"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ejaculated the widow, giving a desperate and impassioned plunge to the churn-dasher. "Now I know why I dreamt of snakes and muddy water the night before she come here to the Ladies' Aid Club. Well, she's seventy, and she can't live forever; she can't take Eben Packard's money into the next world with her, either, and I guess ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... system numbers of unfortunate persons either delay calling in medical assistance until the case has become almost desperate so far as the patient is concerned, or they resort to unqualified persons, with the result that in most cases what was in the first instance a simple attack, capable of treatment, results in serious complications ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... Denmark, even, it is said, from Iceland. The eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries are, in fact, the great period all over Europe for the incursions of the Northmen—high noon, so to speak, for those fierce and roving sons of plunder,—"People," says an old historian quaintly, "desperate in attempting the conquest of other Realmes, being very sure to finde warmer dwellings anywhere than in their ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... coming, and knew what a struggle we would have to elude them without food, we boldly marched into the midst of the warriors, only to find that we had been hiding from an entirely different tribe of savages. The knowledge of this made us desperate, but we were hungry, and we had read of instances where men had acted boldly when in great danger from enemies; so that we concealed our fears, and demanded something to eat. Catching sight of a roast fowl we took it from the spit on which it was hanging, and began ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... of Atkinson, and from them I have learned passages of his former life, and this in particular, that the illness of which he died was brought on by a wound of which he never quite recovered, which he got in the desperate attempt, when he was quite a boy, to defend his captain against a superior force of the enemy which had boarded him, and which, by his premature valour inspiriting the men, they finally succeeded in repulsing. This was that Atkinson, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... HONOUR. I am so old a friend of you and yours, Cecil, that you may surely trust me. I was your father's friend. Side by side we stood in every crisis of his varied life. Together faced the Dervish rush at Abu Klea, and afterwards in India took our part in many a desperate unnamed frontier tussle. I helped him woo your mother, spoke for him when he put up for Parliament, advised him when he visited the city. In fact, I was his companion all through life, and I stood beside his bed ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... wiser than you were, King Midas!" said the stranger, looking seriously at him. "Your own heart, I perceive, has not been entirely changed from flesh to gold. Were it so, your case would indeed be desperate. But you appear to be still capable of understanding that the commonest things, such as lie within everybody's grasp, are more valuable than the riches which so many mortals sigh and struggle after. Tell ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... opportunity offered for crushing them was more than he could bring himself to. Nay, what father whose two bright young sons had been murdered, but would have done as he did? That fearful blow had struck him in a vital spot. Since that day he had felt himself slowly dying; and that sense of weakness, those desperate tremors, the discomforts and suffering which blighted every hour of his life, were also to be set down to the account of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "Of course, I was desperate and didn't know what to do. I had no money of my own, and I didn't dare ask my father for it. I had to tell some ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... would not be behind. Throwing off coat and waistcoat, and tying his handkerchief tight round his loins, he laid hold on the emblematic weapon of Time and Death, determined likewise to earn the name of Reaper. He took the last scythe. It was desperate work for a while, and he was far behind the first bout; but David, who was the best scyther in the whole country side, and of course had the leading scythe, seeing the tutor dropping behind, put more power ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... monsieur,' she said, taking my hand and pressing it affectionately, 'to be able to express to you my gratitude. You have indeed saved us. Were it not for you I might never have seen Mongenod again. He might,—yes, he would have thrown himself in the river. He was desperate when he left me to go and see you.' On examining this person I was surprised to see her head tied up in a foulard, and along the temples a curious dark line; but I presently saw that her head was shaved. 'Have you been ill?' I asked, as I noticed this singularity. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... very seaworthy. As they were driven across the swift waters, they danced on the waves like leaves, and the boatmen bent to their oars with almost desperate energy and with most ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... and bursting into tears, for she had been working herself up as well, "when I am away from her I hate her for having won him from me, and I am almost ready to do anything desperate; but when I am with her she disarms me; there is something about the girl that almost makes me love her. If you could have seen her this morning, she looked so proud and happy when I praised ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... less happily, though I noticed that whenever a camel changed its walk for a trot, each one of the ladies reached back a desperate hand to clutch the saddle and save her spine from the bruising bump! bump! which smote the bone with every step. As for me, that feeling of middle age began to creep on while my coast-guard camel and I were getting acquainted. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Desmond with a lady, and a series of bows took place. Desmond held his hat in his hand till we had passed; his expression varied so much from what it was when I saw him last, at the breakfast table, he being in a desperate humor then, that it served me for mental ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... thousand other things which he knew he wanted if he could only think of them, but the innumerable boyish desires which had arisen since his birthday in June had fled, and, try as he would, he could recall none of them. As a last desperate resort, he scrawled a concluding "Anything else useful," and signed ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Larry. The man's face showed how wrought up he was, and though he was not much taller or stronger than Larry he had a man's energy, and would prove more than a match for the lad if it came to a fight. And it looked now as though he was going to resort to desperate measures in order to ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... with the more desperate resolution, because it was expected that, as soon as the season permitted, an English fleet and army would certainly be sent to its relief. But the besiegers having a prodigious superiority of numbers, and conducting the siege with every advantage ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... out my notebook, from which under the most desperate circumstances I never parted, and wrote a few words ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... words with something less than her former confidence he was not aware of it. How could he know that she was making a last desperate stand? ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Would rouse you, if you were straked. I'll have you with me, If I've got to carry you, chested: sink my soul! And for all I care, that luggish slubberdegullion May lounder my hurdies; and go to Hecklebarney! I'm desperate, Judith ... and I don't mind much ... But, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... scene—rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticination, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant—yielding it sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... fulfilment of the cry of the ancient sufferer, who had lamented that his enemies made so sure of his death that they divided his garments and cast lots for his vesture. But he was 'wiser than he knew,' and, while his words were to his own apprehension but a vivid metaphor expressing his desperate condition, 'the Spirit which was in' him 'did signify' by them 'the sufferings of Christ.' Theories of prophecy or sacrifice which deny the correctness of John's interpretation have the New Testament against them, and assume ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... to give him the assurance he sought, her desperate, passionate voice grown gentle and quiet again. But she was too tired and spent to be comforted. For a long time she lay so still that he became alarmed, thinking she must have fainted again, and drew closer to her to listen to her breathing; at first there was a little catch in it, ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... desperate. Ursula rather hated it. But her mother's contempt and her father's harshness had made her raw at the quick, she knew the ignominy of being a hanger-on, she felt the festering thorn ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the doctor when Baby was in convulsions," she said coldly. "It was terrible not having you here to advise. I have been desperate, and you—" a sob—"you were enjoying yourself in the jungles." She had not an atom of ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... not despair. He sent in every direction for troops. Nothing was forgotten. Nothing that he could do was left undone. Unceasingly he urged action upon Congress, and at the same time with indomitable fighting spirit he planned to attack the British. It was a desperate undertaking in the face of such heavy odds, for in all his divisions he had only some six thousand men, and even these were scattered. The single hope was that by his own skill and courage he could snatch victory from ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... Ralph again knocked on Bertha's door. He looked paler than usual, almost haggard; his immaculate linen was a little crumpled, and he carried no cane; his lips were tightly compressed, and his face wore an air of desperate resolution. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... North Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and spare parts shortages. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel. The nation has suffered its eleventh year of food shortages because of a lack ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... have Some dogs or horses to eat. a man whose wife had an absess formed on the Small of her back promised a horse in the morning provided we would administer to her, I examined the absess and found it was too far advanced to be cured. I told them her case was desperate. agreeably to thir request I opened the absess. I then introduced a tent and dressed it with bisilican; and prepared Some dozes of the flour of Sulpher and Creem of tarter which were given with directions to be taken on each morning. a little ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... he was sick with weariness, and mad with thirst, that he lost his head. Then he flung himself recklessly in every direction, bruising his poor body against the unyielding bars, desperate, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... of the untouched viands; as the soup, for which we had ventured to ask, was particularly bad, we did not interfere to prevent this proceeding. The next course appeared; but still, except a solitary individual, who made a desperate move, and cut up a fowl which he handed round, no one put out a finger; as we were quite at the lower end of the table, and saw with consternation that our appetites, sharpened with the fine air of the sea, were not likely to be satisfied, and not relishing this Governor ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... then closed over it forever. No man heeded its fall. Not one of all that crowd, which oft had grown hoarse with shouts at his coming, paused to save the emperor from destruction. But he, calm and courageous, although at that moment he could have parted with life without a sigh, had made a desperate spring backward, and had alighted on ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... came out in 18881. It was originally intended to be one of a series of biographies of noted men, which were to give the facts accurately but to treat them humorously. History and comedy, however, have never been blended successfully, though desperate attempts have occasionally been made to achieve that result. Warner had not long been engaged in the task before he recognized its hopelessness. For its preparation it required a special study of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the journey so far very well though unable as yet to walk, but as the cool of the evening came on I began to worry lest a night out of doors set her screaming with pain. So as I laced my boots, I decided to go back to Rebais and make another desperate attempt ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... went, smothered beneath the weight of numbers, yet struggled up again. His great head was torn and dripping; his eyes a gleam of rolling red and white; the little tail stern and stiff like the gallant stump of a flagstaff shot away. He was desperate, but indomitable; and he sobbed ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... "I was desperate," she pleaded. "I had given up all that life held for me—given it up for a man who now looked at me coldly and spoke of marrying another. Can you wonder that I went in the evening to his rooms—went to plead with him—to beg, almost on my knees? It was no use. He was done with me—he said that ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... made, in fact, such desperate efforts to learn all about poetry that her system got quite out of order. But although she did not in the course of the day hit upon anything, she quite casually succeeded in her dreams in devising eight lines; so concluding her toilette and her ablutions, she hastily ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... scene. The step-sisters made desperate efforts to wear the slipper; Cinderella finally retired triumphantly on the prince's arm, and the curtains closed only to open again a few moments later upon a scene which bore a strong resemblance to Oakdale High School. The fairy godmother occupied ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... most unsatisfactory condition. The army was wholly unreliable, and extravagance in high places had brought the exchequer to the verge of bankruptcy. In 1882 matters reached a crisis. A revolution broke out, headed by Arabi Pasha, and the situation looked desperate. Joint naval and military action by Britain and France was proposed, but the French ships sailed away and left Britain with a free hand. The British fleet bombarded the Forts at Alexandria and a military force, based on the Suez Canal, was landed ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... heavy-laden, the lady Euryale had noiselessly opened a secret door leading to Melissa's hiding-place, known only to herself and her husband, and had come close to her. She now stood watching the girl with surprise and astonishment, for she had expected to find her beside herself, desperate, and more than ever needing comfort and soothing. The unhappy girl must have been drawn to the window by the cries of the massacred, and at least have glanced at the revolting scene in the stadium. She would have thought it more natural if she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Cross of the Bath. In 1838 he resigned his position and became governor of Jamaica. Perhaps the most significant incident in his career was his fighting as a volunteer in the storming of Deeg, on Christmas Day 1804. The courage which sends a civilian into a desperate hand-to-hand fight, to which he is not obliged to go, must be above proof. Metcalfe had no pecuniary interest in his position. He was a wealthy man, who spent far more than his official salary in the various ways a governor-general {83} is expected ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... a desperate resolve made itself up in his little mind. Where Hirschvogel went would he go. He gave one terrible thought to Dorothea—poor, gentle Dorothea!—sitting in the cold at home, then set to work to execute his project. How he managed it ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... living with another woman. He very coolly informed her that the marriage-ceremony between them was a mere sham; the person who performed it not having been invested with any legal authority. Thus betrayed, deserted, and friendless, the poor young creature became almost frantic. In that desperate state of mind, she was decoyed by a woman, who kept a disreputable house. A short career of reckless frivolity and vice ended, as usual, in the hospital on Blackwell's Island. When she was discharged, she tried to drown her sorrow and remorse in intemperance, ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... on the Manila side of the bay, while others were further out and near Cavite; and throughout the fleet there was constant activity and the utmost vigilance. There was incessant solicitude about what the desperate Spaniards might contrive in the nature of aggressive enterprise. It seemed incredible to Americans that nothing should be attempted. How would a Spanish fleet have fared for three months of war with us in an American harbor? There would have been a new feature ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... remainder of the day in a desperate state of ill-humour, which was increased by finding that Mlle. de Coulanges could neither stand nor walk. Mrs. Somers was persuaded that Emilie, if she would have exerted herself, could have done both, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the first. You see the very doom burning out of his boy's eyes in the youthful portrait, and you see the logical end in that desperate and pitiful mask, the drawing of the last period in the Meynell Book. His was certainly the severed head, and his feet were pathetically far away, down on a stony earth. That he should have forfeited the ordinary ways of ease, is as consistent with his appearance, as it was necessary to ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... task at the same time. Consequently, during the big attack, delivered in the south on the 21st of August, which brought our troops level with the Arras-Albert railway line, our small side-show passed off successfully almost unnoticed. Desperate fighting had also taken place in the neighbourhood of Morlancourt, just north of the river Somme, in which the enemy troops had been driven back after stubborn resistance. They thereupon evacuated the town of Albert, as the place was getting too hot for them, and retired on positions to the east ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... entirely undesirable to us owing to public opinion here. Also at the present moment we must avoid anything that might deepen the impression among our enemies that our peace offer is in any way the result of our finding ourselves in a desperate position. That is not the case. We are convinced that economically and from a military point of view, we can bring the war to victorious conclusion. The question of stating our conditions, therefore, Your Excellency will handle dilatorily. On the other ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... dog-fox down wind and vi. millia passuum, to the next gorse. But this L25 of his is a grueller, and I learnt with interest that you are inclined to get the fishes nose out of the weed. I have offered to lend him L10—hopes it may be lending—and have written a desperate begging letter to R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., which 'evins prosper. Poor T—— says to-night that he has written to Forster about it—which he must have the small of his back very hard against the ropes so to do, so the sooner we get the ginger-beer bottle out the longer ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... will assert that it depends upon Mr. Wood. I should be heartily sorry that this commendable resentment against me should accidentally (and I hope, what was never intended) strike a damp upon that spirit in all ranks and corporations of men against the desperate and ruinous design of Mr. Wood. Let my countrymen blot out those parts in my last letter which they dislike, and let no rust remain on my sword to cure the wounds I have given to our most mortal enemy. When Sir Charles Sidley[16] was taking the oaths, where several ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... neck He smote and burst the tendons; then the van Of Ilium's host, with Hector, all retired. 715 Far as the slender javelin cuts the air Hurl'd with collected force, or in the games, Or even in battle at a desperate foe, So far the Greeks repulsed the host of Troy. Then Glaucus first, Chief of the shielded bands 720 Of Lycia, slew Bathycles, valiant son Of Calchon; Hellas was his home, and far He pass'd in riches all the Myrmidons. Him chasing Glaucus whom he now attain'd, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... enemy on guard. Then, on a given signal—a whistle from Captain FitzClarence—the men dashed forward on the foe, cheering lustily, while from the town the echoes and the voices of anxious watchers gave back cheer for cheer. The tussle was short and sharp. It was a case of fifty desperate men with fifty bayonets dealing destruction to a roaring rabble under the tarpaulins! Then came a storm of hostile bullets from the rear of the trenches, a swift reply from the attacking party, followed by Captain ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... but suddenly, when within thirty paces of the enemy, the royals found themselves on the edge of a deep ravine which separated them from the enemy like a moat. Some were able to check their horses in time, but others, despite desperate efforts, pressed upon by those behind, were pushed into the ravine, and rolled helplessly to the bottom. At the same moment the order to fire was given in a sonorous voice, there was a rattle of musketry, and several dragoons near M. ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... slammed. They rolled homeward, and Ermentrude suffered from a desperate sense of the unachieved. The princess had been impertinent, the Keroulans rather banal. Mrs. Sheldam watched her charge's face in the intermittent lights ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... whom my agony is derision—my despair a source of enjoyment—beneath whose withering glance my spirit shrinks—who, with half-expressed insinuations, tortures my soul, awakening fancies that goad me on to dark and desperate deeds? Dead mother! upon thee I call. If in thy grave thou canst hear the cry of thy most wretched son, yearning to avenge thee—answer me, if thou hast the power. Let me have some token of the truth or falsity of these ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... two men working together could co-operate with a thousand times the effectiveness of men without them. Children playing together could have a degree of companionship otherwise impossible. And four children upon a desperate voyage, without adults to reassure them, would need this close linkage with their fellows. It would give them courage. They ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... hand them up. The conflict between the men of the pinnace and the crew of the vessel was carried on near the capstern, and a pistol fired had accidentally communicated with the powder, which blew up in the very centre of the dense and desperate struggle. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... a rather desperate business to come suddenly into one's day's work. I don't think that I am a particularly brave man. I have an Irish imagination which makes the unknown and the untried more terrible than they are. On the other hand, I was brought up with a horror of cowardice and with a terror of such ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to advance. In a storm of shrapnel, bullets and flame, the British host swept down again upon the foe. The Germans gave desperate and deadly resistance. They fought hand to hand, with bayonets and clubbed muskets and grenades. It was a death grapple, with decisive victory on neither side. In the wild onrush and terrific clash, Pen ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... desperate, Madam. Permit me to say, that you shall not leave me in this humour. Wherever you go, I will attend you. Had Miss Howe been my friend, I had not been thus treated. It is but too plain to whom my difficulties are owing. I have long observed, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... has got to be a success," declared Phil between his teeth, his plain face expressing a sort of desperate determination. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the group; and then, towering above them, and steadying himself by the hand-rail in a desperate effort at erectness, Mr. Royall stepped stiffly ashore. Like the young men of the party, he wore a secret society emblem in the buttonhole of his black frock-coat. His head was covered by a new Panama hat, and his ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... this fascinating world of wealth, so dimly known and doubtless fiercely coveted, lay helpless, open to their plundering. The Vandals ravaged Gaul and Spain, and, being defeated by the Goths, passed on into Africa. The Saxons and Angles penetrated England[2] and fought there for centuries against the desperate Britons, whom the Roman legions had perforce abandoned to their fate. The Franks and Burgundians ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... girls do you suppose have believed that—were justified in believing he meant anything by his attractive manner and nice ways of telling you how much he liked you? He had a desperate affair with Mrs. Mortimer—innocent enough I fancy. He's had a dozen within three years; and in a week Rena Bonnesdel has come to making eyes at him, and Eileen gives him no end of chances which he doesn't see. As for Marion Page, the girl had been on the edge of loving ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... two girls clung together for a moment and then went into the house with hands close-locked and a kind of sad, desperate courage in their young hearts. What would either of them have done, each of them thought, had she been forced to endure alone the life that went on day after day in Deacon Baxter's ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the tact which never failed him, even in such a desperate crisis as this, he handed the doctor his binoculars. Then, both men looked at the summit of Guanaco Hill. Though it was high noon, and the landscape was shimmering in the heat-mist created by the unusual power and brilliance of the sun, they distinctly saw a thin pillar of smoke rising above the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... her chair-swiftly, restlessly; and flung herself down at a writing-table. Seizing ink and writing paper, she began to write as if she had not time to breathe before she got her letter written. And suddenly she saw him. The air of desperate absorption vanished, she smiled, waved a kiss, made a pretty face as if she were a little puzzled and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Still, the people are fearfully spoilt. There are such types—desperate fellows, with whom one has to look sharp. To-day two of that sort had ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... back, the legs wide apart. One arm was thrust upward, the other outward; but the latter was bent acutely, and the hand was near the throat. Both hands were tightly clenched. The whole attitude was that of desperate but ineffectual ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... 'Arry,' asked the huntsman, ''ow is't possible? No man's fonder of 'untin' than I am, but to turn out on sich a day as this would be a daring—a desperate violation of all the laws of registered propriety. The Pope's bull ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... undressed and made to lie down on the sofa, for she insisted so that she would not go to bed that they dared not oppose her, the doctor made his diagnosis. It was double pneumonia, of that sudden sort which declares for life or death in forty-eight hours. At her age a desperate case. Her children must be wired to at once. She had sunk back, seemingly unconscious; and Augustine, approaching the drawer where she knew the letters were kept, slipped out the lavender sachet and gave it to the doctor. When he had left the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... once begun it never could be stopped, and yielding to the instinct of danger, she closed her eyes in letting herself glide along, that she might retain her dream, that she might not be seized with dizziness at sight of the abyss or be made desperate by her impotence. ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... the priest's departure the first steamboat came up the Saguenay from Quebec. By this time Bird was a desperate man. Northwick was still there in his house, with all that money which he would not employ in any way; at once a temptation and a danger if it should in any manner become known. The wandering poor, who are known to the piety of the habitans as the Brethren of Christ, were a terror ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... there are angry spirits And turbulent mutterers of stifled treason, Who lurk in narrow places, and walk out Muffled to whisper curses to the night. Disbanded soldiers, discontented ruffians And desperate libertines ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... appeals summoning the people to arms. In the first week of April, the doctrine which John Mitchel had long been propounding, found expression in the leading columns of the Nation:—"Ireland's necessity," said Duffy, "demands the desperate remedy of revolution." A few weeks later, the same declaration was made in the very citadel of the enemy's power. It was O'Brien who spoke, and his audience was the British House of Commons. With Messrs. Meagher and Hollywood, he had visited Paris to present ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... said office. And on these accounts it appears probable that the said resignation was tendered and accepted as a consideration for some beneficial concessions made in consequence thereof to the said Warren Hastings in his said dangerous and desperate condition. ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... first in their designs against him. Yet did this action appear to some of the conspirators to be too cruel, as to this using such severity to a woman, because Caius did more indulge his own ill-nature than use her advice in all that he did; from which ill-nature it was that the city was in so desperate a condition with the miseries that were brought on it, and the flower of the city was destroyed. But others accused her of giving her consent to these things; nay, they ascribed all that Caius had done to her as the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the voice. Perhaps, had he done so sooner, he would have held on to his sword, and taken the chances of a more protracted and desperate resistance. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... but Lynde's somewhat sedentary habits had made him familiar with his own company. When one is young and well read and amiable, there is really no better company than one's self—as a steady thing. We are in a desperate strait indeed if we chance at any age to tire of this invisible but ever- present comrade; for he is not to be thrown over during life. Before now, men have become so weary of him, so bored by him, that they have attempted to escape, by suicide; ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of life thou makest her, If all her best-beloved she cast away To wreck blind hate on thee!—What, wilt thou say "Through every woman's nature one blind strand Of passion winds, that men scarce understand?"— Are we so different? Know I not the fire And perilous flood of a young man's desire, Desperate as any woman, and as blind, When Cypris stings? Save that the man behind Has all men's strength to aid him. Nay, 'twas thou... But what avail to wrangle with thee now, When the dead speaks for all to understand, A perfect witness! Hie thee ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... portions of the stack, at the Hut. "You see them men under the eaves—they're a plaguy sight safer up there, than we be down here; and; if 'twere'n't for the look of the thing, I wish I was with 'em. That house will never be taken without a desperate sight of fightin'; for the captain is an old warrior, and seems to like to snuff gunpowder"—the reader will understand none knew of the veteran's death but those in the house—"and won't be for givin' ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... The young man hammered away tirelessly, insistently, delivering a hurricane of his two-handed blows, pressing relentlessly in as Murphy shifted and gave ground, his head up, his eyes steady, oblivious to the return hammering the now desperate handler opposed to him. Two minutes passed without perceptible slackening in this terrific pace. The gallery was in an uproar, and some of the members were piling down the stairs to the floor. Perspiration stood out all over Murphy's body. His ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... face; {ein verzweifeltes Gesicht machen}, to look desperate or hopeless; {am Gesicht ansehen}, to ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... saw the banking sector collapse, which helped precipitate an unprecedented default on external loans later that year. Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move stabilized the currency, but did not stave off the ouster of the government. Gustavo NOBOA, who assumed the presidency in January 2000, has managed ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... last desperate problem: "He's learnin' all kind of new things. Me, I ain't learnin' anything. When Chuck comes home he'll just think ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... fire was terrific between 4 and 5 when I woke up and came to the top of the ridge to see what was doing. Plainly something unusually desperate was on the move. "Asiatic Annie" was also busy and several shells came this way, one falling in the C.C.S. where no harm was done. Luckily it had chosen a clear spot in front of the store tent to pitch into. I had gone down to examine this when the wounded ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... in the hands of that heir was dimly rising within her, above all her prejudices and her rancor. But however that might be, her feelings for the time remained confused, and the only clear thing was her desperate torment at being now and forever childless, a torment which goaded her on to seek another's child with the wild idea of making that child in ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... opinion of the publick, when they see an address of this house, by which new expenses are recommended? Will they not think that their state is desperate, and that they are sold to slavery, from which nothing but insurrections and bloodshed can release them? If they retain any hopes of relief from this house, they must soon be extinguished, when they find in the next clause, that we are sunk to such a degree of servility, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... advise or help her or be her companion in inevitable death. Her thoughts must have gone to her brother, with his strength and courage, his skill as a swimmer; but he was far away, unconscious of her desperate extremity. She had to choose, and the river was her choice. With that tragic conception of the drowning of Zenobia fresh in his mind, the realization of his sister's fate must have gained additional poignancy in my father's imagination. He was hard hit, and the traces of the blow ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... contemptuously disregarding its virtues, its happiness, its knowledge, its great achievements, and its wisdom, and by stupidly or dishonestly magnifying its vices, its misery, its ignorance, its great slothfulness, and its folly; it is apt to be the way of the woeful, the unprosperous, the desperate—especially the way of such as find escape from the bore of routine life in the excitements of unrest, turbulence, and change; the past, they say, was all wrong, for it produced the present and ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... been little difficulty had not the contents of the kist caught in my feet and held on to them, like living things afraid of being left behind. I let down my hands to disentangle my feet, but failed; and then, grown desperate, I succeeded in reaching firm ground, dragging I knew not what after me. It proved to be a pillow-slip. Green Brae still shudders when I tell him that my first impulse was to leave the pillow-slip unopened. However, I ripped it up, for to ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... some of the footsteps were effaced, while others, to which Tascheron's shoes fitted, remained, certainly pointed to some mysterious assistant. Forced into hypotheses, the authorities once more attributed the crime to a desperate passion; not finding any trace of the object of such a passion in the lower classes, they began to look higher. Perhaps some bourgeoise, sure of the discretion of a man who had the face and bearing of a hero, had been drawn into ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... heaven hears my oath, I will never marry! Now, my king, try how far your power reaches; what you may do and dare; how far you may prevail with a woman who struggles against the tyranny of her destiny. You can lead an army into desperate battle; you can conquer provinces, and make thrones totter to their base, but you cannot force a woman to do what she is resolved against! You cannot break my will! I repeat my oath—I ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... with the frenzy of a man who is in a desperate strait. He was as strong as I, and he had the advantage in height. For a moment I was borne back. He struck me heavily upon the face, and I made no attempt to defend myself. I waited my time. When it came, I dealt him such a blow that he reeled away, and before he could ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... struggles to escape it drove one of its spurs into his hand. Dunham suddenly released it; and then ensued a wild chase for its recapture, up and down the ship, in which it had every advantage of the young man. At last it sprang upon the rail; he put out his hand to seize it, when it rose with a desperate screech, and flew far out over the sea. They watched the suicide till it sank exhausted into a ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... him after the service, a slight flush washed the white of her face with a delicate warmth,—nothing more. I said to myself, however, as we went home, and afterwards to my husband, that his case was not a desperate one. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... letters, filled with details of woe, from all parts of the country. Fierce, heavy gloom brooded over the assembly; and fiercely and heavily did the men separate, towards eleven o'clock, some irritated by the opposition of others to their desperate plans. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... give him "all Holland and Zeeland, with all their appurtenances," and he was ready to resign at any moment. He was not "ceremonious for reputation," he said, but he gave warning that the Netherlanders would grow desperate if they found her Majesty dealing weakly or carelessly with them. As for himself he had already had enough of government. "I am weary, Mr. Secretary," he plaintively exclaimed, "indeed I am weary; but neither of pains nor travail. My ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... nation, or perhaps the confederacy, of the Alligewi or Talligewi, the semi-civilized "Mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley, who have left their name to the Allegheny river and mountains, and whose vast earthworks are still, after half-a-century of study, the perplexity of archaeologists. A desperate warfare ensued, which lasted about a hundred years, and ended in the complete overthrow and destruction, or expulsion, of the Alligewi. The survivors of the conquered people fled southward, and are supposed to have mingled ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... his mind by making an analysis of a dull sermon. 'There is nothing particular in it,' he admits, but at least it is better, he thinks, to listen to a bad sermon than to the blasphemous rant of deistical societies. Indeed, Crabbe's spirit was totally unlike the desperate pride of Chatterton. He was of the patient enduring tribe, and comforts himself by religious meditations, which are, perhaps, rather commonplace in expression, but when read by the light of the distresses he was enduring, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... so loud and shrill," that the Dutch pug began to bark, Carlo to howl, and the other nuisance, Master Charles, to cry. The German eolina was of itself bad enough, but these congregated noises were intolerable. Uncle John aimed a desperate blow with a large apple, which he was just about to bite, at the head of Carlo, who, in order to give his lungs fair play, was standing on all fours on the hampers. The apple missed the dog, and went some distance beyond him into ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... that no one could possibly have been more welcome. He had failed to find the control: he had to have it. So he might as well have it out with the Prince now as any other time. If Koltsoff but knew it, he was facing a desperate man; for until he had entered and searched the rooms, Jack had harbored no doubt that possession of the control was merely a matter of overhauling the Prince's effects. Now he knew better, and for the first time he was really alarmed as to its whereabouts. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... singularly allied to the animal nature; they conduct the unconscious victim of feelings that appear divine into a state of life at which the world stands aghast." Fanaticism is always united with either excessive lewdness or desperate asceticism. The physiological performance of the generative function is sure to ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the beasts, upon slight or sudden occasions; as, for instance, the carpenters and their (326) assistants, and people of that sort, if a machine, or any piece of work in which they had been employed about the theatre did not answer the purpose for which it had been intended. To this desperate kind of encounter he forced one of his nomenclators, even encumbered as he was ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... before the German infantry attack. The fighting on this section of the front was fierce throughout the afternoon, but finally the British were forced to retire. At Broodseinde, the extreme eastern point of the allied front, the Germans made a desperate attempt to take the salient, using asphyxiating and other bombs again and again on the men of the Twenty-eighth Division of the British. King George's men, however, repelled the attacks with severe loss to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... commanding officer, in a cool Arab house about a flowery patio, but that brief interval over, the fiery plain began again. After Settat the road runs on for miles across the waste to the gorge of the Oued Ouem, and beyond the river it climbs to another plain so desperate in its calcined aridity that the prickly scrub of the wilderness we had left seemed like the vegetation of an oasis. For fifty kilometres the earth under our wheels was made up of a kind of glistening red slag covered with pebbles and stones. Not the scantest and toughest ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... faced him, with a kind of desperate courage. "I got it by going away for two days. It's no good disguising things, trying to ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... was put aboard for Spain. An hour before dawn Drake passed the word along the waiting line: "Shove off!" Bounding into the bay he saw a Spanish rowboat, which at once saw him and pulled hard-all for the shore. The English won the desperate race, making the Spaniards sheer off to a landing some way beyond the town. Then they landed and tumbled the Spanish guns off their mountings on the wharf, to the amazement of the sleepy Spanish sentry, who ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... up to; it seems to me to become, as it were, an act of divine justice. And when I use Miss Pross (though this is quite another question) to bring about such a catastrophe, I have the positive intention of making that half-comic intervention a part of the desperate woman's failure; and of opposing that mean death, instead of a desperate one in the streets which she wouldn't have minded, to the dignity of Carton's. Wrong or right, this was all design, and seemed to me to be in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... revolution in Russia," he began at length. "But because the Duma is subservient, it does not mean that all is over. Not at all. We are not asleep. Revolution is smouldering, ready to break forth at any moment. The agents of the government know it. They are desperate. There is no means they would not use to crush us. Their long arm reaches even to New York, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... she said. "Quick! lemme get in! O God!" she pleaded with desperate entreaty, as Mrs. Kane stood coldly unresponsive, "you have your baby. I haven't seen mine in seven months, and they never wrote. I'll never ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... for our arms. Fort Donelson had fallen, after a desperate contest, and nearly all its garrison were taken prisoners. The scattered remains of the rebel army, under Johnston, had retreated precipitately from Kentucky, which had indeed been to them "the dark and ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... &c. (wonderful) 870; unimaginable, inimaginable[obs3]; unthinkable. impracticable unachievable; unfeasible, infeasible; insuperable; unsurmountable[obs3], insurmountable; unattainable, unobtainable; out of reach, out of the question; not to be had, not to be thought of; beyond control; desperate &c. (hopeless) 859; incompatible &c. 24; inaccessible, uncomeatable[obs3], impassable, impervious, innavigable[obs3], inextricable; self-contradictory. out of one's power, beyond one's power, beyond one's depth, beyond one's reach, beyond one's grasp; too ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... untrustworthy garrison described by Colonel de Coetlogon. During the summer of 1884 there was therefore a growing fear, not only that the worst news might come at any moment, but that in the most favourable event any news would reveal the desperate situation to which Gordon had been reduced, and with that conviction came the thought, not whether he had exactly carried out what Ministers had expected him to do, but solely of his extraordinary courage and devotion ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... across to her own cabin, and left the angry girl among her boxes. It was in vain she fell to work upon them. Presently something had to be done over again, and when it was the box held several chattels less than before the readjustment. She played a sort of desperate dominos to fit these objects in the space, but here were a paper-weight, a portfolio, with two wretched volumes that no chink would harbor; and letting them fall all at once, she straightened herself, still stormy with revolt, eyes and cheeks still hot ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Jovis, of his grace, As I have said, will thee solace Finally with these ilke* things, *same These uncouth sightes and tidings, To pass away thy heaviness, Such ruth* hath he of thy distress *compassion That thou suff'rest debonairly,* *gently And know'st thyselven utterly Desperate of alle bliss, Since that Fortune hath made amiss The fruit of all thy hearte's rest Languish, and eke *in point to brest;* *on the point of breaking* But he, through his mighty merite, Will do thee ease, all be it lite,* *little ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... chew upon that, instead of their tobacco," observed the captain to Mr. Leach, as he hunted for a good coal in the galley to light his cigar with. "I'll warrant you the sheers go up none the slower for the information, desperate philosophers as some ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and performing miracles {48} after death. The second story is of a Jew who was converted to Christianity by the wickedness of Rome, for he reasoned that no cult, not divinely supported, could survive such desperate depravity as he saw there. The third tale, of the three rings, points the moral that no one can be certain what religion is the true one. The fourth narrative, like many others, turns upon the sensuality of the monks. Elsewhere the author describes the most absurd relics, and tells ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... too. When matters got desperate and he was forced to let Tremenhuel, he took what money he could raise and cleared out of the neighbourhood for a time; went off to Tregarrick when the militia was embodied, he being an officer; and there ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stand at Vittoria, filled the centre of that formidable line, before which the troops of France fled in dismay; and by whose skill, prudence, and valour, exerted in a critical hour, the enemy was foiled in his desperate attempt to break through the barrier of the Pyrenees. Picton received the thanks of the house for his valorous conduct for the seventh time; but that was all, his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... risen to adjust the lamp-shade, and now stood behind his chair with her arm resting on it, so that he was obliged to turn his head backward to see her—"Mr. Henderson, do you know you are getting to be a desperate flirt?" The laughing eyes looking into his said that was not such a desperate thing to do if ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... audience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not Anno Domini, but many years B.C. The African deserves no pity. His hideous crime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many such monsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But for American citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at a holiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age, unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and women who will watch side by side the burning of a negro shrink ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... the desperate man, throwing the door wide open and stalking out among the crowd, "well, jest you two wimin put on your duds and go right straight home and bring back the old man and woman, and your grandfather, who is nigh on to a hundred; bring 'em all here, AND I'LL MARRY THE WHOLE D—D ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... A desperate shadow hovered over Mostyn's face. "I'll go back in the morning," he said, doggedly. "Mitchell, you say, wants to see me. I'm not afraid of the woman. If I had been there she wouldn't have made such a ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... God's mighty working within this realm, I have been with you in your most desperate tentations. Ask your own consciences, and let them answer you before God, if that I—not I, but God's Spirit by me—in your greatest extremity willed you not ever to depend upon your God, and in His name promised unto you victory and preservation from your enemies, so ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... and ruins be She fights through dark and desperate days; Beside the watchers on the sea She guards the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... and a cheap showiness, are the ingredients of this devil's cauldron. The worst of it is that it has no fine elements at all. There is a nobility about real tragedy which evokes a quality of passionate and sincere emotion. There is something essentially exalted about a fierce resistance, a desperate failure. But this abject, listless dreariness, which can hardly be altered or expressed, this miserable floating down the muddy current, where there is no sharp repentance or fiery battling, nothing but a mean abandonment ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of these Holland people in times of adversity is one of the wonders of history. For a hundred years they struggled against powerful Spain, but their faith saved them. It is said that at the siege of Leyden they were reduced to such desperate straits that all they had to eat was dogs and cats. In derision they were called "dog and cat eaters." They replied to their enemies: "As long as you hear the bark of a dog or the mew of a cat the city holds. When these are gone we will devour out left arms, ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... tripod. And suddenly she found herself on her knees beside it, staring into its dusky transparent depths, fixing her mind, concentrating every thought, straining every faculty, every nerve in the one desperate and imperative desire. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... experience of its master's habits. The locality had an unfavorable reputation. Sailors—deserters from whaleships—had been seen lurking about the outskirts of the town, and low scrub oaks which everywhere beset the trail might have easily concealed some desperate runaway. Besides these material obstructions, the devil, whose hostility to the church was well known, was said to sometimes haunt the vicinity in the likeness of a spectral whaler, who had met his death in a drunken bout, from a harpoon in the hands of a companion. The ghost of this unfortunate ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... an abject appeal in the bloodshot eyes, a desperate tenacity in his clutch. He looked at me as if he dared look nowhere else. Some horror seemed pressing upon his confused and weakened brain, and I thought I could ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... cried out, "Ho, soldiers of Islam and defenders of the True Faith, if you flee, you are lost, and if you stand fast, you will conquer! Know that courage lies in endurance and that no case is so desperate but that God is able to bring about its relief. May He bless you and look upon you with eyes of compassion! "Then the Muslims cried out, "God is most great!" and the believers in the Divine Unity shouted the profession ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... stating what he intended to do, dashed up the roadway leading to Dr. Scoville's house. It was evident that he was about to resort to some desperate expedient to retrieve the shattered fortunes of his party; but he kept his own counsel; and Somers yielded himself to the master will of his companion like a child, as indeed he was in his exhausted and suffering condition. The roadway led to the rear of the house where ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... his own popularity. For a lady to say she did not admire Mr. Secretary Bolt, was strong evidence of her want of taste. I do not choose to enlighten the world as to how Bolt came to be Secretary of Legation!' Here the old man would make a desperate flourish with his crutch, by which I was led to believe that the means were none of the cleanest; in fact that they were of a character very similar to those used at this day, and to which may be traced the cause of certain of Mr. ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the wall; but others to assure Themselves, some safer passage seek, where they Will have least pain and peril to endure. Rodomont only scorns by any way To wend, except by what is least secure; And in that desperate case, where others made Their offerings, cursed the god to whom ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... world too? If you'll give me some money I'll be off fast enough, and make assurance doubly sure. I'm not much afraid of Maggie. She's a little yea-nay thing, and I can always bend her round to what we want. She had better take care, too," said he, with a desperate look on his face, "for by G—— I'll make her give up all thoughts of Frank, rather than be taken and tried. Why! it's my chance for all my life; and do you think I'll have it frustrated for a ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
