurious edition. I now thought ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... by the books on her table. These volumes, frequently renewed, and almost always damp from the press, bore names generally unfamiliar to Mrs. Leveret, and giving her, as she furtively scanned them, a disheartening glimpse of new fields of knowledge to be breathlessly traversed in Mrs. Ballinger's wake. But to-day a number of maturer-looking volumes were adroitly mingled with the primeurs of the press—Karl Marx jostled Professor Bergson, and the "Confessions of St. Augustine" lay beside ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... that he would advance Germany's request for an armistice, if it looked toward peace—this in reply to Page's message that Great Britain would not receive such a proposal in a kindly spirit—seemed to lay the basis of further misunderstandings. The interview was a disheartening one for Page. Many people whom the Ambassador met in the course of this visit still retain memories of his fervour in what had now become with him a sacred cause. With many friends and officials he discussed the European situation ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... faultless father. The good God has not given us a special kind of men upon whom to devolve the duty of seeing to the observance of the understandings that we call laws. Like all else that men do, this work is badly done. The best that we can hope for through all the failures, the injustice, the disheartening damage to individual rights and interests, is a fairly good general result, enabling us to walk abroad among our fellows unafraid, to meet even the tribesmen from another valley without too imminent peril of braining and evisceration. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... had any mission at all, whether he had not rather yielded to deceitful suggestions, believed in the reality of phantoms, and been deceived by chance appearances. He saw the spiritual and moral features of his friends and disciples, deformed as in a convex mirror; he felt a disheartening certainty that all he had hoped of them was vain. Then again that sad, tender little song returned, no longer beseeching but full of pity, of a pity comprehending all his bitter struggle, the sorrowing pity of some unknown spirit that was ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... never had been. There had been no murder, no robbery, no flight or hiding on the part of the Weggs to escape an injured enemy; nothing even mysterious, in the light of the story they had just heard. It was dreadfully humiliating and thoroughly disheartening, after all their earnest endeavor to investigate a crime that ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... agriculture, or to some special industry which gives him better compensation for his work. This benefit by no means generally results from an attempt at "scientific" agriculture, nor is the adoption of a special industry by any means generally successful. Failure in either of these directions is disheartening and discouraging to those who are watching his example. There are many well-tried improvements upon the old methods of our fathers which are universally adopted, especially in the direction of the use of better implements and more judicious care in the application of manure. ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... Disheartening to Bolivar as this spectacle was, it proved merely the first of a series of calamities which were to overshadow the later years of the Liberator. His grandiose political structure began to crumble, for it was built on the ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... command, we ought to be able to repulse it, and to prevent the scoundrels from effecting a landing. For though the news that they were thoroughly equipped with the weapons and munitions of war was wofully disheartening news, still, as we were well-armed ourselves, it did not altogether discourage us. They might be very well two to one, but two to one is no such great odds when the larger party has to effect a landing upon an open place held by resolute men ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... statesman who, aloof from faction, ought to be accustomed to take just and comprehensive views; and a priest who ought to be under the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. He says I am a visionary. All this might well be disheartening; but now comes one whom no circumstances impel to judge my project with indulgence; who would, at the first glance, appear to have many prejudices arrayed against it, who knows more of the world than Lord Eskdale, and who ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... making my disheartening rounds when the others drove into the yard, and the wails of lamentation rose long ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... November number of the Bibliotheque Universelle, and separately issued as a pamphlet. A less inspiring task could hardly be assigned to a botanist than the systematic elaboration of the genus Quercus and its allies. The vast materials assembled under De Candolle's hands, while disheartening for their bulk, offered small hope of novelty. The subject was both extremely trite and extremely difficult. Happily it occurred to De Candolle that an interest might be imparted to an onerous undertaking, and a work of necessity be turned to good account for science, by studying the oaks in view ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... to ascend the slope which lay beyond. "But brigade after brigade," says General Porter, "seemed almost to melt away before the concentrated fire of our artillery and infantry; yet others pressed on, followed by supports daring and brave as their predecessors, despite their heavy losses and the disheartening effect of having to clamber over many of their disabled and dead, and to meet their surviving comrades rushing back in great disorder from the deadly contest."* (* Battles and Leaders of the Civil War volume 2 page 337.) For over an ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... a disheartening evening. We played progressive euchre for a silly prize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay so. Then the major did amateur conjuring till we nearly died. I was thankful to sneak out-of-doors ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... look rather disheartening, I mean, as far as my grand object was concerned. There was but one other port left, and this was between two and three hundred miles distant. I determined however to go to Plymouth. I had already been more successful in this tour, with respect to obtaining general ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... One most disheartening circumstance appeared, viz. that when he made the circuit oval his law of equable description of areas broke down. That seemed to require the circular orbit, and yet no circular orbit was ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... liberty. And with the loss of the two she lost buoyancy. In a deeper sense than Pericles used the phrase, 'the springtime went out of her year'. Ultimately, perhaps, we cannot explain why this should be so. Other nations have had as disheartening experiences and yet risen above them. Some of the most inspired prophecies in the Hebrew writings came after the tiny state of Judaea had been torn in pieces by the insensate conflict between North and South, and after the whole people had been swept into ...
— Progress and History • Various
... chief determinants of our careers. Even when successful we realize either the emptiness of the prize we had desired, or the distance we are in reality from the goal we had set ourselves. Generalizing thus from his own experience, the individual notes the similar disheartening discrepancies throughout human life. He sees the good suffer, and the wicked prosper; the innocent die, and the guilty escape. Disease is no respecter of persons, and death comes to the just and ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... modern novel; the method of Britannicus still rules the stage. But Racine carried out his ideals more rigorously and more boldly than any of his successors. He fixed the whole of his attention upon the spiritual crisis; to him that alone was of importance; and the conventional classicism so disheartening to the English reader—the 'unities,' the harangues, the confidences, the absence of local colour, and the concealment of the action—was no more than the machinery for enhancing the effect of the inner tragedy, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... every man and every man's hand against them,"—and though the pleasant summer weather brought many sunshiny days and starlit nights, the cold, damp, and dismal days took all the poetry out of this roving life, and sodden forests and relentless foes brought dreary and disheartening hours. Trust me, boys, this so-called "free and jolly life of the bold outlaw," which so many story-papers picture, whether it be with Brian Boru in distant Ireland, nine hundred years ago, or in Sherwood Forest with Robin ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... things which lay there before. This had become a crossing-place for the slaves that the Portuguese agents were carrying to Tette, because they were afraid to take them across nearer to where the ship lay, about seven miles off. Nothing was more disheartening than this conduct of the Manganja, in profiting by the entire ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Government can do something by giving security to property, and by making laws which will raise the self-respect of the lower classes. But the effect of such laws must be slow and gradual; and the error which has most contributed to that delay in the progress of freedom, which is 'so disheartening to every liberal mind,'[272] is the confusion as to the true causes of misery. Thus, as he has already urged, professed economists could still believe, so long after the publication of Adam Smith's work, that it was 'in the power of the justices of the peace or even of the omnipotence of parliament ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Accordingly, on the following morning, three men were despatched along the south bank, while Mr. Hunt and three others proceeded along the north. The two parties returned after a weary scramble among swamps, rocks, and precipices, and with very disheartening accounts. For nearly forty miles that they had explored, the river foamed and roared along through a deep and narrow channel, from twenty to thirty yards wide, which it had worn, in the course of ages, through the heart of a barren, rocky country. The precipices on each side were ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... right. But it is so disheartening. They must have taken her up somewhere; for aught we know, poor girl! she may be a prisoner somewhere in one of the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... bigger and bigger. Again abruptly it resumed its normal proportions, but they, the observers of it, had been struck small. To their own minds they seemed like little black insects crawling painfully. In the distance these insects crawled was a disproportion to the energy expended, a disproportion disheartening, filling the soul with the despair of an accomplishment that could mean anything in the following of that which ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... belong to any set. I see my friends occasionally just as you see yours; and as to progress—well, I fear that you are right in your statement that we shall never look at things alike. To me progress presupposes in the individual or the community attaining it a prelude of slow struggle, disheartening doubts, and modest reverence for previous results—for the accumulated wisdom of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... was not a little embarrassed, for although accustomed to short, informal temperance talks in public, I had no idea, woman that I was, of taking his place at such a critical moment. What added to my embarrassment was the disheartening fact to all of us that Mr. Pope was just then unexpectedly called away to another part of his extensive field and was gone two days. So there was no help for it. I looked over my old notes—nothing would do. Then I inquired of the Lord, and He said "Fear not." ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... disheartening revelation to the king—not that he was unwilling to sacrifice a subject, but that he was hopeless of finding a man willing to sacrifice himself. No time was to be lost however, for the princess was lying motionless on her bed, and ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... wrote very neatly on the outside the date, the name of the creditor, and the amount of the debt, and with an indiarubber band enrolled it in a company of its fellows. Miss Joliffe found drawers full of such disheartening packets after his death, for Martin had a talent for distributing his favours, and of planting small debts far and wide, which by-and-by grew up into ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... was mutual and profound. The cow was not only gone, but she had shown such disinclination to be domesticated, and such a misapprehension of the true purpose of life, that the prospect was truly disheartening. ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight,—this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nothing new; but, for all that, the monotony of the situation must have been disheartening. Napoleon's resolution was soon taken. He was either really ill from privation and disappointment, or soon became so. Armed with a medical certificate, he applied for and received a furlough. This step having been ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... undertook to claim rank over the Virginian commander-in-chief because he had held a king's commission; and Washington was obliged to travel to Boston in order to have the miserable thing set right by Governor Shirley. This affair settled, he returned to take up again the old disheartening struggle, and his outspoken condemnation of Dinwiddie's foolish schemes and of the shortcomings of the government began to raise up backbiters and malcontents at Williamsburg. "My orders," he said, "are dark, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... very disheartening disappointment, but I held my tongue, and knowing that my old friend and correspondent, George Liverm of Cambridge, N. E., possessed an imperfect copy, which he and Mr. Crowninshield, after the noble example of the 'Lincoln ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... fallen when the little party commenced to resaddle their ponies and in the midst of their labors there came a rude and disheartening interruption. Billy had kept either the Chinaman or Bridge constantly upon watch toward the direction in which Rozales' men lolled smoking in the dark, and it was the crack of Bridge's carbine which awoke the Americans to the fact that though the border lay but a few miles away they were still ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... than just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... middle of the room, before he gained his balance. After him went Mac Strann with an agility astonishing in that squat, formless bulk. His long arms were outstretched and his fingers tensed, and in his face there was an uncanny joy; his lip had lifted in that peculiarly disheartening sneer. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... for his banqueting scenes. But to those who live, as most of us do, in houses of moderate dimensions, snug, comfortable, which the owner's presence fills sufficiently, leaving room for a few visitors, a vast marble palace is disheartening and uninviting. I never get into a very large and lofty saloon without feeling as if I were a weak solution of myself,—my personality almost drowned out in the flood of space about me. The wigwam is more homelike than the cavern. Our wooden houses are a better kind of ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... out Beryl's story—of the simple home in the tenement from which her mother shut out all that was coarsening and degrading, stirring her child's mind and her tastes with dreams she persistently cherished against disheartening odds; of the Belgian musician who had first taught her small fingers and fired her ambitions for only the best in the art; of school and the lessons she devoured because she craved knowledge and the ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... they would be all very well if—if they were not British subjects. But such being the case, you never know! It is disheartening to find such babble in the mouth of ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... by unlucky transactions, died, leaving a numerous family without the means of support. His children were obliged to commence life alone and unaided, which, in a country where labor is so cheap, is difficult and disheartening. Our friend chose the profession of a machinist, which, after encountering great obstacles, he succeeded in learning, and now supports himself as a common laborer. But his position in this respect prevents him from occupying that station in society for ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... difference in the proposition. Army cheese runs to rind rapidly, and a pound of beef is often easily bitten to the bone: sometimes, in fact, it is all bone and gristle, and the ravages of cooking minimise its bulk in a disheartening way. One and a half pound of bread is more than the third of a big loaf, but minus butter it makes a featureless repast. Breakfast and tea without butter and milk does not always ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... base, Stars wanting three runs to tie, Scott, a weak batter, at the plate! The situation was disheartening. Yet there sat Delaney, shot through and through with some vital compelling force. He saw only victory. And when the very first ball pitched to Scott hit him on the leg, giving him his base, Delaney got to his feet, unsteady ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... in a peculiarly lamb-like and long-suffering mood this morning. Actions for which O'Hara would on other days have been expelled from the room without hope of return, today were greeted with a mild "Don't do that, please, O'Hara," or even the ridiculously inadequate "O'Hara!" It was perfectly disheartening. O'Hara began to ask himself bitterly what was the use of ragging at all if this was how it was received. And the moments were flying, and his promise to Renford and Harvey ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... position of troops is all laid down on the maps, and the plans of every commander explained in official reports; but amid the doubt and confusion of actual combat, where there has been great loss of men and material, it is not always so easy to decide. On the night of the 2d the state of affairs was disheartening. In the combats of the preceding days, the First, Third, and Eleventh Corps had been almost annihilated; the Fifth Corps and a great part of the Second were shattered, and only the Sixth Corps and Twelfth Corps were comparatively fresh. ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... or preacher of September or of October may think of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating example. Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and the completest triumph of the completest villainy, that ever vexed and disgraced mankind! The example is ruinous in every point of view, religious, moral, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Petrovitch, it was all terribly disheartening," Pulcheria Alexandrovna hastened to declare with peculiar intonation, "and if Dmitri Prokofitch had not been sent us, I really believe by God Himself, we should have been utterly lost. Here, he is! Dmitri Prokofitch Razumihin," she ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... into my heart: My thinned ranks told the woeful tale of the fierce struggles, indescribable by words, through which my division had passed since 7 o'clock in the morning; and this, added to our hungry and exhausted condition, was naturally disheartening. The men had been made veterans, however, by the fortunes and misfortunes of the day, and as they went into their new places still confident of final success, it was plain to see that they felt a self-confidence inspired by the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a momentary brightness over the scene, but after their departure every thing looked more gloomy and disheartening than before. The fort itself was a deep, dark, damp, gloomy-looking place, inclosed in high walls, where the sunlight rarely penetrated. If we ascended to the parapet, we saw nothing but uncouth State flags, representing palmettos, pelicans, and other strange devices. No ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... Grey's triumphant feeling that he had spiked the guns of his young adversary, the revulsion and disappointment of defeat were all the more disheartening. He would like to have believed his tale a false one, but that was not easy. On a closer inspection of the paper which Maurice Walton had brought to him, he discovered a water-mark in the paper showing that it had only been manufactured the year previous. As Gilbert had been in Cincinnati ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... known as the Lamb Fair at Lockerbie, and for the first time in my life took a "fee" for the harvest. On arriving at the field when shearing and mowing began, the farmer asked me to bind a sheaf; when I had done so, he seized it by the band, and it fell to pieces! Instead of disheartening me, however, he gave me a careful lesson how to bind; and the second that I bound did not collapse when shaken, and the third he pitched across the field, and on finding that it still remained firm, he ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... build it, and holding its first bazar. There were no rich people of their faith—unless one except the Conners, who owned the saw-mill and were well-to-do—not even many poor to club their mites; more disheartening yet, the parish roll held about an equal proportion of Irish and German names. The Vicar-General and the Bishop shook their heads at the yoking of the two races; but there was no church nearer than Father Kelly's, five miles away, and Father Kelly ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... this disheartening and weakening discovery of the depth and extent of our sinfulness, we proceed to take the second step, and attempt to extirpate it. Suppose that after coming to a consciousness of all this obligation resting upon us, we endeavor to comply with it. This ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... kilometres off. Patience! We had been used to these long waits since the army had been pulled up before the formidable line of trenches which the Germans had dug north of Reims. They were certainly most disheartening; but it could not be helped, and it was of no use to complain. I turned and went slowly up the steep footpath that led ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... went to Mr. ———'s office, and afterwards strayed forth again, and crossed London Bridge. Thence I rambled rather drearily along through several shabby and uninteresting streets on the other side of the Thames; and the dull streets in London are really the dullest and most disheartening in the world. By and by I found my way to Southwark Bridge, and so crossed to Upper Thames Street, which was likewise very stupid, though I believe Clenman's paternal house in "Little Dorrit" stands thereabouts. . . . . Next, I got into Ludgate Hill, near ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 22) was by far the most disheartening of our journey up the valley of the Susan. We portaged all day through gullies and swamps and over rough ridges, covering in all about two miles and a half. All of us were overcome by the hard work in the burning sun and the poisonous bites of the flies. I was the most susceptible to the attacks ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... disaster: their letters still remain to prove it. But most people, then as now, knew nothing about navies; and so the Armada went on collecting ships and men together, heartening the landsmen of Spain, and disheartening far ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... husband herself, and no longer allow the intruder to keep her from the place which belonged to her alone. The old countess's power of persuasion had strengthened her courage, and the unwonted energy of the weak, more than yielding woman, exerted so startling and at the same time disheartening an effect upon the wearied, tortured young creature that she attempted no resistance. The entreaties of the leech and kind Herr Teufel, however, induced her to persist a short ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rude to call me a thing; it is disheartening, when I believed I was looking my best," says Monica, laughing. Somehow Kit's praises ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... the purpose of propagating the Gospel, but with more reality aspiring to extend their subtile influence over all mankind, this society, with means the most slender and in the face of obstacles the most disheartening, have, with indomitable courage and supernatural patience, accomplished labors unparalleled in the achievements of mind. Now, in the wilds of Western America, taming and teaching races of whose existence the world of refinement had never heard; now climbing the icy steeps and tracking ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... They learn for the first time that it is a foolish shame to lie and cheat, and it would scarcely be surprising if some of them were finally persuaded that Honesty is the best Policy—a maxim that few Italians believe. And here lies the trouble,—in the unfathomable, disheartening duplicity of the race. The children are not quarrelsome, nor cruel, nor brutal; but the servile defect of falsehood fixed by long generations of slavery in the Italians, is almost ineradicable. The fault is worse in Naples than elsewhere in ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... close staircase, which he had no sooner quitted than he heard exclaimed from an opposite window, "My eyes! a'n't that a swell!" He felt how true the observation was, and that at that moment he was somewhat out of his element; so he hurried on, and soon reached that great broad disheartening street, apostrophized by the celebrated Opium-Eater,[1] with bitter feeling, as—"Oxford Street!—stony-hearted stepmother! Thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... than to the reader's for something to happen? Here have I been tramping along since breakfast-time, and now it is late in the afternoon, but never a feather of her dove's wings, never a flutter of her angel's robes have I seen. It is disheartening, for one naturally expects to find anything we seek a few minutes after starting out to seek it, and I confess that I expected to find my golden mistress within a very few hours of leaving home. However, had that been the case, there ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Reed with disheartening enthusiasm as Wallie placed the biscuit, butter, and molasses before ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... come to count up the achievements of my friend Winter and myself— in the face of stupid but none the less disheartening obstacles— we have not done so badly in two ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... If such were the disheartening influence of the day on those who had nothing to apprehend, what must its effect have been on the poor captives! Woful indeed. The two monks suffered a complete prostration of spirit. All the resolution which Father Haydocke ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth |
