"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Beata was no thaumaturgist; only a loving woman, standing where science had failed, translating another's desperate need from her own depths of sympathy—arresting the oncoming shadow because of her faith and ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Shall we find ourselves already fettered when we wake, or will there be one moment, just one moment, in which we can spring up? At any rate, hitherto, the English have always been at their best, not their worst, in desperate positions. They hate exciting themselves, and refuse to do it until the crisis is actually on them. But then they become ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... expecting an easy victory over the youth. But Rodrigo was strong as a man, and his deadly hate of the count added vigor to his arm. Though soon wounded and bleeding, he yet parried with skill the blows aimed at his heart, and finally, with one desperate effort, drove the sword of Mudarra through and through the body of Gormaz. The head of his fallen enemy Rodrigo carried home in triumph to the proud Diego. Thus did the youthful Ruy Diaz de Bivar avenge the wrongs of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... other rocks are near? Well, the Frost Giants carried these boulders about, and dropped them down miles away from their homes, as you might take a pocketful of pebbles, and drop them along the road as you walk. Sometimes they roll great rocks down the mountain-sides, playing a desperate game of ball with each other. Sometimes they are sent to make a bridge over Niagara Falls, or to build a dam across a mountain torrent in an hour's time. Now and then they have to rake off a steep mountain- side as ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... forward at the same reckless pace, regardless alike of the dirt and wet which flew about his head, the profound darkness of the night, and the probability of encountering some desperate characters abroad. At every turn and angle, even where a deviation from the direct course might have been least expected, and could not possibly be seen until he was close upon it, he guided the bridle ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... my trespass? He watches his eye, he measures his limbs, his strength, and his agility. Though they have met in the deserts of Africa, where there is no law to punish the violator, he knows that he exposes himself to a fearful hazard; and he enters upon his purpose with desperate resolve. All this and more must occur to the man of violence, within the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... man sees this, what will he think of himself?—A. Then he will not only think but conclude, that he is an unclean thing, that his heart has deceived him, that it is most desperate and wicked, that it may not be trusted by any means, that every imagination and thought of his heart, naturally, is only evil, and that continually (Isa 64:6; Prov ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as the greatest wonder in history how a poor Man, who preached in Palestine for about two years, who scarcely had a hundred followers at the end of His mission, who was crucified and died a shameful death, whose cause seemed a quite desperate episode, scornfully rejected or fearfully abandoned by all those who knew it—how this poor Man replaced successively the mightiest gods the human imagination ever invented: Zeus in Olympus, Jupiter in the Capitol, Wothan in the North, and at last also Perun in Kieff. ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... the power of laying our hands upon him. This I expect very shortly to do. I have good hopes of managing it through my own arrangements; but it is a thing which needs delicate handling, for we have a shrewd and desperate man to deal with, who is supported, as I have had occasion to prove, by another who is as clever as himself. As long as this man has no idea that anyone can have a clue there is some chance of securing him; but ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... squirm to the door and wriggle out. Other mothers say: 'If you don't, I shall tell your father!' 'Do as I tell you, and ask no questions.' 'I never heard of such behavior in my life!' 'Haven't you any sense of propriety?' 'If this happens again I shall have to do something desperate.' 'Leave the room at once,' and so on; but ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... my mind that he understood the girl's desperate ruse, and that he was waiting for the issue. I picked furiously at the ropes which bound my hands, and a long strand uncoiled and whipped ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... seen," answered Olaf. "Now I came to know if you were yet landless and desperate so that you would sail to Norway with me. But now I cannot ask you that. Nevertheless I shall be more glad to see you wedded and at rest here, for I think that you have seen ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... turned her back upon her fellow-passengers, stretched in mute misery in their chairs or huddled in cheerful groups behind sheltering projections, and stood watching the dip and rise of the steamer's bow as it drove onward into the mist. Whither was she going, and to what? With a desperate sense of her ignorance and impotence, she strained her eyes into the white, dimly translucent bank, from which stray drops repeatedly lashed her face, as though its vaporous wall alone stood between her and the ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from—will you risk the commission of so fearful ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... a leap forward, and on the following days reached and crossed the Marne, seizing, after desperate fighting, guns, howitzers, mitrailleuses, and 1,300,000 cartridges. On the 12th it established itself on the north edge of the Montagne-de-Reime in contact with our centre, which for its part had just forced the enemy to retreat ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... it's rarer: as if we were to be shut up in families to tread on one another's corns! Dear me! and after a time we should be having rank jesuitry advertised as the specific balsam for an unhappy domesticated population treading with hard heels from desperate habit and not the slightest intention ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He might, so I liked to think, chase Selby-Harrison round the College Park with a drawn sword in his hand. Then there would be complications. The Provost and senior fellows, not understanding Titherington's desperate plight, would resent his show of violence, which would strike them as unseemly in their academic groves. Swift, muscular porters would be sent in pursuit of Titherington, who would, himself, still pursue Selby-Harrison. The great bell of the Campanile would ring furious alarm peals. The Dublin ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... to reply. Her one thought was to reach the refuge of her own apartment, and to this end she concentrated her failing energies. The climb to the ladies' dressing-room was a desperate effort; but when she was once outside the house the cold, pure air ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the strange actions of Marufa the more he was persuaded that that wily colleague was acting upon sound information, and the tangle of his affairs made him so desperate that he decided to gamble upon that assumption: for magician Bakahenzie began to realize that Marufa had somehow scored a point and that now was approaching the crux which would determine whether he won back or lost for ever that which was the essence of life ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... poor Jean, so desperate that he did not understand, his soul quite overwhelmed, his heart bursting, but not yet understanding himself. Then the girl seated herself beside Luc, and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... forward up the heights. Two minutes would bring them about the little party in overwhelming strength. Flight anywhere downhill was impossible. The one refuge in sight was that beleaguered little clump of buildings just beyond them up the slope, garrisoned by a dozen desperate men who had shouted warning again and again, they'd shoot down the first man that showed a head ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... of what had happened began to grow in force and keenness and, of a sudden, the thought of Calypso smote me like a sword! Spurred to desperate effort, I stood up on the instant and leaned against a rocky wall. Miracle of miracles! I could stand. I was not dead, after all. I was not, indeed, so far as I could tell, seriously hurt. Badly bruised, of course—but no bones broken. It seemed incredible, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... that new mill, and of the states of society consequent on the changes involved by the suggestive dates of either building. She remembered the times when watchers or wakeners in the night heard the distant word of command, and the measured tramp of thousands of sad desperate men receiving a surreptitious military training, in preparation for some great day which they saw in their visions, when right should struggle with might and come off victorious: when the people of England, represented by the workers of Yorkshire, Lancashire, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... kennels, and vulgarly spotless houses. But when I go down a street which has been left so long to itself that it has acquired a distinct outward character, I find plenty to think about. The scraps of sodden letters lying in the ash-barrel have their meaning: desperate appeals, perhaps, from Tom, the baker's assistant, to Amelia, the daughter of the dry-goods retailer, who is always selling at a sacrifice in consequence of the late fire. That may be Tom himself who is now passing me in a white apron, and I look up at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... 1718. The effect of the proclamation, in conjunction with the measures taken in the Bahamas, was very great. By the 1st July, 1719, to which date the time of grace was extended, all but three or four of the most desperate rovers had retired from business. But against the most audacious of them more vigorous ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... might have been expected; for there was nothing he could do but wander about, and try to amuse himself without using his eyes. Anyone who has ever been condemned to that sort of idleness knows how irksome it is, and can understand the state of mind which caused Mac to say to Rose in a desperate ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... case, what must have been Galeotto's? He was of iron, it is true. But consider that he had ridden this way at as desperate a pace already, to save me from the clutches of the Inquisition; and that, scarce rested, he was riding north again. Consider this, and you will not marvel that his weariness conquered him ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... take this resolution so suddenly? There was time, all the time in the world, and having once neglected the thing at the very start, it was curious that she should now, at this late date, make her desperate resolve. Preston had not been worse, more difficult to handle. In fact, when the two women had grown used to his case, the management had been simple enough. He had thought she was inured to the disgust and the horror—placid almost, and taking the thing ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... crushed in the narrow space, and the idea of being thus suddenly torn away from my betrothed filled me with terror. I made a desperate effort to spring out again; but a soft, strong hand gripped my arm and held me still, and in a moment we were borne swiftly away from the courtyard ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... twentieth century will find the pattern Man ready to their hand. Be the demands of the coming years what they may, God is able to raise up men to meet them, men after His own likeness—men of right, men of light, men of might—men who will follow Him in the desperate fight with the hydra-headed monsters of evil of every kind, and who will, by His Name, deliver the souls of men from the slavery of sin and the Hell to which ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... was a fair prospect of carrying the bastions by another assault. A terrible bombardment was begun on the fifth, and continued to the eighth of September, when both the Redan and the Malakhoff were taken by storm. But the struggle was desperate, and the losses on both sides immense. The Russians blew up their fortifications on the south side of the harbor, and retreated across the bay. Nor did they afterward make any serious attempt to regain the stronghold which the allies had wrested from them. The victors for their part proceeded ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... mysticism, nurtured by busy ecclesiastics, developed itself in her; she became possessed of the idea that she was a chosen instrument in the Church's hands to further its interests; and with feverish, desperate energy she devoted herself to literary work as its champion. She had her own press, which set up each day's work and showed it to her in proof the next. She did not leave Rome except on one occasion, and then for less than a day, during the ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... if he had been a lawyer," says I. "But never mind that; I'm going to make a guess—a desperate guess, mind. Should I be altogether in error if I thought that this letter had been stolen; and that the fingers of Mr. Davager, of suspicious commercial celebrity, might possibly be the fingers which ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... with a desperate matter-of-factness. It was half-past nine o'clock. Nothing had happened yet, at any rate. Beside her, Carlisle had more difficulty with her breakfast, hampered by her continuing mind's-eye picture of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... season set in; we might tell of the "tall times" the boys had whipping the trout-streams, of the trials of speed that came off on the river, when it turned out, as Archie had predicted, that Charles Morgan's sloop "couldn't sail worth a row of pins;" and we might tell of many more desperate "scrapes" that came off between the bully and his sworn enemies the Hillers; but we fear, reader, you are already weary of the Young Naturalist's home-life, and long to see him engaging in his favorite recreations—roaming through the woods, with ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... the last shoe, and Joel ran into the water. West, pale of face, but with a determined look in his blue eyes, followed a moment later, a yard or two behind, and the two set out with desperate strokes to reach the scene of the disaster. As he had taken the water Joel had cast a hurried glance toward the spot where Clausen had sunk, and had seen nothing of that youth; only Cloud was in sight, and he seemed to ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... at last become that the clergymen arose in a body and demanded better performances; while a desperate and disgusted party was also formed which was opposed to all singing. Still another band of old fogies was strong in force who wished to cling to the same way of singing that they were accustomed to; and they gave many objections to the new-fangled idea of singing ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the coldness that bound her became by slow degrees a numbness, paralyzing her faculties, extinguishing all her powers. There arose a great uproar in her brain, the swirl as of great waters engulfing her. She raised her head with a desperate gesture. She met the searching of his eyes, and goaded as it were to self-defence, with the last of her strength, she told him the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... her out of his sight; he had even inquired about what friends she had to ascertain whether there was much danger of her being traced. He had meant to get her alone in his car, then stupefy her in some way and bring her here. Her telephoning to the chemist had precipitated matters, made him take a desperate chance and act quickly. At least that was how she construed things. How he had managed to get her out and into his car was a mystery. She had just sent that message to Roger, she recalled. Two minutes, one minute's delay, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... afterwards turned away for his misconduct. He spent his own money and nearly all the stores among the half-bloods upon the beach, and being turned away, went up to the Presidio, where he lived the life of a desperate "loafer," until some rascally deed sent him off "between two days," with men on horseback, dogs, and Indians in full cry after him, among the hills. One night, he burst into our room at the hide-house, breathless, pale as a ghost, covered ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... arm, and attempted to reach it, but without success. At length, while making a desperate effort to regain it, she lost her balance, ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... beginning of a long and intimate acquaintance. In the course of conversation I disclosed to Charles Webster—such was his name—the desperate state of my affairs, with the gloomy prospect they entailed. The remedy he proposed—and when sober he spoke well and sensibly—was drastic and by no means unfeasible. "Cut it all and go to sea," he said. "You've enjoyed yourself while your money lasted, and what's the good of money but ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... they found him at least as strong as themselves, and began to fancy that be might be stronger. A few experiments soon taught them that there was no weakness there. On one occasion the Rothschilds, true to their ordinary selfish policy, made a desperate attempt to crush the new house which dared to enter into rivalry with them. Widespread plans were arranged in such a way that large demands were made upon them on one day. The amount was nearly two millions. Smithers ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... his harem with desperate fierceness, watches over its number while they feed or sleep, chooses the ground for browsing and rest—defends them against enemies—heads them in the advance, and covers their retreat with his own 'person'— such is the domestic ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... their thin clothes could not be imagined; they were worse than ragged. They looked neither to the right nor to the left, but stared straight on and pressed straight on rather rapidly, with such desperate tragedy in their looks as moved me to that noble terror which the old-fashioned critics used to inculcate as the best effect of tragedy on the stage. I followed them a little way before I gained courage to speak to the man, who seemed to have been sick, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... to approach Captain Lake, on the quarter deck, and with an anxious petitioning countenance, asked for the goods, which had been promised him. Prepared for the desperate game he was about to play, it was the object of Lake to gain as much time as possible, that he might get his vessel under way, before he came to an open rupture. Therefore, he pretended to be busy ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... get the horse-hirer to let us have the horses a few hours earlier. In spending time in long conversations mixed with civilities and bows the Japanese are masters. Of this bad habit, which still often makes the European desperate, it will not perhaps be long necessary to complain, for everything indicates that the Japanese too will soon be carried along at the endlessly roaring speed ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Tom," cried Mark, "and make a desperate effort ourselves. If the boats get here first, they will claim to have taken the schooner, and rob ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... He was at the wrong end of the whip. Thorpe's game was desperate, but so was his need, and this was a backwoods country a long ways from the little technicalities of the law. It was one thing to serve an injunction; another to enforce it. Thorpe finished his drive with no more ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... beaten, once near the White Columns, and again near Labranda, and their victory at Pedasos suspended merely for an instant the progress of the Persian arms, so that towards the close of 497 the struggle was almost entirely concentrated round Miletus. Aristagoras, seeing that his cause was now desperate, agreed with his partisans that they should expatriate themselves. He fell fighting against the Edonians of Thrace, attempting to force the important town of Enneahodoi, near the mouth of the Strymon (496);* but his defection had not discouraged any one, and Histiseus, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... seizing Don Benito by the throat he added, "this plotting pirate means murder!" Here, in apparent verification of the words, the servant, a dagger in his hand, was seen on the rail overhead, poised, in the act of leaping, as if with desperate fidelity to befriend his master to the last; while, seemingly to aid the black, the three white sailors were trying to clamber into the hampered bow. Meantime, the whole host of negroes, as if inflamed at the sight of their jeopardized captain, impended ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... at a glance, and the horror of it struck her dumb. Once, twice, three times she tried to call. If she could only get Guard away the cattle would follow him; but no voice came. She grew desperate, mad with fear for her sister. Oh, if she could but get them to come towards her and leave Pen. She tried to whistle, but her lips trembled too much. She tried to shriek and failed, and when at last she succeeded, the weak, strained voice could hardly be recognised as ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... homewards after yielding a reluctant consent to the flight, we are invited to contemplate the agony of his soul. The form which it takes is curiously characteristic. No vehement pangs of remorse, or desperate hopes of escape, overpower his faculties in any simple and straightforward fashion. The poor minister is seized with a strange hallucination. He meets a venerable deacon, and can scarcely restrain himself from uttering blasphemies about the Communion-supper. Next appears an aged widow, and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the features of the strike begin to get dramatic than they were instantly submerged in the flood of conversation that was let loose over them. Mrs. Anthony pitied the poor editors and reporters while Parliament was sitting. She saw them as rather silly, violent and desperate men, yet pathetic in their silliness, violence and desperation, snatching at divorces, and breach of promise cases, and fires in paraffin shops, as drowning men snatch ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... fence, tore up small trees, and seized anything and everything that would serve for a weapon, and maintained the fight for a half an hour, before the police arrived. The second portion went by Eighth Avenue, and intercepted a large body of Orangemen that had retreated from the woods, and a desperate battle followed. There were only two policemen here, and of course could do nothing but stand and look on the murderous conflict. In the meantime, the force telegraphed for by Captain. Helme arrived. It consisted of twenty men, to ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... which we call revolution, is for the time simply impossible. So long as many old leaves linger on the November trees, you know that there has been little frost and no wind; just so while the House of Lords retains much power, you may know that there is no desperate discontent in the country, no wild agency likely ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... one people there was equal bravery, talent, and determination on both sides; which made the struggle a very desperate one," ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... altogether overgrown by the fat of the publican. Though it was not eleven o'clock, a great tankard of bitter ale stood upon the table before him, and he was busy cutting up a plug of black tobacco and rubbing the slices into powder between his horny fingers. For all his record of desperate battles, he looked what he was—a good-hearted, respectable householder, law-abiding and kindly, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sensation supplied a large part of the material for his poetry, and among the senses it was especially the one that has the remotest association with ideas that he drew upon most constantly—the sense of smell. In his desperate search for new and strange sensations he went the round of violent and exhausting dissipations, and as his senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the result in his poems ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... able to conjure all evil. Those desperate enemies of mankind which lie in siege of us all around grew feeble and were silent when she came. Nor has any other force than hers dared to enter the rooms where she had lived: it is her influence alone which inhabits them to-day. There is a vessel of copper, ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls' earnings ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... terribly as Dickens in his "Tale of Two Cities"; yet what man, conversant with slave-biographies, can read that narrative without feeling it weak beside the provocations to which fugitive slaves testify? It is something for human nature that these desperate insurgents revenged such wrongs by death alone. Even that fearful penalty was to be inflicted only till the object was won. It was admitted in the "Richmond Enquirer" of the time, that "indiscriminate massacre was not their intention, after they obtained foothold, and was resorted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Ralph," Edgar said. "At first we were greatly in favour of Ghent, seeing that they were in a desperate strait and that all reasonable terms were refused them, but of late we have not been so warm in their cause. Van Artevelde himself is assuredly honest and desirous of doing what is right, but methinks ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... meantime everything had been put in order, the tent set up, and the dogs fed. Now came the great question: What was there on the other side of the ridge? Was it the same desperate confusion, or would the ground offer better facilities? Three of us went off to see. Excitement rose as we neared the saddle; so much depended on finding a reasonable way. One more pull and we were up; it was worth the trouble. The first ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... short of such a conviction would have enabled her to play a part among kings and queens, and so many of the ablest statesmen of that most able age. Nothing else could have tempted her, on the failure of her prophecies, into the desperate career of treason into which we are soon to ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... hitherto retained, and went into the country "in a very weak and deplorable condition." He was suffering from jaundice, dropsy, and asthma, under which combination of diseases his body was "so entirely emaciated, that it had lost all its muscular flesh." He had begun with reason "to look on his case as desperate," and might fairly have regarded himself as voluntarily sacrificed to the good of the public. But he is far too honest to assign his action to philanthropy alone. His chief object (he owns) had been, if possible, to secure some provision ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... took no steps in this direction. She did not seek for cheap lodgings, not for a rise of salary, nor even for the money illegally detained by her brother for his own profit. She never spoke to her married sister, nor to any one, of her desperate position. The father of her child had disappeared and she never gave information against him for fear of divulging her secret. Moreover, the law at St. Gall only admitted the charge of paternity against unmarried men! She found no practical way of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... lying upon some harrows, in the condition described. He was picked up, and carried to a gentleman's house, where, being well cared for, he narrated the remarkable adventure which had befallen him. Before long, however, he "grew into a frenzy so desperate that they were afraid to stay in his chamber," and the gentleman of the house, not knowing what to do, "sent for the parson of the town." Prompted, it is supposed, by the Satanic influence which still held him, Mr. Leech ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... head. From a mischievous love of sport, I took the lady's part; and very gravely said, 'I think it is but fair to give him an offer of it. If he does not choose it, he may let it alone.' 'I think so,' said the lady, looking at her brother with an air of victory. Sir Allan, finding the matter desperate, strutted about the room, and took snuff. When Dr Johnson came in, she called to him, 'Do you choose any cold sheep's-head, sir?' 'No, Madam,' said he, with a tone of surprise and anger. 'It is here, sir,' said she, supposing he had refused ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... never will. But I'll tell you what. I shall get into some desperate scrape about her. Of course she'll marry, and that soon. Then I shall make a fool of myself. When I hear that she is engaged I shall go and quarrel with the man, and kick him,—or get kicked. All the world will turn against me, and I shall ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... a musing sort of tone, as he laid his hand on Mr. Carlyle's shoulder, which his own head scarcely reached, "I am sometimes at death-beds where the clergyman is sent for in this desperate need to the fleeting spirit, and I am tempted to ask myself what good another man, priest though he be, can do at the twelfth hour, where accounts have not ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... presence and the desperate efforts of Murat, Poniatowski, Victor, Macdonald, and thousands of nameless heroes, barely held off the masses of the allied Grand Army. On the north and north-east, Marmont and Ney were equally overborne.[382] Worst of all, the supply of cannon balls was running low. With pardonable ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... at this time the fall of the desperate Communards, who held Paris and defied the government of Versailles, while experts vowed that the end could not be far off. It seemed impossible that a rabble under the command of first one and then another adventurer could hold the capital against disciplined troops, ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... to see him and walk with him, as he asked, if he returned with clean hands. While the letter which she had read neither proved nor disproved such a supposition, the woman yet felt a secret and sure conviction in her heart that Noy was coming back innocent at least of any desperate action. That he was in Cornwall again and a free man appeared to her proof sufficient that he had ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... themselves in safety, had not quitted their homes, and had only sent off their women, children, and old men to Brussels; therefore the gendarmes met with resistance when they arrived; but death howled behind them, and they attacked like desperate men, triumphed over all obstacles, lost ten men, but established the others, and ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... gave a lurch; then righted herself; then began to circle down, making desperate efforts to cross the neutral line. But the British airman headed her off. Next moment she lurched again, and then took a "nosedive" straight into the British trenches. She fell on open ground, a few hundred yards behind our second line. The place ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... this, the lion caught up with them and diminished their number by five. Finally there was only one left and the coast was a full day's march away. Could he make it? It looked like a desperate chance, but he still had hopes. He noticed with pleasure that the lion was becoming fat and probably could not travel fast. But he also noticed with displeasure that he had forty feet of chain ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... him during their drive what the source of her illumination was; described Anthony March's visit on that most desperate day of all, the vividness of his concern over the outcome of the fight and his utter unconcern about the effect of it upon his own fortunes. She had been reading Kipling aloud, out at the farm, to the boys and Aunt Lucile and a memory of it led her to make a comparison—heedless ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... charge was larceny, the police assured me that the defendant had been arrested fifty times. It seemed such a desperate case that I gave him the longest term allowed by the law. After he had been in jail a few days, I discovered that his aged father and mother were sick and helpless, and needed his support. I set aside the judgment and allowed him his liberty upon the understanding that if he ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the people are brutal— That their instincts of beauty are dead— Were it so, shame on those who condemn them To the desperate struggle for bread. But they lie in their throats when they say it, For the people are tender at heart, And a wellspring of beauty lies hidden Beneath their life's ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... to fame under the title of the Master of the Rolls; but he was young and unspoiled: whereas this man was a monstrous feather-bed in person, fifty years old, and totally out of condition. Spite of all this, however, and contending against me, who am a master in the art, he made so desperate a defence, that many times I feared he might turn the tables upon me; and that I, an amateur, might be murdered by a rascally baker. What a situation! Minds of sensibility will sympathize with my anxiety. How severe it was, you may understand by this, that for the first thirteen rounds ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... believe either that Austria would claim, or that the other powers of the earth, and chiefly Great Britain and America, would permit the intervention of Russia. I could not believe that Austria would resort to this desperate remedy, because (and it is a remarkable circumstance which I mention now for the first time) it was Austria which but a few years before, when, in the transactions with Turkey, the question of foreign interference for the maintenance ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... withdraw it the very last, of the adherents of the hapless Charles. So long did he resist in arms, so pertinaciously did he uphold the authority of the first Charles, so early did he rise again in behalf of the second, that he was noted by the Parliament as an incorrigible and most desperate malignant; and, had it not been that, by his gallantry in the field, and his humanity when the strife was ended, he had won the personal good-will of Cromwell, it is most likely that it would have gone hard with his fortunes if not ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... This desperate aspiring to paradise lost, this deformed dream of the beautiful, is not less tenacious on the part of the man. He turns towards the woman; and this preoccupation, become insensate, persists even when the dreadful shadow of the two red posts ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... hospitality. The Bajada is the capital of Entre Rios. In 1825 the town contained 6000 inhabitants, and the province 30,000; yet, few as the inhabitants are, no province has suffered more from bloody and desperate revolutions. They boast here of representatives, ministers, a standing army, and governors: so it is no wonder that they have their revolutions. At some future day this must be one of the richest countries of La Plata. The soil is varied and productive; and its almost insular ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... for their victualls failed them altogether at once: and they had nothing for their more assured refuge but their shooes and leather ierkins which they did eat. (M416) Touching their beuerage, some of them dranke the sea water, others did drinke their owne vrine: and they remained in such desperate necessitie a very long space, during the which part of them died for hunger. Beside this extreme famine, which did so grieuously oppresse them, they fell euery minute of an houre out of all hope euer to see France againe, insomuch that they were constrained to cast the water continually out, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Then lightly cast his cloth and covered them. But these, fluttering aloft, bore with them there Nala's one cloth; and, hovering overhead, Uttered sharp-stinging words, reviling him Even as he stood, naked to all the airs, Downcast and desperate: "Thou brain-sick Prince! We are the dice; we come to ravish hence Thy last poor cloth; we were not well content Thou shouldst depart owning a garment still." And when he saw the dice take wings and fly, Leaving him bare, to Damayanti ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... through rents made by British cannon. The two vessels had again come closer, but not so as to prevent the guns from being handled. While the cannon roared and the flames shot up, the two crews again met in desperate hand-to-hand strife, for it was evident that one of the two vessels must be lost. By the light of the flames Jones saw that the mainmast of the Serapis was cut almost in two. Quickly he gave the order, and another double-headed shot finished the work. Captain Pearson, who had commanded his ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... must have made the other guy desperate, because he made a dive and let his needle ray burn out a slashing beam that zipped across over my head. My forty-five blazed twice. He missed but I didn't, just as the throb of the stun-gun rang the air again. ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... transgression followed in their train. They supported a large number of tippling-houses, to which they would decoy the youthful and unsuspecting, and, after stripping them of their possessions, send them forth into the world the ready and desperate instrument of vice. Our streets were ever resounding with the echoes of their drunken and obscene mirth, and no citizen was secure from their villainy. Frequently, in armed bodies, they have disturbed the good ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... is also certain, that they are much mistaken that think the poverty of a nation is a means of the public safety. Who quarrel more than beggars? Who does more earnestly long for a change, than he that is uneasy in his present circumstances? And who run to create confusions with so desperate a boldness, as those who have nothing to lose, hope to gain by them? If a king should fall under such contempt or envy, that he could not keep his subjects in their duty, but by oppression and ill usage, and by rendering them ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... that he had stirred he found himself some distance away, standing still beside a chestnut-tree. A great wave of depression and fear and hopelessness swept him, and he shivered under it. He had an instant's wild panic, and mad, desperate thoughts surged upon him. He saw utter failure confronting him. He saw himself as helpless as a little child, his feeble efforts already spent for naught, and, like a little child, he was afraid. He would have rushed at that grim encircling wall and fought his way up and over it, but even ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... end of the year 1916 the situation was already becoming almost desperate, even if the putting away of the horrible Rasputin did seem for a moment to relieve the gloom. Officers high up in the army were imploring our military representatives for British intervention with their rulers. Our ambassador appears to have done everything that man could do, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... him what I thought thereof; and Beorn, who must needs listen to all this, ground his teeth and cursed under his breath, for there seemed to have come some desperate fury on him in place of his cold despair of an ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... wretch! he is half crazed with fear; that makes mean men cruel; care not for him;' and when we were ready, giving our packages to Will, she led the way out with a determined aspect, having, as I soon found, embraced a strange—nay, a desperate resolution. For Will asking her, 'Which way will ye turn now, mistress? In this street no inn will open to us, ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... read. The brave knight fought till he was victorious, or dead. Only the fatally wounded surrendered. All this had Walter's hearty endorsement: He would not have acted differently. The beautiful heroine was loved by everybody; and the rejected suitors died of despair, or joined some desperate band. All quite proper. The good remained steadfast, in spite of the Devil and all his machinations—yes, in spite of tedium. Once selected by the author to be a high-toned, moral hero—then spotless garments! Walter wondered if such a one could have a pain in the stomach, or ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the valuable aid of the cleverest man in the whole camp, read in the Times' columns the details of that great campaign, while we, the actors in it, had enough to do to discharge our own duties well, and rarely concerned ourselves in what seemed of such importance to you. And so very often a desperate skirmish or hard-fought action, the news of which created so much sensation in England, was but little regarded at ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... cut off from the timber, struck out upon the prairie; but the great hound soon overtook him; and after a short but desperate fight, put an end to ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... that, of course, before you stain your neck, and must stain the skin where you have cut off your hair, also. I am giving you these instructions now, because when the time comes there may not be a minute to spare, though, of course, I hope there will be no desperate hurry." ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... unite. Johnston's assistants in command were Beauregard and Bragg, both able and experienced officers. On the morning of April 6, the Confederates fell upon Grant's outposts and drove them headlong against the main body. Desperate valor was shown in the ensuing attack, and before the afternoon it seemed that nothing could save the Union army and its commander from complete disaster. The river was in high flood, two impassable creeks flanked the Federals, while the victorious Confederates ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... let out a yell of terror, and then, certain that he was about to take an awful plunge into some deep part of the lake, made a desperate ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... some funereal spell Drawn down through desperate ways that lead not back We seem to move, bound forth past flood and fell ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 'I'm very miserable—very nearly desperate. What remains for me—what remains? Fortune has done her worst—thrown in the dust, her wheels rolled over me; and the servile world, who follow her chariot like a mob, stamp upon the mangled wretch. All this had passed over me, and left me ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the Gruensberg Leather Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the people who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing something desperate—of leaving a job or a husband—without ever doing it. Babbitt was so hopeful about Escott's hesitant ardors that he became the playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly into the living-room and gurgled, "Has our Kenny been here to-night?" He never credited ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... a fair land, for those who have lingered in its byways: but, alas, a troubled tide of strange metres, of desperate rhythms, of wild conjunctions, of panic-stricken collocations, oftentimes overwhelms it. "Sordello" grew under the poet's fashioning till, like the magic vapour of the Arabian wizard, it passed ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... get someone," replied Barney. "We're a pretty hard combination to beat, aren't we, Margaret? There will be a man to take the service at Bull Crossing if I have to take it myself—a desperate ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... mortified, as they lie in the straw, entirely occupied with breathing. They breathe eternally little short breaths, a hundred or a hundred and ten to the minute, like some sort of pump. They wish passionately not to die, and yet they know with desperate certainty that they are going to die. They lie down there in a tiny, little black hell of their own and fight with all their might and main, feeling that they will die instantly if they skip one little short breath. (I was going to say they fight with all their soul and body, but they no longer ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... gateway-bars, lances and shields, and beaks torn from warships. He too sat there, with the divining-rod of Quirinus, girt in the short augural gown, and carrying on his left arm the sacred shield, Picus the tamer of horses; he whom Circe, desperate with amorous desire, smote with her golden rod and turned by her poisons into a bird with patches of colour on his wings. Of such wise was the temple of the gods wherein Latinus, sitting on his father's seat, summoned the Teucrians to his house and presence; and when they entered ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... plain, At last, in tears and pain. * * * * * Who spurns the shrine of Right, nor wealth nor power Shall be to him a tower, To guard him from the gulf: there lies his lot, Where all things are forgot. Lust drives him on—lust, desperate and wild Fate's sin-contriving child— And cure is none; beyond concealment clear Kindles sin's baleful glare. As an ill coin beneath the wearing touch Betrays by stain and smutch Its metal false—such ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... that it could be pulled up over the barricade when the last of the defenders had entered. By the time this was finished the battle below began in earnest. The infuriated assailants had pulled the doors outwards and were making desperate efforts to climb the pile of logs. This they soon found to be impossible, and began with their halberts to pull them down, and it was not long before they had dislodged sufficient to make a slope up which they ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... rush in one by one without torches and stand as if turned to stone. OLAF comes into view up in the opening, which he seeks to widen with desperate efforts.] ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... bombshell playing havoc with the house of cards which had been so carefully erected. But the intrigue had gone so far, and the prizes to be won by the monarchical supporters were so great that nothing could induce them to retrace their footsteps. For a week and more a desperate struggle went on behind the scenes in the Presidential Palace, since Yuan Shih-kai was too astute a man not to understand that a most perilous situation was being rapidly created and that if things went wrong he would be the chief victim. But family ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... sworn he was a trump, not a dozen ever entered the house a second time. Do what he would, Bowley could not create a business; and the corners of his mouth began visibly to decline ere the experiment had lasted a couple of months. He made a desperate effort to get up a Free-and-easy; he had the old piano tuned, and set an old fellow to play upon it with open windows; exhibited a perpetual announcement of 'A Concert this Evening;' and himself led off the harmony, to the tune of Tally-ho, at the top of his voice. It was all of no avail. The ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... prepared for some sort of gun-play, for the crooks were desperate characters, and I myself was surprised to encounter nothing but physical force, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... blunt, brutal way this Southern Democrat talked. He couldn't believe in his honesty. Beneath those bushy eyebrows burned a wolf's hunger for office and power. On the surface he was loyal to the Union. He wondered if he were not in reality playing a desperate waiting game, ready at the moment of the crisis to throw his information to either side? The air of Washington reeked with suspicion and ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Desperate as his condition was, the master-carpenter could almost have laughed at the idea of marriage preventing him from following the bent of his nature. He was the born lover. If he had been as high as the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to hail Mr O'Neil or somebody; I thought I oughter 'ave summun by to 'elp me, in case he becomed desperate-like, and I couldn't make no one hear on deck, and that's why I comed when I knowed you was a-passing ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Dot's Kangaroo look in that desperate moment, standing erect, waiting for her foe, and conquering her naturally frightened nature by a grand effort of courage, that it seemed impossible that either dogs or men should be so cruel as to take her life. For a moment the dingo hound seemed daunted by her bravery, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... course is to be taken in bad cases." (or), "A desperate case must have a desperate course." ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... ray was thrown against it in order to make the defenders keep their screens up continuously. The edge of the apron was bearing the brunt of that vicious and never-ceasing attack, and most concerned the desperate defense. ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... advised her!" the poor woman passionately retorted. "Look at me in my misery and refuse to help me! Oh, you need n't be afraid, I know I 'm a fright, I have n't an idea what I have on. If this goes on, we may both as well turn scarecrows. If ever a woman was desperate, frantic, heart-broken, I am that woman. I can't begin to tell you. To have nourished a serpent, sir, all these years! to have lavished one's self upon a viper that turns and stings her own poor ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... it for the sake of establishing and giving authority to the good precepts and doctrines Jesus taught; because such a course would have been in the plainest antagonism to all those principles themselves, and because, too, they must have known both the utter wickedness and the desperate hazards and forlornness of such an attempt to give a fictitious sanction to moral truths. In such an enterprise there was before them not the faintest probability of even the slightest success. Every selfish motive would tend to deter them; for poverty, hatred, disgrace, stripes, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... or would he remember her complaint of being tired, a complaint she so seldom made? It was as a blow to Elinor when she heard his step go on past her door: and yet she was glad. Had he come in there was a desperate thought in her mind that she would call him to her bedside and in the dark, with his hand in hers, tell him—all that there was to tell. But it was again a relief when he passed on, and she felt that she was spared for an hour or two, spared for the new ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... also for them order for the repayment of an olde and desperate debt of three thousand marks, a debt so desperate, as foure yeeres left out of their accounts, and by the opinion of them all, not thought fit to be dealt with, for too much offending the Emperour, or impeaching his other businesse, which was ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... we shall find her before then," returned the Colonel earnestly. "We ought not to delay an instant, with that idea in view. Indeed, our theory may be quite wrong and Alora be in desperate ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... thorny, rugged; knotted, knotty; invious^; pathless, trackless; labyrinthine &c (convoluted) 248; intricate, complicated &c (tangled) 59; impracticable &c (impossible) 471; not feasible &c 470; desperate &c (hopeless) 859. embarrassing, perplexing &c (uncertain) 475; delicate, ticklish, critical; beset with difficulties, full of difficulties, surrounded by difficulties, entangled by difficulties, encompassed with difficulties. under a difficulty; in a box; in difficulty, in hot water, in the suds, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... door and walked slowly down the passage. Having reached his room, he stamped with anger, uttered desperate words, struck his forehead with his fist, vented his impatience, because he could see no solution of his difficulties. He paced the room like a madman, fought the air, stopped, resumed his walk,—until exhausted he threw himself into a chair. Sorrow, anguish, and rage, ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... however," he proceeded cheerfully, "that notwithstanding my own experience of the habits of the sordid herd, I saw one card I was surprised to find, though really"—shrugging his shoulders—"I ought to have been less surprised to find it than to find any other. But it was bold. I suppose the fellow is desperate." ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... received an expected visitor at her apartment. Expecting him, she made a desperate effort to appear as strong and unconcerned as she had been on the occasion of a former meeting. There was little in her appearance to suggest worry, illness or alarm when she entered the rather unsettled little library and confronted the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... from others that she was sadly changed. Instead of being one of the most light-hearted girls, I heard that she used to sit day after day in her mother's house and wring her hands and weep and that her mother's heart was almost broken. Friends feared that Lucy was losing her mind and might do some desperate deed, but she did not. I left about that time to teach school in a distant village, and when I returned home I heard sad tidings of poor Lucy. She was a mother, but not a wife. Her brothers had grown angry with her for tarnishing their family name, of which they were ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... his first two volumes he made no direct reference to Froude, and contented himself with his own independent narrative. He vindicated the conduct of Lord Fitzwilliam, and traced to his recall in 1795 the desperate courses adopted by Irish Catholics. He showed that Froude had been unjust to the Whigs who gave evidence for Arthur O'Connor at Maidstone in 1798, and especially to Grattan. That O'Connor was engaged in treasonable correspondence with France there can be no doubt now. But he did not tell his ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... however, the news which he had to communicate was less satisfactory. Garret himself was gone—utterly gone. Dalaber was obstinate, and no clue to the track of the fugitive could be discovered. The police were at fault; neither bribes nor threats could elicit anything; and in these desperate circumstances, as he told the bishop, the three heads of houses conceived that they might strain a point of propriety for so good a purpose as to prevent the escape of a heretic. Accordingly, after a full report of the points of their success, Doctor London went on ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Unto me bending down from above, Thy radiant vision appearing As an angel of beauty and love. 'Mid the torments of desperate sadness, In the torture of bondage and sighs, To me rang thy voice so beloved— And I dreamed thy miraculous eyes. But the years rolled along—and life's tempests My illusions, my youth overcame, I forgot that sweet voice full of music— ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... improperly melancholy, or metaphorically mad, lightly mad, or in disposition, as stupid, angry, drunken, silly, sottish, sullen, proud, vainglorious, ridiculous, beastly, peevish, obstinate, impudent, extravagant, dry, doting, dull, desperate, harebrain, &c. mad, frantic, foolish, heteroclites, which no new [795] hospital can hold, no physic help; my purpose and endeavour is, in the following discourse to anatomise this humour of melancholy, through all its parts and species, as it is an habit, or an ordinary disease, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... her it did not win the shadow of a reply again and again. She laid her hand then upon Mrs. Rossitur's shoulder, but the very significant answer to that, was a shrinking gesture of the shoulder and neck away from the hand. Fleda, growing desperate, then implored an answer in words prayed for an explanation with an intensity of distress in voice and manner, that no one whose ears were not stopped with a stronger feeling could have been deaf to; but Mrs. Rossitur would not ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... children at home. He was furious against the poor girls, as if they had led their brother into danger. In his violent rage he was a perfect maniac, and the young men pushing him away, cried shame on him. In a while, the desperate man, torn by a hurricane of passion, sate himself down on a crag, and burst into a tempest of tears, and struck his head violently with his clenched fists, and cursed himself and every body. It was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... of General Banks's critical position, I have been compelled to suspend General McDowell's movements to join you. The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper's Ferry, and we are trying to throw General Fremont's force and part of General McDowell's ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... They that led him changing the good will they bare him a little before into hatred, because the foresaid speeches proceeded, as they thought, from a desperate mind. ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... Example of others: But when they had touched the Threshold, it was a strange Shock to them to find that the Delusion of Errour was gone, and they plainly discerned the Building to hang a little up in the Air without any real Foundation. At first we saw nothing but a desperate Leap remained for us, and I a thousand times blamed my unmeaning Curiosity that had brought me into so much Danger. But as they began to sink lower in their own Minds, methought the Palace sunk along with us, till they were arrived at ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... steadily, systematically, inexorably, propelled by many powerful tendencies of the age, and checked only by assassination. What are the agrarian outrages which have become so terribly rife of late, but the desperate struggles of a doomed race to break the instruments which pluck them out of their native soil? A generation of instruction in the national schools and a generation of intercourse with the free citizens of the United States, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Aid to his Brother.—During all the years Hannibal was waging war in Italy, his brother Hasdrubal was carrying on a desperate struggle with the Roman armies in Spain. At length he determined to leave the conduct of the war in that country to others, and go to the relief of his brother, who was sadly in need of aid. Like Pyrrhus, Hannibal had been brought to realize that even constant victories ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... "Turkey number one!" he called out. I missed a big gobbler on the run. Copple shot again. "Turkey number two!" he called out. I could not see what he had done, but of course I knew he had done execution. It roused my ire as well as a desperate ambition. Turkeys were running up hill everywhere. I aimed at this one, then at that. Again I fired. Another miss! How that gobbler ran! He might just as well have flown. Every turkey contrived to get a tree or bush between him and me, just at the critical instant. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... that our horses had arrived at La Bizaie early that morning, having crossed by the raft bridge the day before. Silver as usual made a desperate fuss, and was eventually knocked into the river by a mule who was crossing with him. He swam up and down the river for twenty-five minutes, refusing to come out—poor Catley in desperation all the time. But he was eventually hauled out, with my saddle and bags, of course, sopping wet. ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... amongst what looked like the fragments of a ship. She had given way as if driven straight in. Their panting hearts yielded, too, before the tremendous blow; and all at once she sprang up again to her desperate plunging, as if trying to scramble out from under ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... forces in the East. Indeed it seems so reckless that I can only account for it by supposing either that they are confident of rushing Petrograd and paralysing Russia within a few weeks: or that they are in a desperate ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... working it with a tea-kettle, is preposterously abs ... In one of his visions he claims to have seen a gathering of people, called a city, in which there are to be more than four million souls, and governed not by the virtuous, as in our own day, but by the most desperate political malefactors that ever banded together for plunder, and this at the direct request of the people themselves! I am perfectly aware that human nature is weak, and given over at times to strange delusions, but that any body of self-respecting persons should deliberately and of their ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... of steel, and terminating in a long, narrow, and very sharp blade: this, with a hunting-knife, or hanger, completed his offensive arms. Thus equipped, the hunter would either encounter his enemy face to face, confront his desperate charge, as with erect tail, depressed head, and flaming eyes, he rushed with his foamy tusks full against him, who either sought to pierce his vitals through his counter, or driving his spear through his chine, transfix his heart; or failing those ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... ford before his pursuers overtook him. But Andrew felt that the narrow strip of wood beside which he was racing could not afford him shelter and that the ford would avail him nothing. In his extremity he made up his mind to a desperate venture. ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... them to be used as a courier. Blakely's opportune coming had cheered not a little the flagging defense, but, not until forty-eight hours thereafter, by which time their condition had become almost desperate and the foe almost daring, did the lithe, big-eyed, swarthy little Apache reach them. Blakely knew him instantly, wrote his dispatch and bade the boy go with all speed, with the result we know. "Three more of our party are wounded," he had written, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... charge on foot. After a long and difficult contest, the Helvetian warriors were driven back, but the hardest struggle was about the chariots and the camp, for the Helvetians made a stand there and a desperate resistance, and also their wives and children, who fought till they were cut to pieces, and the battle was hardly over at midnight. This glorious deed of victory Caesar followed up by one still better, for he ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Tozer's nose had ceased to bleed, the signal was given for the gates to be thrown open; and out rushed Proctor, Marshal, Bull-dogs, and undergraduates. The Town was in great force, and the fight became desperate. To the credit of the Town, be it said, they discarded bludgeons and stones, and fought, in John Bull fashion, with their fists. Scarcely a stick was to be seen. Singling out his man, Mr. Tozer made at him valiantly, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede |
