"Dispiriting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the failing light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No ingots or dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... in the swamp, a wretched, dispiriting, drizzling rain, falling from morn till night, bringing the temperature down to zero. They recommenced their journey at dark despite the weather; preferring to push ahead rather than seek shelter again, with their friends, and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... depressed. Here, among the Scottish clansmen on the verge of rebellion, he seemed utterly borne down by the greatness of the enterprise. He was wholly unable to infuse anything like spirit or hope into his followers. On the contrary, his appearance among them, when he did show {127} himself, had a dispiriting and a depressing effect on almost every mind. Those who remember the manner and demeanor of the late Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French, the silent shyness, the appearance of almost constant depression, which were characteristic of that sovereign, will, we think, be easily able to ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Garden. A Scotchman informed me that this latter was a fox of his native land, and patriotically gorged himself with it. I tried it, and not being a Scotchman, found it horrible, and fell back upon the patient ass. After dinner, potter on the Boulevards under the dispiriting gloom of petroleum; go home and read a book. 12 P.M.—Bed. They nail up the coffins in the room just over mine every night, and the tap, tap, tap, as they drive in the nails, is the pleasing music ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... with corn-fodder, leaned against the hill. I drew rein in front of the building, and was about to hail its inmates, when I observed the figure of a man issue from the stable. Even in the gloom, there was something forlorn and dispiriting in his walk. He approached with a slow, dragging step, apparently unaware of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... impression for his note-book—they arrive at Vladimir, the capital of a province or "government." Here the younger traveler meets with a friend, to whom he confides his intention of visiting all the other Government towns for "Young Russia" purposes. His friend's reply is dispiriting ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... aware that inactivity is, of all things, the most dangerous and dispiriting to the soldier, who, used to the bustle and array of camps, doth fear nothing so much as a quiet home and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... rocks rise up to the sky behind. There is nothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, and quiet, petrified Capri, three miles distant across the strait. It is an excellent place for a misanthrope to spend a week, and get cured. There must be a very dispiriting influence prevailing here; the keeper refused to take any money, the solitary Italian we have seen ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sedentary work at machines which require practically no skill to operate, and dispiriting home surroundings have brought millions of men to a mental and physical condition which makes them little better ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... Morgan's had been frequent enough to teach the peril of having flocks and herds to tempt the enemy. Farmers gave more attention than before to agriculture proper and the raising of crops which would directly support the family. There was nothing dispiriting in the view of the country on this first day's ride, and though a winter landscape can hardly be exhilarating when it is leafless and bare, gray, and a little sombre in color, we found ourselves under no stress of sympathy with misfortune ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... on the high road to Lille, but at present there is no thoroughfare. It's a dispiriting town, given over to industrial pursuits, and approached by rows of mean little cottages such as you may see on the slopes of the mining valleys of South Wales. Two things stand out in my memory—one, the spectacle of a ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... stories were seldom written. This work involved a laborious and monotonous examination of hotel registers, a canvassing of ticket agencies and cab stands and transfer companies. It was anything but story-book sleuthing. It was a dispiriting tread-mill round, but he was still sifting doggedly through the tailings of possibilities when a code-wire came from St. Louis, saying Binhart had been seen the day before at ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... devolved upon the Duke of Saxe Weimar. The horse of Gustavus, galloping along the lines, conveyed to the whole army the dispiriting intelligence that their beloved chieftain had fallen. The duke spread the report that he was not killed, but taken prisoner, and summoned all to the rescue. This roused the Swedes to superhuman exertions. They ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... engagement at Ball's Bluff, where Colonel Baker and many brave Union officers and soldiers were killed, while others were sent as prisoners to Richmond, had rather a dispiriting effect on the President. Mr. Lincoln and Colonel Baker had attended the same school, joined in the same boyish sports, and when they had grown to manhood their intimacy had ripened into ardent friendship. Mr. Lincoln had watched with admiration the success of his friend Baker at the Illinois ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... before dark, through all the natural—as opposed to supernatural—miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it is), there was nothing ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... "A dismal, dispiriting landscape—nothing but white and gray, No shadows—merely half-obliterated forms melting into the fog and slush. Everything is in a state of disintegration, and one's foothold gives way at every step. It is hard work for the poor snow-shoer who stamps along through the slush and fog ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... low and plaintive sound, as they swung backwards and forwards in the wind. Not a footstep was heard in the street—nothing but the heavy patter of the rain as it fell ceaselessly upon the broad pavement. It was, indeed, a most depressing and dispiriting accompaniment to our intended excursion: and even O'Leary, who seemed to have but slight sympathy with external influences, felt it, for he spoke but little, and was scarcely ten minutes in the carriage till he ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... fortunate that their discovery about the oil was not delayed any longer, but nevertheless it came at a time when the outlook was dreary and dispiriting enough without additional discomforts. On the 6th Spud gnawed through his trace, and when Scott went outside before breakfast, one glance at the dog's balloon-like appearance was enough to show how he had spent his hours of freedom. He had, in fact, eaten quite a week's allowance of ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... bewildering appearances it deals with not human beings—not of the stock of Rose Jocelyn and Sir Everard Romfrey, of Dahlia Fleming and Lucy Feverel and Richmond Roy—but creatures of gossamer and rainbow, phantasms of spiritual romance, abstractions of remote, dispiriting points ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... at some length with these dispiriting particulars. Nor would his cheery companion wholly deny that there might be a point of view from which such a case of extreme want of confidence might, to the humane mind, present features not altogether welcome as wine and olives after dinner. Still, he was not without ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... volume of Huxley's Essays, "Shelley" and "Keats" in the "Men of Letters" series. She borrowed two or three of the political biographies with which Arthur's shelves were crowded, having all the while, however, the dispiriting conviction that Lady Dunstable had been dandled on the knees of every English Prime Minister since her birth, and had been the blood relation of all of them, except perhaps Mr. G., whose blood no doubt had not been blue enough to entitle him ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... my mind that I was in the hands of those who had lately committed a great outrage on property, and were now about to kidnap, if not to murder me. I opened my eyes, it was to no purpose—all around me was dark, for a day had passed over during my captivity. A dispiriting sickness oppressed my head—my heart seemed on fire, while my feet and hands were chilled and benumbed with want of circulation. It was with the utmost difficulty that I at length, and gradually, recovered in a sufficient degree the power of observing external sounds and circumstances; ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... rose from the American vessel, even at this welcome spectacle, for the men knew that victory against such odds was still uncertain, and they thought as yet only of securing it. Nor did the British, at a sight so dispiriting to them, yield in despair. On the contrary, both crews rushed to their guns, and, for half an hour, the combat was waged on either side with desperate fury. The two vessels were soon enveloped in smoke. The explosions of the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... not a very grand affair, and there was a mortgage of $2,000 on it which had been a dispiriting influence ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... mind adds much to life's hardness. Every burden is heavier because of the sad heart that beats under it. Every pain is keener because of the dispiriting which it brings with it. Every sorrow is made darker by the hopelessness with which it is endured. Every care is magnified, and the sweetness of every pleasure is lessened, by this pessimistic tendency. The beauty of the world loses half its charm in the eyes which see all things ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... not deceived. I know that my neighbours have abundant excuses for being down-hearted; and, as described in an earlier chapter, I sometimes overhear their complainings; but more often than not the evidence of voice-tones and stray words is reassuring rather than dispiriting. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... knew them, and explain to each other carefully and in detail how it was impossible for Bruce with the kind of a "rig" he was putting in, to handle enough dirt to wash out a breast-pin. Yet they toiled none the less faithfully for these dispiriting conversations, doing the work of horses, often to the ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... sad as these rooms were, they were yet scrupulously clean. I had nothing to complain of; but the effect was rather dispiriting. Having given some directions about supper—a pleasant incident to look forward to—and made a rapid toilet, I called on my friend with the gaiters and red nose (Tom Wyndsour), whose occupation was that of a "bailiff," or under-steward, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Lord Roberts would grant any more passes. If we were nobodies who had come out (with more or less direct encouragement from the officials) in the hope of getting commissions, we were turned away like tramps, and told that there was "nothing for us." It was all rather flattening and dispiriting. ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... audiences, which are so often doomed to see the most delicate of plays acted in barns of theatres where all the sensitive effects of dialogue and action are swallowed up in the immensity of stage and auditorium. There is nothing more dispiriting, indeed, both to performers and spectators, than the presentation of some comedy like the "School for Scandal" in a house far better suited to the picturesque demands of the "Black Crook" or ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... passion is dangerous. This is both supererogation and imbecility—supererogation because he already knows that it is dangerous, and imbecility because it is quite impossible to kill a passion by arguing against it. The way to kill it is to give it rein under unfavourable and dispiriting conditions—to bring it down, by slow stages, to the estate of an absurdity and a horror. How much more, then, could be accomplished if the wild young man were forbidden polygamy, before marriage, but permitted monogamy! The prohibition in this case would be relatively easy to enforce, instead of ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... appear that we would come to a stream, or a spring, or a well, or anything liquid—to anything but awful miles of dust and heat, trudged over by anything but three-leagued boots. Despite the spur of Winder's speech the brigade moved with dispiriting slowness. It was not the first in column; there were troops ahead and troops behind, and it would perhaps have said that it was not its part to overpass the one and outstrip the other. The whole line lagged. "Close up, men! close ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... he said. He was not astonished, or confused, or encouraged—he simply intimated that he now knew how Pamela's master had rewarded Pamela. And, more dispiriting still, he took the opportunity of knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and filled it, and lit it again. If the cook had been one of the few miserable wretches who never read novels, she might have felt her ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... His fall, instead of dispiriting his followers, roused them to fury! No one asked or gave quarter; it was a fight to the death, and when finally we succeeded in breaking through the royalist horse, half of our number lay lifeless on the plain. Some there were—St. Cyr's personal attendants ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... of means or life by us in a cause seen to be impracticable would be reckless, sanguinary, cruel, and inhuman.—And, once more, to those among ourselves who are influenced by evil prognostications, it was most dispiriting to be told, as if by cool, unprejudiced observers from outside, that no uprising of patriotism, no heroism of sacrifice, no combination of wisdom and power would be of any avail to resist a foreordained catastrophe.—In these three harmful ways of influence, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... more on the field; their loss was variously reported from 700 to 1,000, and even 1,500. The opposite force returned less than 100 killed, including Captain Knox, and about as many wounded. The repulse was even more than that at Ross, dispiriting to the rebels, who, as a last resort, now decided to concentrate all their strength on the favourite ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... was a dispiriting one despite the fineness of the day. T. X. had an uncomfortable sense that something distressing had happened. The run across the moor in the fresh spring air revived him ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... though that was not to be his name any longer, stood alone near the peak of a divide, and the mists of early morning lay thick below him. They obliterated, under their dispiriting gray, the valleys and lower forest-reaches, and his face, which was young and resolutely featured, held a kindred mood of shadowing depression. Beneath that miasma cloak of morning fog twisted a river from which the sun would strike darts of laughing light—when the sun had routed the opaqueness ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... blank in regard to inhabitants or cultivation; a land continuing for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, one expanse of long yellow grass, dotted here and there with groups of bastard palms. In front of the headland rolled the lonely South Atlantic; and, as if such conditions were not dispiriting enough to existence upon the Point, there was yet another feature which at times gave the place a still more ghastly look. A long way off the shore, the heaving surface of the ocean began, in anything like bad weather, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... no one answered. The flute still continued its melancholy tune; it was evidently in the hands of a learner, for the air (a dispiriting one enough at the best) kept breaking off suddenly and repeating itself. But the performer had patience, and the sound never ceased for more than two seconds at a time. Besides this, nothing could be heard. The blinds were drawn in all the windows. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hope to return before long, and a few experiments by Mr. Theodore Martin, published in the notes to his translation of the Odes and elsewhere, constitute perhaps the whole recent stock of which a new translator may be expected to take account. In one sense this is encouraging: in another dispiriting. The field is not pre-occupied: but the reason is, that general opinion has pronounced ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... progress therein is not to be looked for, or that they and their predecessors have hitherto made no advance towards what they and, as they also believe, all men sought and still seek. To them the history of Philosophy for say the last two thousand years is not the dreary and dispiriting narrative of repeated error and defeat, but the record of a slow but secure and steady advance in which, as nowhere else, the mind of Man celebrates and enjoys triumphs over the mightiest obstacles, kindling itself to an ever-brightening ...
— Progress and History • Various
... down a long, dark passage, ushered them into a large, badly-furnished apartment, with a dirty grate, in which a small fire was making a wretched attempt to be cheerful, but was fast sinking beneath the dispiriting influence of the place. After the lapse of an hour, a bit of fish and a steak was served up to the travellers, and when the dinner was cleared away, Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Peter Magnus drew their chairs up to the fire, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... news. There were beds to be had some ten minutes' walk from where we were, at a place called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked among the children for a guide. The circle at once widened round us, and our offers of reward were received in dispiriting silence. We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children; they might speak to us in public places, and where they had the advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to venture off alone with two uncouth and legendary characters, who had dropped from the clouds upon their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affects him with a real sorrow; the scholar is outraged at the mockery. "Sterility," "eclecticism," these are the terms in which he sums up the teachings of the official professors, and they are almost too gentle to be applied to the dispiriting and disheartening doctrines which are taught to the English-speaking student of to-day under the name of ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... at last, cold, grey and foggy, one of those dispiriting mornings of late autumn which the Londoner knows so well. Still I knew not how to act. I wanted to discover her, to bring her back, and to demand of her finally the actual truth. All the mystery of those past months ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... the points of my interview, on which I was always constantly resolved so long as my adversary was absent from the scene: and again they struck me as inadequate. From this dispiriting exercise I turned to the native amusements of the inn coffee-room, and studied for some time the mezzotints that frowned upon the wall. The railway guide, after showing me how soon I could leave Stallbridge and how quickly I could reach Paris, failed to hold my attention. An illustrated ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... pretty parsonage at Coxwold, and as the house, still standing, is called to this day, soon became irksome to him. The very reaction begotten of unwonted quietude acted on his temperament with a dispiriting rather than a soothing effect. The change from his full and stimulating life in London to the dull round of clerical duties in a Yorkshire village might well have been depressing to a mind better balanced and ballasted ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... moulting season of fowls, or the season when the furred world sheds its coat. The dazzling whiteness of the earth is superseded by a dirty drab-grey. The snow lasts long, but its hue is utterly changed. And now Victor was looking out upon a scene that was wholly dispiriting to the mind used to the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... injurious, and often in the highest degree oppressive. Every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering, and in a country like England where, without that, there is usually a "surplus population," to be discharged from work is the worst that can befall the operative. And what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this uncertainty of his position in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of machinery, must exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough without it! To escape despair, there are but two ways open to him; ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... originally bad, or that Pembroke's proceedings at Froome had intimidated them, no symptom of such an intention could be discovered. A desertion took place in his army, which the exaggerated accounts in the Gazette made to amount to near two thousand men. These dispiriting circumstances, added to the complete disappointment of the hopes entertained from the assumption of the royal title, produced in him a state of mind but little short of despondency. He complained that all people had deserted him, and is said to have ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... would have found these winter days very long had it not been for baby Jessie, for father was busily hauling wood from the Cedar River some six or seven miles away, and the almost incessant, mournful piping of the wind in the chimney was dispiriting. Occasionally Mrs. Button, Mrs. Gammons or some other of the neighbors would drop in for a visit, but generally mother and Jessie were alone till Harriet and Frank and I came home from school at ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Tommy pulled himself together. He sank on to the bed and gave himself up to reflection. His head ached badly; also, he was hungry. The silence of the place was dispiriting. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... bright welcoming smiles and free talk of Italian domestics. Her recollections of the happy warm Continental manner, which so sets the bashful at their ease, made the stately and cold precision of all around her doubly awful and dispiriting. Lord Lansmere himself, who did not as yet know the views of Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-in-law in the ward whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous romance had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... cloth on one side, and large cracks on the other. The wind, which always swept over Wingdam at night-time, puffed through the apartment from different apertures. The window was too small for the hole in the side of the house where it hung, and rattled noisily. Everything looked cheerless and dispiriting. Before Ingomar left me, he brought that "b'arskin," and throwing it over the solemn bier which stood in one corner, told me he reckoned that would keep me warm, and then bade me good-night. I undressed myself, the light ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... notions of religion are communicated to children: if these ideas be connected with terror, and produced when the mind is sullen or in a state of dejection, the future religious feelings are sometimes of a gloomy, dispiriting sort; but if the first impression be made when the heart is expanded by hope or touched by affection, these emotions are happily and permanently associated with religion. This should be particularly ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Miss Brewer. "Only this morning I have sent into her room several pressing and impertinent letters from her tradespeople, and I put some accounts of the most dispiriting character before her last night. She is in dreadfully ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... herself comparing the two states of mind as she sat there. She was conscious of a blank now, dull and dispiriting enough, but no more likely to endure than the absorbing passion it succeeded. She knew it for an interregnum, and was thinking of the books she would send for when she had mastered herself sufficiently to be interested in books again. It was as if her mind had been out of health, but was convalescent ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... fell upon Paris that day; a rain so fine and cold that it penetrated the soles of men's shoes and their hearts alike, a dispiriting drizzle through which the pale, acrid smoke of innumerable wood fires faltered upward from the clustering chimney-pots, only to be rent into fragments and beaten down upon the glistening tiles of the mansard roofs. The wide asphalts reflected ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Complaints abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Oeil-de-Boeuf. Besenval says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy (such a tristesse) about Court, compared with former days, as made it quite dispiriting to look upon. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... one, dispiriting in itself even to those who could go about the streets and lose themselves in their tasks and round of duties. To me it was a dead blank, marked by such interruptions as necessarily took place under the prison routine. The evening hours which followed them were no better. The hands on my watch ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Camden. The motives assigned by himself for passing through this barren country were, the necessity of uniting with Caswell, who had evaded the orders repeatedly given him to join the army, the danger of dispiriting the troops, and intimidating the people of the country, by pursuing a route not leading directly towards the enemy, and the assurances he had received that supplies would overtake him, and would be prepared for him ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... consequences would be finally fatal. Nor was this their only trial, for in the midst of this appalling visitation, the gaunt spectre famine reared its ghastly head, and threatened them with new terrors. In circumstances so dispiriting, where despair seemed about to crash the weakened energies of the labourers, and where nothing but activity could preserve them from the loss of life; it was perhaps more honourable to Dr. Ayres' benevolence than to his policy, that he proposed to ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... support and not perplex them in the hard and complex problem which they are appointed to solve. These are principles, which, however trite, need to be kept before us and practically sustained at a period when, as is often the case in long and tedious wars, the dispiriting influence of delays and occasional defeats work erroneous conclusions in the minds of the people, leading to unjust accusations against the men in power, and an unwillingness to frankly acknowledge that the evil too often originated where the result ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... consideration than the Irish kerns, and although it is certain that of all the 'undertakers' Raleigh was the one who, after his lights, tried to do the best for his land, his experience as an Irish colonist was on the whole dispiriting. By far the richest part of his property was the 'haven royal' of Youghal, with the thickly-wooded lands on either side of the river Blackwater. He is scarcely to be forgiven for what appears to have been the wanton destruction of the Geraldine Friary of Youghal, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and loyalty did me good, and when I had struggled through with the letter and had confided it to his care, I felt easier and more hopeful. Hinge's first movement was up to London, and thence he returned to me within half a dozen hours with the dispiriting intelligence that Lady Rollinson and Violet had left town together an hour before his arrival without leaving any instructions as to the forwarding of letters. Hinge, in his occasional visits to the house, had contrived to get on very excellent ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... alone they are of any use, if a man is swayed by any other considerations than those of prudence and necessity in the hour of danger. A general who could stab one of his own men in the heat of battle, to prevent him dispiriting the army by news of a loss, proved that his judgment was as clear as his ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... dried up those hearts devoted to narrow duties and entrenched behind pious practices. Silent games of cards occupied the whole evening, and the two young girls under the ban of that Sanhedrim enforced by maternal severity, came to hate the dispiriting personages about them with their hollow eyes ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... The sense of responsibility, we might say, is omnipresent. It does not cease with the recitation: it follows him to his study, and haunts him with the recollection of absurd blunders made by young men who should have done better—the dispiriting reflection that despite his best efforts the stupid and indifferent will not learn. If to this normal wear and tear and these every-day annoyances we add the participation in what is pleasingly styled enforcement of discipline—that is, protracted faculty-meetings, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... provinces under the protection of France and England. William, however, was found wholly immovable on this point, declaring that he would rather retire to his lands in Germany, and spend his life in hunting, than sell his country and liberty to France. Nor were the dispiriting representations made by the English ambassadors, that Holland was utterly lost unless he consented to the terms proposed, at all more influential; "I have thought of a means," he replied, "to avoid beholding the ruin of my country—to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... regiment, of which above one half of the private men, and twenty-five officers, were either slain upon the spot, or desperately wounded. Mr. Abercrombie, unwilling to stay in the neighbourhood of the enemy with forces which had received such a dispiriting check, retired to his batteaux, and re-embarking the troops, returned to the camp at lake George, from whence he had taken his departure. Censure, which always attends miscarriage, did not spare the character ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... daughter so whimsically circumstanced as I am? I have sent my intended husband to look after my lover—the man of my father's choice is gone to bring me the man of my own: but how dispiriting ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... wanderer going southward in the desert and guiding his course by the stars would, according to tradition, arrive at length at a wonderfully fertile oasis, the abode of a divinely beautiful enchantress, yet everything appeared highly uncertain and dispiriting, and was rendered still more so by the avalanches of dust before ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... the right, upon what was called Lone Pine Plateau, was a dispiriting failure on the opening day. The dismounted troops of the Third Australian Light Horse, a magnificent body of men, were sent forward to storm the elaborate trenches of the enemy. The attack was made in three lines. The first was mowed down to a man; of the second only a few ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the back windows of most city houses is not calculated to arouse enthusiasm at the best of times, and the day was singularly dispiriting: a sky of lead and a drizzling rain, which emphasized the squalor of the back yards in view. It was all very depressing. Jeffrey's talk, though inconclusive, had stirred in John's mind an uneasiness which was near to apprehension. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... his office window now, staring out disconsolately over the sloping lawns of the capitol grounds, mottled with thin patches of snow, which had contrived to withstand the recent thaw, and he was telling himself, for the thousandth time, the dispiriting fact that, as a force for good or evil in the destiny of his state, he was no more significant than his stenographer's Remington or his secretary's roll-top desk. With all his ideals, with all those pledges which are infinitely more vital when ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... surely it is no very extravagant opinion that it is better to give than to receive, to serve than to use our companions; and above all, where there is no question of service upon either side, that it is good to enjoy their company like a natural man. It is curious and in some ways dispiriting that a writer may be always best corrected out of his own mouth; and so, to conclude, here is another passage from Thoreau which seems aimed directly at himself: "Do not be too moral; you may cheat yourself out of much life so. . . . ALL FABLES, INDEED, HAVE THEIR MORALS; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the evasive tact which Miss Burton exercised towards his friend was not caused by his relationship to Ida, and yet was compelled to admit that her frank and friendly bearing towards himself was scarcely less dispiriting. Her manner, as a rule, was so plainly that of a friend only, that were it not for occasional and furtive glances which he intercepted, he would deem his prospects little better than Stanton's, in ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... spectacles in the arena and after the outset of spring permitted their resumption, I was not only continuously busy, but entirely contented. Of the dreary and tedious winter between, which was intensely dispiriting and appeared interminable, the less I say the better. I do not want to remind myself ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... cannot exercise the holiest affections of his nature, by adding to the pleasures of his lisping little ones; that the landowners' corn law, by its paralyzing influence, is rapidly withering the great mass of the industry of the country into idle, dispiriting pauperism. ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... better than anything else his equivocal attitude as historian. Nor is the incident altogether inconsistent with what we know of the Duke's cheerful propensities. "Nose after ears!" was one of his blithest watchwords. Faced with so dispiriting a prospect and aware that His Highness was as good as his princely word, the sympathetic scholar, while too resentful to praise his achievements, may well have been too prudent to disparage them. Hence his reticence, his circumspection. Hence that ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... rays of the noonday sun did a great deal toward raising my spirits, and dispelling the mental gloom in which I had been shrouded almost continually since entering the Land of Awful Shadow. There is nothing more dispiriting to me ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... insane ambition to match the mocking-bird in song as well as in personal appearance. If so, it is not surprising that he should be subject to fits of discouragement and silence. Aiming at the sun, though a good and virtuous exercise, as we have all heard, is apt to prove dispiriting to sensible marksmen. Crows (fish crows, in all probability, but at the time I did not know it) uttered strange, hoarse, flat-sounding caws. Everv bird of them must have been born without a palate, it seemed to me. White-eyed chewinks were at home in the dense palmetto scrub, whence ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... (where I felt so self-righteous) nothing would have prevented me—but now I haven't the spirit. Mark, please, how the whirligig of Time brings its revenges! In Calcutta I thought myself a saint, in Takai I am regarded as a Brand Unplucked. It is rather dispiriting. I am beginning to wonder if I really am as nice as I ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... of our stay on the cape was drawing to a close. Only three days more remained, and they were to be occupied in collecting our books, packing trunks, and all the unpleasant little duties that become so tedious and dispiriting when, like a drop curtain, they announce the end ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... must be superb on clear days. Standing there, I looked inland and remembered all the places I had intended to see—Vieste, and Lesina with its lakes, and Selva Umbra, whose very name is suggestive of dewy glades; how remote they were, under such dispiriting clouds! I shall never see them. Spring hesitates to smile upon these chill uplands; we are still ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... springs on its prey. Now it changes to the terrible and deep-toned growlings of the wild beast as he is pressed on all sides by his foes, and now it seems like his last dying moan beneath a mortal wound. Nothing can be more dismal or dispiriting than the fearful uproar. Hour after hour it goes on during the night, increasing as the dawn approaches. Now the howls come from one direction, now from another, and in far-off parts of the forest. Yet, terrific as they appear, they are produced by animals not ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... up from Budapest to Tarnopol, crossed the frontier at the little village of Kolodno, and thence driven the "forty" along the valleys into Volynien, a long, weary, dispiriting run, on and on, until the monotony of the scenery maddened me. Cramped and cold I was, notwithstanding the big Russian fur shuba I wore, the fur cap with flaps, fur gloves, and fur rug. The country inns in which I had spent the past ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... painful increment to his load of misery and unrest. The very world in which he lived seemed to have undergone a transformation. The sunlight had lost its glory, the flowers had become pale and odorless, the songs of the birds dull and dispiriting. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... repeated to Rena all he had learned in the city, and told her what he proposed doing. The prospect that was so dispiriting to him removed her greatest care; but her eager thanks humiliated him as he felt his utter helplessness in the hands of fate. A sudden fear that she might hurt him before he could make her unconscious brought back her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... plantations. The sullen pool—its ghost-like guardian—the dreary heath around, the rude features of the country beyond, and the apparent absence of all human habitation, conspired to make a scene of the most dispiriting and striking desolation. I know not how to account for it, but as I gazed around in silence, the whole place appeared to grow over my mind, as one which I had seen, though dimly and drearily, before; and a nameless ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dreamy country because its beauty is as that of a dream. Sometimes it is black, wildly inhospitable and dispiriting - and suddenly, in calm, mild weather, the entire country with its trees, canals, cities and inhabitants sparkles in an indescribable tender radiance, enhancing everything with a deep mysterious meaning impossible to explain or describe more fully, and resembling the peculiar beauty of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... my seizure and captivity, and was then examined and re-examined upon the circumstances of the murder. It will be remembered this was the first time I had had my say out, or the matter at all handled, among lawyers; and the consequence was very dispiriting to the others and (I must own) disappointing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the principal cause of his losing the battle; and I have heard that the illustrious sportsman, to whom you referred just now, was always observed to shoot ill, because he shot carelessly, after one of his dispiriting omens. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... lives in terror of shocking their feelings. One day the butler found her kissing Geoffrey, believing they were alone, and she waited for him to say, 'Allow me, madam!' as he always does if she ventures to do a hand's turn for herself. She's says it's dispiriting to think you can't even quarrel in peace for fear of interruption, and it takes a good deal to interrupt Esmeralda when once ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... found her in excellent spirits, and quite undamped in her enjoyment of the frequently ponderous rejoicings. In the Bilberry school-room, among dog-eared French grammars and lead-pencilled music, education did not appear actually dispiriting; and now, as she sat by the fire, with the bright, sharp little scissors in lier hand, and the pile of white merino on her knees and trailing on the hearth-rug at her feet, Griffith found her simply irresistible. Ah! ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is a dreary thing. With one fixed idea in the mind—to wait, to watch for some careless head over the mounded earth, and then to kill—war is drearier than slave labor, more nagging than an imperfect marriage, more dispiriting than unsuccessful sin. The pretty brass utensils of the dwellings had been pillaged. Canvas, which had once contained bright faces, was in shreds. The figures of Christ and his friends that had stood high in the niches of the church, had fallen forward on their faces. All the little devices ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... food, keen also for rest after those dispiriting days, I stopped, before reaching Medesano, at an inn where three ways met; and there I purposed to eat and spend the night, for the next day, it was easy to see, would be tropical, and I should rise before dawn if I was to ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Hearing such dispiriting utterances, Punin sighed expressively, assented, shook his head up and down, and from side to side; Musa maintained a stubborn silence.... She was obviously fretted by the doubt, what I was, whether I was a discreet person or a gossip. And if I ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... feeling this fluttering of the heart is! I know it is nothing organic, and that it is entirely nervous; but the sickening effects of it are dispiriting to a degree. Is it the body brings it on the mind, or the mind that inflicts it upon the body? I cannot tell; but it is a severe price to pay for the Fata Morgana with which Fancy sometimes amuses men of warm imaginations. As to body and mind, I fancy I might as well inquire whether ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... establishments; if our streets were not strung with signs of gorgeous hues and thronged with hurrying purchasers, we would quickly discover how firmly the chill hand of winter lays upon the heart; how dispiriting are the days during which the sun withholds a portion of our allowance of light and warmth. We are more dependent upon these things than is often thought. We are insects produced by heat, and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... men were bestowed in their quarters, the major went off to discover, if possible, what had been the result of the fighting on the other side of the loop. It was two hours before he returned, and the news he brought was dispiriting. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... with him. Those who have been soldiers, and especially cavalrymen, know to the full how dispiriting is the sound of those few words: "It ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... fright, and would not come back again. We wished ourselves at the end of the journey; thought anything better than this kind of existence—living entirely at the expense of others; even the fleecings in Usui felt less dispiriting; but it could not be helped, for it must always exist as long as these Turks are allowed to ride rough-shod over the people. The Turks, however, had their losses also; for on the way four Bari men and one Bari slave-girl slipped off with a hundred of their plundered ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... early and gazed across the cold misty Thames to the great factories and wharves upon the opposite bank. The outlook was indeed dull and dispiriting, I stood recalling how Moroni had walked with the beautiful girl in the streets of Florence, unwillingly it seemed, for he certainly feared lest his companion be recognized. I also recollected the strange conversation I had heard with my own ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... needed to hold Alsace-Lorraine in time of peace, and long before the end Great Britain received from her dominions fourfold the help in Europe that she had to lend them overseas. The rally to the British flag was to us one of the most inspiring, and to the Germans one of the most dispiriting, portents in the war; but it took time to bear its fruits, and meanwhile the cause of civilization had to rely upon the gallantry of French armies and the numerically weak British forces fighting on the Marne and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... commission had interviews with the president, his cabinet, and others, and afterward we had time to look about us. Few things could be more dispiriting. The city had been burned again and again, and there had arisen a tangle of streets displaying every sort of cheap absurdity in architecture. The effects of the recent revolution—the latest in a long series ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... dismiss the possibility of going out, and spend the afternoon as he had spent the morning. But he permitted himself a few minutes' relaxation as he smoked his cigarette, and sat down by the window, looking out, in Lucretian mood, on to the very dispiriting conditions that ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... shabby-genteel, like the exterior; a quarter of a century might have elapsed since the faded paper had been put up, or a stroke of painting executed, in that dispiriting apartment. Meanwhile, all the agencies of travel-stain had been defacing both. An odour of continual meal-times hung about it; likewise of smoke of every grade, from the perfumed havanna to the plebeian pigtail. The little tables were dark with hard work and antiquity; the chair seats polished ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... church I made my way, under the dispiriting drip, drip of the rain, and accompanied by a feeble old man, who is sexton, clerk, gravedigger, and anything or everything of an ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... discouraging days they pressed onward through the dispiriting rain and over all the exhausting obstacles. On the morning of the fourth they reached the foot of the range in which Wildcat Gap is situated. They were marching slowly up the steep mountain side, their soaked garments clinging about their weary limbs and ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... before the train on the Old Colony road would go out. We had dinner (I little realized how long it would be before I should eat again), and John tamely suggested driving about to look at some of the places of interest. I assured him that there was nothing so dispiriting as looking at places of interest, and he answered, cheerfully, after some moments of thought, that we could "shut our eyes when we ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... himself that there was a great deal more than a "bit of a blow" at the time, but he said nothing. The worst of it was the way the rain came pelting down, for it was as thick as a fog, and dispiriting. It was a cold rain, too, and although it was September, the northeast gale was chill. Colin shivered in his oilskins. The pursing in done, the seine-master waved a torch, but it could not ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... truly a toilsome, dispiriting march, as in single file we pushed our way forward into the interior, and I confess I soon began to tire of the monotony of the terrible gloom. But to all my questions ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... moments, not daring to speak to him. But the desire of affording consolation to Oswald, and the lively interest she took in every thing they were to see together, inspired her with courage, and she said to him: "You know my lord, that, among the ancients, so far was the aspect of the tombs from dispiriting the living, that they endeavoured to excite a new emulation by placing these tombs on the public roads, in order that by recalling to young people the remembrance of illustrious men, they might silently admonish them to follow their example." "Ah! how ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... showed her that some church or other stood within a few steps of the hotel archway, and saying nothing to Mrs. Goodman, she quietly cloaked herself, and went out towards it, apparently with the view of disposing of a portion of a dull dispiriting evening. The church was open, and on entering she found that it was only lighted by seven candles burning before the altar of a chapel on the south side, the mass of the building being in deep shade. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... spring of 1283 that English troops at last forced their way among the defiles of Snowdon. Llewellyn had preserved those passes and heights intact until his death in the preceding December. The surrender of Dolbadern in the April following that dispiriting event opened a way for the invader; and William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, at once advanced ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... perhaps, with some little eclat on a school where Arthur had already proclaimed his fame among the boys, and where Grover had prepared him a welcome among the masters. Compared with that, this solitary backstairs arrival seemed tame and dispiriting, and he half regretted that he had not postponed his coming till to-morrow, even in the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... relieve depression to be set down in a solemn courtyard, lighted by a solitary gas-lamp. This in itself would be quite sufficient to make a weary traveller melancholy, without the tolling of a gruesome bell to announce our arrival. This dispiriting sound seems to affect nobody in the house, except a lengthy young man in a desperate state of unwakefulness, who sleepily resents our arrival in the midst of his first slumber (he must have gone to bed at nine), and drowsily expresses a wish to be informed (for he will not take ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... anchored in the Roads by nightfall—we had it all planned out, even to the man who was to stand the first anchor-watch—and now, before the friendly gleam of the Lizard Lights had reached us, was fog—damp, chilling, dispiriting, a pall of white, clammy vapour that no cunning of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... arrived in due course at longitude 103 deg. 31 min., but saw no island. This was dispiriting; but still Captain ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... is (2) the dispiriting experience of writing and telegraphing about important things and never hearing a word concerning many of them, and the consequent fear of some dead bad break in the State Department. The clubs are full of stories ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... had tried their fate in vain together, at length they were sent forth separately, and for many months with still- continued ill success. I have mentioned this here, because, among the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to Manchester, Charlotte told me that her tale came back upon her hands, curtly rejected by some publisher, on the very day when her father was to submit to his operation. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... eyes had reaccommodated themselves to the dispiriting darkness and her bosom heaved to a sigh of relief; of thanksgiving. Under the heaped coverlets of the bed she had seen the movement of feeble hand stirred in a gesture ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... of cots suffered a dispiriting drop. Fifty cents would hire the most exclusive bed in the phantom city ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... am to the doctrines of Schopenhauer and Leopardi, I will admit that the shores of the Caspian did seem rather gloomy and dispiriting. There seemed to be nothing alive on the coast; no vegetation, no birds. There was nothing to make you think you were on a great sea. True, the Caspian is only a lake about eighty feet below the level of the Mediterranean, but this lake is often troubled ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... sinking two Spanish ships and setting a third on fire, Hawkins saw that flight was their only chance, and, gathering his men together in two small tenders, he 'crawled out under the fire of the mole and gained the open sea.' The position of affairs was dispiriting in the extreme. Many men and three good ships were lost, besides treasure worth more than a million pounds, that had been won, by running innumerable dangers, during the past year. His ships were overcrowded, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Dispiriting item, that on resuming his seat the chastised one is a hero to his fellows for the rest of the day. Item, that Master John James Rattray knows she hurts her own hand more than his. Item, that John James promised ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... to the dispiriting truth which closed that thought, but springing forward, dashed through fern and brake, and halted not till he stood in the centre of his companions, who, scattered in various attitudes on the grass, were giving vent, in snatches of song and joyous laughter, to ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... perpendicular, and I was conscious of a rush of joy when he became completely absorbed in watching a man who was fishing for pickerel. Have you ever fished for pickerel through a hole in the ice? If so you will recall that it is chilly and rather dispiriting work, especially if the fish are shy. They certainly were shy that afternoon, for the individual in question had angled long and bagged nothing, as I gleaned from the answers to the direct interrogatories put by my urchin during the few minutes I stood paternally ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... demonstrative in his effort; so it is not easy to understand how much he is doing. Then, pessimism brought recruits; it made the Englishman say, "I've got to put my back into it!" Muddling there was and mistakes, such as that of the method of attack at Gallipoli; but in the midst of all this dispiriting pessimism, no Englishman thought of anything but of putting his back into it more and more. Lord Kitchener had said that it was to be a long war and evidently it must be. Of course, England's misfortune was in having the war ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... my clothing and hair were damp and I shook with cold. In my dressing- gown and slippers before a blazing grate of coals I was even more uncomfortable. I no longer shivered but shuddered—there is a difference. The dread of some impending calamity was so strong and dispiriting that I tried to drive it away by inviting a real sorrow— tried to dispel the conception of a terrible future by substituting the memory of a painful past. I recalled the death of my parents and endeavored ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... withered, odorless skeleton of a bouquet, that was given him on the day he left home, and who will carry it till he returns, or till it is reddened with his blood. And when I see a man, in the face of ridicule and brutal scoffing, through long marches and weary days of dispiriting labor, clinging with fond tenacity to some little memento of the past, I set him down as a man with his heart in the right place, who will do his country and God good service when there is need. And—it is well to practise what one admires ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... who went by land, L100 to drive along his horses and cattle. John accepted, and tried his best to fulfil his share of the bargain; but he was seemingly neither a very expert woodsman nor yet a good stock hand. There is no form of labor more arduous and dispiriting than driving unruly and unbroken stock along a faint forest or mountain trail, especially in bad weather; and this the would-be drover speedily found out. The animals would not follow the trail; they incessantly broke away from it, got lost, scattered in the brush, and stampeded at night. Finally ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... No sun rose, but the day broke over an ugly plain with hardly any trees, and that grey and wretched dawn came in with a cold and dispiriting rain unrefreshed by wind. Colson, who was a foolish little man (the son of a squire), marching by my side, wondered where and how we should be dried that day. The army was for ever producing problems for Colson, and I was often his comforter. He ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... hurried to and fro, talking Welsh to one another very fast; and Helen felt as if she were in a foreign land, and in a dream. The end of the matter was, that she had a low fever which lasted long. It was more dispiriting than dangerous—more tedious than alarming. Her illness continued for many weeks, during which time she was attended most carefully by her two new friends—by Miss Clarendon with the utmost zeal and activity—by Mrs. Pennant with ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... no rich and lovely embroidery on the dress of the idea to divert us from the idea itself—the idea is as nearly nude as our limited senses and our modern respectability permit. And the idea being what it is, it follows that the play, after the drama once commences, is not only immoral, but also dispiriting and boring, and, to my thinking, inconsequential and pointless. The first act, the exposition, is from beginning to end magnificent: never were the lines on which a drama was to develop more gorgeously, or in more masterly ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the court to keep on the defensive and not endanger his troops by engaging them in hazardous adventures. Amida must protect itself, or at any rate not look to him for succor. Ursicinus chafed terribly, it is said, against this decision, but was forced to submit to it. His messengers conveyed the dispiriting intelligence to the devoted city, which learned thereby that it must rely ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... in the bishops' hands was by no means insignificant; and Swift felt that to make such a bill law would not only tend to impoverish, the inferior clergy, but would place them in a position of subjection at once degrading and dispiriting. He opposed the bill, with the consequence that the House of Commons ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... you so much as to marry you without loving you, and I shall never love any more," said Vixen, with a sad steadfastness that was more dispiriting ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... eye, or come to my ear; and that her very misfortunes are made glorious to her, and honourable to all that are related to her, by the use she has made of them; and by the patience and resignation with which she supports herself in a painful, lingering, and dispiriting decay! and by the greatness of mind with which she views her approaching dissolution. And all this from proper motives; from motives in which a dying ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... dispiriting thought that there under his eyes, so close that the babble of the children occasionally reached him across the intervening tables, was the family of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... had a turn on the verandah before 5.55, when 'the child' (an enormous Wallis Islander) brings me an orange; at 6, breakfast; 6.10, to work; which lasts till, at 10.30, Austin comes for his history lecture; this is rather dispiriting, but education must be gone about in faith - and charity, both of which pretty nigh failed me to-day about (of all things) Carthage; 11, luncheon; after luncheon in my mother's room, I read Chapter XXIII. of THE WRECKER, then Belle, Lloyd, and I go up and make music ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Started by the Indians' fiercely-blazing arrows, the pine-logs were beginning to blaze well now, dispiriting those who had worked so bravely before; and, seeing that their attack hail been successful, the Indians ceased now to send in their fiery flights, for moment by moment the flames increased, completely enveloping one corner of the block-house, and displaying ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... brush away the film and to conceive something to be worshipped as the service went on, but failed, always misled by the voice of Mr. Bax saying things which misrepresented the idea, and by the patter of baaing inexpressive human voices falling round her like damp leaves. The effort was tiring and dispiriting. She ceased to listen, and fixed her eyes on the face of a woman near her, a hospital nurse, whose expression of devout attention seemed to prove that she was at any rate receiving satisfaction. But looking ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... and the weather improved as if by magic. The clouds gradually melted away, and the blue of the sky palpitated through the grey; the sun shone warm upon the barren, featureless coast, adding colour to the dispiriting grey of the limestone spotted with the dark green of shrubs, a characteristic of most of the Dalmatian islands, and the Velebit Mountains became clear, in some places to the summits, though the greater part of the chain was still cloud-capped ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... warmer toward his dead son George than to any one else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair as Andrew was dark, as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and dispiriting, as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother was slow and angular, as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was phlegmatic and sour—or so it seemed to the father and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... least sign of a watershed, it is so level. Returned to where I left the others, followed our tracks back, and at eleven miles camped. Horses nearly done up with heavy travelling and the heat of the sun, which is excessive. It is very vexing and dispiriting to be forced back with only a little more than one hundred miles between Mr. Gregory's last camp on the Camfield and me. If I could have found water near the end of this journey, I think I could have forced the rest. It is ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... besieging army had been at work before the fort, and in three days more all their arrangements would have been completed and the post have fallen into their hands. It was therefore deeply mortifying and dispiriting to be forced to retire, just as success was about crowning their efforts. But far-seeing, prudent, and looking more to future results than present triumphs, General Greene, on the 19th, commenced retreating toward the Saluda, which river ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... down upon the flat fish strewn about like orange-peel on a sidewalk. Sam, too, had stuffed his shirt-front with such a weight of Spanish doubloons from the wreck of an old galleon, that I had to help him across all the worst places. It was very dispiriting. ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... together the foremast, the fore and main booms, and the fore and main gaffs. The wind was favourable, and I had thought to tow them back under sail, but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with the oars was a snail's pace. And it was such dispiriting effort. To throw one's whole strength and weight on the oars and to feel the boat checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, was ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... fountain before actually being reduced to boy's estate, and passing once more through the tumultuous experiences of that period. And of these, not having enough to eat is by no means the least common. The evidence as to execrable dinners is rather dispiriting, and one may end by saying that if there is a worse fellow than a bully, it is a master who does not see that his boys are supplied with plenty of wholesome food. He, at least, could not venture, like a distinguished headmaster, to preach and publish sermons on "Boys' Life: its Fulness." A schoolmaster ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... disappearing more and more. I had made up my mind to finish the score of the "Valkyrie" during the four months here, but that is out of the question. I shall not even finish the second act, in so terribly dispiriting a manner does this false position act upon me. In July I wanted to begin "Young Siegfried" at Seelisberg, on the lake of Lucerne, but now I think of delaying that beginning till next spring. This dislike of work is the worst feature of all. I feel as if ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the spirit and principles which governed the public and private life of Grattan. Learn from him how to regard your countrymen of all denominations. Observe, as he did, how very much that is excellent belongs to both the great parties into which Ireland is divided. If (as some do) you entertain dispiriting views of Ireland, recollect that any country containing such elements as those which roused the genius of Grattan never need despair. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... trouble of waiting for the concierge. We departed from Vienne with too unfavourable an impression of its dirty inn, and of the place in general, to render us desirous of spending the night there. The squalid, dispiriting appearance of the town itself, indeed, forms a strong contrast both to the fine country in which it stands, and the capital letters which decorate its name in the map of France. Instead of loitering in its smoky, desolate streets, while horses are changing, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... are one or two fine dramatic touches, as, for instance, when Daland asks if his ship is any the worse: "Mein Schiff ist fest, es leidet keinen Schaden," with its bitter double meaning; but on the whole things are very dreary and dispiriting until the south wind blows up and stirs the composer's imagination. The sweet wind carries off the mariners to their home; the water ripples and plashes gently; and to the last bar of the act all is peace and beauty. The music has not, perhaps, the point of, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman |
