"Hopeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... female is easily captured by approaching very stealthily and covering the entrance to the nest. The bird seldom makes any effort to escape, seeing how hopeless the case is, and keeps her place on the nest till she feels your hand closing around her. I have looked down into the cavity and seen the poor thing palpitating with fear and looking up with distended eyes, but never moving till I had withdrawn a few paces; then she rushes ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... leading apparently to subterranean dungeons, being all dimly seen in the obscurity of the night, suggested to his mind ideas of prisoners confined there in ancient times, and wearing out their lives in a dreadful and hopeless captivity, or being put to ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... Portlaw had joyously waded into whatever gaiety offered, neck-deep; Portlaw had attached himself to the Club with all the deliberation of a born gourmet and a hopeless gambler; Malcourt roamed society and its suburbs, drifting from set to set and from coterie to coterie, always an opportunist, catholic in his tastes, tolerant of anything where pretty women were inclined to be amiable. And they often ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... had found in the coppice on the day of her abduction, and that I had kept ever since as one keeps the relic of a departed saint. Another moment and I should have poured out the story of the mad, hopeless passion that filled my heart to bursting, when of a sudden—"Yvonne, Yvonne!" came Genevieve's fresh voice from the other end of the terrace. The spell ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... foreigners, and there was some mystery about them which the girls did not then understand, inspired them with fear; though Philadelphia residents of that time testify that the homeless and destitute strangers were in reality a very simple and inoffensive company, when, "friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city." Through the influence of Anthony Benezet, a member of the Society of Friends, they were provided with homes on Pine Street above Sixth, where the two little wooden houses still stand; one, when we last ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... advisable, the writ was suspended for a time, that its suspension might serve both as a punishment and as a warning, a practice which is still not unfrequently adopted. But no plan could be devised for dealing with the evil in counties, till what seemed hopeless to achieve by direct legislation was, in a great degree, effected by the indirect operation of the Reform Bill of 1832. The shortening of the duration of an election, which was henceforth concluded in a single ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... were really true that God heard her prayers and would answer them, certainly things would not go so badly with her any more. But was she one of His little ones? Surely there was no one more helpless and hopeless and troubled—nobody ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... thought Albinia as she parted from him. Nothing is so hopeless as that sort of forgiveness, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... witches do; they remembered that he had been missing for a whole day during the Sohrai festival and believed him. So the sick man's wife and mother were fetched and well beaten to make them restore the sick man to health; but his liver and heart had been eaten so that the case was hopeless and in a few days he was dead. His relations in revenge soon killed ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... my lap upon the floor in an instant. I spoke sharply to the cat, when she sat down and folded her paws under her, and regarded the squirrel, as I thought, with only a dreamy kind of interest. I fancied she thought it a hopeless case there amid that pile of posts. "That is not your game, Nig," I said, "so spare yourself any anxiety." Just then I was called to the house, where I was detained about five minutes. As I returned I met Nig coming to the house with the chipmunk in her mouth. She ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... as well poke along the top to camp," he said at last, getting to his feet. "I sent that breed back, down there, so we could talk without having to keep cases on him. This is beginning to look like a hopeless ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... said, that you are vastly amused at having plunged me into such a hopeless discussion; but now hear the parable, and then you will be still more amused at the meagreness of my imagination: for the manner in which the best men are treated in their own States is so grievous that no single thing on earth is comparable to it; and therefore, if I am to plead ...
— The Republic • Plato
... individuals are often allowed to be parents of a numerous progeny. We must (i) inject into these wastrels the feeling of responsibility and (ii) prevent the children from dying of starvation. The first problem requires lengthy treatment and is perhaps hopeless of accomplishment; the second can be done at once by philanthropy, either individual ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... intermittent fever, and hastened to render aid. Under the Doctor's skilful treatment he speedily recovered. On the 10th of March another son was added to the Moffat family, and shortly afterwards Mary was suddenly taken seriously ill, and became so weak, that for many days her recovery seemed hopeless. The Doctor was at that time away surveying, but upon receiving information of the position of affairs at Kuruman, he immediately hastened to render all the assistance ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... Frederick was most heroically silent; the machine was lifted by the Herculean property-man, and carried carefully to the side scene, lest in rolling the thunder should rumble before its cue. It would be a hopeless task to paint the agitation of the contents of the barrel. The property-man, swearing the barrel was unusually heavy, placed the complicated machine in readiness, the witches entered amid flames of rosin; the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... General Lyon marched out with the force then organized, surrounded Camp Jackson, and demanded its surrender. The militia commander, Brigadier-General Daniel M. Frost, after protesting in vain against the "wrong and insult" to his State, seeing resistance hopeless, surrendered his command, about 1500 men, with their arms and munitions of war. After the surrender, and while preparations were making to conduct the prisoners to the arsenal, some shots were fired ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... undisciplined life. It is hard to take at once the path that duty orders: we linger to play with possibilities, shed some idle tears, waste life before the necessity, and go back to everyday work weakened and scarred and aching. And once or twice in a lifetime that black, hopeless never drops down, not the less grievous and inexorable because simply a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Judge Hyde was dead; nineteen years of petulant, helpless, hopeless wretchedness were at last over, and all that his daughter cared to live for was gone; she was an orphan, without near relatives, without friends, old, and tired out. Do not despise me that I say ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Codfish. He must be The saltest fish that swims the sea. And, oh! He has a secret woe! You see, he thinks it's all his fault The ocean is so very salt! And so, In hopeless grief and woe, The Codfish has, for many years, Shed quarts of salty, briny tears! And, oh! His tears still flow— So ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... gone from his life. It would have been easier for him never to have begun, and easier for him to have stopped before he reached his present condition, but even in his present condition, be it the lowest and the most helpless and hopeless that can be imagined, he has the power to get out of it and be a free man once again. Let us see. The desire for drink comes upon him again. If he entertain the thought, the desire, he is lost again. His only hope, his only ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... convenience—a measure the world will only tolerate in the Rosalinds and Violas of the stage. The career of George Sand was, like her nature, entirely exceptional, and any attempt to judge it in any other light lands us in hopeless moral contradictions. She had extraordinary incentives to prompt her to extraordinary actions, which may be condemned or excused, but which there could be no greater mistake than to impute to ordinary vulgar motives. It must also be remembered ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... with a faint, hopeless movement of the head, and Alice correctly interpreted it to mean that the situation was worse instead ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... flame knocked at her very door to demand admittance; she heard its fiery tongue flap against the panels, a few moments more and its scorching arms would clasp her in their embrace of death. She knelt one moment, her soul was in that prayer; she rushed again with almost hopeless agony to the window. O, joy! and yet how terrible! That moment when the flame relaxed to gain new energy, a fireman had discovered her frail form in the glare of the light. He did not hesitate an instant; his soul was made of such stern stuff as common minds cannot appreciate. He raised the first ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... think it very hopeless in his heart, but he persevered, as in duty bound. 'I told your dear mother that perhaps you would succeed where she thought she had failed, though indeed she had done much. It made her happy. So, my dear child, you are bound to do ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was to serve a personal end. It was to furnish an added instrument of power to the autocrat who ruled, to reflect always and everywhere the glory of Napoleon. The period which saw its cleverest woman in hopeless exile, and its most beautiful one under a similar ban for the crime of being her friend, was not one which favored intellectual supremacy. The empire did not encourage literature, it silenced philosophy, and oppressed the talent that did not glorify itself. Its blighting touch rested upon the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... returned to the old place. They had kept entirely to the back of the island and the woods—the lagoon, down to a certain point, and the reef; a wide enough and beautiful enough world, but a hopeless world, as far as help from civilisation was concerned. For, of the few ships that touched at the island in the course of years, how many would explore the lagoon ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Beerjand and the Harood is on my map a dismal-looking, blankety-blank stretch of country, marked with the ominous title "Dasht-i" which, being interpreted into English, means Desert of Despair. A gleam of hope that things may not be quite so hopeless as pictured is born of the fact that, in dwelling on the difficulties of the situation, the Ameer makes less capital out of this same Desert of Despair than of the Harood, which has to be crossed on its ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... this letter was written Mrs. Lockhart was seized with an illness almost hopeless, it would seem, from the first. She died May 17, and this bereavement overclouded the rest of her husband's life, though, after a few months' retirement to Milton-Lockhart, he returned to his usual occupations, more devoted ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... tork, you do," said Billy, who appeared to be as much in awe of the young lady as he was hopeless of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... justified on New Year's Day when the enemy's attacks were renewed east of Guzow. The armies are facing each other across their breastworks at a distance varying from 200 to 300 yards. The dawn of 1915, the Germans roused themselves again to the dreary energy of the hopeless battle. I watched the shelling from the headquarters of a regiment which is occupying a trench in the centre of the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... wounded fore and main masts, the latter in its fall carrying away the head of the mizen-mast. Thus reduced to a complete wreck, she rolled her ports deeply in the water, and the lids of those on the larboard side having been torn or knocked off in her late engagement, she filled faster than ever. Hopeless seemed the fate of all on board. Her officers scarcely expected that she could float many hours, or ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... been in a heavy shower of rain. They drip pools on the floor-cloth. The snow is steadily climbing higher about walls, ponies, tents and sledges. The ponies look utterly desolate. Oh! But this is too crushing, and we are only 12 miles from the glacier. A hopeless feeling descends on one and is hard to fight off. What immense patience is needed for ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... remedies suggested by Zany depressed Miss Lou all the more, for they increased her impression of the hopeless character of her position. She felt that she was being swept forward by circumstances hard to combat, and how to resist or whether she could resist, were questions which pressed for an immediate answer. She possessed ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... himself the happiest man alive, had not fortune made him woeful in one only thing, to wit, that amongst his other children he had a son who overpassed all the other youths of his age in stature and goodliness of body, but was a hopeless dullard and well nigh an idiot. His true name was Galesus, but for that neither by toil of teacher nor blandishment nor beating of his father nor study nor endeavour of whatsoever other had it been found possible to put into his head any inkling of ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... evenings are too long and light to shut out, and such weather is rife, the city which Mr Podsnap so explanatorily called London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife; such a gritty city; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy of its sky; such a beleaguered city, invested by the great Marsh Forces of Essex and Kent. So the two old schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their dinner done, they turned towards the fire to smoke. Young Blight was gone, the coffee-house waiter was gone, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... affected to place this point, as well as the still more interesting one of Bingley's being withheld from seeing Jane, she felt a solicitude on the subject which convinced her, on examination, that she did not consider it entirely hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes she thought it probable, that his affection might be reanimated, and the influence of his friends successfully combated by the more natural influence ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... fellow as Jack Gray, and Jack learned all he cared to know about Hanson in less than two days. The next step was to find the servant on whom the overseer depended for his information. This looked like a hopeless task, but fortune favored him. One morning he stood in front of the mirror in Marcy's room performing his toilet. The door, which was behind and a little to one side of him, was open, and the lower end of the long hall was plainly reflected upon the polished surface of the ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... person passed into it; and here he was now with his one old servant, Molly Gilders, a shade more dingy and dilapidated than himself. Several persons put questions to Molly about her master, but found it a very discouraging business, so they gave up the attempt as hopeless, and it remained an unexplained mystery why Mr Tankardew came to Hopeworth, and where he came from. As for questioning the old gentleman himself, no one had the hardihood to undertake it; and indeed he gave them little opportunity, as he very rarely showed his face out of his own door; ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... one listens to him, the better one understands what the picture is; nothing but an illustration of the old story of how people can torture one another. There is not one redeeming feature, only cruel violence and defiant hate and hopeless suffering. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut,—a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye, but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... of triumph and leaped toward the thicket. Poor Phoebe heard his cry, and for an instant all seemed hopeless. But hers was a brave young soul, and, far from fainting in her despair, a new vigor ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... crest of his wonderful game, had won the first two sets and was leading Murray in the third, when the famous Californian started a sensational rally. Murray, with his terrific speed, merry smile, and genial personality, has always been a popular figure with the public, and when he began his seemingly hopeless fight, the crowd cheered him wildly. He broke through Church's service and drew even amid a terrific din. Church, always a very high-strung, nervous player, showed that the crowd's partiality was getting on his nerves. The gallery ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... clergy reserve question up to the time when the House reassembled (27th February, 1839), must have convinced the dominant party that it was, and ever would be, hopeless, in the face of the determined opposition which their schemes encountered, to obtain that which they wanted from the local legislature. They could not again openly bring in a bill (as they did last year) to revest the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... forget that I had a helpless mother and two little brothers. We couldn't wait for you, Nils; your prospects seemed hopeless then. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... stone balls worked terrible havoc upon horses and riders. The ground was quickly strewn with heavily armoured men, who lay there as helpless as turned turtles, and who were ridden over by those in the rear. The mediaeval cavalry was shattered or thrown into hopeless confusion by the new artillery. The infantry met with no better success in moving to the assault of the hastily raised ramparts bristling with guns. The English army was demoralized by this unexpected reception. In vain did Talbot ride again and again into the thickest of the fray—the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... playing at Mephistopheles as he was of playing at Faust, he followed the occupation of his new friends. But his attempts at reformation were vain, they wore out the soul, and left it only more hopeless than before; and he remembered John Norton's words, that faith is a gift from God which we must cherish, or He will take it from us utterly; and sighing, Mike recognized the great truth underlying a primitive mode of expression. He had drifted too far into the salt sea of unfaith and cynicism, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... cautious, helpless advisers. Then came the Forty-Five. Eleanor was not subdued by Culloden: the undefeated old lady was a guest at the great dinner, with the splendid new service of plate, which the Prince gave to the Princesse de Talmond and his friends in 1748. He was braving all Europe, in his hopeless way, and refusing to leave France, in accordance with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. When he was imprisoned at Vincennes, Eleanor was threatened. Catholic as she was, she frankly declared that Prince Charles had better declare himself a Protestant, and marry a German Protestant Princess. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... the hopeless monotony of life in remote farmhouses with one of her phenomenal moods. They come like besoms of destruction, but they scatter the web of stifling routine; they fling into the stiffening pool the stone which jars the ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... whirlwind—sinking and rising—round and round—always near that gate. All through the languid stillness of that night he fought with the impalpable; he fought with the shadows, with the darkness, with the silence. He fought without a sound, striking futile blows, dashing from side to side; obstinate, hopeless, and always beaten back; like a man bewitched within the invisible sweep of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... turning and cutting myself free. The creatures from the other side of the circle must have made the hundred yards in four or five seconds. And the rest had now covered the breach in front. It was hopeless. ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... childhood, of the enchanted tree, and the Fairies' Well; from which sources, her accusers anxiously hoped to prove that she derived her inspiration. But it is very clear that no such evidence was forthcoming, and that it seemed to them hopeless to attribute sorcery to her; therefore the accusation was changed to that of heresy alone. The following mandate from the University authorising her prosecution will show what the charge was; and the reader will note that one of its darkest items is ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... English king's share of the spoil, along with a reassertion of his supremacy over the rest of Scotland. English officers began to rule between the Tweed and the Forth. But the cause of independence was never really hopeless. Balliol and the English party were soon weakened by internal dissensions, and the leaders on the patriotic side were not slow to take advantage of the opportunities thus given them. It was, indeed, necessary to send King David and his wife to France, and they landed at Boulogne in May, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... I'd save the Hazard of my own; But as thou'rt brave, so thou shalt bravely fall Before Thersander rob me of thy Life, Or thou the Fortune hast to vanquish him— And if in this Encounter I expire, I do but fall a Victim to an hopeless Fire. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... furiously. Here is the French cavalry, was the cry; and they took to flight."... The Austrians doubted not that Murat and all the horse had forced a way through the bogs; and at that moment Buonaparte commanding a general assault in front, the confusion became hopeless. Alvinzi retreated finally, though in decent ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... cut across through unbroken forest without a compass. Traveling through a northern forest in summer is desperately hard work. The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush thick; fallen logs lie across each other in hopeless confusion, through and under and over which one must make his laborious way, stung and pestered by hordes of black flies and mosquitoes. So that, unless you have a strong instinct of direction, it is almost ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... on as a business or it will fail as an art. It is an unwelcome, if not an unwarrantable intrusion to come among our people with elaborate advice, and endeavor to make them live after different fashions from those which are suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless to attempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to make louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession to exact or to expect any ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... that a perception of ignorance is the summit of knowledge. She had not even realized that human nature is chiefly made up of illogical and absurd contradictions. Thus she left the house that Saturday morning gloomy, perhaps hopeless, certainly quite undecided as to the future, but serene, sure of her immediate position, and sure that Louis would act like Louis. She knew that she had the upper hand, both physically and morally. The doctor had called and done his work, and given a very reassuring report. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... world—make it advisable that I should now retire from the self-imposed responsibility of management, involving such a perilous outlay; and the more especially, as a building so restricted in size as the Princess's, renders any adequate return utterly hopeless. ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... the soldiers fought off that encircling band of Indians, with a desperation and valor born of an almost hopeless situation. Ever and anon, from across the river came the ping of a Winchester bullet, proving that retreat was cut off that way. The Indians had completely ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... ebb when Newton was left in this desolate situation. After some minutes passed in bitterness of spirit, his natural courage returned; and although the chance of preservation was next to hopeless, Newton rose up, resolved that he would use his best efforts, and trust to Providence for their success. His first idea was to examine the beach, and see if Jackson had left him any portion of the provisions ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the hopeless soil of a dungeon blossoms to rapture, Blooms with roses of Love, more sweet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that they could not be put out. The wounded shrieked and threw themselves on one another in wild despair. A number of black heads on the surface of the water showed that many swimmers were trying to reach an island about a mile away. The current was against them and their case was hopeless. Shot after shot was fired at them. Some sank quietly without a struggle, while others uttered cries of terror and raised their arms to heaven before they went down to the dark crystal halls of the crocodiles. Fugitives who succeeded in getting their canoes afloat forgot their paddles ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... pan. London opened her gates and then the pitched battle at Barnet gave a final verdict between the rival Houses which England accepted. This battle was fought on April 14th, when the thick fog and the like speech of the two bodies caused hopeless confusion. Many friends slew each other unwittingly, and among the slain was the indefatigable, energetic Warwick who had hoped to play with his royal puppets. Only forty-four was he and worthy of a better and ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... resolution of the German Reichstag of the 9th of July last, the spirit and intention of the Liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless contradiction? These are very serious and pregnant questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... late deportment had given spring to my hopes. Was not the hour at hand which should render me the happiest of human creatures? He suspected that I looked with favorable eyes upon Carwin. Hence arose disquietudes which he struggled in vain to conceal. He loved me, but was hopeless that his love would be compensated. Is it not time, said I, to rectify this error? But by what means is this to be effected? It can only be done by a change of deportment in me; but how must I demean myself ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... talent; she was fond of literary pursuits, and very powerful in Rome; what more was necessary? Yet I thought it would be good policy to appear ignorant of her inclination for me, and to let her suppose from the very next day that I was in love with her, but that my love appeared to me hopeless. I knew that such a plan was infallible, because it saved her dignity. It seemed to me that Father Georgi himself would be compelled to approve such an undertaking, and I had remarked with great satisfaction ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... entrance was free, and we walked in without question. Officials and policemen were likewise scattered about the great entrance-hall, none of whom, however, interfered with us; so we took whatever way we chose, and wandered about at will. It is a hopeless, and to me, generally, a depressing business to go through an immense multifarious show like this, glancing at a thousand things, and conscious of some little titillation of mind from them, but really taking in nothing, and getting no good from anything. One need ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... without the assistance of any polishing powder, as of very finely levigated glass, as some have recommended. But when the cornea is affected through all its thickness, the return of its transparency becomes hopeless. See Class I. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... northward as circumstances would allow, we left the river on a north-east course; but two hours' ride across an open plain, through which several channels ran to the north-west, brought us to dry barren scrubs, in which it appeared hopeless we should find either feed or water; we accordingly altered our course to south-east, and made the river again ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... handicrafts have now been largely supplanted by machinery, and the hardship that continuing progress entails on laborers is greatly reduced, there is involved in progress a new burden which falls altogether on the capitalist employer. The machine itself is often a hopeless specialist. It can do one minute thing and that only, and when a new and better device appears for doing that one thing, the machine has to go, and not to some new employment, but to the junk heap. There is thus taking place a considerable waste of capital in consequence of mechanical and other ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... that had passed since the acting-Principal assumed office were among the most critical in McGill's history. They were fraught with a hopeless misunderstanding arising from a dual control, the causes of which have been made sufficiently clear in the documents quoted. The Governors resented the interference of the Royal Institution, which in those days of advocacy of political autonomy and sensitive ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... was of no avail. All was in hopeless confusion. The artillery fired, until the Ghazis were within a few yards of them; then they hastily limbered up, and fell back. But the Ghazis were too close at hand, and two ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... islanders in these particulars toto caelo. There is an utter and hopeless incompatibility. His predilection is for morocco in genere; he estimates it not only above russia (calf is hardly in his dictionary), but above even the choicest vellum encasement to be procured ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... artists love the sombre, the melancholy, the hopeless. They enjoy painting the bowed form, the tear-filled eyes. To them grief is a festival. There are people who find pleasure in funerals. They love to watch the mourners. The falling clods make music. They love the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... by earlier biographers supposed to have occurred. On the other hand, according to the view which commends itself to several eminent living commentators of the poet, it was not courtship and marriage, but a hopeless and unrequited passion, which absorbed these years of his life. Certain stanzas in which, as they think, he gave utterance to this passion are by them ascribed to one of these years; so that if their view were correct, the poem in question would have to be regarded ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... she had told her friend, she was all alone in the world. What mattered it where the rest of her life was spent? She tried bravely to do her duty "in that station in life to which it had pleased God to call her." That was enough for the present. The future stretched out, dreary and hopeless, before her. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... publishers—they had not advertised him enough; he even, secretly, cherished that most hopeless of all convictions—that his book was above the heads of the public. He noticed, also, that wherever he might be, this name of Rondel appeared before him, Mr. Rondel with his foolish face and thin mother in black, was obviously the young man of the moment—in the literary advertisements of ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... admitted to himself that it looked as though the Home Seekers' Syndicate were going to have things their own way; unless—There he stuck. There must be some way out; never in his life had he faced a situation which had been absolutely hopeless; always there had been some chance to win, if a man only saw it in time and took it. In this case it was the clerk in the office who pointed the ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... Gadabout took things much more seriously. She could not so lightly "off with the old love and on with the new." For her the affair had already gone too far; already, for the side she was now on, she had formed a serious, a hopeless, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... legionaries fell back, heedless of the storm of spears and arrows, reaching their own lines before the outflanking body of Jews could get among them. Then seeing that there was nothing more to be gained, since to attempt to storm the Roman works was hopeless, the victorious Jews also retreated, this time not to the houses behind the tower, but only to the old market wall thirty or forty paces in front of it, which they proceeded to hold and strengthen in the fading light. Seeing that they were lost, such of the wounded Romans as remained ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... that meeting to the opinions of all the other girls—and to their hopeless and disappointed complaints as well—and then she had taken the whole burden ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... watch, and after seeing that Shanter lay unchanged, night had about waned, and they were gazing at the stars in silence, for fear of startling anything on its way to the pool, when just as they were feeling that the case was hopeless, and that they might as well give up, Norman suddenly touched Tim, who pressed his hand, for he too had heard the sound of ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... another. At Coburg and at Rosenau, which had been one of the old Duke's favourite resorts, his memory haunted his children. "Every sound, every view, every step we take makes us think of him and feel an indescribable hopeless longing for him." ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... marks the boundary; while upon the left bank, surmounting a high, rock-strewn beach, is the dilapidated frame house of a West Virginia "cracker," through whose garden-patch the line takes its way, unobserved and unthought of by pigs, chickens and children, which in hopeless promiscuity swarm ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... especially Bulgaria, might join the Teutonic Powers. Serbia had already shown that she could take care of the Austrians alone, but with Bulgaria attacking her flank, even the most optimistic realized that the fight against such odds probably would be hopeless. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... phrase, they continued "to fight the ship," and perhaps would have held out to the moment of sinking, had not the accession of the Liberals to power in the spring of this present year caused Sherwood so deep a disgust that he turned despondent and began to talk of surrender to hopeless circumstance. ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... his cynicism and apparent indifference, was all watchfulness. He knew that, for the present, any attempt to escape was hopeless, but he wished to observe the country through which he was passing, and see everything pertaining to it as far as the eye could reach. It was always well to know where one was, and he had been taught from infancy to observe everything, the practice ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... woman of Leek, in Staffordshire, while he served his apprenticeship there, conceived a violent passion for him; and though it met with no favourable return, followed him to Lichfield, where she took lodgings opposite to the house in which he lived, and indulged her hopeless flame. When he was informed that it so preyed upon her mind that her life was in danger, he with a generous humanity went to her and offered to marry her, but it was then too late: her vital power was exhausted; and she actually ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... address to myself, I neither fainted, shuddered, nor cried—I felt, at the time, a little stupefied: and it was some hours after (the hideous man's words all the time ringing in my ears) before I fully comprehend my hopeless state of perdition. I looked at the fire as I sat by it, and trembled. I went to bed, but not to sleep. No child ever haunted by a ghost-story was more terrified than myself, as I lay panting on my tear-steeped pillow. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of course. Automatically father felt in his overcoat pocket and pulled out a great handful. "Take care of them, they're the last you'll get," he said; but when Jack asked why, his father looked at him with the same hopeless expression that he had found in his mother's eyes a short while before. Jack felt a little cross that every one ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... mile to the west of the town. The authorities were summoned to send out the garrison and the Governor, or the town would be burnt and the inhabitants put to the sword. Preparations were made for the attack, but Sir John Mackenzie, considering that any further defence was hopeless, on the 10th of November collected together all the boats he could find and at high water safely effected his escape from the town, when Lovat marched in without opposition. His Lordship advised the Earl of Sutherland that he had secured possession of Inverness, and on the 15th of November ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... this the fact that speculative commitments by individuals from all over the world, which have been based upon the expectation of an uninterrupted market, are left in hopeless and critical suspense if this market is suddenly removed, and it becomes apparent that to close the Exchange is manifestly to inflict far-reaching hardship upon vast numbers of people. It is also sure to be productive ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... I'll go ahead. All the long years when the hopeless war dragged along we, unassuming, forgotten in quiet, Endured without question, endured in our loneliness all your incessant child's antics and riot. Our lips we kept tied, though aching with silence, though ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... did not last long, the Hopeless is its own antidote and after half a pipe of tobacco their cheerfulness, such as it was, returned and they fell to discussing with the girl the best way of ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... as usual allowed this letter to lie by, dear E——, not in the hope of the occurrence of any event—for that is hopeless—but until my daily avocations allowed me leisure to resume it, and afforded me, at the same time, matter wherewith to do so. I really never was so busy in all my life, as I am here. I sit at the receipt of custom (involuntarily enough) from morning till night—no ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Repealers, they come here sure of immediate wealth, to kick up a deuce of a row, for two shillings and sixpence currency is paid for a day's labour, which two shillings and sixpence was a hopeless week's fortune in Ireland; and yet the Catholic Irish who have been long settled in the country are by no means the worst subjects in this Trans-Atlantic realm, as I can personally testify, having had the command of large bodies of them during the border ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... another and another with the same result. Under ordinary circumstances I could have secured a light somehow and quickly, but now my hands and fingers were stiff as sticks and refused to grip the matches firmly. I worked with desperation, but it seemed hopeless. Easton's face by this time had taken on the waxen shade that comes with death, and he appeared to be looking through a haze. His senses were leaving him. I saw something must be done at once, and I shouted to him: "Run! run! Easton, run!" Articulation was difficult, and ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... Nevertheless, he has authority, from God, to rule over you. You are under service to him. You are bound to obey him in all things. Your service is very, very, very often involuntary from the first, and, if voluntary at first, becomes hopeless necessity afterwards. I know God has laid upon the husband to love you as Christ loved the church, and in that sublime obligation has placed you in the light and under the shadow of a love infinitely higher, and purer, and holier than all ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... from Burr a formal pledge that his plans were in no wise hostile to the Union; and the other people upon whom Burr counted most, both in Ohio and Kentucky, hastily followed this example. This immediate defection showed how hopeless Burr's plans were. The moment he attempted to put them into execution, their utter futility was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Lynn, Mass., Mrs. Eddy (then Mrs. Glover) met with a severe accident, and her case was pronounced hopeless by the physicians. There came a Sunday morning when her pastor came to bid her good-by before proceeding to his morning service, as there was no probability that she would be alive at its close. During this time she suddenly ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... man would have to shut himself up in a cellar to escape those glorious hills and the bay, if he wanted to work at that putty." He cast a contemptuous glance at a rough bust of his Cousin Della, the only thing he had attempted. As a solution of his hopeless problem he picked up a pipe and was hunting for some tobacco, preparatory to a stroll up Newport, when someone sounded timidly at the show knocker of the ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... I was told that the mate was very ill. The doctor of the ship had been attending him, but said that his case was hopeless. I sat by him all day. Sometimes he would be perfectly quiet and do nothing but moan; and then he would start up, and shriek out,—"Luff!— luff!—or she'll be into us!" and then sink down again, overcome ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... was oddly 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
... thee all thoughts of pleasure I forego, For thee my tears shall never cease to flow: For thee at once I from the world retire, To feed in silent shades a hopeless fire. My bosom all thy image shall retain; The full impression there shall still remain. As thou hast taught my constant heart to prove; The noblest height and elegance of love; That sacred passion I to thee confine; My spotless faith shall be ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... such a sad, hopeless face!" exclaimed one of the college girls whom the others called "Muffit." "If she were an American girl I'd ask her to walk with us. But English girls are so reserved and shy, and I am afraid it would ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... between him and that memory as he stepped into that enchanted land for the second time. The sweet figure of young womanhood to which he had turned his boyish soul in hopeless worship, when it should have been busied rather with birds' nests and rabbit-snares, had, it is true, come to him in dimmer outline each Spring, but with magic the deeper for that. As the form faded from ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... situation of the beseiged was rendered so hopeless, that no mode of escape was left but by desperate sallies. They made them, but without other effect than weakening their strength and increasing their miseries. Wallace was for them to do in their situation, he needed no better spy ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... "There was such hopeless submission, such patient suffering, in those words, that I could not find it in my heart to leave her. I thought of how I might have behaved, of the wild things I might have said, if Ovid had cared nothing for me. Had some cruel man forsaken her? That was her ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... as 21 to 20: accordingly, in respect to marriage, every 21st man is naturally superfluous." Here is hint enough to set Saxe's bright vein of humor flowing. The Superfluous Man becomes a concrete embodiment, and sings his discovery of the cause of his forlorn single lot and his hopeless predicament. It flashes upon him that he is that 21st man alluded to by the profound statistician. He is under a natural ban,—for he's a superfluous man. There's no use fighting 'gainst nature's inflexible plan. There's never a woman for him,—for he's a superfluous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... were, and whither we were going. The robbers, however, only laughed, and declared that was none of their business, and, without more words, attacked us brutally. I defended myself to the last, wounded though I was, but at length, seeing that resistance was hopeless, and that the ambassador and all our followers were made prisoners, I put spurs to my horse and rode away as fast as I could, till the poor beast fell dead from a wound in his side. I managed to jump off ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... asked Signor Catalani's consent, the latter frowned on the scheme, for the golden harvest was too rich to be yielded up lightly for the asking. He coldly refused, and bade the suitor think of his love as hopeless, though he found no objection to M. Vallebregue personally. Poor Angelica was thoroughly wretched, and day after day pined for her young soldier-lover, who had been forbidden the house by the father. For several days she was in such dejection that she could not sing, and ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... When I get ready," he replied, laughing in spite of himself at Lydia's hopeless way of putting the question. "It is sure to come soon. I've had pulls at this tangle from time to time without getting a fair hold of it. But I intend to straighten it out before long, or know ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... rest of the world. The curse had entered her very soul; autocracy, and nothing else in the world, has moulded her institutions, and with the poison of slavery drugged the national temperament into the apathy of a hopeless fatalism. It seems to have gone into the blood, tainting every mental activity in its source by a half-mystical, insensate, fascinating assertion of purity and holiness. The Government of Holy Russia, arrogating to itself the supreme ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... Angel Court the sunless air Grows faint and sick; to left and right, The cowering houses shrink from sight, Huddling and hopeless, eyeless, bare. ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... the beginning of 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
... was not free to indulge in idle grief, in the luxury of woe; the great house had still to be run, she had to bury her beloved dead, the mourning which seems such a hopeless mockery when the heart is racked with misery, had to be seen to; and she did it, and went through it all, with outward calm, sustained by that Heron spirit which may be described as the religion of her class—noblesse oblige. Jessie had wept loudly through the house ever since the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... recollect) in great distress; confiding her sorrows to the jailer's daughter. Her father was pining in the prison, charged with an offense of which he was innocent; and she herself was suffering the tortures of hopeless love. She was on the point of confiding her secret to her friend, when the appearance of the young nobleman closed her lips. The girls at once withdrew; and the two friends—whom I now only remember as the Marquis and the Count—began the dialogue ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... who read crept back to life from nearly beyond the grave? Crept back to find it shorn of all that made it fair? After hours of delirium to awaken in great weakness to a sense of hideous anguish and loss—to the prospect of days of aching void and hopeless longing, to the hourly, momentary sting of remembrance of things vaster than death, more dear than life itself? If you have come through this valley of the shadow, then you can know what the first days of ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... had kept them in the way of righteousness. It needed a strong head or a strong morality to avoid the danger, and George had neither. He succumbed. He lost all sense of shame, and there was no power to hold him. And it was more hopeless because nothing could keep him from drinking. When Macinnery had been dismissed for breaking Alec's most stringent law, things, notwithstanding George's promise of amendment, had only gone from bad to worse. Alec remembered ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... freed, it will be by a mighty rising of the common people, and even then the struggle between the commons of Scotland and the whole force of England aided by the feudal power of all the great Scotch nobles, would be well nigh hopeless." ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... more dreadful criminals than this one we have been speaking of—men who have murdered a dozen of their fellow-creatures, and feel no remorse whatever. But what I especially noticed was this, that the very most hopeless and remorseless murderer—however hardened a criminal he may be—still KNOWS THAT HE IS A CRIMINAL; that is, he is conscious that he has acted wickedly, though he may feel no remorse whatever. And they were all like ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... new fears—on the dark future before them. Captive to such captors—red ruthless savages, whose naked arms, already around, have held them in brawny embrace—carried away from home, from all they hold dear, into a captivity seeming hopeless as horrid—to the western woman especially repulsive, by songs sung over her cradle, and tales told throughout her years of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to be expected of the most provident of people that anything could be laid by for old age or a rainy day; indeed, there seemed so many rainy days in the present that it was not easy to give much thought to those in the future. Of course too the local provident club had come to utter and hopeless grief. Is there any country place where this has not been the case? Gray had paid into it regularly for years and had gone every Whitmonday to its dinner, his one voluntary holiday during the year, on which occasion ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... Nightingale refused to despair of five men so desperately wounded as to be set aside by the surgeons. The surgeons were right. As they said, their time was but too little for the cases which were not hopeless. And Florence Nightingale was right in finding time, if she could, to see whether there was really no chance. She ascertained that these five were absolutely given over; and she and her assistants managed to attend to them through the night. She cleaned and comforted them, and had spoonfuls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... establishment consisted of two "buggies"—so called always in the bush—open carriages on four wheels, one of which was intended to hold two and the other four sitters. A Londoner looking at them would have declared them to be hopeless ruins; but Harry Heathcote still made wonderful journeys in them, taking care generally that the wheels were sound, and using ropes for the repair of dilapidations. The stables were almost unnecessary, as the horses, of which the supply at Gangoil ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... He battled with the idea, treated it as a prejudice, analysed it. From head to foot the man wore the wrong clothes in the wrong manner,—boots of a vivid shade of brown, thick socks without garters, an obviously ready-made suit of grey flannel, a hopeless tie, an unimaginable collar. Even his ready flow of speech suggested the gifts of the tubthumpers his indomitable persistence, a lack of sensibility. He knew his facts, knew all the stock arguments, was brimful of statistics, was argumentative, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... went to the hospital, at the time when my trouble was fresh and I was breaking my heart with the longing to see Charlie's face again. Most people who have lived long in the world, and have parted with their beloved, know what that sort of hopeless ache means. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... felt that for her, a woman of forty-one, to hold fast the affections of a man of thirty-five, covered with glory and full of charm, was a difficult task; but this reflection, far from consoling her, only disturbed her the more, and she made desperate efforts to triumph in an almost hopeless contest. As was said by Mademoiselle Avrillon, her reader, she seemed not to understand that if the highest rank is a safeguard for a woman, because few men are bold enough to pursue her, the same is not true of a sovereign whose glory dazzles the inexperience ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... husbands and fathers and sons. They are driven to death and to moral ruin by the miserable want liquor drinkin' entails. They are starved, they are froze, they are beaten, they are made childless and hopeless by drunken husbands killin' their own flesh and blood. They go down into the cold waves and are drowned by drunken captains; they are cast from railways into death by drunken engineers; they go up on the scaffold and die for ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... first result the author dismisses Lange's method as hopeless: the results in successive determinations on the same materials showing variations up to 60 p.ct. The results by c and d are satisfactorily concordant: the yields of cellulose are higher than of 'crude fibre.' This is obviously due to the conservation ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... relief of the besieged. Fixing the royal banner aloft on a spear, that it might be seen of the Christians, they sailed boldly towards Joppa, with but a small company of armed men. The king knew that the Christians in Joppa were almost hopeless of his life and safety, and he feared they might shamefully abandon the defence of the place, or be constrained to surrender, unless revived by his presence. On perceiving the approach of the royal banner of King Baldwin, the naval forces of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... an inexpressible joy to me, that any one would believe that I was thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable and almost hopeless condition as I was in, and immediately offered all I had to the captain of the ship, as a return for my deliverance; but he generously told me, he would take nothing from me, but that all I had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... is, after all, a hopeless failure. Not even the very best instinct is safe. It will probably be turned sooner or later ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... acquaintance of your soldier. If he is a gentleman my dear, or even if he is a real man, I mean to bring him here to the farm house to remain as our guest until he has completely recovered. Now, don't argue with me, Sally. Mrs. Burton will tell you that I am a hopeless old woman with whom to have an argument. I simply never do any one's way except my own. I do not wish to discuss this side of the situation with you to any extent, but don't you see, my dear, that it is better for you that we have your soldier here? ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... of 1905 Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Denver was sent by the National Association and spent several weeks working with the Legislature but received practically no cooperation from the local women, as it was conceded that the situation was hopeless while Kibbey was Governor. Mrs. Robinson moved from the Territory and the organization was without a head. It languished for about three years and its enemies sang cheerful requiems for the dead. The Legislature ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... to marry," said Isabel, her colour quickly coming back to her. And then she stopped, looking down with a deep frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt to make her ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... one great nation, had long held different opinions as to the right of making merchandise of men, of women, and of little children. Yes, my son, it was at last claimed to be in accordance with Christianity to doom these people to a life at once hopeless and miserable. As you grow up, my son, and begin to think and act for yourself, you will think it very strange that such a great national crime as this should have existed in a land so blessed with the fruits of a ripe civilization. And it will be a cause of wonder to you that a ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... levelled them with their trunks, and stripping them of their leaves and branches, they tossed them wildly over their heads on all sides. Some in their struggles made no sound, whilst others bellowed and trumpeted furiously, then uttered short convulsive screams, and at last, exhausted and hopeless, gave vent to their anguish in low and piteous moanings. Some, after a few violent efforts of this kind, lay motionless on the ground, with no other indication of suffering than the tears which suffused their eyes and flowed incessantly. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... its fierce intensity—to which only a passionate, repressed nature can give birth. And through the year that passed after Pepe had gained his captaincy, and at the same time Pancha's favor, Pedro's love had grown yet stronger and deeper,—growing the more, perhaps, because it was so hopeless and so deeply hid; but Pancha, whose very life was wrapped in Pepe's now, had almost ceased to remember that such a person as this rueful captain of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... been disgraced—and furnished me scions and I got a start of it from him. Russ sent me some scions from a filbert he called Jumbo. You will see it out on the table there. It's rather a long nut, little larger than DuChilly and not quite so flat, that I grafted in there. It absolutely is hopeless as a pollinizer for anything, because it loses its staminate blossoms by Christmas. But the Hall's Giant pollinizes them, and it's the best filbert I have, all things considered. This year off that one scion—of course, it's four inches in diameter—I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... until he joined him. He found a great tumult going on among his troops; always insubordinate, they were now in a state of mutiny. Many of the officers openly advocated that they should desist from a struggle in which success was altogether hopeless, and should go over and join the French. The troops, however, not only spurned the advice, but fell upon and killed several of those who offered it, and demanded from Silveira that he should lead them down to ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... always "close to his burrow." The "burrow" which received the luckless wight, was indeed no pleasant refuge. Since poor Green, in the earliest generation of dramatists, bought his "groat'sworth of wit with a million of repentance," too many of his brethren had trodden the path which led to hopeless misery or death in a tavern brawl. The history of men who had to support themselves by their pens, is a record of almost universal gloom. The names of Spenser, of Butler, and of Otway, are enough to remind us that even ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... If he'd been Foxx Travis, and if there had been a Merlin, that was exactly where he'd have put it himself. But there was no Merlin, and he wanted a ship. He argued mulishly for a little, then saw that it was hopeless ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... one as to what the Holy Grail really was, and is, we can then proceed with some hope of success to criticize the manner in which different writers have handled the inspiring theme, but such success seems to be hopeless so long as we all start from different, and often utterly irreconcilable, standpoints and proceed along widely diverging roads. One or another may, indeed, arrive at the goal, but such unanimity of opinion as ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... himself. Even if I had differed from him I should not have said so, but I was of his opinion, and was almost as much obliged to him for seeing things as I saw them, as he to me for doing the same kind office by himself. Cordially as I disliked Theobald and Christina, I was in such a hopeless minority in the opinion I had formed concerning them that it was pleasant to find someone ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... bestowed upon one without any choice of one's own? Was one bound to overwhelm one's companions with abundance of pious suggestions, to rebuke vice, to rejoice in the disasters that befell the ungodly? It seemed a hopeless business from first to last; of course, if one had Bunyan's simple faith, if one could believe that at a certain moment, on the Hill of Calvary, a thing had been accomplished which had in an instant ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... great prize may be drawn. And then, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?" The Beachcomber may be perverted into—well, the next best on the list. Yet they say in pitiful tones, those who rake among the muck of the streets, "What a dull life! What a hopeless existence! He is out of it all!" Yes, with a gladsome mind, and all its sounds, if not forgotten, at least muffled by music, soft as dawn, profound as ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... into a scrape myself,' said Clarence despondently. 'I have felt it coming ever since I have been at Bristol;' and he pushed his hair back with a weary hopeless gesture. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was frightened. He saw the prospect of losing what he had gained, and of sinking into hopeless disgrace. With the effrontery that was natural to him, he returned therefore to his usual flatteries, artifices, and deceits; laughed at all dangers and inconveniences, as having resources in himself against everything! The coarseness of this ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... performed. It is the beginning of our immortality. Those only who feel a deep interest and affection for this world will work resolutely for its amelioration; those whose affections are transferred to Heaven, easily acquiesce in the miseries of earth, deeming them hopeless, befitting, and ordained; and console themselves with the idea of the amends which are one day to be theirs. It is a sad truth, that those most decidedly given to spiritual contemplation, and to making religion rule ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... may well ask ourselves what right we have to indulge in public rejoicings. If the war in which we are engaged is an accidental one, which might have been avoided but for our fault; if it is for any ambitious or unworthy purpose on our part; if it is hopeless, and we are madly persisting in it; if it is our duty and in our power to make a safe and honorable peace, and we refuse to do it; if our free institutions are in danger of becoming subverted, and giving place to an irresponsible tyranny; if we are moving in the narrow circles which are to ingulf ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
