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Forlorn   /fərlˈɔrn/   Listen
Forlorn

adjective
1.
Marked by or showing hopelessness.  "A forlorn cause"



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"Forlorn" Quotes from Famous Books



... brain reeled, and he swayed like a drunken man. He turned about, muttering incoherently. Dona Maria stood behind him. Tenderly taking his arm, she led him back to the forlorn little house. Its ghastly emptiness smote him until his reason tottered. He sank into a chair and gazed with dull, stony eyes out over the placid lake, where the white beams of the rising sun were breaking into myriad ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... vase, the ideas shine through her diction; while as regards rhythmic melody of phrase, it is a style such as Beethoven might have written had he uttered in words the melodious passion that was in him. But deeper than all eloquence, grander than all grandeur of phrase, is that forlorn splendor of a life of passionate experience painted in her works. There is no man so wise but he may learn from them, for they are the utterances of a soul in pain, a soul that has been tried. No man could have written her books, for no ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... "Get them—the forlorn hopes, as he called them," said Barbara, determined to be cheerful, "and hope that we shall be happily disappointed in them. Somebody's got to be Shylock, you know. Betty, will you go for these three girls on Main Street?" She handed Betty a slip of paper. "Clara, will you try to find Emily Davis? ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... feared most, soon happened. Lucia came, in some way, to be aware of what was going on, and this last pain, though so much lighter than those she had already borne, seemed to break down all her pride at once. In her own room that night she sat, hour after hour, in forlorn wretchedness—her own familiar friends, the companions of her whole life, were making her misery the subject of their careless gossip. They knew nothing of the real wound which she had suffered, but they were quite ready to inflict another; and the feeling of loneliness ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... I, Merwell. But it can't be done—at least, I am not coming back to this forlorn district, once I get to town again. And it looks dangerous to me, with all these loose rocks ready to slide down into the valley," ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... sally of the trainmaster and his forlorn-hope squad had left the office-story of the head-quarters building almost deserted, it was the force of mere mechanical habit that sent Lidgerwood back to his room to close his desk before going down ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... think of giving up. He remembered all Allie had told him. Those fiends had gotten her again. He believed now all that she had said; and there was something of hope in the thought that if Durade had found her again she would at least not be at the mercy of ruffians like Fresno. But this was a forlorn hope. Still, it upheld Neale and determined him to seek her during the time in which his ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... a simple business proposition—a promising investment," she thought. "I'll ask him to get the money for me at a fair interest—to get me enough anyhow to give me control of the business. The worst he can do is to refuse," she concluded, with a kind of forlorn optimism; "at ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... inhospitable appearance that can be imagined. Nothing is to be seen but hills of sand, on which there is scarcely a blade of verdure; and a vast sea, impelled by the westerly winds, breaking upon it in a dreadful surf, renders it not only forlorn, but frightful; complicating the idea of danger with desolation, and impressing the mind at once with a sense of misery and death. From this place I steered to the northward, resolving never more to come within the same distance of the coast, except ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... instinct is strong, and surmounts all ordinary difficulties. No doubt the widowhood I had caused in the case of the woodpeckers was of short duration, and chance brought, or the widow drummed up, some forlorn male, who was not dismayed by the prospect of having a large family of half-grown birds on his hands at ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... embittering thing to have one's kind feelings and good intentions cast back in one's teeth. I was beginning to relent towards my wretched partner; to pity his forlorn, comfortless condition, unalleviated as it is by the consolations of intellectual resources and the answer of a good conscience towards God; and to think I ought to sacrifice my pride, and renew my efforts once again to make his home agreeable and lead him back to the path of ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... paws resting on the end of the coop, was the mysterious Woggy, gravely contemplating the kitten, as it minced at the food the generous dog had brought it. How proud Edwin felt of Woggy as he looked and understood the scene. How Woggy, in his solitary rambles, must have discovered the forlorn kitten, who had been suddenly torn from her home, far up the valley perhaps, and borne, half drowned and thoroughly frightened, on the rushing torrent, until her box, in which the rising waters had found her taking her afternoon ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... been doing with their clothes off I do not know; women will rather die than confess. When A. had recovered from her fit she denied that there had been anything between them, and stuck to it doggedly, but with such a forlorn look I had not the heart to prosecute ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... heard something of the same sort, and though he was bound to admit that it was all very vague, he begged Virginia to abandon a forlorn hope, and ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... over me a veil and shawl, followed it, and stood by while the service was chaunted over the dead. The scene, as viewed by the light of about two hundred tapers, which were carried by the assistants, was as new to me as it was solemn and striking; but it was succeeded by a strange and forlorn contrast. The moment the service was over, the tapers were suddenly extinguished; the priests and the relatives all disappeared in an inconceivably short time, and before I was quite aware of what was going forward: the coffin, stripped of its embroidered pall and garlands ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... refreshed the girl, and as she passed through the editorial rooms she noted their forlorn, dishevelled appearance, which all places show when seen at an unaccustomed hour, their time of activity and bustle past. The rooms were littered with torn papers; waste-baskets overflowing; looking silent, scrappy, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... inward from the sea. The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wall Grows gray again, turns stone again, the tower, No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud. Old is the world, old as the world am I; The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields, Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echo In fields my heart has known, but has not seen. "These fields"—an unknown voice beyond the wall Murmurs—"were once the province of the sea. Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... fight amid those islands in 1814, a desperate savage battle off the mouth of the Rock, and the memory of this was in my mind as my eyes searched those distant shores, silent now in their drapery of fresh green foliage, yet appearing strangely desolate and forlorn, as they merged into the gray tint of distance. Well I realized that they only served to screen savage activity beyond, a covert amid which lurked danger and death; for over there, in the near shadow of the Rock Valley, was where Black Hawk, dissatisfied, revengeful, dwelt with ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... are to be so far apart," she goes on, "and with your father in California you are to be all alone! And I just know you'll be forlorn and lonesome in that dreadful boarding house! Oh, it ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... sleepless and restless all through the long hours of the night, watching for the dawn. She longed, and yet half dreaded her meeting with Humphrey. She felt so utterly weak and broken-hearted, so forlorn and deserted—what if he again urged his suit!—what if she had now to tell him what had been at their last interview only a probability, and was now a certainty! Her husband was no vague, shadowy personality; he was alive and strong, to work for her the ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... heart on having this virgin; ten weeks nearly had gone; I said if Camille was not back next week she might let the rooms. It passed; a bill was put up in the window, and the next morning calling as a forlorn hope, there was a letter for me,—she would be back in a week. I was in a state of excitement that week, and kept myself chaste, with the idea of the virgin cunt, and Camille's ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... objected to cannibalism was a crank. The man who first thought lunatics should not be chained to walls or left naked on unsavoury beds of straw was a crank. Galileo was an intellectual crank of the shameless type. Shelley is the beautiful crank of all times, champion of forlorn causes, the inspired rebel ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... not why, but prepare my things. I must leave America," said Ensal, in a tone so forlorn as to deeply touch the mother's heart. Drawing near to Ensal she threw her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes as ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... forlorn hope, my dear fellow, but, as you say, it is worth the effort. Allons donc! to the storming ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... sad twinge of a wish that she were out of the boat and safe back again with the Evelyns, and a fresh sense of the unkindness of letting her come away that afternoon so attended. And then with that sickness of heart the forlorn feeling of being alone, of wanting some one at hand to depend upon, to look to. It is true that in case of real danger none such could be a real protection,—and yet not so neither, for strength and decision can live and make live where a moment's faltering will kill, and weakness must often ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... his first contribution to the conversation, "d' you remember it was at a dock that you and I first met? It was night, blacker than Tophet, and raining, and you came ashore wet as a rag. You were the lonesomest, chilliest, most forlorn little tike I ever saw; but, by the eternal, you were trying not ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... and the next moment poor V. was very nearly struck down. Fraught with the most political spite, I whirled up against him; apologized with my blandest smile, and left him wiping his mouth, and rubbing his shoulder, the most forlorn picture of Hope in adversity, that can possibly ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... himself out, abashed by my refusal, embarrassed by the unusual size of his legs and his heart, I sit down in a corner, seized with shivering. Then I obliterate myself in another corner, equally forlorn. It seems as if Marie has gone away with all I have. I am in mourning and I am all alone, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... nor harm; she had many invitations to fetes given in honor of herself, was frequently asked to dinners, balls, etc., but that was all; no person set their wits to work to reinstate her in the good graces of the king. I soon comprehended the forlorn hopes of my poor enemy, and my former animosity soon gave way to the play with which she inspired me. About the period of the marriage of the comtesse d'Artois, an individual of some eminence fell into disgrace; ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... appears to be the most desolate and forlorn-looking spot for eighty miles around the head of the Gulf, the sand hills looking like a terrible desert, nature seems even here, where no rain had fallen for eight months, to have provided for the sustenance of man, one of the most ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry

... my walk to the forlorn and lonely monastery of Pitsoonda on the promontory where the great lighthouse burns. Along the seashore were swamps overgrown with bamboos and giant grasses, twelve feet high. The sea was grey and calm. Lying on ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... Emaciate, in that ancient Delta-land:- We here, full-charged with our own maimed and dead, And coiled in throbbing conflicts slow and sore, Can poorly soothe these ails unmerited Of souls forlorn upon the facing shore! - Where naked, gaunt, in endless band on band ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... be, in health while deprived of the happiness of seeing her and enjoying her discreet conversation, and that I implore her as earnestly as I can, to allow herself to be seen and addressed by this her captive servant and forlorn knight. Tell her, too, that when she least expects it she will hear it announced that I have made an oath and vow after the fashion of that which the Marquis of Mantua made to avenge his nephew Baldwin, when he found him at the point of death in the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... a table, her head buried in her arms, which rested upon it—a forlorn and despondent attitude. She lifted up her face as he entered and gazed pitifully into his; but for a minute or two neither of them spoke. He stood just within the door, looking towards her as he ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... reluctantly closed her school in the spring and, in obedience to her physician, went to Europe for rest, with the intention of spending the summer in England, the autumn in France, and the winter in Italy. Prostrated by the voyage, she was carried to a hotel in Liverpool where she was put to bed with the forlorn prospect of being confined to her solitary room for an indefinite period of convalescence. But again Dr. Channing befriended her. From him she had received letters of introduction, one of which brought to her side Mr. William ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... a particularly infectious way he had, and, before he quite knew it, Rowdy was laughing, also. After that the world did not look quite so forlorn as it had, nor the day's work so distasteful. So Pink, having accomplished his purpose, was content ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... lance-head, farther on Egyptian urns, now and then a few cannon; on all sides the emblems of professions, and every style of art,—Moorish, Greek, Gothic,—friezes, ovules, paintings, vases, guardian-angels, temples, together with innumerable immortelles, and dead rose-bushes. It is a forlorn comedy! It is another Paris, with its streets, its signs, its industries, and its lodgings; but a Paris seen through the diminishing end of an opera-glass, a microscopic Paris reduced to the littleness of shadows, spectres, dead men, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... answered it with a shout, waving at the same time Miss Wardour's handkerchief at the end of his long beggar's staff, as far out from the cliff as possible. In a little while the signals were so regularly replied to, that the forlorn party on Bessie's Apron knew that they were again within hearing, if not within reach, ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... O'Malley's mad campaign may be imagined. To a writer who found interest in the study of forlorn hopes and their leaders, a detailed record of this particular one might seem worth while. For me personally it is too sad and too pathetic. I cannot bring myself to tell, much less to analyze the story of a broken heart, when that heart and ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... carpeted, where the fire burnt bright and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered with a clean cloth. . . . I could not enough admire the change Steerforth had wrought in the 'Golden Cross'; or compose the dull, forlorn state I had held yesterday with this morning's comfort and ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... She laughed in a forlorn way. "I know what you mean; but this is quite good enough for what I shall want. I am going down, you know, to a different level altogether. Oh, you can hear for yourself what mamma ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... I pinched my arms and legs, with the idea that immediate pain would make me forget my fears for the future; but I was not brave enough to pinch them really hard, and I could not forget the motive for my action. I lay back on the sofa and kicked the cushions with my feet in a kind of forlorn anger. Thought was no use, nothing was any use, and my stomach was sick, sick with fear. And suddenly I became aware of an immense fatigue that overwhelmed my mind and my body, and made me feel as helpless as a little child. The tears that were always near my ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... skirts the base of the mesa. We jogged along in silence, which I presently heard stir with the faint, sweet strain of a violin; an air that rose and wailed and fell again, on a violin played with a certain back-country expertness. The road bent to show us its source. We were abreast of the forlorn little shack of a dry-farmer, weathered and patched, set a dozen yards from the road and surrounded by hard-packed earth. Before the open door basked children and pigs ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... Ralph Kirkly, to make all enquiries into the state of the criminal, and, if necessary, to relieve his wants in whatever way could be done. When Kirkly came to the prison he was soon admitted to the cell of the prisoner, where he beheld the most wretched spectacle that imagination can conceive—a poor forlorn criminal, without a friend on earth who could relieve or assist him, and reduced almost to a skeleton by famine and filth, waiting till the dreadful morning should arrive when he was to be made an end of by a violent death. Sir ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... three of the seven electoral votes of New Jersey fell to him as the result of fusion. Yet as the popular vote in the several States was ascertained, defeat wore the guise of a great personal triumph. Leader of a forlorn hope, he had yet received the suffrages of 1,376,957 citizens, only 489,495 less votes than Lincoln had polled. Of these 163,525 came from the South, while Lincoln received only 26,430, all from the border slave States. As compared with the vote of Breckinridge ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... call it courage in a soldier merely to face death—say to lead a forlorn hope—although he has a chance of life and a certainty of "glory." But the suicide does more than face death; he incurs it, and with a certainty, not of glory, but of reproach. If that is not courage we must reform ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... while she grieved the Yuletide sport Waxed lustier in King Pelles' court, And louder, houre by houre, The echoes of the rout were borne To where the lady, all forlorn, Made moning ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... to the Oirishman I was expinded an' forlorn in my inside. 'Tis a way I have, savin' your presince, Sorr, in action. "Let me out, bhoys," sez I, backin' in among thim. "I'm goin' to be onwell!" Faith they gave me room at the wurrd, though they would not ha' given room for all Hell wid the chill off. When I got clear, I was, savin' your presince, ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... certain class of writers are unnatural and discordant sounds. We should expect rather a serene and cheerful melody from a young and brave-hearted race, which is in intimate relations with the external world. Instead of this, we have sucked in with the milk of our Puritan mothers a forlorn and sorrowful spirit. We celebrate our festivals with a sad countenance. We attempt to make merry by singing dismal psalms. We weave our woes into poetry, and expand our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... that no naturalist has actually gone into the wilds with the fixed determination to find him out and examine his haunts, and see whether Nature has committed any blunder in the formation of this extraordinary creature, which appears to us so forlorn and miserable, so ill put together, and so totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which have been so bountifully given to the rest of animated nature; for, as it has formerly been remarked, he has no soles to his ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... guards and veterans, who followed his private banner, were distributed among the chiefs of the army, and even the eunuchs presumed to cast lots for the partition of his martial domestics. When he passed with a small and sordid retinue through the streets of Constantinople, his forlorn appearance excited the amazement and compassion of the people. Justinian and Theodora received him with cold ingratitude; the servile crowd, with insolence and contempt; and in the evening he retired ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... for coming up to D—-. I wanted to consult you and Jenny upon the subject. You, who are an officer's wife, and I, who am both an officer's wife and daughter, ought to devise some plan of rescuing this poor, unfortunate lady and her family from her present forlorn situation." ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... has said in speaking of this overwhelming labor, "I sit down to it in despair, but I leave it with regret." Be it known to all who are ignorant! If the artist does not throw himself into his work as Curtius sprang into the gulf, as a soldier leads a forlorn hope without a moment's thought, and if when he is in the crater he does not dig on as a miner does when the earth has fallen in on him; if he contemplates the difficulties before him instead of conquering them one by one, like the lovers in fairy tales, who ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... forlorn Lincoln children and their still more desolate cousin, it seemed too good to be true. They quickly learned the names of their new brother and sisters. The Johnston children were called John, Sarah and Matilda, so Sarah Lincoln's name was promptly changed to Nancy for her dead ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... in to her and saw her sitting at Aboulhusn's head, weeping and lamenting; and when she saw the old woman, she cried out and said to her, "See what hath betided me! Indeed, Aboulhusn is dead and hath left me alone and forlorn!" Then she cried out and tore her clothes and said to the old woman, "O my mother, how good he was!" Quoth the other, "Indeed thou art excused, for thou wast used to him and he to thee." Then she considered ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... on this trail a frontiersman named Barker built a forlorn ranch-house and corral, and offered what is conventionally called "entertainment ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... Its approach was regarded by the Queen with ominous reluctance. At length, however, the moment for the meeting of the States General at Versailles arrived. Necker was once more in favour, and a sort of forlorn hope of better times dawned upon the perplexed monarch, in his anticipations ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... dry out and warm up for her while I persuade her back on the nest. As she gets used to hearing the cheepings from under another hen she'll take the next ones that come with less mistrust." And suiting her actions to her words Mother Mayberry slipped the two forlorn little mites under a warm old wing that stretched itself out with gentleness to receive and comfort them. Some budding instinct had sent the foolish fluff of stylish feathers clucking at her skirts, so she bent down and with a gentle and sympathetic hand lifted the young inadequate ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... These two forlorn little things are described as "thin and nervous; inclined to cry, and not taking kindly to those who come to pick ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... able to bear this defection without fresh indignation, resolved to make a bold expiring effort by sea and land; but previously offered to fight his adversary in single combat. Augus'tus, however, too well knew the inequality of their situations to comply with this forlorn proposal; he, therefore, coolly replied, "Antony has ways enough to ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... One in a thousand! Oh, Clive, Clive, I know you so well—your family and your pride in them, your position and your security in it, your wide circle of friends, without which circle you would wander like a lost soul—yes, Clive, lost, forlorn, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... the Maid in one instant into mine arms, and I ran very swift, with a fierce running, that I have her away speedy, and so made forlorn trial that I save her life. And lo! as I went from under that huge and dreadful overhang of the great waters, there came downward from the height a great stone that had been cast by the Jet, and it burst upon the rock to my back, and certain of the flinders did strike and ring upon ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... humming-bird, The nebulous darting green, the ruby-throated; The warm fans of the butterfly here floated; Those two nests reared the robins, and the third Was left forlorn Muffled in lilacs, whence the perfume stirred The tremulous eyelids of the ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... said Aunt Sarah, with an ominous shake of the head, 'if you will go to such forlorn, wild places, what may be expected to happen. Had I been in your friend's place, I should never have forgiven you for causing me such an uncomfortable, and, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... he again began, "Of just such an age as one I knew When we of the Line and Forlorn-hope van, On an August morning—a chosen ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... majority may well be expected to support it. No new thing; simply revival of older fashion. Our great grandfathers knew better than to swelter in London through July, pass the Twelfth of August at Westminster, and go off forlorn and jaded in the early days of September. Hunting men may have objections to raise; but then hunting men, though eminently respectable class, are not everybody, not even a majority; may even be spared to go hunting as usual. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... prospect, or even by the dark picture that his imagination conjured up, he pressed onward among the miserable savages, until his man had been recovered. Then he returned, and found his vessel on her side, a forlorn spectacle. Now the wind rose, and the sea beat upon the helpless hulk. It rocked backwards and forwards on its uneasy bed; its treasures of boxes and bales and casks were strewn over the waters; the greedy Indians made haste to seize what they could; and as ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... up at twelve. I provide none but the lightest wines. Nor do I encourage the 'round dances.' I really cannot. Those who do not think it right to join in them would either do so against their consciences, or feel left out and forlorn; pretty girls would get overheated, tumbled, and torn, and carry about the marks of black arms on their delicate waists; and youths, unsurpassed in the natural nobleness of their port and presence, would make ridiculous faces in their well-founded anxiety lest they should lose ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... that slender, forlorn-seeming Japanese lad landed in Boston, with the strange, vague, resistless, heaven-enkindled longing in his heart; what if there had been no kindly hand to grasp his own, no heart to discern and respond to his? How easily might young Neesima have been lost, and the fateful turn ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various

... I am alone, forlorn on the hill of storms. The wind is heard on the mountain. The torrent is howling down the rock. No hut receives me from the rain: forlorn ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... I called to see E. H———, having previously appointed a meeting for the purpose of inquiring about our name. He is an old bachelor, and truly forlorn. The pride of ancestry seems to be his great hobby. He had a good many old papers in his desk at the Custom-House, which he produced and dissertated upon, and afterwards went with me to his sister's, and showed ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... but a leader. Marcus Cato, its present head, did the duty, as he understood it, of its leader amidst daily peril to his life and perhaps without hope of success; his fidelity to duty deserves respect, but to be the last at a forlorn post is commendable in the soldier, not in the general. He had not the skill either to organize or to bring into action at the proper time the powerful reserve, which had sprung up as it were spontaneously in Italy for the party of the overthrown government; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... ordered up to strengthen the besiegers, and Sir Thomas Fairfax sent for a squadron to prevent any help reaching the Royalists by sea. On Sunday evening 'the soldiers were all drawn out; about seven at night forlorn hopes were set, the evening very mild, as at midsummer, the frost being newly gone; the word was given: God with us.... About 11 o'clock at night the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... mine, If the sun should chance to shine, And, too, light as air shall be Every foolish fantasy. I will cause you all to sleep 65 While sleep has you in its keeping, And I'll cause you to awake Without therefore the earth quaking; And a lover by the thorn Of love forlorn 70 If most real be his love I will make his fancy prove Steadfast till it be forsworn. I will make you wish to see Things which scarcely can be parried, 75 And when each of you is married Then truly shall his wedding be. And ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... serious meaning; they were only the natural echo of a girl's preference for a young and beautiful woman to preside over the Court, rather than the bloated rake who now lolled uneasily in the chair before him. He recalled the forlorn little smile with which she had accepted von Elmur's lover-like protestations at Madame de Sagan's doorway. Its forlornness had been lost upon Unziar, who had drawn but one merciless conclusion from the little scene. Close on ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... was divided into three parts. A "forlorn hope" of twenty men was to be the first to rush headlong into the hand to hand fight. Then followed an advance guard of one hundred and fifty men, who, with axes in hand and muskets slung, were to cut away the timbers. Last of all came the ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... widow, and that she had no kith or kin in the world as far as she knew. These facts redoubled the pity of the girls, and they mentally resolved that as long as they were at Lakeview Hall they would do all they could to make life more bearable for the frail and forlorn woman who had been brought into their lives in a way so unexpected ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... the port only as forlorn and insignificant. It did not matter. One consolation remained: he would ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... all these principalities and powers was the Duchess of Queensbury, in her forlorn trim, a white apron and a white hood, and would make the Duke swallow all her undress. T'other day she drove post to Lady Sophia Thomas, at Parsons-green, and told her that she was come to tell her something of importance. " What is it!" ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... was said out of pity and wonder, and that the lady thought her very much neglected and forlorn. But instead of that, the lady meant only to praise and compliment her; and thus, in this way and that way, the bitter little thoughts kept growing and growing, as the cars sped on, until long before the end of her journey came, poor Ally felt that ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... hapless girl of Verona. When she swallowed the sleeping-draught, he shrank and shuddered at the horrible pictures conjured up by her frenzied fancy; and in the last woful scene, he forgot himself, the play, the audience, everything but her, the forlorn gypsy child, the shy and lonely little girl whom long years ago he had taken on his knee, and smoothed down her tangled black hair, as he might have smoothed the plumage of an eaglet, struggling and palpitating under his hand, and glancing up sideways, with fierce and frightened eyes,—and now, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... this one; and there was poor little Miss Delawny sitting out, as usual, in her skimpy pink frock and black hat, trying so hard not to look forlorn that he felt sorry for her. She was tacitly barred by most of the men because she was 'cafe au lait';—a delicate allusion to the precise amount of Indian blood ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... first place, we cannot be sure, beforehand, that such a fight will not be successful. Forlorn hopes sometimes win. We must encourage men to venture, to take chances; only so can the great evils that ride mankind be banished. If there is a fighting chance of accomplishing a great good it is contemptible not to try; society must maintain a code that leads at times ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... the novices—there being, as you know, ten other 'unclothed' boys besides myself—had been roughly aroused in like fashion; and to a by-stander all of us must have looked a forlorn lot of shivering creatures, adrift there on the cheerless deck in the half light of early day, not knowing what to do with ourselves until somebody told us what to do and bearing, I fancy, a strikingly strong ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... every house in the town from which a coach started—(all in vain, for you know Hetty did not start from Stonition by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)—and then in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of road, in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No, she was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Adam was to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to what he should do beyond that, he had ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... family was broken up, the boy passing into the care of one relative, his two sisters into that of another. Certain notes in M. Scherer's possession throw a little light here and there upon a childhood and youth which must necessarily have been a little bare and forlorn. They show us a sensitive, impressionable boy, of health rather delicate than robust, already disposed to a more or less melancholy and dreamy view of life, and showing a deep interest in those religious ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... It was a sympathetic cluck. "Was she a wicked princess?" The query was gently put, but it deeply affected the man. He tried to smile, failed, then like a forlorn little boy he came and bowed his head ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... strip of fence which still rose above water, looked forlorn. To lose in the Beaver the first engine he ever handled was tough, and he was evidently speculating on his chances of ever getting another. If there weren't tears in his eyes, there was storm-water certainly. But ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... sought to shut my eyes to many things, being solely conscious of the horribly forlorn condition in which I find myself in my ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... than the rest, had for some time past sought other resources of happiness than the affection, praise, and indulgence of her fellow-creatures. The parsonage house in which this family lived was the forlorn remains of an ancient abbey: it had in later times been the habitation of a rich and learned rector, by whom, at his decease, a library was bequeathed for the use of every succeeding resident. Rebecca, left alone in this huge ruinous abode, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... retained by the gracious sweetness of her nature. Moon-faced babies crowed and clapped their chubby hands when she passed by their wicker thrones; story-loving children clustered round her knee, and never were denied; pale invalids found wild-flowers on their pillows; and forlorn papas forgot the state of the money-market when she sang for them the homely airs their daughters had no time to learn. Certain plain young ladies poured their woes into her friendly ear, and were comforted; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... statesman died, and his fiddle was heard no more across the valley in the quiet of the evening, but was left untouched for the dust to gather on it where he himself had hung it on the nail in the kitchen under his hat. Then when life seemed to the forlorn girl a wide blank, a world without a sun in it, Angus Ray went over for the first time as a suitor to the cottage under Castenand, and put his hand in hers and looked calmly into her eyes. He told her that a girl could not live ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... these circumstances, would have turned back? What bolting, tramping, and rushing would they not have made through the ranks of the astonished professors and students? The Anniversary set, for example, who sweep the pews of men, or, coming upon one forlorn, crush him as a boa does a sheep. Our silly little flock only laughed, colored, and retreated to the volantes, where they held a council of war, and decided to go visit some establishment where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... monstrous nature grew; Thus he whose sickly body swells with water in the veins, The more he drinks, the more within the thirsty fever reigns. All things are prized by price; to wealth all honours now are sure; Wealth buys the rich man friends; forlorn and friendless pines the poor. If now you ask why copper coins are chiefly my delight, The ancient brass of Rome should I, the ancient Janus, slight? Brass was their wealth of old; though now the better omen's gold, And the new metal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... we looked for some sign or souvenir of the entrancing spirit. The room that echoed to his childish glee, that heard his smothered sobs in the endless nights of childish pain, the room where he scribbled and brooded and burst into gusts of youth's passionate outcry, is now silent and forlorn. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... this speech was very striking. There is nothing that men dislike so much, in critical circumstances, where action is necessary, as uncertainty or want of decision on the part of their leader. The loss of their ship, and their forlorn, almost desperate condition, had sunk their spirits so much that an air of apathetic recklessness had, for a few minutes, crossed the countenances of some of the boldest among the sailors; but while the captain was speaking this expression passed away, and when he had ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... and dote upon. Oh! if there be a mortal ear My sorrowful complaint to hear; If manly breast is ever stirred By wrong done to a helpless bird, To them for quick redress I cry." Moved by the tale, and drawing nigh, On alder branch thou didst espy How, sitting lonely and forlorn, His breast was pressed upon a thorn, Unknowing that he leant thereon; Then bidding him take heart again, Thou rannest down into the lane To seek the doer of this wrong, Nor under hedgerow hunted long, When, sturdy, rude, and sun-embrowned, A ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... dismal windows, vacant and forlorn, stared, sightless, from their marble walls; the whole sad city taking on the semblance of scattered mounds of dead men's sun-bleached skulls—the casements having the appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... forlorn and scattered attitude, there hung about his rags an air of something noble and protective, something strangely inviting that welcomed without criticism all the day might bring. Homeless himself, and with no place to lay his extraordinary body, the birds ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... their attempts to prevent the treaty between France and Spain, they were now engaged in what seemed also a forlorn hope, the preservation of their offensive and defensive alliance with England. They were well aware that many of the leading counsellors of Elizabeth, especially Burghley and Buckhurst, were determined upon peace. They knew that the queen was also heartily ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... till the Light appeared," when they "heard the Spaniard discharge his Watch at his Fort by Beat of Drum, and a Volley of Shot." It was the Spanish way of changing guard, at daybreak. It was also the signal for the "Forlorn" of the buccaneers to march to the battle, under Sawkins. This company consisted of seventy buccaneers. As they debouched from the forest, upon open ground, the Spaniards caught sight of them and beat to arms. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... struck it, has th' notion come into my fool head that when we did ketch up with it the folks it rightly b'longed to might want t' keep it for theirselves! Yes, just kick me, please. Just kick me for a forlorn, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... loss of looks and loss of health—the end of the shelf—should drop her abruptly to the very bottom. She could guess what was there. Every day she saw about the streets, most wretched and most forlorn of its wretched and forlorn things, the solitary old women, bent and twisted, wrapped in rotting rags, picking papers and tobacco from the gutters and burrowing in garbage barrels, seeking somehow to get the drink or the dope that changed hell ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips



Words linked to "Forlorn" :   hopeless, forlorn hope



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