"Despair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were incurable. No member of either House ventured to propose that a paper which came from such a quarter should be read. The contents, however, were well known to all the town. His Majesty exhorted the Lords and Commons not to despair of his clemency, and graciously assured them that he would pardon those who had betrayed him, some few excepted, whom he did not name. How was it possible to do any thing for a prince who, vanquished, deserted, banished, living on alms, told those who were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... flies and a lump of line tumbling on to the pool, and would have driven the boldest of salmon out of its wits. The second pretty nearly took a piece out of Ingram's ear, and made him shift his quarters with rapidity. Duncan gave him up in despair. The third cast dropped both flies with the lightness of a feather in the running waters of the other side of the pool; and the next second there was a slight wave along the surface, a dexterous jerk with the butt, and presently the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... It has been like revisiting the earth after leaving it. The work to which I had devoted myself for so many years, and with more earnestness than any other which I have ever undertaken, though at times almost with the energy of despair, I have now seen successful beyond my dreams. Above all, as I have seen the crowd of students coming and going, I have felt assured that the work is good. It was with this feeling that, just before I left the university for the embassy at Berlin, I erected ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Little, rushing, hurrying tides Along the sloping deck. And the bobstay smashing the big blue deep, While under my hand The kicking tiller groans Its oaken soul out in a gray despair. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... or that witness, or I know not what—the most undeniable and bewildering manifestations occur one after the other. The case is precisely the same with the horses: their queer fancies, their unaccountable and disconcerting freaks drive poor Krall to despair. He never opens the door of that uncertain stable, on important days, without a sinking at the heart. Let the beard or the frown of some learned professor fail to please the horses: they will, forthwith, take an unholy delight in giving the most irrelevant answer ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the winning-post and Tommy wondered when The Duke would put on full pressure; it was high time if he were to win. He dare not hit him, not at present; a few strides from the post it was generally effective because The Duke had no time to think things over and sulk. Just as Colley was beginning to despair and becoming desperate he felt The Duke bound under him, and in a few seconds the whole aspect of the race changed. So sudden was the move that Alan gasped. Eve clutched his arm ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... A cry of despair broke from us as we realized his peril. How it came about I never clearly learned, for in the heat of battle one rarely sees more than the things close at hand. Some said one thing, some another, but this I reckon was the most likely way ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... colony because their relatives will not support them in idleness at home. They feel no despair at the circumstance, for their pockets have been refilled, though (they are assured) for the last time; and they rejoice at the prospect of spending their capital far from the observation ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... in what was very like despair as the steamer neared the dock, "I don't know what to do, even after you've put up all your money. Where can Snip an' I go? We've got to earn our livin', an' I don't see how it's to be done if we're bound to hide ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... I!" exclaimed the girl. "Poor mother is in despair, but I am not going to give up. If the police can't find him I'm going to make a search myself. I know a great deal about his business. Father always said I ought to have ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... in a low, resolute tone—that tone yielded up only from the smitten chords of despair and desperation—"thar's a sick woman in the house. I'll listen to anything you've got to say if you'll say it quietly. But you must ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... from the Cape of Minerva to place in the waters of Salerno. But at daybreak the cock imprisoned beneath the tub, the sole survivor of his race, according to natural custom announced the dawn, to the despair of Bajalardo and the terror of his attendant fiends, who in their precipitate flight dropped into the sea near the Punta Sant' Elia the huge masses of stone they were then carrying; and these rocks are called by men I Galli in consequence ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... yet despair. The troops were re-embarked; five hospital ships were devoted to the sick; the "Parfait," a fifty-gun ship no longer serviceable, was burned, as were several smaller vessels, and on the 4th of October what ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... her back to me as a friend. She holds out her hand for people to lift her up and carry her, quite like a spoiled child; then bursts into a passionate cry, somewhat like that of a kite, wrings her hands quite naturally, as if in despair. She eats everything, covers herself with a mat to sleep, and makes a nest of grass or leaves, and wipes her face with ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... intention to retain forcibly at Berlin the young Duke of Wurtemberg, under pretext, 'that Madam his Mother intended to have him taken to Vienna,' for education. To anger this young Duke, and drive his Mother to despair, was not the method for acquiring credit in the Circle of Swabia, and getting the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thee," answered Don Quixote, "that I mean to imitate Amadis here, playing the victim of despair, the madman, the maniac, so as at the same time to imitate the valiant Don Roland, when at the fountain he had evidence of the fair Angelica having disgraced herself with Medoro and through grief thereat ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... interest in Sylvia Garrison all day and his dull ignorance was the last straw upon nerves screwed to the breaking-point. She sat up in bed and drew her dressing-gown about her as though it were the vesture of despair. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... The tone of despair in his voice changed Effie's frame of mind in a moment. She ran up to him and put her arms ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... what. I'll tell her to come down and I think she will," Kat cried incoherently, and vanished with a complicated and wonderful gesture of her hands, that might have passed for a supplication for forgiveness, a benediction, or total despair, or ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... damnation to despair and die, When Life is my true happiness disease? My Soul, my Soul, thy Safety makes me fly The faulty Means that might my Pain appease. Divines and dying men may talk of Hell, But in my ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... a thought white-hot from the furnace of despair fell into his brain to set it ablaze with purpose. Beyond the litter of activities the octopod was standing, empty of its crew. Bounding up into the cab, he released the brake and sent the great engine flying down the ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... Having waited for several weeks in the hope of meeting you at the Bilgewater Club, to which, due to some mysterious reason, you appear to have been excessively disloyal of late, I despair of the delight of a personal interview and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... ancients are "the despair of the emulator." Voltaire said. "If the admirers of Homer were honest, they would acknowledge the boredom which their favourite often ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... silence ensued that I began to despair of hearing the cry again, when, with a suddenness which straightened the hair on my head, a wailing shriek, exactly like a despairing woman might give in death agony, split the night silence. It seemed ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... hearers just on account of its wild, uncultivated style, foreign to every notion of parliamentary etiquette. Already marks of favour had agitated members, used to the flood of gray and monotonous administrative speech. But at this cry of rage and despair against wealth, uttered by the wretch whom it was enfolding, rolling, drowning in its floods of gold, while he was struggling and calling for help from the depths of his Pactolus, the whole Chamber rose with loud applause, and outstretched hands, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... himself again in the stream, and, calculating that she must by this time have been borne some distance from the spot where she sank, he gave a stroke or two down the river, and disappeared after her. This was followed by another cry of horror and despair, for somehow, the idea of desolation which marks, at all times, a deep, over-swollen torrent, heightened by the bleak mountain scenery around them, and the dark, angry voracity of the river where they had sunk, might have ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... despair. He ran this way and that way, calling aloud and trying to find her, but she had vanished like the fading ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... breath of happiness in my life; while he—" her voice broke suddenly; it came muffled as she continued quiveringly—"while he—he's not dependent on me at all!" After a little interval, she went on, more firmly, but with the voice of despair. "That's the pity of it. That's what makes us women nowadays turn to something else—to some other man, or to some work, some fad, some hobby, some folly, some madness—anything to fill the void in our hearts that our husbands forget to ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... people in these houses lead exclusive, un-American, godless lives. It would tempt me almost to despair of our country," she exclaimed, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... physicians show the desperate ill, To endear their art, by mitigating pains They cannot wholly cure: When you despair Of all you wish, some part of it, because Unhoped for, may be grateful; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... little encouragement to omit smuggling from the decalogue. It is, I think, the late Mr. Coker Egerton, of Burwash, who tells of a Sussex parson feigning illness a whole Sunday on hearing suddenly in the morning that a cargo, hard pressed by the revenue, had in despair been lodged among his pews. But the classical passage on this subject comes from Cornwall, from the pen of R. S. Hawker, the vicar of Morwenstowe and the author of "The Song of the Western Men." ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... hasty glance around just then would have told any observer that this strange message, filled with despair and yearning, left by Hen Condit in the crotch of a stick thrust into the ground, had renewed their former resolution not to give over the search until they had either found the missing chum or exhausted every known ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... at the pitch of surprise and horror; his sentiments had been shocked to the last degree; the hopeful tenderness with which he had taken his place upon the bench was transformed into repulsion and despair; old Mr. Scrymgeour, he reflected, was a far more kindly and creditable parent than this dangerous and violent intriguer; but he retained his presence of mind, and suffered not a moment to elapse before he was on the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the man turned, and the Nipe saw the weapon in the holster at his waist. There was a blinding instant of despair as he realized that his ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... believe now that she was jealous last night, because I fastened a rose in poor Lucia's hair that had come loose. Wouldn't there have been a row if I had given it to her? But she is never angry jealous like some girls, nor sulky; there is a charm—I cannot describe it," confesses the lover in despair. "But we three shall always ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... whether this was a piece of pleasantry on Adams's part, but when he sent for his old wife and daughters to tell them of it, the scene of distress that ensued baffles description. The old woman was in despair. Dinah Adams burst into tears, and entreated the officers not to take her dear father away. Her sister Rachel flung her arms round her father's neck and held on. Hannah Adams clasped her hands and wept in silent despair, and even George, at that time ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... out the pulp of the banana, the palm, the lemon, and the berries from the coffee-tree; and coming upon an almond-tree, we stayed under it for a whole week. Then we proceeded on our journey. We must have travelled miles, and we were beginning to despair of ever seeing the flock again, when we heard a great chatter chatter, and in a few minutes we came in sight of a great number of birds of different colours, in ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... scarred and pockmarked, his once luxuriant locks grown thin and dank, his eyelashes gone, his whole appearance so changed that as he gazed at himself for the first time in the looking-glass he was overwhelmed with such despair that, as he owned afterward to his friends, he would have thrown himself from the window at which he stood into the canal below had he not been prevented by the strong arm of his servant, Dulac. A terrible period of anguish and depression followed on this first excitement, but he awoke ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... before me, offering its crown. The tempest of youth sweeps the skyharp with its fingers; My heart dances in its wild rhythm. Gathering and storing are not for me, I spend and scatter. And prudence and comfort bid me adieu in despair. ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... cried in despair as he paced the room. "To think of the irony of it all! That you should actually woo her—of all women!" Then, halting before me, his eye grew suddenly aflame, he clenched his hands and cried: "But you shall not! Understand me, you shall hate her; you shall curse her very name. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... impossible not to think of the forefathers of New Amsterdam as Knickerbocker describes them. The Wouter Van Twiller, the Wilhemus Kieft, the Peter Stuyvesant, who are familiarly and popularly known, are not themselves, but the figures drawn by Diedrich Knickerbocker. In comical despair, the historian Grahame, whose Colonial History is still among the best, says of Knickerbocker: "If Sancho Panza had been a real governor, misrepresented by the wit of Cervantes, his future historian would have found it no easy matter ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... bowed downwards; so pensive her air, As she looks on the ground with her pale, solemn face, It were hard to decide whether faith or despair, Whether anguish or trust, in her ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... this field. It was instead another lost Manassas, but far greater than the first. The genius of Lee and Jackson which bore up the Confederacy was triumphing once again. Dick shut his teeth in grim despair. He heard the triumphant shouts of the advancing enemy, and he saw that not only his own regiment, but the whole Northern line, was being driven back, slowly it is ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... you will do them. Though many great and glorious conquests have been made in the history and literature of the East, since the days when Sir William Jones[16] landed at Calcutta, depend upon it, no young Alexander here need despair because there are no kingdoms left for him to conquer on the ancient shores of the Indus ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... secretary, and went upon the exchange and solicited an humble office for the purpose of studying the chances there. As soon as he considered himself fit to decide, he ventured in buying very heavily certain stocks, and lost nearly all his little property. He was in despair and wrote to his father, who sent back an unfeeling letter. It is told of him that he presented himself before his father with a loaded pistol in either hand, and threatened to shoot him, and then himself, if he would not give him his name. This tale was undoubtedly invented by his enemies. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Basil seemed very far away, and the tremulous passion in his voice assured her of all she cared to know, that his troth pledged to her had never suffered wrong. Basil spoke on and on, told of his misery in Rome whilst vainly seeking her; how he was baffled and misled; how at length, in despair, he left the city and went to his estate by Asculum. Then of the message received from Marcian, and how eagerly he set forth to cross the Apennines, resolved that, if he could not find Veranilda, at least he would join himself ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... bade him be of good courage. There was no magic trickery in that moment; he was still weak and weary, a discouraged rhetorician, a good intention ill-equipped; but he was no longer lonely and wretched, no longer in the same world with despair. God was beside him and within him and about him.... It was the crucial moment of Mr. Britling's life. It was a thing as light as the passing of a cloud on an April morning; it was a thing as great ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... have most courage to bear up against them. I am but a woman, weak and frail in body, but I trust I have that within me which will not make you feel ashamed of Amine. No, Philip, you will have no wailing, no expression of despair from Amine's lips; if she can console you, she will; if she can assist you, she will; but, come what may, if she cannot serve you, at least, she will ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... been on the wing, But lure nor bird hath seen, while in despair The falconer cries, "Ah me! thou stoop'st to earth!" Wearied descends, and swiftly down the sky In many an orbit wheels, then lighting sits At distance from his lord in angry mood; So Geryon lighting places us on foot ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... mugs of ale upon the table, had spilled some of the liquid, he hurriedly wiped the stain away with EDWIN DROOD'S worsted muffler, and dried the sides of the glasses upon the napkin intended for Mr. DIBBLE'S use. There was something of the wild resources of despair, too, in this man's frequent ghostly dispatch of the German after articles forgotten in the first trip, such as another cracker, the cover of the pepper-cruet, the salt, and one more pinch of butter; and so greatly did his apparent dejection of soul increase as each supplementary ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... whatever time it may take up. But the principle of every uneasiness is the same, though they may appear under different names. For envy is an uneasiness; so are emulation, detraction, anguish, sorrow, sadness, tribulation, lamentation, vexation, grief, trouble, affliction, and despair. The Stoics define all these different feelings; and all those words which I have mentioned belong to different things, and do not, as they seem, express the same ideas; but they are to a certain extent distinct, as I shall make appear perhaps in another place. These are those fibres ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Sally sat in her old rooms once more and wrote a letter to Traill. The return to them had for one moment surged back in a rushing flood of memories; but it did not overwhelm her. She threw herself into no quagmire of despair. Her eyes were tearless. All her actions were such as those of a person dazed with sleep. One hope she had in her heart which animated her, just as the hope of ultimate rest will give sluggish life to the person whose eyes are ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... very many, in the bottom of their hearts, distrusted their own painful and strenuous denial. No words could be more unpopular than that the divided house could not permanently stand, when the whole nation was insisting, with the intensity of despair, that it could stand, would stand, must stand. Consequently occurrences soon showed his friends to be right so far as concerned the near, practical point: that the paragraph would cost more voters in Illinois than Lincoln could lose without losing his election. But beyond that point, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Aske, Lady Salisbury, Surrey,—these, and hundreds of others, selected principally from the patrician order, or from the officers of the old church, might have led the ghostly array which should have told the monarch to die and to despair of redemption; while an innumerable host of victims of lower rank might have followed these more conspicuous sufferers from the King's "jealous rage." Undoubtedly some of these persons had justly incurred death, but it is beyond belief that they were all guilty of the crimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows: but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy; And sundry blessings hang about ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... hour later. He was in despair because his party had decided to leave Naples for Rome, and he feared Beth would be engulfed by the volcano unless he was present to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... prolonged to the utmost stretch of possibility a peripatetic account of an archery meeting; while his victim, heading the procession of sixteen as it slowly circled about, like a revolving funeral, never raised her eyes except once to steal a glance at Mrs Lammle, expressive of intense despair. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to-night.... Praise the Lord!... Come in.... Come at once.... Do not delay—or the gate may close, never to open again. Come! Come with me to the mercy seat. I was once like you. My soul, like yours, was rent in agony. I wept, I strove, I prayed, I was in utter despair ... just as you are now.... Sometimes it seemed as if I could almost lay hold on the Saviour.... Then—all of a sudden—such a fear of the devil fell upon me that he appeared to stand right by my side ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... you are so—don't you know that you're the despair of all social reformers? [She envelops him.] There's a tear in the left knee of your trousers. You're not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... here to judge him, and he is already bored," she continued. "He pines for Paris, I tell him; the nostalgia of criticism is on him; he has no author to pluck, no system to undermine, no poet to drive to despair, and he dares not commit some debauch in this house which might lift for a moment the burden of his ennui. Alas! my love is not real enough, perhaps, to soothe his brain; I don't intoxicate him! Make him drunk at dinner to-night and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Julia. "Where are they, please—now that they may be wanted? If you'd like to hunt them up for me you're very welcome." With which, for the moment, over the difficult case, they faced each other helplessly enough. And she added to it now the sharpest ache of her despair. "He knows about Murray Brush. The others"—and her pretty white-gloved hands and charming pink shoulders gave ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... soft; he draws a curved line, and instantly sees it should have been straight; a straight one, and finds when he looks up again, that it has got curved while he was drawing it. There is nothing for him but despair, or some sort of abstraction and shorthand for cliff. Then the only question is, what is the wisest abstraction; and out of the multitude of lines that cannot altogether be interpreted, which are the really ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... he was no longer "a not unuseful assistant" to Griffiths, he kept up an irregular business association with that literary slave-driver. He also became a contributor to Newbery's "Literary Magazine." At last, in despair, he turned again from the miseries of Grub Street to Dr. Milner's school-room at Peckham, and, after another brief period of teaching, Dr. Milner secured for him the promise of an appointment as medical officer to one of the East India ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... him in the rear. And Pompeius too saw this when it was too late, and he did not venture to attack Sertorius for fear of being surrounded; and though he could not for shame leave the citizens in their danger, he was obliged to sit there and see them ruined before his eyes; for the barbarians in despair surrendered. Sertorius spared their lives, and let them all go; but he burnt the city, not for revenge or because he was cruel, for of all commanders Sertorius appears to have least given way to passion; but he did it to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... and abuses from any and all its members, and often upon the slightest provocation. Should she fall ill, no physician is consulted and no effort is made to restore her health or to prolong life." "The expression of utter hopelessness, despair, and misery" on such ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... save him; and as to his own powers, I did not believe that any man could battle with that terrible torrent-like river, which would sweep him down, dashing him from rock to rock, till he was carried from our sight, leaving us alone in our despair to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... most rational popular accounts of this instrument and its workings that I have so far come across (all things considered) is a little pamphlet entitled The Planchette Mystery, very little known, from which I shall quote in writing this review. Epes Sargent's book, Planchette: the Despair of Science, contains in reality very little on the planchette board, and the title is somewhat deceptive. Mr. Myers's articles on the subject (particularly in Proceedings of S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 217-37; vol. iii. pp. 1-63; and vol. ix. pp. 26-128) ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... these only serve the public, but they serve even private men, more than the slaves themselves do; for if there is anywhere a rough, hard, and sordid piece of work to be done, from which many are frightened by the labour and loathsomeness of it, if not the despair of accomplishing it, they cheerfully, and of their own accord, take that to their share; and by that means, as they ease others very much, so they afflict themselves, and spend their whole life in hard labour; and yet they do not value themselves upon this, nor lessen other people's credit to raise ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... said he, "who are the cause of this revolt; it is your clamors against the Gospel, your guilty oppressions of the poor, that have driven the people to despair. It is not the peasants, my dear lords, that rise up against you—it is God himself who opposes your madness. The peasants are but the instruments he employs to humble you. Do not imagine you can escape the punishment he is preparing for you. Even should you have succeeded in destroying ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... of guts, and the hope that is frequently born of despair, for a military man like Bors to throw in his lot with TALENTS, INCORPORATED, an untried, unscientific organization. Through peculiar gifts of extra-sensory perception, its personnel could, their leader insisted, out-think and out-guess even the most deadly dictator in the history ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... was sinking down to darkness—saw this marble arm, as it rose above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing, faultering, rising, clutching as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from the clouds—saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm,—these all had sunk; at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, rising ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... overboard continued still to burn; but when I saw how quickly it went astern, notwithstanding our vigorous efforts to stop the ship, my heart began to sink, and when, a few moments after, the light suddenly disappeared, despair seized upon me, and I gave my friend ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... Phalguna, saying, "O Govinda, today I have become king of the earth, with my brothers, in consequence of thyself of great wisdom having become my protector and lord. Hearing of the slaughter of that tiger among men, the proud son of Radha, the wicked-souled son of Dhritarashtra will be filled with despair, as regards both life and kingdom. Through thy grace, O bull among men, we have acquired our objects. By good luck, victory hath been thine, O Govinda! By good luck, the enemy hath been slain. By good luck, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... appointed by Augustus governor of Germany; being attacked by Arminius and overpowered with loss of three Roman legions under his command, he committed suicide; when the news of the disaster reached Rome Augustus was overwhelmed with grief, and in a paroxysm of despair called upon the dead man to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wretch!" she cried, hoarse with anger and despair. "What a cur you are! You know you are not speaking the truth. How can you say such things to me? I have never wronged you—" She was almost in tears, impotent with shame ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... few, and the shipwrecked mariners many. The mass of castaways, when they find themselves separated from their kind, their comforts, their necessaries, yield, after a few feeble efforts, or without effort at all, to what is called their fate, and die of cold, or hunger, or despair. These multitudes we take no note of. They pass away from the earth like shadows; or, if our eye follows them for a moment till the view is lost in the crowding incidents of life, we look upon them as the victims of unavoidable and irresistible circumstances, and so turn calmly away. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... servants go; Yet not a soul perceives the case. The steward passes by the place, Himself no wiser than the rest. The joyful Stag his thanks address'd To all the Oxen, that he there Had found a refuge in despair. "We wish you well," an Ox return'd, "But for your life are still concern'd, For if old Argus come, no doubt, His hundred eyes will find you out." Scarce had the speaker made an end, When from the supper of a friend The master enters at the door, And, seeing that the steers were poor Of late, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... departed on an American ship bound for Boston. But Elder was deeply attached to his master, and would have remained till the end had not his mind become somewhat unhinged by frequent disappointments and by his despair of ever securing liberation. When his companion, the lame seaman, went away, Elder developed a form of melancholy, with hallucinations, and appeared to be wasting away from loss of sleep and appetite. Permission ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... myself entirely from it. But a war against one's own nature cannot be carried on without occasional defeat, even if ultimately successful. When grief and pain are gaining the upperhand and I am well nigh in despair, my only help lies in remembering my friend Pythagoras, that noblest among men, and his words: 'Observe a due proportion in all things, avoid excessive joy as well as complaining grief, and seek to keep thy soul in tune and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... therefore from the outset to believe that whatever I may blame or whatever I may praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been, am inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of the future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is a sign of the world's life, and that it will lead—by ways, indeed, of which we have no guess—to ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... It was incredible how slowly the hours crawled by, and yet we were helped through it by the same sort of patient interest which the hunter must feel as he watches the trap into which he hopes the game may wander. One struck, and two, and we had almost for the second time given it up in despair, when in an instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs, with all our weary senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of a ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... took one from his case and gave it to him. Then, striking a match, held it for him, till the wisp of paper and tobacco was well alight; while he lay back, drawing in the fragrant smoke, with a sigh in which contentment and despair ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... I wouldn't care To put it that way. Captain, don't despair! That German doll would make a model wife. But, frankly, ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... me along Down to the gulf of black despair; And, whilst I listened to your song, Your streams ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... cark[obs3], dole, fret, burden, load. concern, grief, sorrow, distress, affliction, woe, bitterness, heartache; carking cares; heavy heart, aching heart, bleeding heart, broken heart; heavy affliction, gnawing grief. unhappiness, infelicity, misery, tribulation, wretchedness, desolation; despair &c. 859; extremity, prostration, depth of misery. nightmare, ephialtes[obs3], incubus. pang, anguish, agony; torture, torment; purgatory &c. (hell) 982. hell upon earth; iron age, reign of terror; slough of despond &c. (adversity) 735; peck of troubles; "ills that flesh is heir to" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... that would be silent no longer? Was he going to lay it at the feet of a woman who would spurn it? When would he come back, and how? Already they began to listen, though he had scarcely set out, for the sound of his return,—in joy or in despair, who could say? ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... so that even the hopefullest of the good-wives shook her head over it, Lovey grew calm of a sudden and (as it seemed) with the calm of despair. She ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... flew, Joconde to get, (So nam'd was he in whom these features met;) 'Midst woods and lawns, retir'd from city strife, And lately wedded to a beauteous wife; If bless'd, I know not; but with such a fair, On him must rest the folly to despair. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... were one. Although the Prince himself had repeatedly offered to withdraw for ever from the country, if his absence would expedite a settlement satisfactory to the provinces, there was not a patriot in the Netherlands who could contemplate his departure without despair. Moreover, they all knew better than did Requesens, the inevitable result of the pacific measures which had been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... men are fitted by nature for the precisions of life in a barracks. They may accept its discipline while not being able to adjust to its rhythm. The normal temptation to despair of them needs to be resisted if only for the reason experience has proved they sometimes make the best men in combat. There are many types which fit into this category—the foreigner but recently arrived in America, the miner who has spent most ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... 4: Even if by a special privilege their predestination were revealed to some, it is not fitting that it should be revealed to everyone; because, if so, those who were not predestined would despair; and security would beget negligence in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Wareville. Whether the villages lay north or south or east or west of them they did not know, and the wind that sighed so gently through the forest never told. They were alone in the wilderness and they knew, moreover, that the wilderness was very vast and they were very small. But Henry and Paul did not despair; in fact no such thought entered Henry's mind. Instead he began to find a certain joy in the situation; it appealed to his courage. They resolved to find something to eat, and they used first a temporary cure for the pangs of hunger. Each had a strong clasp knife and they cut strips of the soft ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... made it all right," sighed Ted after a long period of silence that had followed the discharge of the "human torpedo." Gloom pervaded the chamber of steel; every man was at the point of despair. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... formed our institutions originally. I confidently believe that their descendants will be equal to the arduous task before them, but it is worse than madness to expect that Negroes will perform it for us. Certainly we ought not to ask their assistance till we despair of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... each other in disorder on his lips, all trying to get out at once; then he seemed to despair of finding expression for his thoughts and in disgust threw on the table a small box and a large envelope, both bearing the stamp ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... expectation. A reaction set in afterwards, it is true; but the Babylonian exile completed the triumph of the law. Extraordinary excitement was at that time followed by the deepest depression (Amos viii. 11 seq.). At such a time those who did not despair of the future clung anxiously to the religious acquisitions of the past. These had been put in a book just in time in Deuteronomy, with a view to practical use in the civil and religious life of the people . The book of the Torah ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... conduct and all incentives to action disappeared in its featureless abyss. Immermann intensely disliked it. He was, as he said, a lover of men; the worship of nature drained and exhausted the sympathies, the wills and the spirits of men. The passages in which Klingsor himself, in his moments of despair, and Merlin expose the emptiness of this philosophy, are among the best philosophic statements of the play. They are, how ever, too exhaustive. But they are good philosophy, if they are bad drama and poetry. Klingsor says of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... of despair. "And I have no work," was her rueful utterance. "So far, I've done nothing but travel about a lot, and study music a little. Long ago I planned to go to Leipsic to study, after I was graduated from ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... to his bane. Not one regardful look or smile, Nor e'en a gracious word, the while, Relieved the fierceness of his pain. O'erwearied with a suit so vain, His hope was but to die; No power had he to fly. He sought, impell'd by dark despair, The portals of the cruel fair. Alas! the winds his only listeners were! The mistress gave no entrance there— No entrance to the palace where, Ingrate, against her natal day, She join'd the treasures sweet and gay In garden or in wild-wood grown, To blooming beauty all her own. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... behind which stood a host of youthful warriors. They were the children of the slaves, who were determined to keep the land for themselves. Many battles were fought, but the young men held their own bravely, and the warriors were in despair. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... spoke to us of the hopes and happiness of our maturer years; they had been the mute witnesses of our joys and of our sorrows, and we were leaving them forever. As we gazed upon them, we wept bitterly, and in our despair, we felt as if the sacrifice was beyond our strength. But our sense of duty nerved us, and the terrible ordeal we were undergoing did not shake our resolve, and submitting to the will of God, we preferred exile and poverty, with their train of woes and humiliations, before dishonoring ourselves ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... in despair about the King's death. Their loyal souls were sorely grieved that his gracious Majesty had not outlived the Registration. All their happy inventions about 'hay-fever,' circulated in confidence, and sent by post to chairmen of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... certain town the local forecaster of the weather was so often wrong that his predictions became a standing joke, to his no small annoyance, for he was very sensitive. At length, in despair of living down his reputation, he asked headquarters to transfer him to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the victory long hung doubtful. At length the eldest of the Horatii received a mortal wound, and fell: a second soon met the same fate, and expired upon the body of his brother. The Alban army now gave a loud shout, whilst consternation and despair spread ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... to his room, waited three minutes, and then, in despair, made up his mind to seek Scaife. He felt certain that the Demon's extraordinary luck was about to stand between him and expulsion. Desmond would be caught red-handed, but not he. John ground his teeth with rage at the thought. He found Scaife ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... for the vacant place of secretary of the Orleans territory, but supposing the salary of two thousand dollars not more than he makes by his profession, and while remaining with his friends, I have, in despair, not proposed it to him. If he would accept it, I should name him instantly with the greatest satisfaction. Perhaps you could inform ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a box of comfits (luckily the salt-water had not got into it) and handed them 'round as prizes. There was ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... greeted her as she neared Avice's room, and she entered, to find that damsel plunged in despair over a ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... corner as if possessed, and after trotting, then breaking, then darting madly from side to side, started into a full run. I pulled with all my might; Gusta stood up and helped. No avail. On we rushed to sudden death. No one in sight anywhere. With one Herculean effort, bred of the wildest despair, we managed to rein him in at a sharp right angle, and we succeeded in calming his fury, and tied the panting, trembling fiend to a post. Then Gusta mounted guard while I walked home in the heat and dirt, fully half a ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... prayer may afford a quiet sense of self-justification, though it makes the sinner a hypocrite. We never need despair of an honest heart, but there is little hope for those who only come spasmodically face to face with their wickedness, and then seek to hide it. Their prayers are indexes which do not correspond with their character. They hold secret fellowship with sin; and such externals are spoken ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Wabbac tuk the chair, He lukt to be i' grate despair, He sez, good foak, are yo' aware, Wat's happened ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... part of your character, and requires but an effort to bring it into action. The happiness of my life depends on your exertions; for what else, for whom else do I live? Not that the acquisition of the languages alone can decide your happiness or mine; but if you should abandon the attempt, or despair of success, or relax your endeavours, it would indicate a feebleness of character which would dishearten me exceedingly. It is for my sake that you now labour. I shall acknowledge your advancement with gratitude and with the most lively pleasure. Let me entreat you not to be ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... What verse can do, he has performed in this, Which he presumes the most correct of his; But spite of all his pride, a secret shame Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name: Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage, He, in a just despair, would quit the stage; And to an age less polished, more unskilled, Does, with disdain, the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Ireland you have rain, either thick or thin; in America you have hells of heat and cold, and in the Tropics you have sunstrokes varied by thunderbolts. But all these you have on a broad and brutal scale, and you settle down into contentment or despair. Only in our own romantic country do you have the strictly romantic thing called Weather; beautiful and changing as a woman. The great English landscape painters (neglected now like everything that is English) have this salient distinction: that the Weather is not the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... she was no longer a critical observer. She no longer set aside his strange inward conflict as a delusion of madness. She participated in his consciousness so far as to think that she was actually witnessing the despair of a soul repulsing an opportunity of righteousness, and yet not so far dead as not to know its worth. She tried to speak, but found herself, as at other times, so affected by his overlapping emotion that she was trembling and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... was to it. He yipped and yapped, clutched his stomach but would not come out of his corner nor touch the emetic. The boys were in despair, and their comrades were of no help, Snake even suggesting that it served the Chink right for taking the stuff. But just when it seemed that Fah Moo would raise the roof with his yells, Dr. Taylor arrived in his rattling flivver and ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... day's madness did prepare; Tomorrow's silence, triumph, or despair. Drink! For you know not whence you came, nor why; Drink! For you know not why you ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the House Tax, and withdrawn it contrary to his own judgment; then the facility with which he gave in to O'Connell's motion about the Irish Judge, and threw over his colleagues and his party without an apparent reason or motive. It produces a feeling allied to despair, all security is at an end, for that which would be produced by his good intentions is destroyed by reflecting on his miserable judgment; half republican in his principles, and incredulous of any danger to be apprehended from the continual increase of popular influences in the House of Commons, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... his freedom and equality is the despair of the artist who knows that the harmony of the universe is conditional on kingship and principalities and powers, and the scale of things from ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... strange riddle both did share Yet neither could expound. And we—who sing but as we can, In the small knowledge of a man— Have we an answer found? Nay, some are happy whose delight Is hid even from themselves from sight; And some win peace who spend The skill of words to sweeten despair Of finding consolation where Life has but one dark end; Who, in rapt solitude, tell o'er A tale as lovely as ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare |
