"Hopeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the 39th Regiment! What visions are conjured up when this name comes on the scene! Cracked and gaping plains, desolate, desert and abandoned of life, scorched beneath a lurid sun of burning fire, waterless, hopeless, relentless, and accursed: that is the picture he draws of the great interior. He had followed up Oxley's footsteps and exposed the fallacies into which that explorer had fallen, and erred just as egregiously himself. True, like ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... his immediate wants and desires is the ruling passion of an Indian. The expectation of future advantages seldom produces much effect. The experience of the past is lost, and the prospects of the future disregarded. It would be utterly hopeless to demand a cession of land, unless the means were at hand of gratifying their immediate wants; and when their condition and circumstances are fairly considered, it ought not to surprise us that they are so ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the northward glimmered the Ass's Ears, and as the speaker eyed them carelessly he noted gauzy shreds and streamers veiling their tops. The phenomena interested him, for he knew that here must be wind—wind, the terror of the bleak tundra; the hopeless, merciless master of the barrens! However, the distant range beneath the twin peaks showed clear-cut and distinct against the sky, and he did not mention the occurrence to the guide, although he recalled the words of the Indians: "Beware of the ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... again in such numbers that the English could not withstand them. The coast swarmed with the pirate galleys and bands of marauders entered Wessex, plundering and burning in every direction. Alfred knew that for the time being further resistance against them was hopeless, and with his wife and only a handful of faithful followers he fled into the marshes of Athelney where he remained in the strictest hiding. To all intents and purposes England had become a Danish country and even the English nobles did not know what ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... his contagious enthusiasm spread to and fired Varney. Fate had thrown in their way a plucky and honest man engaged in an apparently hopeless fight against overwhelming powers of darkness. He deserved help. And what possible risk was there now when the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... me at that moment," he said. "There was something, I suppose, in your voice when you asked my pardon for disturbing me, that softened my heart. I told you I had met with a disappointment which had broken me for life. There was no need to explain further. The only hopeless wretchedness in this world is the ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... shudder as she looked at that evil, scowling face. To be with that man always, to share his home and his company, seemed to her a most impossible thing. She had lost her father; the future was black and hopeless before her, but she felt a strength and courage now, that she had been a stranger to for a long time. There was hope, too, which is a fine thing when ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... excites our surprise that the Archduke should have thought the adventure worth the seeking. A most anomalous position in the Netherlands was offered to him by a slender and irresponsible faction of Netherlanders. There was a triple prospect before him: that of a hopeless intrigue against the first politician in Europe, a mortal combat with the most renowned conqueror of the age, a deadly feud with the most powerful and revengeful monarch in the world. Into this threefold enterprise he was about to plunge without any adequate resources, for the Archduke possessed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of my house, by asking her to share my life, there could be only wretchedness ahead for her, and therefore unhappiness for me. The dove and the eagle may not mate. Consider the fate of sweet Agnes Bernauer, who married Duke Albert and perished in the Danube. I tell you, Fraeulein, I am hopeless. When I return to my people, I shall do so knowing that life thereafter will be something to endure, not a blessing ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... prowl in the kennel of justice. The finishing evil which brought up the rear of this infernal file, was my constitutional melancholy being increased to such a degree, that for three months I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittimus, 'Depart from ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... despair in his voice, he whispered to the empty room, the desolate row of white beds watching him: "I always knew that I was hopeless ... hopeless ... hopeless." ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... the board is cleared, Alsace and Lorraine were added to Germany, and the mistake is irretrievable. A fact accomplished cannot be blotted out. But hopeless as it all is, there are watchdogs who, on moonlight nights, call across the Vosges for revenge—for honor, for War, War, War. And the German watchdogs cry War, War, War. The word sounds the same in all languages. The watchdogs bark, but the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... will not be entirely without use and interest. Whether I have succeeded in doing so or not I cannot be the judge; I can only say that the labour of resuscitating a man so long buried beneath mountains of untruth and controversy has some times been so formidable as to have seemed hopeless. And yet one is always tempted back by the knowledge that Christopher Columbus is not only a name, but that the human being whom we so describe did actually once live and walk in the world; did ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... daughter. Twenty-three years ago my daughter buried herself in hopeless disgrace, and for her there can be no resurrection here. If she dreams that I am in my dotage, and may relent, she strangely forgets the nature of the blood she saw fit to cross with that of a beggarly foreign scrub. Go back and tell her, the old man is not yet ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... compliment to his companion, but he was pleased for her sake. He was not yet old enough to be conscious of the sex's belief in its irresistible domination over mankind at all ages, and that Johnny in his check apron would be always a hopeless conquest of Jeannette in her pinafore, and that he ought to have been ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... would be a dangerous one. My father did not perhaps express what he thought to the crew, as he wished to keep up their spirits, and to make every possible effort to get off the brig before he abandoned the attempt as hopeless. Nothing effectual could be done till the return of high-water, however, and daylight would enable us to see our position more clearly ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... magnificent stanzas of Barbier tell the true story of the riderless steed re-bitted, re-bridled, and mounted by the Italian master of mankind, the Caesar for whom the eagle-eyed Catherine of Russia had so quietly waited and looked when the helpless and hopeless orgie of 1789 began. The Past from which he emerged, the Future which he evoked, both loom larger than human in the shadow of that colossal figure. What a silly tinkle, as of pastoral bells in some Rousseau's Devin du Village, have the 'principles ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... another boy named Rolfe—now a distinguished man of science—carried on electrical experiments of their own in the cellar of the Rolfe house. Here they had a "Tom Thumb" telegraph, a telephone which they had ventured to improve, and a hopeless tangle of wires. Whenever they could afford to buy more wires and batteries, they went to a near-by store which supplied electrical apparatus to the professors and students of Harvard. This store, with its workshop in ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... astonished at this verdict of the General's, for he himself, on the contrary, had noted with silent scorn that very remark as a piece of supreme and hopeless stupidity on Bertram's part. No fellow can help having a cobbler for a grandfather, of course: but he need not be such a fool as to volunteer any mention of the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... Max was a hopeless failure as an assistant. He was always possessed with a passionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy disappeared, and he found that he wanted to ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Townsend as he searched his pocketbook. "Here's a twenty. That may get you across the river and on your way. You will make your way all right, but if your case becomes desperate draw on me under the name A.Z., and I will understand. Your financial affairs are in desperate condition but the case is not hopeless. You are young and healthy but you lack a definite plan of life. If someone will throw you a line while you are floundering in this slough you will come out all right. Now what's this thing you are to ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... suggested to him. This argument had been ably answered in the course of the evening; but he would view it in yet another light. It had been said, that the savage disposition of the Africans rendered the prospect of their civilization almost hopeless. This argument was indeed of long standing; but, last year, it had been supported upon a new ground. Captain Frazer had stated in his evidence, that a boy had been put to death at Cabenda, because there were ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... General stole a hundred thousand before he got his position. And he's got very different manners and deportment from me, brother. With my manners and deportment one can't get far! And such a scoundrelly surname, Nevyrazimov! It's a hopeless position, in fact. One may go on as one is, or one may ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... called forth to the support of the country and the government, the valour which had been too often directed against both.] France has been utterly dismayed by the tremendous lessons of the last war, and will hardly provoke another. All without and within the kingdom is adverse to encountering a hopeless struggle, and you alone, sir, seem willing to undertake a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... two hundred "white slaves" by the office of the United States district attorney at Chicago has brought to light the fact that literally thousands of innocent girls from the country districts are every year entrapped into a life of hopeless slavery and degradation because parents in the country do not understand conditions as they exist and how to protect their daughters from the "white slave" traders who have reduced the art of ruining young girls to a national and international system. ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... In their hands this Sub-conscious Personality is capable of development, of tuition, and of emancipation. In this little suspected region lies a great resource. For when the Conscious Personality is hopeless, diseased, or demoralised the Unconscious Personality can be employed to renovate and restore the patient, and then when its work is done it can become unconscious once more and practically ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... two words make it highly probable that the whole inscription is, like them, in Italian. In that case the first two Greek letters give very easily the word 'fidelta' (phi, delta), which combines naturally with the nella. The second part is more difficult, but perhaps not hopeless. [Greek: fnr] may, perhaps be read phi ny (as Latinised spelling of [Greek: nu]), ro, or finiro. Then, for the 'La B.,' suppose that the words form, as emblems often do, a rhymed couplet; then 'B.' ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... at last, and there was not a man alive who could boast that she had ever said as much to him. She asked me how I came to know or to guess the nature of her sufferings, and I told her that I had had great experience in the treatment of nervous disorders, and that her case was by no means hopeless. That although it was impossible to entirely and permanently cure the disease and drive away its attacks, yet it might be greatly diminished. The paroxysms might be reduced in duration and violence, and that without administering any ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... the fourth of this name, came to the throne in 1621, the situation was almost hopeless. The country was involved in the Thirty Years' War, one failure after another befell the Spanish arms, the taxes had become unbearable, and in many quarters revolt was threatened. The king was not equal to his task, government was an irksome duty for him, and he found his greatest pleasure ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... side to that self-satisfied remark of his father, and it also stuck in his memory. Back of the proud words lay envy and deference, and a suggestion of hopeless separation. In Keith's mind it became tied up with his memories from Loth's party, and all of it formed a complex of thought from which he tried his best to get away—and most of the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... reciter of events, but as a philosophical historian. He makes the reader understand how fatally the chronic militarism of these competing empires drained each of its manhood and brought Babylon and Assyria simultaneously into a hopeless condition of national anaemia. Equally pathetic is the picture drawn of the gradual but sure decay of the grand empire of the Pharaohs. Maspero, with masterly skill, passes a processional of these despots ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... (on the ground), having been slain by a powerful demon. Being attacked by the Rakshasa, holding a spear, he attempted to force his way into this room, and I therefore barred his way with my arms. Then desirous of having water in an unclean state, as he stood hopeless, he was slain by the vehement Rakshasa, carrying a spear in his hand.' On hearing from the Sudra of this great calamity, Bharadwaja, sorely afflicted with grief, began to lament, embracing his dead son. And he said, 'O my son, it is for the good of the Brahmanas that thou didst ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... more and more hopeless. On the morning of the third day he thought of a good plan to get rid of his enemy. He asked the king to order all the bells of the neighboring churches to be tolled, while every one in the palace was to cry out loud, "Here she comes!" While all this noise was going on, the guachinango approached ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... on the hilltop in the winter moon, was never a melody of laughter. Rather it was the song of life itself, life in the raw, and the sadness and pain and the hopeless war of existence find their echo in the wailing notes. None of the wilderness voices were joyous. When Bill had chosen his records he took those that answered his own mood and expressed his ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... country as a road. We humped up side by side in sociable silence, spying keenly for what we could see. A covey of quail disappearing in the brush caused us to pull up. We hunted them leisurely for a half hour and gathered in a dozen birds. Always we tried to sneak ducks, no matter how hopeless the situation might seem. Once I went on one hand and my knees through three inches of water for three hundred yards, stalking a flock of sprig loafing in an irrigation puddle. There was absolutely ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the Articles were practicable and, with a few alterations, the best plan that could be devised. Hamilton, on the contrary, regarded them as hopeless. Even before they were adopted, he predicted a speedy failure. They were "neither fit for war nor peace," he declared. "They show chiefly a want of power in Congress." Washington attributed the defects made in ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... fought about Eynsham Abbey. Old Abbot Geoffrey died, and at his election the Abbey had been under the See of Lincoln; but since then King Henry had claimed the gift of abbacies, a claim his son was not likely to bate. A suit with the Crown, Hugh's friends argued, was hopeless or not worth the trouble; but this argument seemed sacrilegious to the intrepid bishop. What? Allow God and the Queen of Heaven to be robbed? Who ever agreed to let Lincoln be so pilled? He is but a useless and craven ruler who does not enlarge instead of ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... some influence he possessed, to be allowed to accompany that part of the army to which his young friends were attached. He had not ceased his efforts to locate the two girls, but he realized, as did Jerry and his chums, that it was an almost hopeless proceeding now. However, there was still the study of explosive noises on insects to which the professor could devote himself, and ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... a bundle of these monographs and a fighting glitter in his eyes had sunk back in his chair in dismay. For it meant that Dr. Boomer had tracked him out for a benefaction to the University, and that all resistance was hopeless. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, 35 Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute. Sharp violins proclaim Their jealous pangs and desperation, Fury, frantic indignation, Depth of pains, and height of passion 40 For ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... be small indeed that we should have blundered like this into your life. It's enough to make one believe in fatality. But I can't find it in me to behave like a fatalist, to sit down with folded hands. Had you been another kind of man I might have been too hopeless or too disdainful. Do you know what Mr. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... this, there were times when the possession, the certainty of Lilith's—"sympathy" she had called it, would fail to cheer, to strengthen. Darker and darker grew the days, more hopeless the prospect, and soon Laurence Stanninghame found himself not merely face to face with poverty, but on the actual verge of destitution. Grim, fell spectres haunted his waking hours no less than his dreams. Did he return from a few hours of hard exercise ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... cheers with which Victoria's name was met, everywhere on British ground. "But you can't get people to give to Mount Vernon. They are afraid of slavery there. They are afraid of this, that, and the other; but give they will not." He handed me a dollar, in a hopeless way, which was a four-hundredth of his income. The blacksmith's wife would not admit me at all, saying, "There has been one beggar here already this morning!" The butcher's wife gave five cents; but I had my doubts about accepting it, for while I was indignantly relating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At the same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him greatly—a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in a most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with, indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early the next day, without any other word, sent old Enoch, his negro servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe—a ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... monotony in which they lived. Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing. His home was next the house of the Cumberland minister. He approached it tonight with the nerveless sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home. The moment he turned into Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above his head. After each of these orgies of living, he experienced all the physical depression which follows a ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—of proclaiming our Union the abode of liberty, the "home of the free," the asylum of the oppressed—while holding in our midst millions of fellow-beings manacled in hopeless bondage! No man was more anxious to correct this disgraceful misnomer, and wipe away its dark stain from our national escutcheon at the earliest practicable moment. But he was a statesman of profound knowledge and far-reaching sagacity. He possessed the rare quality of being able to "bide his ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... appear to-day the historic buildings, which are fast falling into hopeless decay; even the large domed church of the Castle has been desecrated and turned into ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... that the ship in which Elizabeth sailed was not a fortunate craft. When she reached the far-stretching Jersey coast, dangerous even now to mariners who know it well, this vessel was overtaken by storm, and soon became a hopeless wreck. ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... incurable and agonizing malady. Under most painful conditions she toiled unceasingly, moving rapidly from place to place, and passing days and nights in railway journeys. In a letter to a friend, she writes: "I do get so dreadfully depressed about myself, and all things seem so hopeless to me at those times, that I pray God to take me quickly at any moment, so that I may not torture those I love by letting them see my pain. But when the dark hour passes, and I try to forget by constant occupation that I have such a load near my heart, then it is not so bad." She ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... child's development goes on from the great dynamic centers, and is basically non-mental. To introduce mental activity is to arrest the dynamic activity, and stultify true dynamic development. By the age of twenty-one our young people are helpless, hopeless, selfless, floundering mental entities, with nothing in front of them, because they have been starved from the roots, systematically, for twenty-one years, and fed through the head. They have had all their mental excitements, sex and everything, all through ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... handled a pair of oars for many a year, but he seized the sculls and pulled away lustily towards the western side of the harbour. As to rowing up it against the strong tide then running out, that, he saw, was hopeless, Mr Ferris being no oarsman. The Coquille's sails were let fall, and the men in the boats giving way, she in a short time was clear of the harbour, and was seen to stand close-hauled towards the south-west, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... influence of the Army on the Parliament it had reinstated, the extreme Tolerationism of the Army Proposals would have made their chance hopeless with that body even if left to itself. But with such blasts coming from Scotland, and repeated close at hand by the key-bugles of Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners in London, the Parliament did not dare ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... further side he hesitated, glanced up at the clock, and then, turning about, paced listlessly up and down, as if uncertain whether to go or remain. Not even the rain, which now began to fall in that silent, hopeless fashion which predicts a thoroughly wet evening, appeared to assist the wanderer in coming to a decision. He was a mere stripling, short of stature, shabbily clothed, and with a keen look on his pale face that betokened a want of ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... He recounts the losses of Mother Church—-seventeen missions in Lower California, twenty-one all told in Alta California, with all their riches confiscated. The "pious fund"—monument of the faithful dead—swept into the Mexican coffers. The struggle of intellect against political greed looks hopeless. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... drew near the gates, a monstrous dog came out and barked furiously, but Odin rode a little eastward of the shadowy gates to the grave of a wonderful prophetess. It was a cold, gloomy place, and the soul of the great god was pierced with a feeling of hopeless sorrow as he dismounted from Sleipner, and bending over the grave began to chant weird songs, and weave magical charms over it. When he had spoken those wonderful words which could waken the dead from their sleep, there was an awful ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... but congratulating him so quietly that, if Wilford had retained a feeling of jealousy, it would have disappeared; Morris was so seemingly indifferent to everything except Katy's happiness. But Wilford did not observe closely, and failed to detect the hopeless look in Morris' eyes, or the whiteness which settled about his mouth as he fulfilled the duties of host and sought to entertain his guest. Those were dark hours for Morris Grant, and he was glad when at the end of the second day Wilford's visit expired, and he saw ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Jane, thou jewel of my heart— Thou object of my hopeless passion, Though Fate decrees that we must part, I'll leave thee in some novel fashion! I will not do as others do When cheated of prospective bridal, And quit the Bridge of Waterloo With header ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... title of a tragedy by J. Addison (1713). Disgusted with Caesar, Cato retired to U'tica (in Africa), where he had a small republic and mimic senate; but Caesar resolved to reduce Utica as he had done the rest of Africa, and Cato, finding resistance hopeless, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... would accept them," replied the scout, with a return of the perplexed look; "and if they chanced to refuse leave, my case would be hopeless, because I could not and would not dare to act in opposition to positive orders; whereas, if I go off without leave, I shall only be blamed for undertaking a foolish or reckless act; that is, if I return in safety. If I don't return at all, it won't matter what is said or done, but I should count ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... grievance. Tom, as quarterback, saw with dismay the prospect of drilling the new men in the complicated system of signals, of which there were more than sixty, each of which had to be grasped with lightning rapidity. The slightest failure might throw the whole team in hopeless confusion. Dick was ruminating on the loss of Ellis, whose position in the line had been right at his elbow, and with whom he had learned to work with flawless precision on the defense. And Bert would miss sorely the swift and powerful cooeperation of Axtell at ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... they shook hands, and struck a bargain; and why could not she and I have done the same! But she has gone, and that her days of life might be brightened with cloudless serenity, no one so ardently prayed, as a homeless and hopeless unknown; ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... inquiries and found that she was extraordinarily skilled in matters of that nature. Indeed, it was said that she had succeeded in cases that were wonderfully difficult which the leech had abandoned as hopeless, though of course there had been other cases where she had not succeeded. But these, she was informed, were generally those of poor people who did not pay her well. Now in this instance her pay would be ample, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... vaunt, though the Victory-Wielder, God, gave him grace that he got revenge sole with his sword in stress and need. To rescue his life, 'twas little that I could serve him in struggle; yet shift I made (hopeless it seemed) to help my kinsman. Its strength ever waned, when with weapon I struck that fatal foe, and the fire less strongly flowed from its head. — Too few the heroes in throe of contest that thronged to our king! Now gift of treasure and girding of sword, joy of the ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... unknown,—possibly of the individual styled Q., who had been forced to visit his French friends. But what to make of "Traverse Handel S.?" Here was the root and source of the enigma, and not all the tobacco of Virginia seemed likely to suggest any clew here. It seemed almost hopeless; but Dyson regarded himself as the Wellington of mysteries, and went to bed feeling assured that sooner or later he would hit upon the right track. For the next few days he was deeply engaged in his literary labours,—labours which were a profound mystery even to the most ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... it was taken for a good omen of recovery, and a part of the water carried to the patient, though to remote places, without saluting or speaking to any they met by the way; but, if they did sink, the recovery of the party was hopeless. This custom was of late much curbed and restrained; but since the discovery of many medicinal fountains near to the place, the vulgar, holding that it may be as medicinal as these are, at this time begin to re-assume their former practice."—Account ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... instructive to think of what this doubting disposition of Thomas cost him. First, it kept him from the meeting of the disciples that evening, when all the others came together. He shut himself up with his gloom and sadness. His grief was hopeless, and he would not seek comfort. The consequence was, that when Jesus entered the room, and showed himself to his friends, Thomas missed the revealing which gave them such unspeakable gladness. From that hour their sorrow was changed to joy; but for the whole of another week Thomas remained ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... cyclamen flowers in the other. O, these terraces would have delighted the heart of the American naturalist Thoreau. He could not have desired stone walls with more gaps in them. But mind you, these are not dark, ugly, hollow, hopeless chinks. Behind every one of them lurks a mystery. Far back in the niches I can see the busts of the poets who wrote the poems which these beautiful wild flowers are reading to me. Yes, the authors are dead, and what I behold now are the flowers of their amours. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... found all this, I was a great deal too worn out to cry or sob. Simply to break down may be the purest mercy that can fall on truly hopeless misery. Screams of ravenous maws and flaps of fetid wings came close to me, and, fainting into the arms of death, I tried to save my father's body by throwing ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... sank into a chair. The hour of discovery then had arrived,—there was no escape! Like those hopeless culprits before the eternal judgment-seat, he could have cried out to the mountains to fall upon him ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Because I once loved you, and believed in you, my heart aches for you. I will gladly forgive anything you ask. I will do anything you want, except to resume our former relations. That is impossible. It is hopeless and ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... of course, the Ducs de Mayenne and d'Epernon no sooner saw that the cause of the Queen-mother had become hopeless than they hastened to make their submission to the King; although the former, fearing that his known hostility to the favourite might militate against his future interests, first endeavoured to induce M. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... living. Her ideas were orderly and sound; she had a good intellect. Now she more than half defends him—a naval officer! good Lord!—for getting up in a public room to announce that he 's a Republican, and writing heaps of mad letters to justify himself. He's ruined in his profession: hopeless! He can never get a ship: his career's cut short, he's a rudderless boat. A gentleman drifting to Bedlam, his uncle calls him. I call his treatment of Grancey Lespel anything but gentlemanly. This is the sort ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and even, as Brasseur de Bourbourg supposes, on ancient continents or portions of continents now out of sight below the surface of the oceans. The representation of some speculators that the condition of the human race since its first appearance on earth has been a condition of universal and hopeless savagery down to a comparatively modern date, is an assumption merely, an unwarranted assumption used in support of an unproved and unprovable theory of man's origin. Its use in the name of science by advocates of this theory, like the theory itself, shows that the constructive ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... at the outset. He said that the condition of the peasants was still very bad; that they had very generally eaten their draught-animals, burned portions of their buildings to keep life in their bodies, and reduced themselves to hopeless want. On my suggesting that the new commercial treaty with Germany might help matters, he thought that it would have but little effect, since only a small portion of the total product of Russian agriculture ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard — ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... produced at the Duke's Theatre in 1682. They were unsettled and hazardous times. The country was convulsed by the judicial murders and horrors which followed in the train of the pseudo-Popish Plot engineered by the abominable Gates and his accomplices. King and Parliament were at hopeless variance. The air was charged with strife, internecine hatreds and unrest. In such an atmosphere and in such circumstances politics could not but make themselves keenly felt upon the stage. The actors were indeed 'abstracts ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... straightened the scattered books on the library table, Ted dashing off a popular waltz with her head turned carelessly aside to watch the attentive Keith; all these to Julia were glimpses of a life so free, so full, so invigorating as to fill her with hopeless ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... shrieks of parrots, and with a peculiar rushing noise a great hornbill flapped its heavy wings, as it flew rapidly across the river. In short, it was the beginning of a glorious tropic day for all there but one, who knelt sullen and hopeless, only a few yards from Ned, who stood spell-bound, now that he realised what was to happen, too much fascinated by the horrible scene to ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... his breast pocket and fumbled with papers. Rigobert examined me rapidly. But the spell was broken, and I was myself again master of my emotions, and of the thousand francs. He saw that it was hopeless—and rose. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... happened? After careful observations he discovered that no star moved at all with this base line, and that it must be ever so much longer in order to make any impression. Then indeed the case seemed hopeless, for here we are tied to the earth and we cannot get away into space. But the astronomer was nothing daunted. He knew that in its journey round the sun the earth travels in an orbit which measures about one hundred and eighty-five millions ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... gym fittings, books. We've a license. We sell beer to members," his eyes were eager: the man's heart was in his hopeless self-imposed work. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... thy Ring, sweet Hill, a boy I used to play, And form my plans to plant thy top on some auspicious day! How oft among thy broken turf with what delight I trod! With what delight I placed those twigs beneath thy maiden sod! And then an almost hopeless wish would creep within my breast: 'Oh, could I live to see thy top in all its beauty dressed!' That time's arrived; I've had my wish, and lived to eighty-five; I'll thank my God, who gave such grace, as long as e'er I live; Still when the morning sun in spring, whilst I enjoy my ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... So Merrihew, hopeless and subdued, went into the room designated, saw the cigars taken out and weighed, took the bill and presented it with a hundred-lire note at the little window in the off-room. The official there pushed the money ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... with the ghost of a wink. "It isn't the boys that make trouble; it's the masters. However, Prout and King don't approve of dormitory gatherings on this scale, and one must back up the house-masters. Moreover, it's hopeless to punish two houses only, so late in the term. We must be fair and include everybody. Let's see. They have a holiday task for the Easters, which, of course, none of them will ever look at. We will give the whole school, except prefects and study-boys, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... that, unless this temper could be checked, it would soon become so extensive, and would arrive at such a point of fury, as to threaten dangerous consequences. It was obviously necessary either to attempt a diminution of its action by rendering its exertions hopeless, and by giving to the treaty the weight of his character and influence, or to determine ultimately to yield to it. A species of necessity therefore seems to have been created for abandoning the idea, if it was ever taken up, of making the ratification of the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that it was no such light matter to usurp the place of such a woman as Sophie, though the latter was laboring under the great disadvantage of being ignorant of the plot against her. In most cases, indeed, the attempt would have been wellnigh hopeless, but Cornelia had two exceptionally powerful allies—her own supreme beauty, and Bressant's untrained and ill-regulated animal nature, which he had not yet learned to understand and provide against. And there was another thing in her favor, too, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... reply. Visions of her own lonely home rose before her—her mother fading slowly away under an accumulation of misfortunes; her only brother shot in the Union army; her father sinking into almost a dishonored grave through hopeless liabilities brought on indirectly by the war; she, petted and idolized, the only remaining member of the family, seeking her daily bread and finding a pittance by working among strangers. She hung her head and had not a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... attack on waste is an industrial necessity. I recall very well indeed how, in the early days of forest fires, they were considered simply and solely as acts of God, against which any opposition was hopeless and any attempt to control them not merely hopeless but childish. It was assumed that they came in the natural order of things, as inevitably as the seasons or the rising and setting of the sun. To-day we understand that forest fires are wholly within the control ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... was he to find one who would have filled for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much attached to? What white man would have been his brother? What white woman his sister? He had two courses left open to him,—he could either have renounced all natural ties, and have led a hopeless, joyless life among the whites, ever a servant, ever an inferior being; or he could renounce civilisation, and return to the friends of his childhood, and to the habits of his youth. He chose the latter course, and I think that I should have done ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... ever. I own that when the old priest pointed out the number of churches and convents you could see in the valley below, and spoke, with regret, of the time when there were twelve convents round Subiaco alone, I felt that the cause of this hopeless misery was not far to seek, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... to render the expedition in a great measure hopeless, was the ease with which the English could maintain a constant watch upon their operations within the port of Boulogne. The least appearance of stir or preparation, to embark troops, or get ready for sea, was promptly sent by signal to the English ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... Socialist" reforms of semidemocratic governments like those of Australia and Great Britain. "Neither can we avoid the final outcome of these antagonisms—the overthrow of present society. One thing it can do. It cannot abolish the revolution, but it can avert many premature, hopeless revolutionary attempts and render superfluous many revolutionary uprisings. It creates clearness regarding the relative strength of the different parties ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... gen'ral propositions on me, either. I'm right there with the Missouri stuff. He has to go clear back to first principles every time he makes a statement, and work up to it gradual. Course, I was keepin' him jollied along too, and while it must have been sort of hopeless at the start, inoculatin' a cauliflower like mine with higher chemistry, I fin'lly showed one or two gleams that encouraged him to keep on. Anyway, we hammered away at the subject, only stoppin' to make coffee and sandwiches, until near two ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... borne, the bewildered, despairing, struggling centre of all that armed and merciless mass, swiftly towards the Netherbow. In the midst of the blazing torches, the Lochaber axes, the guns and naked swords, that hemmed him in, the helpless, hopeless victim was swept along. A rope was readily found, but a gibbet was not forthcoming; a byer's pole served at the need. Within a little while after the forcing of the Tolbooth gate, Porteous was hanged and dead, and his wild judges were ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... given hospitality, with his wife and children. "They are very generous, and make it a point not to attach themselves to the goods of this world." "Their greatest reproach is 'that man wants everything, he is greedy'. They support, with never a murmur, widows, orphans and old men, yet they kill hopeless or troublesome invalids, and their whole conduct to Europeans was the ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... original United States, but was swarming toward and beyond the Mississippi. They dropped to the level of a mere party of opposition; they went further until the only article of their political creed was State sovereignty; some of them went one step further, and dabbled in hopeless projects for secession and the formation of a New England republic of five States. It is difficult to perceive any advantage to public affairs in the closing years of the federal party, except that, by ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... of the South sold by their fathers? How shall I answer this question? Thousands and tens of thousands never were, their fathers never have received the poor compensation of silver or gold for the tears and toils, the suffering, and anguish, and hopeless bondage of their daughters. They labor day by day, and year by year, side by side, in the same field, if haply their daughters are permitted to remain on the same plantation with them, instead of being as they often are, separated from their parents and ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... gilded cage to pine; Hard a hopeless prisoner's lot—and mine. [Absently fingering the ornaments on the table, and beginning to put ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... the other previous eras, if any such ever existed, than we know about the inhabitants of other planets, if such there be. It is therefore futile, yea more, thoroughly wicked, to impose upon the people a chronological system which is so pessimistic and hopeless in its tenor ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... of any yeoman that had a child to receive her last blessing, whose few acres were not to pass away to the hungry expecting son of a hated rival. Her virginity was not like that of Jephthah's daughter, a free-will offering to the Lord. Pride, and policy, and disappointment, and, it may be, hopeless, self-condemned affection, conspired to perpetuate it. Probably it was well for England that no offspring of hers inherited her throne. By some strange ordinance of nature, it generally happens that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... kills your genius," said Lotys; "Therefore you are quite safe! If you were less of a scamp you would be a great man,— perhaps the greatest in the country! That would never do! Your rivals would never forgive you! But you are a hopeless rascal, incapable of winning much honour; and so you are compassionately recognized as somebody who might do something if he only would—that is all, my Zouche! You are an excellent after-dinner topic with those who are more successful than yourself; and that is the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... enemy, whose delight it would be to hunt me to death? I told myself that if I could obtain a small, light, handy canoe and weapons, even though they should but consist of a bow and arrows, the situation would not be altogether hopeless—for I possessed a very fair share of pluck and resource; but I felt that before I could effect my escape from my watchful custodians, and obtain these necessities, I might find myself in so dire a strait as to render them and all else valueless to me. Yet I would not suffer ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... by good use is about 25,000; but counting obsolete characters, the number amounts to over 50,000. A knowledge of 5000 or 6000 characters, however, enables one to read and write without difficulty. The task of learning even this number might well be hopeless, were it not that many of the characters bear a remote resemblance to the objects for which they stand, and when once explained, readily suggest the thing or idea represented. The nature of the characters shows conclusively that the Chinese system of writing, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... (1729-1777).—Divine and forger, ed. at Camb., became a popular preacher in London, and a Royal Chaplain, but, acquiring expensive habits, got involved in hopeless difficulties, from which he endeavoured to escape first by an attempted simoniacal transaction, for which he was disgraced, and then by forging a bond for L4200, for which, according to the then existing ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the last of a row culminating at a four-cross-road. Phew—and he dropped one on it and got five of us. Wilshire (Royal Fusiliers) came in for a fearful gash, ten or twelve inches long and three wide, right across the spine. Conscious, but paralysed, he looked round on us with a piteous, hopeless appeal for succour in his eyes and made wild, inarticulate sounds for water. One of the signals (R.E.) fell face downward on the floor in a widening pool of his own blood, one part of his face blown away. Poor laddies, full of youth, vim, life—cursed ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... hoped that soon the situation will be improved. These conditions cannot be borne very much longer. I am hopeless. The battalion is under the command of Captain May, and I am reduced to acting as Fourier. It is not at all an easy thing to do in our present frightful situation. In the black night soldiers must be sent some distance ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dismay by learning that Hastings had concluded a treaty with the Mahrattas. He expected that the Mahratta confederacy would invade the country of Mysore, and he intimated his intention of returning for its defence. Bussy, however, persuaded him that the war in the Carnatic was not altogether hopeless, and that means might be found to counteract the negociations of the Governor-general of Bengal, and to win back the Mahrattas, not merely to a neutrality, but to a close alliance. Accordingly he resolved to remain in the Carnatic, and he prepared to co-operate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the dog to guard her, the Man departed on his hopeless errand. It was brave of him. He believed that in trying to find God, he would get so lost that he would never be able to retrace his footsteps. Before he went he kissed the Woman tenderly, begging forgiveness for all the ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... cousin Bernard is much too grand a person for me to take the liberty of loving him. I shall be very glad to see Johnny Eames." From all which Mrs Dale was led to believe that Johnny's case was still hopeless. And how should it not be hopeless? Had Lily not confessed within the last week or two that she still ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... upon this mountain and who lived there they remained in complete ignorance. It was a case of stalemate. Harut would not tell them anything nor could they learn anything for themselves. He added in a depressed way that the whole business seemed very hopeless, and that he had begun to doubt whether there was any tidings of his lost wife to be gained among the Kendah, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... had never thought to have seen them again! And they were so changed, I should scarcely have known them. Bob, in particular, looked so much taller, and stronger, and oh! so much happier than he had done last year! He was no more the wretched, joyless, hopeless creature, cowering in rags, one that even rats might look on with pity; he had a bright, fearless eye, and hopeful smile; and if ever a face expressed gratitude and affection, it was his when he looked ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... impregnable. Surely few cities were situated more favorably to resist either attack or siege. But Admiral Porter got his gunboats below the city, running the batteries in the night, and Grant's investment was complete. The Confederate cause was hopeless, their men nearly starved. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Suddenly Herbert, who was gazing forlornly through the window at this disconsolate world, waiting, napkin on his arm, to begin to wait, heard a voice saying, "I'm afraid you forgot to charge me for my cigar yesterday." It was the portly gentleman. Life was not utterly hopeless any more. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... the day. The Heavy Brigade, as we have seen, had already done splendid service in routing the Russian cavalry. The turn of the Light Brigade had come, although, unhappily, the task entrusted to it was hopeless, foredoomed to failure ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... houses were in flames. A sortie had been attempted and had failed. British reenforcements had not come. Supplies were giving out. The outlook seemed hopeless. The men fought without spirit. An attempt was made to escape by sea. It also failed. A violent storm drove the boats back to shore. The ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... in the grate settled down with a slight crash; and Michaelis, the hermit of visions in the desert of a penitentiary, got up impetuously. Round like a distended balloon, he opened his short, thick arms, as if in a pathetically hopeless attempt to embrace and hug to his breast a self-regenerated universe. He ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... their breath has ceased, but as a sort of distance-posts in the race of chronology. "The dull swain treads on" their relics "with his clouted shoon." Our monuments are as perishable as ourselves; and it is the most hopeless of all problems for the most part, to tell where the mighty ones of the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin |
