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More "Desperation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked around in desperation. "What can we do now? He won't come close enough for us to even fire ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... glacis to sound the retreat; the troops in the ditch would not believe the signal to be genuine, and struck their own buglers who attempted to repeat it. "Gathering in dark groups, and leaning on their muskets," says Napier, "they looked up in sullen desperation at Trinidad, while the enemy, stepping out on the ramparts, and aiming their shots by the light of fireballs, which they threw over, asked as their victims fell, 'Why they ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... down the avenue that night, feeling like an adventurous traveller that in a moment of desperation has set his foot upon a plank stretching in narrow perspective over a chasm of immeasurable depth, this problem evolved itself from the shadows before me: How, with no other clue than the persuasion that Eleanore ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... had not been in so wild a panic he would have given himself up, for no man willingly invites the discharge of a deadly weapon a few paces behind him. But the youth was bent on escape if the feat were possible and ran with the vigor of desperation. ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... her room till the last footsteps had died away, then in desperation made a rush for it, flew down the wide stairs in a bashful agony, and, as a matter of course, entered the spacious dining-hall by the door devoted to ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... choked with blackened ruins and putrid masses, and the days of sorrow and wailing come, when the living are unable to bury the dead. Again, a great famine has come upon the city after the days of its early tribulations have passed away, and strong men, driven to desperation by the pangs of hunger, slay their wives and children, and feed upon the dead bodies, and mothers devour the sucking babes in their arms; and horror grows upon horror, till, amid the slaughter, ruin, and madness wrought ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... increased, and although we were spurred on to almost superhuman efforts by sheer desperation to thwart the fate we knew would be ours should we falter by the way, gradually our strength failed us, and although we tried to encourage each other to quicker progress, it took every vestige of our will power to drag our benumbed feet from ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... Ellen would have disliked her as a mystificator. She drew her hand across her brow, and immediately perceived that the gesture had so evidently expressed dislike of this obligation to confide that the girl was again alienated, and in desperation she cried out all she meant. "I'm responsible for him in the usual way. By loving his father. Much more than the usual way, most people would tell me, because of course I knew it wasn't lawful. But there's something more than that. I was so very ill before ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... worse than useless. "No, no," said his friend, "don't do that. If your affairs are so desperate, retire into a convent, become a Capuchin." "Ah, non!" was the indignant answer; "I am desperate; but I have not yet arrived at such a pitch of desperation." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... recall to you the fact that our wedded life has been a failure. You have made my life miserable—ay, and that of my sweet, motherless, tender little Faynie, until, in sheer desperation, she has fled from her home on the night I write this, and my grief is more poignant than ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... withdrew his people in good order. General Howard in desperation sent the cavalry, under Chief-of-Staff E. C. Mason, to find the Pierced Noses and hold them. Colonel Mason did not find them—they found him, and he was very glad to return in ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... a large heart and lungs, are accessory conditions. We do not associate corpulence or surplus of vitality with a long, slender neck. The character of cerebral manifestations is represented by the baser faculties of mind, such as Combativeness, Destructiveness, Desperation, Turbulence, Hatred, and Revenge. If unrestrained, these culminate in violent and criminal acts; if regulated, they are employed in personal defense. When unduly excited, they lead to dissipation, obscenity, swearing, rowdyism, and licentiousness; when perverted, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... dangerous case, perhaps the fellow In desperation would, to soothe us up, Promise repentant recantation, And after fall into that desperate course, Both which I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... for they moved from the window into the room; but they left me a different man. It was not so much the hope of reward as the desire for vengeance that urged me; my clerk's wits returned once more, and in the very desperation of my affairs gave me the courage I sometimes lacked. I recognized that I had not to do with a King, but a dog; but that none the less that way lay revenge. And I rose up and slunk again into the main street and passed through the crowd and up the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... rushed into the den. Mex stood on guard in the first partition door, a butcher knife in her hand. Slight parley did the athletic, impetuous Virginian ranger hold with the dragon who interposed between him and his lady-love. "Drop the knife! Throw up your hands!" he demanded, with an emphasis of desperation, which left no doubt of his intentions. Mex knew the meaning of pistols; she was cowed; the knife fell and her hands went up. Secretly she was glad to be foiled. She wished to be rid of the woman Palafox admired, and she could think of but two modes of disposing ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... neighborhood is from mere casual observation. For instance, I have a slight acquaintance with (1) Thomas Spavin, who commonly wears an air of injured innocence, and is groom to Mr. Joseph Green, of Our Street. "I tell why the brougham 'oss is out of condition, and why Desperation broke out all in a lather! 'Osses will, this 'eavy weather; and Desperation was always the most mystest hoss I ever see.—I take him out with Mr. Anderson's 'ounds—I'm above it. I allis was too timid to ride to 'ounds ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lizard when we are in Italy, love, and you see his tail hang out of the chink of a wall, his winter-house—because the strange tail will snap off, drop from him and stay in your fingers—and though you afterwards learn that there is more desperation in it and glorious determination to be free, than positive pain (so people say who have no tails to be twisted off)—and though, moreover, the tail grows again after a sort—yet ... don't do it, for it will give you a thrill! What a fine fellow our ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... secure, without coming to blows, from the Sultan what he expected that his victorious armies would give him, namely, the administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina. After the failure of the 1874 crops the peasants of Herzegovina and then of Bosnia were driven to desperation by the demands of the tax-gatherers. Miss Irby's eloquent description[56] tells us of the terrible state of these provinces during the years that preceded the outbreak. Taxes of one-eighth were demanded ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... with or without escorts, after eleven o'clock every night in the year. He knew them all by name. He knew their histories. He could detect at a glance whether they were unhappy or merely depressed by the rain, whether they drank champagne from happiness or desperation. Notwithstanding his dreamy disposition his temperament was ardent; his was an unspoiled soul; he felt himself a sort of moral barometer for the magnificent and feline women who treated him as if he were a wooden post when they were ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the deck Theriere had the entire crew aloft taking in sail; but though they worked with the desperation of doomed men they were only partially ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... such of the body of the people as thought themselves federalists, would find that they were in truth republicans, and would come over to us by degrees; but that their leaders had gone too far ever to change. Their bitterness increases with their desperation. They are trying slanders now which nothing could prompt but a gall which blinds their judgments as well as their consciences. I shall take no other revenge, than, by a steady pursuit of economy and peace, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... heart-rending groan, the unfortunate duke walked on; but when they reached the archway directly before the room, he came to an obstinate halt, and positively refused to go a step farther. It was death, anyway, and he resisted with the courage of desperation, feeling he might as well die there as go in and be assassinated by his confederates, and not even the persuasive influence of Hubert's dagger could prevail on him to budge ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... are we to say to her?" cried Meadows in desperation. "They're out walking now—but she'll be back directly. There isn't a corner in the house! I've got a little bachelor room in the attics. Really, Doris, if you were going to do this, you should have given both her and me notice! There is a crowd ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... the days of the Terror presented the spectacle of outraged humanity, goaded to desperation by centuries of oppression in the name of religion and divine right, rising up and madly breaking every restraint. Because in the minds of the people the Papacy stood for religion, they blindly struck at religion itself, and at God, in ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... Driven to desperation by being overlapped and turned away from Germany, the Germans made a supreme effort to escape toward the south-west, thus completing their circle round the bull's-eye, as Jellicoe began to round them up from the inner. Their ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... and touched his hand, but made no comment. They had been over that statement of desperation too many times already. But it kept nagging at him—something in the room, something in the room! Something so common that nobody ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... that of a lover, but of a villain. I implored him, if he possessed a spark of manhood, to set me free, to send me to my father. He informed me that I was his captive and should so remain until I yielded to his wishes. I repulsed him with scorn, with the energy of desperation. Ultimately he overpowered me by sheer force, and compelled me to yield. Then I saw him no more. I wandered about the hut like one demented. My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. I was in despair. Shame and degradation ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... of the water was stunning, but the sudden change in the state of affairs seemed to stun him far more, till it gradually dawned upon him that they had rowed on in their desperation till the boat had passed into a current of air, one caused by the wind striking against and being reflected from the rocks at one side of the falls, and by whose help they were gliding so rapidly into safer waters that the ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... new jealousy by her flirtation with Willett. Even there at Scott he must have written and made further threats, for the freshest and newest of the precious collection of her letters found in "Brannan's" case referred to something of the kind. Driven to desperation, she wrote that she would expose him to her husband and Captain Cranston if he again presumed to address her, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... no easy matter to grant these reasonable requests. The Roman Catholic party resisted, with all the energy of desperation, the concession of any places for worship according to the reformed faith. Catharine was loth to take the decided step of disregarding their remonstrances. It seemed more convenient to avail herself of the representations ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... precipitation of its retreat from discovery. Dressed on the other hand not as gentlemen dress in London to pay their respects to the fair, he excited by the exhibition of garments that had nothing in common save the violence and the independence of their pattern a belief that in the desperation of humility he wished to render public his having thrown to the winds the effort to please. It was written all over him that he had judged once for all his personal case and that, as his character, superficially disposed to gaiety, deprived him of the resource ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... with myself. She proved to her own satisfaction that these things could not be done. But there is a devil of perversity in her. She is like a boa constrictor ... I think that's the snake which cannot let go its prey once it has seized it. She can't let go. In desperation she is risking her own safety and happiness to make public her belief that I am Horace Endicott. In spite of the overwhelming proofs against the theory, and in favor of me, she is bent on ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... minute; in fact, he went so much over his time that another class was waiting at the door. He clung to those last moments with the desperation of the drowning man to the splintered piece of board. After it was over, just as he was yielding the desk to the man who followed him, one of his students approached him with a question and the thankfulness, the appeal, almost, in the smile with which ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... their porch on their boundary line, and, as Mrs. Tunnygate pointed out, they were claiming to own something that wasn't theirs. So Tunnygate, in daily obedience to his spouse, forced his way through the hedge to the beach, and daily the wrath of the Appleboys grew until they were driven almost to desperation. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... freeze tightly. He tried to breathe—he only gasped—and the corners of his mouth tightened and refused to open. He felt the blood rush up from around his loins, and leave him paralyzed and weak. In sheer desperation he threw the gun to his shoulder, and the next instant he would have fired the load into the face of the thing with its voice of the dead, had not something burst on his head with a staggering, overpowering blow, and despite his efforts ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... amalgamation of two once-rival gangs. Tommy knew, in a vague fashion, that Von Holtz was frightened. That he was terrified in some way. And that he was inordinately suspicious of someone, and filled with a queer desperation. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... Palmer an old dried scalp lock, scalp of "White Chief's enemy," with the same ceremony as they had brought the hand. Then they sat around his tent and watched him, giving little grunts now and then until in desperation he ordered coffee for them, after which they danced. The men gave them bits of tobacco too. Well, they kept this performance up three or four days, each day bringing something to Colonel Palmer to make him think ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... be called on!" he broke in, speaking from a desperation outside his own control. "It's murder! I've killed a man!" He turned upon her with a savage challenge in the motion; but her face was set, placidly forward, and the growing ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... to him now from the north, and all his hopes were fixed on Howe's advancing host from the south. But no news of Howe's approach reached him. Day by day the American force round him was increasing. Day by day his own was growing weaker. At last in desperation he decided to risk a battle. For he saw that he must either soon cut his way through the hostile forces ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... friends, was Provost Marshal of the District of Columbia at this time, and as such Mrs. Greenhow was in his charge during her imprisonment. This duty was made so irksome to him that, upon one occasion, he exclaimed in desperation that he preferred to resign his position rather than to continue such an uncongenial task. It has been stated that information conveyed by her to the Confederates precipitated the Battle of Bull Run, which was so disastrous to the Union Army. Her conduct, even in prison, was so ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... before; although he had thought of it, and reflected upon how to draw out of the intercourse which was so pleasant, before he gave himself up to it, with an abandon which he could not account for, which seemed now like desperation. Desperation was no excuse. He saw the guilt of it fully, without self-deception, only when he had done all the harm that was possible, had yielded to every temptation, and now found it impossible to go any further. To repent in these circumstances is not uncommon; there ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... apparent impossibilities in the closest detail, and the next day reported that they had been accomplished. These successes were not cheaply attained. The Mexicans, though deficient in science and in military intelligence, fought with bravery and sometimes with desperation. The enormous percentage of loss in his army proves that Scott was engaged in no light work. He marched from Pueblo with about 10,000 men, and his losses in the basin of Mexico were 2703, of whom 383 were officers. But neither ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... and broke out afresh, clapping, stamping, crying bravo, making a tremendous racket, which little respite gave poor de Sigognac time to collect his scattered senses, and, with a mighty effort, he broke the spell that had bound him, and threw himself into his part with such desperation that his acting was more extravagant and telling than ever. It fairly brought down the house. The haughty Yolande herself could not forbear to smile, and her old uncle, thoroughly aroused, laughed heartily, and applauded with all his ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... in the composition. The chief men among the Ulama were required to sign it. Perhaps if they had been priests or divines they might have resisted to the last. But they were magistrates and judges; their posts and emoluments were in danger. In the end they signed it in sheer desperation. From that day the power of the Ulama was gone; they had abdicated their authority to the padishah; they became mere ciphers in Islam. A worse lot befell their leaders. The head of the Ulama and the obnoxious chief justice ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... shyness and so retrograding from her usual vantage ground. She expected him to speak. It was his turn. But he said nothing. She felt sure that he had seen through her last lie, and that he was secretly resenting it as a heavy-footed approach to sacred ground. What a blunderer she was to-night! Desperation seized her. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... investigation was made, and the truth of the awful manner in which Pomponio had accomplished his evasion disclosed. Stupefied, the commandant and his men gazed at, the traces of the deed, the pools of half-dried dark blood and the two pieces of bone, eloquent of the fortitude he must have possessed, the desperation he was in, to perpetrate such ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... some means of escaping from the house without passing by my half-seen enemy. But none presented themselves. Either I must slink away into the kitchen region—a proceeding from which my whole manhood revolted,—or I must advance and face whatever evil awaited me. Desperation drove me to the latter course. Making one bound, I stood before that lighted passage. A slim, firm figure confronted me; but it was not that of Guy, but of his older ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... think of the conditions under which a great many of our poor people live, I am not very much surprised that they are goaded into desperation to commit some fearful crime; because we know very well, where a person lives in the country, and has the blue sky over his head, and the running brooks gurgling through the meadows, and the green trees and villages, and every thing cheerful and pleasant ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... piece of iron. All ceased suddenly. The sound of screaming and hammering went on thin and distinct—like a solo after a chorus. He was alive. He was screaming and knocking below us with the hurry of a man prematurely shut up in a coffin. We went to work. We attacked with desperation the abominable heap of things heavy, of things sharp, of things clumsy to handle. The boatswain crawled away to find somewhere a flying end of a rope; and Wamibo, held back by shouts:—"Don't jump!... Don't come ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... will require the practical extinction of their supreme power. This, I conceive, is the really great danger that yet awaits the world—if the Allies hold together till defeat and famine drive the Germans to the utmost desperation. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... conceived the notion of seeking her again; but he knew too well the weakness of his generous resolution; and, though infirm of thought, was yet virtuous enough in act not to hazard it to certain defeat. At length in a momentary desperation, and muttering reproaches on Lucilla for her fickleness and inability to appreciate the magnanimity of his conduct, he threw himself into his carriage, and bade adieu ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... months of desperation rather than despair, the idea of devoting myself to Honorine with God only in my secret, was one of those poems which occur only to the heart of a lover through life and death! Love must have its daily food. And ought ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... discharging spears and other missiles on the little body, who on their side continued to be wounded and shot down, but were quite unable to retaliate, cooped up as they were within a palisading barely six feet high, until in desperation they tore down their defences with their own hands, and dashed at the enemy. These had nothing to do but to draw back from the point of egress, and being light troops easily escaped beyond the grasp of heavy-armed men, while ever and again, from one ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... all-absorbing hate only to be found in a country town. His rebuff had simply ruined him with the malicious provincials among whom he had come to live, thinking to rule over them. It was so real a disaster that he was not long in feeling the consequences of it. He betook himself in desperation to a wealthy old maid, and met with a second refusal. Thus failed the ambitious schemes with which he had started. He had lost his hope of a marriage with Mlle. d'Esgrignon, which would have opened the Faubourg Saint-Germain of ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... "In desperation I sought him out—it was easy enough to find where he was staying—and told him my story. I asked him to loan me money, because I knew that I might have to bribe officials. He offered to do more—to accompany me to St. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... and compelling me to do the work over. The air grew foul and sluggish, but I was toiling for life, and dug at the debris madly, reckless of what might fall from above. Better to be crushed, than to die of suffocation, and the very desperation with which I strove proved my salvation. For what remained of the roof held, and I struggled through into the firmer gallery beyond, faint from exhaustion, yet as quickly reviving in the fresher air. I had reached ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... the crossings where one had to pick one's way as through a shallow creek with stepping stones here and there. There were many women alone, as in every other avenue and every frequented cross street throughout the city—women made eager to desperation by the long stretch of impossible weather. Every passing man was hailed, sometimes boldly, sometimes softly. Again and again that grotesque phrase "Let's go have a good time" fell upon the ears. After ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... but the desperation of the time and Dr. Anstruther's consent and co-operation, gave her courage; she was neither timid nor ignorant; she knew exactly what to do, and she believed, if it were God's will to save Arthur's life, He would give ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... knew must be that of Parson John. He put out his hand and felt his coat. Then he called, but all in vain. Hastily fumbling in his pockets he drew forth several matches and tried to strike a light. His little hands trembled as he did so, and time and time again a draught blew out the tiny flame. In desperation he at length kneeled down upon the snow, sheltered the match with his coat, and ere long had the satisfaction of seeing the flame grow strong and steady. Carefully he held it up and the small light ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... declared in desperation; "at least, I mean I won't if you'll be sensible and let me stand by and see you through ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... out for the Holy Land. On reaching Spain, he found the King of Castile engaged in war with the Moors, and thinking any contest with Saracens consistent with his vows, he joined the Spaniards against the Moors. But being overpowered by the enemy's horsemen, in desperation he took the heart from his neck, and threw it before him, shouting aloud, "Pass on as thou wert wont, I will follow or die." He was almost immediately struck down, and under his body was found the heart ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... mail, made an odd gesture of desperation, sat still a moment staring, his brilliant, green-gray eyes gone dull and blank, then he gave himself a shuddery shake, pulled a small parcel from under the papers, and held it out ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... 1860-1861.*—The decade 1850-1860 was in Austria-Hungary a period of political and intellectual torpor. Embarrassed by fiscal difficulties and by international complications, the Government at Vienna struggled with desperation to maintain the status quo as against the numerous forces that would have overthrown it. For a time the effort was successful, but toward the close of the decade a swift decline of Imperial prestige compelled the adoption ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... and head that one can hardly accept as veracious; an enormous forehead impending over a small face, with an almost delicate mouth. But he was obviously a man of ability, and his courage was hardened by desperation. His aim was to unite all the tribes in an effort to exterminate the entire English population, though this has been estimated to number in New England, at that time, more than fifty thousand persons. The odds were all upon the colonists' ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... what would be lovely spring in England without a sign of a living blade of flower, though a few little songbirds did their best bravely to make it up to us. Already we are being driven almost crazy with the mosquitoes and black flies, songsters of no mean calibre, especially at night. In desperation our little ones yesterday succeeded in killing an unusually large specimen, and after burying it with great solemnity were heard singing around the grave in no uncheerful tones, ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... carefully argued, but to no avail. At last in desperation the nobleman implored assistance from the Enemy of Mankind, who, hearing his name invoked, and scenting the possibility of gaining a recruit to the hosts of Tartarus, speedily manifested his presence, promising to build the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... and, therefore, unresisting victims to the ferocity of their enemies? Aware as he was, that they were both well provided with arms, and fully determined to use them with effect, might not his aim be to decoy them to destruction without, lest the blood spilt under his roof, in the desperation of their defence, should hereafter attest against him, and expose him to the punishment he would so richly merit? Distracted by these doubts, the young men scarcely knew what to think or how to act; and anxious as they had previously been to quit the hut, they now considered the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... night's silence as loud as the passage of an express train; and the echo of it, flung back from the canon side, confused it and distorted it till, to Lockwood's morbid alertness, it seemed fraught with all the madness of flight, all the hurry of desperation. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... rocks that tremble o'er the steep, And tempt the icy valley yawning deep, O'er-walk the chasmy torrent's foam-lit bed, Rock'd on the dizzy larch's narrow tread, 465 Whence Danger leans, and pointing ghastly, joys To mock the mind with "desperation's toys"; Or steal beneath loose mountains, half deterr'd, That sigh and shudder to the lowing herd. —I see him, up the midway cliff he creeps 470 To where a scanty knot of verdure peeps, Thence down the steep a pile ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... both of us to the Mother and Boy. My Wife is better than usual; rejoices in the promise of summer now at last visible after a spring like Greenland. Scarcity, discontent, fast ripening towards desperation, extends far and wide among our working people. God help them! In man as yet is small help. There will be work yet, before that account is liquidated; a generation or two of work! Miss Martineau is gone to Switzerland, after emitting Deerwood [sic], a Novel.* How do you like it? people ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I heard of him, and knew they resembled one another, but as I was told that he had left the place for years and was now dead, my thoughts never even once ran in that direction until I got into a state of desperation, and then I merely surmised that his misdeeds might have been at the bottom of some difficulty between ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... like sky-rockets. But Fritz can be very obstinate on occasions, and all our teasing with rifle-grenades failed to make him retaliate with anything larger than "pineapples" (light trench-mortars). In desperation, I sent to the brigade bombing officer for some smoke and gas-bombs. Even these failed to rouse his anger sufficiently when—Eureka!—we discovered some "lachrymose" or "tear" bombs. These did the trick and over came a "rum-jar" as the "minnie" shells are generally called. I had eight batteries ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... interpreter though he was, he misinterpreted my intentions. He tore away from my grasp and made a rush forward, but several men were coming in that direction, and he dashed back to find himself faced by Tom Jecks again. In his desperation he charged right at the sailor, lowering his head as he did so, and striking him with so much force that Tom Jecks went down sprawling, and Ching ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... incredible as the truth. I have it from a passenger. There was on the ship a young girl who was very beautiful. She came on deck, where the corsair stood, about to issue his orders, and, more beautiful than ever in the desperation of the moment, confronted him with a small missal spread open, and, her finger on the Apostles' Creed, commanded him to read. He read it, uncovering his head as he read, then stood gazing on her face, which did not quail; and then, with a low bow, said: 'Give me this book and I will do your ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... declared. "Well, I know something about the Government officials: if they would make a law to fit my case they will make one to fit yours. When I tell them what you have done perhaps you will not fare so well with them as you expect." She was fighting now with the desperation ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... braggarts are often brave men. The Parisians have an indomitable pride, they have called upon the world to witness their achievements, and the thought of King William riding in triumph along the Boulevards is so bitter a one, that it may nerve them to the wildest desperation. If, however, Bazaine capitulates, and the armies of the Loire and of Lyons are only the figments of their own brains, it may be that they will bow to what they will call destiny. "Heaven has declared against us," is an expression that I already hear frequently uttered. It is indeed ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... knees. With a grunt of triumph the Black Chief crashed down upon him, only to find himself clutched by the legs and hurled clean over his wily adversary's head. Before he could recover himself, Grom was upon him, pinning him to the earth and reaching for his throat. In desperation he set his huge ape teeth, with the grip of a bull-dog, deep into the muscular base of Grom's neck, and began working his way in ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... day-spring overshoot his humble nest. The peasant too, a witness of his song, Himself a songster, is as gay as he. But save me from the gaiety of those Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed; And save me, too, from theirs whose haggard eyes Flash desperation, and betray their pangs For property stripped off by cruel chance; From gaiety that fills the bones with pain, The mouth with ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... can I sufficiently describe it? Had I not been sustained by the impudence of desperation, I should have jumped overboard directly I had got on deck. I found myself, not well knowing by what kind of locomotion I got there, in the fore-cabin, where was spread a very handsome collation, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... up, another blow from a stick fell on his head; and this served to rouse him to desperation, for he turned round, with one blow knocked down the fellow who had struck him, and then commenced a furious attack upon his persecutors. For a moment they drew back, and then closed upon him again. Blows from sticks and hands rained ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... early in a dull evening in February. The lamps were lit and in their yellow light Ally's face showed a pale and quivering exaltation. It was the face of a hunted and terrified thing that has gathered courage in desperation to turn and stand. She defended herself with sullen defiance ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... now heard below stairs, at which Cecilia, who had not dared call for help lest he should quicken his desperation, was secretly beginning to rejoice, when, starting at the sound, he exclaimed, "I believe you are too late!—the ruffians have already seized my house!" then, endeavouring to force her out of the room, "Go," he cried, "to my wife;—I want to ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to wrestle with my lot? Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven, Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away? And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... November he was at Pontefract in Yorkshire. Here he was to be delayed a while. The Castle of Pontefract, a very strong place, commanded by one Morris, still held out for the King, and was the refuge of much of the fugitive Cavalierism of the surrounding district, now in a mood of actual desperation. Sallies from the Castle for robbery and revenge had been frequent; and, just as Cromwell was expected in the neighbourhood, a party of the desperadoes, riding out in disguise, had gone as far as Doncaster, obtained admission to the lodging of Colonel Rainsborough there, under pretence of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... night. Strange to say Ragstock was a good business man as well as a cool gambler. He bemoaned the fate that made him so rich that gambling had not the exhilarating effect on him which it would have had if he had been playing in desperation. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... thought the girl rose unsteadily to her feet. She could not stay alone another moment in this horrible place; she would go and find Scott, if she had to brave Angel Gonzales to do it. With a recklessness born of desperation she slid and scuffled down the side of the cliff and ran blindly ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... still intend to go to M. Fouquet?" suddenly called out the major from below. Baisemeaux ran to the window like a madman. "No, no," he exclaimed in a state of desperation, "who the deuce is speaking of M. Fouquet? are you drunk below there? why an I interrupted when I am ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... herself upon her knees in the soft grass, and the hot, angry tears of desperation and rage at herself were softened. Her heart was lighted up with the glow of dawn and sang its prayer to God; a thrilling, lifting little prayer of confidence and wonder. The words that the night before would not form themselves ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... what to do, and in desperation began to pry at the box with his stick and his jackknife. Then the box broke open, scattering some ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... in Elizabeth to shake his hand so long and so vigorously, even though she was glad to see him. And it was worse than cruel to keep pushing easy chairs before him and insisting upon him sitting down. Elizabeth insisted, and in desperation Joe took a letter from his pocket ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... cared to break the silence which prevailed after Foster's departure. Julie had slipped away at the same time. The pause became embarrassing, and in desperation ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... number of women persisted, as did the residents, and three city inspectors in succession were transferred from the ward because of unsatisfactory services. Still the death rate remained high and the condition seemed little improved throughout the next winter. In sheer desperation, the following spring when the city contracts were awarded for the removal of garbage, with the backing of two well-known business men, I put in a bid for the garbage removal of the nineteenth ward. My paper ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... should be!" I looked longingly at the distant planet, the outlines of whose continents and seas appeared most enticing, but when I tried to propel myself in that direction I only kicked against nothingness. I groaned in desperation. ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... I tell you I'm going to?" said Nancy, laying down her paint-brush with an air of desperation. "I sha'n't do it a bit more for your asking so often. Do ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... her eyes, going back to the divan and sinking upon it. "You may as well know," he blurted out, in desperation. "Irene and Buckton have gone ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... continue to act out the part assumed until those others were safe beyond pursuit. With quick wit she had grasped this chance for service; had encouraged Kirby to believe her the slave, and then, in sudden desperation, had been driven into trusting me in an effort to keep out of ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... could not help hiding behind the corner of the passage and listening—(she was humiliated to the very depths of her being at having to stoop to such means: but fear mastered her).—She heard a dry chuckle of laughter. Then whispering, so low that she could not make out what was said. But in her desperation Anna thought she heard: her terror breathed into her ears the words she was afraid of hearing: she imagined that they were speaking of the coming masquerades and a charivari. There was no doubt: they would try to introduce the episode of the ashes. Probably she was ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... fancy, and he was vexed because I preferred staying with Charlie to going out with him: he offered to teach me how to drive; so I believe, like the rich young man in the gospel, he went away in desperation." ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... storm king's sway. All were laid low before him. With the united fury of fiends of Hades, he laughed in demoniacal glee at the desperation of the Arctic travelers under his heel. The whole world was now his. Far from the icy and unknown wastes of the interior, around the great Circle and Rockies, riding above the heads of rivers and mountains, he came from the Koyuk and Koyukuk. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... I said, in a sort of desperation. "But I have the most curious feeling that she is depending on me. The way she spoke the day I saw her, and her eyes and everything; I know you think it nonsense," I ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... circumstance which, if it could have come to his knowledge, would perhaps have in some measure consoled him for his untimely end. This poor Hawkins was surely entitled to some pity, since his being finally urged to desperation, and brought, together with his son, to an ignominious fate, was originally owing to the sturdiness of his virtue and independence. But the compassion of the public was in a great measure shut against him, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... seeing a few antelopes in the distance, they camped on the margin of a small stream. All now, that were capable of the exertion, turned out to hunt for a meal. Their efforts were fruitless, and after dark they returned to their camp famished almost to desperation. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... gained rapidly and thought them almost within grasp. But "the best laid plans of mice and men, etc., etc." Desperation nerved them and they flew down the pike, scattering the stones behind. But we ran them into the net prepared. The detachment that had gone out later from camp struck the pike opportunely and received the enemy warmly as we drove him into ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane
... of the ledges of rock and the outside of the cavern, where he might perhaps find foothold enough to scramble along the base of the cliffs—but those fifty yards were equal to the Atlantic to him, he could not swim that distance to save his life. Once or twice, in a fit of desperation, he had almost plunged in to attempt it, and take his chance. Fortunately his courage failed. Had he taken the plunge his fate would ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... she had made, too, when put to the test! Ella had at least proved herself worthy to live. The scrub-woman had risen in the strength of desperation and killed the beast who had maimed her. She had only sunk a limp mass of shivering, helpless cowardice and fled from the room ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... issue is dependent upon chance. There is of course the same fascinating stimulus as in cards, or dice, arising from the hope of gain. The mind also must be equally agitated between hope and fear; and the same state of desperation may be produced, with other fatal consequences, in the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Phillips fought with desperation; his struggles caused the structure to creak and to strain; men piled over it and joined in the fight. He was whining and sobbing in ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... of Moscow one is apt to recall a page from history and remember the heroic, self-sacrificing means which the people of this Asiatic city adopted to repel the invading and victorious enemy. It was an act of sublime desperation to place the torch within the sanctuary of Russia and destroy all, sacred and profane, so that the enemy should also be destroyed. It was the grandest sacrifice ever made to national honor by any people. "Who would have thought that a nation would burn its ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... flock flapped away in confusion the captive tugged frantically at his tether, crying shrilly and struggling to follow them. In his desperation he paid no heed whatever as the big, brown dog dashed out and triumphantly dragged the bodies of the two victims to land. He was horrified by the terrible noise, and the killing; but his attention was chiefly engrossed by the fact that the flock had been frightened away, leaving ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two; they ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... both young bears trying to get in at the window at once, was striking right and left. He had bears and troubles of his own and did not heed Sullivan's call. The old bear thrust her head down through the hole and seemed about to fall in, when Sullivan in desperation grabbed both hams and threw them ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... handful of meal since the preceding night, and travelled all day in a hot sun, many of the slaves, who had loads upon their heads, were very much fatigued: and some of them snapt their fingers, which among the Negroes is a sure sign of desperation. The Slatees immediately put them all in irons; and such of them as had evinced signs of great despondency were kept apart from the rest, and had their hands tied. In the morning they ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... have believed that such a man as the Cardinal possessed her full confidence; that she should have employed him to deal with a tradesman without the King's knowledge, for a thing which she had refused to accept from the King himself, drove her to desperation. She sent first for the Abbe de Vermond, and then for the Baron de Breteuil. Their hatred and contempt for the Cardinal made them too easily forget that the lowest faults do not prevent the higher orders of the empire from being defended by those to whom they have the honour to belong; that a Rohan, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... true that the few in the interior— Cabira, Amasia, Eupatoria—were soon in the power of the Romans; but the larger maritime towns, Amisus and Sinope in Pontus, Amastris in Paphlagonia, Tius and the Pontic Heraclea in Bithynia, defended themselves with desperation, partly animated by attachment to the king and to their free Hellenic constitution which he had protected, partly overawed by the bands of corsairs whom the king had called to his aid. Sinope and Heraclea even sent forth vessels against the Romans; and the squadron of Sinope ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... remained motionless until roused by a short roar of agony. They then plunged into the jungle with their drawn weapons, where they speedily found Sadhu Sing holding in his arms the lifeless corpse of his bride, where a little farther lay the body of the tiger, slain by such a blow over the neck as desperation itself could alone have discharged.—The brideless bridegroom would permit none to interfere with his sorrow. He dug a grave for his Mora, and erected over it the rude tomb they saw, and never afterwards left the spot. The beasts ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... though I knew the direction of the camp. This section of cedar forest was all but impenetrable. Dead cedars were massed in gray tangles, live cedars, branches touching the ground, grew close together. In this labyrinth I lost my bearings. I turned and turned, crossed my own back trail, which in desperation I followed, coming out of the cedars at the deep and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... She was related to Josephine's mother. She knocked timidly at Annie's door. She waited, and knocked again. She was trembling from head to foot in a nervous chill. She got no response to her knock. Then she called, "Annie," very softly. She waited and called again. At last, in desperation, she opened the door, which was not locked. She entered, and the room was empty. Suddenly she remembered that Annie, kind-hearted as she was, and a good servant, had not a character above suspicion. She remembered that she had heard Gladys intimate that she had a sweetheart, and was not altogether ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fatal mark to their enemies. Still they continued to maintain a stout resistance, checking the progress of the Spaniards by barricades of timber hastily thrown across the streets; and, as their intrenchments were forced one after another, they disputed every inch of ground with the desperation of men who fought for life, fortune, liberty, all that was most dear to them. The contest hardly slackened till the close of day, while the kennels literally ran with blood, and every avenue was ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... inclination for society, I allowed myself to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone, deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life—so utterly miserable that any ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... her bravado, and her shots were the indication of her desperation. The memory of the wan face of Prebol brought down by her bullet was now an accusation, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... proclaim Their jealous pangs and desperation, Fury, frantic indignation, Depth of pains, and height of passion, For the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... of Mr. Lincoln was a wild scheme, born of desperation, and its success would have worked only evil to the Confederacy. The purpose of the North would have been strengthened, the public feeling would have been embittered and the friendship of England and of the Continental ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... They have done for two! But a heavyish job remains to do! For yonder, sledge and shovel in hand, Like elder Sons of Giant Despair, A couple of Cyclops make a stand, And fiercely hammering here and there, Keep at bay the Powers of Air— But desperation is all in vain!— They faint—they choke, For the sulphurous smoke Is poisoning heart, and lung, and brain, They reel, they sink, they gasp, they smother. One for a moment survives his brother, Then rolls a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... plainly than Judith wished to learn it. Her mother made the advances towards a marriage, to the surprise, not to say horror of her daughter, and she actually found a relief when she discovered traces of what struck her as insanity—or a morbid desperation, bordering on that dire calamity—in the earlier letters of that ill-fated woman. The answers of Hovey were coarse and illiterate, though they manifested a sufficient desire to obtain the hand of a woman of singular personal attractions, and whose great error ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... following the curve which a hand would have described in carrying it toward a mouth, and it remained suspended in the transparent air, all alone and motionless, a terrible red spot, three yards from my eyes. In desperation I rushed at it to take it! I found nothing; it had disappeared. Then I was seized with furious rage against myself, for it is not allowable for a reasonable and serious ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... I do actually see it, though my lids are dosed, and so it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me, and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known this, you would be acquainted with desperation." ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and adore. At this the shadow wept, melting away. The Latmian started up: "Bright goddess, stay! Search my most hidden breast! By truth's own tongue, I have no daedale heart: why is it wrung 461 To desperation? Is there nought for me, Upon the bourne of ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... is any," replied Alice, "is not mine. I was coming like a butterfly, but my aunt Helen, who is making us a visit, objected so strongly that I took off my party dress and head-dress, made for the occasion, and, in a fit of half-don't-care desperation, got myself up after this modest fashion that you are pleased to ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... bitterness of heart? Is there enmity in my words?—Surely I do not feel it! The spirit of benevolence and truth allows, nay commands me to hate the vice; but not its poor misgoverned agents. They are wandering in the maze of mistake. Ignorance and passion are their guides, and doubt and desperation their tormentors. Alas! Rancour and revenge are their inmates; be kindness and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Detraction's desperation, And wedded unto one she had loved well— A man known in the councils of the Nation, Cool, and quite English, imperturbable, Though apt to act with fire upon occasion, Proud of himself and her: the World could tell Nought against either, and both seemed secure— She ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... know this from the pages of ancient writers,—was one of the most terrible griefs of Tiberius's old age. He had loved his son tenderly, and the idea of leaving so horrible a crime unpunished, in case the accusation was true, drove him to desperation. Yet, on the other hand, Livilla, the presumptive criminal, was the daughter of his faithful friend, of that Antonia who had saved him from the treacheries of Sejanus. As for the public, ever ready to believe all the infamies which were reported of the imperial house, it ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment facing some great danger. "I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer," he concluded, conscious—as were others—after the words were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... rivals that of Saragossa. Is it not a little singular that the Spaniards, who in the open field were, with a few remarkable exceptions, absolutely contemptible, yet frequently defended towns with wonderful fortitude, courage, and desperation. It may, indeed, be said that in every siege where the Spaniards were commanded by brave and resolute chiefs they behaved admirably. This great range of hill country was the stronghold of the guerillas, and every ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... lay still and heard the big man ride away. He heard his own horse stamping and nickering, and heaving a great sigh of relief his muscles relaxed, and he slept soundly on his hard bed. For hours he had fought off this terrible languor with a desperation born of terror for those he had left behind him, who looked to him as their only hope. Now he resigned their fate to the big man whose eyes had looked so kindly into his, with a childlike feeling of rest and content. He lay thus until the sun rose high in the heavens the next morning, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... him, and send him forth into the world to struggle with poverty, with rapacity, and with scorn. Under these dire forebodings, his temper, exhausted by the sickness of delayed hope, became peevish and fretful, and his words and actions sometimes expressed a reckless desperation, which alarmed Miss Wardour extremely. We have seen, on a former occasion, that Sir Arthur was a man of passions lively and quick, in proportion to the weakness of his character in other respects; he was unused to contradiction, and if he had ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of slavery never seeks shelter in the Bible, of its own accord. It grasps the horns of the altar only in desperation—rushing from the terror of the avenger's arm. Like other unclean spirits, it "hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved." Goaded to phrenzy in its conflicts with conscience and common sense, denied all quarter, and hunted ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... time, the men became very unmanageable; for they hated the captain: he treated them like slaves, and imposed upon them on every occasion; so that at length, goaded to desperation by his cruelty, they positively refused to handle a rope until he agreed to the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... and groaned, and dozed, and smoked cigarettes until he could stand it no longer. He got up and dressed, in sheer desperation, and went for ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the woman within would insist on learning whom Hamlin was attempting to conceal, possibly overhearing enough of their conversation to become frightened at the final outcome, Miss McDonald, in sudden desperation, had surmounted the rail, and dropped to the ground. The rest would be easy—to hasten around the side of the house, and slip in through ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... more the stones were hurled in mad desperation. There was an-other crash, and the door tottered and came away from the lock. Then Tom threw his weight against it and it burst ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... the horrid din, the desperate struggle, the maddening ferocity, the frantic desperation, the confusion, and self-abandonment of war. Dutchman and Swede commingled, tugged, panted, and blowed. The heavens were darkened with a tempest of missives. Bang! went the guns; whack! went the broad-swords! thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-strocks; ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... woman's part to create delusions, and - destroy them! To think of it! after all that has passed between us these - these three weeks, next Monday! "Once and for ever." Did ever woman use such words before? And I - believed them!' 'Did you speak to the mother?' I asked in a fit of desperation. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... consolidate security and progress. But the enemy is interested exactly the other way. His ascendancy is coincident, not with the mitigation of the conditions of human existence, but in accentuating the misery of the masses, driving them to desperation and to embrace illogic and deceptive maxims of socialism and violent anarchy. It is with those forces that he intends to uproot and usurp divinely instituted authority expressly set up to repress evil and to protect person and property. He wants by licence and not liberty to hasten the ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Three young men squander their substance and become poor; but a nephew of theirs, returning home in desperation, falleth in with an abbot and findeth him to be the king's daughter of England, who taketh him to husband and maketh good all his uncles' losses, restoring them to good ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... In perfect desperation again I aimed, and fired when Jana was not more than thirty feet away. This time the bullet must have gone wide to the left, for I saw a chip fly from the end of the animal's broken and deformed tusk, which stuck out in that direction several feet ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... by an act of almost romantic heroism, covered with the unparticipated glory, of having overpowered a leader, who, renowned, and long accustomed to conquest, saw, for the first time, his invincible troops give way; who, inflamed to desperation, deemed the perilous exposure of his person necessary, to rally them to the contest, over bridges of their slaughtered comrades, but who at length was obliged to retire from the field of battle, and to leave ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Although I was distressed beyond measure at the suffering of my mother, yet the affliction, the indiscribable anguish, of my father demanded almost as much of my attention as the illness of my mother. To see his noble soul bent down to the earth, driven almost to the madness of desperation, was to me a more heart-rending spectacle than the delirium which produced a sort of stupor in my mother. She had not been sensible for any considerable period of time together for two days; and we were under dreadful apprehensions that she would be taken from us without ever recovering ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... sprees together. We assumed in our prosperity the luxury of a maid—the unparalleled Anna Bederke aus Rothenburg, Kreis Bumps (?), Posen, at four dollars a month, who for a year and a half was the amusement and desperation of ourselves and our friends. Dear, crooked-nosed, one-good-eye Anna! She adored the ground we walked on. Our German friends told us we had ruined her forever—she would never be fit for the discipline of a German household again. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... clear—he could certainly rely upon his friend the magistrate to take the child out of the mother's custody or do something horrible of that kind. The happiness of that whole family was at his mercy. She had been goaded to desperation. Mr. Heard began to understand. To understand—that was not enough. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... further doubts of Addicks' slickness. I said to him: "You are certainly the shrewd man they describe you as. Now continue to be frank long enough to answer this one question: Did you figure this out as the last card to throw at me, knowing that the very desperation of the case might warm me up and tempt me to tackle it for the sake of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... He was in consequence mourned as a victim, and his son, the second Charles, at once proclaimed and acknowledged King of Scotland. How he deported himself in that capacity, and what gratitude he and his brother showed the land for its faith and loyalty in the wreck and desperation of their royal fortunes, with a firm and a fearless pen I now purpose to show. But as the tale of their persecutions is ravelled with the sorrows and the sufferings of my friends and neighbours, and the darker ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... heard the voice of an arrival down-stairs, and the unaccustomed tones of a man's voice mingling with the shriller notes of Miss Peck, their little landlady. It was not the curate's voice, with which Gladys had grown quite familiar during her father's illness. He had been very kind; and in his desperation, when his end approached, Graham had implored him to look after Gladys. It was a curious charge to lay upon a young man's shoulders, but Clement Courtney had accepted it cheerfully, and had even written to his widowed mother, who lived alone in a Dorsetshire ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... poetic event; in half a page he makes an unforgettable scene. It suddenly glows and flushes, and its effect in the story is profound. A passing glimpse of this kind is caught, say, by Anna in her hungry desperation, by Levin as he wanders and speculates; and immediately their experience is the fuller by an eloquent memory. The vividness of the small scene becomes a part of them, for us who read; it is something ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... she must continue to act out the part assumed until those others were safe beyond pursuit. With quick wit she had grasped this chance for service; had encouraged Kirby to believe her the slave, and then, in sudden desperation, had been driven into trusting me in an effort to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... Morgan. If I diagnose correctly, they mean nascent 'desperation.' Now, so long as I am in the world, you ought ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... My wife, aroused to desperation, began to administer a remedy upon her own responsibility and while I grew better very slowly, I gained ground surely until, in brief, I have no trace of the terrible Bright's disease from which I was dying, and am a perfectly well man. This may sound like a romance, but it is true, and ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... two emerged, side by side, into the street, the Emperors exchanged stony sidelong glances. For they saw the more than normal pallor of the Duke's face, and something very like desperation in his eyes. They saw the tragedy progressing to its foreseen close. Unable to stay its course, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... oars; the air filled with shouts from the combatants and exclamations from the lookers-on: [Greek: olophurmos, boe, nikontes, kratoumenoi, alla hosa en megalo kinduno mega stratopedon polyeide anagkaizoito phthengesthai.] Then after a struggle, in which desperation gave energy to the Athenians, and ambitious hope inspired their foes with more than wonted vigour, the fleet of the Athenians was finally overwhelmed. The whole scene can be reproduced with wonderful distinctness; for the low shores of Plemmyrium, the city of Ortygia, the marsh of Lysimeleia, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... saw a man with a very red face approaching on the opposite side of the street, and from his general appearance I guessed him to be a sailor; so, driven almost to desperation, I crossed over to him, looking, I am sure, the very picture of despair, and I thus accosted him: 'If you please, sir, can you tell me where I can go and ship for ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... up to this met with no serious obstacles, it is because, though apparently acting rashly, we are in reality most prudent and cautious. We have managed our slaves well, and have not driven any one to desperation. But we are beginning to weary of our profession; we are getting old, and we have need of repose. We intend, therefore, to retire, but before that we wish to have all matters securely settled. I have an immense mass of documentary evidence, but it is not always ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... and his father, Buckhurst struck his forehead, and rushed out of the room: an insulting laugh followed from Colonel Hauton, in which Mr. Sloak and all the company joined—Buckhurst heard it with feelings of powerless desperation. He walked as fast as possible—he almost ran through the barrack-yard and through the streets of the town, to get as far as he could from this scene—from these people. He found himself in the open fields, and leaning against a tree—his heart almost bursting—for still he had a heart: ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... said Gideon, in desperation, "one moment, for the sake of that God you have brought me here to invoke in behalf of this wretched man. One moment, for the sake of Him in whose presence you must stand one day as he does now." With passionate earnestness ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... women and men tramped intrepidly out towards Versailles. If they had done less, the Assembly would have been dispersed or arbitrarily decimated, even though such a measure would certainly have left the government in desperation. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... baulk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad horse to the dismay and expostulary wonderment of innkeepers, ostlers &c. who declared they would not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand the creature gall'd to death and desperation by gad flies, cormorants winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. This he tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a' winter's eves, 'tis his star of set glory, his rejuvenescence to descant upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... trickery, and has been swindled; but so overpowering is his thirst for universal rule that he again trusts himself to Loge. The Giants hold Freia as a hostage; presently all the gods begin to lapse into a comatose state—they have not eaten of her apples that day—and in desperation Loge and Wotan set out for the Nibelung's abode. The Nibelungs are the slaves and sons of toil; they labour incessantly for Alberich; him only does Wotan fear: he must get the Ring from them at all costs. The pair descend into the Nibelung's cave. The Ring is already ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... 3rd Cavalry Brigade, moved on the right of the enemy's position at Chouda. During the advance he had to take in succession three strongly intrenched positions, where the enemy defended their guns with frantic desperation. Here Her Majesty's 40th Regiment lost two successive commanding officers, Major Stopford and Captain Coddington, who fell wounded at the very muzzles of the guns. It captured four regimental standards. This corps was ably and nobly ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... I was on the point of saying "No," when the door of 218, which lay about two hundred yards away, flew open, and out came Mr. Cullen, Fred, Albert, Lord Ralles, and Captain Ackland, all with rifles. Of course it was perfect desperation for the five to tackle the cowboys, but they were game to do ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... expostulating with. The men were drunk and reckless. They wanted rum and were bound to have it, and on the other hand the Squire had evidently made up his mind that if they got into his store in their present mood, they would be likely to plunder him of whatever he had, and drawing valor from desperation, was opposing, a resistance which involved no small personal peril. The crowd, besides being drunk, was composed of the very men who had grudged him his escape from the whipping-post a few days previous, and was by no means disposed ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... accidents and terrors, and when she would go in ... she had an impulse to open the door gently, leave the food just inside and run down the stairs out into the world anywhere and never come back again. At last in desperation she turned the handle and stepped inside. Her face flamed, the blood burned her eyes physically so that she could not see through them. She did not look at the bed, but went direct to the fireplace, and with a dogged patience began mending the fire. After a few stubborn ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... his countenance. Dawson could not bridle the cowardly petulance of his spite—"They know all, Thornton!" said he, with a look of triumph. The villain turned slowly from him to us, muttering something we could not hear. He saw upon my face, upon the magistrate's, that his doom was sealed; his desperation gave him presence of mind, and he made a sudden rush to the door; the officers in waiting seized him. Why should I detail the rest of the scene? He was that day fully committed for trial, and Sir Reginald Glanville honourably released, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so that my health gave way. A friend spoke to me of Christian Science, but I scoffed at the idea. Later on, in desperation, I asked her to lend me "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," thinking I might be able to read five minutes a day in it. I opened the book at the chapter on Physiology, and began. Time passed unnoticed: every page seemed illuminated. I said, "This is everything ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... than the force of the collision drove her off, and the gallant lieutenant, with only ten of his people, found himself opposed to the eighty miscreants who formed the slaver's crew, several of whom were either Englishmen or Americans, who, consequently, fought with the greatest desperation. In spite of the gallantry of the British, they ran a great risk of being overpowered, but, happily, a midshipman, Mr Hinds, then scarcely fifteen years old, had the presence of mind to order the crew to get out their sweeps, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... was given, and the men, worked up to a feeling of desperation on account of repeated failures, raised a cry and made another charge. The ground was covered with dead and wounded. Trees were felled by shell and solid shot; and at one time a company was covered with the branches of a falling tree. Captain Callioux was in command of Company ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... throne, a poor man, infirm in health and in purpose, virtually deposed in favour of the son who was Lieutenant or the brother who was Regent of the kingdom, and from whom all his domestic comfort had been taken as well as his power, was driven to desperation by this blow. He had lost his wife and his best counsellors; he had never been strong enough to restrain his son, nor resist his brother. David, his first-born and heir, the gay and handsome youth who ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and northeast their attacks were not at first pressed so hard as on the south of the Menin road, where the fighting was especially fierce. In the latter direction masses of infantry were hurled on with absolute desperation and were beaten off with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... grew suspicious; he insisted that I had an object in going out so far at sun-set. This irritated me,—and I rose to smite him, when the fair girl interposed her fragile form between us. She screamed for mercy, and clung to my arm with the desperation of despair. I could not shake her off! The boy had the spirit of a man; he seized a piece of spar, and struck me on the temples. 'How, you villain!' said he, 'your life or mine!' At that moment the boat upset, and we were all adrift. The boy I never saw again—a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... unfair to him, but what is he to do? He must get food for himself and his family and a little ready money for his taxes, for the Communal authorities will probably sell his cow if he does not pay his arrears.** In desperation he accepts the conditions and puts off the evil day—consoling himself with the reflection that perhaps (avos') something may turn up in the meantime—but when the time comes for fulfilling his engagements the dilemma revives. According to the contract he ought to work nearly ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... last, but a year ago one evening at home I was talking to him on this subject; but he met everything I said lightly you know his way and I saw my words took no hold. I asked him at last in a kind of desperation, if he supposed there was a woman in the world that could please him; and he laughed, and said, if there was, he was afraid she was not in that hemisphere. And a day or two after he told me he was going ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... In desperation he finally went to Murphy begging quick promotion to a traveling position, but the Sales Manager told him there was no chance before the first of the year, then asked him why he had lost his grip ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... fine-leaved and short-thorned, or rough and spiny; and the cattle ate them all. Mesquite and cat-claw and ironwood, tough as woven wire and barbed at every joint, these were all that were left except cactus and the armored sahuaros. In desperation he piled brush beneath clumps of fuzzy chollas, the thorniest cactus that grows, and burned off the resinous spines; but the silky bundles of stickers still lurked beneath the ashes, and the cattle that ate ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Excellency find some other subject?" cried the other General in desperation, and taking the newspaper from his companion's hand, he read the following: "A correspondent writes to us from Tula: 'There was a festival here yesterday at the club, on the occasion of a sturgeon being caught in the river Upa (an occurrence which not even old residents ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... longer be compelled to marry, or be a charge upon unwilling relatives or, as in desperation they ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... in the words, the desperation of helpless youth. No perspective, no light or shade, but ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... England without a sign of a living blade of flower, though a few little songbirds did their best bravely to make it up to us. Already we are being driven almost crazy with the mosquitoes and black flies, songsters of no mean calibre, especially at night. In desperation our little ones yesterday succeeded in killing an unusually large specimen, and after burying it with great solemnity were heard singing around the grave in no uncheerful tones, "Nearer, my God, ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... whose elegance and charm the reporter had admired as he saw him at beautiful Natacha's feet in the datcha at Eliaguine. Now, no more in uniform, he had thrown over his bowed shoulders a wretched coat, whose sleeves swayed listlessly at his sides, in accord with his mood of languid desperation, a felt hat with the rim turned down hid a little the misery in his face in these few days, these not-many hours, how he was changed! But, even as he was, he still concerned Rouletabille. What was he doing ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... allow it," cried Marie Antoinette in desperation. "In the name of Heaven, I conjure you not to be ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... her up and down, commanding and good-humouredly malicious. She put her hand to her throat as if it throbbed, and uttered with a calmness of desperation: ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... multitude cared little for their idolatrous worship; but all who depended for subsistence on the prevalence of superstition, such as the image-makers, the jugglers, the fortune-tellers, and a considerable number of the priests, [93:3] were dismayed and driven to desperation by the progress of Christianity. They saw that, with its success, "the hope of their gains was gone;" and, under pretence of zeal for the public interest, and for the maintenance of the "lawful" ceremonies, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... interferes, our sense of it is influenced by the fact that Shakespeare uses current religious ideas here much more decidedly than in Othello or King Lear. The horror in Macbeth's soul is more than once represented as desperation at the thought that he is eternally 'lost'; the same idea appears in the attempt of Claudius at repentance; and as Hamlet nears its close the 'religious' tone of the tragedy is deepened in two ways. In the first place, 'accident' is introduced into the plot in its barest and least ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... black cloak, with the dilapidated remains of a mourning veil hanging from her small bonnet. As she came toward him he was stirred first by an impulse of pity and immediately afterward by a violent repulsion. In her whole figure there were the tragic signs of poverty and desperation; but it was the horror of her eyes, he told himself, that he should never forget. They were eyes that would haunt his sleep that night like the face of the drowned man in ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... destitute of so many wonders, corroborating the probability of his. The three narratives are quite in keeping. We find in each the same restlessness, the same blind passion impelling to deeds of vice and desperation, and the same proofs of treachery amongst their companions. Each, too, has furnished so many means of detection, by names of persons, dates, and places, that,—no attempt at refutation having been made by persons implicated,—we are to believe that they must, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... South Pacific one third of all mankind has entered upon an historic struggle for a new freedom; freedom from grinding poverty. Across all continents, nearly a billion people seek, sometimes almost in desperation, for the skills and knowledge and assistance by which they may satisfy from their own resources, the material ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... warmth. Fred wrapped himself in a blanket and sat half shivering in the gloom. At first, detached and unrelated thoughts ran through his brain, but gradually his musing assumed a coherence. To-morrow, at this time, he might be either a hunted murderer or a victim himself of Storch's desperation. In any case, he would be furnishing the text for many a newspaper sermon. How eagerly they would trace his downfall, sniffing out the salacious bits for the furtive enjoyment of the chemically pure! For there would be salacious ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... how often a sense of humour has saved a man from desperation? Perhaps only the Easterns have thoroughly appreciated that divine gift. I have interpolated the adventure of Inspector Bristol in order that the sequence of my story be not broken; actually I did not learn it until later, but when, on the following day, the whole of the facts came into my possession, ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... she tried to dismiss the matter from her thoughts, but it persisted in occupying the foreground of her mind, and at last, in desperation, she picked up her discarded book and began to read. For a few moments she succeeded in concentrating her attention. Then gradually, as the sunlight, piercing through the branches overhead, flickered dazzlingly on the surface ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... "—So in sheer desperation he turned nurse to Squawk and ran errands for its mother, wondering the while how it was that some ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... there, another search for a home, another set of explanations, pretences, fears, lies,—things of which he was so weary. But there was something else, something worse than any of these things, that made Fritzing mop his forehead with so extreme a desperation: Annalise had demanded the money due to her, and ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the morning passed from him as suddenly as it had come, and he told himself with the uncompromising desperation of youth that for all he cared now his great play might remain forever in oblivion. Life itself appeared as empty—as futile as his ambition—so empty, indeed, that he began immediately in the elastic melancholy which comes easily at twenty-five—to ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... to the fallen tree, started with an exclamation and dashed off in an opposite direction from the point whence came the alarming sounds. The effect was contagious: the others followed pell-mell, every one plunging forward with the frantic desperation which the bravest man will ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... and addressing him with dogged desperation] Ive come here to say this. When I proposed to Edith I was in utter ignorance of what I was letting myself in for legally. Having given my word, I will stand to it. You have me at your mercy: marry me if you insist. But take notice that I protest. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... pleasure more than she suffered from pain. There was the dark shadow of her life. You may be sure that a lover was often compelled to part with a nice little heap of crowns in order to pass the night with her, and was reduced to desperation by a refusal. Now for her it was a joyful thing to feel a youthful desire, like that she had for the little priest, whose story commences this collection; but because she was older than in those merry days, love was more fully established ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... bright, even to keenness; physically he was lazy and a shirk; morally his status is best represented by the algebraic sign 0-0; spiritually he was at times profoundly reverent and aspiring, or again, outrageously blasphemous, and reckless almost to desperation. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... lashed himself up to a fit state of wretched desperation, he found himself at the well-known corner of the street leading out of the Strand. On his journey thither he had been trying to realize to himself what it would be to be the husband of Norah Geraghty; what would be the joy of returning to a small house ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... I seen many Christians die? Some put their Trust in Things not to be confided in; others breathe out their Souls in Desperation, either out of a Consciousness of their lewd Lives, or by Reason of Scruples that have been injected into their Minds, even in their dying ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... similarity of Montanelli's question to the password came like a chance straw, that the Gadfly, in his desperation, caught at, answering automatically. He had begun to tremble under the soft pressure of the hand that seemed to burn upon ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... used in crossing the mountains, being very sure-footed: and it is observed that in choosing their steps, they always march upon the brink of the precipice. You must let them take their own way, otherwise you will be in danger of losing your life; for they are obstinate, even to desperation. It is very dangerous for a person on horseback to meet those animals: they have such an aversion to horses, that they will attack them with incredible fury, so as even to tear them and their riders in pieces; and ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... steps. The affair, we must suppose, had gone through all the more usual stages of entreaty on the lover's part, and persuasion on that of the parents, before such an attempt was finally made. But the shy Jeanne had by this time attained that courage of desperation which is not inconsistent with the most gentle nature; and without saying anything to anyone, she too went to Toul, appeared before the bishop, and easily freed herself from the pretended engagement, though whether with any reference to her very different destination ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... of his quickly-made fortune was invested. With the loss of his political pull, disaster came to one after another of those enterprises, and his successive losses were soon heavy enough to drive him almost to desperation. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... first fifty yards with showers of sparks like sky-rockets. But Fritz can be very obstinate on occasions, and all our teasing with rifle-grenades failed to make him retaliate with anything larger than "pineapples" (light trench-mortars). In desperation, I sent to the brigade bombing officer for some smoke and gas-bombs. Even these failed to rouse his anger sufficiently when—Eureka!—we discovered some "lachrymose" or "tear" bombs. These did the trick and over came a "rum-jar" ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... hint, calling to his aid all his pride, and all his singular power of playing any role in his own drama that he might desire to play. He played it with energy, with desperation, counting meanwhile each hour as it passed, having in view always that approaching moment in London when Lucy would disappear within the doors of the Porters' house, leaving the butler to meet the demands of unwelcome visitors with such equivalents ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... quarters below when he stumbled upon Miss Farnham. Mindful of his earlier slip, he passed her as if she had been invisible. She let him go until her opportunity was all but lost; then, plucking courage out of the heart of desperation, she spoke. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... sensitiveness may produce priapism, or continuous and painful erection, one of the most "terrible and humiliating conditions," as Dr. Acton says, to which the human body is subject. The horrid desperation of patients suffering under this condition is almost inconceivable. It is, fortunately, rare, in its most severe forms; but hundreds suffer from it to a most painful degree as one of the punishments of transgression of nature's laws; and a ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... step the devil thrust him into desperation, and strove thereby to clinch the hopelessness of his estate. With wild fierce passion, Kennedy flung himself into sins he had never known before; angrily he laid waste the beauty and glory of the vineyard whose hedge had been broken down; a little entrance to the sanctuary had been ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... these words of atonement and Catholic belief spoken by voices that were still hoarse with the cries of pagan desperation. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... cherished friends, was Provost Marshal of the District of Columbia at this time, and as such Mrs. Greenhow was in his charge during her imprisonment. This duty was made so irksome to him that, upon one occasion, he exclaimed in desperation that he preferred to resign his position rather than to continue such an uncongenial task. It has been stated that information conveyed by her to the Confederates precipitated the Battle of Bull Run, which was so disastrous to the Union Army. Her conduct, even ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... knew she ought to go, but something held her back. She was not satisfied with the look in his eyes. He was controlled again, but it was a controlled desperation. She could ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... the grand, old Wainamoinen. When at last young Youkahainen, Pohyola's old and sorry stripling, Strives his best to move his right foot, But alas! the foot obeys not; When he strives to move his left foot, Lo! he finds it turned to flint-stone. Thereupon sad Youkahainen, In the deeps of desperation, And in earnest supplication, Thus addresses Wainamoinen: "O thou wise and worthy minstrel, Thou the only true, magician, Cease I pray thee thine enchantment,. Only turn away thy magic, Let me leave ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... said Tchartkoff gloomily. And he turned himself upon the comfortless sofa with a feeling akin to desperation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... they began discharging spears and other missiles on the little body, who on their side continued to be wounded and shot down, but were quite unable to retaliate, cooped up as they were within a palisading barely six feet high, until in desperation they tore down their defences with their own hands, and dashed at the enemy. These had nothing to do but to draw back from the point of egress, and being light troops easily escaped beyond the grasp of heavy-armed men, while ever and again, from one point of vantage ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... stumble over his replies, to grope, to flounder. The agony of his soul was in his face. And then, in a moment of tortured desperation he rose from his seat, tall, gaunt, disordered, and clasped his hand to his forehead as if driven to the utmost bound of his endurance and to the outer brink of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... supposed counterfeits to be genuine. In the mean time the gambler had left the city. Two days after, Mr. Sidney had overtaken him. So great were his excitement and vexation that he could scarcely eat or sleep. In a fit of desperation, without law and against law, he pounced upon the suspected man and put him in irons. He beat a parley. It was granted, and the two went to the gambler's apartments in company. In a conversation of several hours, Mr. Sidney extracted from him the most valuable information ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... loss sustain'd by a sordid Neglect of our Concern in that excellent Part, in exchange for the most contemptible and justly condemn'd Trifles, and all this eternal and irrecoverable: These People tell us nothing of the eternal Reproaches of Conscience, the Horror of Desperation, and the Anguish of a Mind hopeless of ever seeing the Glory, which alone constitutes Heaven, and which makes all other Places dreadful, and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... there any dogs about, nor cats, nor animals of any kind to be seen. In desperation Hanlon even tried the trees or plants there, to see if they had minds like the Guddus—but none ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Jennechka? I'll go further than that. Out of us scarcely, scarcely one in a thousand has committed abortion. But all of you several times over. What? Or isn't that the truth? And those of you who've done this, did it not out of desperation or cruel poverty, but you simply were afraid of spoiling your figure and beauty—that's your sole capital! Or else you've been seeking only beastly carnal pleasure, while pregnancy and feeding interfered with your giving ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Shunned and hated by his companions, feared by the convict overseers, and regarded with unfriendly eyes by the authorities, Rufus Dawes was at the very bottom of that abyss of woe into which he had voluntarily cast himself. Goaded to desperation by his own thoughts, he had joined with Gabbett and the unlucky three in their desperate attempt to escape; but, as Vickers stated, he had been captured almost instantly. He was lamed by the heavy ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... explained Geoffrey in desperation, and again Thomas Savine chuckled, while Helen, who ground one little boot-heel into the grasses, deliberately turned away. Mrs. Savine, however, cheerfully departed to find the bottle, and soon returned ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... add more, for at that instant three fierce dogs rushed upon the bull at once, and by their joint attacks rendered him almost mad. The calm deliberate courage which he had hitherto shown was now changed into rage and desperation: he roared with pain and fury; flashes of fire seemed to come from his angry eyes, and his mouth was covered with foam and blood. He hurried round the stake with incessant toil and rage, first aiming at one, then at another of the persecuting dogs that harassed ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... behind a board fence by the side of the road. Several speakers made excited speeches, urging the members of the Convention to be men, and defend their lawful rights, even at the risk of their lives. The Free State men were wrought up to the verge of desperation. The vote was about to be taken, whether or not to resist the troops. There was much suppressed excitement; and, had the vote been taken then, it would undoubtedly have been in favor of resistance. Father, in the meanwhile, was on a committee, in a back room. Mr. Quiett began ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the oaths and some of the worst features of the incident, but the above outline is more than adequate to suggest the barbarism of a lot of men bent on lawlessness and revenge. Drunk with their own success, the gang now went about with even greater desperation. Everybody stood in terror of them; Custom officers were so frightened that they hardly dared to perform their duties, and the magistrates themselves were equally frightened to convict smugglers. Consequently the contraband gangs automatically increased ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
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