"Hopelessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chat and smoke, which reminded me of those gulping mouths under the wainscot, and I leaned down to catch a glimpse of their rows of black fangs, thinking to ask Edmund for further explanation about them; but the sight gave me a shiver, and I felt the hopelessness of trying ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... weeks of the year, the arrival of these large official envelopes is watched with eagerness. These envelopes are the balm of Gilead; and the Land League and the hopelessness of matchmaking are merged and lost for a moment in an exquisite thrill of triumph or despair. An invitation to the Castle means much. The greyheaded official who takes you down to dinner may bore ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... be the generation of stenches to shock to purgeing tempests the tolerant heavens over such smooth stagnancy. He had his ideas about movement; about the good of women, and the health of his England. The feeling of the hopelessness of pleading Nesta's conduct, for the perfect justification of it to son or daughter of our impressing conventional world—even to a friend, that friend a true man, a really chivalrous man—drove him back ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and rushed to the deck. Here all was panic, confusion, and unutterable distress. The fog had cleared away; day was dawning; and there was just light enough to show them the utter hopelessness of their position. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... that he understood what a relief tears were to her, and that she let him see them to make him feel her loving sympathy. Again, she would be so wrought upon by the steady agony of those fixed eyes that she would leave him abruptly to hide herself and shudder, tearless, at the utter misery and hopelessness of it all. She wondered at her mother's calm until she noticed, after a few weeks, how the face was withering with that shriveling which comes from within when a living thing is dying at ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... met his was too penetrating not to detect the smallest attempt at subterfuge; besides, Sweetwater had no need to hide his errand; it was one of peace, and it threatened nobody—"the more's the pity," thought he in uneasy comment to himself, as he realised the hopelessness of the ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... was (a) not free, or else (b) not sufficiently representative, or, finally, (c) not unanimous in its decisions. But such utterly unsupported allegations served only to accentuate the weakness of their cause and the hopelessness of their position; since it would be difficult, from the origin of the Church to the present time, to find any Council so free, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... running up to the gap from the support line through the long grass of the nullah, and dropping in their tracks under the constant fire of the redoubt. Chadwick and J.R. Creagh were both in the forefront of the advance, and Chadwick signalled back its hopelessness. His subaltern, Bacon, had been the first to pass the gap, and had been killed on emerging. The whole battle in this sector was really over, and I stopped the men under cover from moving out into the open. In the late afternoon the ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... hopelessness of his attitude made her want to run back and throw her arms around his neck, but she did not dare. Trouble as great as that seemed to raise a wall around itself. It could not be comforted by a caress. The only thing to do was to slip ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in the woods, where the wild impossibility of anybody having the smallest reason to get out, is only to be equalled by the apparently desperate hopelessness of there being anybody to get in. It rushes across the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal: nothing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted 'WHEN THE BELL RINGS, LOOK OUT ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... ladies. The house seems in a waiting mood, when suddenly Mr. Detective Fitzgerald enters, and changes it to one of anxiety. Several voices inquire if he was successful. He shakes his head, and having recounted his adventures, the discovery of where the money went to, and the utter hopelessness of an effort to recover it; "as for the man, Toddleworth," he says, methodically, "he was found with a broken skull. The Coroner has had an inquest over him; but murders are so common. The verdict was, that he died of a broken skull, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... of hopelessness. "I suppose I have lowered myself in your eyes by being so frank—by showing and speaking what I ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... her, the sorrow she manifested was so profound and natural, that every one sympathized with her grief. Nor would she be satisfied unless Mulford would consent to go in search of the bodies. The latter knew the hopelessness of such an excursion, but he could not refuse to comply. He was absent on that melancholy duty, therefore, at the moment of the scene related in our last chapter, and did not return until after that which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the fear of God's wrath, superstitions arising from doubt of God's moral goodness, sickness, sorrow, hopelessness, sin, worldliness, bitterness of spirit and mind, suffering, and at last conquering death as an enemy ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... naturally led us into a review of the war, and we asked him what had been his own expectation as to the result, and when he had himself recognized the hopelessness of the contest. "I confess," said he, laughing, "that I was one of the hot Southerners who shared the notion that one man of the South could whip three Yankees; but the first year of the war pretty effectually knocked that nonsense out of us, and, to tell ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... same characters, he remembered very well; yet there was a difference; not grief had changed them, but life had. The brow had all its fine chiselling and high purity of expression; but now there sat there a hopelessness, or rather a want of hopefulness, that a child's face never knows. The mouth was sweet and pliable as ever, but now often patience and endurance did not quit their seat upon the lip even when it smiled. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... a line here and there as he turned the marked pages, but avoiding entirely some of the most beautiful sonnets because of their hopelessness. At last, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... months, at the end of which time, for two reasons, he was loath to leave us. One reason was that he had fallen in love with Anna Roylston, and the other was that he had become one of us. It was not until he became convinced of the hopelessness of his love affair that he acceded to our wishes and went back to his father. Ostensibly an oligarch until his death, he was in reality one of the most valuable of our agents. Often and often has the Iron Heel been dumbfounded by the miscarriage of its plans and operations against us. If it ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... the pillow in a renewed outpour of tears. It was an utter breakdown of the nervous system, sweeping everything before it, one of those sudden lapses into hopelessness to which he was so subject, in which he despised himself and all the world. His sister, knowing as she did the best way of treating such crises, kept ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the aggravated light of a personal offence. After some hesitation, however, his prudence got the better of his passions, as he reflected that he was in a situation to dictate the terms of victory, without paying the usual price for it. His past experience seems to have convinced him of the hopelessness of infusing sentiments of loyalty in a Mussulman towards a Christian prince; for, while he granted a general amnesty to those concerned in the insurrection, it was only on the alternative of baptism or exile, engaging at the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... hand in hand today with that of medicine; for doctors and nurses are realizing as never before the power of mind over body, and the hopelessness of trying to cure the one without considering the other. Hence psychology has come into her own as a recognized science of the mind, just as biology, histology, chemistry, pathology, and medicine ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... the Song of Death, the music of the knowledge of death. The Third was conceived as a Song of the Great Pan—his "gaya scienza," Mahler would have liked to call it. In the Fourth he sought to open the heart of a child; in the Sixth, to voice his desolation and loneliness and hopelessness; in the Eighth, to perform a great religious ceremony; in "Das Lied von der Erde" to write his "Tempest," ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the girls, who were quite young, looked so miserable that even I pitied them. The look on the face of one of those girls as she stood by the hearth drawing off her gloves lives in my memory. Too deep for tears was its sorrow, shame, and hopelessness.... ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... would be the worse for him. He closed up. The very next week he was sued for a hundred dollars by a man of whom he had never borrowed anything. He did not defend the suit, and it went against him. In three days the sheriff was in his store. He knew the hopelessness of it then, and went out and mortgaged his store and paid the bill. The next week another man sued him for a hundred dollars he did not owe. He went and threw himself on his mercy, and the man let him off for ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... of the river, continuous and at times heavy fighting continued, sometimes assuming almost the proportions of pitched battles. During the last week of the month Mackensen apparently realized the hopelessness, for the present at least, of driving the enemy out of Dobrudja, and shifted some of his forces over to the west bank of the river. The Russians had retired behind the Rimnik River, a small stream which is about ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... questioning. From any woman it was sooner or later to be expected, and Beatrice was as exacting as she was passionate. She knew herself, and strove hard to subdue these characteristics which might be displeasing to Wilfrid; her years of hopelessness, of perpetual self-restraint, were of aid to her now; three months had passed without a word from her which directly revived the old sorrows. Her own fear of trenching on indiscretion found an ally in ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... of France, backed by the great proportion of the people and aided by the pope and the Catholic powers, so long as he remained a Protestant. But this change of creed was scarcely even foreseen by those who followed him, and it was the apparent hopelessness of his cause, and the gallantry with which he maintained it, that attracted the ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... when the darkness fell; for as I sat there looking and looking and feeling the bitter hopelessness of it all, I was well on my way to going crazy with sorrow. But somehow, not seeing any longer the ruin which was so near to me, and of which I knew myself to be a part, it seemed less real to me—and so less dreadful. ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... tennis-balls, with a message full of contempt and scorn,[84] implying that a racket-court was a more fit place for him than a battle-field. It is well observed, that such an act of wilful provocation must have convinced both parties of the hopelessness of any attempts towards a pacific arrangement; and, since the negociations were carried on to the very last, some discredit has thence been attempted to be thrown on the story altogether. But it must be remembered (as ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... went to the attic to watch how Luca painted, and loved him more than ever for that, but knew in the hopelessness of her heart—as Luca also knew it in his—that the good and gallant youth would never be able to create anything that would go as the duke's gifts to the Gonzaga of Mantua. And she did care for Luca! She had spoken to him but rarely indeed, yet passing in ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... knowledge, knowledge of a man's own heart, and knowledge of human-kind. There is a pathetic resemblance between the accounts given of the death of Confucius and the death of Zeno. Both died almost without warning in dreary hopelessness, without the ministrations of either love or religion. This may be a mere coincidence, but the lives and teachings of both men must have led them to look with indifference upon such an end. For Confucius in his teaching treated only ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... the offender had managed to antagonize some natural law, or force or mass. Such an one had to face, not an irritated human organism, but a Gibraltar armed for the encounter. The men who found themselves confronted by this anger could and did brace themselves against it, but it was with some hopelessness of feeling, as of hostility upon a plane where they were at a disadvantage. The man now sitting his horse before him on the endless winter road was one not easily daunted by outward aspects. Nevertheless he ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... dashed to the ground. Meta's father is so enraged at his daughter's legacy being lost, that he has forbidden Walter the house, and his bride as well as his farm has been taken from him. I wonder he did not curse me, as he came to see me off in the steamer; but his face—the hopelessness and despair written there—was quite enough for me. And now I am going back to break to Clare and Elfie that they as well as myself are absolute beggars. Agatha was the only wise one amongst us. She refused to trust Mr. Montmorency with ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... that we were not instantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship; but I could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing could defer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... like it; for I never witnessed such an intense sense of the reality and force of the cause which had called it forth. I can not recall her words; but I remember, after describing the cruelty and apparent hopelessness of her people's captivity, their groans, their prayers to the Lord, day after day and year after year, their darkness and despair, their still-continued crying unto God for help, she concluded by describing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... were splashed with blood, leaving a clear trail toward one of the innumerable alleys or "runs" through the forest that debouched upon the drinking-place. But they had no sooner left the open and entered the particular alley along which the animal had retreated than they recognised the absolute hopelessness of attempting to follow the blood-marks without artificial light of some sort. Sir Reginald and Lethbridge, indeed, with a partial return to reasonableness, suggested the abandonment of the chase for the night, and a return to the Flying Fish until the morning, when they could come back to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... democracy (Jimmy was the son of a carpenter and a grocer's daughter) suggested power; suggested it as a block of granite or a bull-dog suggests it. His compact, sturdy frame and well-poised head, with its close, brown curls, seemed a protest in themselves against hopelessness. On the third day he smiled; it was in recess that she detected him at it. An organ-grinder's monkey in the school-yard called it forth, a sweet, glad smile, which lit up his dense features as the sun at twilight ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... spite of the woodlands so far down below, in spite of the attenuated grass on which they stood, inspired a profound sense of repugnance. To the mind of Bill Brudenell, at least, it was a land of hopelessness, a land ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... She began to count on her fingers—it was the sixteenth day since the birth of the child,—sixteen days exactly since she had written to Sir Philip Errington, informing him of his wife's danger—and the danger was not yet past. Thinking over all that had happened, and the apparent hopelessness of the case, she suddenly took a strange idea into her head. Retiring to a distant corner, she dropped on ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... crept into the music, a note of protest, of rebellion. Fury took the place of hopelessness; dumb resignation gave way to angry stirrings. Fiercely the storm raged for a moment, and then subsided into feeble murmurs, and flickered out into hopelessness again, blacker and deeper than before. Then ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... story went on—of his agonized thoughts and fever and fears—of his comprehension that she had been taken from him, and of the utter hopelessness of his financial position, and the whole outlook, until he came to the night of his ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... exhorted, prayed with them. It was his personality, his individual powers over the minds and hearts of men, that kept the strike alive. The weight rested upon his shoulders alone, but he did not bend under it. He would not admit the hopelessness of the contest—and he fought on. At the end of a month he was still able to fire his audiences with sincere, if theatrical, oratory; he could still play upon them and be certain of a response. At the end of two ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... spoken on the mountain when he told her of his father's death. Her tortured imagination pictured the horror of the sequel, in which the son of the murdered man should meet him who had taken his father's life. The fate of it, the hopelessness of escape from its awful consequence, overcame her. Her breath, no longer controlled, came ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... sex and above age and above wealth that shone in the blowing hair and night-blue eyes of Berenice Fleming. His visit to the Carter family at Pocono had been a disappointment to him, because of the apparent hopelessness of arousing Berenice's interest, and since that time, and during their casual encounters, she had remained politely indifferent. Nevertheless, he remained true to his persistence in the pursuit of any game he ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... morning the Professor awoke with a feeling of utter depression. Before he opened the paper he was sure that his hopelessness had been justified. He was right—Gulmore had carried his whole ticket, and Simpson had been beaten by a majority of more than a thousand. The Democratic organ did not scruple to ascribe the defeat to the fact that Lawyer Hutchings had sold his party. The simulated indignation of the ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... message to an unbelieving people. This vision appropriately introduces the prophecies proper in vii.-xii.; but it is practically certain that though the vision itself was early, the account of it is later. The hopelessness of his prospective ministry looks rather like the retrospect of a disappointing experience. Though Isaiah elsewhere expresses his faith in the salvation of a remnant, this chapter asserts the utter annihilation of the people, vv. 11-13ab. An attempt has been made to relieve ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... gloominess on nearly every face. Tired faces, tired bodies from a hard day's work, mouth corners drooped. Hopelessness stamped ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... had passed. It was November now, and very cold. Outdoors a dull gray sky and a dull brown earth combined into a dismal hopelessness. Indoors the dull monotony of a two-months-old quarrel and a growing heartache made a combination that ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... words, if theology had preserved the same commanding interest for the more powerful minds with which it affected them three hundred years ago. But on the one hand, a sense, half serious, half languid, of the hopelessness of the subject has produced an indisposition to meddle with it; on the other, there has been a creditable reluctance to disturb by discussion the minds of the uneducated or half-educated, to whom the established religion is simply an expression of the obedience which ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... affairs. Believe me, tears like these are not good to mingle with love, they are too bitter, too scorching, they blister love's wings and fall too heavily on love's heart. I feel worn out with a dreary sort of hopelessness; if you know a cure for pain like this send ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... in the realization of the utter hopelessness of his position. Latour had trapped him. When he sent him the appointment to come to the Chat Rouge, he must have known what he had told him to-day; he had deliberately said nothing until after Seth's anxiety had been quieted; ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... happiness usually succeed in making everybody unhappy. Now, the Russian's happiness was a poor thing, but his own. In reality he was wretched and oppressed, and his voice and bearing should have expressed his misery and hopelessness, instead of a foolish content and a silly detachment from political affairs. But he is at last emancipated, and, as was said of Mary's fleecy companion, now contemplate ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... half-dry creek, and on the other by a field of tasselled corn. A crow sat upon the dead limb of a sycamore, and cawed, and cawed, in noisy unrest. The weight which had been placed upon my breast two months before seemed like a millstone now. The consciousness of hopelessness made it ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... the Long-expulsion Resolution now proceeded, and its mover, in view of the hopelessness of securing a two-thirds affirmative vote, having accepted an amendment comprising other two Resolutions and a Preamble, the question upon adopting these was submitted on the 14th of April. They were in the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterized by a Satanic pride and audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of hopelessness wherewith it ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the whiskey, and as the strong spirit fired his veins, the utter hopelessness of his outlook muffled him into silence. Dropping his head into his open palms, he sat dully staring at ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... training of Wordsworth to the priesthood of nature's temple. So was he possessed with the hope of a coming deliverance for the nations, that he spent many months in France during the Revolution. At length he was forced to seek safety at home. Dejected even to hopelessness for a time, he believed in nothing. How could there be a God that ruled in the earth when such a rising sun of promise was permitted to set in such a sea! But for man to worship himself is a far more terrible thing than that blood should flow like water: the righteous ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... she sat by her window, looking out on the early April sunshine, trying, with the hopelessness of despair, to form some plan for her future. "Why didn't I have a grandmother to leave me an inheritance like Blanche and Maud?" she ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the room thoroughly—looking everywhere they could think of. They had all but given it up to go on elsewhere, when Dawtie, standing again in the middle and looking about in a sort of unconscious hopelessness, found her eyes on the mantel-shelf, and went and laid her hand upon it. It was of wood, and she fancied it a little loose, but she ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... full power and authority to use these funds, amounting to nearly six million dollars, as he saw fit in the effort to obtain for the human sufferer the same mercy that is extended to the beast of the field, and to make final disposition of the estate in his own will. Realising the present hopelessness of an attempt to secure legislation of this character, he suggested that first of all it would be imperative to prepare the way to such an end by creating in the minds of all the peoples of the world a state ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... river, and was the closest companion the good missionary had in all that wild, remote country. Even Wampum's parents were Christian church workers, but, kindly as their hearts were, they, too, shook their heads sorrowfully over the hopelessness of trying to Christianize the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... to feel the hopelessness of this unguided search, do not look at a map of the Pacific, but go there. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square leagues of sea, thousands of islands, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Queen Christina rallied the Chevalier de Grammont on the passion he had then for the Duchesse de Mercoeur, one of Cardinal Mazarin's nieces; and spared him only on account of the utter hopelessness of it. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... waited for the inevitable compliment. It came not. Instead, there were stealthy snores. The pair had slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by. They'll get no more dinners or wisdom from me. I tell this tale to show the hopelessness of arguing with this stiff-necked generation of pianists. But I mean to keep on arguing until I die of apoplectic ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... eyes under their white brows filled and the Doctor turned hastily back to the figure on the bed. A worn figure it was—thin and looking old—with lines of care and anxiety, of constant pain and ceaseless fear, of dread and hopelessness. Only a faint suggestion of youth was there, only a hint of the beauty of young womanhood that might have been; nay that would have been—that ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... frozen roots to their gulfy basin. All things are on the steep-sloping path to final evanishment, uncreation, non-existence. He is filled with horror—not so much of the dreary end, as at the weary hopelessness of the path thitherward. Then a dim light breaks upon him, and with it a faint hope revives, for he seems to see in all the forms of life, innumerably varied, a spirit rushing upward from death—a something in escape from the terror of the downward cataract, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... steadily about Lily and the young doctor from the day of this meeting of self-consciousnesses which had, as it chanced, taken place on the pavement of the curved parade by the sea. Till that day the little town had attributed to Maurice hopelessness, to Lily simply friendship for a sad young man. Now its members talked the usual gossip that attends the flirtations of the sincere, but added to it a considerable divergence of opinions as to the likelihood of Maurice's conversion from despair. Lily, they were all decided, began ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to keep off dead before the wind, and by crossing over to the north shore, let the steamer pass ahead, and continue a bootless chase to the eastward. Several vessels, however, were visible in the middle of the passage, at distances varying from one to three miles, and Mulford pointed out the hopelessness of attempting to cross the sheet of open water, and expect to go unseen by the watchful eyes of the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... watched Blenkiron a grey shadow of hopelessness seemed to settle on his face. His big body drooped in his chair, his eyes fell, and his left hand shuffled limply among his Patience cards. I could not get my mind to work, but I puzzled miserably ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... had more opportunities to exercise the pattern," he replied. "For the pattern, dear friend, is scoundrelism. And I, God bless me ..." He paused and gestured as if in a hopelessness of words. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... revolutionary times in the Riegos' own town. He straightened his back a little, looking at me with dignity, and then glanced at the other, who inclined his head affirmatively. The utter and complete hopelessness of the position appalled me for a moment. The old man had not put foot outside his door for years, not even to go to church. Father Antonio said Mass for him every day in the little chapel next the dining room. When O'Brien—for his own purposes, and the better to conceal ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... twisted and snarled. He felt the burning pain of teeth sinking into his flesh. He was smothered; a hundred knives seemed cutting him into pieces; yet no sound—not a whimper or a cry—came from him now in the horror and hopelessness of it all. ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... in his room, watching from behind the curtains his fellow-beings romping and shrieking over a game of baby-in-the-hat. The bottom had, indeed, dropped out of things—the universe was topsy-turvy. More keenly than in the afternoon he felt the utter hopelessness of his disgrace. If he could only get away—escape from it all. If he only had had five dollars in his pocket he could have reached Trenton and worked his way to some seaport town. He looked at the now ridiculous souvenir toilet set ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... nature there seemed to be a feeling of hopelessness and pain. The earth, like a ruined woman sitting alone in a dark room and trying not to think of the past, was brooding over memories of spring and summer and apathetically waiting for the inevitable winter. Wherever one looked, on ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Codrington, whose curious but attractive face was known to all the world through the caricatures of it in 'Punch.' I knew that she saw Derrick, and that he instantly perceived her, and that a miserable sense of separation, of distance, of hopelessness overwhelmed him as he looked. After all, it was natural enough. For two years he had thought of Freda night and day; in his unutterably dreary life her memory had been his refreshment, his solace, his companion. Now he was suddenly brought ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... oppresses them? A. The priest has explained that the perpetual presence of the poor is necessitated by a law of God; the economist has proved its necessity by a law of Nature; and between them they have succeeded in convincing the labourers of the hopelessness of any opposition to the capitalist system.—Q. How is it that the labourers cannot see for themselves that they are legally robbed? A. Because the present method of extracting their surplus value is one of fraud rather than of force, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... ancestors, and they hoped to regain something that the family of Borlam had lost, of which they were members. General Oglethorpe had the two boys brought to his cabin; he spoke to them of the friendship he had entertained for their father, of the kindness he had shown to themselves, of the hopelessness of every attempt of the house of Stuart, of their own folly in engaging in this wild and desperate struggle, of his own duty as an officer of the house of Brunswick; but if they would go ashore, their secret should be his. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Sabbath he might present the mercy of God with equal clearness. But the sermon of the day, standing alone and confirming the threatenings of an accusing conscience, depressed Gregory greatly. It did not anger him, as such truth usually did. He was too weak and despairing. He now felt the hopelessness and folly of opposition. The idea of getting into a passion with fate! Only weak natures fume at the inevitable. There is a certain ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Louis to oppose the Buchanan electoral ticket. An electoral ticket in the State at large, for John C. Fremont, was neither possible nor advisable. In some districts no man would dare be a candidate on that side; in others, the full free-soil vote, from the utter hopelessness of success, would not be polled; and thus the cause would be made to appear weaker than it deserved. To meet the emergency, and yet bear witness to principle, the free-soil vote was cast for the Fillmore electoral ticket, 'under protest,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mean? Come back and get your fish," cried Alene, swinging the basket as far as she could reach. She rushed up the street a short distance but, seeing the hopelessness of overtaking him, came to a halt while the ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... desired separation and independence if their natural rights were recognized. It was not until the revolution of 1895 that the independence of Cuba became a national demand, a movement based on realization of the hopelessness of further dependence upon Spain for the desired economic and fiscal relief. As in the American colonies there appeared, from time to time, individuals or isolated groups who demanded drastic action on the part of the colonists, so were there ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... safety had been in vain, had heard our earnest prayers for his aid, and I trust that in our deliverance we recognized and acknowledged with sincerity and thankfulness his guiding and protecting hand. It is in circumstances only such as we had lately been placed in that the utter hopelessness of all human efforts is truly felt, and it is when relieved from such a situation that the hand of a directing and beneficent Being appears most plainly discernible, fulfilling those gracious promises which he has made, to hear them that ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Huge and menacing, they swirled out from the mesa's edge, crossed the desert triumphantly, then, at contact with rock or cholla thicket, collapsed and disappeared. Endless, merciless, hopeless the yellow desert quivered against the bronze blue sky. For the first time dazed hopelessness gave way in Rhoda to fear. The young Indian, watching the girl's face, beheld in it what even DeWitt never had seen there—beheld deadly fear. He was silent for a moment, then he leaned toward her and put a strong brown hand over her trembling little fists. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... rousing of Tyler Sud-ley from his revery, and the glance of indignant reproach which he cast on his wife. No man, however meek, or however bowed down with sorrow, will bear unmoved a gratuitous mention of his debts; it seems to wound him with all the rancor of insult, and to enrage him with the hopelessness of adequate retort or reprisal. It is an indignity, like taunting a ghost with cock-crow, or exhorting a clergyman to repentance. He flung himself all at once into the conversation, to bar and baffle any renewed allusion to that subject, and it was ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... remain to be discovered, either in Thebes or elsewhere, may be doubtful, but is certainly worth the inquiry of learned travellers.' The condition, however, of the fragments obtained by Mr. Harris but too significantly indicate the hopelessness of success. The scroll had evidently been more frequently rolled and unrolled in that particular part, namely, the speech of Hyperides in a matter of such peculiar interest as that involving the honor of the most celebrated ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... Singh mounted the steps and seated himself. In his attitude also there was a hopelessness—not indeed the hopelessness of a man whose plans are thwarted, but of one who is keenly conscious that he has no plans, no goal, no purpose. As he sat there, his fine head thrown back against the white ivory, his eyes half closed, his ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... forced to change their habits and their food, and from free and, in their own way, happy masters of the soil they became the slaves of a handful of ruthless men from beyond the sea. When Ponce's order to distribute them among his men confirmed the hopelessness of their slavery, they looked upon the small number of their destroyers and began to ask themselves if there were no means of ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... a library well stocked with works on civil and international law, jurisprudence, and political economy. He took advantage of it; and, resuming the thread of those serious studies which had been broken off during his period of hopelessness, plunged into those recondite themes that pleased his active intelligence and his awakened ambition. Thus he waited patiently until politeness would permit him to bring to an explanation the former friend and companion-in-arms of his father. In the morning he rode on horseback; gave ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... years on the altar of motherhood. At least I am thankful that Walter has decided to parade his affairs less, now that Evelyn is coming out. You proud, queenly, beautiful woman, how can you be so brave? In your place I should have died of hopelessness and grief years ago. But you go on with your precious head high in the air, smiling, though crushed by your agony. Day in and day out your nerves are taut—you never rest. Why hasn't something snapped years ago? Perhaps God gives an abundance ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... many first-class passengers seemed to have some welcoming friend to greet him on shore save only myself. I would not let myself acknowledge that I felt discouragement, but a certain gloomy sense of the hopelessness of my undertaking would obtrude itself, as I rattled over the badly-paved streets of New York in the ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... the kiss she had bestowed as he had believed she would be; perhaps this was because he had mistaken its meaning and motive. It stood in his eyes as the expression of forgiveness and pity,—he never knew that it was full of regretful renunciation, and the hopelessness of a heart misunderstood. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... apostrophized, it was a sorrowful adieu; and, could they have done anything to save the sailor, there was not one of the three who would not have risked his life over and over again. But all were impressed with the hopelessness of rendering any succor; and under the still further discouragement caused by another huge wave, that came swelling up under their chins, they turned simultaneously in the water; and, taking the tidal current for their guide, swam with all ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... at the two men. Hulagur's hand was on his sword hilt, his eyes darting from one of those silent watchers to the next. But the utter hopelessness of the Tatar position was too plain. Only Menlik made no move toward any weapon, even his spirit wand. Instead, he sat quietly in the saddle, displaying no emotion toward the Apaches ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... the beginning of a proclamation, written in pencil by A.I. Konovalov, Minister of Commerce and Industry in he Provisional Government, and then scratched out as the hopelessness of the situation became more and more evident. The geometrical figure beneath was probably idly drawn while the Ministers were ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... that the Swedenborgian view of the future life should be burdened and darkened with the terrible error of the dogma of eternal damnation, spreading over the state of all the subjects of the hells the pall of immitigable hopelessness, denying that they can ever make the slightest ameliorating progress. We have never been able to see force enough in any of the arguments or assertions advanced in support of this tremendous horror to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fulfilment brings no joy; sometimes it comes freighted with complications which rob it of half its zest; sometimes it brings no charm at all, but only bitterness and disappointment; and again—oh, often again, thank God for His mercies!—it comes at the moment of hopelessness, of renunciation, dazzling the eyes and heart with a ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... long time at work on a beautiful altar-cloth for the chapel. It was to have been a present to the Senora. It was nearly done. As she held up the frame in which it was stretched, and looked at the delicate tracery of the pattern, she sighed. It had been with a mingled feeling of interest and hopelessness that she had for months been at work on it, often saying to herself, "She won't care much for it, beautiful as it is, just because I did it; but Father Salvierderra will be pleased when ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... say, which, in its latter portions, will be found to include incidents of a nature so entirely out of the range of human experience, and for this reason so far beyond the limits of human credulity, that I proceed in utter hopelessness of obtaining credence for all that I shall tell, yet confidently trusting in time and progressing science to verify some of the most important and most improbable ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... those who remained to such an extent that they lay half unconscious for the balance of the day, nor was the subject referred to again for several days. Horrible days of increasing weakness and hopelessness. At length Monsieur Thuran crawled to ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... days were hard, the nights were torture. Even that poor, tormenting, futile hope that left her sick and shaken was better than hopelessness. There were no stars in the darkness that brooded over her heart after the sun went down. As she lay with clenched hands, counting the ten thousand woolly sheep whose agility in overleaping an obstructive wall is for some mysterious reason assumed ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Perceiving the hopelessness of the situation, and that not even his matchless logic could win sympathy in his project, he left Montreal on May 11, and thus ended the efforts to coerce Canada into a struggle which was to try so sorely ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... stepbrother. In any case, the struggle could not have lasted long; as it was, Levi stumbled backward over the body of his dead mate and fell, with Hiram upon him. Maybe he was stunned by the fall; maybe he felt the hopelessness of resistance, for he lay quite still while Hiram, kneeling upon him, drew the rope from the ring of the chest and, without uttering a word, bound it tightly around both the bag and the captive within, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... arrested. Mary Easty and Elizabeth Proctor were also arrested. Mary Easty, sister of Mrs. Nurse, was tried and condemned. On her condemnation and sentence, she made an affective memorial while under sentence of death, and fully aware of the hopelessness of her case, addressing the judges, the magistrates and the reverend ministers, imploring them to consider what they were doing, and how far their course in regard to accused persons was inconsistent with the principles and ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... prison. It is solidly, awfully suggestive of the sternness of its duty and of the hopelessness of its failing in it. It stands like a great fortress of the Middle Ages in a quadrangle of cheap brick and white dwelling-houses, and a few mean shops and tawdry saloons. It has the towers of a fortress, the pillars of an Egyptian temple; but more impressive than either ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... Charleswood. He was lost in a maze of conjectures, fears, and impossible plans, though his intelligence told him that no plan of search he could form was likely to be of the slightest use. Only luck could help him there, and it was part of the hopelessness of the situation that he dared not invoke the aid of any of those agencies or organizations which make it their business to find persons who have disappeared in London. His search must be ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... answer. Perception of the grain of truth which seasoned the vast, the glaring, injustice of his accusations unnerved her. His speech was ingeniously cruel. His humour such, that it was vain to protest. And the hopelessness of it all affected her to the point of physical weakness. She moved across the room, intending to gain the door and go, for it seemed to her the limit of her powers of endurance had been reached. But her strength would not carry her so far. She stumbled on the upturned corner of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... reminded him of the condition of the gun. He cast the wet and unserviceable piece away, and grasped his tomahawk; but a band of Pequots rushed in to the rescue, rendering resistance madness. Perceiving the hopelessness of his situation, the Sachem of the Narragansetts dropped his tomahawk, loosened his belt, and advanced unarmed, with a noble resignation, to meet his foes. In the next instant, he was ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... said Genestas, as they turned to go. "I should do the same if I were in his place; we have lost our father. Everything seems dark to me now that I have seen that man's hopelessness," he went on, addressing Benassis; "he does not know how much I am interested in him, and he will think that I am one of those gilded rascals who cannot feel ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... a parsonage. She would have us believe that from morning till night, from night till morning, Charlotte Bronte in the Parsonage thought of nothing but of getting married, that her dreams pursued, ruthlessly, the casual visitor. The hopelessness of the dream, the undesirability of Charlotte, is what makes her so ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... little stock of money gone, wandering foot-sore about London, seeking in vain for work; forcing himself to call on Uncle Donald; being thrown down the front steps by haughty footmen; sleeping on the Embankment; gazing into the dark waters of the Thames with the stare of hopelessness; climbing to the ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... precise position," continued Mr. Harley, with a sort of hopelessness. "I shall now tell you the conditions upon which my safety depends. They rest with you; I stand or fall as you decide." Dorothy tried to speak, but her voice died on her lips. "If you receive Count Storri, not as a lover, but as an acquaintance, or, if you will, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... from the sun, a strange star millions of miles removed from the planet earth. All this was a miracle to Frederick, almost overwhelming him, as if he were imprisoned in marvels. In a sudden seizure of hopelessness that he would ever throw off the suffocating oppression of riddles and miracles, the temptation came upon him to leap over the railing. Close upon this feeling followed the timidity of a man with a bad conscience. He glanced about, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... violence nor threatening to do so, themselves avoiding all violations of the constitution, while compelling the Government, in case it will not yield, to commit such violations openly, their cause will gradually grow so strong that the king will ultimately see the hopelessness of longer resisting it. Or, once more, even if the present king, whose self-will is such that he may possibly persevere in his present course through his reign, does not yield, it is understood that the heir apparent is inclined to adopt a more liberal policy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... third day, was minded to depart, he bade him adieu. And the carnal love he had borne the lady being spent, he burned for her thereafter with a flame of honourable affection. Now what shall be our verdict in this case, lovesome ladies? A lady, as it were dead, and a love grown lukewarm for utter hopelessness! Shall we set a liberality shewn in such a case above this liberality of Messer Ansaldo, loving yet as ardently, and hoping, perchance, yet more ardently than ever, and holding in his hands the prize that he had so long pursued? Folly indeed should I deem it to compare that liberality ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to be hard on you," James went on, softening a little in spite of himself before the weary hopelessness of Arthur's manner. "I am quite willing to believe that you have been led away by bad companions, and to take into account your youth and inexperience and the—a—a—imprudent and—a—impulsive character which you have, I fear, inherited from ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... utter hopelessness, cast a look of despair at the princess, of supplication towards the queen, and directed a glance full of anger towards the admiral. The princess pretended not to notice him, while the queen turned aside her head, and the admiral laughed outright, at the sound of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... horses, caring for neither cannon nor musketry; nor did these appear to have any effect on them. The guilty Nana, with the blood of the recent treacherous massacre on his hands, grew desperate at the hopelessness of the situation, and called a council of war. What plans could they devise to keep out the English? what steps could they adopt to stay their advance. The conclusion arrived at in that council of human tigers could have found expression nowhere save in the brains of Asiatics, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... not there. A terrible storm came over her, as if she were drowning. She was possessed by a devastating hopelessness. And she approached mechanically to the altar. Never had she known such a pang of utter and final hopelessness. It was beyond death, so ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... wore on. Two rifles to one were now playing against his devoted company, which had had neither food nor drink since early morning. As he scanned his thinning line he saw a look of bloodlessness and hopelessness gathering on the set faces of which he had grown so fond during this ordeal. Some of the men were crouching too much ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... They could not go back over the desert by which they had come, that was impossible; they therefore chose a longer road, but with more chance of food, leading up the left bank of the Tigris River and proceeding to the Euxine, or Black Sea. It was in dread and hopelessness that the solitary band began this long and perilous march, through a country of which they knew nothing, amid hosts of foes, and with the winter at hand. But they were soon to experience a new misfortune and be left in ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that any attempt upon it must end in failure that is often pathetic from its very hopelessness; even the warmth of ardent affection has never yet succeeded in evolving a mental companionship from such discordant material. By kindly dispensation of nature the breadth of the gulf, indeed, is hidden from those who cannot cross it. They know it is there, they have some ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... we had had sufficient time to fully realise the peril and hopelessness of our position; and I think most of us fully made up our minds that we were destined to a lingering death from starvation, unless, indeed, the end should happen to be precipitated by the springing up of another gale or ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... somewhat better able to support the dull hopelessness of their lives than others would have been. Most of them were handy in some way or other, and as they were permitted by the authorities to make anything they could, they passed much of their time in working at something or other. ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... the rank and file of the party throughout the State that when the convention met there was practically no opposition to his nomination. The friends and supporters of Governor Powers realized early in the campaign the hopelessness of the situation, so far as he was concerned, and therefore made no serious ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... hands, and that his hands were stayed by Mr. Blight's intercession was but another evidence of his power. When my father reasoned with me kindly, instead of whipping me, I yielded, not to his sophistry but to that masterful influence before which even he seemed to bend. I realized the hopelessness of my cause, and found myself facing Mr. Blight again, an humble suppliant for his pardon. Humbly I asked him if I might not soon see Penelope again, and she joined in my petition. Humbly I asked that some day he would bring her back to the valley, and she ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd |
