"Disheartening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flowers and the green leaves; on the other hand, the small results which appear to have hitherto attended such endeavors are calculated rather to induce those who have yet made, to relinquish them than to lead others to follow in the same track. It is truly a disheartening task. To the critic himself no good, though some amusement occasionally, can be expected: to the criticised, good but rarely, for he is seldom convinced, and annoyance and rancour almost of course; and, even in those few cases ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... proboque, deteriora sequor. And St. Paul's "To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do." From pagan and Christian pen alike there comes testimony to this universal and disheartening experience.] There is no greater need for most men than that of some wiser and more effective method whereby those who have ideals beyond their practice may regularly ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Hilo early on the 12th; they travelled on horseback, and returned on the ensuing Monday, highly delighted with their trip, but giving a melancholy description of the road, which they pronounced to be in some places impassable to people on foot. This latter intelligence was disheartening to the second division, some of whom, and myself of the number, had intended to walk. These, notwithstanding, adhered to their resolution; and the second party, consisting of eight, left the ship at 6 A.M. on Tuesday. Some on horseback, and some on foot, we got away from the village about eight ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... tastes and inclinations, it would not have been so hopeless. But to realize they had no standards in common and that the only tie that bound them together was the frail thread of kinship was a disheartening outlook indeed. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... true in poetic art, I seem, to myself to find the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted in Art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism." And again: "The radical difference between the poetic theory of the Greeks and our own is this: that with them, the poetical character of the action in itself, and the conduct of it, was the first consideration; ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... darkened both sees and feels. How many times parents, by unkind words or actions, becloud their children's sky! One way in which parents do this is by telling the faults of their children to visitors, in the presence of the children. There is scarcely anything more disheartening to a child than this. He feels humiliated and hurt. He feels, and justly feels, that he has been mistreated. It sinks down into his soul and rankles there. It discourages him, and if it is often repeated ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... It was a disheartening evening. We played progressive euchre for a silly prize, and we all got shuffled up wrong and had to stay so. Then the major did amateur conjuring till we nearly died. I was thankful to sneak out-of-doors ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... was disposed to rejoice, under the impression that his greatest labour had been achieved. A better look at the state of things around him, however, taught the disheartening lesson of humility, by demonstrating that they had in truth but ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... so disheartening that Cyril did not leave the house again for another fortnight. His first visit was to Mr. Wallace. The sight of a watchman at the door gave him quite a shock, and he was grieved indeed when he heard from the ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... were the disheartening influence of the day on those who had nothing to apprehend, what must its effect have been on the poor captives! Woful indeed. The two monks suffered a complete prostration of spirit. All the resolution which Father Haydocke ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... met with an equally disheartening response. Miss Carmichael sat up straight, pushed back the persistent curls from her face, and bent every energy towards the achievement ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... This most disheartening record underwent a complete change in 1576, when the son of the Bungo feudatory, a youth of some sixteen years, and, two years later, the feudatory himself, Otomo, embraced the Christian faith. In the first Annual ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... muster. This will be in time for our Assembly. The presentment going in the public papers just at the moment when Congress was together, produced a great effect both on its friends and foes in that body, very much to the disheartening and mortification of the latter. I wish this petition, if approved, to arrive there under the same circumstances, to produce the counter effect so wanting for their gratification. I could have wished to receive it from you again at our court on Monday, because ——— ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... as I have ever known," he exclaimed heartily. "I served with him in two campaigns. But what are you two young fellows doing here? for it would be hard to conceive of a more disheartening place of residence. Surely, De Croix, you are not permanently located in ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... crime of slavery wiped away, but a new source of strength to our forces was provided by the emancipated negroes, who were enlisted to aid in the confirmation of their freedom by final victory. The first half of the year 1863 witnessed what was perhaps the gloomiest and most disheartening period of the war. Hooker succeeded Burnside, only to meet at Chancellorsville the same disastrous fate which had overtaken his predecessor at Fredericksburg. General Lee was encouraged to assume the offensive, and to invade Pennsylvania. ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... exhibited by Sparta, by Carthage, and by Rome, was a chimera of philosophers never realised by antiquity. At last Tacitus, wiser than the rest, confessed that the mixed Constitution, however admirable in theory, was difficult to establish and impossible to maintain. His disheartening avowal is not disowned ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Angels the thinnest perennial spurt; we must let out the water only for bare use, and turn the tap off instantly after. There is something very disappointing in this; and the knowledge of that dearth of water, of those two taps symbolical of chronic drought, is positively disheartening. Beautiful proportions, delicate patterns, gracious effigies of the Madonna and the angels we can have, and also the most lovely garlands. But we cannot have a fountain. For it is useless calling this a fountain, this poor little trough with ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... of adventure. With a cumbrous and oppressive government over them, and with no private ownership of land nor other encouragement for steadygoing thrift, the only chance for personal gain was through a stroke of discovery. No wonder the loss of time and strength in futile excursions. No wonder the disheartening reaction in the malaria-stricken camp ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... advanced position should be expressed by the books on her table. These volumes, frequently renewed, and almost always damp from the press, bore names generally unfamiliar to Mrs. Leveret, and giving her, as she furtively scanned them, a disheartening glimpse of new fields of knowledge to be breathlessly traversed in Mrs. Ballinger's wake. But to-day a number of maturer-looking volumes were adroitly mingled with the primeurs of the press—Karl Marx jostled Professor Bergson, and the "Confessions of St. Augustine" lay ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the mystery of Mongolia. In 1916, Coltman and his former partner, Oscar Mamen, had driven across the plains to Urga, the historic capital of Mongolia. But most unromantic and incongruous, most disheartening to a dreamer of Oriental dreams, was what I learned a few days later when the awakening had really come—that among the first cars ever to cross the desert was one purchased by the Hutukhtu, the Living Buddha, the God ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... miles in two days—a wonderful performance.[5] In the very heart of the rebellion, W. L. Mackenzie seems to have found the roads fighting against him, for he speaks of the march along Yonge Street as over "thirty or forty miles of the worst roads in the world"; and attributes part of the disheartening of his men to what one may term mud-weariness.[6] Local tradition still remembers with a sense of wonder that Sydenham, eager to return to his work in Lower Canada, once travelled by sleigh {12} the 360 miles from Toronto to Montreal in ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... sir," said he, turning courteously to Vivaldi, "that you are in a bad plight, and I hope that I or my carriage may be of service to you." He ventured a second glance at Fulvia, but she had turned aside and was inspecting the wheel of the chaise with an air of the most disheartening detachment. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... languid hands of the younger guests, and those ridiculous mottoes, which could hardly amuse anyone out of Earlswood Asylum, were looked at a shade more contemptuously than usual. The weather was too warm for enthusiasm. And Violet's pale set face was almost as disheartening as the skeleton at an Egyptian banquet. When Mrs. Tempest retired to put on her travelling-dress Violet went with her, a filial attention the mother had in ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... The disheartening effect throughout the Confederacy may be guessed by the following extract from a diary kept by Mr. I. D. Jones, the Rebel ...
— History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: Beverly Ford. • Daniel Oakey
... principle and conscience. Such is the case wherever and whenever they are demanded as necessary, or when their introduction involves a denial of the truth, an admission of error, an infringement of Christian liberty, an encouragement of errorists and of the enemies of the Church, a disheartening of the confessors of the truth, or an offense to Christians, especially the weak. Such conditions, they maintained, prevailed during the time of the Interim, when both Pope and Emperor plainly declared it to be their object to reestablish the Romish ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... better educated of the East. These men, year after year, without leadership, without encouragement, without the support and generally against the covered or open hostility of their neighbours, under most disheartening official conditions kept the torch alight. They had no wide theory of forestry to sustain their interest; they could certainly have little hope of promotion and advancement to a real career; their experience with a bureaucratic government could not arouse in their breasts ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... passengers . . . At a moderate computation, about 9,000 emigrants have, or, within the next month, will have, left this port for America. It is to be hoped their anticipations will be realised. There can be little fear, however, that their condition could be worse, or their prospects more disheartening than those which the 'potato famine' in this country, little mended by the promise of Indian corn, had occasioned. La faim chasse le loup hors du bois. To starve, or emigrate, are the only alternatives ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... this defeat, in the capitulation of Hamilcar, which, in a manner, determined the fate of Sicily, were so disheartening to the Carthaginians, that they were obliged to submit to a disadvantageous and dishonorable peace. Among other terms, it was stipulated that they should evacuate all the places they held in Sicily, and entirely quit that island; that they should also abandon all the small islands that lie between ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... therefore, the majority of my neighbours, whose ability for the work they have been prepared to do proves them to be no fools, are, nevertheless, pitiably helpless in the management of their own affairs. Most disheartening it is, too, for those whose help they seek, to work with them. In the cricket-club committee, on which I served for a year or two, it was noticeable that the members, eager for proper arrangements to be made, often sat tongue-tied ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... meal that will not end until he be destroyed. He is shut out from his fellows. As they approach he must cry, 'Unclean! unclean!' that all humanity may be warned from his precincts. He must abandon wife and child. He must go to live with other lepers, in disheartening view of miseries similar to his own. He must dwell in dismantled houses or in the tombs. He is, as Trench says, a dreadful parable of death. By the laws of Moses (Lev. 13:45; Numb. 6:9; Ezek. 24:17) he was compelled, as if he were mourning for his own decease, to bear about ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... as to those of other professed solutions of insoluble mysteries, whose souls are bound up in the success of their sectarian propaganda, no doubt, it must be very disheartening if the "world," for whose assent and approbation they sue, stops its ears and turns its back upon them. But what does it signify to any one who does not happen to be a missionary of any sect, philosophical or religious, and who, if he were, would have no sermon to preach except from ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... imagined. But too often different is rational conjecture from melancholy fact. This exordium, as contrary to all the rules of rhetoric as to those more essential rules of policy which our situation would dictate, is intended as a prelude to a deadening and disheartening proposition; as if all that a minister had to fear in a war of his own conducting was, that the people should pursue it with too ardent a zeal. Such a tone as I guessed the minister would have taken, I am very sure, is the true, unsuborned, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... disheartening disappointment, but I held my tongue, and knowing that my old friend and correspondent, George Liverm of Cambridge, N. E., possessed an imperfect copy, which he and Mr. Crowninshield, after the noble example of the 'Lincoln Nosegay,' had won from the Committee of the 'Old ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... he who is guided by a master's teaching! His progress does not know the misery of those wearisome breakdowns. What was I to do before the disheartening wall that every now and then rose up and barred my road? I followed d'Alembert's precept in his advice to young mathematical students: 'Have faith and go ahead,' said the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... wonder why the pirates had not murdered him and all his crew, and thrown them overboard. He hoped that in time he and his men might reach Georgetown, or some other port, but it would be slow and disheartening ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... he could not sleep, he wondered why it is that one never day-dreams unpleasant obstacles and disheartening failures into one's air castles. Why was it that, just when it had seemed to him that his dream was miraculously come true; when he found himself complete master of the Double-Crank where for years he had been merely one of the men; when the One Girl was also settled indefinitely in the household ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... were so trained and improved. That this should be the maximum proportion will surprise those who have been misled by the ad captandum statements sometimes put forward to the public, no doubt with laudable and benevolent motives. This amount of success, disheartening as it seems at first, is not to be despised; but the strength of an appeal, whether to the charitable public or to the State, to provide for the training of idiots, lies in elevating them to the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... starvation, and in entire ignorance as to which of these particular directions should be followed, without a single road, trail, tree, bush, or other landmark to guide or direct—the effects upon the imagination of this formidable array of disheartening circumstances can be fully appreciated only by those who have been personally subjected ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... question him about Westmore, and the change in his face showed that his work was still a refuge from all that made life disheartening and unintelligible. Whatever convictions had been thwarted or impaired in him, his faith in the importance of his task remained unshaken; and the firmness with which he held to it filled Justine with a sense of his strength. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... this magical volume is doubtless rather disheartening: but the sight of the original silver clasps (luckily still preserved) will operate by way of a comforter. Upon them you observe ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... I approached my native city, the more I recalled to myself doubtingly the circumstances, prospects, and hopes with which I had left home; and it was with a very disheartening feeling that I now returned, as it were, like one shipwrecked. Yet, since I had not very much with which to reproach myself, I contrived to compose myself tolerably well: however, the welcome was not without emotion. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... not uninviting, seen under the charitable cloak of February's snow, sun-touched by the freshly risen luminary, the white expanses glinting; all the rocks and ledges and the barren shapes were covered. But under summer's frank sunlight Egypt was as disheartening a spectacle as a racked old horse, ribs and hip bones outthrust, waiting for ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... enough to admit Santa Claus, a note could be left directing him along the halls to the other apartments. A spirit of universal brotherhood had taken possession of the Santa Maria flatters. Misery bound them together. But the investigation proved to be disheartening. The cruel asbestos grates were ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Sedgwick. For here the position was almost unassailable, and the troops better massed; and, if Lee had made an unsuccessful assault, Hooker would have been in better condition to make a sortie upon the arrival of the Sixth Corps in his vicinity, than after the bloody and disheartening work ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... return home, were disobedient to orders, and were deserting in large numbers—it is said "by half and even by whole regiments." Then followed the Americans' defeat at White Plains, the surrender of Fort Washington, the evacuation of Fort Lee, and the steady disheartening of the American forces. The ineffectual attempts to increase the militia, the indisposition of the inhabitants to farther resistance, the retreat of General Washington through New Jersey at the head of less than three thousand ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... cried Delcasse, and smote the arm of his chair a heavy blow. "I do foresee such a struggle—I have never denied it; and for twenty years I have laboured to prepare for it. You can understand, then, what a blow it is to me—how terrible, how disheartening—to have all my calculations blasted by such accidents ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... began to chant the score with the hopes of further disheartening the Bartlett eleven. "We want more! We ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... were not enviable. He had enough faith to fear God, but not to trust and obey. The thought recurred with disheartening frequency, "If God is against this, He will thwart ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... converters wouldn't convert, and no matter how many switches they shoved in, there was no power output. The inside telemetered equipment, of course, was self-powered. Some of them were dead, too, but from those which still worked Mohammed Matsui got a uniformly disheartening story. ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... was wind enough for the Spot Cash. Much more would shake and drown her like a chip. Bill o' Burnt Bay, at the wheel, and the crew, forward and amidships, kept watch for the coast and the friendly landmarks of harbour. But what with wind and fog and rain it was a disheartening business. ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... fortunately came across in a post-house, for it gave me an opportunity of a chat with the Doctor anent his now well-known discovery, the "latest Siberian Mammoth," which he was conveying in sections, packed in twenty sleighs, to Irkutsk. Dr. Herz gave us, like Talbot Clifton, very disheartening accounts of affairs north of Yakutsk. The Doctor had travelled here from the Kolyma river (our goal on the Arctic Ocean) only with the greatest difficulty on account of the scarcity of reindeer and the dangerous ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... because 'C'est le neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it always is God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we shall drink pure. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... which gives him better compensation for his work. This benefit by no means generally results from an attempt at "scientific" agriculture, nor is the adoption of a special industry by any means generally successful. Failure in either of these directions is disheartening and discouraging to those who are watching his example. There are many well-tried improvements upon the old methods of our fathers which are universally adopted, especially in the direction of the use of better implements and more judicious care in the application of manure. But the average ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... encouraged them. But fresh trials were in store for them. Mr. Judson had embarked for the province of Arracan; and when they were daily looking for his return, a vessel arrived from the port to which he had sailed, bringing the disheartening tidings that neither he nor the vessel in which he had sailed had been heard of there. While, tortured by suspense on Mr. Judson's account, new terrors alarmed the mission family. Mr. Hough was ordered ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... We believe that to them is to be attributed a considerable part of that patriotic feeling which, after a suspended animation of several years, awoke in the spring of 1861 and asserted itself with such unexpected power, and which sustained the country during four years of a peculiarly disheartening war. How pleasant and spirit-stirring was a celebration of the Fourth of July as it was conducted in Webster's early day! We trust the old customs will be revived and improved upon, and become universal. Nor is it any objection to the practice of having ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... to deal with imbeciles, had to deal with mere idiots; but for sheer, determined, monumental asininity I have never met the equal of this aggregation. I trust this morning's painful, disgraceful, disheartening experience may never, never be repeated. You ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... long-suffering mood this morning. Actions for which O'Hara would on other days have been expelled from the room without hope of return, today were greeted with a mild "Don't do that, please, O'Hara," or even the ridiculously inadequate "O'Hara!" It was perfectly disheartening. O'Hara began to ask himself bitterly what was the use of ragging at all if this was how it was received. And the moments were flying, and his promise to Renford and Harvey ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... afraid you've had a very poor lunch, Dan. It's disheartening to see you picking at a few beans and drinking soda water. I ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... the worst tangle of vegetation, and has a hearing and eyesight so keen that usually he sees the hunter long before the latter sees him. A hunt after bongo means long hours or even days of hunting the forests, with hardships of travel so disheartening that comparatively few white sportsmen attempt to go in after the elusive antelope. Kermit Roosevelt, however, with the good fortune that has followed his hunting adventures, succeeded in killing a cow and calf bongo after only a few hours ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... us threw a momentary brightness over the scene, but after their departure every thing looked more gloomy and disheartening than before. The fort itself was a deep, dark, damp, gloomy-looking place, inclosed in high walls, where the sunlight rarely penetrated. If we ascended to the parapet, we saw nothing but uncouth State flags, representing palmettos, pelicans, and other strange devices. No echo ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... corresponding to his rank, and but little opportunity to do any military work whatsoever. The very best men, men like Lawton, Young, Chaffee, Hawkins, and Sumner, to mention only men under or beside whom I served, remained good soldiers, soldiers of the best stamp, in spite of the disheartening conditions. But it was not to be expected that the average man could continue to grow when every influence was against him. Accordingly, when the Spanish War suddenly burst upon us, a number of inert elderly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Battle of the Marne kept their fighting spirit intact. I remember asking many of the officers attached to the forces which, after the Battle of Charleroi, retreated under a broiling sun, along roads burning with heat, through a suffocating dust, how they felt at this disheartening time. All of them answered, "We did not know where we were going or what we were doing, but we did know one thing—that we would beat them!" One writer, Pierre Laserre, described this retreat in the words, "Their bodies were retreating, but not their souls!" This is proven ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... very rude to call me a thing; it is disheartening, when I believed I was looking my best," says Monica, laughing. Somehow Kit's praises always ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... subject declared it to be impossible, prophesying that the extension of the settlement westward would forever be obstructed by their unscalable heights. Blaxland, however, was not intimidated by these disheartening predictions; and, in 1811, he started out on a short journey of investigation, in company with three Europeans and two natives. On this trip he found that by keeping on the crowning ridge or dividing water-shed between the streams running into the Nepean ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... That disheartening view of the foreign and mechanical nature of the real world which our sciences and our industrial arts have impressed upon the minds of so many of us; that contempt for superstition; that denial ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... obstinacy and perseverance, and he was gifted with an unaristocratic amount of energy. When an idea once took possession of his brain, he patiently and diligently brought the embryo thought to fruition, in spite of all disheartening obstacles. He was narrow-minded and selfish when any interests save his own and those of his mother and son were at stake. These were the only two beings whom he loved, and he only loved them because they were his—a portion of himself; and it was merely himself ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... lonely year that had passed since his wife's death, Mr. Day's experiences with domestic help had been disheartening as well as varied. ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... rolled round with incredible swiftness. It brought to Nance not only an end to all her good times, but the disheartening knowledge that she would soon be out of employment again with no money saved, and under the self-imposed necessity of making a clean breast of her ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... won't bury its dead. It sits over their corpses like a persistent resurrectionist, in a fashion which is irresistibly disheartening. Did it never strike you, by the way, what a droll caricature might be made on that line? Time as a decrepit ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... same breadth, using the cover of an old glove-box as a gauge, wrote very neatly on the outside the date, the name of the creditor, and the amount of the debt, and with an indiarubber band enrolled it in a company of its fellows. Miss Joliffe found drawers full of such disheartening packets after his death, for Martin had a talent for distributing his favours, and of planting small debts far and wide, which by-and-by grew up into ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... rich was based upon many years of successful experience it must not be supposed that Booker Washington did not have his share of rebuffs and discouragements. In fact, scarcely a day went by that he did not receive some such disheartening rebuff as the following note from a man who had for several years contributed a small sum each year ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... alone before he suggested to John that Consuello might be able to furnish a clew to Gibson's whereabouts. Thoughts of her had been flashing in and out of John's mind during the excitement of the morning. He realized that if anyone knew where Gibson was it would be Consuello, and again he had the disheartening apprehension that, faithful to her love, she might be in flight with the man she was ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... magnificent frame, and covered with a sunshine of varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight,—this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indeed was the prospect before us. With one hundred and thirty persons in a sinking boat, far out at sea, in a dark and tempestuous night, with no other dependence for reaching the shore than a few small and tattered sails, our condition might be considered truly awful. But, with all these disheartening circumstances, hope, delusive hope, still supported us. Although it was evident that we must soon sink, and our progress towards the land was very slow, still we cherished the expectation that the boat would finally be run on shore, and thus most of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... have so long been eager in the pursuit and accumulation of riches, are now to show more generous energies in the free spending of our means to gain the invaluable objects for which we have gone to war. There is nothing disheartening in this prospect. Our people, accustomed as they have been during late years to the most lavish use of money, and to general extravagance in expense, have not yet lost the tradition of the economies and thrift of earlier times, and will not find ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... and looked out of the window. A piece of the moon, far gone in the third quarter, was rising above a mass of evergreens. She had a courageous young soul, and the waning brightness of the lovers' orb did not affect her as a disheartening sign. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... and functions of the various parts of the hand on the part of a teacher would smooth over many disheartening experiences of his pupils. Just as it is of value to study the mental characteristics of a pupil so, also, is it of value to thoroughly examine his physical peculiarities. I wonder how many violin teachers have noticed, or have profited by so noticing, ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... 6th. Nice journey to Falmouth. Here we have been since Second-day learning our own manifold deficiencies; but this, under a genial atmosphere, is, to me, never disheartening,—always an exciting, encouraging lesson. ——'s kind words on intellectual presence of mind, and his animating example of it, have determined me to make a vigorous effort over my own sloth and inanity. I believe the first thing is to be always conscious of what I am thinking ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... the Government, if the Government had shown an earlier confidence in the loyalty of the people. Though the President talked of "repossessing" the stolen forts, arsenals, and custom-houses, yet close upon this declaration followed the disheartening intelligence that the Cabinet were discussing the propriety of evacuating not only Fort Sumter, which was of no strategic importance, but Fort Pickens, which was the key to the Gulf of Mexico, and to abandon which was almost to acknowledge the independence of the Rebel States. Thus far the Free ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... de Roberval, a nobleman of Picardy. He sailed up the St. Lawrence, anchoring probably at the mouth of the river Cap Rouge, about four leagues above Quebec, where he built a fort which he named Charlesbourg-Royal. Here he passed another dreary and disheartening winter, and returned to France in the spring of 1542. His patron, De Roberval, who had failed to fulfil his intention to accompany him the preceding year, met him at St. John, Newfoundland. In vain Roberval urged and commanded him to retrace his course; but the resolute old navigator ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... forenoon Ladysmith and the little garrison left behind for its defence was the target of Long Tom on Pepworth Hill. The fugitives from Kainguba brought in disheartening reports and the Boers seemed to be threatening from the north. W. Knox, a Horse Artillery officer who had been left in command, anticipated an attack which he had little chance of meeting successfully with the scanty force at his disposal and ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... between, wrought her to a very strong sense of the necessity of having some kind of "help" soon. Mrs. Rossitur wearied herself excessively with doing very little, and then looked so sad to see Fleda working on, that it was more disheartening and harder to bear than the fatigue. Hugh was a most faithful and invaluable coadjutor, and his lack of strength was, like her own, made up by energy of will; but neither of them could bear the strain long; and when the final clearing away of the dinner-dishes gave her a breathing- ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Johnny's" piped up my little sister amid a very disheartening roar of laughter from the {321} school. There was no use in my denying the statement. Her reputation for veracity was much higher than mine, and I recognized the futility of trying to convince any one that she was mistaken. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... as Glaucon had heard the avowal of Democrates on the night of the seizure. There was no longer any doubt of the answer to the great riddle. But disheartening, benumbing beyond all personal anguish was the dread for Hellas. The sacrifice at Thermopylae vain. The glory of Salamis vain. Hellas and Athens enslaved. The will of Xerxes and Mardonius accomplished not because of their valour, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... I pursued, "is trying to get on in commercial life, but has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make a beginning. Now I want somehow to help him to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... financial magnate, and by birth a Hebrew. In the conversation that ensued between this lady and Baron Rothschild, the latter said: "Madam, my sympathies are entirely with your country; but is it not disheartening to think that there are men in Europe who are lending their money and trying to induce others to lend it for the strengthening of human slavery? Madam, NONE BUT A CONVERTED JEW WOULD ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... easily conquered them in everything; so great an auxiliary was I to him. But thee, indeed, I stand by and preserve, and I exhort thee freely to fight against the Trojans. But either weariness, from great toil, has entered thy limbs, or at least disheartening fear in some manner possesses thee. Thou art not henceforth to be deemed at least the son of Tydeus, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... he really had any mission at all, whether he had not rather yielded to deceitful suggestions, believed in the reality of phantoms, and been deceived by chance appearances. He saw the spiritual and moral features of his friends and disciples, deformed as in a convex mirror; he felt a disheartening certainty that all he had hoped of them was vain. Then again that sad, tender little song returned, no longer beseeching but full of pity, of a pity comprehending all his bitter struggle, the sorrowing pity of some ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... me, and I with some elements of executive ability myself gave the worst part of it to Nasmith, the Vice-Consul-General. Modifications became necessary every few minutes, and Leval and I were running around like stricken deer all day, seeing the disheartening number of government officials who were concerned, having changes made and asking for additional trains. During the afternoon more and more Germans came pouring into the Consulate for refuge, until there were over two thousand of them there, terribly crowded ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... as all this work was, it was but the smallest part of his work. Richelieu found that his officers were cheating his soldiers in their pay and disheartening them; in face of the enemy he had to reorganize the army and to create a new military system. He made the army twice as effective and supported it at two-thirds less cost than before. It was his boast in his "Testament," that, from a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... should have expected, but she couldn't help being a little disappointed. Eleanor had just shown herself so fine and downright, so willing to make all the reparation in her power for a course whose inconsistency had been proved to her. It was very disheartening to find that she cherished the old, reasonless grudge as warmly as ever. But if Betty had accomplished nothing for herself, she had done all that she hoped for Eleanor, and she tried to feel ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... and more difficult to maintain a position without money. Mr. Morgan says that it is a disheartening thing to be an aristocrat without luxury; he declares that he cannot tell whether the Knickerbockers of New York or the plutocrats are more uneasy just now. The one is hungry for social position, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the aims of primitive Christendom with those of ecclesiastical society at the end of the third century—a comparison of the actual state of things at the different periods is hardly possible—will always lead to a disheartening result; but the parallel is in itself unjust. The truth rather is that the correct standpoint from which to judge the matter was already indicated by Origen in the comparison he drew (c. Cels. III. 29. 30) between the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... physical features. Of the text matter it is difficult to write without passion. No more disheartening work has been put on the ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... be disheartening work learning a musical instrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical instrument. But ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... are famishing, foretells that you are meeting disheartening failure in some enterprise which you considered a promising success. To see others famishing, brings sorrow to others as well as ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... sagacity in overcoming every difficulty; for, occasionally making a strong effort, they would gain ten or twenty yards upwards, and then, halting of their own accord, plant their fore legs entirely under them to recover their wind. But in spite of every indulgence, it was disheartening to see the perspiration dripping, like a fountain, from the flanks and stomachs of the animals, while they panted for breath. Toiling up the acclivity, we arrived, at last, at the summit of the mountain; and although the elevation must have been several thousand feet above ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... commander explained in official reports; but amid the doubt and confusion of actual combat, where there has been great loss of men and material, it is not always so easy to decide. On the night of the 2d the state of affairs was disheartening. In the combats of the preceding days, the First, Third, and Eleventh Corps had been almost annihilated; the Fifth Corps and a great part of the Second were shattered, and only the Sixth Corps and Twelfth Corps were comparatively fresh. It was possible therefore that the ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... that the phoenix flame of love would rise from the ashes of what he knew had been but the stirring of adolescent blood when he fancied that he loved Eva Thornhill. The home life of others had not impressed him as a dream fulfilled. The gradual disillusionment of the many was disheartening, and Latimer's worn, unhappy face was a constant reminder. Arthur Latimer! That blithe Southerner—believer in men—and women! Philip knew what had made him seek forgetfulness in the law and politics. The success of his friend, who had reached his goal, on the supreme bench, had gratified Danvers, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Expedition of Park. His Departure. Attacks on Mr. Park. His disheartening Situation. Conduct of Mansong. Death of Mr. Anderson. Death of Mr. Park. Manuscripts ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... persons is steadily falling behind in proportion to the urban population in the country at large. There are many localities where there is also an actual loss in population, and in the North and Middle West the States generally are making no rural gain. But the most disheartening element in the movement of population from the point of view of rural communities is the loss of the most substantial of the older citizens, who move to the city to enjoy the reward of years of toil, and of the most ambitious of the young people who hope to get on faster in ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... breakers were ahead in the accomplishment of the work before us; for the timid ones this very ignorance proved a great blessing,—conquering one difficulty at a time, with the greater ones in the shadow, was not as disheartening as having the future ...
— Silver Links • Various
... distance actually to be run, and for which the steamer will be compelled to burn coal is not very great; but the trouble of working the vessel in and out, against adverse winds and currents, and amid storms and calms, is sometimes excessive, while the delay and cost are disheartening. They have also the trouble of warping into and out of the docks, which is not the case ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... look rather disheartening, I mean, as far as my grand object was concerned. There was but one other port left, and this was between two and three hundred miles distant. I determined however to go to Plymouth. I had already been more successful in this tour, with ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... because each was the fruit of their long meditations. Incapable of boldly looking forward, each beginning seemed to them an end. Though absolutely free, they were imprisoned in their own simplicity, which would have been disheartening had either given a meaning to their confused desires. They were poets and poem both. Music, the most sensual of arts for loving souls, was the interpreter of their ideas; they took delight in repeating the same harmony, ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... developed that there was nothing to detect, and never had been. There had been no murder, no robbery, no flight or hiding on the part of the Weggs to escape an injured enemy; nothing even mysterious, in the light of the story they had just heard. It was dreadfully humiliating and thoroughly disheartening, after all their earnest endeavor to investigate a crime that had never ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... he asked of Mr Blight, the boatswain. "The kroomen let go the anchor without orders," he replied. "Then slip your cable, and get out of this," exclaimed Captain Lyster. "It's a chain cable, clenched to the bottom, and we can't unshackle it," replied Mr Blight. On hearing this disheartening intelligence, Captain Lyster jumped on board to see what assistance he could render. Just then Lieutenant Corbett staggered up towards the stern, exclaiming, "I have done it, and am alive!" In truth, he had cut the chain cable with ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... easily shake it off. It was only a matter of time, therefore, before his experiment at farming failed and with the aid of his father-in-law he entered business as a real estate broker in St. Louis. But for this calling he had no qualification whatsoever, and after a disheartening experience in attempting to secure the post of county engineer, he accepted his father's suggestion that he join his brothers in the leather business in Galena, Illinois, and retired there with his family ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... virtue, the whole-hearted attack on vice, the genial humour, the sunny portraits of humanity, the splendid cheerfulness of Tom Jones, that 'Epic of Youth,' came from a man in middle age, immersed in disheartening struggles, and fighting recurrent ill health. Superficial critics have called Fielding a realist because his figures are so full-blooded and alive that we feel we have met them but yesterday in the street; to eyes so shortsighted life itself must seem merely realistic. As none ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... troubled the child, for her days were zealously planned by her enthusiastic guardians. Beulah came at ten o'clock every morning to give her lessons. As Jimmie's quest for work grew into a more and more disheartening adventure, she had difficulty in getting him out of bed in time to prepare and clear away the breakfast for Beulah's arrival. After lunch, to which Jimmie scrupulously came home, she was supposed to work an hour at her modeling ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley |
