"Despair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an ecstasy descending from the stars, welling up in her own heart, and she had shivered with fear and had dropped with weariness akin to despair. Now suddenly all emotions were upgathered into searing anger. Her thought was: "He will take the meat from me! The meat I have brought for Mark." She grew rigid in her tracks. She jerked up her rifle in front of her; her tired eyes hardened. She ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... smothered ejaculation of bitter disappointment Frobisher recoiled a few steps in sheer despair, bringing up rather sharply against the iron-plated door through which he had just emerged; and the next instant he realised that he was doubly trapped. Escape was cut off in front of him by that broken glass, and he had been in such haste to get away ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... regained her composure and her proud calmness. She had to overcome even this great grief, and the heart of the queen had not yet been broken. She still loved, she still hoped. She owed it to her husband and children not to despair, and better days might come even yet. "We must keep up courage," she said, "to live till the dawn ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... educated, handsome, a perfectly honest woman, and a sound Protestant. Quite the reverse of Lord Fleetwood's seeking to escape her, it is she who flies; she cannot forgive him his cruelties and infidelities: and that is the reason why he threatens to commit the act of despair. Only she can save him! She has flown for refuge to her uncle, Lord Levellier's house at a place named Croridge—not in the gazetteer—hard of access and a home of poachers, where shooting goes on hourly; but most picturesque and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cavalry had now passed the defile, and were no longer visible on the platform. The Mochuelo turned away and walked in the direction of the bivouac, and Herrera mechanically followed him, rage and despair in his heart. When out of earshot of the sentries the guerilla paused, and, leaning his back against a tree, folded his arms on his breast. His features, still pale, had assumed an expression of calm dignity, strongly contrasting with the hushed and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... none of his chagrin and grief to show in his face. He would not allow any Indian or renegade to see him in despair or in anything bordering upon it. He merely sat motionless, staring into the fire, his face without expression. Henry had escaped once from the Wyandots. Perhaps it was a feat that could not be repeated a second time—indeed all the chances were against it—but in spite of ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nerves, and made his heart beat. Then he wished to abstract himself, and cling especially to the meaning of that sorrowful plaint, in which the fallen being calls upon its God with groans and lamentations. Those cries of the third verse came back to him, wherein calling on his Saviour in despair from the bottom of the abyss, man, now that he knows he is heard, hesitates ashamed, knowing not what to say. The excuses he has prepared appear to him vain, the arguments he has arranged seem to him of no effect, and he stammers forth; "If Thou, O Lord, shalt ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... wildly upon my face—she stretched out her arms as though to clasp me; then, in the agony of her despair, she cast herself at length and grovelled upon ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... are allowed to vote, see that your names are put on the lists of voters, and go to the polls. If you are not strong enough to choose a man of your own color, give your votes to those who are friendly to your cause; but, if possible, elect intelligent and respectable colored men. I do not despair of seeing the time when our State and National Assemblies will contain a fair proportion of colored representatives—especially if the proposed college at New Haven goes into successful operation. Will you despair now so many champions are ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... wear. When the world frowns on you and everything seems to go wrong, possess your soul in patience and hope for the dawn of a brighter day. It will come. The sun is always shining behind the darkest clouds. When you get your manuscripts back again and again, don't despair, nor think the editor cruel and unkind. He, too, has troubles of his own. Keep up your spirits until you have made the final test and put your talents to a last analysis, then if you find you cannot get ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... what his right hand was doing. One fact, however, has been so often mentioned, that it is violating no sanctity of private life to repeat it here. He was the first to discover the excellence of Greenough and to make that sculptor known to his countrymen. "Fenimore Cooper saved me from despair," wrote the latter in 1833, "after my second return to Italy. He employed me as I wished to be employed; and has up to this moment been a (p. 082) father to me in kindness." To this generosity, it is to be added that his sense of personal honor was of the loftiest kind. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... a long, well-oiled affair with a coat of red, discarded house paint on its framework, had come to grief in a collision with Brown's, one sunny afternoon. Even Silvey, the optimist, who had furnished the motive power, had looked at the wreckage in well-founded despair. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... replied, "Strike sail? Come and do it yourself!" At once the English guns cut down his masts and rigging, while a perfect hail of arrows prevented the Spaniards from clearing the wreckage away. Don Anton's crew began running below, and when, in despair of making sail, he looked overside, there was gigantic Tom Moone, at the head of the boarders, climbing out of the pinnace. Then Anton struck his flag, was taken aboard the Golden Hind, and, with all his crew, given a splendid banquet ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... existed drunkenness, debauchery, and profligacy, which he attributed to the debasing nature of their employment as at present exercised; he had found the same vices among the poorer class of people who ought to be muffin consumers; and this he attributed to the despair engendered by their being placed beyond the reach of that nutritious article, which drove them to seek a false stimulant in intoxicating liquors. He would undertake to prove before a committee of the House of Commons, that there existed a combination to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... proudest one there, Was driven almost to the verge of despair, Because she had met with a simple mishap, And upset the ...
— The Nursery, December 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 6 • Various
... talk like that!" he said sharply. "We're going to beat this thing! We've got to! And being desperate helps, but being in despair doesn't ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... passions are all storm and tumult; nothing of the finer passions of the sex, which, if naturally drawn, will distinguish themselves from the masculine passions, by a softness that will even shine through rage and despair. Her character is made up of deceit and disguise. She has no virtue; is all pride; and her devil is as much within her, as ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Love in its alloyed form of friendship is its efficacious shape for universal use. Pure love, which poor humanity is always reaching out its hands for, simply—as George Sand said—simply tears people to pieces without doing them any good. The result is tragedy, despair, wrecked lives, death before one's time. We see that everywhere depicted in fiction, in the drama, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... begins such a bombardment of Havre and the flat-bottomed manufactories as was quite surprising. Fifty-two incessant hours of it, before he thought poor Havre had enough. Poor Havre had been on fire six times; the flat manufactory (unquenchable) I know not how many; all the inhabitants off in despair; and the Garrison building this battery to no purpose, then that; no salvation for them but in Rodney's 'mortars getting too hot.' He had fired of shells 1,900, of carcasses, 1,150: from Wednesday about sunrise till Friday about 8 A.M.,—about ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... despair seemed to have fallen on the party. Nobody spoke. The children looked blank, the dogs whined, the camel put on his haughtiest sneer, and the parrot fidgeted in his ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... Dutch ship, and consequently began to retire in all haste. The ship followed our patache, but as the latter was as swift as a bird it made so much headway in a short time that the ship abandoned the chase in despair. Our patache continued to retire toward Manila, where it arrived June 6, having lost fifteen men, who died of sickness, among them a Franciscan religious who was aboard. Consequently, our galleons were left without any patache, for one patache came in with the Siamese ship and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... nervous," he replied. "Whew! Don't, Polly! Don't flourish your spoon, or you'll go over sideways. Don't tilt up your legs when you laugh, Polly, or you'll go over backwards. Whew! Polly, Polly, Polly," said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to despair, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... eagerly cut down the unresisting fugitives. Gates, with some of the militia general officers, made several attempts to rally them, but in vain. The further they fled the more they dispersed, and Gates in despair hastened with a few friends to Charlotte, eighty miles from ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... fierce eddies, the moaning wind burst into shrieks and exhaled more ardent and still more malignant breath. The pilgrim could no longer sustain himself.[15] Faith, courage, devotion deserted him with his failing energies. He strove no longer with his destiny, he delivered himself up to despair and death. He fell upon one knee with drooping head, supporting himself by one quivering hand, and then, full of the anguish of baffled purposes and lost affections, raising his face and arm to heaven, thus to the elements he poured ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... be made to pay for the upkeep of the camps: in other words, that we should turn the Colonials into slave raiders and slave-drivers (but save them the expense of buying the slaves), the only thing that stands between us and despair is the thought that Heaven has never yet failed us. We remember how African women have at times shed tears under similar injustices; and how when they have been made to leave their fields with their hoes on their shoulders, their tears on evaporation have drawn fire ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... I went. Sure I went." He rubbed his delicate hands together in his glee. His eyes sparkled again with rising excitement. But Eve forgot her fears for him now; she was interested. She was lifted out of her own despair by his evident joy, and waited for him to ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... The rebellious Sepoys marched on Delhi. When the rebel troops came up from Meerut the English officers prepared to meet them. Their Sepoys joined the mutineers. The revolt spread throughout Delhi. In despair, Willoughby blew up the fort with 1,500 rebels who were assaulting it. Only four of his command escaped. Willoughby himself died six weeks afterward, while India and Europe were ringing with his name. Fifty Englishmen whom the rebels had captured were butchered ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... escape from its fiery bed, and the loud and awful noises by which they were at times accompanied, suggested the idea that some imprisoned monsters were trying to release themselves from their bondage, with shrieks and groans, and cries of agony and despair, at the futility ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... the window still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child in the spring. What was the winter to her now! Nothing but a step towards joy. The world was all broken up and made new. The prairie, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Pettingrew is no "Mrs. Alving." She is a plain, hard-featured woman who takes in sewing for a living, and she is quite unlettered, but she is a general in the army of spiritual forces. She does not despair, she does not give up like the half-hearted mother in "Ghosts," she does not waste her strength in concealments; she stands up to her enemy and fights. She fought the wild beast in Nelse's father, hand to hand, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition, fortune—he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was to save her from despair ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... contempt is that they are unconscious dupes of the demiurge whereas he, aware of its ways and its devices, employs it almost as if it were some hippogriff bridled by him in Elysian pastures and respectfully entertained in a snug Virginian stable. His attitude toward romance suggests a cheerful despair: he despairs of ever finding anything truer than romance and so contents himself with Poictesme and its tributaries. The favorite themes of romance being relatively few, he has not troubled greatly to increase them; war and love in the main ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... prophets of hope and of victory. The dark message of defeat and despair has also had its full expression. Satiety with material good, disappointment of inward joy, the loss of the old objects of adoration and trust, have inspired utterances in every key of gloom, impotence, despondency ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... she was indeed undone, and began to fight with the recklessness of despair. "I don't believe you!" she cried, reckless that she was committing herself. "That old spy, Hagar, has fancied these things. How could you ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Berrot is considered an excellent player on the contra-bass, although beginning its practice only a few years ago, and at an age when most persons would despair of acquiring a knowledge of ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... of all hypocritical coverings, and she saw and understood me. What a scene! To discover in the one she had revered and worshipped so long her moral assassin! To stand face to face and have the dreadful truth suddenly revealed! The darkness of despair gathered around her brow; an agony, like that which finds no comforter, was stamped on her face; and with these a hate, a horror, a contempt, mingled triumphantly. The door opened,—it was closed,—and my wife was lost to me forever. I essayed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... to Stepan in despair. He picked up Mumu, and flung her promptly outside the door, just at Gerasim's feet, and half an hour later a profound stillness led in the house, and the old lady sat on her sofa looking blacker than ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... through the crowded streets with the friend and monitor of his childhood, confiding the simple tale of his earlier trials,—when, amidst the wreck of fortune and in despair of fame, the Child-angel smiled by his side, like Hope,—all renown seemed to him so barren, all the future so dark! His voice trembled, and his countenance became so sad, that his benignant listener, divining that around ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the affirmative, had a bath, and changed, and sat down to one of the daintily prepared dinners which were the envy and despair of his bachelor friends. It was really an admirable little dinner; the claret was a famous one from the Anglemere cellars, and warmed to a nicety; the coffee was perfection; Sparling's ministrations left nothing to be desired; and yet Drake sank into his easy-chair ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... at this, led Mimi away. One parting look she threw upon Claude, full of utter despair, and then, leaning upon the arm of ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... of twelve Bjoernson was sent to the Latin school at Molde, where, however, his progress was not encouraging. He was one of those thoroughly healthy and headstrong boys who are the despair of ambitious mothers, and whom fathers (when the futility of educational chastisement has been finally proved) are apt to regard with a resigned and half-humorous regret. His dislike of books was instinctive, hearty, and uncompromising. His strong, half-savage boy-nature ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... such as we are going to try to describe to you; possibly with the same effect upon yourself as the one we have to confess to in our own case—namely, that you have been left face to face with a problem to which you have never been able to supply a solution. You have given up a conundrum in despair, and no one has told you ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... saved or served it. The faith of the fathers was a mighty force in its creation, and the faith of their descendants has wrought its progress and furnished its defenders. They are obstructionists who despair, and who would destroy confidence in the ability of our people to solve wisely and for civilization the mighty problems resting upon them. The American people, intrenched in freedom at home, take their love for it with them wherever they go, and they reject as mistaken ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... also, taken off my boots, they fastened the door of my cage, without saying a word, and left me to myself. The thought that I was separated from my comrades, overcame me, and I threw myself on the ground in despair. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... half-starved woman got hold of her. Measure for measure, pang for pang, what torture, what insults, what degradation, could atone for the life that was suffered in this miserable room? And for the life of "that girl downstairs" who had given up in despair? ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... his fellow-horsemen had survived that marvellous enterprise of valour and despair. Of the fifty knights who had shared its perils, eleven only gained the wood; and, though in this number the most eminent (save Sir John Coniers, either slain or fled) might be found, their horses, more exposed than themselves, were for the most part wounded and unfit for ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Indians, seeming to despair of destroying the beleaguered party before succor might arrive, began to draw off, and on the fourth wholly disappeared. The men were by this time nearly famished for food. Even now there was nothing to be had except horse-meat from the carcasses of the animals killed ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... finally to two and a half. I have in my possession one of his laundry lists of that period; a glance at it will show the scrupulous care which he bestowed upon his person. Well do I remember the dawning hopes of those days, alternating with the gloomiest despair. Each Saturday I opened his bundle with a trembling eagerness to catch the first signs of a return of his love. I helped my friend in every way that I could. His shirts and collars were masterpieces of my art, though my hand often shook with agitation as I applied the starch. She was a brave noble ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... paused, for she thought she heard footsteps approaching, and then exclaimed anxiously: "I am waiting—expecting. Perhaps Antony cannot escape from the paralyzing grasp of despair. To fight the last battle without him, and yet under the gaze of his wrathful, gloomy eyes, once so full of sunshine, would be the greatest sorrow of my life. Archibius, I may confess this to you, the friend ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of twelve. On Sundays and holidays they were always arm in arm. It seemed strange that now he should have to hide the thing that Amedee was so proud of, that the feeling which gave one of them such happiness should bring the other such despair. It was like that when Alexandra tested her seed-corn in the spring, he mused. From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... not in a mood to obey authority. "There's something behind this and I propose to be let in on it! Stop, you!" He pushed Mayo back, but the latter's face did not change its expression of dull, blank, utter despair which saw not and heard not. Mayo recovered himself and came on again, looking ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... weeps, unconsoled, So desolate is her gloom; But a voice falls softly through the air, Whispering comfort to her despair, 'Love here ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... in its blessed ray All thought of hopeless sorrow flies, Despair and anguish melt away Where'er its healing beams arise. How dark our sinful world would be— A flowerless desert, dry and drear! Did not this light, O God, from thee Its gloom ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... in allegorical designs, the rather to be represented with such things that might suggest hope than such as convey a cold and grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one? They fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant twitter or ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... back against his shoulder with all its wealth of rippling hair—the fragile form he clasped was helpless, lifeless, breathless!—and with a great shuddering sob of agony, he realised the full measure of his life's despair. Innocent was dead!—and for her, as for the "Sieur Amadis," the quaint words shining above her in the morning ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... speech to Henrietta, little thinking what anguish it would cause. Henrietta had very little pride, very little proper pride some people might have said; she did not at all mind giving a great deal more than she got. But this speech, which was not, after all, so very malignant, drove her to despair. She went to Miranda, who hugged her, and said: "Old cat! barbaric old cat! Never think of her again, she isn't worth it. Try dear little Stanley, he's a pet; men are much ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... and tried to spread the clothes on the bed with her beak; but as fast as she pulled them up one side, they slipped off the other, and at last she gave up in despair. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... unattainable by him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his original, in order to make some amends for the general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to encourage idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand; who talk of Poetry as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely about a taste for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and looked about him in shivering despair. He found that he had been lying upon the verge of a fissure in the ground, such as are often ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... too, with the relief the stranger's words brought him. The best he had dared to hope for when the knock came was the news that Mona's body had been washed in. The revulsion of feeling from despair to joy sent him reeling ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... all the sufferings we endured upon our return. My uncle bore them like a man who has been in the wrong—that is, with concentrated and suppressed anger; Hans, with all the resignation of his pacific character; and I—I confess that I did nothing but complain, and despair. I had no heart for this ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... yet the violence of his passion told him that genuine love, if not the basis on which it was founded, had been the certain consequence. With a strict scrutiny into his heart he sought this knowledge, but arrived at it with a regret that amounted to despair. ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... despair, and all sat and thought a great while. It was growing late in the day, and Mrs. Peterkin hadn't had her cup of coffee. At last Elizabeth Eliza said, "They say that the lady from Philadelphia, who is staying in town, is very wise. Suppose I go and ask her what ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... time with her camera operations and a less determined person would have given up in despair. The natives were so shy and suspicious that it was well-nigh impossible to bribe them to stand for a second and it was only after three hours of aggravating work in the stifling heat and dust that she at last ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... which so frequently occurs in the printed letters under the name of "rubila"? It is evidently a secret remedy, and, so far as I know, has not yet been made out. I had almost given it up in despair, when I found what appears to be a key to the mystery. In the vast multitude of prescriptions contained in the manuscripts, most of them written in symbols, I find one which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... gentlest manner / did his guests attend: The land around with stranger / was crowded, and with friend. They bade the sorely wounded / nurse with especial care: Whereby the knights high-hearted / 'neath all their wounds knew not despair. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... in a state of despair. But Elena's eyes aroused in him a sweet agitation for a new love. His wearied heart thirsted, and ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... thought came upon me which wrung my heart. The Governor! How could this unfortunate man exist? With a precipice on one side of his house and a potato-field on the other, what could save him from despair and self-destruction? This question was answered for me when I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... effect that was entirely satisfactory to me, and had failed to reach just what I wanted. One day, however, I was at work on a portrait that I was very particular with, but the background of which proved quite unsatisfactory to me. In despair I threw on a handful of pumice stone, intending to entirely remove the background by its aid, when, to my surprise and delight, I found I was producing the very effect that I had been seeking for years, namely, one rendering the background of a different ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... spectral shapes. And yet there is a wonderful, hidden significance in this uncanny scenery. The reader feels that the wild, fantasmal imagery is in itself a kind of language, and that it in some way expresses a brooding thought or passion, the terror and despair of a lost soul. Sometimes there is an obvious allegory, as in the Haunted Palace, which is the parable of a ruined mind, or in the Raven, the most popular of all Poe's poems, originally published in the American Whig Review for February, 1845. Sometimes the meaning is more obscure, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and ill-fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him he had been set on shore by an American privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught, stripped of everything. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of despair as arose! such mutual abuse as broke out all round! till, just at that moment, Wade cried, "I have one!" when all attention was turned to him. Slowly he draws it up. We were all watching. But 'twas a ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... romantic design of collecting together the portraits of his school friends, we see the natural working of an ardent and disappointed heart, which, as the future began to darken upon it, clung with fondness to the recollections of the past; and, in despair of finding new and true friends, saw no happiness but in preserving all it could of the old. But even here, his sensibility had to encounter one of those freezing checks, to which feelings, so much above the ordinary temperature of the world, are but too constantly exposed;—it being ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... anything more could be said, a shout, almost of despair, arose from those who were working ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... tail down between his legs. A woman called to him and tried to stop him, but he only dodged her and ran faster, until he came to a wide street full of shops, and here people walking about, and carriages and cabs driving past, and he got quite bewildered; and then, just when he was in despair, a policeman caught hold of him and looked for his collar. Now, the silly little dog had not got his collar on. Ethel had taken it off that morning to rub up his name and address, and make them look nice and bright, and when she ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... I were to be married myself, I should despair ever being able to describe a wedding so well as you have done: had I known your talent before, I would have desired an epithalamium. I believe the Princess[1] will have more beauties bestowed on her by the occasional poets, than even a painter would afford her. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... malignity. The fair humanities of the old religion were fair only in shape and exterior. The old pagan gods were friendly only to kings, heroes, and grandees; they had no beatitude for the poor and lowly. Human despair, under their dispensation, knew no alleviation but a plunge from light and life into the underworld, —rather than be monarch of which, the shade of Achilles avers, in the "Odusseia," that it would prefer to be the hireling and drudge of some poor earthly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... had been hidden. Then she began to feel the imprisonment and silence telling upon her, for the old woman only entered to bring in her meals, and never opened her lips, except on the first occasion, when she told her that she was strictly forbidden to converse with her. After that she began to despair, and the news that her abductor would visit her, the next day, decided her to make an attempt to escape. She had no difficulty in letting herself down from the window by the aid of her bedclothes, but she found that what had been said respecting the wall and gate was true, and that ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... earnestness in sustaining a strict morality. Fragments of this projected work reappeared in his lectures on Louis XIV., and in his last publication on the Casuists. The lectures betray the decline of the tranquil idealism which had been the admiration and despair of friends. Opposition to Rome had made him, like his ultramontane allies in France, more indulgent to the ancient Gallican enemy. He now had to expose the vice of that system, which never roused the king's conscience, and served for sixty years, from the remonstrance of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Kennedy's diary: "It was many years ago that I found Poe in Baltimore in a state of starvation. I gave him clothing, free access to my table, and the use of a horse for exercise whenever he chose; in fact, I brought him up from the very verge of despair." ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... kiblahs of our prayer have weight to solace our despair,[30] But they are potent by their care for ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... compelled our men by torture to confess where his frigate and ships were." To the disheartened folk about him it seemed that all hope of returning home was now gone, for they made no doubt that the ships were by this time destroyed. Some of them flung down their gold in despair, while all felt something of the general panic. The Maroons recommended that the march should be made by land, "though it were sixteen days' journey," promising them that, if the ships were taken, they might sojourn among them in the forest as long as they wished. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... of life are spent, Yet hope still battles with despair; Will Heaven not yield when knees are bent? Answer, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some of the leading points of his argument take the form of digressions. The thought of this discourse is that death is no part of the natural order of the universe, but is introduced into the world by the wickedness of men. The author imagines a monologue of the wicked, led by despair of aught beyond the grave to a life of luxury and oppression. Another imaginary monologue expresses the feelings of the same wicked men as they awaken from death to the life beyond. But as a digression between these two monologues the author ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... gold of Peru. Soon after his return to Darien he received letters from Zamudio, informing him that Enciso had complained to the king, and had obtained a sentence condemning Balboa and summoning him to Spain. In his despair at this message Vasco Nunez resolved to attempt some great enterprise, the success of which he trusted would conciliate his sovereign. On the 1st of September 1513 he set out with one hundred and ninety Spaniards (Francisco Pizarro among them) and one thousand natives; on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... abuse of that put the drop of savage blood in motion, till the Spaniards began to regard their women with indiscriminate desire. That was the first outrage for which a Spanish life had to atone. But neither treachery nor cruelty lurked beneath their flowery ways; it was sullen despair which broke their gayety, brief spasms of wrath followed by melancholy. But they could not keep their ideas well enough in hand to lay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... belonged to the kennel. He lay on the ground, his head on his paws, and his eyes fixed on the child; and whenever she made the slightest movement he growled in the fiercest manner. No wonder she uttered cries of dread and despair. ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... reclaim him as peer of the kingdom of France; but Louis, much disturbed by the loss of the battle of Garigliano, which robbed him of the kingdom of Naples, had enough to do with his own affairs without busying himself with his cousin's. So the prisoner was beginning to despair, when one day as he broke his bread at breakfast he found a file and a little bottle containing a narcotic, with a letter from Michelotto, saying that he was out of prison and had left Italy for Spain, and now lay in hiding with ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Irma and I sat together in the jutting window, where, as the night darkened and the curtains of the clouds drew down to meet the sombre tree-tops, a kind of black despair came over me. Would "King George" really do any good? Would I prove myself stout and brave when the moment came? Would the beacon we had prepared really burn, and, supposing it did, would any one see it, drowned ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... money and convention, his passion for the things of the mind, his contempt for the mode, whether in dress or politics, his light evasions of the red tape of life as of something that no one could reasonably expect of a vagabond like himself—these things presently transformed a woman in despair to a woman in revolt. She fell in love with an intensity befitting her true temperament, and with a stubbornness that bore witness to the dreary failure of her marriage. Marriott Dalrymple returned her love, and nothing in his view of life predisposed him to put what probably ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arms, And England pouring on her foes. Such a war had such a close. Again their ravening eagle rose In anger, wheel'd on Europe shadowing wings, And barking for the thrones of kings; Till one that sought but duty's iron crown, On that loud Sabbath shook the spoiler down; A day of onsets, of despair! Dashed on every rocky square Their surging charges foamed themselves away; Last the Prussian trumpet blew; Thro' the long tormented air Heaven flashed a sudden jubilant ray, And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... "I have been in despair, all day, that I cannot save the life of one who saved mine. I have told Mahmud that my honour is concerned, and that I would give my life for yours. Months ago, he would have braved the anger of all his army for me, but he has changed much of late. It ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... measured the distance to the helpless lad with a practised eye, and groaned in despair. "They'll fall short by a dozen feet," he murmured hopelessly. "God forgive me, for bringing him ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... frocks for Miss Lethbridge; whereupon that young lady cast such a comical glance of despair at me—a glance which I think was involuntary—that it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. I saw so well what was in her mind! And if you will believe me, O'Hagan, I volunteered to go ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... numerous tracks of the kangaroo were observed in all directions. Fish were abundant, but none were caught. Before returning on board we visited two other places in the bay to make further search for water, but with no better success; and we began to despair of finding any upon ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... out through the gloom, over the heads of such as were on the hill within hearing of the dying man, a cry of despair, if not reproach: ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... came, and Rome had recovered her ascendency, the Gauls were faithful to Hannibal; and when at length he was forced to return to Africa, the Gallic bands, whether from despair or attachment, followed him thither. In the year 200 B.C., at the famous battle of Zama, which decided matters between Rome and Carthage, they again formed a third of the Carthaginian army, and showed that they were, in the words of Livy, "inflamed by that innate hatred towards the Romans which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... simple, terrible statement, was repeated in some lucid interval. After overwhelming us with proofs of the reign of Death, and transferring to us his intense urgency and emotion; and after shrieking, as if in despair, these words, "Death is a tremendous necessity,"—he suddenly looked beyond us as if into some distant region, and cried out, "Behold a mightier!—who is this? He cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, glorious in his apparel, speaking in righteousness, travelling ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 1917, General Kornilov, commanding the Petrograd garrison, gave up his efforts in despair and handed in his resignation, on account of "the interference of certain organizations with the discipline of his troops." Generals Gurko and Brussilov also sent in their resignations, and a few days later Minister of War and Marine ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... get out the drawing the latter boy had made from the lines on the ring, and they would study over it a long time, but they always found it baffling, and they finally gave up in despair. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... she cried in despair. "I couldn't have dreamed those tools fell down, and yet where could they have gone? There's no hole in ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... Paris for their finery; but I think our taste in men is generally good. We like our philosophers; we like our poets; we like our genuine workmen;—but we love our heroes. I would have you a hero, Paul.' He got up from his chair and walked about the room in an agony of despair. To be told that he was expected to be a hero at the very moment in his life in which he felt more devoid of heroism, more thoroughly given up to cowardice than he had ever been before, was not to be endured! And ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Shih-yin was in despair, but all he could do was to stamp his feet and heave deep sighs. After consulting with his wife, they betook themselves to a farm of theirs, where they took up their quarters temporarily. But as it happened that water had of late years ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... rose. Her wild black eyes looked upward, with an expression of despair so defiant and so horrible in its silent agony that the Doctor turned away his head, unable to endure the sight of it. The bare idea of taking anything from her—not money only, but anything even that she had touched—suddenly revolted him. Still without looking at her, he said, 'Take ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... said Nikolaus's father, the judge, "and despair will take away their courage and their energies. We have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... meet hers squarely. They shifted, sidelong and bloodshot. But she might have read in them something of despair, something of sullenness, something of shame, but mostly she could have seen a plea for mercy, and ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Morton did not despair. As the first of January and Emancipation Day approached, he arrayed his hosts, and the fight for supremacy became fiercer than ever. The school-teacher is giving you a pretty hard brought the school-children in for chorus ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... substantiated facts by which Mr. Steele's claims upon Mrs. Packard were annulled and Bess restored to her rights, if not to her false husband's heart and affections. There are times, though, when I do not even despair of the latter; constant illness is producing a perceptible change in the man, and it seemed to me, from what Mrs. John Brainard told me one day after she had been able, through the kindness of the Misses Quinlan, to place ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... and style of review literature have changed greatly since its inception, when each quarterly gloried in the character of a literary ogre, and dead men's bones lay round its doors, as erst about the castle of Giant Despair. Authors are not now thrown to the wild beasts for the entertainment of the multitude, as in former days; and had John Keats, or even poor Henry Kirke White, written and published fifty years later, they would never have perished by the critic's pen. Yet the same malignant ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... on her father. Just for a moment the sick sense of bewilderment and despair seemed to crush her altogether. She had realized her sentence in a flash—that the home that meant all the world to her, and from which Heaven only differed in that Mother was there, was to be changed for a new, strange world that would be empty ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... lost darling day after day; And, Cleo, my daughter, don't mind if it's true, But I reckon I've guessed about Archie and you! And the Lord knows our burdens are grievous to bear, But there's still a bright edge to my cloud of despair, And somehow I hear, like a tune in my head: "The boys are coming! The ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... notwithstanding all I can say to him, he does nothing but idle away his time in the streets, as you saw him, without considering he is no longer a child; and if you do not make him ashamed of it, I despair of his ever coming to any good. For my part, I am resolved, one of these days, to turn him out of doors, and let ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... gently urged on his old horse, and we proceeded through an infinite silence broken only at intervals by the plaintive cry of a bird, sad even unto death. I murmured this prayer in my heart: "My God, God of Mercy, save me from despair and after so many transgressions, let me not commit the one sin Thou dost not forgive." Then I saw the sun, red and rayless, blood-hued, descending on the horizon, as it were, the sacred Host, and remembering the divine Sacrifice of Calvary, I felt hope enter into my soul. For some time longer ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... with a gesture of despair. "What could a fellow do? And I'll bet Winnie cooks fish so ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... have seen had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to despair. It was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly. I maintain that she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I might have been a little kinder to her. But ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... those shallow natures to which the tragedy of life is impossible. He was disappointed—angry at the turn which affairs had taken; but he was not reduced to despair. To take things easily had been his complete code of morals and philosophy from earliest boyhood. He was not going to break his heart for any woman, were she the loveliest, the cleverest, the noblest that ever the gods endowed with their choicest gifts. She might be ever so fair, but if she were ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... learning, and the depth and suggestiveness of its thought; and how he determined that it was his special mission to introduce its ideas to the British public. But how was this to be done? As a mere bald abstract of the original would never do, the would-be apostle was for a time in despair. But at length the happy thought occurred to him of combining a condensed statement of the main principles of the new philosophy with some account of the philosopher's life and character. Thus the work took the form of a "Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdroeckh," and as such it ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... entertainment of the Sultan and his court. At the conclusion it was asked, which of the pieces he preferred. He replied, the first, which was accordingly recommenced, but stopped, as not being the right one. Others were tried with as little success, until at length the band, almost in despair of discovering the favourite air, began tuning their instruments, when his highness instantly exclaimed, "Inshallah, heaven be praised, that is it!" The Turkish prince may be excused, when it is known that at the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... immense riches, and leads a life of continual pleasure. What has he done to obtain from thee a lot so agreeable? And what have I done to deserve one so wretched?" Having finished his expostulation, he struck his foot against the ground, like a man absorbed in grief and despair. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... kingcraft and all the other mouldy and rank-smelling relics of the dark ages. The press is the arch apostle of civilization, progress, and truth—the Greatheart, whose mission it is to combat and destroy the giants Pope and Pagan, Maul and Despair, and all other misleaders and oppressors of men. Language itself might be exhausted before all that could be said in favor of the uses, benefits, and value of the press had found fitting expression. The greatest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... peculiarly precious in the rusty, dusty, tar-trickled, fishy, phosphorescent brown of an old boat, and when this has just dipped under a wave and rises to the sunshine it is enough to drive Giorgione to despair. I have never seen any effort at this by Stanfield; his boats always look new painted and clean; witness especially the one before the ship in the wreck picture above noticed; and there is some such absence of a right sense of color ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... who afterwards related many curious anecdotes of them. There were sincere and honest men among them, who, with the energy of their national character, and enthusiasm for liberty, had plunged into the desperate cause of the rebellion two years before, and did not, even then, despair of freedom and equality in Ireland. Some of them were in private life most amiable persons, and their fate was altogether entitled to sympathy. The poet, from that compassionate feeling which is an amiable characteristic of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... of the expedition. From the moment that he realized to himself the fact of the entire inability of his fleet to cope with that of the Greeks, Xerxes made up his mind to return with all haste to Asia. From over-confidence he fell into the opposite extreme of despair, and made no effort to retrieve his ill fortune. His fleet was ordered to sail straight for the Hellespont, and to guard the bridges until he reached them with his army. He himself retreated hastily along the same road by which he had advanced, his whole army accompanying ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... heart-burnings kindled over the grave of buried love. But oh, how much more agonizing it is to bend over the dying bed of an impenitent, ruined child! And especially if, in that terrible moment, he turns his eyes, wild with despair and ominous of curses, upon the parents, and ascribes his ruin to their neglect! Let me ask you, would not this part of that sad drama add to your cup of bitterness, give a fearful emphasis to all your sighs, and burnings to ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... was naething else for it, so I lets drive at them wi' the grit-shot, thinking to ding them baith at ance. I killed the sma' ane dead enough; but the auld one, she lets a roar that amaist deeved me, and at me she comes like a tiger. I was that frighted, sir, I did na ken what to do; but in despair I just held out the muzzle o' the fusee to fend her off, and I believe that saved my life, for she gripped it atween her teeth, dang me o'er the braid o' my back, and off she set, trailing me through the bushes like a tether-stick; for some way or ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale |
