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More "Despond" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is to get through with the business in hand. I have been in a Slough of Despond for some days past, having written so fiercely that I came to a stand-still. There are points where a writer gets bewildered and cannot form any judgment of what he has done, or tell what to do next. In these cases it ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... of every man and boy we pass upon the street, how few—how very few—there are that would not reveal sickening pictures of lust, disease, melancholy and insanity. Charnel-houses of sin and lust—sloughs of despond and regret—excess of passion offset by lack of power—dread, despair, hopelessness, shame and desperation, making a picture of misery scarcely to be conceived by any but those unfortunate beings who in the thoughtless, careless heyday of youth, or the reckless reliance on more mature ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... a system should be swept away and some other adopted which will be more in harmony with the actual facts of the Egyptian situation. If, as I trust may be the case, Lord Kitchener is able to devise and to carry into execution some plan which will rescue Egypt from its present legislative Slough of Despond, he will have deserved well, not only of his country, but also of all those Egyptian interests, whether native or European, which are ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... bid you take comfort, and trust to God for better things, and better things will come, too. You are not so badly off now as you were this time twelvemonth. And you know I'll never leave you. Don't despond—don't give away. It's unnatural for a man to do it, and he's lost if he does. Oh, bless you, this is a life of suffering and sorrow, and well it is; for who wouldn't go mad to think of leaving all his young 'uns behind him, and every thing he loves, if he wasn't taught that there's a quieter place ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... so much against being governed, that she observes it too much. I could talk till to-morrow upon these things, but they make me melancholy. I could not but observe that lately, after much conversation with Mr. Harley, though he is the most fearless man alive, and the least apt to despond, he confessed to me that uttering his mind to me gave ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... labor should, on having this labor left to their discretion, be disposed at first to relax, and, in some instances, totally abstain from it, was equally to be expected. But we have no reason to despond, nor to imagine that, because such has occurred in some ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... it is; it isn't because of anything he's done or has, it's just because it's HIM, I suppose, but I know my chance is gone for good! THAT leaves me free to act for her; no one can accuse me of doing it for myself. And I swear she sha'n't go through that slough of despond again while I ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... fond of Life, I return'd Thanks to Providence for my Escape, and thought myself extreamly happy, tho' thrown on an unknown Coast, and destitute of every thing necessary to sustain me: But I trusted in that Goodness which had preserved, and which I hoped would provide for me. To despond, I thought, would be mistrusting the Bounty of our Creator, and might be the ready way to plunge me into the Miseries Men naturally apprehend in my Circumstances. I therefore heartily recommended me to the Divine Protection, and enter'd ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... so," said Hofer, gravely, and loud enough to be heard by all. "Do not despond, my dear friends! The Austrian government will assuredly keep its word, for the dear brave Archduke John promised me in the emperor's name that Austria would succor the Tyrolese, and send troops into our country, if we would be in readiness ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... right here, Mrs. Trapes! In fact, Arthur broke into my—er—life just when things were at their darkest generally. Arthur found me very depressed and gloomy. Arthur taught me that life might yet have its uses. Arthur lifted me out of the Slough of Despond. Arthur brought me—to you! And behold! life is good and perchance shall be even better if—ah yes, if! So you see, my dear Mrs. Trapes, Arthur has done much for me, consequently I have much to thank Arthur for. Indeed, I look ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... travelled along the dreary prairies, these five Eldorado seekers proved to be jovial fellows, and there was about them an elasticity of temper which did not allow them to despond. The divine had made up his mind to go to Rome, and convert the Pope, who, after all, was a clever old bon vivant; the doctor would go to Edinburgh, and get selected, from his superior skill, as president of the Surgical College; ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... of home industry have always referred with satisfaction to the effect of the tariff of 1842 as an explicit and undeniable proof of the value of protection. It raised the country from a slough of despond to happiness, cheerfulness, confidence. It imparted to all sections a degree of prosperity which they had not known since the repeal of the tariff of 1828. The most suggestive proof of its strength and popularity was found in the contest of 1844 between ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... in London at this time was Prentice Mulford, of California. In later years Mulford acquired a wide reputation for his optimistic and practical psychologies. Through them he lifted himself out of the slough of despond, and he sought to extend a helping hand to others. His "White Cross Library" had a wide reading and a wide influence; perhaps has to this day. But in 1873 Mulford had not found the tangibility of thought, the secret of strength; he was only finding it, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was a grant of land, which took their name, and became the Manor of Despond; there's where Spoon Hall is now. Sir Thomas Desponder was one of those who demanded the Charter, though his name wasn't always given because he wasn't a baron. Perhaps Miss Palliser does not know ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... see you are cutting the last piece of ground from beneath your feet—letting yourself sink at once into a slough of despond?" ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... brothers in blue, who people the air, overcloud the eyes and set up torture-chambers in the brain. Bunyan, in that ever-living "Pilgrim's Progress," paints no tyrant so terrible as "Giant Despair," and no obstruction to the way so fatally impassable as the "Slough of Despond." And we have never read over the sorrowful conclusion of the "Bride of Lammermoor" without believing that the young master of Ravenswood, on that sombre November morning, sunk the sooner and the more fatally in the quicksands ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... indomitable, her purpose firm and her faith secure, but she was without the slightest vestige of news, entirely shut off from the outside world, left to conjecture, to scheme, to expect and to despond alone. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... their hearts despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me like a whale? Did their ear perhaps hearken yearningly-long for me IN VAIN, and for ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in the metropolis, he sought a situation, but in vain, and he was beginning to despond, when he obtained work with one John Morgan, an instrument-maker, in Finch Lane, Cornhill. Here he gradually became proficient in making quadrants, parallel rulers, compasses, theodolites, etc., until, at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... he meant that the great numerical majority of the inhabitants bear this character, he spoke truly, inasmuch as the great numerical majority of the inhabitants are negroes, among the most depraved in the island. Kingston is like the slough of Despond, a place whither all the scum and filth of the negro population in the east end of the island do continually run, and make it a very sink of wickedness. But are the white families and the large number of thoroughly respectable colored ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his days "unwept, unhonored, and unsung." We have a picture of this middle-aged man, clerking for his younger brothers in a country store, at eight hundred dollars a year, and day by day sinking further into the slough of despond. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... obtained the cash, they sallied forth to carry devastation and affright throughout the camps of innocent and unsuspecting blacklegs. As might be expected, it took about as many minutes as they had pounds to effect the ruin of the adventurers. Did they despond? Not they; a flaw existed in their calculations. They looked for it with care, and were torn from their employment only by the exigencies of the time, and the pressing demands of nature for immediate bread. Mr Wedge had from this period struggled on, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... 3 Despond then no longer, The Lord will provide; And this be the token— No word he hath spoken, Was ever yet broken, The Lord ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... and said, "Believe me, you will yet be united. Of this, there is an impression on my mind too strong to admit of doubt. If at times you are tempted to despond, remember these words were uttered by your friend, when she drew near the confines of another world: you ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... Irad. Despond not: wherefore wilt thou wander thus To add thy silence to the silent night, And lift thy tearful eye unto the stars? They cannot ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... steady growth and they were a promising source of income. From the results of my mavericking and my trading operations I had been enabled to send two thousand young steers up the trail the spring before, and the proceeds from their sale had lifted me from the slough of despond and set me on a financial rock. Therefore my regard for ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... to write about myself. What can I say on that precious topic? My health is pretty good. My spirits are not always alike. Nothing happens to me. I hope and expect little in this world, and am thankful that I do not despond and suffer more. Thank you for inquiring after our old servant; she is pretty well; the little shawl, etc., pleased her much. Papa likewise, I am glad to say, is pretty well; with his and my kindest regards to you and Mr. Gaskell—Believe ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... performed by rail. Instead of the slow, solitary, pensive pilgrimage which John Bunyan describes, we travel in fashionable company, and in the most agreeable manner. A certain Mr Smooth-it-away has eclipsed the triumphs of Brunel. He has thrown a viaduct over the Slough of Despond; he has tunnelled the hill Difficulty, and raised an admirable causeway across the valley of Humiliation. The wicket gate, so inconveniently narrow, has been converted into a commodious station-house; and whereas it will be remembered there was a long ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... surety in a case of debt, 'Tis not the thing t' accept the terms, But dread th' event—the tale affirms. A Stag approach'd the Sheep, to treat For one good bushel of her wheat. "The honest Wolf will give his bond." At which, beginning to despond, "The Wolf (cries she) 's a vagrant bite. And you are quickly out of sight; Where shall I find or him or you Upon the day ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... but knew what balm, for all Despond, lies in an angel's glance, Your looks would on my window ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... in writing to me at such a time, and that I would fain assure you of my heart-felt sympathy, however unavailing it may be. To you who have a steadfast anchor for your hopes, I ought not, perhaps, to say, "Do not despond." Yet, dearest H——, do not despond: is there any occasion when despair is justified? I know how lightly all soothing counsel must be held, in a case of such sorrow as yours, but among fellow-Christians such words still have some significance; for the most unworthy ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... counsellor, Pizarro gave little heed to the suggestion, and even showed some resentment, as the matter was pressed on him. In every contest, with Indian or European, whatever had been the odds, he had come off victorious. He was not now for the first time to despond; and he resolved to remain in Cuzco, and hazard all on the chances of a battle. There was something in the hazard itself captivating to his bold and chivalrous temper. In this, too, he was confirmed ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... as you may readily conceive, was sunk in the Slough of Despond deeper than ever plummet sounded. Margaret thought this very nice of him; it was a delicate tribute to her that he ate nothing; and the fact that Hugh Van Orden and Petheridge Jukesbury—as she believed—acted in precisely the same way for ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... world; he is not quite a man, as the world goes, and not at all an angel, as the celestials see. He must be his own motive, path, and guide, his own priest, king, and law. The world may be his footstool, and may be his slough of despond, but is never his final end. His aims are transcendental, his realm is art, his interests ideal, his life divine, his destiny immortal. All the old theories of saintship are revived in him. He is in the world, but not of it. Shadows of infinitude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... another,—by a too tender regard for slavery in some States, and by a too zealous anxiety for instant emancipation in others,—by fear of provoking opposition in one quarter, and by a blind defiance of all obstacles in another. Now what shall be done? Shall we hesitate, despond, despair? Never! For Heaven's sake, take off the muzzle. Use every weapon which the God of Battles has placed in our hands. Put forth all the power of the nation. Encourage and promote all fighting generals; cashier all officers who are determined to make war on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... various pulpits by American Missionary Association speakers, this glorious fact met with cordial applause. All the more did it seem incumbent upon the churches to take hold of the American Missionary Association, still burdened with its debt, and lift it out of the slough of financial despond. This, however, is only the reflection of the feeling among the churches throughout the land. The determination to lift the debt of the American Missionary Association, and to make it possible to continue at least its depleted ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
... time, and they make life worth living, In spite of life's troubles—'tis vain to despond; Oh, man! WE at least, WE enjoy, with thanksgiving, God's gifts on this earth, though we look ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Annette, lays her right arm gently over her shoulder, and pats her cheek with her left hand: "Annette will see her mother, yet. There is an all-protecting hand guiding us through every ill of life. Be of good cheer, my child; never despond while there is a hope left; bury the horrors of the past in the brighter prospect of the future." And leading her to the table she seats her by her side and reads the letter aloud, as with joy the forlorn girl's feelings ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... a little map in my pocket-book of the various twists and turns of the road through that vast Slough of Despond, marking them from hour to hour as we followed its devious wanderings. On studying this at the end of that part of our journey I realised afresh how utterly impossible it would have been for us to thread that misty maze where ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... not international—except in a strictly legal sense. It is difficult to say what it is if it be not the private domain of King Leopold and of several monopolist-controlling trusts. Probably the only way out of the present slough of despond is the definite assumption of sole responsibility by the Belgian people; for it should be remembered that a very large number of patriotic Belgians urgently long to redress evils for which they ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... salvation that she could give no account of any 'law work.' And as one of the old examiners, who thought there could be no genuine conversion without a period of deep conviction, asked her, "But, my dear, how about the Slough of Despond?" she dropped a courtesy and said, "Please, sir, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... greenhouse a cabinet of perfumes?"—his clergymen, his ladies, and his tasks, he is not only constantly amusing himself, but carrying on a secret battle, with all the terrors of Hell. He is, indeed, a pilgrim who struggles out of one slough of despond only to fall waist-deep into another. This strange creature who passed so much of his time writing such things as Verses written at Bath on Finding the Heel of a Shoe, Ode to Apollo on an Ink-glass almost dried in the Sun, Lines sent with Two Cockscombs to Miss Green, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Indeed I must confess that whenever my eye rested upon it, an emotion of regret moved me, and my fancy filled with an hundred perils that seemed incident to my career. The earnestness of my mother, however, always restored me to confidence. Her motto was, never despond, nor sit idly at home, when fame and fortune are to be gained by going abroad. She did everything with great cheerfulness of manner, and though the frosts of fifty winters had made snow-white the hairs of her head, and plowed their furrows deep into her oval face, there was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... high that these losses left the sisters without the means to pay it. They were therefore in debt, and that deeply, for people with no immediate, or even remote, prospects of an addition to their income. Then the Bloods during Mary's absence had fallen further into the Slough of Despond, out of which, now their daughter was dead, there was no one to help them. George could not aid them, because, though they did not know it, he was just then without employment. Unable to live amicably with his brother-in-law after Fanny's death, he had resigned his position in Lisbon ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... This hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination—her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope. We shall and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... it!—that Mary—his bonnie Mary—his betrothed wife—had been chosen to inherit those very millions which had formerly stood between him and what he had then imagined to be his happiness. And listening to the strange story, he had sunk deeper and deeper into the Slough of Despond, and now sat rigidly silent, with all the light gone out of his features, and all the ardour quenched in his eyes. Mary looking at him, and reading every expression in that dark beloved face, felt the tears rising thickly in her throat, but bravely suppressed ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... this Slough of Despond, he was called to Washington by his patent lawyer. Not having enough money to pay the cost of such a journey, he borrowed the price of a return ticket from Sanders and arranged to stay with a friend ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... but not yet was the soul to be out of prison, the pilgrim to be freed from the Slough of Despond. Once more ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... Haven, with whom already a warm friendship had been formed that lasted for life, and who has pleasantly sketched what happened. Mr. Felton saw Irving constantly in the interval of preparation, and could not but despond at his daily iterated foreboding of I shall certainly break down; though besides the real dread there was a sly humor which heightened its whimsical horror with an irresistible drollery. But the professor plucked up hope a little when the night came and he saw that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... except at its latest stage (just the past few years), when lace-making, as almost every other art work in this country, is emerging from what, from an artistic point of view, has been one long Slough of Despond. ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... look forward to brighter days. You would not now sadden the hours of your absence from me by causing anxious thoughts in my heart. Oh! my precious wife; you have borne much for my sake, you have been to me in very truth a ministering angel. Do not now despond, but still strengthen me by your brave, hopeful smiles. You know how I shall miss you every moment of your absence, but the hope that this ride will do you good makes me willing and anxious to have you go. And see, the Orderly has just brought your horse, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... laughed at seeing the sergeant on horseback. Mr Swinton, however, calmly advised us to make no obstacle: "Good," said he, "will come of this, and though for a season we are ordained to tribulation, and to toil through the slough of despond, yet a firm footing and a fair and green path lies in a ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... all felt the weight of his words, but our collapse was pitiful. Lured by a treacherous hope into the belief that we were saved, we were fallen into a deeper Slough of Despond than before. Jill was hard put to it to ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... There was a two-miles stretch across shell-torn, muddy country just behind the fighting line. Tired men, just relieved from the trenches, and carrying heavy equipment, naturally loathed it as a Slough of Despond; but when we struck the good, honest surface of the navvy battalion's road, though there were many miles still between us and rest, we felt the journey was as good as over, so easy, by comparison, had marching become. A close friendship grew up between our battalions. Our officers invited ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the province are at a standstill," he repeated, "while all my energies are bent upon this quest. Should we fail to have news of his capture in Dauphiny, we need not, nevertheless, despond. I have sent men after him along the three roads that lead to Paris. They are to spare neither money nor horses in picking up his trail and effecting his capture. After all, I ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... plumes for the head. They, too, employed as weapons darts, bows and arrows, clubs, lances, and slings. The fate of the Chibchas was, of course, the same as that of the Incas. Their bodies decked with their brilliant feathers and pomp sank into the mire of despond, never again to attain ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... for the cherishing of mental health, the expulsion of morbid excitements, assume what guise they may. We should take extreme care not to admit decay at the summit. A healthy soul is a better prophylactic than belladonna. Refusing to despond respecting American health, we cheerfully trust that the genius of the New Man will find all required physical support, and due length of time ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... it is highly dramatic and picturesque. It is, to be sure, an allegory, but one of those allegories which seem inherent in the human mind and hence more natural than the most direct narrative. For all men life is indeed a journey, and the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, Vanity Fair, and the Valley of Humiliation are places where in one sense or another every human soul has often struggled and suffered; so that every reader goes hand in hand with Christian and his friends, fears for them in ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... system, subtle processes are at work, and when finally interest dawns,—when finally hope returns to us, and life again becomes worth while,—these heartbreaking struggles reap their reward. The psychologists call them "plateaus of growth," but some one has said that "sloughs of despond" would be a ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... earth, Chequered with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair That pleases and yet shocks me, I can laugh And I can weep, can hope, and can despond, Feel wrath and pity when I think on thee! Ten righteous would have saved a city once, And thou hast many righteous.—Well for thee— That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else, And therefore more obnoxious at this hour ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... before these questions could be answered. Full three hours had elapsed since the last sound of a trumpet had been heard; it was now one o'clock, and as yet no trace of the travellers had been discovered in any quarter. The most hopeful began to despond; and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... tremble for my country," said he; "the moderes are meditating the reform of the constitution already; and to place again in the king's hands the power the people have scarcely acquired. My mind is overwhelmed by these gloomy reflections, and I despond. I am ready to quit the post you have confided to me. Oh, my country, be but thou saved, and I shall breathe my ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... always room in every business for an honest, hard-worker. It will not do to presume otherwise; nor should one sit down to grumble or concoct mischief. The most perilous hour of one's life is when he is tempted to despond. He who loses, his courage loses all. There are men in the world who would rather work than be idle at the same price. Imitate them. Success is not far off. An honorable and happy life is before you. Lay ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Henry Fuller's gay spirit, Lorado's swift wit and the good fraternal companionship of Charles Francis Browne were of daily comfort; but above all others I depended upon my wife whose serenely optimistic spirit carried me over many a deep slough of despond. How I leaned upon her! Her ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the attainment of bare subsistence. During a brief gleam of hope, rather than of actual prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by the professional exertions ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... face and trembling hand: alas, alas, ruined! Oh, do not give him up. Perhaps you can do something for him. Little kindness he has known for very long. Give him the five shillings by all means; but next morning see you go out, and try what may be done to lift him out of the slough of despond, and to give him a chance for better days! I know that it may be all in vain; and that after years gradually darkening down you may some day, as you pass the police-office, find a crowd at the door, and learn that they have got the corpse of the poor suicide within. And ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... keep saying, 'Big guns are good but the Almighty is better, and He is on our side, no matter what the Kaiser says about it.' I would have gone crazy many a day lately, Miss Oliver, dear, if I had not sat tight and repeated that to myself. My cousin Sophia is, like you, somewhat inclined to despond. 'Oh, dear me, what will we do if the Germans ever get here,' she wailed to me yesterday. 'Bury them,' said I, just as off-hand as that. 'There is plenty of room for the graves.' Cousin Sophia said that I was flippant but I was not flippant, ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... great novelists not only provide us with a world of friends more real and enjoyable than the actual folk we know, but also with a world for those friends to live in, more real and far more enjoyable than the world in which we ourselves sojourn. And this is well seen of Christian. The Slough of Despond and the terrible overhanging hill; the gateway and the Interpreter's House and the House Beautiful; the ups and downs of the road, and the arbours and the giants' dens: Beulah and the Delectable Mountains:—one knows them as one knows the country that one has walked ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... transient gleam from Hampton Roads and Kernstown; plunging the public mind into a slough of despond, in which it was to be sunk deeper and deeper with ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... ranged the coast to seek them, but with no friendly intent. Their thoughts dwelt, with unspeakable yearning, on the France they had left behind; and which, to their longing fancy, was pictured as an unattainable Eden. Well might they despond; for of a hundred and eighty colonists, besides the crew of the "Belle," less than forty-five remained. The weary precincts of Fort St. Louis, with its fence of rigid palisades, its area of trampled earth, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... twenty-four. These forces being much beyond those of Captain Morgan, caused a general consternation in the pirates, whose biggest vessel had not above fourteen small guns. Every one judged Captain Morgan to despond, and to be hopeless, considering the difficulty of passing safe with his little fleet amidst those great ships and the fort, or he must perish. How to escape any other way, by sea or land, they saw no way. Under these necessities, Captain Morgan resumed new ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men— in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, from the slough of despond and the desert, Half dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee[72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... country to preach a boycott of British officials, the Mahars should have sent in petitions imploring the Governor not to abandon them or surrender the power which has alone done something to raise them out of the slough of despond? Mr. Gandhi, however, who would be a great social reformer had he not preferred to plunge into a dangerous political agitation, is not himself blind to such an awful blot as "untouchability" has made on Hindu civilisation, and some of his followers, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... that, though it was a very honourable thing to command a ship, we should be very glad to be relieved of the honour. Since we captured the vessel we had not had a moment to take any food. Hunger made us rather inclined to despond. We, however, found out what was the matter with us, and sent Billy Wise down into the cabin to forage. He soon returned with some biscuit and white cheese, and dried plums and raisins, and a few bottles of claret, but there was no ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... would not do to despond. We had been incautious, and we should take good care not to ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... all the days of their sojourn in that "Valley of Despond," did our adventurers feel more despondence, than on the afternoon that succeeded the bursting of their great air-bubble—the balloon. They felt that in this effort, they had exhausted all their ingenuity; and so firmly ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... among poets more grovelling, miry, and dull. All arts of civilising others render thee rude and untractable; courts have taught thee ill manners, and polite conversation has finished thee a pedant. Besides, a greater coward burdeneth not the army. But never despond; I pass my word, whatever spoil thou takest shall certainly be thy own; though I hope that vile carcase will first become a prey to ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... are right; for man, to man so oft unjust, Is always so to women; one sole bond Awaits them, treachery is all their trust; Taught to conceal, their bursting hearts despond Over their idol, till some wealthier lust Buys them in marriage—and what rests beyond? A thankless husband, next a faithless lover, Then dressing, nursing, praying, and all ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... pain no one by quoting Janet's common sense. For that I should be sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in sloughs of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of immeasurable Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries, has it comforted me to whisper to myself: "I don't believe it of Him. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... into what "sloughs of despond" we German translators fall—with the sad necessity of dragging your honor after us. Yet this is but a part of the general woe. When you hear in every bookseller's shop throughout Germany one unanimous complaint of the non-purchasing public and ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... hour passed, and the hogs showed no disposition to depart, Hal began to despond, declaring that no help would reach them before they should starve. Ned, however, kept up heart, until the infuriated creatures began to devour the dead body of ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... women, cities, landscapes. It is the simplest, the most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... thought it faint-hearted to shrink at every little molehill of difficulty; she had plenty of what the boys call pluck (no word is more eloquent than that), and a fund of quiet humor that tided her safely over many a slough of despond. If any one could have read Bessie's thoughts a few minutes after the laboring engine had ceased to work, they would have been as follows, with little ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thus sinking deeper and deeper in the Slough of Despond, the firing of a musket, and the shriek of the man who was struck, attracted my attention. Looking towards the opposite end of the pen I saw a guard bringing his still smoking musket to a "recover arms," and, not fifteen feet from him, a prisoner lying ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... day Mary and her mother spent in studying and discussing the latest fashion-plates, but the elaborate descriptions of expensive costumes plunged the girl into another state of bewilderment and slough of despond. She heartily regretted having accepted the invitation. She began to dread the party as an execution—to shrink from exhibiting herself to Christian with the fine ladies and gentlemen who would form the company ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... To Toddrington our hero proceeded, through cross-country roads—such roads!—very different from the Irish roads. Waggon ruts, into which the carriage wheels sunk nearly to the nave—and, from time to time, 'sloughs of despond,' through which it seemed impossible to drag, walk, wade, or swim, and all the time with a sulky postillion. 'Oh, how unlike my Larry!' ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... now living it seems as if man had not yet lost all that part of his soul which longs for beauty: nay we cannot but hope that it is not yet dying. If we are not deceived in that hope, if the art of to-day has really come alive out of the slough of despond which we call the eighteenth century, it will surely grow and gather strength and draw to it other forms of intellect and hope that now scarcely know it; and then, whatever changes it may go through, it will at the last be victorious, and bring ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... is not like you to repine in this way; you who have suffered and endured so much must not despond when, after a long, starless night, the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... unripe I was for John Barleycorn, when, at this time, I descended into my slough of despond, I never dreamed of turning to John Barleycorn for a helping hand. I had life troubles and heart troubles which are neither here nor there in this narrative. But, combined with them, were intellectual troubles which ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... long spring day is o'er, and dark despond My heart invades, and lets the tears flow down, As all alone I stand, when from beyond The mount our ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... aspiration even to be free," "they are content to wallow in the slough of despond." The {adikoi} (unjust) correspond to the {dikaioi} (just), {akrateis} (incontinent) to the {sophoi} (wise) (Breit. cf. "Mem." III. ix. 4, {sophian de kai sophrosunen ou diorizen}), {andrapododeis} (servile) to the ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... pleasant, dearest Monna Nina; for it was not so pleasant indeed to hear how ill you had been—and yet to be lifted into the hope, or rather certainty, of seeing you next week pleased us extremely of course, and the more that your note through Lady Lyell had thrown us backward into a slough of despond and made me sceptical as to ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... thee; but be still! thy patient God waits to be gracious! Oh! be deeply humbled and softened because of thy guilt, resolve to dedicate thyself anew to His service, and so coming, "He will by no means cast thee out!" Despond not by reason of former shortcomings,—thy sins are great, but thy Saviour's merits are greater. He is willing to forget all the past, and sink it in oblivion, if there be present love, and the promise of future obedience. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" Ah! how different ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... him daily in company, with much solicitude; but no effort to rally him, physically or mentally, was successful, and he died this morning. "He died," said the former to me, "because he would die." The Indians seem to me a people who are prone to despond, and easily sink ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... had a villa. The Poet, perceiving the spirits of Munatius dejected, writes this Ode to reconcile him to his destiny, and to inspire him with delight in the beautiful Scenery by which he was surrounded; insinuating, that should Augustus banish him, which was no improbable event, he ought not to despond, but to form his conduct upon the spirited example of Teucer; who, together with his Friends and Followers, was banished from his native City, Salamis, by his Father, because he had not revenged upon the Greeks the death of his Brother ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... overdone with work, bereft of conjugal consolations, and weary of a world in which he wandered alone, by the time he was two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began a great book ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... my dear, for your kind, your seasonable advice and consolation. I hope I shall have more grace given me than to despond, in the religious sense of the word: especially as I can apply to myself the comfort you give me, that neither my will, nor my inconsiderateness, has contributed to my calamity. But, nevertheless, the irreconcilableness ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... spirits are reviving. We have escaped the peril of fire; the fear of explosion is past and gone: and oblivious of the fact that the ship with a hold full of water is only too likely to founder when she puts out to sea, we feel a confidence in the future that for- bids us to despond. ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... star had swum into the world's ken'; of how 'the situation of this country is perilous with so much Bolshevik gunpowder moving about', and how 'it has required a strong heart and a clear head to keep the nation from falling either into the sloughs of despond or the fires ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... foolish — hot and fond, That chuckles through his deepest ire, That gilds the slough of his despond But dims the goal ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... bravely the fact that his own vitality had been fatally impaired. "What exceeding folly," he wrote to a friend, "was it that tempted me to cross the sea in search of what I do not seem able to find here—a righteous stomach? I have been wallowing in the slough of despond for a week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am as blue as ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... we have to have ready a Theme to send off to Harvard. Of course, every Thursday morning We, with one accord, begin to make excuses. Well, the Dread Day rolls around to-morrow, and consequently I am deep in the Slough of Despond. My only consolation is that our Geniuses can't write regularly, but then the mood to write never possesses me.... This week, in writing a comparison between Hamlet and Antonio, I did succeed in jotting down something, but unfortunately I found ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... petty, yet sore grievances to the Squire, and had made him to despond about success. He has lately, however, been made happy by the receipt of a fine Welsh falcon, which Master Simon terms a stately high-flyer. It is a present from the Squire's friend, Sir Watkyn Williams Wynne; and is, no doubt, a descendant ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... in my dream, that just as they had ended this talk they drew near to a very miry slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire. Then said Pliable, "Ah! neighbor ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... strength lay. They were also to keep a tight rein on their allies—the strength of Athens being derived from the money brought in by their payments, and success in war depending principally upon conduct and capital, had no reason to despond. Apart from other sources of income, an average revenue of six hundred talents of silver was drawn from the tribute of the allies; and there were still six thousand talents of coined silver in the Acropolis, out of nine thousand seven hundred that had once been there, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... the composite forces which maintained the Liberal Government in power through the crisis of 1910, the elements of such an organic view as may inspire and direct a genuine social progress. Liberalism has passed through its Slough of Despond, and in the give and take of ideas with Socialism has learnt, and taught, more than one lesson. The result is a broader and deeper movement in which the cooler and clearer minds recognize below the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... northerly wind; we are steadily bearing south. This, then, is the change I hoped the March equinox would bring! We have been having northerly winds for more than a fortnight. I cannot conceal from myself any longer that I am beginning to despond. Quietly and slowly, but mercilessly, one hope after the other is being crushed and ... have I not a right to be a little despondent? I long unutterably after home, perhaps I am drifting away farther from ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... over the line of new road which was, what is called in America, graded, that is, ploughed, ditched, and levelled, preparatory to putting on the broken stone, and which graded road, in spring and autumn, must be very like the Slough of Despond. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... stranger on his way towards them. The feet of thousands of people, who had visited the spot since the news of the accident was made known, had worn away the last blade of grass from the slippery fields and had left a very Slough of Despond behind them. I was down half a dozen times, and when I reached the hovel where the rescue-party had gathered I was as much like a mud statue as a man. Everything was in readiness, and the descent was made ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... seen, even from the mast-head. The ship was getting deeper and deeper, and we prepared to take to the boat. I calculated the nearest part of South America to be seven hundred miles from us, and that we were more than twice that distance from Rio Janeiro. I did not, however, despond, for, under all circumstances, we were extremely well off: and I inspired the men with so much confidence, that they obeyed in everything, with the utmost alacrity and cheerfulness, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... after hour passed, and the hogs showed no disposition to depart, Hal began to despond, declaring that no help would reach them before they should starve. Ned, however, kept up heart, until the infuriated creatures began to devour the dead body of ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... fine heretofore, broke up with the startling suddenness which is peculiar to the Adriatic. The heavens opened, and to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning the rain descended in torrents, flooding the tents, quenching the illuminations, and reducing the whole ground to a Slough of Despond. The guests naturally rushed for shelter to the little inn, which was much too small to accommodate them. The police made for the barrels of beer, and were soon incapable of keeping order, and a mob of villagers who had assembled ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... 30. Noon. Miserable, utterly miserable. We have camped in the 'Slough of Despond.' The tempest rages with unabated violence. The temperature has gone to 33 deg.; everything in the tent is soaking. People returning from the outside look exactly as though they had been in a heavy shower of rain. They drip pools on the floor-cloth. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... impaired. "What exceeding folly," he wrote to a friend, "was it that tempted me to cross the sea in search of what I do not seem able to find here—a righteous stomach? I have been wallowing in the slough of despond for a week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... in the hopes of discovering a store of farina or rice, but nothing could they find but the rotting tobacco and the monkey-skins, and, starving as they were, they could not manage to eat them. Even when reduced to this extremity the young officers themselves did not despond, nor did their men, who looked to them for example, do so either. Murray calculated that if they could but get a breeze, they might reach the port for which they were steering in less than twenty-four hours. It was very tantalising to be so near it, and yet not to be able ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... let me look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination—her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope. We shall ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... more than happy: she was thrilling with strange and mysterious joy, and was elated beyond measure, as if Christian principle and heaven were already won; as many a pilgrim is happier before the quickly coming fall into the "Slough of Despond" than ever again until within the gates of the ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... I have ever known what it is to despair, or even to despond (if such were my inclination, I have had some opportunities recently), and it was not long before I began to find out the bright side of Cruces life, and enter into schemes for staying there. But it would be a week or so before ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... Elkanah were here!" she had sometimes sighed to herself;—but in all these days she wrote him no word. And he—guessing nothing of her long, silent agony, himself sufficiently bemired in his slough of despond, working away with sad, unsatisfied heart in his little studio, hoping yet for light to come to his night—was, in truth, so full of himself, that Hepsy Ann had little of his thoughts. Shall I go farther, and admit that sometimes this poor fellow dimly regretted his pledged heart, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... as an end-man. And by the way, you're all chirked up yourself. Who's been helping you to the elixir of life. When we parted last night, you were forty fathoms deep in the slough of despond." ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... weather was terribly inclement, alternating between extremes. Heavy snowstorms and hard frosts were followed by thaws and drenching rains. The difficulties of transport continued supreme. Roads, mere spongy sloughs of despond, were nearly impassable, and the waste of baggage-animals was so great ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... a considerable period. The murmur, instead of becoming more distinct, gradually died away. My progress was arrested by fatigue, and I began once more to despond. My exertions produced a perspiration, which, while it augmented my thirst, happily supplied me with imperfect means of ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... ever more firmly planted in the human heart, than that of discovering some short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Heaven knows why it is; it isn't because of anything he's done or has, it's just because it's HIM, I suppose, but I know my chance is gone for good! THAT leaves me free to act for her; no one can accuse me of doing it for myself. And I swear she sha'n't go through that slough of despond again while I have ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... in her sense of humor. It had saved her from many dangers, from none more insidious than that lurking in five years' experience as a successful author. It had rescued her from the slough of despond when unappreciative publishers rejected her most ambitious attempts; it had come to her aid also when a southern admirer whose intentions were better than his rhetoric, sent her a manuscript ode constructed in her honor. She had won success in her profession; but she had won it at ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... engaged to marry Sir Griffin Tewett, and the lover was an occasional visitor in Hertford Street. Mrs. Carbuncle was as anxious as ever that the marriage should be celebrated on the appointed day, and though there had been repeated quarrels, nothing had as yet taken place to make her despond. Sir Griffin would make some offensive speech; Lucinda would tell him that she had no desire ever to see him again; and then the baronet, usually under the instigation of Lord George, would make some awkward apology. Mrs. Carbuncle,—whose ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... many weeks were gone, I began to despond again, fearing, lest, notwithstanding all that I had enjoyed, that I might be deceived and destroyed at the last; for this consideration came strong into my mind, That whatever comfort and peace I thought I might have from the ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... ended, the other would not deny but that it did in some degree affect him. He hoped he was not without proper feeling for the unfortunate man. But he begged to know in what spirit he bore his alleged calamities. Did he despond or have confidence? ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... you may readily conceive, was sunk in the Slough of Despond deeper than ever plummet sounded. Margaret thought this very nice of him; it was a delicate tribute to her that he ate nothing; and the fact that Hugh Van Orden and Petheridge Jukesbury—as she believed—acted in precisely the same way for precisely the same reason, merely demonstrated, of course, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... current section there is no divergence, except by voluntary catastrophe. Another junction flashes into sight, and again your choice is made; negligently enough, perhaps, but still with a view to what you consider the greatest good, present or prospective. One line may lead through the Slough of Despond, and the other across the Delectable Mountains, but you don't know whether the section will prove rough or smooth, or whether it ends in a junction or a terminus, till the cloven mists of the Future melt into a manifest ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... warily, with their feet dragging to save themselves from falling. Everything was splashed with filth and corruption; one marvelled at the cleanness of the sky. Trees were blasted, and seemed to be sinking out of sight in this war-created Slough of Despond. We came to the brow of a hill; in the valley was something that I recognised. The last time I had seen it was in an etching in a shop window in Newark, New Jersey. It was a town, from the midst of ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... but no effort to rally him, physically or mentally, was successful, and he died this morning. "He died," said the former to me, "because he would die." The Indians seem to me a people who are prone to despond, and easily sink into frames ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... to rouse her mother from her slough of despond, as she had often done in the old days. So she said: "Mother, you don't want to spoil this moment for me, do you? Why, I'm back with you again! Come, now, and we'll take in my boxes and unpack them. I've brought provisions along. We'll have a fine dinner all ready by the time father comes home." ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... first day of summer; the oak leaves expand, the roses blow, butterflies are about, and I have spirits enough to write to you. We have had clouded skies this fortnight past, and roads like the Slough of Despond. Last Wednesday we were benighted on a dismal plain, apparently boundless. The moon cast a sickly gleam, and now and then a blue meteor glided along the morass which lay ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... suddenly became aware that a new star had swum into the world's ken'; of how 'the situation of this country is perilous with so much Bolshevik gunpowder moving about', and how 'it has required a strong heart and a clear head to keep the nation from falling either into the sloughs of despond or ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... imaginative. And I can even imagine that little thing finding Tom just the least bit slow, at times, if it were not for his goodness. Tom is so kind that I'm convinced he sometimes feels your joke in his heart when his head isn't quite clear about it. Well, we will not despond, my dear." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the realm of literature. There is a sunrise and sunset. There is a transition from the light of the sun to the gentler light of the moon. There is a rest in nature which seems necessary in all her great operations. And so with all the great operations of the human mind. But do not let us despond if we seem to see a diminished efficacy in the production of what is essentially and immortally great. Our sun is hidden only for a moment. It is ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... enigmas presented to him in the earth's structure—instead of being prompted to undertake laborious enquiries into the natural history of the organic world, and the complicated effects of the igneous and aqueous causes now in operation—was taught to despond from the first. Geology, it was affirmed, could never rise to the rank of an exact science; the greater number of phenomena must for ever remain inexplicable, or only be partially elucidated by ingenious conjectures. Even the mystery which invested the subject was said to constitute one of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... ills appall the brave? Shall manly hearts despond? Up, faint heart, up! The blackest cloud But ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... difficulties the soul of man has to encounter nowadays from those so triumphantly overcome by Christian in the great work of John Bunyan in the first part of "The Pilgrim's Progress." He cannot now get out of the Slough of Despond by planting his foot on the stepping stones of the Promises. He cannot, like Hopeful, pluck from his bosom the Key of Promise which opens every lock in Doubting Castle when the two pilgrims are shut in it by Giant Despair, when they are caught trespassing on his grounds. Even ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... the rest of those babies have returned to their duty," continued Monroe, who was always the first to despond. ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... was succeeded by deep sand, and plains treeless and waterless, not bounded in any direction by any object that the eye could reach, so that, not only through thirst and the difficulty of the march, was the army exhausted, but even the aspect of all around caused the soldiers to despond past all comfort, seeing neither plant, nor stream, nor top of sloping hill, nor blade of grass sprouting or rising through the earth, but a bare sea-like wave of desert heaps of sand environing the army. Now this of itself made the Romans suspect treachery. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... province are at a standstill," he repeated, "while all my energies are bent upon this quest. Should we fail to have news of his capture in Dauphiny, we need not, nevertheless, despond. I have sent men after him along the three roads that lead to Paris. They are to spare neither money nor horses in picking up his trail and effecting his capture. After all, I ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... score of others, who are not at all the bloodless creatures of the Romance of the Rose, but men real enough to stop you on the road and to hold your attention. Scene after scene follows, in which are pictured many of our own spiritual experiences. There is the Slough of Despond, into which we all have fallen, out of which Pliable scrambles on the hither side and goes back grumbling, but through which Christian struggles mightily till Helpful stretches him a hand and drags him out on solid ground and bids him go on his way. Then come ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... other people out of their troubles was not helping the Days out of their particular Slough of Despond. So many difficulties seemed reaching out to clutch at Janice and Daddy! The girl thought it was like walking through a briar-patch. Every step they ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... to become an actress, and she went diligently to work, not allowing herself to despond over that first great disappointment. For the next seven years, she worked faithfully learning the new profession from the very bottom. "I became aware," she said, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin windows; he must serve and learn his trade before ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... to Alida's room to help her sort and address them. "You certainly have your share this year," she said, laughing. "Do you remember what a slough of despond you ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... love with patience.... He began life full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, ungovernable, expecting the world to fall at once beneath his powers. Unable to bear the sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, he began to despond, and flew to dissipation as a relief. For six weeks he was scarcely sober, and to show what a man does to gratify his appetites when once they get the better of him, he once covered his tongue and throat, as far as he could reach, with Cayenne ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... that she must get him somehow back into his slough of despond. His freedom paralyzed her. And he returned with a ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... schoolboys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would "lend" me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came, and I was beginning to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands a double letter with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging. The fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen; she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... logically. I think I begin to see the light. Can you not see that for some reason Carmen doesn't admit the existence of evil? And you know, and I know, that she is on the right track. I have followed the opposite path all my life; and it led right into the slough of despond. Now I have turned, and am trying to follow her. And do you put the thought of Satan out of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... dejected, writes this Ode to reconcile him to his destiny, and to inspire him with delight in the beautiful Scenery by which he was surrounded; insinuating, that should Augustus banish him, which was no improbable event, he ought not to despond, but to form his conduct upon the spirited example of Teucer; who, together with his Friends and Followers, was banished from his native City, Salamis, by his Father, because he had not revenged upon the Greeks the death ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... existence is like the flight of a bird in the air; he is sustained only by effort, and when he ceases to exert himself he falls. There are intervals, however, of comparative calm, and to one of these the storm-tossed Bunyan was now approaching. He had passed through the Slough of Despond. He had gone astray after Mr. Legality, and the rocks had almost overwhelmed him. Evangelist now found him and put him right again, and he was to be allowed a breathing space at the Interpreter's house. As he was at his ordinary ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... these details, and I hasten over the ground. One entire hour passed away, and no jailer appeared. We began to despond heavily; and Agnes, poor thing! was now the most agitated of us all. At length eleven struck in the harsh tones of the prison-clock. A few minutes after, we heard the sound of bolts drawing, and bars unfastening. The jailer entered—drunk, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... preferred it; he considered that he was not properly equipped without that enormous sack—big as that which the "Pilgrim's Progress" man shuffled off when he scrambled out on the right side of the Slough of Despond. I think he regarded the trip to the river—though we drove comfortably to it, and drove home again the same evening—as a serious expedition into unknown wilds, and was buoyed up throughout with the fancy that he ranked ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... relation, then we and the time are changeable too, then without money is impossible to perform any matter, if I had at present in my grieved desperate position L4 for my restaurant, then I were rescued. I do not earn anything, and I must despond at last, I perish here, in Russia I was ruined, please to aid me in Your merciful humanity by something, if I had L15 I could start off from here to go somewhere to look for my daily bread, and if I had L30 so I shall go to Jerusalem because I am convinced by my bitter ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Jean-Baptiste Oudry. He was a man endowed with the sort of energy we are apt to consider modern and American. He already occupied a high place in the Gobelins, and retained it, too, while he lifted Beauvais from the Slough of Despond, and carried it to ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... pleasures disgraceful in themselves, that he altogether abandoned the reins, and allowed himself to live such a life as is passed by some young men in London. His tastes and appetites were too high for this. He did not sink into a slough of despond. He did not become filthy and vicious, callous and bestial; but he departed very widely astray from those rules which governed him during his ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... cash, they sallied forth to carry devastation and affright throughout the camps of innocent and unsuspecting blacklegs. As might be expected, it took about as many minutes as they had pounds to effect the ruin of the adventurers. Did they despond? Not they; a flaw existed in their calculations. They looked for it with care, and were torn from their employment only by the exigencies of the time, and the pressing demands of nature for immediate bread. Mr Wedge had from this period ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... sound of the words, we all think of some one unhappy soul we know just now, whom they suggest. Nobody is ever without at least one brother, sister, cousin, or friend on hand, who is struggling through this social slough of despond; and nobody ever will be, so long as the world goes on taking it for granted that the slough is a necessity, and that the road must go through it. Nature never meant any such thing. Now and then she blunders or gets thwarted ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... about the room, hoping to see some blue blossoms awaiting her. But none appeared; and she was about to despond again, ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... Last night I was afraid Dr. Johnson was beginning to faint in his resolution; for he said, 'If we must ride much, we shall not go; and there's an end on't.' To-day, when he talked of Sky with spirit, I said, 'Why, Sir, you seemed to me to despond yesterday. You are a delicate Londoner;—you are a maccaroni[263]; you can't ride.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I shall ride better than you. I was only afraid I should not find a horse able to carry me.' I hoped then there would be no fear of getting ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Rosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot refrain from ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... been—and yet to be lifted into the hope, or rather certainty, of seeing you next week pleased us extremely of course, and the more that your note through Lady Lyell had thrown us backward into a slough of despond and made me sceptical as to your coming ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... of want now attacked poor Kit. He could obtain no employment. His expectations in this respect, as well as his earnest efforts, received so little encouragement that he began, finally, to despond. Extreme poverty is a wet damper on the fires of the best genius; but, as was the case with Kit, it does not effectually put it out. Kit saw with sorrow that he must retrace his steps. To obtain ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... to five to one. Ah, but why should we despond on that account?" And his voice vibrated with renewed confidence. "The country is a difficult one, easy to defend, and Lord Wellington's genius will have made the best of it. There are, for example, ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... said the other. "It must be a sad ride for him! Much honor, much hardship! You've no reason to despond, for your husband will return tomorrow or the day after; while I—look at me, Maria! I go through life stiff and straight, do my duty cheerfully; my cheeks are rosy, my food has a relish, yet I've been obliged to resign what was dearest to me. I have endured my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... crossed. He agitates the necessity and practicability of social reform, but it must be through individual effort. Years ago he decided that society was in a low state, now he calls on all men to put their shoulders to the wheel and lift it out of the Slough of Despond, where it has been floundering to no purpose for so long. His investigations are aided by a keen shrewdness, that bespeaks the practical man, who knows where to find the vulnerable heel of circumstance, and aims at it his swiftest arrows. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in 1861, and expressed it strongly in a long letter when Atlanta had fallen and he had won his commission as major-general in the regular army. "I confess I owe you all I now enjoy of fame," he said, "for I had allowed myself in 1861 to sink into a perfect 'slough of despond.'" Halleck's friendship and encouragement had put him in the way of recovering from this. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 791.] But now his faith in human nature was rudely shocked by finding, apparently, this friendly hand joining in the hardest ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men— in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, from the slough of despond and the desert, Half dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee[72]—Ho!" muttered the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... 'Unhappily, I myself can be of no use to him; he has not the same friendly feeling for me as he used to have. But it is very certain that those of his friends who have the power should exert themselves to raise him out of this fearful slough of despond. If he isn't effectually helped, there's no saying what may happen. One thing is certain, I think: he is past helping himself. Sane literary work cannot be expected from him. It seems a monstrous thing that so good a fellow, and one with such excellent brains too, should ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... write about myself. What can I say on that precious topic? My health is pretty good. My spirits are not always alike. Nothing happens to me. I hope and expect little in this world, and am thankful that I do not despond and suffer more. Thank you for inquiring after our old servant; she is pretty well; the little shawl, etc., pleased her much. Papa likewise, I am glad to say, is pretty well; with his and my kindest regards to you and Mr. Gaskell—Believe ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... with his prayer to her, if so, to forgive lines coloured by hasty passion, and, for the sake of all, not to disdain that self-vindication which might perhaps yet soften a nature possessed of such depths of sweetness as that which appeared now so cruel and so bitter. He would not yet despond—not yet commission her to give his last farewell ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... question why the Lord of the way had ever allowed this unhallowed crew to gather in the valley at all. If he could restrain them, and if Mr. Greatheart could hew the giants in pieces, why could not the whole nest of hornets have been smoked out once and for all? Even the Slough of Despond could not be mended with all the cartloads of promises and texts that were shot there. And yet for all that, when one came to reflect upon it, this Calvinistic scheme of election and reprobation did seem to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... attention of the nation was again directed to Egypt the scene was transformed. It was as though at the touch of an angel the dark morasses of the Slough of Despond had been changed to the breezy slopes of the Delectable Mountains. The Khedive and his Ministers lay quiet and docile in the firm grasp of the Consul-General. The bankrupt State was spending surpluses upon internal improvement. The disturbed Irrigation Department was ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... strictly legal sense. It is difficult to say what it is if it be not the private domain of King Leopold and of several monopolist-controlling trusts. Probably the only way out of the present slough of despond is the definite assumption of sole responsibility by the Belgian people; for it should be remembered that a very large number of patriotic Belgians urgently long to redress evils for which they feel themselves to be indirectly, and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... received, through the interest of Lord Moira, the post of Barrack-Master in Dublin, and thus became independent. In 1815, "Retrenchment" deprived him of this office, and he was placed on half-pay. The family had to seek aid from the son, who entreated them not to despond, but rather to thank Providence for having permitted them to enjoy the fruits of office so long, till he (the son) was "in a situation to keep them in comfort without it." "Thank Heaven," he writes afterwards of his father, "I have been able to make his latter days ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... being governed, that she observes it too much. I could talk till to-morrow upon these things, but they make me melancholy. I could not but observe that lately, after much conversation with Mr. Harley, though he is the most fearless man alive, and the least apt to despond, he confessed to me that uttering his mind to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... was beginning to rise, phoenixlike, from the ashes of his despond, the Patriot reprinted the full details of Nellie's complaint as they appeared in a New York daily. For a brief spell he shrivelled up with shame and horror; he could not look any one in the face. Nellie's lawyers ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... There was a grant of land, which took their name, and became the Manor of Despond; there's where Spoon Hall is now. Sir Thomas Desponder was one of those who demanded the Charter, though his name wasn't always given because he wasn't a baron. Perhaps Miss Palliser does not know ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... wealth on a lazy world merely causes the growler to circulate rapidly. And so we sympathize with Andrew Carnegie in his endeavor to live up to his dictum to die poor, and yet not pauperize the world by his wealth. But let us not despond. The man is only seventy-eight. His eyes are bright; his teeth are firm; his form is erect; his limbs are agile; and his brain is at its best. Most hopeful sign of all, he can laugh. He can even laugh at himself. If ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... doom shall I despond? I would not from thy snare go free, Release me not from thy sweet bond, I live but in thy mystery; Though all my senses from me flee, I still would glut my glazing eye, Thou nectar of mortality— To taste that ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... jolted off one's seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a unique experience. Nor was the spending of ten hours in making thirty miles with four horses. In the Yellowstone one of the coaches of our party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on the highway, from which it was finally extricated backwards by the combined efforts of twelve horses borrowed from the other coaches. Misery makes strange bedfellows, and the ingredients of a Christmas pudding are not more thoroughly shaken together or more inextricably mingled ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... would seem as precious to me when I had got them as they do now. Once I did not know what it was to despond, but I lost my pupils last winter, and everything seemed hopeless. I am not vain or egotistic; I do not pine for applause and wealth, but I should like to sing.... I've heard so much about my voice that I'm curious to know what ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... my dream, that just as they had ended this talk they drew near to a very miry slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... rent free for a year. It was a rare chance for the reporter, and I did not miss it. The city as landlord in the Bend was fair game. The old houses came down at last, and for a twelvemonth, while a reform government sat at the City Hall, the three-acre lot lay, a veritable slough of despond filled with unutterable nastiness, festering in the sight of men. No amount of prodding seemed able to get it out of that, and all the while money given for the relief of the people was going to ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... so; but those who did stand against us paid the penalty. If therefore thou thinkest this good to do, let us forthwith attempt the Peloponnese, or if thou thinkest good to hold back, we may do that. Do not despond however, for there is no way of escape for the Hellenes to avoid being thy slaves, after they have first given an account of that which they did to thee both now and at former times. Thus it were best to do; but if thou hast indeed resolved to retire thyself and to withdraw thy army, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... his life was blighted, Mr. Gammon sang and whistled with more than usual vivacity as he dressed each morning. It was not in his nature to despond; he had received many a knock-down blow, and always came up fresher after it. Mrs. Clover's veto upon his tender hopes with regard to Minnie had not only distressed, but greatly surprised him; for during the last few ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... All arts of civilising others render thee rude and untractable; courts have taught thee ill manners, and polite conversation has finished thee a pedant. Besides, a greater coward burdeneth not the army. But never despond; I pass my word, whatever spoil thou takest shall certainly be thy own; though I hope that vile carcase will first become a prey ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... It is rather jumping at conclusions to consider that he will let his vessel be wrecked. Yes, it was nervous work watching a vessel like that; but there, we must hope for the best, and possibly there is no reason to despond. Whoever the brig belonged to had good reason for getting away, and they have succeeded in that. There, come along; let's have our dinner, and think no more about it. But hallo! What's the ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... scowled at it, and at last passed a law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them, for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were Papist processions and mobs, which made me afraid to stir out, lest knowing ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... have to have ready a Theme to send off to Harvard. Of course, every Thursday morning We, with one accord, begin to make excuses. Well, the Dread Day rolls around to-morrow, and consequently I am deep in the Slough of Despond. My only consolation is that our Geniuses can't write regularly, but then the mood to write never possesses me.... This week, in writing a comparison between Hamlet and Antonio, I did succeed in jotting down something, but unfortunately ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... did not want such a boy as Harry appeared to be. His country garb, with the five broad patches, seemed to interfere with the working out of his manifest destiny. Yet he was not disheartened. Spruce clerks and ill-mannered boys laughed at him; but he did not despond. ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... against the cloudless sky, its lofty crown of rock just faintly signalling the still distant coming of the heralds of the god of day. Here in the gloomy depths of the basin, and at the banks of the murmuring stream, all was still silence and despond. The smouldering ruins of Bennett's cosey home lay a mass of dull red coal, with smoke wreaths sailing idly aloft from charred beam or roof-tree. The mangled body of the stout frontiersman had been gathered into a trooper's blanket and lay there near the pathetic ruin of the house he had ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the Armenian, 'do not despond; it may be your turn next to take money; in the meantime, can't you be persuaded to ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... herself with a fond and implicit faith to the guidance of all she loved; and to the chances of life. It was a sweet indolence of the mind, which made one of her most beautiful traits of character; there is something so unselfish in tempers reluctant to despond. You see that such persons are not occupied with their own existence; they are not fretting the calm of the present life, with the egotisms of care, and conjecture, and calculation: if they learn anxiety, it is for ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and anxiety. Nor do I yet see the end of this worse than tedious uncertainty." Mary was to see Shelley's younger brother, who was just married, but she had small hope of reaping any good from his visit. She adds, "Adieu, my ever dear friend; while hearts such as yours beat, I will not wholly despond." Mary refers with great kindness to Hunt, and is most anxious as to his future. She also notices with high satisfaction that the Whigs with Canning are in the ascendant, and that they may be favourable to Greece. While Mary Shelley was residing in Kentish Town, before she joined ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... nothing. He was tired, and absorbed in his new possessions. It was good to sit down in his study, and spread his treasures out on the broad table, and gloat over them. A clump of damp moss rested quietly on his new sermon, "The Slough of Despond," but he took no note. He was looking for a place to put this curious little lizard in, and after anxious thought selected the gilt celluloid box, lined with pink satin, which the Mission Circle had given ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... us she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway; Our's is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto: Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre cannot be swept away—- The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... greater sin than all the sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than all the sins that had been committed by all God's redeemed ones. Was there ever a man in the world so capable of describing the miseries of Doubting Castle, or of the Slough of Despond, as poor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... slavery in some States, and by a too zealous anxiety for instant emancipation in others,—by fear of provoking opposition in one quarter, and by a blind defiance of all obstacles in another. Now what shall be done? Shall we hesitate, despond, despair? Never! For Heaven's sake, take off the muzzle. Use every weapon which the God of Battles has placed in our hands. Put forth all the power of the nation. Encourage and promote all fighting generals; cashier all officers who are determined ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the course of the dull world; he is not quite a man, as the world goes, and not at all an angel, as the celestials see. He must be his own motive, path, and guide, his own priest, king, and law. The world may be his footstool, and may be his slough of despond, but is never his final end. His aims are transcendental, his realm is art, his interests ideal, his life divine, his destiny immortal. All the old theories of saintship are revived in him. He is in the world, but not of it. Shadows of infinitude are his realities. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... arrival in the metropolis, he sought a situation, but in vain, and he was beginning to despond, when he obtained work with one John Morgan, an instrument-maker, in Finch Lane, Cornhill. Here he gradually became proficient in making quadrants, parallel rulers, compasses, theodolites, etc., until, at the end of a year's practice, he could make "a brass sector with a French joint, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... child, you must not despond; at your age one must try to see only the bright side. If I expected to remain in America, I would not give you up without a struggle; would beg your mother's permission to keep you until she claimed you. But I shall only wait to learn that Douglass has arranged for my arrival. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting there at the gate, just as he left her—his forever, but not here below. Yes; my belief in woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted forever on earth, but waiting! She in anticipation of a meeting in Elysium; he in the Slough of Despond." ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... the mean time will you help me pull him out of his slough of despond?" she asked, smiling with the ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... been grown oaks, the sea-ports would have found a market. Had they been [larch], the country demands for ruder purposes would have been unanswerable. The Duke does the best he can to retrieve his woods, but seems to despond more than a young man ought to do. It is refreshing to see a man in his situation give so much of his time and thoughts to the improvement of his estates, and the welfare of the people. The Duke tells me his people in Keeldar were all quite wild the first time his father went up ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... weary, no doubt, and ready to despond on this prospect, by presenting another which it is in our power to realize. Is it possible for a real American to look at the prosperity of this country without some desire for its continuance, without some respect for the measures which, many will say, produced, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... [28] "The slough of despond which we call the eighteenth century" ("Hopes and Fears for Art," p. 211). "The English language, which under the hands of sycophantic verse-makers had been reduced to a miserable jargon . . . flowed clear, pure, and simple along with the music of Blake and Coleridge. Take ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom, from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in strict concert and cooeperation. If, with the report of your Finance Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars. Nor must we forget that they are unwearied ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles which underlie and animate them; for no insight of principles, and of the moral laws which govern human events, could ever cause tyrants to exult or philanthropists to despond. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... ah me! most wretchedly Mourns, meekest, worthiest woman, Her husband dear hurled to his bier By Roman fiends inhuman. Tremulously now murmurs she: "Naught's here but naked horror; Black despond and blind despair, Mad turmoil, murderous terror! Free he rose, his hero blows Gave Rome black cause to rue him; Ten to one, then they run Their poisonous poignards through him. Thus took flight thy tortured sprite, Dear heart, from ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... better, and He is on our side, no matter what the Kaiser says about it.' I would have gone crazy many a day lately, Miss Oliver, dear, if I had not sat tight and repeated that to myself. My cousin Sophia is, like you, somewhat inclined to despond. 'Oh, dear me, what will we do if the Germans ever get here,' she wailed to me yesterday. 'Bury them,' said I, just as off-hand as that. 'There is plenty of room for the graves.' Cousin Sophia said that I was flippant ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Nesbitt said to Effie and me once. He said, if we had a friend of whose love we could be sure, a friend who was wise and powerful and who had promised to bring us safely through our troubles, we should have no cause to fret and despond, though we might not understand all that happened by the way. We might be sure that in the end ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... act on trifling grounds, but in great matters they are easily overwhelmed. Men of this kind show great activity in helping an unfortunate individual, but by the distress of a whole Nation they are only inclined to despond, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... less Trouble, believe me, Madam; (return'd Gracelove) and then began to inform Fairlaw in every Point of her unhappy Circumstances. The good old Gentleman heard 'em with Amazement and Horror; but told her, however, that she need not despond, for he would take Care to right her against her Brother; and, that in the mean Time she should be as welcome to him as any of his nearest Kindred, except his Wife and Daughter. Philadelphia would have knelt to thank him; but he told her, that humble Posture was due to none ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the city. On recovering, he wished to go to Vienna, with the view of beginning an artistic career, and was only prevented from carrying out his design by want of money to defray the expenses of the journey. He was in great distress, and even began to despond, until finally in the summer he contrived to get to Posen, and thence to Berlin, where he arrived ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... two hundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth for at least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner of the next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough of despond. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... teachers must not think it strange, if their hearers and readers are slow to change. Nor must they despond even though no signs of improvement appear for months or years. A change for the better in a student may not be manifest till it has been in progress for years. It may not be perfected for many years. You cannot force a change of mind, as you can force the growth of a plant in a hot-house. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... of one's Time"! O those dismal Phantoms, conjured up by the blatant Book-taster and the Indolent Reviewer! How many a poor Soul, that would fain have been honest, have they bewildered into the Slough of Despond and the Bog ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... no one by quoting Janet's common sense. For that I should be sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in sloughs of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of immeasurable Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries, has it comforted me to whisper to myself: "I don't believe it of Him. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Despond not, ye bachelors—anybody can get married. It's as easy as rolling off from the roof of a six-story house, and quite as beneficial to the system. I have known people who did this little business without intending to accomplish it, but they never crowed over it; and I have known others ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... of debt, 'Tis not the thing t' accept the terms, But dread th' event—the tale affirms. A Stag approach'd the Sheep, to treat For one good bushel of her wheat. "The honest Wolf will give his bond." At which, beginning to despond, "The Wolf (cries she) 's a vagrant bite. And you are quickly out of sight; Where shall I find or him or you Upon the day the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... ashamed to go abroad, and has no comfort at home. He becomes crabbed, morose, and querulous, losing all pleasure in life. He wants the passport to enjoyment and respect—money; he has only his debts, and these make him suspected, despised, and snubbed. He lives in the slough of despond. He feels degraded in others' eyes as well as in his own. He must submit to impertinent demands, which he can only put off by sham excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost the independent bearing of a man. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... while at Hoppet Hall; and come in and see you from time to time till you get better." John Morton replied that he should never get better; but though he said so then, there was at times evidence that he did not yet quite despond as to himself. He could still talk to Mrs. Morton of buying Chowton Farm, and was very anxious that he should not be forgotten ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... had been petty, yet sore grievances to the Squire, and had made him to despond about success. He has lately, however, been made happy by the receipt of a fine Welsh falcon, which Master Simon terms a stately high-flyer. It is a present from the Squire's friend, Sir Watkyn Williams Wynne; and is, no doubt, a descendant of some ancient line of Welsh princes of the air, that ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... fleet, in which their real strength lay. They were also to keep a tight rein on their allies—the strength of Athens being derived from the money brought in by their payments, and success in war depending principally upon conduct and capital, had no reason to despond. Apart from other sources of income, an average revenue of six hundred talents of silver was drawn from the tribute of the allies; and there were still six thousand talents of coined silver in the Acropolis, out of nine thousand seven hundred that had once been ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... Pilgrim's Progress from his memories of the pilgrims and their fairs on the Way, he may have had other scenes in his mind which suggested other names. The Delectable Mountains may have been the blue line of the Sussex Downs, or the hills by Black Down and Hindhead. The Slough of Despond may have been the marshy pools of Shalford Common, or the ponds under the hill by Chilworth; and Doubting Castle, spelt Dowding Castle, is actually a name to be found on the Surrey map, south of Epsom ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... than our worse enemies." Yet it appears by a subsequent letter, that the grievances of which the General complained so bitterly, were not cured even by the presence of the Chevalier; that those who had made a pretext of his absence to complain and despond, desponded still, and that, in fact, the malady was so deep-seated as to ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Vain were counsels of captains and doctors. Soldier stomachs that could tackle mule and horse meat could stand any load, said the boys, and loaded accordingly. Cheer and laughter and merry-making, fun and chaff and jollity, ran through the ranks, where all, but another sun agone, was silence and despond. The rough campaign was practically over. Only scattered bands of hostiles remained, in this part of the country at least. Rest and recuperation for those "tatterdemalions" would be the enforced order of the day for a month to come, for while they might readily and speedily build ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... he confided to his friend Bob Wilson one evening as during his transit through a particularly dismal slough of despond they in company were busily engaged in blazing the trail with empty bottles; "One such as I, a man of thirty and of good health, without a dollar or the prospect of a dollar, an income or the prospect of an income, a home or the prospect of a home, following ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... shall we therefore despond? [And tearing himself from melancholy, he springs toward the left.] There is still much to do over here. Cock-a—[At this point the crowing of other COCKS ascends from the valley. CHANTECLER listens, then softly.] Hark! Do ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... make a defence. Alfred felt assured that they would never let the matter come to trial; but time passed on, and they still persisted. Many of his brother lawyers were not only doubtful, but more inclined to despond than to encourage him as to the event of the trial; several regretted that he had not accepted of Mr. Sharpe's offered compromise. "Half the estate certain, and his father's release from all difficulties, they thought ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... hope, rather than of actual prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hips, the halberd grasped in the strong right hand, and the shield in the left, bearing the Saxon coat-of-arms,—as these various points were noted and remarked on, each moment brought fresh courage to hearts that had been almost ready to despond. In all ages there have been jealousies and strife between the military and the respectable burgher class, and Freiberg was no exception to this rule. But to-day the soldiers were welcomed with loud and joyful shouts, which they, fully conscious of their own value, acknowledged by ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... the drawing near of God's sun. The soul looks ever unto the hills whence cometh its help. In the morning, at noon, and at night, man longs for a deliverer. God is the pledge of the soul's victory over the body. For men floundering in the slough of sin and despond these words, "Ye may, ye must be born again," are sweeter than angel songs falling ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... this. Then Zwingli spoke one more, begging all to hold firm to the Gospel, and never to despond as long as they leaned upon it. "What is done from the best motives will be misrepresented by falsehood and slander. Thus it had been said here and there yesterday evening that we would now degrade the body and blood of Christ into sleeping-cups. No!"—cried he—"no one certainly wishes ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... country. The children undoubtedly listened to the talk of their elders and gazed with wide-open eyes at the execrable plates in the imported editions illustrating Christian's journey. After the deaths by fire and sword of the Martyrs, the Pilgrim's difficulties in the Slough of Despond, or with the Giant Despair, afforded pleasurable reading; while Mr. Great Heart's courageous cheerfulness brought practically a ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... for my Escape, and thought myself extreamly happy, tho' thrown on an unknown Coast, and destitute of every thing necessary to sustain me: But I trusted in that Goodness which had preserved, and which I hoped would provide for me. To despond, I thought, would be mistrusting the Bounty of our Creator, and might be the ready way to plunge me into the Miseries Men naturally apprehend in my Circumstances. I therefore heartily recommended me to the Divine Protection, and enter'd the Woods ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... present gurled and growled; but the soldiers laughed at seeing the sergeant on horseback. Mr Swinton, however, calmly advised us to make no obstacle: "Good," said he, "will come of this, and though for a season we are ordained to tribulation, and to toil through the slough of despond, yet a firm footing and a fair and green path lies ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... her own son, and her welcome was kindly given. But she was anxious and preoccupied, having but risen from the perusal of the despatches Paul had brought; and although her natural courage and hopefulness would not permit her to despond, she could not but admit that danger menaced the cause of the Red Rose, whilst she realized, as her young son could not do at his age, how utterly disastrous would be a single victory of the enemy at ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... fond,—oh, you will not sentence me to woe. Mother, oh, speak to me. I care not how many years I wait: say, only say that, if his character be cleared of all they have dared to cast upon it, I shall one day he his. Do not turn from me, mother. Oh, bid me not despond; and yet and yet, because he is poor, oh, would you, can you ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... knife. Like most nervous persons, her feelings were intense. Such condemnation, remorse, and utter despair as took hold of her: it could not be called repentance, for that has "A purpose of heart and endeavour after new obedience." She was in the Slough of Despond. The twilight had deepened into darkness, when sounds ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... Fuller's gay spirit, Lorado's swift wit and the good fraternal companionship of Charles Francis Browne were of daily comfort; but above all others I depended upon my wife whose serenely optimistic spirit carried me over many a deep slough of despond. How I leaned upon her! Her ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... despair reigned. What! they had been marching since morning with nothing to eat, they had summoned up all their energies to escape that deadly trap at Harancourt pass, only in the end to be landed in that slough of despond, with an insurmountable wall staring them in the face! It would be hours, perhaps, before it became the last comer's turn to cross, and everyone knew that even if the Prussians should not be enterprising enough to continue their pursuit in the darkness they would be there with the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Chinese on September 18th, and kept in vilest durance and imminent danger of being put to death till October 8th, when, after the capture of the Summer Palace, both the prisoners were released.] is safe. We have been very uneasy about him, and not without cause. The China war is a slough of despond: the further we advance the more we shall flounder, until we are half ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... induced by the look of the house. Still, when I do look around and see the rich carpets gone, the pictures, statues, all the thousand beautiful things we used to take pleasure in, I say to myself, 'This just man will have his reward.' Don't despond, Jack: I tell you, things will come ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... me look forward to brighter days. You would not now sadden the hours of your absence from me by causing anxious thoughts in my heart. Oh! my precious wife; you have borne much for my sake, you have been to me in very truth a ministering angel. Do not now despond, but still strengthen me by your brave, hopeful smiles. You know how I shall miss you every moment of your absence, but the hope that this ride will do you good makes me willing and anxious to have ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... since that I have Love's true colours donned, I in his service will not now despond, For in extremes Love yet can all restore: So till her beauty walks the world no more All day remembered in my hope shall be The lady who is ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... right; for Man, to man so oft unjust, Is always so to Women: one sole bond Awaits them—treachery is all their trust; Taught to conceal their bursting hearts despond Over their idol, till some wealthier lust Buys them in marriage—and what rests beyond? A thankless husband—next, a faithless lover— Then dressing, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... required all Giles's skill as a chauffeur. Another time, trying a short cut across some fields, the car ran into soft earth and refused to stir. Her occupants got down and tried with their united efforts to push her out of her "slough of despond", but with no effect. Giles kept starting the engine, but the wheels, instead of gripping, simply turned round and round, and sank deeper into the soil. They were obliged to go to a farm for help, ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... these disorders to mature themselves, I must now return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that, although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... never be discouraged; never despond; never say, "It is too late." Fear not, even if you relapse again and again. Many of you have much to contend with. Some may be so faulty, by temperament or habit, that they can never on this earth lead a wholly fair and harmonious life, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill, If fortune bind both lovers in one bond, If either at the other's grief despond, If both be governed by one life, one will; If in two bodies one soul triumph still, Raising the twain from earth to heaven beyond, If love with one blow and one golden wand Have power both smitten breasts to pierce ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... his carelessness (but then he had been so worn out with watching), his fatal mistake, his heartless mistake (and yet he would almost have given his own life for his children) had brought him down to this slough of despond. There was no hope, the doctors never told him of any, and he knew he could ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... seeing that the pulsations of each individual's life are creating other pulsations which answer them back in other lives, we know not where or how many, whenever we thus shrink away from our duty, when we turn our back upon it, or despond about it, when we become deaf to the higher calls, we are, in fact, crying to God to be relieved of our service to Him and to our fellows. And it is a happy thing for our life if He does not answer us according to ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... nibbled at her glove in full spirit of comradarie. Then one day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation, a brief minute of exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and beyond that, alas for the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added period of wallowing in the Slough of Despond! ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... who delighted in interfering with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power. He was doing this—somehow—for her benefit. She saw neither the how nor the why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her. All the world was not limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet. ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... our hero proceeded, through cross country roads—such roads!—very different from the Irish roads. Waggon ruts, into which the carriage wheels sunk nearly to the nave—and, from time to time, "sloughs of despond," through which it seemed impossible to drag, walk, wade, or swim, and all the time with a sulky postilion. "Oh, how unlike my ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... repeated the Doctor; "it won't do. You think too much of the past, and despond too much in the present. That won't do either. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... them, and to carry them water and food. Grey and I agreed that, though it was a very honourable thing to command a ship, we should be very glad to be relieved of the honour. Since we captured the vessel we had not had a moment to take any food. Hunger made us rather inclined to despond. We, however, found out what was the matter with us, and sent Billy Wise down into the cabin to forage. He soon returned with some biscuit and white cheese, and dried plums and raisins, and a few bottles of claret, but there was no honest cold ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... There are some folks that are, you know. There are some people who study to be pessimistic. They are the "self-appointed inspectors of warts and carbuncles, the self-elected supervisors of sewers and street gutters." They pride themselves on being guides to the Slough of Despond and on holding a pass key to the ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... of victory is slender indeed: yet to us now living it seems as if man had not yet lost all that part of his soul which longs for beauty: nay we cannot but hope that it is not yet dying. If we are not deceived in that hope, if the art of to-day has really come alive out of the slough of despond which we call the eighteenth century, it will surely grow and gather strength and draw to it other forms of intellect and hope that now scarcely know it; and then, whatever changes it may go through, it ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... a pope, he must in these days be a reformer, or—give up his temporal power. Not that I look on Pio Nono as more than a precursor; he may break ground, and point the way, but he is not the man to lead Europe out of its present slough of despond, and under the headship of the Church found a new and lasting republic. We want a Hildebrand, one who will be to the nineteenth century as Gregory ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... from the depths of despond; but Job stood, at last, upon the heights, and felt once more God's blessed sun, and rejoiced—even as we should. But, as regards this stranger, he is one who would seem to have suffered some great wrong, the continued thought of which has unhinged his mind; his ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the early American road was a veritable Slough of Despond. Watery pits were to be encountered wherein horses were drowned and loads sank from sight. Frequently traffic was stopped for hours by wagons which had broken down and blocked the way. Thirteen wagons at one time were stalled on Logan's Hill on the York Road. Frightful accidents occurred in attempting ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... impression that he has lost all of his friends," said Kirk. "He needs to be assured that such is not the case—that his friends and acquaintances have no desire to cut him. I think if that could be done he would come out of the slough of despond and be worth something. We may need him this summer; or a man who has his pitching ability ought to develop into ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... would do good in many ways. It would revive the drooping spirits of those who were inclined to despond as to the prosperity of the cause. It would rouse from slumber the consciences of some who had once been its active friends, and it would strengthen the hands of all faithful workers; it would bring on the field all the best speakers of the country, and give an ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... every one knew that this was impossible, he would narrate these visions with the faith of an old Bible seer, and declare that they must come true, and that it was a sin to despond. But as year after year he journeyed up and down the country, seeing, at Mission after Mission, the buildings crumbling into ruin, the lands all taken, sold, resold, and settled by greedy speculators; the Indian converts disappearing, driven back to their original wildernesses, the last traces ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of Lord Moira, the post of Barrack-Master in Dublin, and thus became independent. In 1815, "Retrenchment" deprived him of this office, and he was placed on half-pay. The family had to seek aid from the son, who entreated them not to despond, but rather to thank Providence for having permitted them to enjoy the fruits of office so long, till he (the son) was "in a situation to keep them in comfort without it." "Thank Heaven," he writes afterwards of his father, "I have been able to make his latter days tranquil ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... a grant of land, which took their name, and became the Manor of Despond; there's where Spoon Hall is now. Sir Thomas Desponder was one of those who demanded the Charter, though his name wasn't always given because he wasn't a baron. Perhaps Miss Palliser does not know ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... suddenly in Holland, and facing bravely the fact that his own vitality had been fatally impaired. "What exceeding folly," he wrote to a friend, "was it that tempted me to cross the sea in search of what I do not seem able to find here—a righteous stomach? I have been wallowing in the slough of despond for a week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am as blue as ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... you know. There are some people who study to be pessimistic. They are the "self-appointed inspectors of warts and carbuncles, the self-elected supervisors of sewers and street gutters." They pride themselves on being guides to the Slough of Despond and on holding a pass key to the cave ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... that much has happened since your departure that can engage your curiosity. Of all publick transactions the whole world is now informed by the newspapers. Opposition seems to despond; and the dissenters, though they have taken advantage of unsettled times, and a government much enfeebled, seem not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... handkerchiefs for Mat, marked towels; and one noble being actually took off his coat and packed the trunks in layers of mosaic-work wonderful to behold. A supper celebrated the last evening; and even the doleful Lavinia, touched by such kindness, emerged from her slough of despond and electrified the ball by dancing a jig with ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... means and resources, to drive us, trembling and unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom, from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in strict concert and cooeperation. If, with the report of your Finance Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough of despond." ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... compulsory labor should, on having this labor left to their discretion, be disposed at first to relax, and, in some instances, totally abstain from it, was equally to be expected. But we have no reason to despond, nor to imagine that, because such has occurred in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... hours had elapsed since the last sound of a trumpet had been heard; it was now one o'clock, and as yet no trace of the travellers had been discovered in any quarter. The most hopeful began to despond; and general ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... imprisoned on a window pane, to find its way to freedom through it. There is no escape for the fly until its restless activities discover the right direction, and, to change the figure, there is none for the Negro out of his slough of despond until he can lay hold of the ballot. Wanting the ballot no amount of education and wealth in the South and of agitation in the North will of themselves be able to make Southern Governments responsive to the needs and the rights of the Negro as laborer and citizen. But until they ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... the great numerical majority of the inhabitants bear this character, he spoke truly, inasmuch as the great numerical majority of the inhabitants are negroes, among the most depraved in the island. Kingston is like the slough of Despond, a place whither all the scum and filth of the negro population in the east end of the island do continually run, and make it a very sink of wickedness. But are the white families and the large number of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the Rose, but men real enough to stop you on the road and to hold your attention. Scene after scene follows, in which are pictured many of our own spiritual experiences. There is the Slough of Despond, into which we all have fallen, out of which Pliable scrambles on the hither side and goes back grumbling, but through which Christian struggles mightily till Helpful stretches him a hand and drags him out ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a doom shall I despond? I would not from thy snare go free, Release me not from thy sweet bond, I live but in thy mystery; Though all my senses from me flee, I still would glut my glazing eye, Thou nectar of mortality— To taste that honey ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... other. "It must be a sad ride for him! Much honor, much hardship! You've no reason to despond, for your husband will return tomorrow or the day after; while I—look at me, Maria! I go through life stiff and straight, do my duty cheerfully; my cheeks are rosy, my food has a relish, yet I've been obliged to resign what was dearest to me. I have endured my widowhood ten years; my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... would another get For surety in a case of debt, 'Tis not the thing t' accept the terms, But dread th' event—the tale affirms. A Stag approach'd the Sheep, to treat For one good bushel of her wheat. "The honest Wolf will give his bond." At which, beginning to despond, "The Wolf (cries she) 's a vagrant bite. And you are quickly out of sight; Where shall I find or him or you Upon the day ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... in a zigzag way, he by and by reached the base of the mountain at a point where there was a break in the forest. A patch of dreary-looking swamp was before him, covered with clumps of alder-bushes—a true Slough of Despond. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... the slow, solitary, pensive pilgrimage which John Bunyan describes, we travel in fashionable company, and in the most agreeable manner. A certain Mr Smooth-it-away has eclipsed the triumphs of Brunel. He has thrown a viaduct over the Slough of Despond; he has tunnelled the hill Difficulty, and raised an admirable causeway across the valley of Humiliation. The wicket gate, so inconveniently narrow, has been converted into a commodious station-house; and whereas it will be remembered there was a long standing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... like you to repine in this way; you who have suffered and endured so much must not despond when, after a long, starless night, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a review of Fraser Tytler's History of Scotland. It is somewhat saucy towards Lord Hailes. I had almost stuck myself into the controversy Slough of Despond—the controversy, that is, between the Gothic and Celtic system—but cast myself, like Christian, with a strong struggle or two to the further side of this Slough; and now will I walk on my way rejoicing—not on my article, however, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... got out of this Slough of Despond, and having become convinced of God's love she told the good story to the sick in hospitals, to soldiers and sailors without number, and has done more for the good of Jack Tar afloat and ashore than perhaps any other ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... men, women, cities, landscapes. It is the simplest, the most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of Crusoe's cave ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... his range "atmosphere." To the Happy Family it seemed a waste of horseflesh to comb a twenty-mile radius of mesa to get a cow and calf which might have been duplicated within a mile of the ranch. The Happy Family knew that Luck was wading chin deep in the slough of despond, and they decided that he kept them riding all day just for ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... done before him, draw up a treatise of consolation for himself."—Life of Cicero. "Then there can be no other Doubt remain of the Truth."—Brightland's Gram., p. 245. "I have observed some satirists use the term."—Bullions's Prin. of E. Gram., p. 79. "Such men are ready to despond, or commence enemies."—Webster's Essays, p. 83. "Common nouns express names common to many things."—Infant School Gram., p. 18. "To make ourselves be heard by one to whom we address ourselves."—Blair's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... was ever more firmly planted in the human heart, than that of discovering some short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the power of avoiding which is "a consummation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... a time, and they make life worth living, In spite of life's troubles—'tis vain to despond; Oh, man! WE at least, WE enjoy, with thanksgiving, God's gifts on this earth, though we look ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... "Do not despond, Georgy, dear—all his prejudices will fade away as soon as you shall have acquired ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... At the first sound of the words, we all think of some one unhappy soul we know just now, whom they suggest. Nobody is ever without at least one brother, sister, cousin, or friend on hand, who is struggling through this social slough of despond; and nobody ever will be, so long as the world goes on taking it for granted that the slough is a necessity, and that the road must go through it. Nature never meant any such thing. Now and then she blunders ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... are selfish, Peter," Barstow agreed frankly, "but I don't think it's your nature. You 've got into the Slough of Despond, and the only thing that will drag you out of that is love, love of ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... well, his sleepless nights having begun to tell even upon his powerful constitution. The rest of that afternoon and all of a night without sleep in the Pullman he was in a depth of despond. He had been in the habit of getting much comfort out of an observation his father had made to him just before he died: "Remember that ninety per cent of these fourteen hundred million human beings are uncertain ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... Christian, whom he accompanied as far as the "Slough of Despond," when he turned ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... oak-wood, the bark would have fetched its value; had they been grown oaks, the sea-ports would have found a market. Had they been [larch], the country demands for ruder purposes would have been unanswerable. The Duke does the best he can to retrieve his woods, but seems to despond more than a young man ought to do. It is refreshing to see a man in his situation give so much of his time and thoughts to the improvement of his estates, and the welfare of the people. The Duke tells me his ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... unto us she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway; Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away— The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er, For us ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... of the world, my dear Sir, you know as well as I do, that young ladies don't give very straightforward answers on the subject of their prepossessions in favour of young gentlemen. But I got enough out of her to show me that you had made pretty good use of your time—no occasion to despond, you know—I leave you to make her speak plain; it's more in your line than mine, more a good deal. And now let us come to the business part of the transaction. All I have to say is this:—if you agree to my proposals, then I agree to yours. I ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... have their loads of grain carried over this dreadful place for three or four cents a bushel was to the farmers of the Rock River and Fox River valleys—who, having hauled their wheat from forty to eighty miles to this Slough of Despond, frequently could get it no farther—a privilege which they soon began to appreciate. The road had all it could do, at once. It was a success. There was now no difficulty in getting the stock taken up, and before long it was finished to Fox River. It paid from fifteen to twenty per cent to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... mansion, by the burnside in the glen, where there was abundance of water and secure privacy. Watt's extreme diffidence was often the subject of remark at Dr. Roebuck's fireside. To the Doctor his anxiety seemed quite painful, and he was very much disposed to despond under apparently trivial difficulties. Roebuck's hopeful nature was his mainstay throughout. Watt himself was ready enough to admit this; for, writing to his friend Dr. Small, he once said, "I have met with many disappointments; and I must have sunk under ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... did not occur to the humanitarians at the moment: people do not reflect deeply when they are in the first happiness of escape from an intolerably oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim they could not see the wicket gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the castle of Giant Despair; but they saw the shining light at the end of the path, and so started gaily ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... time another gentleman shook his head in the same way. He held a pleasant position, but he found that promotion was very slow, and he began to despond and to think the times sadly demoralized, and his party—at least he feared it—fatally mercenary. It was evidently indifferent to reform, and seemed to care little for the wishes of the people or the character of the country. He, too, shook his head with profound distrust of the future; and the ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... let failure make you despond. Ours is a calling of ups and downs; it is an advantage of its uncertainty that you never know what may happen next; the darkest hour may he very near the dawn. This is where Bohemianism, in the best ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... brother! and within the veil Boldly thine anchor cast. What though thy boat No shoreland sees, but undulates afloat On soundless depths; securely fold thy sail. Ah! not by daring prow and favoring gale Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond, And gains a rest in being unbeyond, Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail; Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find. Not far but near, about us, yea within, Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind Dwell in the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination—her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope. We ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... approaching sail. Ships, indeed, had ranged the coast to seek them, but with no friendly intent. Their thoughts dwelt, with unspeakable yearning, on the France they had left behind; and which, to their longing fancy, was pictured as an unattainable Eden. Well might they despond; for of a hundred and eighty colonists, besides the crew of the "Belle," less than forty-five remained. The weary precincts of Fort St. Louis, with its fence of rigid palisades, its area of trampled ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... redeemed from prose by the unique force of the situation. De Foe painting mere everyday pots and pans is as dull as a modern blue-book; but when his pots and pans are the resource by which a human being struggles out of the most appalling conceivable 'slough of despond,' they become more poetical than the vessels from which the gods drink nectar in epic poems. Since he wrote, novelists have made many voyages of discovery, with varying success, though they have seldom had the fortune to touch upon so marvellous an island as that ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... provide us with a world of friends more real and enjoyable than the actual folk we know, but also with a world for those friends to live in, more real and far more enjoyable than the world in which we ourselves sojourn. And this is well seen of Christian. The Slough of Despond and the terrible overhanging hill; the gateway and the Interpreter's House and the House Beautiful; the ups and downs of the road, and the arbours and the giants' dens: Beulah and the Delectable Mountains:—one knows them as one ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... entered on an auspicious period in the history of the mission. Geog Tapa became the radiant centre of spiritual life. The preceding year had been one of apprehension, but the brethren now learned not to despond every time the heavens gathered blackness, for in the darkest hour the sun may break forth and change the whole scene. We have come to the beginning of that series of revivals, with which the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... stream, succeed in weary iteration. Bleached skeletons of dead trees writhe in weird contortions against the dark background of jungle, as though some wizard's curse had blighted life and growth amid the rank vegetation rising from this dismal Slough of Despond. The brooding melancholy of atmosphere and scenery penetrates mind and soul, oppressed by an intangible weight, and escape from the Dantesque horrors of this selva oscura is accompanied by a sudden relief and buoyancy of spirit which perceptibly heightens ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... However bad she might be, the blame certainly rested with him as the stronger. If it was impossible to live with her now, he might, at any rate, have stretched out his hand long ago, and rescued her from the slough of despond into which she ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Zwingli spoke one more, begging all to hold firm to the Gospel, and never to despond as long as they leaned upon it. "What is done from the best motives will be misrepresented by falsehood and slander. Thus it had been said here and there yesterday evening that we would now degrade the body and blood of Christ into sleeping-cups. No!"—cried ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... years or more; yet if there's roast pork on the table, and I say a word to put him off it, he's that hurt as never was. Why, I'm only too glad to see him enjoying his food if no harm comes of it; but it's dreary work seeing your husband in the Slough of Despond, especially when it's your business to drag him out again, and most especially when you particularly ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... have described my Pilgrim's Progress from the Slough of Despond, commonly known as Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un (then located at Germaine) through the mysteries of Noyon, Gre and Paris to the Porte de Triage de La Ferte Mace, Orne. With the end of my first day as a certified inhabitant of the latter institution ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... may be said, that when the tea was finally announced, our young lady came downstairs a great deal more cheerful; that she did not despond, or deplore her fate, or think about George's coldness, or Rebecca's eyes, as she had been wont to do of late. She went downstairs, and kissed her father and mother, and talked to the old gentleman, and made him ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... minister saw nothing. He was tired, and absorbed in his new possessions. It was good to sit down in his study, and spread his treasures out on the broad table, and gloat over them. A clump of damp moss rested quietly on his new sermon, "The Slough of Despond," but he took no note. He was looking for a place to put this curious little lizard in, and after anxious thought selected the gilt celluloid box, lined with pink satin, which the Mission Circle had given him on Christmas ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... purple flowers raised their heads in clusters — and ever in the most rugged and barren spots the gayest flowers are found to bloom. How grateful do we feel to Nature for bestowing such charms upon the wild desert! cheering our spirits with a sense of the beautiful, that else would droop and despond as we journeyed through the lone ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men— in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, from the slough of despond and the desert, Half dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee[72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit That dwells in the drearisome caves, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... exertion he was undergoing from the mere weight of his useless baggage. He said he preferred it; he considered that he was not properly equipped without that enormous sack—big as that which the "Pilgrim's Progress" man shuffled off when he scrambled out on the right side of the Slough of Despond. I think he regarded the trip to the river—though we drove comfortably to it, and drove home again the same evening—as a serious expedition into unknown wilds, and was buoyed up throughout with the fancy that he ranked with the eminent explorers who go forth with their ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the steed Rosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot refrain from copying here ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... character to your happy memory. 'He was a man that had the root of the matter in him, but at the same time he was the most troublesome pilgrim that ever I met with in all my days. He lay roaring at the Slough of Despond for above a month together. He would not go back neither. The Celestial City, he said he should die if he came not to it, and yet was dejected at every difficulty and stumbled at every straw. He had, I think, a Slough of Despond in his ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... incessant rains, were mud, mud, mud! ordinarily to the ankles, extraordinarily to the knees of the marching infantry. The wagon train moved in front, and the heavy wheels made for the rest a track something like Christian's through the Slough of Despond. The artillery brought up the rear and fared worst of all. Guns and caissons slid heavily into deep mud holes. The horses strained—poor brutes! but their iron charges stuck fast. The drivers used whip and voice, the officers swore, there arose calls for Sergeant Jordan. Appearing, that steed ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... a cry from the depths of despond; but Job stood, at last, upon the heights, and felt once more God's blessed sun, and rejoiced—even as we should. But, as regards this stranger, he is one who would seem to have suffered some great wrong, the continued thought of which has unhinged his mind; his heart seems broken—dead. ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... are heavenly lights too that wax and wane; they are lights, they are in the heavens though they change. You have no reason, Christian man, to be discouraged, cast down, still less despondent, because you find that the witness of the Spirit changes and varies in your heart. Do not despond because it does; watch it, and guard it, lest it do; live in the contemplation of the Person and the fact that calls it forth, that it may not. You will never 'brighten your evidences' by polishing at them. To polish the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... men proceed equally from a too fixed attention to the facts and events before their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles which underlie and animate them; for no insight of principles, and of the moral laws which govern human events, could ever cause tyrants to exult or philanthropists to despond. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... discovering a store of farina or rice, but nothing could they find but the rotting tobacco and the monkey-skins, and, starving as they were, they could not manage to eat them. Even when reduced to this extremity the young officers themselves did not despond, nor did their men, who looked to them for example, do so either. Murray calculated that if they could but get a breeze, they might reach the port for which they were steering in less than twenty-four hours. It was very tantalising to be so near it, and yet not to be able to get there. Had ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... they devoted their lives. They had been at some period of their lives, in almost every case, factory workers themselves, but had by various circumstances, native talent, industry, and energy, or favouring fortune—more likely by all together—managed to raise themselves out of the slough of despond in which their fellows were overwhelmed. One, I remember, a Mr. Doherty, a very small bookseller, to whom we were specially recommended by Lord Shaftesbury. He was an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a furious Radical, but a very clever man. He was ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... things for him in a small five-pound way; he had promised him that loan, too, which would have lifted him out of his Slough of Despond, and he clung with an affectionate gratitude to these exhibitions of brotherly love. Besides, he had accustomed himself—the organ of veneration standing prominent on the top of the vicar's head—to regard Mark in the light ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Circumstances are fluidic and impressionable, and take on any form that the mental power has achieved sufficient strength to stamp, and because of this—which is the explanation of the outward phenomena whose significance, on the spiritual side, is all condensed in prayer—one need never despond or despair. At any instant he can so unite his own will with the divine will that new combinations of event and circumstance will appear in his life. A writer on this line of ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... was chiefly of the future, about which Symonds did not despond, though he was disposed to blame, somewhat sharply, our late companions, for choosing to find their way South independently; I thought he was unjust then, and since that I have had ample evidence of their ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... to woe. Mother, oh, speak to me. I care not how many years I wait: say, only say that, if his character be cleared of all they have dared to cast upon it, I shall one day he his. Do not turn from me, mother. Oh, bid me not despond; and yet and yet, because he is poor, oh, would you, can you ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... Man, to man so oft unjust, Is always so to Women: one sole bond Awaits them—treachery is all their trust; Taught to conceal their bursting hearts despond Over their idol, till some wealthier lust Buys them in marriage—and what rests beyond? A thankless husband—next, a faithless lover— Then ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... mental disease seemed likely enough. 'Unhappily, I myself can be of no use to him; he has not the same friendly feeling for me as he used to have. But it is very certain that those of his friends who have the power should exert themselves to raise him out of this fearful slough of despond. If he isn't effectually helped, there's no saying what may happen. One thing is certain, I think: he is past helping himself. Sane literary work cannot be expected from him. It seems a monstrous thing that so good a fellow, and one with such excellent brains too, should perish ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... not dejected; do not despond, my dearest and best-beloved friend. God Almighty is just and gracious, and gives not his assent to rash and inhuman curses. Can you think that Heaven will seal to the black passions of its depraved creatures? If it did, malice, envy, and revenge would triumph; and the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... rest of those babies have returned to their duty," continued Monroe, who was always the first to despond. ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power. He was doing this—somehow—for her benefit. She saw neither the how nor the why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her. All the world was not limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet. There was ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... be more in harmony with the actual facts of the Egyptian situation. If, as I trust may be the case, Lord Kitchener is able to devise and to carry into execution some plan which will rescue Egypt from its present legislative Slough of Despond, he will have deserved well, not only of his country, but also of all those Egyptian interests, whether native or European, which ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... deep in the Scriptures, and when I asked him if he got comfort from them I was answered, "They are strong words for a weak man, and better than pig." But only a St. Francis Xavier or a Livingstone, a great moral force, could lift the people now from the slough of despond in which they expire. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... it, and at last passed a law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them, for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were Papist processions and mobs, which made ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... came from Luke, and there was no proof that he had received hers. Lucy began gradually to despond; for work became slack, and at times she only got enough to employ her half the day. Not to lose ground, however, she hired herself to the neighbouring farmers' wives to sew during her spare time, leaving Dame Damerel to the occasional care of Susan Larkin. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory; I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted towards England and towards you, I will not despond. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... than my self. Not with less Trouble, believe me, Madam; (return'd Gracelove) and then began to inform Fairlaw in every Point of her unhappy Circumstances. The good old Gentleman heard 'em with Amazement and Horror; but told her, however, that she need not despond, for he would take Care to right her against her Brother; and, that in the mean Time she should be as welcome to him as any of his nearest Kindred, except his Wife and Daughter. Philadelphia would have knelt to thank him; but he told her, that humble Posture was due to none but Heaven, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... judge a man's whole intellectual character, and declare him to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers about matters of business. Apparently Shakspere helped that Elizabethan Mr. Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of despond, in which the ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering,— pursued by the distraint of one of the friendly family of Quiney— Adrian Quiney. They were neighbours and made a common dunghill in Henley Street. {171a} I do not, like Mr. Greenwood, see anything "at all out of the way" in the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... away with alacrity. Marian put off her bonnet and furs, and sat down before the fire to despond over the prospect of living in that shabby room, waited on by that slipshod Irish girl, who roused in her something very like racial antipathy. Presently Eliza returned, carrying a small tray, upon which she had crowded ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... this letter altogether, but that I felt very deeply your kindness in writing to me at such a time, and that I would fain assure you of my heart-felt sympathy, however unavailing it may be. To you who have a steadfast anchor for your hopes, I ought not, perhaps, to say, "Do not despond." Yet, dearest H——, do not despond: is there any occasion when despair is justified? I know how lightly all soothing counsel must be held, in a case of such sorrow as yours, but among fellow-Christians such words still have some significance; for the most unworthy of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... denote a sound-hearted brave old man; continually subduing to himself many ugly troubles; and, like the stars, always steady at his work. To sit grieving or desponding is, at all times, far from him: "Why despond? Won't it be all done presently; is it of much moment while it lasts?" A fine, unaffectedly vigorous, simple and manful old age;—rather serene than otherwise; in spite of electric outbursts and cloudy weather that could not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... shoulder, or nibbled at her glove in full spirit of comradarie. Then one day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation, a brief minute of exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and beyond that, alas for the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added period of wallowing in the Slough of Despond! ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... at present," he whispered. "I leave you, Caroline, in anticipation of fortune, rank, and prosperity; that is some comfort. For myself, I see only difficulties, embarrassment, and poverty in the future; but I despond of nothing. Hereafter you may serve me, as I have served you. Adieu!—I have been advising Caroline not to spoil Doltimore, Mrs. Merton; he is conceited enough already. Good-by! God bless you all! love to your little girls. Let me know if I can serve you in any way, Merton,—good-by again!" ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... along the dreary prairies, these five Eldorado seekers proved to be jovial fellows, and there was about them an elasticity of temper which did not allow them to despond. The divine had made up his mind to go to Rome, and convert the Pope, who, after all, was a clever old bon vivant; the doctor would go to Edinburgh, and get selected, from his superior skill, as president of the Surgical College; one of the lawyers determined he would "run for legislature," ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... domains with a baby clutched in her arms and one shoe left in the circumambient mud: the great folks of the neighbourhood (Lord and Lady Carlisle) coming to call graciously on the strangers, and being whelmed, coach and four, outriders and all, in a ploughed field of despond: the "universal scratcher" in the meadows, inclined so as to let the brute creation of all heights enjoy that luxury: Bunch the butler, a female child of tender years but stout proportions: Annie ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... to another; correspond'ence; correspond'ent; despond' (literally, to promise away: hence, to give up, to despond); ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... letter, Domitius, concealing the truth, gave out in council that Pompey would speedily come to their assistance; and encouraged them not to despond, but to provide everything necessary for the defence of the town. He held private conferences with a few of his most intimate friends, and determined on the design of fleeing. As Domitius's countenance did not agree with his words, and he did everything with ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... with great courage. Many of the Hebrews were slain; and the remainder of the army, upon the disorder of their troops, were pursued, and fled, after a shameful manner, to their camp. Whereupon this unexpected misfortune made them quite despond; and they hoped for nothing that was good; as gathering from it, that this affliction came from the wrath of God, because they rashly went out to war ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... till to-morrow upon these things, but they make me melancholy. I could not but observe that lately, after much conversation with Mr. Harley, though he is the most fearless man alive, and the least apt to despond, he confessed to me that uttering his mind to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... putting his hand upon her arm to prevent her flying under the wheels of a carriage which in her absorption she had not noticed. "Look here, Helen; it wouldn't be any better if Arthur wanted to marry you. You are too melancholy alone without having him to push you deeper into the slough of despond." ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... she hath a spell beyond Her name in story, and her long array Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond Above the Dogeless city's vanished sway; Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto;[382] Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre,[383] can not be swept or worn away— The keystones of the Arch! though all were o'er, For us repeopled ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... slimy, splashy, thick, heavy, dirty mud. Thousands of men and thousands of mules and horses are treading it to mortar. It is mixed with slops from the houses and straw from the stables. You are reminded of the Slough of Despond described by Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress,—a place for all the filth, sin, and slime of this world. Christian was mired there, and Pliable nearly lost his life. If Bunyan had seen Cairo, he might have made the picture ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... that these losses left the sisters without the means to pay it. They were therefore in debt, and that deeply, for people with no immediate, or even remote, prospects of an addition to their income. Then the Bloods during Mary's absence had fallen further into the Slough of Despond, out of which, now their daughter was dead, there was no one to help them. George could not aid them, because, though they did not know it, he was just then without employment. Unable to live amicably with his brother-in-law after Fanny's death, he had ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... spirits of Munatius dejected, writes this Ode to reconcile him to his destiny, and to inspire him with delight in the beautiful Scenery by which he was surrounded; insinuating, that should Augustus banish him, which was no improbable event, he ought not to despond, but to form his conduct upon the spirited example of Teucer; who, together with his Friends and Followers, was banished from his native City, Salamis, by his Father, because he had not revenged upon the Greeks ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... with cordial applause. All the more did it seem incumbent upon the churches to take hold of the American Missionary Association, still burdened with its debt, and lift it out of the slough of financial despond. This, however, is only the reflection of the feeling among the churches throughout the land. The determination to lift the debt of the American Missionary Association, and to make it possible to continue at least its depleted work, is universal. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
... take them away from the South, as he might have done, or to provide for them handsomely, as he perhaps meant to do,—I violated the traditions of my class and stepped from the beaten path to help the misbegotten son of my old friend out of the slough of despond, in which he had learned, in some strange way, that he was floundering. Ten years later, the ghost of my good deed returns to haunt me, and makes me doubt whether I have wrought more evil than good. I wonder," he mused, "if he ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... captain is evidently a clever sailor and knows what he's about. It is rather jumping at conclusions to consider that he will let his vessel be wrecked. Yes, it was nervous work watching a vessel like that; but there, we must hope for the best, and possibly there is no reason to despond. Whoever the brig belonged to had good reason for getting away, and they have succeeded in that. There, come along; let's have our dinner, and think no more about it. But hallo! What's the ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... he is not quite a man, as the world goes, and not at all an angel, as the celestials see. He must be his own motive, path, and guide, his own priest, king, and law. The world may be his footstool, and may be his slough of despond, but is never his final end. His aims are transcendental, his realm is art, his interests ideal, his life divine, his destiny immortal. All the old theories of saintship are revived in him. He is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... "Tendencies of one's Time"! O those dismal Phantoms, conjured up by the blatant Book-taster and the Indolent Reviewer! How many a poor Soul, that would fain have been honest, have they bewildered into the Slough of Despond and the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... There is a power in a saint, because Christ is in him, that overpowers all the powers of darkness without, and all the power of indwelling corruption within, so that when the poor weak creature is ready to despond; within sight of his duty, and say, because of difficulty, what is my strength that I should hope? Christ saith, despond not, my grace is sufficient for thee, and my power shall rest upon thee, to a reviving thee, and raising thee up, and putting thee in case to say, when I am ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... work much sooner than with us. Probably the last summer had found no human being alive, in all the track included between the shores of Calabria and the northern Alps. My search was utterly vain, yet I did not despond. Reason methought was on my side; and the chances were by no means contemptible, that there should exist in some part of Italy a survivor like myself—of a wasted, depopulate land. As therefore I rambled through the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... which are your inheritances from your Parent. Do not make the great mistake of confounding the Relative with the Absolute. Avoid this pitfall into which so many have fallen. Do not allow yourself to fall into the "Slough of Despond," and wallow in the mud of "nothingness," and to see no reality except in the person of some forceful teacher who takes the place of the Absolute in your mind. But raise your head and assert your Divine Parentage, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... They who despond, as the tidings of woe come borne to us on almost every breeze which sweeps across the ocean, have lost sight of Him who holds in his hand the issues of life and the awful realities of death. These ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... major, calling at Captain Dade's, was concerned to hear that Mrs. Dade was not at home. "Gone over to the hospital with Mrs. Blake and the doctor," was the explanation, and these gentle-hearted women, it seems, were striving to do something to rouse the lad from the slough of despond which had engulfed him. That night "Pink" Marble, Hay's faithful book-keeper and clerk for many a year, a one-armed veteran of the civil war, calling, as was his invariable custom when the trader was absent, to leave the keys of the safe and desks with Mrs. Hay, was surprised ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... who would not permit his feelings to influence his conduct, "we must not allow ourselves to despond at little more than the beginning of our search. We will breakfast here, lads, and then return to the ridge where we first saw their footsteps. Daylight will enable us to track them more easily. Thank God the weather is warm, and I daresay if they kept well under cover of the trees, ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... south, the early American road was a veritable Slough of Despond. Watery pits were to be encountered wherein horses were drowned and loads sank from sight. Frequently traffic was stopped for hours by wagons which had broken down and blocked the way. Thirteen wagons at one time were stalled on ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... wandering, so that she uttered absolute nonsense at times—insomuch that I would have laughed had I not been jealous of what I deemed the mutual love of Ada and thee. No, Erling, thy suit will prosper, depend on't. It is I who have reason to despond, for ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... solicitude; but no effort to rally him, physically or mentally, was successful, and he died this morning. "He died," said the former to me, "because he would die." The Indians seem to me a people who are prone to despond, and easily sink into frames ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... results of my mavericking and my trading operations I had been enabled to send two thousand young steers up the trail the spring before, and the proceeds from their sale had lifted me from the slough of despond and set me on a financial rock. Therefore my regard for the eternal ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... certain proportion of the members of every great aggregation of mankind should constantly tend to establish and populate such a Slough of Despond as this is inevitable, so long as some people are by nature idle and vicious, while others are disabled by sickness or accident, or thrown upon the world by the death of their bread-winners. So long as that proportion is restricted within tolerable limits, it can be ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... yet silent tears,' as if veiling her shame in a cloudy mantle, shall I, too, lie down and weep? Why not? for am I not 'a part of all I see'? And even now, in fasting and mortification, am I not sorrowing for my sin and for its dreary chastisement? But shall I then despond ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... mature themselves, I must now return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that, although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the hard ground ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... brief ills appall the brave? Shall manly hearts despond? Up, faint heart, up! The blackest cloud But veils the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... will you help me pull him out of his slough of despond?" she asked, smiling with the old, frank, ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... have charms, especially when they are old and picturesque, and smell of the Middle Ages; but to be kept a prisoner in one of them by rainy weather is apt to plunge a restless wanderer into the Slough of Despond. The chances are that the inn itself becomes at such times a slough, so that Bunyan's expression is then applicable in a real as well as in a figurative sense. There is a constant coming in and going out of peasants with dripping sabots, of dogs with wet paws, and draggle-tailed hens with miry ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Smooth-it-away, "is the famous Slough of Despond—a disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that it might so easily be converted into ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... strenuous labour will live, or how far Gladstone will prove to have read aright the signs of the times, the tendencies of human thought, and the political forces of the world. But we, who were his followers and disciples, know perfectly well what we owe to him. If ever we should be tempted to despond about the possibilities of human nature and human life, we shall think of him and take courage. If ever our religious faith should ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... seem as precious to me when I had got them as they do now. Once I did not know what it was to despond, but I lost my pupils last winter, and everything seemed hopeless. I am not vain or egotistic; I do not pine for applause and wealth, but I should like to sing.... I've heard so much about my voice that I'm curious to know what people will ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... although the world may applaud this acute sensibility, religion condemns it. As the effect of mere passion, it has nothing in it which can secure the approbation of God; on the contrary, it is offensive to him, who, while he permits us to weep, does not allow us to despond, and who often sees it best to humble a refractory spirit by a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the column was reached and the frieze of ghostly figures was swallowed up into the night. We drew a long breath, for we knew now from the colonel of the battalion whose men had delivered us from that Slough of Despond that we had been within 150 yards of the German lines. We had mistaken Richebourg l'Avoue for Richebourg ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... as Dr. Brown enthusiastically styles him, was christened on November 30th, 1628. He was born in a cottage, long fallen, and hard by was a marshy place, "a veritable slough of despond." Bunyan may have had it in mind when he wrote of the slough where Christian had so much trouble. He was not a travelled man: all his knowledge of people and places he found at his doors. He had some schooling, "according to the ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... dream, that just as they had ended this talk they drew near to a very miry slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire. Then said Pliable, "Ah! neighbor Christian, where are ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
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