"Hopeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tragedies. We are made conscious at once of some power which is to influence the whole action to the hero's undoing. In Macbeth we see and hear the Witches, in Hamlet the Ghost. In the first scene of Julius Caesar and of Coriolanus those qualities of the crowd are vividly shown which render hopeless the enterprise of the one hero and wreck the ambition of the other. It is the same with the hatred between the rival houses in Romeo and Juliet, and with Antony's infatuated passion. We realise them ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... for half a dozen doctors, but they on their arrival had found that the case was hopeless. Three of the doctors had accordingly gone away, but the other three had ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... it, madam. I am telling you the truth, whether you believe me or not." There was a pause; my lady looked perplexed, and somewhat ruffled; Mr. Gray as though hopeless and wearied out. "Then, my lady," said he, at last, rising as he spoke, "you can suggest nothing to ameliorate the state of things which, I do assure you, does exist on your lands, and among your tenants. Surely, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... self-support. It appears to assume that the present inability for successful production is inherent and permanent, and is more likely to increase than to be gradually overcome; yet in spite of this it proposes, by the exercise of the lawmaking power, to sustain that interest and to impose it in hopeless perpetuity as a tax upon the competent and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... alone,—they, the herd, who cry "Madman!" when any worker and his work which they cannot comprehend rise before them. In the great moment when, after years of climbing, I stood victorious on the summit, they claimed that I had fallen to the chasm's depths, and confined me here at Staunton as a hopeless lunatic. This heart of mine, burning with the grandest discovery ever made, must throb itself away in a cell, because it could not contain its high knowledge, but went forth among men once more to mingle ideal rays with their sunshine, and make every wind, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... surrounding the masts, from which still floated that flag which, professing to be the flag of freedom, has so often protected that traffic which has carried thousands upon thousands of the human race into hopeless and abject slavery. The seamen instinctively gave a cheer as they saw it disappear ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... in hopeless embarrassment, and even the men who had been chuckling most openly were sorry for him. That the captain had reason to be dissatisfied with the second mate's work, we were ready enough to admit; but he should have ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... death itself. As he drew near the gates, a monstrous dog came out and barked furiously, but Odin rode a little eastward of the shadowy gates to the grave of a wonderful prophetess. It was a cold, gloomy place, and the soul of the great god was pierced with a feeling of hopeless sorrow as he dismounted from Sleipner, and bending over the grave began to chant weird songs, and weave magical charms over it. When he had spoken those wonderful words which could waken the dead from their sleep, there was an awful silence for a moment, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... thine eyes away. O look upon me! 5 Confess it freely before all. Fear no one, Let who will hear that we both love each other. Wherefore continue to conceal it? Secrecy Is for the happy—misery, hopeless misery, Needeth no veil! Beneath a thousand suns 10 It ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had struggled hard against her husband's penuriousness, defiantly sometimes, and sometimes tearfully. But he had held her down with a heavy hand of unyielding determination. At last she grew weary of struggling, and settled down in sullen submission, a hopeless heavy-eyed, spiritless women, and as time went by she became greedier for money ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... prominence the great overthrown statue of the king. There is something peculiarly sensational in the examining of a tomb which has not been entered for such thousands of years, but it must be left to the imaginative reader to infuse a touch of that feeling of the dramatic into these words. It would be hopeless to attempt to put into writing those impressions which go to make the entering of a great Egyptian sepulchre so thrilling an experience: one cannot describe the silence, the echoing steps, the dark shadows, the hot, breathless air; nor ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... morning, looking at the extraordinary astronomical dials of the parish church, covering much of the surface of the outer walls. All the straight lines, curves, and figures, and the inscriptions in Latin, must have the effect of convincing the majority of the inhabitants that their ignorance is hopeless. Such a display of science must be like wizard symbolism to the common people. The dials are exceedingly curious, and there are some really astonishing calculations, as, for instance, a table showing the 'number of souls that have appeared ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... things modern in French art. He still smacks of the Middle Ages in many a custom, many a habit of thought; his men clank in armour, in his chateaux lurk the suggestion of the fortress, and his common people are sunk in a dark and hopeless oppression. Yet he himself darts about Europe with a springing gait and an elegant manner, the type of the strong aristocrat dispensing alike arts of war and arts ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. If I could catch another one—but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a nearness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... brother;—nor could he be her husband. And at this very moment, as she knew, his heart was sore with love for another woman. And yet he hardly knew how not to throw himself at her feet, and swear, that he would return now and for ever to his old passion, hopeless, sinful, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Elmer K. Pratt, the photographer. "I had an uncle once that died in an asylum, and I used to keep him quiet before he got hopeless by lettin' on that he really was George Washington. Now, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... to Mansur, in the city of Lowell. In 1844 Mansur retired from the field and Abbott became a candidate. Mansur's friends were opposed to the nomination of Abbott, and by their action the nomination came to me. The district was then hopeless. In 1842 the Dorr question was uppermost in the public mind. That had lost its power. In a Presidential contest Massachusetts was Whig by an immense majority. National questions were all-controlling. I was renominated for Congress in 1846 and 1848. I canvassed ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... to control himself. But the effort was vain. There was no resistance in the man. He writhed in his chair and suddenly burst forth in a tone of hopeless lamentation. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the degrees of truth and goodness. We say degrees; for we may well doubt whether, even in the faculty of memory, its apparent absence as to any one essential object is any thing more than a feeble degree of activity: and the doubt is strengthened by the fact, that in many seemingly hopeless cases it has been actually, as it were, brought into birth. And we are still indisposed to admit its entire absence in any one particular for which it was bestowed on man. An imperfect developement, especially as relating to ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... ordering; but, you see, I couldn't help thinking about it night and day. I wouldn't wonder if that meddling missionary had been praying about it all the while; and the result is, the old money-lender is going to give you a lift, my boy. We, hackneyed, hopeless old reprobates, need just such preachers as the missionary's famous seminary is going to make out of you; and I invited you here to say that you can depend on me for two hundred dollars in gold to start with, and as much more each year, till you graduate, as the missionary says you need. When old ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... is hopeless," he said, "but as well to die beneath the force-shells of the Ralas as live out a lifetime here. Yes, I will help, though I cannot see how you expect to escape even from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Both he and Scott substantially ruined themselves through their mediaevalism. Scott's luckless attempt was to place his private and family life upon a feudal basis and to give it mediaeval colour and beauty; Newman undertook a much nobler and more heroic but more intrinsically hopeless task—that of re-creating the whole English Church in harmony ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... their original debts, they find themselves every day more deeply involved. The more they struggle, the more complicated and firm becomes their entanglement. Lamentable as undoubtedly must be such a hopeless state of servitude, it still appears to them preferable to the precincts of a prison. They respire the free invigorating air of their plains, and can still traverse them at their option, or at least when the ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... some advantages of a very critical kind for subsequent generations of men. Nearly every one who came into contact with him in the way of testing his capacity for being instructed pronounced him hopeless. He had several excellent opportunities of learning Latin, especially at Turin in the house of Count Gouvon, and in the seminary at Annecy, and at Les Charmettes he did his best to teach himself, but without any better result than a very limited power ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... middle-aged, but poor Ducharme does not need his sparse gray beard to proclaim his advancing years. Valmont vaunts an air of prosperity; Ducharme wears the shabby habiliments and the shoulder-stoop of hopeless poverty. He shuffles cringingly along the street, a compatriot not to be proud of. There are so many Frenchmen anxious to give lessons in their language, that merely a small living is to be picked up by any one of them. You will never see the ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... found themselves in the midst of scenes of dreadful terror and confusion,—the scenes, in fact, which are usually exhibited in the midnight sacking of a city. They met with various adventures during the time that they continued their desperate but hopeless resistance. They encountered a party of Greeks, and overpowered and slew them, and then, seizing the armor which their fallen enemies had worn, they disguised themselves in it, in hopes to deceive the main body of the Greeks by this means, so as to mingle among them unobserved, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the use, too!" whined Dolph. "You can't row a biskit across a puddle of molasses with a couple of toothpicks," he added, with cook's metaphor for the absolutely hopeless. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... humor in the situation. The man might be run over, or freeze to death. To abandon any human being in such a plight seemed too monstrous to him. The other young men hurried on in the cold, shrugging their shoulders and shaking their heads—"Poor Abe!—he's a hopeless case," and left Lincoln to do the work of a Good Samaritan alone. He had no beast on which to carry the dead weight of the drunken man, whom he vainly tried, again and again, to arouse to a sense of the predicament he was in. At last ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... place," his lordship said with his grave, kindly look, "you need not have wondered at your fortune. If you had lived in Warwickshire instead of winning laurels in campaign you might have been my rival if you would—and I a hopeless man—and she a Duchess. But you two ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... power back of his halting words, a sudden bursting fort of bloom amid the frozen assembly that sat ice-bound, refusing to be melted by the fires of an alien enthusiasm. She could not help wondering whether he felt how hopeless it would be to force a sympathetic response from his audience. In ordinary times the Second Presbyterian Church of San Francisco could not possibly have had any interest in Serbia except as a field ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... compassion on my hopeless state; for just as I was going to throw myself into the sea, I perceived a ship at a considerable distance. I called as loud as I could, and taking the linen from my turban, displayed it, that they might observe me. This had the desired ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... this river would be a great point. The Lena, which was even nearer to the head of Lake Baikal, also flowed into the Arctic Sea; but its course was almost due north, and it would be absolutely hopeless to endeavour to traverse the whole of the north coast of Siberia. The Angara and the Yenesei, on the other hand, flowed north-west, and fell into the Arctic Sea near the western boundary of Siberia, and when they reached that point they would be but a short ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... seen anything like it, and was for sometime lost in admiration. Across the road the children of the epider and the good man himself were already busy trying to shovel some of it away from the door. It seemed at first sight a hopeless task and I, looking down at Delle Josephine's door, wondered how on earth we were ever to get out of it when not a particle of it was to be seen. Not all that day did I get out of the house, and ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... to his chair, and again seating himself, leaned back his head and closed his eyes, as at first. How sad, and weary, and hopeless he felt! The burdens of the day had seemed almost too heavy for him; but he had borne up bravely. To gather strength for a renewed struggle with adverse circumstances, he had come home. Alas! that the process of exhaustion should still go on. That where only ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... at a certain period of his life, he had left an excellent position to take a new one which seemed more promising. It soon developed that the difficulties of this position were such as to make his success seem almost hopeless. He became obsessed with the idea that the people with whom he had to deal were "out to get him." His fears of the job and of his associates grew to the point where ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... looked so odd, drank so much beer and talked so fast. Yet she had made inquiries and found that she was extraordinarily skilled in matters of that nature. Indeed, it was said that she had succeeded in cases that were wonderfully difficult which the leech had abandoned as hopeless, though of course there had been other cases where she had not succeeded. But these, she was informed, were generally those of poor people who did not pay her well. Now in this instance her pay would be ample, for she, Mother Matilda, had promised her a splendid fee out of her private ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Head answered, with the ghost of a wink. "It isn't the boys that make trouble; it's the masters. However, Prout and King don't approve of dormitory gatherings on this scale, and one must back up the house-masters. Moreover, it's hopeless to punish two houses only, so late in the term. We must be fair and include everybody. Let's see. They have a holiday task for the Easters, which, of course, none of them will ever look at. We will give the whole school, except prefects and study-boys, regular ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... they remained in complete ignorance. It was a case of stalemate. Harut would not tell them anything nor could they learn anything for themselves. He added in a depressed way that the whole business seemed very hopeless, and that he had begun to doubt whether there was any tidings of his lost wife to be gained among ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... my stuff just as I reported. Oh, you can't imagine how I felt!" went on Brassy Bangs in a hopeless tone of voice. "Many a time I thought I'd go to Colonel Colby and confess everything. But then I thought they would bring that old charge of barn-burning up against me, as well as the charge of helping in the robbery, and I didn't have ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... of a better sort than any Lincoln had yet known except, perhaps, the miller's family in the old days in Kentucky—and still a smaller few were of fine quality, the community for the most part was hopeless. A fatality for unpromising neighborhoods overhangs like a doom the early part of this strange life. All accounts of New Salem represent it as predominantly a congregation of the worthless, flung together by unaccountable accident at a spot where there ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... many men the Schools mean a cruel and wearing anxiety, out of all proportion to the real importance of academic success. We cannot see things as they are, and estimate their value, in youth; and if pleasures are more keen then, grief is more hopeless, doubt more desolate, uncertainty more gnawing, than in later years, when we have known and survived a good deal of the worst of mortal experience. Often on men still in their pupilage the weight of the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... forced to do so. She never loved him; and it was proved at last, for about six months later she wrote to my lady and said she considered herself free—that of course it was dreadfully sad, but that she could not spend her life engaged to a hopeless invalid. Just a month after ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... [2] is very well known; he was entered in a College of Jesuits, and after having been tryed at several Parts of Learning, was upon the Point of being dismissed as an hopeless Blockhead, till one of the Fathers took it into his Head to make an assay of his Parts in Geometry, which it seems hit his Genius so luckily that he afterwards became one of the greatest Mathematicians of the Age. It is commonly thought that the Sagacity ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... about it which gave it, even in its schoolgirl form, a look of distinction. Sibyl, on the contrary, was an undersized girl, with the fair, colorless face, pale-blue eyes, the lack of eyebrows and eyelashes, the hair thin and small in quantity, which make the most hopeless type of ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... already divided now, and the cunning foe was between the two portions; a more desperate situation therefore than this half of my party was then in can scarcely be imagined. To attempt to conciliate these people had last year proved hopeless. Our gifts had only excited their cupidity, and our uncommon forbearance had only inspired them with a poor opinion of our courage; while their meeting us in this place was a proof that the effect of our arms had ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... renewal of war. He understood that until he had completely broken the power of Great Britain all his Continental designs were imperiled and his colonial and commercial projects hopeless. The humiliation of the great rival across the Channel would be the surest guarantee of the prosperity of the French bourgeoisie, and it was in last analysis from that class that his own political support was chiefly derived. The year 1803-1804 was spent by the emperor in elaborate preparations ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... gradually speak for themselves. His followers in every age have seemed fools to many, if not to most, of their judicious contemporaries; but cheered by His confidence, they venture on apparently hopeless undertakings, and find that He ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... noblest rights of mankind, and had filled his life with shame and trouble? For as Simonides used to say playfully that he always found his money-chest full but his gratitude-chest empty,[833] so the wicked contemplating their own vice soon find out that their gratification is joyless and hopeless,[834] and ever attended by fears and griefs and gloomy memories, and suspicions about the future, and distrust about the present. Thus we hear Ino, repenting for what she had ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the yells of the natives returning in strong force decided the question. He and Martin took to their heels with right good will, and in a few minutes the three friends were far on the road which led to their night bivouac; while the villagers, finding pursuit hopeless, returned to the village, and continued the wild orgies ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... raging and driving over the savannas in unchecked fury. I put spurs to my horse, in a fruitless effort to reach home before the worst came, for I knew full well what would follow this outbreak. At this moment I saw approaching me, at full speed, a white horse, whose rider was making hopeless attempts to manage him. I at once recognized Inez, and placing myself across the path, succeeded in seizing the bridle and stopping the animal in his ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... thought I saw a startled opening of its lips; it withdrew and was gone. I had merely caught a glance at it, yet of this I am sure—the face was white with the pallor of things that grow in a cellar, it was weak with the terrible drooping, hopeless weakness of endless self-indulgence; it was a brutal face, and yet wore the expression of timid, anxious, pathetic inquiry. It was a face that had come to ask a question. And though, because only the pale skin had reflected the light from within, I had ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... it ought to remain for ever behind you. The ladder that carried you having given way under your foot, the only thing for you to do is to seize again on the moral law freely, with a free consciousness, a free will, or else to roll down, hopeless of safety, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sweetness and placidity of his smile, a secret expression of inward agony—the physical and natural feelings of the parent and the man mingling, or rather struggling, with the great principle of dependence on God, without which he must at once have sunk down prostrate and hopeless. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... appropriated to ladies at this sight, were full to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, we posted off, along with a great crowd, to be in time at the Table, where the Pope, in person, waits on these Thirteen; and after a prodigious struggle at the Vatican staircase, and several personal conflicts with the Swiss guard, the whole crowd ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... frenzy like a nympholepsy. At first, when in childhood we find ourselves torn away from the lips that we could hang on for ever, we throw out our arms in vain struggles to snatch at them, and pull them back again. But when we have felt for a time how hopeless is that effort, and that they cannot come to us, we desist from that struggle, and next we whisper to our hearts, Might not we ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... recognition of the law. The sense of error deepens, remorse preys on the mind; spasmodic efforts are made towards improvement, and, frustrated by old habits, repeatedly fail, till the man, overwhelmed by grief for the past, despair of the present, is plunged into hopeless gloom. At last, the ever-increasing suffering wrings from the Ego a cry for help, answered from the inner depths of his own nature, from the God within as well as around him, the Life of his life. He turns from the lower nature that is thwarting ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... ambition of his manhood, the Lollards roasted at slow fires the prisoners massacred on the field of battle, the expiring lease of priestcraft renewed for another century, the dreadful legacy of a causeless and hopeless war bequeathed to a people who had no interest in its event, everything is forgotten but the victory of Agincourt. Francis Sforza, on the other hand, was the model of Italian heroes. He made his employers and his rivals alike his tools. He first ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Nancy," she mused, "sweet, sensitive, and fine, under such influence! And Joan so high-strung and reckless! It would be a hopeless condition!" ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... away there was a tempest that turned the lake into an angry ocean, and, ah my good God, she did not come. At last, half-crazy at the vacant days of misery which went by and by, and she did not come, I set out upon a wild-goose quest, of her—of all the hopeless things the most hopeless, for the world is great—and I sought and did not find her; and after three days I turned back, recognising that I was mad to search the infinite, and coming near the Chateau, I saw her wave her handkerchief from the island-edge, for she divined that ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... so he rose quickly, slipped out of the house, and made his escape. His father followed him, but not being so light of foot, found the pursuit hopeless, so returned home, where his mother was still grieving over the offence ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Abbey. Old Abbot Geoffrey died, and at his election the Abbey had been under the See of Lincoln; but since then King Henry had claimed the gift of abbacies, a claim his son was not likely to bate. A suit with the Crown, Hugh's friends argued, was hopeless or not worth the trouble; but this argument seemed sacrilegious to the intrepid bishop. What? Allow God and the Queen of Heaven to be robbed? Who ever agreed to let Lincoln be so pilled? He is but a useless and craven ruler who does not enlarge instead ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... gulfs of sorrow, When the helpless feet stretch out And find in the deeps of darkness No footing so solid as doubt, Then better one spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though hopeless of shore at last! ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... ODD DISCOVERY A very interesting story, telling how Rose aided an old man in the almost hopeless ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... begin with a few rules, and be steady and persevering with these, till a habit is formed, and then take a few more, thus making the process easy and gradual. Otherwise, the temper of children will be injured; or, hopeless of fulfilling so many requisitions, they will become reckless and indifferent ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... was as one's hand before him in the daylight. She had now a bit of the woman's reserve—her prudence, her skill in hiding the things of the heart. I loved her more than ever, but somehow I felt it hopeless—that she had grown out of my life. She was much in request among the people of Hillsborough, and we went about a good deal and had many callers. But we had little time to ourselves. She seemed to avoid that, and had much to say of the grand young men who came to call on her ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... this evening with a literary allusion, and found that you'd never heard of Longfellow's 'Village Blacksmith.' That wasn't a very encouraging start, you'll admit. Last night I tried you with art, and all you did was to mix it up with morality, which, as everybody knows, is a perfectly hopeless thing to do. The ancient Hebrews had more sense. They were specialists in morality, and they absolutely forbade art. Whereas the Greeks, who were artists, went in for a thoroughly immoral kind of life. Finding that you were totally indifferent to the metaphysics ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... not only inartistic: it is also faint-hearted and unjust. It alienates sympathy. It substitutes unreal adoration for wholesome admiration; it afflicts the reader, conscious of frailty and struggle, with a sense of hopeless despair in the presence of anything so supremely ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... still thought forever of the mountain. Vainly she peered over the western horizon for a glimpse of his proud head and honest face. The horizon was dark. Her lover was far beyond, forests, plains, hills, valleys, rivers, and other mountains intervened. Her watching was as hopeless as her love. ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... from those of the senate, concurred in their oppressions; for the struggle was not now between patricians and plebeians, who only nominally differed, but between the rich and the poor. 21. The lower orders of the state being by these means reduced to a degree of hopeless subjection, instead of looking after liberty, only sought for a leader; while the rich, with all the suspicion of tyrants, terrified at the slightest appearance of opposition, entrusted men with uncontrollable power, from whom they had not strength ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... double quick time the column emerged from the woods, and passing over the plain strewn with felled trees and entangled brushwood, plunged into a fury of shot and shell as they charged for the batteries on the rebel left. Again and again that unsupported column of black troops held to their hopeless mission by the unrelenting order of the brigade commander, hurled itself literally into the jaws of death, many meeting horrible destruction ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... Iphigenia, except the young girl, weak, delicate, full of feeling, and beautiful as a sunbeam on the full, green tree. But, in the next scene, the first impulse of that passion which makes and unmakes us, though unconfessed even to herself, though hopeless and unreturned, raises her at once into the heroic woman, worthy of the goddess ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... His Eureka, an ambitious treatise, the immortality of which he confidently predicted, was a disappointment and failure. He tried lecturing, but with only moderate success. His correspondence at this time reveals a broken, hysterical, hopeless man. In his weakness, loneliness, and sorrow, he resorted to stimulants with increasing frequency. Their terrible work was soon done. On his return from a visit to Richmond, he stopped in Baltimore, where he died from the effects of drinking, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... duration, or only a week? Curious entities, or non-entities, space and tithe? When you see a metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of these accidents, so as to lay his dry, clean palm on the absolute, does it not remind you of the hopeless task of changing the color of the blackamoor by a similar proceeding? For space is the fluid in which he is washing, and time is the soap which he is using up in the process, and he cannot get free from them until he can wash himself in ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... shore. Very soon he found that he was exhausting himself by his efforts and that it would be far better to go down the stream, and trust to getting ashore far lower down, though, at the same time, a chilly feeling of despair began to dull his energies, and it seemed hopeless to think of ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... sorry to hear it, sir,' returned Mat, in a weak, hopeless voice. 'You will make a great mistake, and nothing good will come of it. She will teach the youngsters to loathe my very name, and as for the lad'—here he spoke with strong emotion—'he will be ready to curse me for spoiling his life. No, no, sir; let sleeping dogs lie. Better let me ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "I'm not mad, Roy, but I'm disheartened—a little hopeless, I'm afraid. I'm willing to believe that he isn't just right in his head, but you see I can't help him; I'm not a doctor. His heroism is just a phase of his condition—he gets excited." That's just exactly what Mr. Ellsworth said, because I remember. Then he just lifted the ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... too late—too late now, Charlie," he replied, mournfully. "I shall continue to love her as I do now until I draw my last breath. I know it is hopeless—I know she can never be more to me than she already is; but I cannot help loving her. Let us go; I may see her once again. Ah, Charlie, you cannot even dream what inexpressible pleasure the merest glimpse of her affords me! ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... but it was hopeless. There would be no escape this time. Buehl couldn't risk it. The shock treatment—or whatever Buehl would use under the name of shock treatment—would begin at once. It would be easy to slip, to use an overdose of something, to make sure Dane was killed. Or there were ways of making ...
— Dead Ringer • Lester del Rey
... him, but Geoffrey was as good a man on the platform as in court, and he had, moreover, the very valuable knack of suiting himself to his audience. As his canvass went on it was generally recognised that the seat which had been considered hopeless was now doubtful. A great amount of public interest was concentrated on the election, both upon the Unionist and the Separatist side, each claiming that the result of the poll would show to their advantage. The Home Rule party strained every nerve against him, being most anxious to show ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... sufficient knowledge of men to recognise the difference between the two. Count Plettau was a mere hopeless idler and vagabond. Frielinghausen was at least inspired with a wish to pull himself together and become good ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Hodgson's private room, closed the door behind me. One parcel was the opera as I had originally written it, a neat, intelligible manuscript, whatever its other merits. The second, scored, interlined, altered, cut, interleaved, rewritten, reversed, turned inside out and topsy-turvy—one long, hopeless confusion from beginning to end—was the opera, as, everybody helping, we had "knocked it ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... too, the imminent emergency, when a man is overboard, and must sink or swim, sharpens, concentrates, and invigorates the mind, and causes matters of thought and sentiment to assume shape and expression, though, perhaps, it seemed hopeless to express them, just before you rose to speak. Yet I question much whether public speaking tends to elevate the orator, intellectually or morally; the effort, of course, being to say what is immediately received by the audience, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... them. The poultry, all wet and dispirited, ventured within and stood about the door, now scuttling in sudden panic and with peevish squawks upon the unexpected approach of a heavy foot. Loralinda, sitting at her spinning wheel, was paler than ever, all her dearest illusions dashed into hopeless fragments, and a promise which she did not value to one whom she did not love quite perfect ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Board was so hopeless that nothing more was heard of it; but the battle over the removal question was renewed with added violence, when the bill for establishing the Department of Foreign Affairs came up for consideration. White of Virginia now led the attack. He had been a member of the Continental Congress from 1786 ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... Campion we have seen. Father Letheby has scored again. There were heavy bets of fifteen to one in half-gallons of porter, laid by desperate gamblers, that Father Letheby would make Mrs. Darcy wash her face. It was supposed to be a wild plunge in a hopeless speculation. I am told now, that the betting has gone up at the forge, and is now fifty to one that, before a month, she'll have a lace cap and "sthramers" like the maids at ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... instance of the extraordinary reverses of fortune which marked the history of nearly all the great families during the whole course of this York and Lancaster quarrel. In about ten years from the time when Henry and Margaret were driven away, apparently into hopeless exile, they came back in triumph, and were restored to power, and Edward himself, in his turn, was ignominiously expelled from the kingdom. The narrative of the circumstances through which these events were brought about forms quite a ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... his last fight a good one. Almost over his head, on a limb not six feet distant, crouched, ready to spring, the biggest puma he had ever seen. At this new confronting of doom his brain cleared, and his sinews seemed to stretch with fresh courage. It was hopeless, of course, as he knew, but his heart refused to recognize the fact. Then he noted with wonder that not at him at all was the puma looking, but far over his head. He followed that look, and again his heart sank, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... will recollect with profound emotions, so long as they remain worthy of the liberties they enjoy, and of the exertions you made to obtain them, that you came to them in the darkest period of their struggle; that you linked your fortune with theirs, when it seemed almost hopeless; that you shared in the dangers, privations and sufferings of that bitter struggle; nor quitted them for a moment till it was consummated on the glorious field of Yorktown. Half a century has elapsed since that great event, and in that time your name ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... And Virgil hopeless! On these terms I had rather gloom with the good poet (whose fault in your eyes was that he knew in what he had believed) than freeze with you and Aquinas on your peak of hyaline. And as I have found you, Donna Beatrice, so in the main have they of whom ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... that I may never be so discouraged that I feel my life has been spent. Help me to so live, that I may not follow into hopeless days, but look for the bright and beautiful in to-morrow. Forgive me for all that I have asked for and accepted through willful judgment, and make me more careful in ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... had little hopes of their ever rising again. The scorching of the sun's rays was so dreadful, that they thrust their heads into some empty ant-hills to keep off the heat, and there they lay in as forlorn and hopeless a state as the horses. Speak they could not; their parched tongues rattled like boards against the roofs of their mouths; their lips were swollen and bloated, and their eyes inflamed and starting from the sockets. As Alexander afterward said to Swinton, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... satisfy anyone capable of forming a judgment that the personal equation is the most important factor in a business operation; that the business ability of the man at the head of any business concern, big or little, is usually the factor which fixes the gulf between striking success and hopeless failure. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... had better change to another subject. She dropped this one as far off as possible. "When do you expect to see your two old interesting twins again?" said she conciliatorily. For she felt that reasoning with her beautiful but irregular daughter was hopeless. The young lady explained that her next visit to Chorlton would be by way of an expedition from Pensham. Adrian and Irene would drive her over. It was not morally much farther from Pensham than from the Towers, although some arithmetical appearances ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... very moment thinking of her whom he knew that his brother loved? And was it not sinful of him to be unable to conquer a passion which, besides being a wrong towards his own brother, was so utterly hopeless? ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... colour; his teeth fine, and forehead agreeably low, round which his black hair curled naturally and beautifully. His eyes were black too, but had nothing of fierce or insolent; on the contrary, a certain melancholy swimmingness, that described hopeless love rather than a natural amorous languish. His exploits in war, where he always fought by the side of the renowned Paladine William of England, have endeared his memory to all admirers of true chivalry, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... followers actually secured for Frenchmen, and in a less degree for other Europeans of to-day. By their efforts, the chance of the poor but talented child to rise to power and wealth has been somewhat increased. This chance, when they began their labors, was not so hopeless as it is often represented. It is not now so great as it is sometimes assumed to be. Still, there has been one decided advance. We have seen that under the old monarchy many important places were reserved ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... head. Let him alone, I tell you, or all will be hopeless confusion when Grey comes for his lecture. We're only in the third ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... armies had been sent against them, and still the Southern people were unconquered, defiant, and apparently stronger than ever. Would it have been possible to strengthen this doubt into a conviction that the attempt to subdue the Southern people was hopeless, and the war had better be stopped? Volunteering was no longer filling the Federal armies. Now, if the Confederate arms had been incontestably triumphant, from the Potomac to the Ohio, if Northern territory had been in turn threatened with general invasion, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... was like Savage, of whom Johnson says (Works, viii. 161):—'To supply him with money was a hopeless attempt; for no sooner did he see himself master of a sum sufficient to set him free from care for a day, than he became profuse and luxurious.' When Savage was 'lodging in the liberties of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... die. Her sons were taking her a tour, in the hope of raising her spirits, but she said she was just moved about and dressed like a doll, that she had not one ray of comfort, and that all shrunk from her hopeless and repining grief. She asked me to tell her if any widow of my acquaintance had been able to bear her loss with resignation; and when I told her of some instances among my own relations, she burst into tears and said, "I am ever arraigning the wisdom of God, and how can I hope for ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... sake of peace and silence I consent, You should be warned that you will cruelly Disturb them. But 'tis best. You should be warned Your pleading will be hopeless. But 'tis best. You have my full consent. Weigh well your acts, You cannot rest where you have cast this bolt Lay that to heart, and you are cherished, prized, Among them: they are estimable ladies, Warmest of friends; though you may think they soar Too loftily for your measure of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Syracuse all Sicily, it was hoped, would be secured. Carthage and Italy were next to be assailed. With large levies of Iberian mercenaries she then meant to overwhelm her Peloponnesian enemies. The Persian monarchy lay in hopeless imbecility, inviting Greek invasion; nor did the known world contain the power that seemed capable of checking the growing might of Athens, if ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... mouldered to a gigantic skeleton, yet two pale and ghastly flames glared in his eyeless sockets. Blackened in terrible convulsions, Wolfstein expired; over him had the power of hell no influence. Yes, endless existence is thine, Ginotti—a dateless and hopeless eternity of horror." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... books; it did not make my troubles less. The old thoughts came right in and left me no peace. Even while I was reading I could not fix my mind on the book, and when I laid the book down, I had gained nothing, but was as sad and hopeless as ever. Happiness is not for me, and the little motto upon my rose may be true for others; it is not true for me. I cannot 'grasp' the only 'fortune' I ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... when one sinks and cannot be brought to the surface again, the crew must miserably perish. Very humane people shudder at the very idea of ordering men into a craft that may go to the bottom and become the hopeless grave of the crew. Yet the 'Pollard' lies at the bottom of this harbor, and Captain Benson has just come to the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... regretfully, left his native land to begin this apparently hopeless quest; and, after visiting his uncle, the Pope, in Rome, he tried to secure heavenly assistance by a pilgrimage to the holy sepulcher. Then he set out for Babylon, or Bagdad, for, with the visual mediaeval scorn ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... his feet, and even Rufus was forgotten. He took an audacious pleasure, too, in leaping suddenly over the heads of the whole class to the first place. He did not always bother. He liked to wait for some really teasing question, and then, when silence had become hopeless, hold up his hand. Mr. Ricardo would look towards him, apparently incredulous and satirical, but Robert could read the message which the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... just how he feels," whispered Albert with some sympathy. "It's all there, but he must know the quest is hopeless." ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... was amongst the few exceptions. Dispirited and hopeless—a terrible condition for a child—she wondered how Alec Forbes could be so merry. But he had had his evil things, and they were over; while hers were all about her still. She had but one comfort left—that no one would prevent her from creeping up to her own desolate garret, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Hackman first met and fell in love with her. There are good reasons for believing that his love was returned for a time, but that afterwards Miss Ray determined to continue in her irregular relation with the nobleman. On learning that his suit was wholly hopeless, Hackman conceived the plan which had so fatal an ending. The question as to whether the fact that he provided himself with two pistols was proof that he intended to take his own life as well as that of Miss Ray was ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... for two days and now blew almost a gale. The dust was intolerable and made any attempts at washing hopeless. Indeed one's eyes got so full of it the moment they were opened that we sat blinking like owls or shut them altogether. So it was a cheerless afternoon, with rain threatening. Our supply ship with our tents had not come up, but the Major (Stillwell) had a bivouac ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... with hopeless eyes. "But I am not you!" she said. "I—Peggy, I know just how I look, and how I seem, and how little and ugly and queer I am. I don't wonder they laugh, I don't, really. I haven't any spirit, either; I can't have. You can't do anything with ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... Precisely the same!" Kelson said. "Only it's love—not potatoes and beans that worries me. In the old days when I was penniless, I did get some consolation from knowing it was all hopeless—but now—now, when, as Ed says, 'the money's literally burning a hole in one's pocket,' and everything might go swimmingly—not to be allowed even to buy a bracelet—is more than human nature can endure. I certainly can't conceive ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... people there were several old young men, of distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect, who, having nothing in common with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to band themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the arch pillars or appeared to be considering whether ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... indeed for them was the change from the ease and abundance of the bachelor's-hall, where slavery meant little more than a happy exemption from care, to their present condition, in which it meant hopeless submission to the power of a capricious and cruel mistress. The worst form of female tyranny is that exhibited on a Southern plantation, under the sway of a termagant. Her power to afflict is so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... only then been enabled to have seen as I do now, or to have read the following slave code, which is but a stereotyped law of American slavery. It would have saved me I think from having to lament that I was a husband and am the father of slaves who are still left to linger out their days in hopeless bondage. The laws of Kentucky, my native State, with Maryland and Virginia, which are said to be the mildest slave States in the Union, noted for their humanity, Christianity and democracy, declare ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... of Mother Anastasia the better I liked her, but I perceived that she was a woman with whom it was very necessary to be cautious. She was apt, I thought, to make convictions of her presumptions. If she presumed that my love for Sylvia was an utterly hopeless affection, to be given up and forgotten, I did not like it. It might be that it was hopeless, but I did not care to have any one else settle the matter for me in ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... thread of her life. Had I seduced her? Did I not really love her? No, a miserable seducer I was not; but I had not the courage to acknowledge my sin, and to reward the love of her innocent heart. And thus I was a base wretch. She died, and I regarded myself with still more hopeless scorn. The poor creature's parents, whom I placed in comfortable circumstances, blest me, old villain as I was, for not punishing their daughter's shame, and for bringing up her child in my house. This child, this fair girl, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... protect a Huguenot, however illustrious, I saw that the situation was desperate; for, though we were five to two, the neighbourhood of the city—the gate being scarcely a bow-shot off—rendered flight or resistance equally hopeless. I could think of nothing for it save to put a bold face on the matter, and, M. de Rosny doing the same, we advanced in ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... uncle Edward, when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern; and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to do?—to despair and to leave her. As for my poor uncle Jacob, he had no counsel to give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was turned into a stable, his surplice torn ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and her husband being rapt away by the war, she intended to resume her old, honest, quasi-sentimental relations with G.J. A reliable and experienced bachelor is always useful to a young grass-widow, and, moreover, the attendant hopeless adorer nourishes her hungry egotism as nobody else can. G.J. thought these thoughts, clearly and callously, in the same moment as, mounting the next flight of stairs, he absolutely trembled with sympathetic anguish for ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... zone "A." Very few Germans of the north believe that the German-Austrian Republic will permanently remain separated from themselves.... Both Yugoslavs and Austrians circulated vast quantities of printed matter; for the Yugoslavs the most convincing argument lay in Austria's apparently hopeless economic position and the undesirability of belonging to a State which had to pay so huge a debt; the Austrian pamphlets denounced the Serbs as a military race, though even such a dealer in false evidence as the eminent Austrian historian, Dr. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... hardships, had at the time of the surrender only 7,892 men under arms, and this little army was almost surrounded by one of 100,000. They might, the General said with an air piteous to behold, have cut their way out as they had done before, but, looking upon the struggle as hopeless, I was not surprised to hear him say that he thought it cruel to prolong it. In two other battles he named (Sharpsburg and Chancellorsville, I think he said), the Confederates were to the Federals in point of numbers as 35,000 ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... "You are hopeless, and that's a fact," said Mr. Fairfield. "Of all discouraging people, the worst are ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... behaved in times of peace, or whether we call to mind the behaviour of the two civilians, Haideln and Hufnagel, we can only regret that brave men should stand to be exposed upon so poor a quarrel, or lives cast away upon an enterprise so hopeless. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... just come down and cut himself, take pains whenever he came to a bit of road freshly macadamized to bring down the poor horse on the sharp stones, again with his bleeding knees. And even where you do not find positive malignity in those entrusted with the training of human minds, you find hopeless incornpetcncy exhibited in many other ways; outrageous silliness and vanity, want of honesty, and utter want of sense. I say it deliberately, instead of wondering that most minds are such screws, I wonder with indescribable surprise that they are not a thousand ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... incision on each mastering vein, Then staunch the bleeding, then transpierce the corse, And with their balms recure the wounds again, Then poison and with physic him restore; Not that they fear the hopeless man to kill, But their experience to increase the more: Even so my mistress works upon my ill, By curing me and killing me each hour, Only to show her beauty's ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... case of the employer there had been twenty years of steady progress towards ease and leisure and independence. In the case of the majority of the men there were twenty years of deterioration, twenty years of steady, continuous and hopeless progress towards physical and mental inefficiency: towards the scrap-heap, the work-house, and premature death. What is it but false, misleading, nonsensical claptrap to say that their interests were identical with ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... at St. Elmo, a handful of brave Knights kept the army and fleets of the powerful Mustapha at bay, and hurled them back in assault after assault, the walls gaping with breaches; and then, when all had been done that brave men could do, and further resistance was hopeless, in simple obedience to the stern commands of their loved Grand-Master, La Valette, and to save the city and the other forts, these brave Knights preferred death at their posts, and that a cruel death, rather than dishonour. Wounded knights were actually wheeled on chairs ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... made, but it worked well. Whatever Jack's parentage may have been (and he was named after the stormy month in which he had been born), the blood that ran in his veins could not have been beggar's blood. There was no hopeless, shiftless, invincible idleness about him. He found work for himself when it was not given him to do, and he attached himself passionately and proudly to all the belongings of his ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Madame,' continued the visitor, 'that nothing can be worse or more hopeless for a youth than the life to which we are constrained here, with our whole shadow of hope in intrigue; and for our men, no occupation worthy of their sex. We women are not so ill off, with our children and ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... returned to her own kitchen to superintend a hastily-prepared supper for the weary travellers. Before this was ready, Catesby and John Wright took Robert Winter aside, and tried hard to induce him to write to his father-in-law, attempting to draw him into the now almost hopeless rebellion. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt |
