"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peace; and casting Edith from his arms, he set the example of attack or flight—Roland scarcely knew which,—by leaping against the breast of the daring intruder. Both fell together across the threshold, and Roland obeying the call with desperate and frantic ardour, stumbled over their bodies, pitching headlong into the passage, whereby he escaped the certain death that otherwise awaited him, three several rifle-shots having been that instant poured upon him from a distance ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... upon him, and as it grew heavier and heavier, he felt that he was being crushed to the earth. Then a feeling of unworthiness that even the earth should hold him up and keep him from instant destruction in hell until God in his mercy would deliver him swept over him, and in his desperate condition he cried out until his voice was heard all over the camp-ground, and the people in crowds came to discover, if possible, what was ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... the drama; but to it we must equally attribute the fights of wild beasts among the Romans, nay, even the combats of the gladiators. But must we, less indurated, and more inclined to tender feelings, require demi-gods and heroes to descend, like so many desperate gladiators, into the bloody arena of the tragic stage, in order to agitate our nerves by the spectacle of their sufferings? No: it is not the sight of suffering which constitutes the charm of a tragedy, or even of the games of the circus, or of the fight ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... already moving from Grant's army to the relief of Knoxville. Bragg had also sent to him a staff officer with exhortations to prompt action. For a day or two Longstreet tried to attract Burnside's attention to the south of the river and to other parts of the lines, and then on the 28th prepared a desperate assault upon the great salient of ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... do," said Tom, after an investigation. "As you say, there is more of that hard rock than we calculated on. To try to blast and take it out in the ordinary way will be useless. We must try desperate means." ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... to the aid of the prince Cid Hiaya, and made a desperate attempt to dislodge the enemy from this formidable position, but the night had closed, and the darkness rendered it impossible to make any impression. The Moors, however, kept up constant assaults and alarms throughout the night, and the weary ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... day she abandoned that area, flying heavily eastward. The droning and swooping gnats of aircraft plainly distressed her. At first she had only tried to avoid them, but now and then during her eastward flight from St. Louis she made short desperate rushes against them, without skill or much sign of intelligence, screaming from a wide-open mouth that could have swallowed a four-engine bomber. Two aircraft were lost over Cincinnati, by collision with each other in trying to get out of her way. Pilots were then ordered ...
— The Good Neighbors • Edgar Pangborn
... classes of men aside, as having no special call on the sympathy of the Catholic, of course he does most deeply enter into the feelings of a fourth and large class of men, in the educated portions of society, of religious and sincere minds, who are simply perplexed,—frightened or rendered desperate, as the case may be,—by the utter confusion into which late discoveries or speculations have thrown their most elementary ideas of religion. Who does not feel for such men? who can have one unkind thought of them? I take up in their behalf St. Augustine's beautiful words, "Illi in ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... women, when quite young, are pretty and graceful. Their huts are often tastefully decorated, the floors being spread with yellow mats, embroidered with red and violet designs. The Afars are divided into many sub-tribes, each having an hereditary sultan, whose power is, however, limited. They are desperate fighters and in 1875 successfully resisted an attempt to bring them under Egyptian rule. In 1883-1888, however, their most important sultan concluded treaties placing his country under Italian protection. The Afar ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... would seem to me merely tedious, smile behind your hand, and remember the little dears are all in a blue funk. It must be very funny, and to a spectator like yourself I almost envy it. But never get desperate; human nature is human nature; and the Roman Empire, since the Romans founded it and made our European human nature what it is, bids fair to go on and to be true to itself. These little bodies will all grow ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which fact, somehow, he should feel less stranded. It wasn't that he wanted to be pitied—he fairly didn't pity himself; he winced, rather, and even to vicarious anguish, as it rose again, for poor shamed Bloodgood's doom-ridden figure. But he wanted, as with a desperate charity, to give some easier turn to the mere ugliness of the main facts; to work off his obsession from them by mixing with it some other blame, some other pity, it scarce mattered what—if it might be some other experience; as an effect of which larger ventilation it would have, after a fashion ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... remained mysterious. Turner said on his trial that he had not been unkindly treated, and there was no evidence of provocation by special abuse. There was no trace of any instigation from the North in any form. It seemed not a stroke for freedom by men worthy to be free; not even a desperate revolt against intolerable wrong; but more like an outbreak of savagery, the uprising of the brute in man, thirsty for blood. The fear at first prevailed that there existed a widespread conspiracy, and various legislation for protection ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... stigmatise all the inhabitants of the southern world, and attributing to the whole the character of convictism. A more serious consideration is the positive injury inflicted upon the islanders of the Southern Ocean by scattering among them desperate men who have been perfected in all the arts of wickedness, and who are placed within reach of an interesting and rising people, whom they too often shock by their vices and oppress by their crimes. We submit, sir, to your humanity as a British fellow subject, and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... active magistrate (for he had been in the commission for some time), well acquainted with the law, and no less so with the haunts and habits of the illicit traders. He had acquired the latter kind of experience by a former close alliance with some of the most desperate smugglers, in consequence of which he had occasionally acted, sometimes as partner, sometimes as legal adviser, with these persons. But the connection had been dropped many years; nor, considering how short the race of eminent characters ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... to add more than a word to the published accounts of his death. There is something strangely pitiful in that last desperate effort to achieve humour. We have all read the account of his own death that he dictated from the sick-bed—cold, epigrammatic, and, alas! characteristically lacking in taste. And once more it was his fate to make us ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... and frequently disappointed in their hopes of being relieved from their depredations, by the failure of the numberless schemes that were formed and set on foot for that purpose, began at last to consider the case as quite desperate; and to submit patiently to an evil for which they saw no remedy. The consequences of this submission are easy to be conceived; the beggars, encouraged by their success, were attached still more strongly to their infamous profession; and others, allured by their indolent lives, encouraged by ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... that danger, and I will promise you none on my account. Suffer me to enter the convent of Bielany: we cannot be far from it; and then, do you provide for your own safety.' Kosinski, though rendered desperate by the circumstances in which he was involved, replied, 'No; I have sworn, and I would rather sacrifice my life than ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... they laid to my charge things that I knew not of." This kind in the highest way (that is, in judicial proceedings) is more rare; and of all men, they who are detected to practice it are held most vile and infamous, as being plainly the most pernicious and perilous instruments of injustice, the most desperate enemies of all men's right and safety that can be. But also out of the court there are many knights-errant of the poet, whose business it is to run about scattering false reports; sometimes loudly proclaiming ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... midnight the quarrels, fights, and disturbances, are so noisy and so frequent that none can hope for a night's rest until they are inured by habit; where, night after night, they witness the most desperate encounters between drunken men and women, kicking, biting, and tearing one another's hair out, as they roll together in the gutter, or, as is too often the case, using deadly weapons, and where the crowd, instead of interfering ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... life about him, the torch from which all others drew their light, to understand the horror of the void that was now about me. All things were there, the same, but the spirit that gave life to them was extinct, like a blown-out flame. I now understood the desperate desire of lovers never to see each other again when love has flown. To be nothing where we were once so much! To find the chilling silence of the grave where life so lately sparkled! Such comparisons are overwhelming. I came at last to envy the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... was considered as a concession to the views of the majority of the French Academy. La Bete Humaine exhausted the details of railway life. L'Argent treats of financial scandals and panics. La Debacle, 1892, is a realistic picture of the desperate struggles of the Franco-Prussian war. Le Docteur Pascal, 1893, a story of the emotions, wound up the series. Through it all runs the thread of heredity and environment in their influence on ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... from the Portages du Rat into the Lake of the Woods. I had added another man to my crew, which now numbered seven hands, the last accession was a French half-breed, named Morrisseau. Thomas Hope had possessed himself of a flint gun, with which he was to do desperate things should we fall in with the French scouts upon the lake. The boat in which I now found myself was a large, roomy craft, capable of carrying about three tons of freight; it had a single tall mast carrying a large square lug-sail, and also possessed of powerful ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the truth," answered Hokosa in a voice of desperate calm. "I have knowledge of the plot, for it was I who wove it; but whether or not Hafela will carry it out altogether I cannot say, for as yet no word has reached me from him. King, this was the plan that I made." And he told ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... solid, desperate mass, and then at the thin, struggling French line feeling its way cautiously forward; and a daring resolve came to him as the drums began to roll and he ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... except once these three: Es geht an (It is beginning). Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgeboren knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable; nay, perhaps through one humble individual, something ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the barricade when the last of the defenders had entered. By the time this was finished the battle below began in earnest. The infuriated assailants had pulled the doors outwards and were making desperate efforts to climb the pile of logs. This they soon found to be impossible, and began with their halberts to pull them down, and it was not long before they had dislodged sufficient to make a slope up which they could climb. Their ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... him, it would be of no use. I prefer to agree with him and get him to bed; then, at least, it's over at once and I'm quiet. Besides, he isn't ill-natured, he loves me very much. You could see that just a moment ago when he was desperate to give me a kiss. That's quite nice of him. There are plenty of men, you know, who after drinking a bit don't come straight home but stay out chasing women. Oh, he may fool around with the women in the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... difficult for a person in his humble circumstances to substantiate his claim, or secure the services of a lawyer bold enough to take his case in hand, and refrained from demanding his rights until 1849; in which year, rendered desperate by delay, he went personally to Ashton Hall, obtained an interview with Sir John Smyth, and communicated to him his relationship and his claims. The meeting was much more satisfactory than might have been expected. As Sir John had been party to certain documents which were executed by his brother ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... the estate of poetry in the eyes of even such poetical English publishers as Mr. Moxon, who can write sonnets himself. Poetry is in their eyes just a desperate speculation. A poet must have tried his public before he tries the publisher—that is, before he expects the publisher to run a risk for him. But I will make any effort you like to suggest for any work of yours; I only tell you how things are. By the way, if I ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... choice between the river and the fire. She was alone; there was none to advise or help her or be her companion in inevitable death. Her thoughts must have gone to her brother, with his strength and courage, his skill as a swimmer; but he was far away, unconscious of her desperate extremity. She had to choose, and the river was her choice. With that tragic conception of the drowning of Zenobia fresh in his mind, the realization of his sister's fate must have gained additional poignancy in my father's imagination. He ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation; large scale migration of Zimbabweans to surrounding countries - as they flee a progressively more desperate situation at home - has increased; rural Zimbabwean men, women, and children are trafficked internally to farms for agricultural labor and domestic servitude and to cities for domestic labor and commercial sexual exploitation; young ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... winced beneath the contemptuous gaze of his wife. He had made a desperate struggle to screw up his courage, but it was ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... instead of keeping along their edge. The Froom was down there, and he knew of quiet pools in that stream to which death would come easily. But he was too old to put an end to himself for such a reason as love; and another thought, too, kept him from seriously contemplating any desperate act. His affection for her was strongly protective, and in the event of her requiring a friend's support in future troubles there was none but himself left in the world to afford it. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... reason to think so meanly of them. And, if I am rightly informed, when that measure was debated in Parliament, a very different reason was assigned by the author's great friend, as well as by others, for that reduction: one very different from the critical and almost desperate state of our finances. Some people then endeavored to prove, that the reduction might be made without detriment to the national credit, or the due support of a proper peace establishment; otherwise it is obvious that the reduction could not be defended ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rooms had been engaged for them at the Grand Palestine Hotel, but, on leaving the Town Hall, were surrounded by the crowd, which had now swelled to nearly a million and fought for the privilege of escorting the visitors to the station with such desperate enthusiasm that at a late hour on Saturday night no traces of Prince Ongtong or any of his choir could be discovered. This is all the more to be regretted as arrangements had been made for a competition ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... about down and out; no one would hire him any more, even in the most menial capacity. His poor, hard-working wife had at last taken the pledge not to support him any longer in idleness, so it was up to Dennie to do something desperate. The most desperate thing he could think of was to swear off. So before the priest he took a solemn vow not to touch a drop ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... Now, listen: I have cut a hole through the wall from your room into Jack's. You can hear every word he speaks. Have you pencil and paper? Good! Jot down every word you hear. And don't make a sound. If you are discovered—well, they're a desperate gang. Come!" ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... was about: on the very Sunday when Wagstaff took possession of Salisbury, Cromwell occupied Chichester by horsemen, sent there at daybreak; and he dispatched a warning to Portsmouth, that 'some desperate design was on foot.' But he kept his soldiers away from Salisbury. He took this course, although he knew that Salisbury Plain had been named as a Levellers' rendezvous; and although he had received a report, about three weeks before the 11th ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... eyes literally blazing with fury, his lips working under his tawny, leonine beard. At every syllable he could have thrown himself afresh upon the Jew and flung him out of his presence as so much carrion; yet the impotence that truth so often feels, caught and meshed in the coils of subtlety—the desperate disadvantage at which Right is so often placed, when met by the cunning science and sophistry of Wrong—held the Seraph in their net now. He saw his own rashness, he saw how his actions could be construed till they cast a slur even on the man he defended; he saw how legally ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... climbed to six. So far the sophomores had gained nothing. Then Ellen Seymour made a spectacular throw to the basket and brought her team up two points. With the realization that they were facing defeat the freshmen rallied and made a desperate effort to hold their own, bringing their ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... direct attack on the Cabinet, of which, of course, Lloyd George was a member. His words meant that the Government was proceeding along conventional paths, and not rising to great emergencies, and was lacking that desperate resolution so necessary in war. Thus it was that Lloyd George threw out to the world more than a hint of the difficulties he had had with ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... you are far more anxious about others. I've had time to think. A swoon is not such a desperate affair. You guessed rightly—a thunderstorm prostrates me, but as it passes I ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... (imaginative) person who visits the fall; but most persons, through predominant subjectiveness, would scarcely be conscious of the feelings, or, at best, would never think of employing them in an attempt to convey to others an impression of the scene. Hence so many desperate failures to convey it on the part of ordinary tourists. Mr. William W. Lord, to be sure, in his poem 'Niagara,' is sufficiently objective; he describes not the fall, but very properly, the effect of the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... rushing, eager to see, quick to share in a fight. Believing them to be enemies, Hanscom with instant rush struck the first man a heavy blow, caught and wrenched his weapon from his fist, and so, armed and desperate, faced the circle of inflamed ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... war. Whether or not this comes about, Lee can never supplant Grant as our national military hero. He fought to destroy the Union, not to save it, and in the end he was beaten by General Grant. However much men may praise the personal virtues and the desperate achievements of the great warrior of the revolt against the Union, they cannot conceal that he was the defeated leader of a lost cause, a cause which, in the chastened judgment of coming time, will appear to all men, as even now it does to most dispassionate ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... every tender heart. From early childhood they lead worse than a dog's life. Uncultivated and treated like brutes, they are prone to suicide, and, when desperate, they act more like infuriated beasts than ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... desperate, and yet resistance would have been unwise. Sadly resigned, he turned his head upon the pillow, and soon snored in unison with Hersch. A half-hour of profound silence, then the culprit rose, and making sure that his wife was sleeping the sleep of the just, he cautiously took his ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... was, to be sure, when Tom and the Harrisons met! The brothers were for seizing Tom in place of Yaspard; and nothing but Signy's vehement protestations that he was under a flag of truce, so to speak, prevented their carrying out some desperate measure of the sort. They wouldn't see the difference between Yaspard caught at sea after discharging a hospitable duty, and Tom a ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... sparrow or the goldfinch. It is a race of surprising speed and agility. It is a test of wing and wind. Every muscle is taxed, and every nerve strained. Such cries of terror and consternation on the part of the bird, tacking to the right and left, and making the most desperate efforts to escape, and such silent determination on the part of the hawk, pressing the bird so closely, flashing and turning, and timing his movements with those of the pursued as accurately and as inexorably as if the two constituted one body, excite feelings of the deepest concern. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... stood scared by this desperate answer to his words. Then he put his burden down, approached Chris, knelt beside her, and tried to raise her. She sat up at last with panting breast and eyes ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... world ever saw, what would have become of Felicissimus and him long since? This horse, by second-nature, religiously respects all fences; gallops, if never so madly, on the highways alone;—seems to me, of late, like a desperate Sleswick thunder-horse who had lost his way, galloping in the labyrinthic lanes of a woody flat country; passionate to reach his goal; unable to reach it, because in the flat leafy lanes there is no outlook whatever, and in the bridle there is no guidance whatever. So he gallops ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... board a ship with yellow fever is held responsible for his mischance, no matter what his being kept in quarantine may cost him. He may catch the fever and die; we cannot help it; he must take his chance as other people do; but surely it would be desperate unkindness to add contumely to our self-protection, unless, indeed, we believe that contumely is one of our best means of self-protection. Again, take the case of maniacs. We say that they are irresponsible for their actions, but we take ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... nine hard at it, and four of them with knock-me-down Virginia tobacco, the single human odour could not contend against such powerful odds; as well might a musquito sneeze against thunder. I always loved a cigar; but here I learnt its true value in a desperate emergency. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... his hand, fall upon the counter. "I told you poplars, distinctly. The elm-tree gate is at least a quarter of a mile this side. But, to settle the matter at once," and the doctor, speaking like a man who was about doing a desperate thing, turned to his shelves and took therefrom a bottle of the Universal Restorer—"here's the medicine. I know it will cure you. Take a bottle. It shall ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... what was meant; with the sagacity of a long-trained hunter, he made a desperate effort to gain the advantage by a circuitous route. Twice the stag turned irresolute, as if to face his foe, and Wolfe, taking the time, swam ahead, and then the race began. As soon as the boys saw the herd ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... however, and solid order could not be observed throughout. At length, when they had gained a brookside at the very edge of the wood, the column staggered, quailed, fell into disorder, and then fell back. Some of the more desperate dashed singly into the thicket, bayoneting their enemies, and falling in turn in the fierce grapple. Others of the Confederates ran from the wood, and engaged hand to hand with antagonists, and, in places, a score of combatants met sturdily upon the plain, lunging with ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... October, the other a merely trivial and treeless waste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers. Every wash-tub and milk-can and gravestone will be exposed. The inhabitants will disappear abruptly behind their barns and houses, like desert Arabs amid their rocks, and I shall look to see spears in their hands. They will be ready to accept the most barren and forlorn doctrine,—as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... or the virtue and use of that water in curing of desperate diseases, with directions and rules necessary to be considered by all that ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... words, but I look at them in as pleasant a way as I know how, partly because I like to be friends with servants, and partly because I'm rather afraid of them and don't want to rouse them to Mutiny or do anything desperate, but Boggley discouraged me at the outset. "You needn't grin at them so affably," he remarked, "they will only think you are weak in the head." They quite evidently regard me as a poor creature, even Bella, though she humours me and condescends ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... to let him see the world and the usages of honourable warfare for a year or two; but my Lilias could not bear the thought of her young Ensign's coming home without an arm or a leg, or perchance being slain in some desperate conflict with savage Indians, or scarcely less savage Americans; and I did not press my plan of giving Edward for a time to the service of the King. He, I am bound to say, was eager to take up a Commission; but the tears and entreaties of my Daughter, who thinks War the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... comment, he was too desperate for that. He knew well enough that if his quiet, patient little Nan had gone away, she must be in a state of mind out of which tragedies come. He would go and rouse Jim Lincoln, who slept in the stable loft, and they would search for her. Mrs. Forest watched her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... to avoid the first cut, and he was about to make a desperate attempt to close, when a large stone whizzed past his ear and hit his adversary full on the chest, sending ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... The war with the natives was ignominiously ended by Charles V. in 1533, who found that the colony was growing too poor to pay for it. He despatched a letter to the cacique who had organized this desperate and prolonged resistance, flattered him by the designation of Dom Henri[19] and profuse expressions of admiration, sent a Spanish general to treat with him, and to assign him a district to inhabit with his followers. Dom Henri thankfully accepted this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... two tigers, with an air at once gentle and proud, he leaned with one hand upon a thyrsus, and with the other guided his savage steeds in tranquil majesty. By this rare mixture of grace, vigor, and serenity, it was easy to recognize the hero who had waged such desperate combats with men and with monsters of the forest. Thanks to the brownish tone of the figure, the light, falling from one side of the sculpture, admirably displayed the form of the youthful god, which, carved in relievo, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Lee, Id., vol. ii. p. 1012; vol. v. p. 769.] The contrast between promise and performance in his case had been ludicrous. When we entered the valley, we heard of his proclamations and orders, which breathed the spirit of desperate hand-to-hand conflict. His soldiers had been told to despise long-range fire-arms, and to trust to bowie-knives, which our invading hordes would never dare to face. We found some of these knives among the arms we captured at the Gauley,—ferocious-looking weapons, made of broad files ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... their ruin and their annihilation breathed again and leaped for joy; and the Parliament and the robe destroyed by edicts and by revolutions, flattered themselves the first that they should figure, the other that they should find themselves free. The people ruined, overwhelmed, desperate, gave thanks to God, with a scandalous eclat, for a deliverance, their most ardent ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... In other words, he was hungry. Gingerbread and apples do not satisfy little boys as roast beef does. Archie's stomach was quite empty, and began to cry with an unmistakable voice, "I want my dinner, I want my dinner. Give me my dinner quick, or I shall do something desperate." Everybody in the world has to listen when voices like these begin to sound inside of them. All at once home seemed the most attractive spot in the world to Archie. Visions of Mamma and bread and milk and a great plate full of something hot ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... After all the years, Thou'rt with us yet. To-day, as heretofore, Men see Thee still and they cast off their fears, And take fresh courage to press on once more. The soldiers, bearing from the desperate fight A wounded brother, see Thee, in the way, And know Thee for the Saviour, Healer, Friend, For once again, Thy loved ones hear Thee say (O Christ! White Comrade, in their stand for right!) "Lo, I am with ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... her necessities grew more pressing, and finally became so desperate, that, braving everything, she went boldly to headquarters, and asked ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... eyes as she finished her lover's letter. His unwonted humility touched her as no arrogance could ever have done. His appeal to his desperate need moved her profoundly as such appeals will always move woman. It is an old tale and one oft repeated. Man crying out at a woman's feet, "Save me! Save me! Myself I cannot save!" Woman, believing, because she longs to believe it, that salvation lies in her power, taking on herself ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... had enough and beat a retreat. At once Kitchener pressed on to Omdurman, but the bloody day is not yet at an end. The dervish horsemen rally yet once more. The Khalifa's standard is planted in the ground on a mound, and beside it the Prophet's green banner calls the faithful together for a last desperate struggle. The English and their Egyptian allies fight with admirable courage, and the dervishes strike with a bravery and contempt of death to which no words can do justice. Under the holy banner a detachment advances ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Wingate with delight shining in her dark eyes and a beautiful pink rising up in her pale cheeks. "I wish I COULD do something to please him and make him feel how—how—grateful I am—for the hope he's given me. I was so hopeless and unhappy—and desperate when I came. But I believe my voice is coming back! Every day it's stronger and you are so good to me and make me so happy that I'm not afraid any more. You give me faith to hope—as well as to mix biscuits." And a pearly ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... evils of gold-seeking, I fell under the fascination of what was then a wonderful town, especially wonderful from its youth. The ever-moving crowds which thronged the streets, every man of which appeared to be full of important business and in a desperate hurry, reminded one of the City in London. Smart carriages with well-dressed ladies drove rapidly past, the shops were cunningly arranged with tempting wares, and all this bustle and traffic was restored in little over a week. A fortnight previously a revolution was impending and a siege was looming ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... than you were, King Midas!" said the stranger, looking seriously at him. "Your own heart, I perceive, has not been entirely changed from flesh to gold. Were it so, your ease would indeed be desperate. But you appear to be still capable of understanding that the commonest things, such as lie within everybody's grasp, are more valuable than the riches which so many mortals sigh and struggle after. Tell me, now, do you sincerely desire to rid ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... word of father was like Persey's shield, to make the poore maid stone, now nurse doth threat Vnlesse she will in gentle manner yeeld, she would to morrow shew how in a heat She would haue made away her desperate life, and she must tell the man that forc'd that strife within her brest through feare she thus did frame and made her toung ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... of trust and longing, ventured himself on the wave, and as soon as he felt the cold water creeping above his knees lost his trust, and so lost his buoyancy, and was ready to go down like a stone? He had so little faith, that he was beginning to sink; he had so much that he put out his hand—a desperate hand it was—and cried, 'Lord, save me!' And the hand came, and that steadied him, and bore him up till the water was beneath the soles of his feet again. 'Lord! I ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... she did Jeff look so miserable. Perhaps some time she would reward him—after a long while, though. Thus, poor Jeff spent many a wretched hour cursing his fate and cursing Pick Lawrence. He thought he would create a diversion by paying desperate attention to Margaret's guest; but it resolved itself on the first opportunity into his opening his heart and confiding all his woes to her. In doing this he fell into the greatest contradiction, declaring one moment ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Portugal, and his ostentatious passion for Leonora de Guzman, who bore him a large family of sons, set Peter an example which he did not fail to better. It may be that his early death, during the great plague of 1350, at the siege of Gibraltar, only averted a desperate struggle with his legitimate son, though it was a misfortune in that it removed a ruler of eminent capacity, who understood his subjects well enough not to go too ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to tell Laura and Marian how my desperate venture had ended, and what the next event in our lives was likely to be. I left all details to be described later in the day, and hastened back to St. John's Wood, to see the person of whom Count Fosco had ordered the fly, when he went ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... dance, was now freed. And Monday—when she had promised to go to town and look for hats with Dorothy, and Tuesday, when those women were coming for lunch—it was all miraculously cancelled. A mere chance had loosed the bonds that neither her own desperate resolution nor Bert's could break. She was Nancy Bradley again, a wife and mother and housekeeper first, and everything ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... realise their position they found themselves being carried along in the human stream well out of reach of the blows being showered down by the rallying party from the house, who literally drove their enemies before them, at first step by step, striking back in their own defence, rendered desperate by their position, then giving up and seeking refuge in flight, when with a rush their companions gave way more ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... seeing that her secret had been discovered handed the rings to Ethel saying that she should kill herself. The girls, seeing that she was desperate, replied that as one of their "seven laws" was to "render service," if she would confess why she had taken the rings they would shield her. Overjoyed, the girl did so. She told everything. She had done ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... Romans caught them by the middle, and destroyed at once their ships and themselves who were taken in them. And for such as were drowning in the sea, if they lifted their heads up above the water, they were either killed by darts, or caught by the vessels; but if, in the desperate case they were in, they attempted to swim to their enemies, the Romans cut off either their heads or their hands; and indeed they were destroyed after various manners every where, till the rest being put to flight, were forced to get upon the land, while the vessels encompassed ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... "dangerous" man. And when it was noised abroad that he had proposed that all the colored men of the county should band together to protect themselves against this evil, as he chose to regard it, he was at once branded not only as "dangerous" but as a "desperate" and "pestiferous" nigger, instead of being ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... been these impressions upon his imagination, they were soon thrown off, and the mad youth rushed on in his desperate career of vice and folly. Is he then left to fill up the measure of his iniquities? No, the Lord has a great work for him to do. HIS hand is not shortened that he cannot save. Bunyan has to be prepared for his work; and if terrors will not stop him, manifested mercies ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... further up the river, when we discovered the European boats and crews lying at anchor abreast of the smoking ruins of what had been a Malay town. Here we learnt that the pirates had been completely routed, after a desperate resistance, that four large towns had been burnt, and seventy-five brass guns of the country, called leilas, had been captured. The victory, however, had not been gained without loss on our side, and had the pirates ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... Otherwise, says Roland-Holst, "the greater has been the success of the working people at the beginning, the greater has been the terror of the middle classes," and as a consequence the measures of repression in the end have been proportionately desperate. But this applies only when such strikes are for aggressive ends, like that of 1910 in France, and promise nothing to any element of society ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... you can give me, doubtless, further proof. You have now a desperate woman to deal with, and if you have lied to me, I will be revenged on both ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... sadly changed. Instead of being one of the most light-hearted girls, I heard that she used to sit day after day in her mother's house and wring her hands and weep and that her mother's heart was almost broken. Friends feared that Lucy was losing her mind and might do some desperate deed, but she did not. I left about that time to teach school in a distant village, and when I returned home I heard sad tidings of poor Lucy. She was a mother, but not a wife. Her brothers had grown angry with her for tarnishing their family name, of which they were ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... himself. He had read the 'Anabasis,' some Herodotus, three plays of Euripides, and was now making some desperate efforts on Aeschylus and Sophocles. Any Plato? David made a face. He had read two or three dialogues in English; didn't want to go on, didn't care about ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who was as susceptible to the temperature of rooms as a thermometer, tried each window in succession during the afternoon, and came to the desperate conclusion that the rain came from all quarters of the leaden ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... did not march away with music and banners. They went in silence, looked at and gazed after by eyes filled with tears. They went to meet, not an equal, but a superior—to fight five times their number—to make a desperate stand—to stop the advance of the enemy, and then, when their ammunition gave out, seek the protection of rocks, of ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Vaudois hero, disabled by age and wounds, was still alive—an exile at Geneva—and he was consulted on the subject. Javanel embraced the project with, enthusiasm; and the invasion of the valleys was resolved upon! A more daring, and apparently more desperate ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... standing up well under the attack of the monster he had first wounded. Ned, watching his chance, got in several blows, first at one and then at the other of the huge creatures. The third devil fish, which had not been wounded, had disappeared. Finally Koku, with a desperate blow, succeeded in severing the tail from the beast attacking him, ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... before quoted. "The laws and customs of England conspire to sink this class of English women into a state of vice and misery below that which necessarily belongs to their condition. Hence their extreme degradation, their troopers' oaths, their love of gin, their desperate recklessness, and the shortness of their ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... many desperate attempts which were made from time to time to dethrone her, the following ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... pass, of course. One need not be derisively cynical over that. Infatuation succeeds infatuation. Dream succeeds dream. The loyalty of a life-long love was not his. His life ended indeed before youth's desperate experiments were over, before the reaction set in. But the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... desperate struggle ensued, the Mantatees attempted to enclose the Griquas in the burning town; but not succeeding, they fled precipitately. Strange to say, the Mantatee forces were divided into two parts, and during the ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... when everything went wrong at Plumfield; times were hard, the school dwindled, Jo overworked herself and had a long illness; Laurie and Amy were abroad, and the Bhaers too proud to ask help even of those as near and dear as this generous pair. Confined to her room, Jo got desperate over the state of affairs, till she fell back upon the long-disused pen as the only thing she could do to help fill up the gaps in the income. A book for girls being wanted by a certain publisher, she hastily scribbled a little story describing a few scenes and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... possible on this memorable night that within a few days these two Democratic chieftains would be challenging each other and engaging in a desperate struggle to decide the question of ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... feather worn by a warrior represents an enemy slain or captured—man, woman or child; but the Dakotas, before they became desperate under the cruel warfare of their enemies, generally spared the lives of their captives, and never killed women or infants, except in rare instances, under the lex talionis. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... he looked up at her, and their eyes met, hers with desperate expectation and his holding her gaze in an unmoved questioning. "Did she give it to you?" he asked, and she shook her head with a negation almost imperceptible. "No," said Jeffrey to himself. "She didn't have it. Who did ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... of ships bound to New Zealand. They keep further north for Auckland, further south for New Plymouth, and the ship had struck just between these two points, on the desert region of the shores of Ika-na-Mani, a dangerous, difficult coast, and infested by desperate characters. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... hold our case to be desperate, to whom the disillusionment of peace, after the high optimism engendered by the vast heroism and the exalted ideals instigated by the war, has brought nothing but a mood of deep pessimism. The sentiment is perhaps natural, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride. They offer us their protection! Yes, such protections as vultures give to lambs,—covering and devouring them! They call on us to barter all the good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... promontory at Beachley, but from which they were quickly dislodged by Massy. We know he was present when the same effort was renewed a month later, and had a second time to be relinquished, Sir John Winter only effecting his escape by hard riding, and making a desperate descent upon the river Wye, by which he was only just enabled to reach the Prince's ships ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... repeatedly wounded, he survived twelve years of constant fighting with no {21} more serious casualty than a broken arm which he carried away from the siege of Orbitello. By the time peace was signed at Muenster he had become a soldier well proved in the most desperate war which had been ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... have been commonly found insurmountable. The latter being the intention of this book, the task has been undertaken with a perfect consciousness of all its difficulties, and with scarcely a hope of success. It would be indeed a desperate undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in the way of a Roman de Societe in this country; still useful glances may possibly be made even in that direction, and we trust that the fidelity of one or two of our portraits will be recognized by the looker-on, although they will very ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... first of a five and came Of a coifed sisterhood. (O Deutschland, double a desperate name! O world wide of its good! But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town, Christ's lily and beast of the waste wood: From life's dawn it is drawn down, Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they have sucked ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... escaped all the dangers he so recklessly braved, and all the bad speculations he embarked in turned out good. Somehow or other, the moment he took part in a desperate scheme it ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... not doing anything but drill in Archangel. Of course he had only half-truth. That is the way misunderstandings and bad feelings feed. At that moment a company of the Archangel Regiment was at a desperate front, Bolsheozerki, standing shoulder to shoulder with "M" Company out of "I" Company's own battalion. But these American soldiers at that moment with their feelings growing warmer with expression of them, thought only of the drilling Russian soldiers in Archangel and ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from, will you risk the commission of so fearful ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... with me, I will goe seeke the King, [Sidenote: Come, goe] This is the very extasie of Loue, Whose violent property foredoes[4] it selfe, And leads the will to desperate Vndertakings, As oft as any passion vnder Heauen, [Sidenote: passions] That does afflict our Natures. I am sorrie, What haue you giuen him any hard ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... entangled itself in its toils. No burning language of prophecy would be too solemn and too stinging for the premeditated wretchedness, and incurable calamity, of such a bond. No; if we must violate the simplicity of our national interests by such degrading, and such desperate involvements—if we should not shrink from this conspiracy against mankind, let it, at least, not be consummated in the face of day; let us at once abandon the hollow pretences of human honesty; let us pledge ourselves to a perpetual league of rapine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... some particular hints, concerning his character, that excited my curiosity, and I ventured to ask him a few questions. He was reserved in his replies, but, after hesitating for some time, he owned, that he had understood abroad, that Montoni was a man of desperate fortune and character. He said something of a castle of Montoni's, situated among the Apennines, and of some strange circumstances, that might be mentioned, as to his former mode of life. I pressed him to inform me further, but I believe the strong interest I felt was visible in my manner, and ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... arm! With the same astounding discovery came one more terrible: that arm belonged to the weight that was pressing him down; and now, assisted by his struggles, it was slowly slipping toward the brink of the ledge and the abyss below! With a desperate effort he turned on his side, caught the body,—as such it was,—dragged it back on the ledge, at the same moment that, freeing his head from its covering,—a feminine skirt,—he discovered it ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... the first. You see the very doom burning out of his boy's eyes in the youthful portrait, and you see the logical end in that desperate and pitiful mask, the drawing of the last period in the Meynell Book. His was certainly the severed head, and his feet were pathetically far away, down on a stony earth. That he should have forfeited the ordinary ways of ease, is as consistent with his appearance, as it was necessary to his nature. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Bayard announced that he would cast the single vote of his State for Jefferson. "You cannot well imagine the clamor and vehement invective to which I was subjected for some days," he wrote to Hamilton. "We had several caucuses. All acknowledged that nothing but desperate measures remained, which several were disposed to adopt, and but few were willing openly to disapprove. We broke up each time in confusion and discord, and the manner of the last ballot was arranged but a few minutes before the ballot was taken." How narrowly the Federalists ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... point Mrs. Langton came rustling down, and Vincent rose to meet her, with a desperate hope that he would be asked to spend the whole of his last evening with them—a hope that ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and they echoed the word: the sound, bandied about at random, came at last to ears which, but for its universality, it might never have reached; and at the very crisis when I had tried my last effort and knew not what to do, Fortune looked in at me one morning, as I sat in drear and almost desperate deliberation on my bedstead, nodded with the familiarity of an old acquaintance—though God knows I had never met her before—and threw a prize into ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... water birds the wing quills disappear nearly all at once and the birds are unable {64} for a short time to fly; but being at home in the water, where they secure their food, they are not left in the helpless, even desperate, condition in which a land bird would find itself if unable to fly. In a few cases birds begin to migrate before this moulting takes place, but with the great majority the moult is complete before they leave ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... thought Charteris, rapidly diagnosing the case. 'By Jove, if he comes rotting about with me I'll kill him.' Having to do anything in a desperate hurry always made Charteris's temper slightly villainous. He turned the corner at a sharp trot, and came upon two youths who seemed to be engaged in the harmless occupation of trying to ride a bicycle. They were of the type which ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Accordingly Japan, having rightly or wrongly concluded that not only her civilisation but her national life, her independent existence, were menaced by the presence and the increasing number of these foreigners, she decided, on the principle that desperate diseases require desperate remedies, to expel them and to effectually seal her country against any possibility of future foreign invasions. I am not, I may remark, defending her action in the matter; I am only putting forward ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... desires, save a longing for his fair young wife, were lost out of his mind, and he thought of Bertha only in a dim and formless way—feeling his need of her and dumbly wondering why she did not come. In final, desperate agony, he lifted the phial of strychnine to his lips, hoping that it might put an end to his suffering; but before this act was completed a sweet, devouring flood of forgetfulness swept over him, his hand dropped, and the unopened bottle ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... actually joined the Duke of Monmouth?" exclaimed Alice, turning pale. "I urged him not to join so desperate a cause as that which the Duke's must be when he comes ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... little time it was all we could do to keep a few yards in front of the flames, the heat of which was roasting our backs and necks. At last, in a desperate effort, we managed to get slightly ahead, and when we descended—some of the animals rolled down—into a deep depression, we found ourselves clear of the smoke. The wind was unfortunately blowing the way we were travelling, but in that depression ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... shining in the sun, flung back the light, from end to end of the undulating column. Billows of smoke, out-puffing unexpectedly, anywhere and everywhere along the line, marked down the tragedies where desperate bunnies, scudding from cover and racing up or down before the red men, were targets for fiercely biting hail of lead from two or three or more of ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the bird, which, after striking at him two or three times, made a desperate effort to rise, fluttering and beating with its wings, and hopping a little, but trailing its broken leg as it made for the pen, within which were all ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... Triggvi yielded to his false friend's wish, and on reaching the place of meeting he was foully murdered with all his men. His cousin, King Gudrod Biornson, was at about this same time surprised at a feast by Harald Greyfell and slain after a desperate fight. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... numbers by numerous sanguinary battles; "* (* Battles and Leaders volume 2 page 389.) and he records his conviction that pity for his troops had much to do with the general's inaction. Hill would have probably come nearer the truth if he had said that the tired regiments were hardly to be trusted in a desperate assault, unsupported by artillery, on a position which was even stronger than that which they had stormed with such loss at ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... used a slow match," put in Jack. "These captains always have their enemies, who are desperate fellows and ready to do almost anything to injure them. The steamer might be set afire by means of a slow match, which would give the villain ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten) |
