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Hopeless   /hˈoʊpləs/   Listen
Hopeless

adjective
1.
Without hope because there seems to be no possibility of comfort or success.  "With a hopeless sigh he sat down"
2.
Of a person unable to do something skillfully.
3.
Certain to fail.
4.
(informal to emphasize how bad it is) beyond hope of management or reform.  "He is a hopeless romantic"



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"Hopeless" Quotes from Famous Books



... White of Pennsylvania, Dr. William Smith of Maryland, and Dr. Wharton of Delaware. Precisely what measure of acceptance this book enjoyed, or to what extent it came actually into use, are difficult, perhaps hopeless questions. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... pigmy bondsmen who work in the cotton-mills of the South—yellow, gaunt, too dead to weep, too hopeless to laugh, too ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... passed on. The rain, unsatisfied, sullenly ceased in its attack. The waves, hopeless but still vindictive, began to call back their legions from the narrow shore. The lightnings, unsated in their wrath, flared and flickered on and out across the eastward sea. With wild laughter and shrieks and imprecations, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... the "immense anxieties and impossible financial requirements" of the period between the Summer of 1916 and the Spring of 1917. The task would soon have become "entirely hopeless" but "from April, 1917" the problems were "of an entirely different order." "The Economic Consequences of the Peace." New York, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920, ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... choose to do is right. But, once for all, remember that I wish henceforth to live alone, entirely alone, and speak to me neither of the future nor of the past, which is cruel, nor of the present, which is hopeless. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... unpopular, because of their sympathy with the Stuart pretenders who had twice attempted to seize the crown and given the country a brief taste of civil war. By 1760 the Tories saw that the cause of the Stuarts was hopeless, and so they were inclined to transfer their affections to the new king. George III. was a young man of narrow intelligence and poor education, but he entertained very strong opinions as to the importance of his kingly office. He meant to make himself a real king, like ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... to lift him away from the sleigh, but found the task altogether beyond his young strength in that deep snow, and had to give it up as hopeless. Certainly he was in a most trying situation for a mere boy—fully five miles from the shanty, with an almost untravelled road between that must be traversed by him alone, while the injured man would have ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley

... Trenton and Princeton were magnified into great victories; and were believed by the body of the people to evidence the superiority of their army and of their general. The opinion that they were engaged in hopeless contest, yielded to a confidence that proper exertions would ensure ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... civilized troops. They are Christians, and remarkable for orderly and inoffensive conduct; but as enemies, they are among the most dreadful of their race. They were all mounted (in the war of 1812-13), fearless, active, enterprising; to contend with them in the forest was hopeless, and to avoid their ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... pragmatical, very unexpected characters. His son Ernest—in the Admiralty—he thought a poor, careful stick. His daughter Adela, an excellent manager, delighting in spiritual conversation and the society of tame men, rarely failed to show him that she considered him a hopeless heathen. They saw as little as need be of each other. She was provided for under that settlement he had made on her mother fifteen years ago, well before the not altogether unexpected crisis in his affairs. Very different was the feeling he had bestowed on that son ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... often hopeless. I don't know what I would have done sometimes without the comforting talks and prayers of those two women, your mother and Aunt Elizabeth. Then evenings after you children went to sleep, Mrs. George Donner would read to me from the book[27] she wrote in every day. If that book had ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... each sober fool; When Candour started in amaze, And, meaning censure, hinted praise; When Prudence, lifting up her eyes And hands, thank'd Heaven that she was wise; When all around me, with an air Of hopeless sorrow, look'd despair; 330 When they, or said, or seem'd to say, There is but one, one only way Better, and be advised by us, Not be at all, than to be thus; When Virtue shunn'd the shock, and Pride, Disabled, lay by Virtue's side, Too weak my ruffled ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... talks in his letters of England, as a man married to a termagant might talk of his first love—hopeless regrets, inevitable destiny, and so forth. He is bound to Ireland, and she treats him as Catharine treated Petruchio before marriage. But he has not the whip of Petruchio, nor perhaps the will, since the knot has been tied. He is only one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... with a mournful shake of his head. "I understand that his case is hopeless. They are going to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... of many companies, good, bad, and indifferent, and, reviewing the enterprises with which his name was associated, he had, without the slightest difficulty, placed his finger upon the least profitable and certainly the most hopeless proposition in the Mazeppa Trading Company. And nothing could be better for Mr. de Vinne's purpose, not, as he explained to Fred Pole, if he had searched the Stock Exchange Year ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... smoke and roar, and powder-stench, And hopeless waiting for death: But the soldier's wife, like a full-tired child, Seem'd ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... speaking slowly and hesitatingly; "of course I have that. To be very frank, Dr. Dennis, it is a hopeless sort of desire; I don't expect it in the least; my father is peculiarly unapproachable; I know he considers himself sufficient unto himself, if you will allow the expression. In thinking of him, I have felt that a great many years from now, when he is old, and when business cares ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... brief space of time was travelling at a much faster rate, and there was every fear that one of the monster billows which each moment curled up threateningly in our wake would hurl itself on board, thus pooping the vessel and rendering her altogether unmanageable, if not a hopeless wreck—such a mass of water as the big waves carried in their frowning crests being more than sufficient to swamp us instanter, and, mayhap, bury the poor Denver City deep in the depths below at ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... she said she had never heard anything like it; and even in the dale, so critical of strangers, it was admitted that she knew. The village had a new schoolmaster who was no musician, and hopeless with the choir. Alice, as the musical one of the family, had been trained to play the organ, and she played it, not with passion, for it was her duty, but with mechanical and perfunctory correctness, as she had been taught. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... living in their minds, those whose immodest suggestions led them on to sin, those whose eyes tempted and allured them from the path of virtue. They turn upon those accomplices and upbraid them and curse them. But they are helpless and hopeless: it is too ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair, the hopeless mouth with a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... more forlorn than ever when he sighted it, a bleak, staring, single eye which seemed to brood over its own misfortunes, a dead, hopeless thing which never had brought anything but disappointment. A choking came into Fairchild's throat. He entered the tunnel slowly, ploddingly; with lagging muscles he hauled up the bucket which told of Harry's presence below, then slowly lowered himself ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... reason than you do, my dear, for your not being. It seems to me," she continued, "that we're only right as to what has been between us so long as we do wait. I don't think we wish to have behaved like fools." He took in while she talked her imperturbable consistency; which it was quietly, queerly hopeless to see her stand there and breathe into their mild remembering air. He had brought her there to be moved, and she was only immoveable—which was not moreover, either, because she didn't understand. She understood ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... any longer endure the torments of hopeless love, and standing before her doors, he spake these last words: 'Anaxarete, you have conquered, and shall no longer have to bear my importunities. Enjoy your triumph! Sing songs of joy, and bind your forehead with laurel, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... result was that we opened a terrible fusillade in the direction he had fled, our men firing at least a hundred shots. Many mocking voices then called back to us from the shadows. There was laughter, too. It was obviously hopeless trying to do anything in this dark; so when a bugler trotted up from our lines with stern orders from the French commandant for his men to retire, we all stumbled back more than willingly We had gone ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... the world which he has never loved or trusted, but in which he was born and reared. As a son of its faith, Gabriel Luna was to have been a priest; but before he became a minister of its faith, it meant almost the same that he should become a Carlist soldier, and fight on for that cause till it was hopeless. In his French captivity he loses the faith which was one with the Carlist cause, and in England he reads Darwin and becomes an evolutionist of the ardor which the evolutionists have now lost. He wanders over Europe with the English girl whom he worships with an intellectual ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Tiburce, it seemed to Florian—for this was a strange night—was struggling futilely under all that dirt, which shut out movement, and clogged the mouth of Tiburce, and would not let him speak; and was struggling to voice a desire which was unsatisfied and hopeless. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... started forward, and was staring at me with a wild surprise. Unable to comprehend why my name should have this effect on him, but hopeless of understanding this extraordinary man's behaviour, I ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... throat and the fearlessness of the eye, the instinct in her for cleanliness of mind and body, carried him back forty years to the land of heather, to a memory of the laird's daughter whom he had worshiped with the hopeless adoration of a red-headed gillie. It had been the one romance of his life, and somehow it had reincarnated itself in his love for the half-breed girl. To him it seemed a contradiction of nature that ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... gazing into the fire. He was recalling the conversation which had passed in the little room in the Strand. Could he leave these two helpless old creatures. Could he get away from it all for a little time—away from the maddening prattle of unguided tongues, from the dread monotony of hopeless watching? He knew that he was wasting his manhood, neglecting his intellectual opportunities, and endangering his career; but his course of duty was marked out with terrible distinctness. He never saw the pathos of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... to-night, when, as I was bidden to do, I showed thee that vision in the Sanctuary and confessed to thee my soul's black crime, then hopeless and helpless, unshielded by my earthly power, I must have wandered on into the deep and endless night of solitude. This was the third appointed test, the trial of thy spirit, and by thy steadfastness, Leo, thou hast loosed the hand ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... attitude toward the brutes by maintaining that they have, theoretically, rights to recognition, in so far as such recognition does not interfere with the rights of man in the rational social order? The brutes outnumber us, to be sure. We are in a hopeless minority. But were this minority sacrificed, there would be no rational social order at all—no right, no wrong; nothing but the clash of wills or impulses which reason now strives to harmonize as it can. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... start she saw that Toby's fair head was bowed upon her arms in an attitude of the most hopeless, the most ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... most hopeless of all, the most wearisome and full of pain, for with the sun getting higher the rays were reflected from the rock-face till the place grew unbearably hot, with the consequence that thirst began to parch ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... his limbs were about to drop in pieces. He seemed unconscious of all that was passing; his long, matted hair hung over his wasted face; his eyes glared steadily forward with an expression so utterly hopeless and wild, that I shuddered at seeing it. This was but one of a number of ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... convents on slight excuse. "To a nunnery go, and quickly, too," was an order often given and followed with alacrity. Married women, worn with many cares, often went into "retreat"; girls tired of society's whirl; those wrung with hopeless passion; unmanageable wives; all who had fed on the husks of satiety; those who had incurred the displeasure of parents or kinsmen, or were deserted, forlorn and undone, all these found rest in the convents—provided they had the money ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... a child's development goes on from the great dynamic centers, and is basically non-mental. To introduce mental activity is to arrest the dynamic activity, and stultify true dynamic development. By the age of twenty-one our young people are helpless, hopeless, selfless, floundering mental entities, with nothing in front of them, because they have been starved from the roots, systematically, for twenty-one years, and fed through the head. They have had all their mental excitements, sex and everything, all through the head, and when it comes to the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... at Sevres in front of the shop of an unfortunate hairdresser. They caught hold of the latter and forced him to dress the gory heads; a task which made the poor man a hopeless maniac the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... indignation of Major Kemp, who is situated somewhere about the middle of the procession, reaches its culminating point when, with much struggling and pushing and hopeless jamming, a stretcher carrying a wounded man is borne down the crowded trench on its way to the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... to think now, though I started in my youth with as high an ambition as the best of them. Thank God, it is not my business here to speak of past times and their disappointments. A twinge of the old hopeless heartache comes over me sometimes still, when I think of my ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... children preceded him in death, some of them while still in their infancy, and others in the prime of their youth. His own health was always delicate and he passed through several severe illnesses from which his recovery was considered miraculous. His heaviest cross was, perhaps, the hopeless insanity of his first-born son, who throughout his life had to be confined to a locked and barred room as a hopeless and dangerous lunatic. A visitor in the bishop's palace, it is related, once remarked: "You ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery and causes a woeful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have many modern or modern-fronted edifices; altho there are likewise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint-looking houses in the by-streets, here and there, betokening an ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... he thought. "Refreshingly different." But he sighed as he handed the papers to the clerk. The whole case seemed a hopeless tangle. And now that she was gone Felicia herself seemed absolutely unreal. He rubbed his eyes and plunged into ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... demand admittance; she heard its fiery tongue flap against the panels, a few moments more and its scorching arms would clasp her in their embrace of death. She knelt one moment, her soul was in that prayer; she rushed again with almost hopeless agony to the window. O, joy! and yet how terrible! That moment when the flame relaxed to gain new energy, a fireman had discovered her frail form in the glare of the light. He did not hesitate an instant; his soul was made of such ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... over, but the fog had descended again. We lighted our lamps, and were curtly ordered by a sentry to put them out. In the moment that they remained alight, carefully turned away from the trenches, it was possible to see the hopeless condition ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... old mauma at the end of the front bench "sets de tchune," a sad, quavering minor, and pitched so high that any attempt to follow it seems utterly hopeless. But no: the women all strike in on the same soaring key, while the men, by a skillful management of the falsetto, keep up with the screamiest flights. As they wail out the last word, "skies," the women all curtsey with a sharp jerk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... governor, and republican legislature. Massachusetts indeed still lags; because most deeply involved in the parricide crimes and treasons of the war. But her gangrene is contracting, the sound flesh advancing on it, and all there will be well. I mentioned Connecticut as the most hopeless of our States. Little Delaware had escaped my attention. That is essentially a Quaker State, the fragment of a religious sect which, there, in the other States, in England, are a homogeneous mass, acting with one mind, and that directed ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... had not been long in the borough before I found that my position was hopeless. Influential men in the town who had been represented to me as being altogether devoted to your Grace's interests started a third candidate,—a Liberal as myself,—and the natural consequence was that neither of us succeeded, though my return as your Grace's ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... undergoing strange transformation. The greater light at the surface had sent some glimmering rays down into the mass below, which began to awaken and to think. Misery, hopeless and abject, was changing into rage and thirst ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... pray for a Sir Giles Overreach or a Shylock among the creditors. For such a one, by his apparently malevolent but really beneficent grasping, would have in effect liberated the bondsman, who, as it was, was compelled to toil at a hopeless task to his dying day, and to hasten that dying day ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... nothing approaching to famine. The fault of the people was apathy. It was the feeling of the multitude that the world and all that was good in it was passing away from them; that exertion was useless, and hope hopeless. "Ah, me! your honour," said a man to me, "there'll never be a bit and a sup again in the county Cork! The life of the world ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... bitterness of the last six months welled to his lips—all his new-found philosophy evaporated at the sting of wounded pride. He remembered with a start the gray road on the afternoon in November, the sullen cast of the sky, the hopeless trend of the wind among the trees, the leaping of the light into Eugenia's face. She laughed now as she had laughed then—a hearty little burst of surprise in the suddenness ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... that he had been Olga's chosen confidant in her wonderful scheme of causing Mrs Weston and the Colonel to get engaged, and the distinction of being singled out by Olga to this friendly intimacy, had proved a great tonic. It was quite clear that the existence of Mr Shuttleworth constituted a hopeless bar to the fruition of his passion, and, if he was completely honest with himself, he was aware that he did not really hate Mr Shuttleworth for standing in his path. Georgie was gentle in all his ways, and his manner of falling in love was very gentle, too. He admired Olga ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... beloved one, If I have offered sacrifice, and paid Due reverence to the saints; if I have given Alms to the needy—may we meet again Hereafter, in the world to come, and find The refuge for our woes denied us here. Let us together follow in the path By which our son has gone. Our hopeless fate Can never alter here. Whatever words I may have uttered, thoughtlessly, in jest, These, when I pray for pardon, shall receive Fullest forgiveness. Thou must not despise Thy lord: nor pride thee on thy queenly state Now passed and gone." The prince's wife replied: ...
— Mârkandeya Purâna, Books VII., VIII. • Rev. B. Hale Wortham

... is easily captured by approaching very stealthily and covering the entrance to the nest. The bird seldom makes any effort to escape, seeing how hopeless the case is, and keeps her place on the nest till she feels your hand closing around her. I have looked down into the cavity and seen the poor thing palpitating with fear and looking up with distended eyes, but never moving till ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... Corey had listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion up to a certain moment, when a broad light of hope flashed upon him. It came from Lapham's potential ruin; and the way out of the labyrinth that had hitherto seemed so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster would befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the unselfishness of his constancy. He thought of the sum of money that was his own, and that he might offer to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... reply. He hovered about her, clumsily solicitous, and whichever way she turned, he managed to get underfoot, until, thoroughly vexed, she stood stock-still and opened her arms with a hopeless gesture: ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... are open to the charge of morbidness. In "The White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving the tale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... darkness of the mine, where a system of pitiless infant slavery prevailed, side by side with the employment of women as beasts of burden, "in an atmosphere of filth and profligacy." The condition of too many toilers was rendered more hopeless by the thriftless follies born of ignorance. The educational provision made by the piety of former ages was no longer adequate to the needs of the ever-growing nation; and all the voluntary efforts ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... itself; and she knew the man who had called it up and had done more than bear his share of the primeval curse which, however, was apparently more or less evaded at Silverdale. Even when the issue appeared hopeless, the courage that held him resolute in the face of others' fears, and the greatness of his projects, had appealed to her, and it almost counted for less that he had achieved success. Then glancing further across the billowing ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... with Calumet, or by anyone who understood a horse less, but she saw it, and knowing Calumet's innate savagery, his primal stubbornness, his passions, the naked soul of the man, she began to feel that the black was waging a hopeless struggle. He could never win unless ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... I say"—(and this addressed to our group with a sort of blank, hopeless expression) "I don't suppose any of you Frenchies know where I could get a ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... out. I see in myself, at least my then self, things that I never saw quite so clearly before. Yet let me be quite sure that I would not do the same again. I had not the smallest desire to throttle this innocent lad (nor did I), but only to extricate Raffles from the most hopeless position he was ever in; and after all it was better than a blow from behind. On the whole, I will not alter a word, nor whine ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... precedence in creative art is as hopeless of solution as it is unimportant. And yet it seems appropriate to say, in writing of E.A. MacDowell, that an almost unanimous vote would grant him rank as the greatest of American composers, while not a few ballots would indicate him as the best ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... incessant wars of that vast empire on whose frontiers the sun never set, had favoured the multiplication of adventurers, to-day great lords, to-morrow beggars; one day dangerous, another day contemptible or ridiculous. "Such people there are living and flourishing in the world, Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt that Laughter ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... messenger came from Durham, bringing letters from Coldingham to announce the death of good Sir David Drummond, which had taken place two days after Malcolm had left him, all but the youth himself having well known that his state was hopeless. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... His view. To man's eyes there are hopeless classes, but He sees deeper. 'Perhaps a spark lies hid.' There are dormant possibilities in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... selected a hopeless-looking spot, one as yet not touched by the axe, set the stick on end, poured a cup of water on the place, then, when that had soaked in, he struck with all his force a single straight blow at the line where the grain spread to embrace the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... silent. He did not try to vindicate himself. He had given that up as hopeless. He was ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... interpreter, "it is, you must see, hopeless for your followers to attempt to recapture this castle. The bridge is destroyed, the secret passage by which you entered blocked up, and we can resist any attack upon the rear wall. We have shown you and yours a mercy such as you would certainly not have extended to English ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... Anglo-Saxon inspiration of his nature, which coursed through the same channels, counselled resistance, mad as it might seem. As he thought of his situation, the tears came into his eyes, and he wept bitterly. The future was dark and forbidding, as the past had been joyless and hopeless. They were tears of anger and resentment, rather ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... fruitless and almost ridiculous conclusion of Edward's mighty preparations; and as his measures were the most prudent that could be embraced in his situation, he might learn from experience in what a hopeless enterprise he was engaged. His expenses, though they had led to no end, had been consuming and destructive; he had contracted near three hundred thousand pounds of debt;[**] he had anticipated all his revenue; he had pawned every thing of value which belonged ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... the shoulder, which disabled him; the next was Mr. Wright, and after him the younger Wright, who were both killed; Rookewood was then wounded. Catesby, now seeing all was lost, and their condition totally hopeless, exclaimed to Thomas Wintour, "Tom, we will die together." Wintour could only answer by pointing to his disabled arm, that hung useless by his side, and as they were speaking, Catesby and Percy were struck dead at the same instant, and the rest then surrendered themselves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various

... me that an old man had made signs of a large water, but not fit to drink, and was very anxious for us to change our course, Mr. Roper had understood the same. But, as long as we were ignorant what was before us, the pantomime and words of the natives enabled us to form but very vague and hopeless guesses. It was easy to understand them, when we knew the reality. These natives must have had some intercourse with white men, or Malays, for they knew the use of a knife, and valued it so highly, that one of them offered a gin for one. They appeared equally acquainted ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... do not care about the ordinary city folk. They have an air of elaborate superciliousness which testifies to ages of systematic half-culture. They seem to utter that hopeless word, connu! And what, as a matter of fact, do they know? They are only dreaming in their little backwater, like the oysters of the lagoon, distrustful of extraneous matter and oblivious of the movement in a world of men beyond their shell. You ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... of her discontent. If any one had told her in her days of buoyant self-confidence that she would ever go to bed weary and wake up hopeless, she would have scorned the idea; yet the fact remained that the fruit of her independence ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... the table! No theater could dare to imitate such raptures of imagination. Other writers have insisted on the superb chances for gorgeous processions and the surging splendor of multitudes. We see thousands in Sherman's march to the sea. How hopeless would be any attempt to imitate it on the stage! When the toreador fights the bull and the crowds in the Spanish arena enter into enthusiastic frenzy, who would compare it with those painted people in the arena when the opera "Carmen" is sung. Again others emphasize ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... the sufferings I endured. And, besides, I thought with dread On the angry disposition Of the king: for his ambition When has it or bowed the head, Or with patience heard related The sad tragedies of fate? Hopeless and disconsolate In this solitude I've waited, Till some happy chance might rise When no longer I should grieve, And the king would give me leave To ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... to know the exact truth, and be able to make my arrangements accordingly. I was quite convinced that my condition was hopeless, but I thought it right to consult a physician, and to know how much time I could reckon on. Can you tell ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... found himself confronted by the Persian host. Darius held an excellent position and hoped to crush his foe by sheer weight of numbers. But nothing could stop the Macedonian onset; once more Darius fled away, and once more the Persians, deserted by their king, broke up in hopeless rout. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... time to his study of Greek, until he felt that he was almost neglecting certain other studies in his course that in themselves were far more enjoyable. But his progress under Splinter seemed to be in no wise advanced, and soon Will was cherishing a feeling that was something between a hopeless rage ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... her. Button-Bright flushed red as a Pinky and then grew very pale. He crept closer to Trot and took her hand in his own, pressing it to give the little girl courage. As for Cap'n Bill, he was watching the smiling face of the Witch in a puzzled but not hopeless way, for he thought she did not seem wholly in earnest ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... the utmost consternation. All power seems paralysed. The citizens stand together in knots at the corners of the streets, like persons struck dumb, and without command of either their bodies or then minds. The first feeling was, and it was freely expressed, 'To contend further is hopeless. The army is destroyed; another cannot now be recruited; and if it could, before it were effected, Aurelian would be at the gates with his countless legions, and the city necessarily surrender. We must now make the best terms we can, and receive passively conditions ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... certainly been wretched enough, with yearning regret. He had at least been a free man, and when should he be free again? Ah, when! He was, as it were, in a prison on wheels, guarded by two jailers. Escape would have been hopeless, even had it been judicious to make the attempt. His only consolation was, that Solomon Coe was no longer with him to jeer at his dejected looks. He had started for Gethin with the news, doubtless ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... twice, and had, apparently, fully recovered; they ruminated readily, and were gaining flesh. Upon examination, however, they were pronounced diseased, and, when killed, both lungs were found in a hopeless case, very ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... citizens," in which, referring to what he called the proposed "banishment" of the Mormons, he said: "Ye fathers of the Revolution! Ye patriots of '76! Is it for this ye toiled and suffered and bled? . . . Must they be driven from this renowned republic to seek an asylum among other nations, or wander as hopeless exiles among the red men of the western wilds? Americans, will ye suffer this? Editors, will ye not speak? Fellow-citizens, will ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... established, that there are fair characters existing among the individuals of the race; for the moment that all men, without exception, shall be conceived abandoned, good people will cease efforts deemed to be hopeless, and perhaps think of taking their share in the scramble of life, or at least of making it comfortable principally for themselves. Take then, my dear sir, this work most speedily into hand: shew yourself good as you are good; temperate as you are temperate; and above all things, prove yourself ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... an 'official' war for a long time, and she had much justification for the belief that she could do so still longer. 'She could not be thoroughly persuaded,' says Mr. David Hannay,[66] 'that it was hopeless to expect to avert the Spanish invasion by artful diplomacy.' Whilst reasonable precautions were not neglected, she was determined that no one should be able to say with truth that she had needlessly thrown away money in a fright. For the general ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... waitresses, farmers, country characters; Dreiser's own people—the boys and girls of his youth; his brother Paul, the Indiana Schneckenburger and Francis Scott Key; his sisters and brothers; his beaten, hopeless, pious father; his brave and noble mother. The book is dedicated to this mother, now long dead, and in a way it is a memorial to her, a monument to affection. Life bore upon her cruelly; she knew poverty at its lowest ebb ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... European writers, a choice made long before any of the Buddhist canonical texts had been published or translated, has had a most unfortunate result. Those writers did not share, could not be expected to share, the exuberant optimism of the early Buddhists. Themselves giving up this world as hopeless, and looking for salvation in the next, they naturally thought the Buddhists must do the same, and in the absence of any authentic scriptures, to correct the mistake, they interpreted Nirv[a]na, in terms of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... They left the hopeless case, and began to talk of the things they had heard, especially the miracle which Dylks had promised to work. "He's appointed it for to-night," Gillespie said, "but I don't believe but what he'll put it ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... forward for another look at the photograph which he had propped up against a vase. A hungry yearning was in his face as he bent towards it, gazing into it as if he could not look his fill. Suddenly his head went down on his crossed arms in such a hopeless fashion that in a flash Doctor Huntingdon divined the reason, and recognized the resemblance that had haunted him. Now he understood why the boy had stayed behind to nurse him. Now a dozen trifling incidents that had seemed of no importance ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... pamphlet issued by the Illinois Legislative Voters' League in 1903, and quoted by C. A. Beard, American Government and Politics, pp 539, 540.] the ones not having the backing of the house "organization" are retired farther and farther down until their ultimate passage becomes hopeless. If the bill of the independent member reaches a second reading, it may be killed by striking out the enacting clause or by tacking on an obnoxious amendment that makes it repulsive to its former friends. ... To carry out the will of the organization, the speaker declares amendments ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... when I'm tired and discouraged and utterly, utterly hopeless that some cowpuncher will ask me to marry him and I'll say yes. Then he'll file on a homestead away off somewhere in the foothills where the range is good and there's no sheep and it's fifty miles to a neighbor and a two days' trip ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... conspiracy were laid amongst all the slaves of the several jurisdictions, which cannot be done, since they cannot meet or talk together; nor will any venture on a design where the concealment would be so dangerous and the discovery so profitable. None are quite hopeless of recovering their freedom, since by their obedience and patience, and by giving good grounds to believe that they will change their manner of life for the future, they may expect at last to obtain their liberty, and some are every year restored to it upon the ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... been put on short allowance, they found that they had accomplished but three-quarters of their journey. Actual starvation threatened them. But twice in nineteen days did Crockett Taste of any bread. Despondency spread its gloom over the half-famished army. Still they toiled along, almost hopeless, with tottering footsteps. War may have its excitements and its charms. But such a march as this, of woe-begone, emaciate, skeleton bands, is not to be counted as among ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... was frightened. He saw the prospect of losing what he had gained, and of sinking into hopeless disgrace. With the effrontery that was natural to him, he returned therefore to his usual flatteries, artifices, and deceits; laughed at all dangers and inconveniences, as having resources in himself against everything! The coarseness of this variation was as plain as possible; but the difficulty ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... of Heathens were a sore enough trial, but sorer and more hopeless was the wicked and contaminating influence of, alas, my fellow-countrymen. One, for instance, a Captain Winchester, living with a native woman at the head of the bay as a Trader, a dissipated wretch, though a well-educated man, was angry forsooth at this ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... Pharaoh, when he slew the infants of Israel, ere they had recovered their cradles: or of the policy of Jezebel, in covering the murder of Naboth by a trial of the Elders, according to the Law, with many thousands of the like: what were it other, than to make an hopeless proof, that far-off examples would not be left to the same far-off respects, as heretofore? For who hath not observed, what labor, practice, peril, bloodshed, and cruelty, the kings and princes of the world have undergone, exercised, taken on them, and committed; to make themselves ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... letter from Paulina, fond as she had been of writing to him long, half-despairing letters, full of complaint against destiny, and breathing in every line that hopeless love which the beautiful Austrian woman had so long wasted on the egotist and coward, whose baseness she had half suspected even while she still clung ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... efforts of the Turkish troops, their grim but hopeless battle against equally brave troops, appalling weather conditions, and insuperable obstacles, their failure and defeat when on the very verge of complete success, make an ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... between industrial slavery and the degradation of the arts have learned also to hope for a future for those arts; since the day will certainly come when men will shake off the yoke, and refuse to accept the mere artificial compulsion of the gambling market to waste their lives in ceaseless and hopeless toil; and when it does come, their instincts for beauty and imagination set free along with them, will produce such art as they need; and who can say that it will not as far surpass the art of past ages as that does the poor relics of it left us by ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... is she called? It seems to me that it is sometimes very hard for young girls to be in the right. They certainly should not be mercenary; they certainly should not marry paupers; they certainly should not allow themselves to become old maids. They should not encumber themselves with early, hopeless loves; nor should they callously resolve to care for nothing but a good income and a good house. There should be some handbook of love, to tell young ladies when they may give way to it without censure. As regards our heroine, however, she probably wanted no such handbook. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... perceptiveness, but comes of habitual concentration on every-day cares and woes, on the life of the world as apart from that of the soul. Through sleepless nights, Lady Ogram brooded over the contrast between her own exaltation and the hopeless level of the swinking multitude. What should she do with her money? The question perturbed her with a sense of responsibility which would have had no meaning for her in earlier years. How could she best use the vast opportunity for good which lay ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... us in a few words the conditions of a hopeless bondage. The account of the prisoner himself, and of the lingering deaths of the brothers; the first frenzy of the survivor, and ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... himself be disposed to give way. Any such expectation ought to have been dissipated by a letter which Lord John received meanwhile from Palmerston, in which he talked with his usual confidence and levity of 'the certainty of success,' the 'hopeless condition of the Pasha,' and the facility with which the Treaty ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... port," he replied, in something of a hopeless tone, "and there is no wind. The schooner lies like a log on ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... offended her, yet she let it pass. In his monstrous vanity it was often hopeless to make him appreciate the importance of anything or anybody outside of himself. Of this the present occasion was ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... prevent the boat from being swamped, still, as long as they could do that, they hoped at all events to save their lives for the present. Though, after all, they should be compelled to put into a French port, to do so was not altogether hopeless, as they would have the excuse of coming in for the sake of getting a fresh mast. The wind continued to go down, and the sea to decrease so much, that their exertions were greatly lessened. They were able to enjoy a ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... lightning from the roof, but I cannot throw off my sorrows! Was I not unhappy enough from my feelings alone, without calling around me my thoughts, like greedy vultures? What does the sick man gain by knowing that his disease is incurable?... The tortures of my hopeless love have become sharper, more piercing, more various, since my intellect has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... stand nearly knee-deep and were forced to bail the water out with our caps. It is difficult to imagine a more deplorable situation than to have to stay for four days in a foul trench, half filled with swamp water, constantly exposed to the destructive fire of the enemy, utterly isolated and hopeless. ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler

... which has introduced all formal compacts and covenants among men made it necessary: I mean, habits of soreness, jealousy, and distrust. I parted with it as with a limb, but as a limb to save the body: and I would have parted with more, if more had been necessary; anything rather than a fruitless, hopeless, unnatural civil war. This mode of yielding would, it is said, give way to independency without a war. I am persuaded, from the nature of things, and from every information, that it would have had a directly contrary ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... in what lawn or grove, While your Alexis pines in hopeless love? In those fair fields where sacred Isis glides, Or else where Cam his winding vales divides? As in the crystal spring I view my face, Fresh rising blushes paint the watery glass; But since ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... Twenty-two years! and hopeless humiliation and defeat at the end of it. The Emperor handed over to the English; a Bourbon sitting on the throne of France; crowds of foreign soldiers still lording it all over the country—until the country had paid its debts ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... "cornering" game which, down on Wall street, he played upon a fellow-operator. Now he would be glad to exchange all his interest in Venango County for one share in the Christian's prospect of heaven. Hopeless, he falls back in his last sickness. His delirium is filled with senseless talk about "percentages" and "commissions" and "buyer, sixty days," and "stocks up," and "stocks down." He thinks that the physician who feels his pulse is trying to steal his "board book." He starts up at midnight, saying: ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... right here that Mr. Jameson kept his word. The name John Pennington served as a clue, and in the end he learned that was his name. He had lost his mind through an accident and, though his case was deemed hopeless, occasionally he was apt to have little flashes of his former cleverness. He was returned to the sanitarium from which he had escaped, and the boys never heard of him again. But the memory of the wild man would always ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... away on his small, tightly-booted feet; pausing on the threshold to say: "From the first it was hopeless," before he disappeared through the ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... woman who was destined to influence his whole life, and left her alone in his bewilderment and wretchedness. It is difficult to say on which heart the heaviest pressure fell, or which life was most hopeless. It is alleged that only men die of broken hearts—that women can bear the crushing heel of disappointment, live on and endure, while men fall by the way, and perish in the strife of passion. It may be so. We know not. In the present case the harder lot was on Miss Loring. If she ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... from all manner of foreign spirits which threatened to transform its very character. It settled the controversies by rendering a clear and correct decision on all doctrinal questions involved. It unified our Church when she was threatened with hopeless division, anarchy, and utter ruin. It surrounded her with a wall of fire against all her enemies. It made her a most uncomfortable place for such opponents of Lutheranism as Crypto-Calvinists, unionists, etc. It infused her with confidence, self-consciousness, conviction, a clear ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente



Words linked to "Hopeless" :   helpless, futureless, colloquialism, hopeful, despondent, unskilled, despairing, discouraging, pessimistic, black, impossible, bleak, dim, abject, bad, insoluble, unhopeful, forlorn, heartsick, lost, desperate



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