"Despairing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the still room; it was his whole relationship towards life. It was not his fatherhood that he felt reeling; it was the fatherhood of God. It was not love that he felt slipping from his grasp; it was truth: not Nicky that he was despairing of, but the figure ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... suffering from a broken arm, was also stabbed by another murderer in his own house, but still survives, and his son was wounded, supposed fatally. It is believed, by persons capable of judging, that other high officers were designed to share the same fate. Thus it seems that our enemy, despairing of meeting us in open, manly warfare, begins to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, "Well, you know holly—mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this logical method in the comparison of plants or nations. But if he had said to the Teuton, "Well, you know Germany—England's the opposite"—the definition, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... he begins, in a slow, careful tone, which Floyd knows is no index to his real state of mind, "but that does not say I am quite despairing. I had the pleasure of working most amicably with your father and receiving a fair return on my investment. I have had no dissensions with your brother, who is really my working partner. Your father was more sanguine of success than I, but ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... his despairing household stood upon the deck of the vessel as it was towed by a steamer out of the harbor. As the sails were unfurled, and filled with a favoring breeze, they sadly watched the receding shores of France. There was no parting salute. It was a funereal scene. Even the most ardent ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... lecture was a pleasant sound, for then they needed not to punctuate their progress with the sharp tang of the bicycle bell. And best of all the bells made music morning and evening at the chapel hours. Not the despairing music of a peal, that falls and rises only to fall again, till nervous men are racked, but a cheerful note—just one—but different from each side; and, amongst all, that one that each man knew to be his own and loved, and knows it still to-day and loves it still. It ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... the old chief Membertou. He signals back to the watchers behind the gates. Musketry shots ring out welcome. The ship's cannon answer, setting the waters churning. Trumpets blare. The gates fly wide and out marches the garrison—two lone Frenchmen. The rest, despairing of a ship that summer, have cruised along to Cape Breton to obtain supplies from French fishermen, whence, presently, come Pontgrave and Champlain, overjoyed to find the ship from France. Poutrincourt has a hogshead of wine rolled to the courtyard ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... with a kind of despairing earnestness, for Hope herself felt how useless every thing would probably be. But when she had ended Alfred ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... tormentor, despairing of ever enticing her out by fair words, resolved to launch a bomb which he knew was sure to bring the besieged raging to the walls. "Got a message from Tom Poole!" he roared, loud enough to be heard at Mrs. Fraser's across the valley. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... dear friends and servants, be strong and courageous against the assaults of the devil, and feel great displeasure and contrition for your ill deeds, without despairing of God's mercy. Believe with me, that there is no sin, however great, in the world, which God, in his grace and loving kindness, will not pardon, when one asks it of Him with contrition of heart. Remember that the Lord God is always more ready to receive ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... had intended, because of the reports that reached him of the unsafe condition of the roads. He sent back the old Genoese with the horses, and spent the time in thoroughly examining the town and making acquaintances among its inhabitants. At length, after a stay of ten or eleven days, despairing of any improvement in the state of the country, he continued his journey in the company of a contrabandista, temporarily retired from the smuggling trade, from whom he hired two horses for the sum of forty-two dollars. Borrow ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... that when he was in Thessaly he saw a youth challenge the birds in music; and a nightingale took up the challenge. For a time the contest was uncertain; but then the youth, "in a rapture," played so cunningly that the bird, despairing, "down dropped upon his lute, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... effect, which tells us that the sloop disappeared over the horizon, and the head under the water, at one and the same moment? Monsieur Hugo may say what he will, but we know better; we know very well that they did not; a thing like that raises up a despairing spirit of opposition in a man's readers; they give him the lie fiercely, as they read. Lastly, we have here already some beginning of that curious series of English blunders, that makes us wonder if there are neither proof-sheets nor judicious ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a despairing howl uttered by the tortured monster, a howl which set the terrified dog a-barking, and made him scratch up the ground beneath the gate in order ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... to the conviction that his chances were of the smallest. It is said that, despairing of any decisive stroke, he conceived the idea of fortifying Isle-aux-Coudres, and leaving a part of his troops there when he sailed for home, against another attempt in the spring. The more to weaken the enemy and prepare his ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... manager's house had been converted into a hospital. Alec found everyone stunned by the disaster, and the attempts at rescue had been carried on feebly. He set himself to work at once. He put heart into the despairing women. He brought up everyone who could be of the least use and inspired them with his own resourceful courage. The day was drawing to a close, but no time could be lost; and all night they toiled. Alec, in his shirt sleeves, laboured as heartily as the strongest miner; he ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... splendor testimony of the gentlest domestic affection, brought stained with blood to another parent long ago, to interpret the cruel mystery of a son's death. And after all these centuries she felt drawn near to Jacob in the tender realization of a common humanity, and often repeated his despairing words, "I shall go down into the grave ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... left, neither did I strive to hide in the bushes nor to evade aught, for I knew that the Maid died slowly in mine arms, and there to be no more gain in life, save by speed, that I have her swift to the Mighty Pyramid to the care of the Doctors. And a great and despairing madness ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the thought. Other peoples had declared war on each other: America by her silence had declared war on Ignorance. He felt a sudden shame for his previous doubts. He saw clearly that his great continent-country was a rock to which the other baffled, despairing nations might cling ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... world. Conscience swelling within will stifle the complaint of the guilty. The courage of the despiser will fail: the last poor comfort of the blasphemer, to hurl against the judgment seat the last despairing, defiant word, will be taken away. The history of the fact written by divine prescience before the time, makes no mention of what the condemned will say. The record simply runs, "These shall ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... a sound from above stairs—a sound which this time, the door being open, did reach his ears, froze the words on his lips. It was the sound of a voice, yet no common voice, Heaven be thanked! A moment she continued to confront him, her face one mute, despairing denial! Then she slammed the door in his teeth, and he heard her panting breath and fleeing footsteps speed up the stairs and along the passage, and—more faintly now—he heard her ascend the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... slight click with her tongue which conveys the idea of despairing compassion for the pitiable incapacity of ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... close to me. She met my words by a despairing outward movement of her hands as though ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... glanced through the papers eagerly and read the title—"Lay of Despair." When Ambrosio heard this, he asked him to read the words aloud that all those assembled might hear the last verses of the dead shepherd. And while Senor Vivaldo spoke the despairing lines, some of the shepherds were digging the grave for ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... cast one despairing look at Gerald, and sank again. Gerald had gone as far as was practicable on the ice. I could hear it cracking all over, and see the white cracks darting suddenly over ice that had ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... in the shade of a shop awning, and he was looking down at her, eagerly, persuasively. She had a debate with herself, then with a despairing gesture of the hands, she ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... utter the words that bound him to her forever, without a visit from the one whose heart he had broken years before. She came to him in the dark and silent midnight, as he tossed sleeplessly upon his bed, and stood and looked at him with her pale face and despairing eyes, until he was driven almost to madness. She was with him when the light of morning dawned; she moved by his side as he went forth to meet and claim his betrothed; and was near him, invisible to all eyes but his own, when he stood at the altar ready to give utterance ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... into the last few months had been too much for him. He fell into dangerous pulmonary illness, sank ever deeper; lay for many weeks in his Father's house utterly prostrate, his young Wife and his Mother watching over him; friends, sparingly admitted, long despairing of his life. All prospects in this world were now apparently shut ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... be sole occupant, unless I felt lonely and would like Rose Jane to sleep with me. I looked at pretty, soft-eyed, dirty little Rose Jane, and assured her kind-hearted mother I would not be the least lonely, as the sickening despairing loneliness which filled my heart was not of a nature to be cured by having as a bedmate ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... away from her, dragged himself to Spa, hoping vainly for a return to health, and then, despairing, back again to England, to Wilton, to the majestic house standing there resplendent in the summer sunshine, among the great cedars which had lent their shade to Sir Philip Sidney, and all those familiar, darling haunts of beauty which ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... were inconsolable. Princess Charles of Schwarzenberg—the wife of the brilliant general who had just fought like a hero, and, in the next year, as Austrian ambassador at the court of the Tuileries Avas to negotiate the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise—wrote a most despairing letter to her husband, in which she said: "I shall bury myself in the past in order to escape the present and the future. I have heard that you were to be chosen to negotiate this so-called peace; it was a ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... you any more untruths. But it's very seldom he's violent now. [Weeping] Oh, don't let him know, Monsieur, don't let him know. He'd go away—he'd leave me—he'd take my children from me. [She gives a despairing cry] Ah, he'd take my children from me! I don't know what to say to you—but it isn't possible—you can't tell him—now you know all the harm it would do. You won't? Of course I was guilty—but I didn't understand—I didn't know. I wasn't seventeen, sir, ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces upturned to the heavens—faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries; my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed and surged ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... turning round to the gate, she laid her arms on the top bar and buried her face on them. A sob came up in her throat that seemed to tear her to bits, and she cried as if her heart would break. His timid despairing touches, his voice ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... obstinate refusal, would have surely obtained a better recognition from the monarch who "never broke his word," but failing to persuade either the king or his claimant, the Confederates were forced to abandon their intervention and Count Michael got nothing at all. Ill and despairing, he now abandoned the administration of his hopelessly involved estates to his brother Francois, who with the aid of an appointed council vainly essayed to bring order out of confusion. In an open assembly ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... so, a wild despairing fancy crossed her mind, and her fingers tightened, and the proud mouth grew firm. If it was through her that this penalty of banishment overtook him, why should she not ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... good-by!" He knew that if he remained he would lose all control, crush her madly in his arms, and hurt her lips with his despairing kisses. He had not gone a dozen paces, when he heard her call ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... maniacs I recognised the singular face of Grace Marks—no longer sad and despairing, but lighted up with the fire of insanity, and glowing with a hideous and fiend-like merriment. On perceiving that strangers were observing her, she fled shrieking away like a phantom into one of the side rooms. It appears that even ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... father, my child," she urged; "James, if he loves you, will wait for you. Don't marry until the boys are all old enough to be out of trouble. Think, Lizzie, of the misery a step-mother might cause with your brother Jack's impetuous temper, and Sam's hopeless, despairing disposition—each one would be hard for a step-mother to guide. Be a mother to them, my girl; down on your knees, and to make your mother's heart easy, promise before God that you will guide them, and watch over them as long as you are needed. Stay with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and the ensuing rust and numbing of all life and thought, so that a century of revolution seems to have brought Spain no nearer a solution of its problems. At the present day, when all is ripe for a new attempt to throw off the atrophy, a sort of despairing inaction causes the Spaniards to remain under a government of unbelievably corrupt and inefficient politicians. There seems no solution to the problem of a nation in which the centralized power and the separate communities work only ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... to re-establish, after these emotional passages, the natural flow of conversation. But the Judge eked out what was wanting with kind looks, produced his snuff-box (which was very rarely seen) to fill in a pause, and at last, despairing of any further social success, was upon the point of getting down a book to read a favourite passage, when there came a rather startling summons at the front door, and Carstairs ushered in my Lord Glenkindie, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Najayo, much further down the coast. Buller met with strong resistance at Fort San Geronimo and was forced to retire to Venables' intrenchments. The united English forces made several attempts to march on the capital, but fell into ambuscades and sustained heavy losses. Despairing of success, the fleet and army left the island on June 3 and proceeded to Jamaica, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... consider the award of the King of the Netherlands as binding upon neither party, and the two Governments, therefore, are as free in this respect as they were before the reference to that Sovereign was made. The British Government, despairing of the possibility of drawing a line that shall be in literal conformity with the words of the treaty of 1783, has suggested that a conventional boundary should be substituted for the line described by the treaty, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... have in reserve. Lord! How Billy's soul grazes in diggins of clover, While Stefani rapidly fingers them over, Feelingly, fervidly fingers them over. Illusion that enervates! Feverish dream Of excitement magnetic, inspired, supreme, Or despairing dejection, alternate, extreme! Gad! These opium-benumbing performances seem, In their sad wild unresting irregular flow Just expressly concocted for William Barlow. Oh! dear Raggedy, oh! Why, they ravish the ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... that impressed him was the abandonment that thrust itself upon him in the more crowded of these courts and alley-ways and back-streets, the despairing abandonment there of the decencies of living. The thin dwarfed children kicked and tumbled with naked limbs on the ground; many women leaned half-dressed and much unbuttoned from ground floor windows, or came out into the passage-ways slatternly. In one court two ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... of those who bear His image, saying, in resistless human tones, "Shall one creature endure and love and continually forgive another, and shall I, who am not loving, but Love, be weary of thy transgressions, O sinner?" And so does the silent and despairing life of many a woman weave unconsciously its golden garland of reward in the heavens above, and do the Lord's work in a strange land where it cannot sing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Amru at Berenice, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea. This decaying sea-port was connected with Medina by a pigeon-post, and in reply to his viceroy's enquiry with reference to the victim about to be offered by the despairing Egyptians to the Nile, Omar had sent a reply which had been immediately ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rushing nearer to the crowded and bustling terminus where dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one paralysing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage. There was one slender despairing chance, which the next few minutes must decide. His fellow-traveller might relapse into a blessed slumber. But as the minutes throbbed by that chance ebbed away. The furtive glance which Theodoric stole at her from time to time ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Major Gordon. I met him walking the streets as a common citizen. He seem'd a little asham'd at seeing me, but pass'd without saying anything. I should have been as much asham'd at seeing Miss Read, had not her friends, despairing with reason of my return after the receipt of my letter, persuaded her to marry another, one Rogers, a potter, which was done in my absence. With him, however, she was never happy, and soon parted from him, refusing to cohabit with him or bear his name, it being ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the Persians and their longed-for prey, Belisarius having fixed his headquarters at Chalcis, half a degree to the west of Gabbula, and twenty-five miles nearer to Antioch. Thus balked of their purpose, and despairing of any greater success than they had already achieved, the allies became anxious to return to Persia with the plunder of the Syrian towns and villages which they had sacked on their advance. Belisarius was quite content that they should carry off their spoil, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... came up alone. She surveyed the state of things in silence. Matilda had been crying, she saw. She left her time to recover from that and take up her work. But Matilda sat despairing and careless, looking at it and ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... sort of lusty Shepheards throw The barre by turns, and none the rest outgoe So farre, but that the best are measuring casts, Their emulation and their pastime lasts; But if some Brawny yeoman, of the guard Step in and tosse the Axeltree a yard Or more beyond the farthest Marke, the rest Despairing stand, their ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... do for me? said she: tell me truly, good Sir, with a cheerful aspect, (you know you cannot disturb me by it,) whether now you do not put on the true physician; and despairing that any thing in medicine will help me, advise me to the air, as the last resource?—Can you think the air will avail in such ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... the shore. Wallace raised what was left of his voice in a despairing shout. The scaler mockingly waved his hat, then turned and ran swiftly and easily toward the shelter of the woods. At their border he paused again to bow in derision. Carpenter's cry brought men to the boarding-house ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... love of this rarest friend, I gained, at the very moment of becoming homeless, a real home for my art which I had hitherto longed for and sought for in the wrong place.... At the end of my last stay in Paris, when, ill, miserable, and despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eye fell on the score of my 'Lohengrin,' which I had totally forgotten. Suddenly I felt something like compassion that this music should never sound from off the death-pale paper. Two words ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... gave them some common house flies, which they seized with eagerness in their fore claws, and tore in pieces; notwithstanding this apparent fondness for flies, they continued to destroy each other. Despairing at last, from their daily decrease, of rearing any to the winged state, he separated them into small numbers, in different glasses; but here, as before, the strongest of each community destroyed the rest. He afterwards received several pair of Mantes in the winged state, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... dark with shadow, and must be relieved with light and color. The hasty conclusion should not be drawn that this is the philosophy of gloom. The tone of Horace is neither that of the cheerless skeptic nor that of the despairing pessimist. He does not rise from his contemplation with the words or ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... Lord! we have searched the world around, From centre to the utmost bound, But no such mortal can be found; Despairing, back we come. ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... children; but their dread of the English name accelerated their flight, and in a few minutes, excepting the knight and his attendants, the place was deserted by all. He paced through the village to seek a shelter for the night, and despairing to find one either in the inaccessible tower or the plundered huts of the peasantry, he directed his course to the left hand, where he spied a small, decent habitation, apparently the abode of a man considerably above the common rank. After much knocking, the proprietor ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. So was it now with Tom. The atheistic taunts of his cruel master sunk his before dejected soul to the lowest ebb; and, though the hand of faith still held to the eternal rock, it was a numb, despairing grasp. Tom sat, like one stunned, at the fire. Suddenly everything around him seemed to fade, and a vision rose before him of one crowned with thorns, buffeted and bleeding. Tom gazed, in awe and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the house at night, and go off and wander about the street for hours, proud, heartsick, despairing, not knowing which way to turn, or what to do, while Mrs. Clemm would endure the anxiety at home as long as she could, and then start off ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... who had wrung her handkerchief into a clammy ball, gave it a last despairing wrench, and faltered: "Wouldn't you like—hadn't you better—don't you think you'd ought to be more constant at ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... description, a propos of the perpetual repetition of the drama played by the French Assembly and the French president, in which the constant threats of resignation on the one hand are invariably followed by passionate and despairing entreaties to "stay" on the other. It is the old story of Cavour and the door-knob over again; and even the great Bismarck, by the way, does not disdain a resort occasionally to the same terrible pantomime. "The only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... fear of disgrace, the Ormuzians manned 130 of their vessels, with which they furiously assailed the two Portuguese ships: yet they both made their way through showers of bullets and arrows to the fort, to the great joy and relief of the governor and garrison. Despairing of being able to shake off the Portuguese yoke, and dreading the punishment of his revolt, the king of Ormuz abandoned his city and retired to Kishom or Queixome, an island about 15 leagues in length and 3 leagues from Ormuz, close to the shore ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... together in a despairing prayer for Syracuse. For himself he must ply his trade, for that was his duty as it had been that of his father before him, and his father before him. As for Perpetua, he would make a home for her still deeper in the heart of the mountain ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... step by step, toward the bridge, we pressing their despairing forces and cutting them down by scores. Arrived on the bridge, the slaughter still continued. Alexander de la Pole was pushed overboard or fell over, and was drowned. Eleven hundred men had fallen; John de la Pole decided to give up ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... her feet and bent over the bed. The child was fighting for breath, while the mother wrung her hands despairing. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... for my life. Whither my legs carried me I know not. Women's despairing shrieks rent the air on every hand. The massacre had commenced. I remember I dashed into a long, narrow street that seemed half deserted, then turned corner after corner, but behind me, ever increasing, rose the cries of the doomed populace. The Cossacks ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... will not trouble to counsel the doubting; of the one rich in humility who will yet not seek to save his neighbour from arrogance; of him rich in charity who indifferently views his uncharitable brethren; of the man rich in hope who will not strive to make hopeful the despairing; of the one rich in graces of the Holy Ghost who will not seek to reclaim the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... despair... Her son Gilbert so near death... And such a death!... At that time we could only hope for a miracle... an impossible miracle. I myself was resigned to the inevitable... You know as well as I do, when fate shows itself implacable, one ends by despairing." ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... he lay sick and despairing off Belem, an unknown voice said to him compassionately: 'O fool! and slow to believe and serve thy God.... He gave thee the keys of those barriers of the ocean sea which were closed with such mighty ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... She thought of going to beseech Serge and ask him what sum he would take in exchange for Micheline's liberty; but the haughty and sarcastic face of the Prince forcibly putting the bank-notes in her hands, passed before her, and she guessed that she would not obtain anything. Cast down and despairing, she entered her office and set ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... of his hiding-places after the battle of Culloden, protected by Flora Macdonald and Highland outlaws, who are alarmed on their watch. Here rests, in fitful and affrighted slumbers, the recent victor, Prince Charles Edward, a broken and despairing fugitive, his gallant spirit dissipated, and his well-knit limbs stained, and bruised, and soiled by urgent journeys and perilous encounters. Beside him sits a sleepless guardian, the brave, the beautiful, the heroic Flora Macdonald. A deer-hound, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... little known, and is copied from the Salopian Journal of 3 July: "It is known to many of our readers that the Whig-Radical faction in Shrewsbury, despairing (as the event has proved) of winning the election by fair and honest means, have resorted to the infamous trick of publishing anonymous slanders against Mr. Disraeli, one of the Tory Candidates. He rebutted the slanders so promptly and effectually, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... windows the vivid tongues of flame darted, flashing upward. She summoned all her courage and waited for the call of the man she loved. Inside a floor gave way with a crash and the collateral walls of the building swayed ominously. A despairing roar accompanied the thunder of falling beams. The lions had gone to ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... thousands have perished; though, where they burn, spring up the foul poisons of the human heart, and to those whom thou canst subject to thy will, thy presence glares in the dreams of the raving maniac, or blackens the dungeon of despairing crime, thou art not my ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... quickly, more alarmed at Renshaw's despairing face than at the news itself. "Tell him everything, Dick—Mr. Renshaw; it may not be ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... design Of walking by the house of Roderick: Who knows but through some window I had spied Fair Julia's shadow passing by the glass; Or if some others, I would think it hers; Or if not any, I would see the place Where Julia lives. O Heaven, how small a blessing Will serve to make despairing lovers happy! ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... find her still in the despairing attitude in which we left her, plunged in an abyss of dismal reflection—a dark hell at the gate of which she has almost left hope behind, because for the first time she doubts, for the first time ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could fire there came a roar like that of a beast from behind him and a terrific blow fell on his head. Under the weight of a second assailant he was crushed to the snow, his pistol slipped from his grasp, and two great hands choked a despairing cry from his throat. He saw a face over him, distorted with passion, a huge neck, eyes that named like angry garnets. He struggled to free his pinioned arms, to wrench off the death-grip at his throat, but his efforts were like those of a child against a giant. In a ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... of York themselves in my absence did call for some of the Commissioners of the Treasury and give them directions about the business of the certificates; which I, despairing to do any thing on a Sunday, and not thinking that they would think of it themselves, did rest satisfied with, and stayed at home all yesterday, leaving it to do something in this day: but I find that the King and Duke of York had been so pressing in it, that ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Nor how, despairing and alone, He then must wear his life away; And linger, feebly toiling on, And fainting, ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... slaves now, and they must go back to their masters to be sent to the market on another day, for the sun is below the horizon, the market almost empty, and the guards will be gathering at the city gates. Two dilals make a last despairing promenade, while their companions are busy recording prices and other details in connection with the afternoon's business. The purchased slaves, the auctioneer's gaudy clothing changed for their own, are being taken to the houses of ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... loss: upon which he, in despair, resolved to drown himself; when suddenly, as he was going to execute his purpose, a great fish appearing with the ring in his mouth, swam close to shore, and having dropped it within reach of the despairing youth, miraculously exclaimed, "I am the fish which you released from captivity, and thus reward you for your generosity." The fisherman's son, overjoyed, returned to his father-in-law's capital, and at night rubbing the ring, commanded the genii to convey the palace to its old site. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... feeling, the parting scene between Imogen and Posthumus, that between Romeo and Juliet, and that between Troilus and Cressida: compare the confiding matronly tenderness, the deep but resigned sorrow of Imogen, with the despairing agony of Juliet, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... all else is the consciousness of his utter helplessness. Succor or sympathy there is none. Penitence for embarking avails not. The final satisfaction of despairing may not be his with a relish. Vain the idea of idling out the calm. He may sleep if he can, or purposely delude himself into a crazy fancy, that he is merely at leisure. All this he may compass; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... to say something, but the words stuck in her throat. She gave one despairing glance about the room, her eyes sweeping the almost deserted quarters, and rising she made ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... struggles of these poor children who ought never to have felt restraint, nor would, had they been always held in with an even hand, to the despairing plunges of a spirited filly, which I have seen breaking on a strand; its feet sinking deeper and deeper in the sand every time it endeavoured to throw its rider, till ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... she communicated what she had to say. These Causes have produced suitable Effects, and Laetitia is as insipid a Companion, as Daphne is an agreeable one. Laetitia, confident of Favour, has studied no Arts to please; Daphne, despairing of any Inclination towards her Person, has depended only on her Merit. Laetitia has always something in her Air that is sullen, grave and disconsolate. Daphne has a Countenance that appears chearful, open and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... black bow was carefully tied to conceal its worn parts. Her gloves had been stitched a good many times. Her gown, although it was tidy, was old-fashioned and had distinctly seen its best days. He suddenly recognized the effort—the almost despairing effort—which her ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rationally the mystery of a phonograph and despairing of any attempt to describe the laws of vibration, Birnier sought for a likely simile. Encouraged by the almost imperceptible fact that he had awakened Bakahenzie's visible interest, he plunged on: "Within ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... thee hurry," pleaded the girl bringing the boots from the entry way. "There is so little time, my cousin. To-morrow I will come to thee at Sally's, and then we can have a long talk. Now thee must act. Sukey may come in at any time. Or Tom. Oh!" in a despairing tone as the latch of the door leading into the main building clicked its warning. "'Tis too late. Why, ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... the latest despairing cry of the industrially vanquished and down-trodden, and is not to be suppressed by force of argument, whether the argument comes from the side of the employer or the fellow-workman. Only with the removal of the causes can we expect this philosophy of despair to vanish, for it ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... the youth facing his stern conqueror; his hands were clenched until the knuckles showed white; his face was a dull crimson. Vainly he sought for words in which to vent some of the malicious chagrin that filled his soul almost to bursting-point. Then, despairing, with a shrug and an inarticulate mutter, he flung past the Parisian, obeying him as the cur obeys, with pendant ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... some sticks protruding from the heap and a shriveled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now lustreless but the rudely carved gap that just before had been a mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... allow the Arabs who fought Nsama to enter his country. They did not attempt to force their way, but after sending friendly messages and presents to different chiefs, when these were not cordially received, turned off in some other direction, and at last, despairing of more ivory, turned homewards. From first to last they were extremely kind to me, and showed all due respect to the Sultan's letter. I am glad that I was witness to their mode of trading in ivory and slaves. It formed a complete contrast to the atrocious dealings ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... repelled at first with haughty disdain, came to be received with sullen indifference. He had nothing to say for himself in reply, because, in point of fact, there was nothing in his case to justify his taking so gloomy and despairing a view of life. Many men, he knew, were at his age out of employment, and many more had been crossed in love. He was too proud to condescend to false reasoning with his lips, though he encouraged it in his heart. He knew quite well that drink ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... now; nor am I in this any vain deceiver. I truly met Miss Spencer. I was the recipient of her most entrancing smiles; I listened to her modulated voice; I bore her off, a willing captive, from a throng of despairing admirers; I danced with her, gazing down into her eyes, with her fluffy hair brushing my cheek, yet resisted all her charms and came forth ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... began to be doubtful in their minds; despairing by reason of their wicked doings ever to attain unto salvation Others being thus made doubtful, did moreover stir ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... have," he flashed back. "I want the open sea—tide and tempest and grey surges, with the wind in my face and the thrill of danger in my heart! I want my blood to race through my body; I want to be hungry, cold, despairing, afraid—everything! God, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Academy of Dijon is rich in wits. One of them, whose name cannot be unknown to you, living in the last century, prepared with great labour an edition of Pindar. One night, worrying over five verses the sense of which he could not disentangle, so much was the text corrupt, he dozed off, quite despairing, at cockcrow. During his sleep, a Sylph, who wished him well, transported his spirit to Stockholm into the palace of Queen Christina, conducted him to the library, and took from one of the shelves a manuscript of Pindar's showing him the difficult passage. The five verses were there, as well ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... over.—All this we learn from Comenius himself, whose account of the matter and of what followed had better now be quoted. "The Pansophiae Prodromus," he says, "having been published, and copies dispersed through the various kingdoms of Europe, but many learned men who approved of the sketch despairing of the full accomplishment of the work by one man, and therefore advising the erection of a College of learned men for this express business, in these circumstances the very person who had been the means of giving the Prodromus to the world, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... lovely; run along, little boy," said Ivy, and Mat, with a last despairing glance at the feast, was gone, leaving her free to resume ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... hands in a half-despairing gesture and into her eyes welled a flood of passion as if a dam had broken and made concealment futile. Her words came with a low thrill, and the man's brain swam with an ecstatic sense of discovery which for the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... supported them with threats of personal violence; but not a word would he say. At last a disagreement was formally entered, the jury discharged and the obstinate juror chased from the city by the maddened populace. Despairing of success in another trial and privately admitting his belief in the prisoner's innocence, the public prosecutor moved for his release, which the judge ordered with remarks plainly implying his own belief that the wrong man had ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... mass of power, craft, passion, and devilry which made up the worst of the Plantagenets; had he dramatized the grand scene of the signing of the Charter and shown vividly the gloom and horror which overhung the excommunicated land; had he painted John's last despairing struggles against rebels and invaders as he has given us the fiery end of Macbeth's life, we might have had another Macbeth, another Richard, who would by his terrible personality have welded the play together and carried us breathless through ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... like a child into the outstretched arms, and he, having wet his handkerchief on the mist-damped grass, bent the weary head back against his shoulder, and wiped away the blood-stains from the despairing face. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... an impressive spectacle, like all of the same kind that have preceded and followed it—a glorious spectacle, when the faces of most of the men were observed, and nothing of the despairing dullness of the conscript's eye seen there, but the vigorous pride and determination of men who were going forth at the call of their country to battle for that country to the death. And yet a sad spectacle, as all the others have been, when waste of life and mismanagement of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... a place of darkness, of sad despairing hearts, that prison house, before Christ's visit to it," said Rupert. "There, as in a pit, dwelt those who in earth-life had rejected the truth, and who, sinking low in the vices of the world, permitted themselves to be led captive by the ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without perception over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him, dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And he would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against the warm breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising behind him a cloudlet of dust which rolled along the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... overboard, clear of the side. West grasped her, and dragged her to her feet. His one thought was that they were actually going down, but, even as he held her in his arms, ready to leap out into the black water, the shuddering vessel, with a last despairing effort, partially ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... held in check by the fire of the musqueteers, he moved on himself at the head of his main body, directing his attack to that part of the enemy where Ferdinand Pizarro was seen at the head of his squadrons. Orgognez apparently despairing of the battle, called out while advancing, "Follow me who will! I go in the name of God to do my duty, and to seek an honourable death!" While Orgognez was advancing, Gonzalo Pizarro and Alonso Alvarado observed that his flank was uncovered, and accordingly made an immediate charge, by which above ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... decoyed back to France by a son of the people whose qualifications for the post of villain were none too convincing, and there all manner of unpleasant things were by way of happening to them, when enter the despairing husband with the dashing scarlet one at his side—et voila tout. The last few chapters come nearly or even quite up to the mark, but as for most of the rest, I advise you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... After, indeed, that they had united all the flags in Christendom to put down this horrid traffic, the slavers might repudiate all flags, and divest themselves of every document which might enable th captor to identify them with any particular nation. That would be the last refuge of despairing crime; and in order to meet those circumstances, he would propose a clause by which such a ship should be dealt with as though it were an English trader, unless it appeared, in the course of the trial, that she ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... by an old companion who had served in the Ohio Penitentiary, by the name of Gordon. Gordon gave information to the keepers, of Wyatt's having served a time in the penitentiary in Ohio. Wyatt became enraged, and despairing of any chance of a pardon, being sentenced, I think, for fourteen years, he tried to effect his escape, but was detected and severely punished. He then swore vengeance against Gordon, whose time ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... and confirmed Richelieu's territorial gains and guided France at last to triumph over the Imperial House of Austria. On 9th March 1661, after a pathetic scene in his sumptuous palace, where the stricken old cardinal dragged his tottering steps along its vast galleries, casting a despairing look on the marvellous treasures of art he had collected and sorrowing like a child at the idea of separating from them for ever, the great Italian, "whose heart was French if his tongue were not," confronted death at Vincennes with firmness ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... afraid to trust herself. She was afraid to accept her own suggestions of comfort, if ever a ray of it came to her, lest it should be but another form of self-deception, another proof of moral instability. In her eternal tossing to and fro, in mental anguish, the despairing idea often assailed her: that after all, it did not matter what she did or thought. She was but an atom of the vast whole, a drop in ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... thoughtfully considered, into a sudden and violent change in the channel of a boy's life, a change which is due to the normal channel (or channels) of his expansive energies having been blocked by years of educational repression. His wild, ruffianly outrages are perhaps the last despairing effort that his vital principle makes to assert itself, before it finally gives up the struggle ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... probable that the colony found the Indians hostile, and despairing of relief from home, abandoned the island and proceeded to Croatan, where they ultimately perished. However, a writer who resided in the country more than a century after, says there were traditions among a tribe that inhabited the coast, that their ancestors were white ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... face was terrible, my voice was strange, for my wife suddenly turned pale and began shrieking aloud in a despairing voice that was utterly unlike her own. Liza, Gnekker, then Yegor, came running ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Past the despairing wail— And the bright banquets of the Elysian Vale Melt every care away! Delight, that breathes and moves for ever, Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river! Elysian life survey! There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads, His youngest west-winds blithely leads The ever-blooming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... content in our thought and he will empty it of its content to our eyes; that is not how we really see things, but it is how we ought to see them if what we believe about the nature of things is true. This irony we find in Mr. Nevinson's pictures of the war, whether it be a despairing irony or the rebellion of an unshaken faith. He has emptied man of his content, just as the Prussian drill sergeant would empty him of his content for the purposes of war; and only a Prussian drill sergeant could consent to this version of ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... here—all pressing refreshments on our deliverer—all joyful excitement. The only element lacking, dear Mr Darcy's presence! And two hours later,—for none could go to rest,—that also was supplied; for finding his pursuit of the Merton chaise mistaken, he returned home, drooping and almost despairing, in the ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... live with Sidwell—to breathe the fragrance of that flower of womanhood in wedded intimacy—to prove the devotion of a nature so profoundly chaste! The visionary transport was too poignant; in the end it drove him to a fierce outbreak of despairing wrath. How could he dream that such bliss would be the reward of despicable artifice, of calculated dishonour? Born a rebel, how could his be the fate of those happy men who are at one with the order of things? The prophecy of a heart wrung with anguish foretold too surely that ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... not my poor papa!" cried Pinocchio in a despairing tone; and as he said it, the gold pieces clinked ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... likely to grow upon him in that way absented himself seven years together from his wife. But then returning, she within the space of a year afterwards was delivered of seven male children at a birth, which made the poor man to think himself utterly undone, and thereby despairing put them all in a basket with full intent to have drowned them: but Divine Providence following him, occasioned a lady then within the said city coming at this instant of time in his way to demand of him what he carried in that basket, who replied that he had there whelps, which she desired to ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the matter with her?" Pere Ruys would ask; and Jenkins, with the authority of a physician, would attribute it to her age and a physical trouble. He himself avoided speaking to the girl, relying upon time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of obtaining what he desired, for he desired more eagerly than ever, being in the grasp of the insane passion of a man of forty-seven, the incurable passion of maturity; and that was the hypocrite's punishment. His daughter's strange state caused the sculptor genuine distress; but it was of brief ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... melt: With stern command to Albert's charge he gave To waft Palemon o'er the distant wave. "The ship was laden and prepared to sail, And only waited now the leading gale: 480 'Twas ours, in that sad period, first to prove The poignant torments of despairing love, The impatient wish that never feels repose, Desire that with perpetual current flows, The fluctuating pangs of hope and fear, Joy distant still, and sorrow ever near. Thus, while the pangs of thought severer grew, The western breezes inauspicious ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... again, at once raging and despairing, "They won't believe me. They'll think I'm a crackpot. You get the news to somebody who'll investigate. I see the thing, Lockley. I can see it now. At this instant. And Jill's ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... came round, and found me so engrossed in putting the finishing touches to my excursus of Mr Mellish's character, that I stayed on in the form-room till ten past. Two other members of the form stayed too, writing with the despairing energy of those who had five minutes to say what they would like to spread over five hours. At last Mellish collected the papers. He seemed a trifle surprised when I gave up my modest three sheets. Brown and Morrison, who had their eye on the form prize, each gave up reams. Brown told ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... I understood that the dispersion of the Jews everywhere made it possible to find Jewish types anywhere, and especially in London, to which flowed all the streams of the Exile. But long days of hunting in the Jewish quarter left me despairing. I could find types of all the Apostles, but ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill |
