"Hopelessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as I hated the crime, I could not hate the criminal. My schoolmate, my playfellow, stood there, alone, forsaken, despised; crushed to the ground, ready to despair. I went to him, gave my hand and stayed, while his case was up. Never shall I forget the look of mingled gratitude and hopelessness in his haggard eyes which had scarcely ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... conjectures, fears, and impossible plans, though his intelligence told him that no plan of search he could form was likely to be of the slightest use. Only luck could help him there, and it was part of the hopelessness of the situation that he dared not invoke the aid of any of those agencies or organizations which make it their business to find persons who have disappeared in London. His search ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... last year at Monsted, and whom, as you say, you knew in Copenhagen, has during the last months haunted the region hereabouts. He looks just as he used to, he is the same pale knight of the melancholy mien. He is the most ridiculous mixture of forced gayety and silent hopelessness, he is affected—ruthless and brutal toward himself and others. He is taciturn and a man of few words, and doesn't seem to be enjoying himself at all, though he does nothing but drink and lead a riotous life. It is as I have already said, as if he had a fixed idea that ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... with it—bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh; and, as in a reprobate family an exquisitely delicate and refined sister may feel the whole weight of the debt and shame of the household to lie on herself, so He felt the unworthiness and hopelessness of the race as if they were His own; and, like the scapegoat on whose head the sins of the community were laid in the old dispensation, He went out ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... an official religion, the Brazilian people have really made progress in spite of the hopelessness of Romanism that perverts all things and resorts to ail sorts of schemes to preserve its former ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... was expected of him. When he was informed that among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a Frenchman who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene, he felt suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and hopelessness to which he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces, that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was no escape from this position. Smiling ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... year later in the lovely summer home of a friend in the Black River Country, within sight of the Adirondack hills. We had found many nests in the woods and orchards, but the meadow had been safe from our feet, partly because of the rich crops that covered it, but more, perhaps, because of the hopelessness of the search over the broad fields for anything so easily hidden ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... them determined, desperate, despairing, half rebellious, half subdued; resigned with the resignation of sheer helplessness, which I take it is a different thing from the resignation of sheer hopelessness. It is no very pleasant sight to see a country flayed and quartered like a bloody carcass in a meat shop; but an even less pleasant thing than that is to see a country's heart broken. And Belgium to-day is a country ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison-walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... It was rather the sense of utter vacancy and hopelessness, with but one fixed purpose—that she would see his face again, and be the nearest to him when he was laid in the grave. She hastily wrote to the housekeeper and to the clergyman that she was coming, and Miss Wells's kind opposition only gave her just wilfulness and determination enough ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fraternal, tone convinced the young man of the hopelessness of his love. He realized that he could not hope to make any further progress in that feminine good-fellowship in which affection was lacking, and that he should lose something every day of his charm as an unfamiliar type in the eyes of that creature who was born bored, and who seemed to have ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Chunda Das, you will devise some way,' protested the barber, reading the hopelessness in my mind. 'You have a fleet horse, and can ride after Sheikh Ahmed, find him, and call him back again. Or, if he be really dead, you can bring word of ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... far as he might be able, in putting a constraint on his ministers to carry out his views. Thus, he had notoriously induced Lord North to persevere in the late civil war in America long after that minister had seen the hopelessness of the contest; and it was, probably, only the knowledge of the strength of his feelings on that subject, and of his warm attachment to that minister, that caused the Parliament so long to withstand all the eloquence of the advocates of peace, and the still stronger arguments ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... of that day is one of heavy fatigue and a pressing hopelessness. Shalah behaved oddly, for he was as restive as a frightened stag. No covert was unsuspected by him, and if I ventured to raise my head on any exposed ground a long brown arm pulled me down. He would make no answer to my questions except a grunt. All this gave me the notion that ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... perfectly alone he stood. Most of the people whom he knew would see only blind obstinacy in his refusal to be a minister. But were one's inclinations nothing? Was there really nothing in the "call" to preach? So he pondered as he walked, and more and more the hopelessness of his predicament became revealed to him. All his life had been moulded by this one woman's hands. Would not revolt now say to the world, "I am grown now; I do not need this woman who has toiled. I can disobey her with ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... growing firmer under his feet. Even when he wrote the letter to the prison, promising to meet Ida, he had acted as if out of mere humanity. It needed a chance such as the present to open his eyes. That she should quit the prison, and, not finding him, wander away in blank misery and hopelessness, most likely embittered by the thought that he had carelessly neglected to meet her, and so driven to despair—such a possibility was intolerable. The fear of it began to goad him in flesh and spirit. With a sudden violent stringing of all his sinews, he wrenched at the bonds, but only with ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Lahoma protested, seemingly all at once overcome by the fatigues of her journey and the hopelessness of the situation. "I was afraid he wouldn't agree to hide at all; and just as soon as you came away, and there wasn't any more prospects of letters, he'd get lonesome, and tire of staying away from home. He's in that cove this minute, ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the heart of every man and boy we pass upon the street, how few—how very few—there are that would not reveal sickening pictures of lust, disease, melancholy and insanity. Charnel-houses of sin and lust—sloughs of despond and regret—excess of passion offset by lack of power—dread, despair, hopelessness, shame and desperation, making a picture of misery scarcely to be conceived by any but those unfortunate beings who in the thoughtless, careless heyday of youth, or the reckless reliance on more mature vigor, have weakened, emasculated ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... We put it to the vote at once, so as not to let Denny cool. H. O. and Noel and Alice voted with us, so Daisy and Dora were what is called a hopeless minority. We tried to cheer their hopelessness by letting them read the things out of the Golden Deed book aloud. Noel hid his face in the straw so that we should not see the faces he made while he made poetry instead of listening, and when the Wouldbegoods was by vote dissolved for ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... might come in here," said he, evidently not unwilling to expose to Bob the full hopelessness of the latter's case. "And if so, they can trail us in; and then trail us out again!" He pointed to the lacets of the trail up the north wall. He grinned again. "You and I'd just crawl down a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... accident, Ferdinand was made acquainted with the principal articles of this treaty before its signature. [11] His army had remained inactive in its quarters around Victoria, ever since the landing of the English. He now saw the hopelessness of further negotiation, and, determining to anticipate the stroke prepared for him, commanded his general to invade without delay, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... spirits of which I have spoken, and promises great advantages to each of them. It can give the individual worker everything except the power to alter the State—that is, his own status. Finality (or what certain eleutheromaniacs would call hopelessness) of status is the soul of Slavery—and of Compulsory Insurance. Then again, Germany gives the individual exactly the liberty that has always been given to a slave—the liberty to think, the liberty to dream, the liberty to rage; the liberty to indulge in any intellectual hypotheses ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... of the Highland clansman—faithfulness, courage, and a jealous sense of personal honour. From the very beginning he had seen the folly of the rising. But when he had failed to convince Charles of its hopelessness, he had thrown himself into the movement as if it had been of his own devising. Never did he afterwards reproach Charles by word or look ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... insurgents, a personal interview. Here the Huguenot defended his adherents against the imputation of having revolted against their lawful monarch, and maintained that, on the contrary, they had come to uphold his honor and free him from the intrigues of the Guises. Seeing, however, the hopelessness of resisting the superior force of his enemy, Castelnau consented to capitulate, after exacting from the Duke of Nemours his princely word that he and his followers should receive no injury, and be permitted to have free access to the king, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... assigned me by our anxious President, and gladly accepted, was the distribution on the pitiful fields of Cuba. These scenes I would not recall. The starving mothers and motherless babes, the homelessness and squalor, the hopelessness and despair, are beyond all words and all conception, save to those who saw and lived among them. It is past and ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... token the literature of Young Russia of that day is as easily recognized as is the English literature of the Dryden and Pope epoch by its sententiousness. It contrasts sharply with the tone of passive resignation and hopelessness of the preceding period. Even Chekhov, the greatest representative of what may be called the period of despondence, was caught by the new spirit of optimism and activism, so that he reflected clearly the new influence in his later works. But while in Gorky the revolt is ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... already referred to, puts the hopelessness of the mass of the exiles in a forcible fashion. The only sense in which living men could say that their bones were dried up, and they cut off, is a figurative one, and obviously it is the national existence which they regarded as irretrievably ended. The saying gives us a glimpse ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... these poor people of Ruscino because he foresaw the hopelessness of forging their weak tempers into the metal necessary for resistance. As well might he hope to change a sword-rush of the river into a steel sabre for combat. Masaniello, Rienzi, Garibaldi, had roused the peasantry and led ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... savage hopelessness of his countenance awed and pained the girl, and after a moment's silence, and a short struggle with her heart, she extended her hand, saying with evident reluctance: "Give me the key, I will not ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... "Yes, that's so; I'll admit that it has that effect, or it would if you didn't talk of the hopelessness of trying to do anything. Don't feel alarmed," she said, turning to the others, "Mr. Cargill and I understand each other very well. We've known each other so long that we ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... time fled—one of those full months without past to it or future. What in his youth would certainly have been headlong passion, was now perhaps as deep a feeling, but far gentler, tempered to protective companionship by admiration, hopelessness, and a sense of chivalry—arrested in his veins at least so long as she was there, smiling and happy in their friendship, and always to him more beautiful and spiritually responsive: for her philosophy of life seemed to march in admirable step with his own, conditioned by ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him by increased rewards to go back and carry tidings to Madame de Mauban that I was working for her, and that, if she could, she should speak one word of comfort to the King. For while suspense is bad for the sick, yet despair is worse still, and it might be that the King lay dying of mere hopelessness, for I could learn of no definite disease ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... of James was hardly more regretted by his immediate subjects than by his Irish allies. All external events now conspired to show the hopelessness of resistance to the power of King Henry. From Scotland, destined to half a century of anarchy, no help could be expected. Wales, another ancient ally of the Irish, had been incorporated with England, in 1536, and was fast becoming reconciled to the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... old hopelessness before a superior force, this feeling for which he could never find words and vent, unless it some day happened that—he closed his eyes, and there was a compressed, violent expression about ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... barracks of the fort being set on fire, Major Anderson, seeing the hopelessness of a prolonged resistance, surrendered. The effect of the news throughout the United States was tremendous, and Mr. Lincoln at once called out 75,000 men of the militia of the various States to put down the rebellion—the border States ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the despair with which that admirable observer of men, Mr. Mathews the comedian, confessed the hopelessness of success, in his endeavours to obtain a sufficiency of prominent and distinctive features to compose an entertainment founded on American character. The whole nation struck him as being destitute ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... her the only sufferer, a romance that had spelt a life's disaster for her. To the adamantine fortune-teller was attributed a devotion so strong, so passionate in the days of her youth that her reason had been well-nigh unhinged by the hopelessness of it. The object of it was her own sister's husband, Joan's father. It was said that at the moment of his death Mercy Lascelles' youth died too. All softness, all gentleness passed out of her life and left her the hard, prematurely aged woman ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... case. "We will do nothing of the sort," replied Marcel; and in a few moments, at the provost's orders, the work-people left their work, and shouts of "To arms!" resounded through the streets. The prince's councillors were threatened with death. The dauphin saw the hopelessness of a struggle; for there were hardly a handful of men left to guard the Louvre. On the morrow, the 20th of January, he sent for Marcel and the sheriffs into the great hall of parliament, and giving way on almost every point, bound himself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... burning rays upon our little bark. If it had not been for the awning, we could not have endured it; the heat was so oppressive. We had been obliged to give over rowing, as much from the fatigue it occasioned as from the hopelessness of our labour. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... westward, they received an unexpected intimation, "The enemy is in Honno-ji," and their route was altered accordingly. Nobunaga defended himself valiantly. But being at last severely wounded and recognizing the hopelessness of resistance, he set fire to the temple and committed suicide, his fourteen-year-old son, Katsunaga, perishing with him. His eldest son, Nobutada, who had just returned from the campaign in the east, followed his father to Kyoto, and was sojourning in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... looked up and looked down, then sank on the steps, convulsed with grief, sobbing bitterly. "She said He could deliver her from the mouth of lions! And He has not," she murmured under her breath, in utter misery and hopelessness. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flights of arrows and defending themselves as they best could, the unarmed multitude raised a new wall in their rear, which, by the morning of the next day, was six feet in height. This last proof of his enemies' resolution and resource seems to have finally convinced Sapor of the hopelessness of his enterprise. Though he still continued the siege for a while, he made no other grand attack, and at length drew off his forces, having lost twenty thousand men before the walls, and wasted a hundred days, or more ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Joe had seen in many a boyish dream; now that he was a part of it he did not dwell on the hopelessness of the situation, nor of the hostile chief whose enmity he had incurred. Almost, it seemed, he was glad of this chance to watch the Indians and listen to them. He had been kept apart from Jim, and it appeared to Joe that their captors treated his brother with a contempt ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... actually inflicted injustice, as questions constantly arose which lay far outside the limits of the old customary law of the Germanic tribes, or of the scanty knowledge of Roman law which had penetrated into other codes. The men of that day looked too often with utter hopelessness to the administration of justice; there was no peril so great in all the dangers that surrounded their lives as the peril of the law; there was no oppression so cruel as the oppression wrought by the harsh and rigid forms of ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... strong negative emotional states such as anger, fear, resentment, hopelessness, etc. Behind most diseases it is common to find a problematic mind churning in profound confusion, one generated by a character that avoids responsibility. There may also be job stress or ongoing hostile relationships, often ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... very eyes, ourselves in rags or fetters! our enemies in robes of office, seated on curule chairs, swaying the fate of nations, dispensing by a nod the wealth of plundered provinces! I could reverse the picture. But, as it is, your present miseries and your past deeds dissuade me. Your hopelessness and daring, your wrongs and valor, your injuries and thirst of vengeance, warn me, alike, that words are weak, and exhortation needless. Now understand with me, how matters stand. The stake for which ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... only in his hopeful moods. Such alone he counts worthy of sharing with his fellows. If there is no hope, why, upon any theory, take the trouble to say so? It is pure weakness to desire sympathy in hopelessness. Hope alone justifies as well as excites ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Alice revealed again, but in clearer lines, the sickness and weariness and the hopelessness of the elder woman's face, and Ben's consideration and watchful care of her took something out of the ride. The rapture, the careless gayety, of ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the hour, the sunshine and the shade," all reminded me of the happy past, and all brought vividly before me every portion of that dream of happiness in which I was so utterly—so completely steeped—every thought of the hopelessness of my passion was lost in the intensity of it, and I did not, in the ardour of my loving, stop to think ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... rapid decline of the active faculties. Unhappily, that of suffering seemed only to increase—no longer the sharp anguish of unspent force which had wrung from him the passionate cries and plaintive murmurs of former years, but the dull numbness of hopelessness. His existence was monotonous, and the few occurrences which varied it were of a sad or unpleasant nature. His sister married and left Paris, and his mother subsequently went to live with her in the country, thus breaking up their family circle; Paul de Musset was absent from France ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... pursue the same course. But please understand that nothing will shake my resolution. It will pain me deeply to have to keep you in a place like this, but keep you I must until you consent to be mine. You must see yourself the hopelessness, as well as the folly, of holding out. On the one side is a life wasted here, on the other you will be the wife of a man who loves you above all things; who has risked everything by the step that he has taken, and who, when ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... up by the Negro pulpit, but this would be a mere statement and not an actual fact. The pessimist lives in an unwholesome atmosphere, he will not see the sunshine because he prefers to stay down in the valley beneath the cloud of doubt and surmounted with the fog of hopelessness. The educated Negro pulpit is mainly optimistic and sees beyond its immediate surroundings. It sees to it that the leaven of sound doctrine and moral ethics are being put into the meal, and from personal developments believes that in process of time the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... of a widowed mother, also called Sally, the name in both cases being (as in that of her daughter whom we know) Rosalind, not Sarah. This mother married en secondes noces a former sweetheart; it had been a case of a match opposed by parents on the ground of the apparent hopelessness of the young man's prospects. Mr. Paul Nightingale, however, falsified the doleful predictions about his future by becoming a successful leader-writer and war correspondent. It was after the close of the American Civil War, in which he ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... candidate and tried to get him to retract that Question. He listened quietly, he answered with a patient smile. Now and then he threw a story into the midst of this discussion which made them laugh in spite of themselves. The hopelessness of the case was quite plain to Mr. Hill, who smiled, and whispered in Stephen's ear: "He has made up his mind. They will not budge him an ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... All the weariness and hopelessness passed from Doris's face; she was eager, her eyes shone. Presently she stood up, her back to the fire, her glance on that far window that opened to the starry night and the narrow, flower-hidden bed on ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Well, then, Monsieur knows that when I left Paris I felt that part of my studies were complete. I had seen a little more of government, a little more of humanity, a little more of life, a little more of men. It was not men but mankind that I studied most. I had seen much of injustice and hopelessness and despair. These made the fate of mankind—in ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... as vividly as possible while you linger at San Rocco the painter's singularly interesting portrait of himself, at the Louvre. The old man looks out of the canvas from beneath a brow as sad as a sunless twilight, with just such a stoical hopelessness as you might fancy him to wear if he stood at your side gazing at his rotting canvases. It isn't whimsical to read it as the face of a man who felt that he had given the world more than the world was likely to repay. Indeed before every picture of Tintoret you may remember this tremendous ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... his little stock of money gone, wandering foot-sore about London, seeking in vain for work; forcing himself to call on Uncle Donald; being thrown down the front steps by haughty footmen; sleeping on the Embankment; gazing into the dark waters of the Thames with the stare of hopelessness; climbing to ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... it in him to do a kindly thing? If so it seemed a pity to thwart him. Berrington looked fairly and squarely into the eyes of the speaker, but they did not waver in the least. The expression of Sartoris's face was one of hopelessness, not free ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... the concomitant manifestation of various goods, notably of truth. The mixture of these values is perhaps all we have in mildly pathetic works, in the presence of which we are tolerably aware of a sort of balance and compensation of emotions. The sorrow and the beauty, the hopelessness and the consolation, mingle and merge into a kind of joy which has its poignancy, indeed, but which is far too passive and penitential to contain the louder and sublimer of our tragic moods. In these there is a wholeness, a ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... still weak and he still continued to limp a little, he could not resume his place in the circus. Between brooding over his superstition and worrying about his accident, he grew very despondent. The climax of his hopelessness was reached when the doctor told him at last that he would never be able to vault again. The fracture had been a severe one, the bone having protruded through the skin. The broken parts had knitted with great difficulty, and the leg would never be as firm and as elastic as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... from the bed. He could have groaned at the hopelessness of the girl's case. If she had only given him one thread that would lead him to another clue, if she only protested her innocence! His heart sank within him, and he could ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... in the darkness of oncertainty, and hopelessness, and despair of our forefathers, and which them four old fathers wuz willin' to seal with ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Xerxes, the absence of the re-enforcements they expected, produced an alarmed and anxious council; Leonidas dissuaded the confederates from retreat, and despatched messengers to the various states, urging the necessity of supplies, and stating the hopelessness of opposing the Mede ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prematurely aged women. Did you ever see a bent Japanese girl of twenty waddling in from a day of labor in a field? To emulate Japanese industry, with its peonage, its horrible, unsanitary factory conditions, its hopelessness, would be to thrust woman's hard-won sphere in modern civilization back to where it stood at the dawn of the Christian era. Do you know, Miss Parker, that love never enters into consideration when a Japanese contemplates marriage? His sole purpose ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... in 'Jane Eyre.' The calm, clear mind, the brave, independent spirit are there. But a fuller and more accurate picture of her character may be found in Lucy Snowe, the heroine of 'Villette.' Here we find especially that note of hopelessness that predominated in Charlotte's character. Mrs. Gaskell, in her admirable biography of Charlotte Bronte, has called attention to this absence of hope in her nature. Charlotte indeed never allowed herself to look forward to happy issues. She had no confidence in the future. The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and Philip had that day spent many fruitless hours in the search, when they hit on a fresh clue and an address in Mulliner's Rents. But here, even, difficulties bristled, and the tide of hopelessness was setting in upon both men when a wretched old crone was dragged out of a public-house to confront them, with dazed eyes and with a hateful odour of gin oozing from ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... degree the "advocate of the people." It is said that a poor man in a remote district of Scotland thus answered an acquaintance who wished to dissuade him from "going to law" with a wealthy neighbour, by representing the hopelessness of being able to meet the expenses of litigation. "Ye dinna ken what ye're saying, maister," replied the litigious northerner; "there's no' a puir man in a' Scotland need want a freen' or fear a foe, sae lang as ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... circumstances in which I was placed, my single strength was sufficient. The spectacle of her emotions was inconceivably frightful. Her violence at length however began to abate, and she became convinced of the hopelessness ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... of such wars, summoned councils, issued pastoral letters, and employed preachers, as in the days that were past. But dissensions at home during the first half of the fourteenth century, and the general conviction of hopelessness which had seized the public mind respecting all armaments against the Moslems, occasioned the failure of every attempt to unite once more the powers of Chistendom in ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... sensuality. They are unknown alike to each other, and to any persons of respectability or property in their vicinity. Philanthropy seeks in vain for virtue amidst thousands and tens of thousands of unknown names; charity itself is repelled by the hopelessness of all attempts to relieve the stupendous mass of destitution which follows in the train of such enormous accumulation of numbers. Every individual or voluntary effort is overlooked amidst the prodigious multitude, as it was in the Moscow campaign of Napoleon. Thus the most powerful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... impossibility &c adj.; what cannot, what can never be; sour grapes; hopelessness &c 859. V. be impossible &c adj.; have no chance whatever. attempt impossibilities; square the circle, wash a blackamoor white; skin a flint; make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, make bricks without straw; have nothing to go upon; weave a rope of sand, build castles in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Times. On the other hand unrest, ill-health, separation from Grace, an elusive and never-to-be-satisfied pursuit, scandal and possible loss of religion, unhappiness ... At least it was to his credit that he realised the conflict; it is even further to his credit that he grasped and admitted the hopelessness of it. He knew which way he would go; even now he was tired with the thought of the struggle; he sank into his shabby chair with a sigh of weariness; his hand stretched out instinctively for an easy volume. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... as any one else!" echoed Aimee, indignantly. "Nicer than Brown! You ought to be in leading-strings!" with pathetic hopelessness. "That was n't your only ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it. It's your own fault. After all that waiting, that hopelessness, I am now so happy! And happiness makes one selfish. ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... to the immense advantage Germany uniquely derived by completely organizing and keeping at work that vast majority of incurable mediocrities—mere plodders—who are found in every race and who often weigh down its destiny to the point of sinking hopelessness. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... moved against the rebels in the north (S171). Convinced of the hopelessness of holding out against his forces, they submitted. With their submission the long struggle of the barons against the Crown came to an end (SS124, 130). It had lasted ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... of sick. Milk ration[27] has been stopped since yesterday; new sorrow. Our Camp a veritable valley of desolation. For the very essence of sorrow and misery, come here! For weeping, wailing mothers, come here! For broken hearts, come here! For desperate misery and hopelessness, come here! What would become of us if we had not our Religion to fall back upon! What, if we had not the assurance that a Good and Merciful God reigns above! What if there was no Love! What, if there was no hope of the Resurrection and Life Everlasting! ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... seven thousand, painfully collected by the Prince of Orange, moved towards the place, under command of Hohenlo and John of Nassau, but struck with wonder at what they saw, the leaders recognized the hopelessness of attempting relief. Maestricht was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and Roger, with various queer-looking tools, were tinkering at the car here and there, and though they did not seem to be doing any good, yet they were evidently not discouraged, for they were whistling gaily, and now and then made jesting remarks about the hopelessness of ever moving ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... day wore on. Two rifles to one were now playing against his devoted company, which had had neither food nor drink since early morning. As he scanned his thinning line he saw a look of bloodlessness and hopelessness gathering on the set faces of which he had grown so fond during this ordeal. Some of the men were crouching too much for ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... duties required of them; besides, the prospect of gaining a belt—a mark of authority—is a strong inducement to good conduct on the part of the convict, and conduces much towards lightening, in the well disposed, the feeling of hopelessness that ever accompanies a sense of ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... a cynic; he was never a cynic, for that implies a certain corrupt fatigue about human affairs, whereas he was vibrating with virtue and energy. Nor would it be fair to call him even a sceptic, for that implies a dogma of hopelessness and definite belief in unbelief. But it would be strictly just to describe him at this time, at any rate, as a merely destructive person. He was one whose main business was, in his own view, the pricking of illusions, the stripping away ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... as is this amount of criminals who have been brought to justice, it is to be feared that many years must elapse before an evil so deeply rooted can be eradicated. The difficulty is increased by the utter hopelessness of reformation as regards the survivors. Their numbers are still calculated to amount to ten thousand persons, who, taking the average of three murders annually for each, as calculated by Captain Sleeman and other writers, murder every year thirty thousand of their fellow ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... selfish man fills his office with a malign atmosphere; his very presence chills like a cold, clammy day. Suspicious people fill all the circle in which they live with envy and jealousy. Moody men distribute gloom and depression; hopelessness drains off high spirits as cold iron draws the heat from the hand. Domineering men provoke rebellion ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... character of an Irish wake. There is nothing more heart-rending than their death wails. When the natives turn their eyes to the future world, they have a view cheerless enough of their own utter helplessness and hopelessness. They fancy themselves completely in the power of the disembodied spirits, and look upon the prospect of following them as the greatest of misfortunes. Hence they are constantly deprecating the wrath of departed souls, believing ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... degree should be the sufficient justification, with those who still hold her an accomplice in the death of Darnley and the marriage with Bothwell,—(considering the then lawless state of Scotland, the complicity of the leading nobles, the hopelessness of justice)—of ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... danger and apparent hopelessness of the attempt, without looking at the wild force of the water, and the grinding roll of the big wheel, without even waiting to fling off their coats—Julian and Kennedy, actuated by the strong instinct to save a fellow-creature's life, had both plunged into the mill-dam, and ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... she drew out the envelopes and cards. There was a permanent scent of sweet grass. She discovered nothing; she realized that her discovering anything depended solely upon hazard. Excitement ebbed, leaving nothing but hopelessness. She threw the cards and invitations into the basket. She might have known that visiting-cards and printed invitations are generally odorless. She sought the garden. The Angora was prowling around, watching the bees and butterflies ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... saw the hopelessness of it all. The horizon behind them swarmed with moving dots—dots that grew larger and more distinct with every fleeting minute. Garvey had obtained reenforcements, without doubt, for there seemed to be no end to ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... spoke with a sincere cynicism, an easy grimness that appeared quite dreadful to Ellen. The girl looked appealingly at her, asking her not to give the sanction of her impressive personality to such hopelessness about life, but had the ill luck to catch her in the act of a practical demonstration of her dislike for her fellow-creatures. Now that the train had puffed out of the station the station-master, a silver-haired old man with a red face on which amiability clung like a lather, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... would forever have remained unjustified, but whereby it is now abundantly vindicated. Since then, humanity has entered on a new phase of spiritual development, an evolution of higher faculties, the very existence of which in human nature our ancestors scarcely suspected. In place of the dreary hopelessness of the nineteenth century, its profound pessimism as to the future of humanity, the animating idea of the present age is an enthusiastic conception of the opportunities of our earthly existence, and the unbounded possibilities ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... inability to pay one of her former husband's claims brought to me a threat and an anonymous letter. I laid them before her, when a scene ensued which revealed the blindness of my folly in all its hideous hopelessness: she accused me of complicity in her divorce, and deception in regard to my own fortune. In a speech, whose language was a horrible revelation of her early habits, she offered to arrange a divorce from me as she had from her former husband. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... I am not surprised; for our harrowing experiences and the hopelessness of our situation and the wilfulness of Desiree were enough, Heaven knows, to jerk his nerves; but at the time I regarded his actions as those of a thoughtless fool, and told him so, thinking to divert his anger to myself. He took no ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... are the only man to lead the people, because you are the only man whose courage never fails. God knows how you manage it. I am of the bull-dog type and hold on because I do not know how to let go. Most of my work I do in utter hopelessness. But you, sir, you never come within a mile of despair. The blacker the clouds get the more confident you are that there is sunlight behind them. I carp and cavil at you, but I also take off my hat to you, for you are by far the greatest ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Easty and Elizabeth Proctor were also arrested. Mary Easty, sister of Mrs. Nurse, was tried and condemned. On her condemnation and sentence, she made an affective memorial while under sentence of death, and fully aware of the hopelessness of her case, addressing the judges, the magistrates and the reverend ministers, imploring them to consider what they were doing, and how far their course in regard to accused persons was inconsistent with the principles and ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... occupant of cot No. 11 with mingled feelings of pity and amazement—pity for the hopelessness of her case, now more apparent than ever; amazement at ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Gennesaret Jesus was encountered by a man whose suffering and nakedness are types of the anguish and shamelessness of sin. He could not be controlled; he was dwelling among the tombs, and these, too, are pictures of the helplessness and loneliness and hopelessness which evil passions produce. Most of all it is interesting to note that while the demon cried out in dread, the man drew near to Jesus, really hoping for help. The experience was like that of those who suffer ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... in her walk, and stood gazing at it longingly. To the exhausted, lonely, frightened child it seemed a beautiful sight. It was like a friendly smile, a kindly welcome reaching out to her in her hopelessness. ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... she sat by her window, looking out on the early April sunshine, trying, with the hopelessness of despair, to form some plan for her future. "Why didn't I have a grandmother to leave me an inheritance like Blanche and ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and reassuring in the demeanour of this strange being that Anne, convinced of the utter hopelessness of confronting the storm, as well as of the need of gathering strength, allowed herself to be placed in a chair, and to partake of the food set before her, and the tea, which was served without ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scholar in Europe, attempted indeed a translation of the travels of Fahian, a Buddhist pilgrim, who visited India about the end of the fourth century after Christ. It was in many respects a most valuable work, but the hopelessness of reducing the uncouth Chinese terms to their Sanskrit originals made it most tantalising to look through its pages. Who was to guess that Ho-kia-lo was meant for the Sanskrit Vyakarana, in the sense of sermons; Po-to for the Sanskrit Avadana, parables; Kia-ye-i for the Sanskrit Kasyapiyas, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... herself far more interested in the people, their customs and living conditions than in the treasures of art. "It is good for our young civilization," she wrote Daniel, "to see and study that of the old world and observe the hopelessness of lifting the masses into freedom and freedom's industry, honesty and integrity. How any American, any lover of our free institutions, based on equality of rights for all, can settle down and live here is more than I can comprehend. It will only be by overturning ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... doorway death stands ready to strike. In the murky light of little rooms filled with thick air child-life has struggled into existence; up and down their narrow stairs patient endurance and passive hopelessness ever pass and repass. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... accidentally met Alice in Washington, there had never been a wavering of his purpose. She was the one girl to him among the many he met during the social rounds into which he had plunged while living in New York. He had been undaunted by her attitude, undismayed by the seeming hopelessness of it all—but now her very sympathy proved to him the necessity of at last giving up the one great hope upon which he had set his heart. The pain at separating from his chief, while of a different nature, was no less keen. Mr. Gorham still stood to ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... gasped, making a little gesture of hopelessness. "When the sun shines are not the flowers open? But when the night hath come where are the flowers? The deer feed on sweet pastures, but when the shadow of the lion falleth upon the grass hath not a great cloud ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... for whom he periled so much, into what depths of hopelessness and woe are they again plunged! But the deeper and blacker for the loss of their dearly sought and new-found freedom. How long must wrongs like these go unredressed? "How long, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still |
