"Despond" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... international—except in a strictly legal sense. It is difficult to say what it is if it be not the private domain of King Leopold and of several monopolist-controlling trusts. Probably the only way out of the present slough of despond is the definite assumption of sole responsibility by the Belgian people; for it should be remembered that a very large number of patriotic Belgians urgently long to redress evils for which they feel themselves to ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... drain the rice fields or feed the salt pans. When out in quest of snipe I have sometimes had to choose between crossing by one of those bridges, innocent of even a handrail, and wading through the black slough of despond which it spanned. Choosing neither, I went home, but the "Kolee" and the "Agree" trip over them like birds, balancing household chattels on ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... seem as precious to me when I had got them as they do now. Once I did not know what it was to despond, but I lost my pupils last winter, and everything seemed hopeless. I am not vain or egotistic; I do not pine for applause and wealth, but I should like to sing.... I've heard so much about my voice that I'm curious to know what people will think ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Mrs. Trapes! In fact, Arthur broke into my—er—life just when things were at their darkest generally. Arthur found me very depressed and gloomy. Arthur taught me that life might yet have its uses. Arthur lifted me out of the Slough of Despond. Arthur brought me—to you! And behold! life is good and perchance shall be even better if—ah yes, if! So you see, my dear Mrs. Trapes, Arthur has done much for me, consequently I have much to thank Arthur for. Indeed, I ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... I hadn't, I'd have more money, I s'pose. Perhaps you've noticed that those who trust a good deal are usually poor. It's all right, Mr. Ellery; you go and take your walk. And I'll walk into that pantry closet. It'll be a good deal like walkin' into the Slough of Despond, but Christian came out on the other side and I guess likely I will, if the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... say, you must not despond, Athenians, under your present circumstances, wretched as they are; for that which is worst in them as regards the past, is best for the future. What do I mean? That our affairs are amiss, men of Athens, because you do nothing which is needful; if, notwithstanding you performed your duties, ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... 3 Despond then no longer, The Lord will provide; And this be the token— No word he hath spoken, Was ever yet broken, The Lord ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... another get For surety in a case of debt, 'Tis not the thing t' accept the terms, But dread th' event—the tale affirms. A Stag approach'd the Sheep, to treat For one good bushel of her wheat. "The honest Wolf will give his bond." At which, beginning to despond, "The Wolf (cries she) 's a vagrant bite. And you are quickly out of sight; Where shall I find or him or you Upon the day the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... too refined a notion of female purity to bear the little arts of love with patience.... He began life full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, ungovernable, expecting the world to fall at once beneath his powers. Unable to bear the sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, he began to despond, and flew to dissipation as a relief. For six weeks he was scarcely sober, and to show what a man does to gratify his appetites when once they get the better of him, he once covered his tongue and throat, as far as he could reach, with Cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the "delicious ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... you don't think I'd offer anybody a friendship pulled out of a slough of despond, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Religion! Ah! Yes, religion; the world will be a blackened cinder or cometary gas before the love of God is stamped from its heart. But religion and art must go hand in hand. Divorced, art has fallen into the Slough of Despond; else has been transformed into an acrid poison wherewith men's souls are destroyed as if by a virulent absinthe. United with religion, art is purified. All art sprang from religion. All great art, from a Greek statue to a Gothic cathedral, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... eggs. He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough of despond." ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... who is under the impression that he has lost all of his friends," said Kirk. "He needs to be assured that such is not the case—that his friends and acquaintances have no desire to cut him. I think if that could be done he would come out of the slough of despond and be worth something. We may need him this summer; or a man who has his pitching ability ought to develop into something ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... we miss our millionaire, we need not despond over ways and means. The beauty-spots of Great Britain are engaged just now in a fierce rivalry of advertisement. Why should not this rivalry be pressed into the service of beautifying the railway lines along which ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... early American road was a veritable Slough of Despond. Watery pits were to be encountered wherein horses were drowned and loads sank from sight. Frequently traffic was stopped for hours by wagons which had broken down and blocked the way. Thirteen wagons at one time were stalled on Logan's Hill on the York Road. Frightful accidents occurred in ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... Toddrington our hero proceeded, through cross-country roads—such roads!—very different from the Irish roads. Waggon ruts, into which the carriage wheels sunk nearly to the nave—and, from time to time, 'sloughs of despond,' through which it seemed impossible to drag, walk, wade, or swim, and all the time with a sulky postillion. 'Oh, how unlike my Larry!' ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... away and some other adopted which will be more in harmony with the actual facts of the Egyptian situation. If, as I trust may be the case, Lord Kitchener is able to devise and to carry into execution some plan which will rescue Egypt from its present legislative Slough of Despond, he will have deserved well, not only of his country, but also of all those Egyptian interests, whether native or European, which ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... wished to go to Vienna, with the view of beginning an artistic career, and was only prevented from carrying out his design by want of money to defray the expenses of the journey. He was in great distress, and even began to despond, until finally in the summer he contrived to get to Posen, and thence to Berlin, where he arrived ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Despond not, ye bachelors—anybody can get married. It's as easy as rolling off from the roof of a six-story house, and quite as beneficial to the system. I have known people who did this little business without intending ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... physiognomic coherency;—as there was not. His Letters, and all the symptoms we have, denote a sound-hearted brave old man; continually subduing to himself many ugly troubles; and, like the stars, always steady at his work. To sit grieving or desponding is, at all times, far from him: "Why despond? Won't it be all done presently; is it of much moment while it lasts?" A fine, unaffectedly vigorous, simple and manful old age;—rather serene than otherwise; in spite of electric outbursts and cloudy weather ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... enough without the imaginary monsters and legions of phantoms that peopled it, I cannot say. Nor can I conjecture how far I strayed north or south from my course. I only know that marshes that were like Sloughs of Despond, and barren and wet savannahs, were crossed; and forests that seemed infinite in extent and never to be got through; and scores of rivers that boiled round the sharp rocks, threatening to submerge or dash in pieces ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... glanced about the room, hoping to see some blue blossoms awaiting her. But none appeared; and she was about to despond again, when ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... dreariness has not been induced by the look of the house. Still, when I do look around and see the rich carpets gone, the pictures, statues, all the thousand beautiful things we used to take pleasure in, I say to myself, 'This just man will have his reward.' Don't despond, Jack: I tell you, things ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... co-operation work; but then, would it have been possible to carry on any business with continual loss? The starting of Hope Mills had inspired other disheartened firms, and given an impetus to Yerbury industries that might have lain much longer in the Slough of Despond. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... victory is slender indeed: yet to us now living it seems as if man had not yet lost all that part of his soul which longs for beauty: nay we cannot but hope that it is not yet dying. If we are not deceived in that hope, if the art of to-day has really come alive out of the slough of despond which we call the eighteenth century, it will surely grow and gather strength and draw to it other forms of intellect and hope that now scarcely know it; and then, whatever changes it may go through, it will ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... It is rather jumping at conclusions to consider that he will let his vessel be wrecked. Yes, it was nervous work watching a vessel like that; but there, we must hope for the best, and possibly there is no reason to despond. Whoever the brig belonged to had good reason for getting away, and they have succeeded in that. There, come along; let's have our dinner, and think no more about it. But hallo! ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... opinion that there is something generous, rather than derogatory, in giving to the poor exile, whose thoughts are so high and noble, those privileges of a man of rank, which some who were born in such lofty station are too cowardly to avail themselves of. Yet despond not, noble Princess; the challenge is not yet accepted of, and if it was, the issue is in the hand of God. As for me, whose trade is war, the sense that I have something so serious to transact with this resolute man, will keep me from other less honourable quarrels, in which a lack of occupation ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and fighting bravely, and heroically, as the means of success. She was commissioned, she said, to stimulate the men to fight,—not to pray, but to fight. She promised no rescue by supernatural means, but only through natural forces. France was not to despond, but to take courage, and fight. There was no imposture about her, only zeal and good sense, to impress upon the country the necessity of bravery and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the mean time will you help me pull him out of his slough of despond?" she asked, smiling with the old, ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... roots wait the drawing near of God's sun. The soul looks ever unto the hills whence cometh its help. In the morning, at noon, and at night, man longs for a deliverer. God is the pledge of the soul's victory over the body. For men floundering in the slough of sin and despond these words, "Ye may, ye must be born again," are sweeter than angel songs falling from ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... city as landlord in the Bend was fair game. The old houses came down at last, and for a twelvemonth, while a reform government sat at the City Hall, the three-acre lot lay, a veritable slough of despond filled with unutterable nastiness, festering in the sight of men. No amount of prodding seemed able to get it out of that, and all the while money given for the relief of the people was going to waste at the rate of a million dollars a year. The Small Parks Act of 1887 appropriated ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... women, cities, landscapes. It is the simplest, the most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... 'miracles' attracting attention, he was brought before the Inquisition at Naples, as an impostor. He was sent to an obscure and remote monastery, and thence to Assisi, where he was harshly treated, and fell into Bunyan's Slough of Despond, having much ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the heavens and the earth can a poet despond? O Life, O Beyond, Thou art strange, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... to become an actress, and she went diligently to work, not allowing herself to despond over that first great disappointment. For the next seven years, she worked faithfully learning the new profession from the very bottom. "I became aware," she said, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... despond, and see In a silent ecstasy Chestnuts heave for hours and hours All the glory of their flowers To the melting blue above, That broods over them like love. Leave the garden walls, where blow Apple-blossoms ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... whom already a warm friendship had been formed that lasted for life, and who has pleasantly sketched what happened. Mr. Felton saw Irving constantly in the interval of preparation, and could not but despond at his daily iterated foreboding of I shall certainly break down; though besides the real dread there was a sly humor which heightened its whimsical horror with an irresistible drollery. But the professor plucked up hope a little when the night came and he saw that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... impressionable, and take on any form that the mental power has achieved sufficient strength to stamp, and because of this—which is the explanation of the outward phenomena whose significance, on the spiritual side, is all condensed in prayer—one need never despond or despair. At any instant he can so unite his own will with the divine will that new combinations of event and circumstance will appear in his life. A writer on this line ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... trembling and unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom, from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in strict concert and cooeperation. If, with the report of your Finance Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars. Nor must we forget that they are unwearied agitators, bold ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... neighbor of Christian, whom he accompanied as far as the "Slough of Despond," when he turned back.—Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the other would not deny but that it did in some degree affect him. He hoped he was not without proper feeling for the unfortunate man. But he begged to know in what spirit he bore his alleged calamities. Did he despond or have confidence? ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... if virtue conquer ill, If fortune bind both lovers in one bond, If either at the other's grief despond, If both be governed by one life, one will; If in two bodies one soul triumph still, Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond, If love with one blow and one golden wand Have power both smitten breasts to pierce ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... reproaches, or complaints, the strength which they ought to give to their country's safety. But this ought not to surprise us in the present case: for our lot, until of late, has been singularly prosperous, and great prosperity enfeebles men's spirits, and prepares them to despond when it shall have passed away. The country, we are told, is "ruined." What! the country ruined, when the mass of the population have hardly retrenched a luxury! We are indeed paying, and we ought to pay, the penalty of reckless extravagance, of wild and criminal ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... insensible degrees, overdone with work, bereft of conjugal consolations, and weary of a world in which he wandered alone, by the time he was two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began a ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... much," repeated the Doctor; "it won't do. You think too much of the past, and despond too much in the present. That won't do either. You must give ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... in an affectionate voice, as he hastened to lift him up, "my dear sir—my dear friend—be calm! Comfort yourself. I cannot bear to see you despond. Alas! my intention was quite the contrary ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... inheritances from your Parent. Do not make the great mistake of confounding the Relative with the Absolute. Avoid this pitfall into which so many have fallen. Do not allow yourself to fall into the "Slough of Despond," and wallow in the mud of "nothingness," and to see no reality except in the person of some forceful teacher who takes the place of the Absolute in your mind. But raise your head and assert your Divine Parentage, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the task that lay before me, if he recovered, the more I felt inclined to despond. The oftener the English physician who attended on him said to me, "He may get the better of the fever, but he has a fixed idea, which never leaves him night or day, which has unsettled his reason, and which will end in killing him, unless you or some of his friends can remove it"—the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... an auspicious period in the history of the mission. Geog Tapa became the radiant centre of spiritual life. The preceding year had been one of apprehension, but the brethren now learned not to despond every time the heavens gathered blackness, for in the darkest hour the sun may break forth and change the whole scene. We have come to the beginning of that series of revivals, with which the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... Then Zwingli spoke one more, begging all to hold firm to the Gospel, and never to despond as long as they leaned upon it. "What is done from the best motives will be misrepresented by falsehood and slander. Thus it had been said here and there yesterday evening that we would now degrade the body and blood of Christ into sleeping-cups. No!"—cried he—"no one certainly ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... athletics, but he understood the theory of the game. At the University School in Cleveland where Rush taught for many years, he took charge of the football team, and although coaching mere boys, his results were marvelous, and in 1915, when the Princeton coaching system was in a slough of despond, it was decided to give Rush an opportunity to show what ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... the bottom, rest, rot there—a plague on it! For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town, 'Destruction'—that's the name, and fire shall burn it down! O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late. How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate? Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful— But it's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago Town, wife, and children dear.... Well, Christmas did, you know!— Soon ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... deep down in the slough of its eternal despond, a few lorn and desolate-looking men stood on the platform. There they were once more, as if it were but yesterday, with their hands deep down in their pockets; the wistful, curious glance in their eyes, and the melancholy slouch ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... sunrise and sunset. There is a transition from the light of the sun to the gentler light of the moon. There is a rest in nature which seems necessary in all her great operations. And so with all the great operations of the human mind. But do not let us despond if we seem to see a diminished efficacy in the production of what is essentially and immortally great. Our sun is hidden only for a moment. It is like the day-star ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... and Assyrians, having entered Egypt with a numerous army, the Egyptian officers and soldiers refused to march against him. The high priest of Vulcan, being thus reduced to the greatest extremity, had recourse to his god, who bid him not despond, but march courageously against the enemy with the few soldiers he could raise. Sethon obeyed. A small number of merchants, artificers, and others who were the dregs of the populace, joined him; and with this handful of men, he marched to Pelusium, where Sanacharib had pitched ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... quite true, his carelessness (but then he had been so worn out with watching), his fatal mistake, his heartless mistake (and yet he would almost have given his own life for his children) had brought him down to this slough of despond. There was no hope, the doctors never told him of any, and he knew he could ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot refrain from copying here some passages from this same portion which recall in an exceptional ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... overshadowed the transient gleam from Hampton Roads and Kernstown; plunging the public mind into a slough of despond, in which it was to be sunk deeper and deeper ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... frigate was to be seen, even from the mast-head. The ship was getting deeper and deeper, and we prepared to take to the boat. I calculated the nearest part of South America to be seven hundred miles from us, and that we were more than twice that distance from Rio Janeiro. I did not, however, despond, for, under all circumstances, we were extremely well off: and I inspired the men with so much confidence, that they obeyed in everything, with the utmost alacrity and cheerfulness, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... helped the stranger on his way towards them. The feet of thousands of people, who had visited the spot since the news of the accident was made known, had worn away the last blade of grass from the slippery fields and had left a very Slough of Despond behind them. I was down half a dozen times, and when I reached the hovel where the rescue-party had gathered I was as much like a mud statue as a man. Everything was in readiness, and the descent was ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... reasonable mind—that men who have all their lives been subject to compulsory labor should, on having this labor left to their discretion, be disposed at first to relax, and, in some instances, totally abstain from it, was equally to be expected. But we have no reason to despond, nor to imagine that, because such has occurred in some districts, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... behind the mansion, by the burnside in the glen, where there was abundance of water and secure privacy. Watt's extreme diffidence was often the subject of remark at Dr. Roebuck's fireside. To the Doctor his anxiety seemed quite painful, and he was very much disposed to despond under apparently trivial difficulties. Roebuck's hopeful nature was his mainstay throughout. Watt himself was ready enough to admit this; for, writing to his friend Dr. Small, he once said, "I have met with many disappointments; and I must have sunk under the burthen of them ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... noble being actually took off his coat and packed the trunks in layers of mosaic-work wonderful to behold. A supper celebrated the last evening; and even the doleful Lavinia, touched by such kindness, emerged from her slough of despond and electrified the ball by dancing a jig with ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... disorders to mature themselves, I must now return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that, although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the hard ground ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... with dangerous mistrusts, but gave all she had to God, begging Him to purify the gift and supply her mind with the dispositions to render the offering acceptable. She had learned that most difficult lesson even to the holy—to hope rather than despond in the conviction of unworthiness. There was one other victory which the Lady Margaret had gained over herself: she had suppressed an inclination to return the attachment of Gilbert de Hers, which she clearly saw could only lead to unfortunate results. It was the remembrance of this inclination ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the dogeless city's vanished sway; Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away - The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... they were a promising source of income. From the results of my mavericking and my trading operations I had been enabled to send two thousand young steers up the trail the spring before, and the proceeds from their sale had lifted me from the slough of despond and set me on a financial rock. Therefore my regard for the eternal ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... thus: "It made a great impression here [Oxford]; and, I say what of course I would only say to such as yourself, it made me for a while very uncomfortable in my own mind. The great speciousness of his argument is one of the things which have made me despond so much," that is, as to its effect ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Bacon in his Essays, of the English, wisdom, which they each in fact helped to create. Carlyle's paradoxes have been exaggerated, his partialities intensified, in his followers; his critical readers, not his disciples, have learnt most from him; he has helped across the Slough of Despond only those who have also helped themselves. When all is said of his dogmatism, his petulance, his "evil behaviour," he remains the master spirit of his time, its Censor, as Macaulay is its Panegyrist, and Tennyson its Mirror. He has saturated his nation with a wholesome tonic, and the practice ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... before many weeks were gone, I began to despond again, fearing, lest, notwithstanding all that I had enjoyed, that I might be deceived and destroyed at the last; for this consideration came strong into my mind, That whatever comfort and peace I thought I might have from the word of the promise of life, yet unless there ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... this little paper). I cannot deny it. A truth is a truth. And, since no medal, nor riband, nor cross, of any known order, is disposable for the most brilliant successes in dealing with desperate (or what may be called condemned) passages in Pagan literature, mere sloughs of despond that yawn across the pages of many a heathen dog, poet and orator, that I could mention, the more reasonable it is that a large allowance should be served out of boasting and self-glorification to all those whose merits upon this field national governments have neglected to proclaim. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Peter," was all he said to me in reference to the matter, "and I shall miss her." Then he clapped me on the shoulder, and bade me not despond. "We still have the rubies," he reminded me, "which, properly invested, will more than pay ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... so, to forgive lines coloured by hasty passion, and, for the sake of all, not to disdain that self-vindication which might perhaps yet soften a nature possessed of such depths of sweetness as that which appeared now so cruel and so bitter. He would not yet despond—not yet commission her to give his last ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... day of summer; the oak leaves expand, the roses blow, butterflies are about, and I have spirits enough to write to you. We have had clouded skies this fortnight past, and roads like the Slough of Despond. Last Wednesday we were benighted on a dismal plain, apparently boundless. The moon cast a sickly gleam, and now and then a blue meteor glided along the ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... certainly not tried to make his proposition very attractive, and yet she felt as if she were emerging from deep waters in which she had been suffocating. Now there was pure air to breathe and there would always be God's sunlight to cheer one and bring blessed warmth. From the slough of despond she was being drawn into the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... is before us. It is a fearful prospect; but men like those who compose the band of Seguin do not despond while the shadow of a hope remains. It is a barren spot indeed, where they ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... spirit, Hector, I am sure you will succeed. You are young and hopeful. I am too much inclined to despond. I have always been timid about the future. It is ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... slimy, splashy, thick, heavy, dirty mud. Thousands of men and thousands of mules and horses are treading it to mortar. It is mixed with slops from the houses and straw from the stables. You are reminded of the Slough of Despond described by Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress,—a place for all the filth, sin, and slime of this world. Christian was mired there, and Pliable nearly lost his life. If Bunyan had seen Cairo, he might have made the picture still more graphic. There are old houses, shanties, sheds, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... begin to see the light. Can you not see that for some reason Carmen doesn't admit the existence of evil? And you know, and I know, that she is on the right track. I have followed the opposite path all my life; and it led right into the slough of despond. Now I have turned, and am trying to follow her. And do you put the thought of Satan out of your ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Then farewel further intercourse between us. [Aside] Despond not thus, all will be well again. I think you owe me just five hundred pieces? Yet let not that disturb you in the least: It may be in your power to ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... Without them Chicago would have been a desert. Henry Fuller's gay spirit, Lorado's swift wit and the good fraternal companionship of Charles Francis Browne were of daily comfort; but above all others I depended upon my wife whose serenely optimistic spirit carried me over many a deep slough of despond. How I leaned upon her! Her ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... "Tendencies of one's Time"! O those dismal Phantoms, conjured up by the blatant Book-taster and the Indolent Reviewer! How many a poor Soul, that would fain have been honest, have they bewildered into the Slough of Despond and the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... farina or rice, but nothing could they find but the rotting tobacco and the monkey-skins, and, starving as they were, they could not manage to eat them. Even when reduced to this extremity the young officers themselves did not despond, nor did their men, who looked to them for example, do so either. Murray calculated that if they could but get a breeze, they might reach the port for which they were steering in less than twenty-four hours. It was very tantalising to be so ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... Heavy, coming out of her momentary slough of despond. "But we all have our little troubles, ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... like you to repine in this way; you who have suffered and endured so much must not despond when, after a long, starless night, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... fell into discourse, I marvelled much how thou camest so far upon the way, even among the sheep and the shepherds of that country. For I found that thou hadst little experience in conflict with Apollyon, and that thou hadst never passed through the Slough of Despond nor wandered in the Valley of the Shadow. Nay, thou hadst never so much as been distressed in thy mind with great fear, nor hadst thou fled from thy wife and children, to save, if it might be, thy ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... from three to five to one. Ah, but why should we despond on that account?" And his voice vibrated with renewed confidence. "The country is a difficult one, easy to defend, and Lord Wellington's genius will have made the best of it. There are, for example, the fortifications ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Cross to the heathen. In his old age abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men— in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, from the slough of despond and the desert, Half dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee[72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... subsequent letter, that the grievances of which the General complained so bitterly, were not cured even by the presence of the Chevalier; that those who had made a pretext of his absence to complain and despond, desponded still, and that, in fact, the malady was so deep-seated as ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... are cutting the last piece of ground from beneath your feet—letting yourself sink at once into a slough of despond?" ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... cash, they sallied forth to carry devastation and affright throughout the camps of innocent and unsuspecting blacklegs. As might be expected, it took about as many minutes as they had pounds to effect the ruin of the adventurers. Did they despond? Not they; a flaw existed in their calculations. They looked for it with care, and were torn from their employment only by the exigencies of the time, and the pressing demands of nature for immediate bread. Mr Wedge had from this period struggled on, living as he knew how, and nobody ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... road of which thou speak'st was full of rocks, and deep pits, and swamps, and quagmires, and other frightfuls. I do remember me of a certain SLOUGH OF DESPOND, Wherein Sundry Travellers Were Bemired to purpose, and some hardly escaped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... bedstead, upon which merely a rude straw mattress, covered with a blanket, was thrown, and which, for aught he knew, had been occupied by a thousand prisoners before him; but, however bitter and sarcastic his mind might be, it was not given to despond; and he soon began to reflect on what had passed. Although it was not by any means the first time he had been face to face with the Protector, yet it was the first time he had ever seen him with any of the indications of human feeling. "He has made many children fatherless," thought the Ranger, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... province are at a standstill," he repeated, "while all my energies are bent upon this quest. Should we fail to have news of his capture in Dauphiny, we need not, nevertheless, despond. I have sent men after him along the three roads that lead to Paris. They are to spare neither money nor horses in picking up his trail and effecting his capture. After all, I think we shall ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... not despond. I trust all may yet be well with you, and rest assured it gives me heartfelt pleasure to be enabled to render you a service, and take you to a place of safety. But your hand is hot—burning: it is feverish excitement from which you suffer. When we have reached Goliad, and you can rest, I doubt ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... to his friend Bob Wilson one evening as during his transit through a particularly dismal slough of despond they in company were busily engaged in blazing the trail with empty bottles; "One such as I, a man of thirty and of good health, without a dollar or the prospect of a dollar, an income or the prospect of an income, a home or the prospect of a home, following a cold scent like the one I ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Escape, and thought myself extreamly happy, tho' thrown on an unknown Coast, and destitute of every thing necessary to sustain me: But I trusted in that Goodness which had preserved, and which I hoped would provide for me. To despond, I thought, would be mistrusting the Bounty of our Creator, and might be the ready way to plunge me into the Miseries Men naturally apprehend in my Circumstances. I therefore heartily recommended me to the Divine Protection, and enter'd the Woods ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... come in and see you from time to time till you get better." John Morton replied that he should never get better; but though he said so then, there was at times evidence that he did not yet quite despond as to himself. He could still talk to Mrs. Morton of buying Chowton Farm, and was very anxious that he should not be ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... after hour passed, and the hogs showed no disposition to depart, Hal began to despond, declaring that no help would reach them before they should starve. Ned, however, kept up heart, until the infuriated creatures began to devour the dead body ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... little child who so simply trusted Christ for salvation that she could give no account of any 'law work.' And as one of the old examiners, who thought there could be no genuine conversion without a period of deep conviction, asked her, "But, my dear, how about the Slough of Despond?" she dropped a courtesy and said, "Please, sir, I didn't come ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination—her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope. We shall and must break bounds ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Sir Griffin Tewett, and the lover was an occasional visitor in Hertford Street. Mrs. Carbuncle was as anxious as ever that the marriage should be celebrated on the appointed day, and though there had been repeated quarrels, nothing had as yet taken place to make her despond. Sir Griffin would make some offensive speech; Lucinda would tell him that she had no desire ever to see him again; and then the baronet, usually under the instigation of Lord George, would make some awkward apology. Mrs. Carbuncle,—whose life at this period was not a pleasant one,—would behave ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... toil accomplished nothing. Then we unloaded all our baggage down to the smallest articles. Another effort and we were still in our slough of despond. I retreated to a neighboring fence and returned with a stout pole. The Cossack brought another, and we arranged to lift the fore wheels to somewhere near the surface. It was my duty to urge the horses, and I flattered myself that I ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... happy. I have brought some solace and light into your days, Eleanor? If I died to-morrow, or was lost from sight, you would look back and say: 'He gave me my dearest hours, my most treasured memories. He brought me from the slough of despond to the sunshine of ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... had been petty, yet sore grievances to the squire, and had made him to despond about success. He has lately, however, been made happy by the receipt of a fine Welsh falcon, which Master Simon terms a stately highflyer. It is a present from the squire's friend, Sir Watkyn Williams ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... and crops failed even in the most favourable situations. Settlers drove their flocks and herds to distant tracts for pasture and water, neither remaining for them in the located districts. The interior suffered equally with the coast, and men, at length, began to despond under so alarming a visitation. It almost appeared as if the Australian sky were never again to be ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... without the ballot as it is for some foolish fly, imprisoned on a window pane, to find its way to freedom through it. There is no escape for the fly until its restless activities discover the right direction, and, to change the figure, there is none for the Negro out of his slough of despond until he can lay hold of the ballot. Wanting the ballot no amount of education and wealth in the South and of agitation in the North will of themselves be able to make Southern Governments responsive to the needs and the rights of the Negro as laborer and citizen. But until they are made ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... put to death till October 8th, when, after the capture of the Summer Palace, both the prisoners were released.] is safe. We have been very uneasy about him, and not without cause. The China war is a slough of despond: the further we advance the more we shall flounder, until we are half ruined ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... tedious uncertainty." Mary was to see Shelley's younger brother, who was just married, but she had small hope of reaping any good from his visit. She adds, "Adieu, my ever dear friend; while hearts such as yours beat, I will not wholly despond." Mary refers with great kindness to Hunt, and is most anxious as to his future. She also notices with high satisfaction that the Whigs with Canning are in the ascendant, and that they may be favourable to Greece. While Mary Shelley was residing in Kentish Town, before she ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... him out of his present slough of despond. He thought of how lonesome he should be after Harrington went away the next day. He could have Scott or Charlie Minturn up to see him, to be sure, but somehow, since he had known Harrington, these ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... to rise, phoenixlike, from the ashes of his despond, the Patriot reprinted the full details of Nellie's complaint as they appeared in a New York daily. For a brief spell he shrivelled up with shame and horror; he could not look any one in ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... nothing of the fashion in which the British Navy lived up to its best traditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short of criminal that the English censor should have permitted the world to hold Great Britain in contempt for twenty-four hours and sink poor France in the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, and presumably does ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... details, and I hasten over the ground. One entire hour passed away, and no jailer appeared. We began to despond heavily; and Agnes, poor thing! was now the most agitated of us all. At length eleven struck in the harsh tones of the prison-clock. A few minutes after, we heard the sound of bolts drawing, and bars unfastening. The jailer entered—drunk, and much disposed to be insolent. I thought it ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... foolish — hot and fond, That chuckles through his deepest ire, That gilds the slough of his despond But dims the ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... and within the veil Boldly thine anchor cast. What though thy boat No shoreland sees, but undulates afloat On soundless depths; securely fold thy sail. Ah! not by daring prow and favoring gale Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond, And gains a rest in being unbeyond, Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail; Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find. Not far but near, about us, yea within, Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind Dwell ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... jolted off one's seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a unique experience. Nor was the spending of ten hours in making thirty miles with four horses. In the Yellowstone one of the coaches of our party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on the highway, from which it was finally extricated backwards by the combined efforts of twelve horses borrowed from the other coaches. Misery makes strange bedfellows, and the ingredients of a Christmas pudding are not more thoroughly shaken together or more inextricably ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... encouraged with the hope of interpreting the enigmas presented to him in the earth's structure—instead of being prompted to undertake laborious enquiries into the natural history of the organic world, and the complicated effects of the igneous and aqueous causes now in operation—was taught to despond from the first. Geology, it was affirmed, could never rise to the rank of an exact science; the greater number of phenomena must for ever remain inexplicable, or only be partially elucidated by ingenious conjectures. Even the mystery ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... situations. Settlers drove their flocks and herds to distant tracts for pasture and water, neither remaining for them in the located districts. The interior suffered equally with the coast, and men at length began to despond under so alarming a visitation. It almost appeared as if the Australian sky were never again to be traversed by ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... bodies bent double (the Germans were only two hundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth for at least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner of the next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough of despond. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs |
