"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love no other; she can make no one happy but him, and she cannot be happy without him. She would rather consume herself in ceaseless conflicts, she would rather die free and wretched, than driven desperate by the company of a man she did not love, a man she would make as unhappy as herself; she would rather die than live ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... if his uncle would not help him he could not go on at the hospital. Panic seized him and, putting aside his pride, he wrote again to the Vicar of Blackstable, placing the case before him more urgently; but perhaps he did not explain himself properly and his uncle did not realise in what desperate straits he was, for he answered that he could not change his mind; Philip was twenty-five and really ought to be earning his living. When he died Philip would come into a little, but till then he refused to give him a penny. Philip felt in the letter the satisfaction ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... grown about his temples in the last two months. The people of the fort had said they had never seen him so irascible, yet so gentle; so uneasy, yet so reserved; so stern about the mouth, yet so kind about the eyes as he had been since Hume had gone on this desperate errand. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... further that could be done for Emil Crawford for hours and in the hazardous sally to Crawford's laboratory he knew that Ruth's cool courage and quick wits would at least double their chances for success in their desperate mission. He provided her with a reserve hood and tunic of lead cloth, then handed her a ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... of us," replied Alice, and her voice was calmer now. She realized that their situation might be desperate, and that there would be need of all the presence of mind ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... Tom discovered it was no other than Van Butchell,{1} whom he observed to Bob, there was little doubt had been summoned on some desperate case, and must go ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... two, on its hinges. A table, which had been covered with an elegant supper, was overturned. The decanters broken in pieces, and the fruits crushed, strewed the floor. Everything in the apartment gave evidence of a violent and desperate struggle. D'Artagnan even fancied he could recognize amid this strange disorder, fragments of garments, and some bloody spots staining the cloth and the curtains. He hastened to descend into the street, with a frightful beating at his heart; he wished to see if he could find ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... trying to get his revolver out from under him, swearing he would kill me. Taking in the situation, I dropped my gun, jumped over the wagon tongue, as he was getting on to his feet, and engaged in what proved to be a desperate fight for the revolver. We were both sometimes struggling on the ground, then again on our knees, he repeatedly striking me in the face and elsewhere, still accusing me of trying to murder him. As I ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... oppose that policy, and to labour as hard as he could for the redemption of his pledges. Yet isolated as he was, he had little power over either one of these aims or the other. The liberal party was determined to support the reigning foreign policy, and this made financial improvement desperate. Of Lord Derby's friends he was not hopeful, but they were not committed to so dangerous a leader.[354] As he put it to Elwin, the editor of the Quarterly: There is a policy going a begging; the general policy that Sir Robert Peel in 1841 took office to support—the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Cossacks as heralds of the Russian hosts who were to emancipate them from the yoke of Napoleon. Did the Prussians and Austrians reflect on the humiliation of an alliance with the Muscovites, and on the superiority of the code civil when the Russian Guard at Kulm stood like a rock against the desperate onslaughts of Vandamme? Perhaps by this time the inhabitants of Berlin have obliterated the bas-relief in the Alley of Victories, representing Prince William of Prussia, the future victor of Sedan, seeking ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... and therefore to material unity, to the point where the Thames was earliest crossed and spanned. More special historical and social facts may be found attached to every old bridge. In war, especially, heroic achievement and desperate valor have often consecrated these narrow defiles and exclusive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... amazed Marshal to follow, and preceded him to a spot where the floor of the gallery suddenly yawned, and they sank together through it to sepulchral depths. Here he was surrounded by a band of desperate coiners who would forthwith have made away with him if the Marshal had not told them who he was, and warned them that if he disappeared his army would dig to the earth's centre to find him, and would infallibly find and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the winds were contrary; some days passed before we could set sail; and when at last I prevailed upon the mariners to venture, a great storm caught us in mid-channel, threatening to rend the sails to ribbons and, lifting us high, hurl us all to perdition. Helpless and desperate, for the sailors had lost all control, I vowed that if the storm might abate and we come safe to harbour I would—when I succeed to my father's lands in Gloucestershire—give to the worthy Abbot of an ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... preposterously abs ... In one of his visions he claims to have seen a gathering of people, called a city, in which there are to be more than four million souls, and governed not by the virtuous, as in our own day, but by the most desperate political malefactors that ever banded together for plunder, and this at the direct request of the people themselves! I am perfectly aware that human nature is weak, and given over at times to strange delusions, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... good many times. But the Circle Bar cattle continued to disappear. Years of warfare followed. The Cattlemen's Association lost no opportunity to harass your father or, for that matter, all the other small owners in the vicinity. Desperate, dissolute men were imported from Texas and Arizona, men who took delight in the shedding of human blood. These men roamed the ranges, stealing the Circle Bar cattle and killing Circle Bar cowboys. Your father had trouble in keeping men; in order to ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... in the turret, he was either placed there by the King, to protect him while he summoned his minions by feigned cries of treason, or he was placed there by Gowrie to help the Master to seize the King. In the latter case, the Master's position was now desperate; in lieu of an ally he had procured a witness against himself. Great need had he to consult Gowrie, but though Gowrie certainly entered the house, went upstairs, and returned to Lennox with the assurance that James had ridden away, it is ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... she exclaimed. "Besides, it isn't so desperate as all that. You certainly are not obliged to rent the house unless ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... folks will be expecting you, won't they?" persisted Jim Otis. He felt that he had a duty of loyalty towards this desperate girl's father and brothers as well as to herself. He had promised Eugene Hautville to bring her home this morning, and who could tell where she might wander and when she might return if he left ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was as good as his word, and the skipper demanded the watch as pay for Eric's feed, for he maintained that he'd done no work, and was perfectly useless. Eric, grown desperate, still refused, and the man struck him brutally on the face, and at the same time aimed a kick at him, which he vainly tried to avoid. It caught him on the knee-cap, and put it out, causing him ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... being never forgiven," rejoined Bessie. "I shall do some desperate act one of these days if I am kept idle. Think of the echoes in this vast house answering only the slamming of a door! and think of what they would have to answer if dear little unruly Justus were ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... children contending for the possession of a bone drawn from the slush of the kennel. I have seen boys fight and bruise each other for a crust of bread dropped upon the pavement, and covered with wet mud, or even unsightlier filth. I have entered the abode of this desperate poverty, led thither by children, who have clamored at my side for alms, and found such misery as I am incompetent to express in words. I have seen the living unable to rise from sickness, in the same bed with the dying and the dead. I have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a boy! They say she is crazy to get him; everybody else has slipped through her fingers, you see, and he would be better than nothing. Now we are in the last week in July, I daresay she is getting desperate; but young Wilde knows pretty well what he is ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... in to relieve Boston of the sufferings inflicted upon her when the port was closed by the despotism of the British crown—we see the beginning of that which insured the cooeperation of the colonies throughout the desperate struggle of the Revolution. And we there see that which, if the present generation be true to the memory of their sires, to the memory of the noble men from whom they descended, will perpetuate for them that spirit of fraternity in which the Union began. But it is not here alone, nor in ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... early June 24, entrenched on the heights of La Guasima, near Sevilla, on the main road from Daiquiri to the city of Santiago de Cuba. The advance guard was soon hotly engaged with them; after a very desperate fight of over one hour, the enemy was driven in confusion from their intrenchments. Our men were too exhausted to follow them. The Tenth Cavalry lost 13 killed and wounded. For a while it was a terrific fight, as the enemy was strongly intrenched on the heights ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... particularly hard winter, when, for some unnecessary and wholly unwarrantable reason, the potato crop had failed, and the little Irish village was in a condition of desperate distress, it was found impossible to collect more than a tithe of Mr. Kingsnorth's just dues. No persuasion could make the obstinate tenants pay their rents. Threats, law-proceedings, evictions—all were useless. They simply would not pay. His agent finally admitted ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... last desperate rally, formed a line of battle, a gleaming, formidable crescent, half hid by a cloud of skirmishers. Out of the woods by the Chinn House now came Jubal Early, with Kemper's 7th Virginia, Harry Hays's Louisianians, and Barksdale's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... idiot. It was natural that she should release Dawes—women were so tender-hearted. A few well-chosen, calmly-uttered platitudes anent the necessity for the treatment that, to those unaccustomed to the desperate wickedness of convicts, must appear harsh, would have served his turn far better than bluster and abuse. Moreover, North was to sail in the Lady Franklin, and might put in execution his threats of official complaint, unless he was carefully dealt ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... victory awaits the Pandavas. Peaceful and still though this night be, my heart is full of the music of a hopeless venture and baffled end. Ask me not to leave those who are doomed to defeat. Let the Pandavas win the throne, since they must: I remain with the desperate and forlorn. On the night of my birth you left me naked and unnamed to disgrace: leave me once again without pity to the calm expectation of ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... The desperate efforts of professional theologians to smooth away, explain, and reconcile all these incoherences and contradictions, constitute one of the most marvellous exhibitions of mental acrobatics recorded even in the history of hermeneutics. ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of the hedge—I don't know well how, for they startled me so I'd liked to have thrown down my milk—two boys, one about the size of he," said she pointing to Jem, "and one a matter taller, but ill-looking like; so I did not think to stir to make way for them, and they were like in a desperate hurry: so, without waiting for the stile, one of 'em pulled at the gate, and when it would not open (for it was tied with a pretty stout cord) one of 'em whips out with his knife and cuts it— Now, have you a knife about you, sir?" continued ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand, at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in a desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during the time of it he breathed ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Captain Sybil, "that if the public school had been common through the South this war would never have occurred. Now things have reached such a pass that able-bodied men must report at headquarters, or be treated as deserters. Their leaders are desperate men, of whom it has been said: 'They have robbed the cradle ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... dainty foot. And he cast a glance at us ladies on whom he had long had an eye, a sort of fearful leer, and went on: "The tops—they . . . " and again he stuck fast. Howbeit, as Starch once more pointed to the pear-tree, he confessed in desperate terror that another man had claimed the tops, one who had not been caught, inasmuch as they were so high and good. Hereupon Starch laughed so loud and clapped his hand with such a smack as made us maidens start, and he cried: "That's it, that is the way of it! Zounds, ye knaves! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... method of existence was soon the talk of the county and continued to be so for ten long months. There is more than one way to kill a cat and more than one method of wiping out the only existing witness against a desperate man striving to escape ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... their common indifference to the world, in one mystic brotherhood. As men learned these lessons, or were inwardly ready to learn them, they recognised more and more clearly in Jesus their heaven-sent redeemer, and in following their own conscience and desperate idealism into the desert or the cloister, in ignoring all civic virtues and allowing the wealth, art, and knowledge of the pagan world to decay, they began what they felt to be an imitation ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... and their establishment does not produce great results in the building of the Church when compared with the work of evangelists and educationalists. In some places their aid was at first apparently necessary to success, but as time went on that first desperate importance ceased. We have not so large a medical force that we can afford to use it for any but the most important and necessary purposes; yet, if the establishment of a native Church is the dominant purpose, large numbers of ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... out of my thoughts, what a desperate one this Will-be-will was, when power was put into his hand. First, he flatly denied that he owed any suit or service to his former prince and liege Lord. This done, in the next place he took an oath, and swore fidelity to his great master ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seen perish without any Forerunner, or other manifest Hurt, than only a decay in Strength; and who being asked concerning their Condition, answered, that they were not sensible of any Disorder, which for the most part denoted a desperate Case, and an approaching Death; but the Number of these were very small in Comparison of such as ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... for Niuchwang. We had been told that our route would be over historic battlegrounds, and we soon realized this, for, after leaving Mukden, we saw the monument erected by the Japanese Government as a memorial to the memory of the Japanese soldiers who fell in a desperate engagement, March 13th, 1905. This was the battle of Shio-ho, one of the worst of the war. General Kuropatkin headed the Russians, while Generals Kuroki and Nogi were on the Japanese side. The Russians were vanquished and ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of whom are devoted to play; she never told the secret to one of them. But my uncle told me this much, on his word of honor. Tchaplitzky, who died in poverty after having squandered millions, lost at one time, at play, nearly three hundred thousand rubles. He was desperate and grandmother took pity on him. She told him the three cards, making him swear never to use them again. He returned to the game, staked fifty thousand rubles on each card, and came out ...
— The Queen Of Spades - 1901 • Alexander Sergeievitch Poushkin
... fifty of their number flying through the black jungle, and without the slightest knowledge of when their uncanny foemen might resume the cold-blooded slaughter they had commenced, it was a desperate band of cut-throats that waited sleeplessly for the dawn. Only on the promise of the Arabs that they would leave the village at daybreak, and hasten onward toward their own land, would the remaining Manyuema consent to stay at the village a moment longer. Not even fear of their cruel ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gave him his card, and the sailor mounted to the promenade deck. He had not been gone two minutes before the captain rushed down the steps as though he were in a desperate hurry. ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... a desperate effort to move, and taking his cane in his left hand, passed his right hand slowly down it, from the golden head that adorned it to the other extremity. 'Look you,' ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... thirteen Spaniards in armor. Thus, on the little island of Gallo in the Pacific, when his men were clamoring to return to Panama, did Pizarro and his few volunteers resolve to stake their lives upon the success of a desperate crusade against the powerful empire of the Incas. At the time they had not even a vessel to transport them to the country they wished to conquer. Is it necessary to add that all difficulties yielded at last ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... round the 'arth, in this latitude. Now is the time to speak, Sir John. If we are bound to Leaphigh, we have the choice of three pretty desperate chances; to go through, to go under, or to go over that there ice. If we are to put back, there is not a moment to lose, for it may be even now questioned whether the ship would claw off, as we are, with a sending ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to while away the tediousness of those winter nights are included the narration of personal adventures passed through by the different hunters in their wild life. Tales of narrow escapes, of Indian fights, of desperate encounters with beasts of the forests; and through the rough texture of these narratives now and then appears a pathetic incident in which woman is the prominent figure. Sometimes it is a hunter's wife who is the heroine, and again the scene is laid in the home of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... in the shed. I made the most desperate efforts to call to mind what tools and other things were left in it which might be used against me. But my agitation confused me. I could remember nothing except my father's big stone-saw, which was far too ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... litle battons, yea the massers to the parliament at Paris have no more. Next none most bring nether swords nor spurs wtin any of the bars: the reason whey swords have bein discharged is because that judges and conseillers have bein several tymes assasinate on the bench be desperate persons poussed forward be revenge; whence a man bringing on wtin the bar wil be made prisoner: yet we had ours ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... each other, an active policy might double the principality both in population and extent. Certainly at least the scheme is entertained in the court of Mittwalden; nor do I myself regard it as entirely desperate. The margravate of Brandenburg has grown from as small beginnings to a formidable power; and though it is late in the day to try adventurous policies, and the age of war seems ended, Fortune, we must not forget, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Contemporains" says that he was executed. I have often heard it said that he died at the foot of the scaffold. Hyvert was left alone, his determined brow, his terrible eye, the pistol in each practiced and vigorous hand threatening death to the spectators. Perhaps it was involuntary admiration, in his desperate plight, for this handsome young man with his waving locks, who was known never to have shed blood, and from whom the law now demanded the expiation of blood; or perhaps it was the sight of those three corpses over which he sprang like a wolf overtaken by his hunters, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... To move down so cunningly that never a leaf stirred; to wade knee-deep in the roaring shallows that drown all noise from behind; to drink, looking backward over one shoulder, every muscle ready for the first desperate bound of keen terror; to roll on the sandy margin, and return, wet-muzzled and well plumped out, to the admiring herd, was a thing that all tall-antlered young bucks took a delight in, precisely because ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Anaphlystian and those of his friends who were especially suspected of Laconian leanings, to fight bravely, and by their deeds to efface this suspicion from the minds of their fellow-citizens. They took Kimon's armour, and set it up in their ranks; and then, fighting in one body round it with desperate courage, they all fell, one hundred in number, causing great grief to the Athenians for their loss, and for the unmerited accusation which had been brought against them. This event caused a revulsion of popular feeling in favour of Kimon, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... not an army exceeding 20,000 men, and her fleet was reduced to six ships of the line and a few frigates, while her fortresses were in ruins. In such a desperate condition, therefore, it might have been expected that, however repugnant to his inclinations, the heir of the house of Braganza would have broken his alliance with England, and have joined the Family Compact. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... all the elements of the situation. The wolf ponders with turned head, half doubtful, half desperate. The poor little cub whimpers pitifully. The hunters dissemble their craft, the trap waits in the path ready to spring. It is not even concealed. Is that the irony of the artist, or is it only due to the necessity of making his meaning plain? Whichever ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... that as he was speaking to me seriously I would do the same; that I was truly sorry to see him in such a state; that every time such a thing happened I was greatly upset by it; that I was a woman of standing, I had settled my life, and could do nothing for him. He was desperate. He informed me that he was leaving for Constantinople, that he would never return. He couldn't make up his mind either to remain or to go away. He fell ill. Nanteuil, who thought I loved him and wanted to keep him, did all in her power to get him away from me. She flung herself at his head ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... were a season of desperate battles, but in that time many more Union soldiers were slain behind the Rebel armies, by starvation and exposure, than were killed in front of them by cannon and rifle. The country has heard much of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... in the Roman Empire, sufficiently numerous to make it politic, in the opinion of Infidels, for a candidate for the empire to profess Christianity; sufficiently powerful to secure his success, notwithstanding the desperate struggles of the heathen party; and sufficiently religious, or if you like superstitious, to make it politic for an emperor and his politicians to give up the senate, the court, the camp, the chase, and the theater, and weary themselves with long prayers, and longer speeches, of preachers ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... you push me hard," said the host; "my nephew is my nephew, and though he was a desperate Dick of yore, yet Mike may have mended like other folks, you wot. And I would not have you think all I said of him, even now, was strict gospel; I knew the wag all the while, and wished to pluck his plumes from him. And now, sir, by what name ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions drew, But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... in all the 'Varsity rugger matches which were not scratched, and we finished up by beating the Wellingham Nomads after a muddy and desperate struggle. Murray was playing for the Nomads and Foster for the 'Varsity, and so many Wellingham people came round to Murray's rooms after the match that I had to hold a kind of overflow meeting in my rooms, after the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... clutched her heart. She hazarded a fearful glance at the water below. The man's fingers clawed at her back. In another instant she would have leapt over; but she felt the ground tremble and give under her feet. She staggered, and with a desperate leap, gained a firm foothold beyond. Behind her, with a rumble and a hissing roar a great section of the bank half slid, half fell to the river beach beneath, carrying down bushes, trees, stones—and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... is no treasure-trove on earth Which I would barter for my pain; I love my grief, but spite and wrath Run riot in my heart; my brain Is reeling—and I laugh and cry. Jubilant and desperate, Exultant, I bewail my fate. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Lowestoft fishing lugger. The lad has to suffer many buffets from his shipmates, while the storms and dangers which he braved on board the "North Star" are set forth with minute knowledge and intense power. The wreck of the "Golden Fleece" forms the climax to a thrilling series of desperate mischances. ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... their most precious merchandise—the treasure, as it were, of that city. This happened at the very time when that Republic had been reduced by long-continued wars and by the loss of the greater part, or rather almost the whole, of her dominions on the mainland to a desperate condition; and the Signori then governing were full of doubt and hesitation as to what they should do. However, the rebuilding of that place being a matter of the greatest importance, they resolved that it should be reconstructed at all costs. And wishing to give it all possible grandeur, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... is darkest," the Spaniard continued. "That is what I wished to tell you, but I preferred to prove it by a case in point. Here was the handsome young secretary lying under sentence of death, and his case the more desperate because, as he had been condemned by the States-General, the King could not pardon him, but he connived at his escape. The secretary stole away in a fishing-boat with a few crowns in his pocket, and reached ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a scene! I took Geoffrey in to see her, and she couldn't have been more horrified if he had been the most desperate character in the world. She refused to listen to a word. You would not have recognised mother, she was so haughty and distant, and—rude! Some things she said were horribly rude. After he went, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... spoke strange languages, and who worshipped different gods, for the Angles and the Saxons were heathens. From the sea also it was open to attack. Sometimes the Irish came. But the most feared of all were the Danes, whose sudden appearance and quick movements and desperate onslaughts were the terror of the age. The "black Danes" came from the fords of Norway, the "white Danes" from the plains of Sweden and Denmark. The Danes settled on the south coast: Tenby is a Danish name. Offa, the king of the Mercian Angles, ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... feel for her. The dead cold pond swayed upon his chest. He moved again, a little deeper, and again, with his hands underneath, he felt all around under the water. And he touched her clothing. But it evaded his fingers. He made a desperate effort to grasp it. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... endured her persecutions but three months, now we had endured them for fifteen. A great deal of secret working may go on in a fellow's mind during a year, and in that way the interval had wrought a change, for we were a good deal more to one another, Smith and I, and a good deal more desperate at our hard lot, both of us, than we had ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... faint sound that struck us dumb with horror. The wolves had scented us from afar, and were giving chase. We took to our heels, as the sayin' is; but you don't make much way on that there ground. The awful baying voices gained on us, minute by minute. On, on, we breathlessly fought our way, desperate to escape. At last, so close was the pack behind us, that I could count 'em, half a dozen or so, and by the light of the torches we carried I could plainly see their red tongues lolling out of their hungry jaws. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... Repulsus ab Spartanis ... occiditur. At the invitation of Cleonymus, who had been excluded from the throne of Sparta, Pyrrhus undertook and failed in a desperate attack on the city. He then turned against Argos, to wrest it from Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia, and was hit by a tile thrown from a roof by a woman.[27] As he lay helpless on the ground he was recognised and murdered. 8. Satis ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... say, he knew the man I buried at sea some months before, in fact, had sailed with him on one vessel for several months, and he moreover gave him a very bad character. It appears that he was a most desperate fellow, having been in prison on several occasions for violent conduct, and was noted for his brutal language and bad behaviour. He had been turned out of the French navy for insubordination, and while on the frigate was a perfect ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... to the fishes! What did I care for him? It was mainly to punish Francoise's presumption that I showed my power and made him fight that desperate ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the ring with an unfortunate young man named Ducket, whose jaw he fractured. This laid the foundation of his fame. He fought several battles with unvarying success; but at last he allowed his valor to get the better of his discretion so far as to kill an Englishman who contended with him with desperate obstinacy for two hours. I am informed that the particular blow by which he felled the poor wretch for the last time is known in pugilistic circles as 'Cashel's killer,' and that he has attempted to repeat it in all his subsequent encounters, without, however, achieving ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... wisdom; for he feareth to ask for more; And that by the sweat of my brow, addeth stout-hearted independence; Give me enough, and not less; for want is leagued with the tempter; Poverty shall make a man desperate, and hurry him ruthless into crime; Give me enough, and not more, saving for the children of distress; Wealth oftentimes killeth, where want ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Coniston in the early days, how we found a wounded buzzard—one of the few creatures of the eagle kind that our English mountains still breed. The rest of us were not very ready to go near the beak and talons of the fierce-looking, and, as we supposed, desperate bird. Ruskin quietly took it up in his arms, felt it over to find the hurt, and carried it, quite unresistingly, out of the way of dogs and passers-by, to a place where it might die in solitude or recover in safety. He often told ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... perhaps, it might have occurred to the patrol leader to throw some sort of guard around the cabin, so as to prevent the escape of the desperate thief. He did not think of doing such a thing now, for ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... She started to behold him, so changed were his gloomy brow, his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful form and careless countenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude, neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air had supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art, the dreaming aspirant after some ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... back at West Point, sure of escaping recognition, and bent on a desperate errand of wrecking Dick Prescott's ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... Durham on a bed-bug race—and bed-bug racing was a great sport with the convicts; (b) I was the dog that had been given a bad name: (c) for his frame-up, Cecil Winwood needed the dogs with bad names, the lifetimers, the desperate ones, the incorrigibles. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... And the greater the genius of him who thus safely leaps over the chasm, the greater will probably be the crowing and vainglory of the mere logician, who, hobbling after him, evinces his own superior wisdom by pausing on its brink, and giving up as desperate his proper ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... drive the whole fleet together into one solid flock. He had the speed of them, and with rifle fire they could not damage him, but for all that it was not easy work. They expected the worst, and made desperate efforts to scatter and escape; finally, he drove them altogether in one hopeless huddle—cowed, scared, and tired out; and then he brought the stern-wheeler to a sudden stop just above them, and made Clay shout out terms ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... and New York, when massacre and burning by bands of savages, under French instigation and leadership, made the names of Haverhill and Deerfield and Schenectady memorable in American history, and when, in desperate campaigns against the Canadian strongholds, the colonists vainly sought to protect themselves from the savages by attacking the centers from which the murderous forays were directed. But each successive treaty of peace between England ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... down upon all fours, like other swine. They tried to groan and beg for mercy, but forthwith emitted the most awful grunting and squealing that ever came out of swinish throats. They would have wrung their hands in despair, but, attempting to do so, grew all the more desperate for seeing themselves squatted on their hams, and pawing the air with their fore trotters. Dear me! what pendulous ears they had! what little red eyes, half buried in fat! and what long snouts, instead of ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which a black boy experiences in America in competing with his white rivals, Booker Washington tells us that his own pathetic and desperate struggle taught him that 'success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.' There is a good deal in that. I was once present ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... man was cocking his revolver. Shears rushed into the shrubbery. The other had no time to turn: the Englishman was upon him. There was a violent and desperate struggle, amid which Shears was aware that the man was making every effort to draw his knife. But Shears, stimulated by the thought of his coming victory and by the fierce longing to lay hold at once of this accomplice of Arsene Lupin's, felt an irresistible ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... In the West most men favored the bill. The tariff was, therefore, a local issue, and the test must come on the Bank. The bill for a re-charter of the National Bank reached the President on July 4. It was considered most carefully, and doubtless the desperate situation of the Administration was duly canvassed. With every evidence of a strong Southern secession from his party, with Clay and Webster leading the solid ranks of the East, it did seem that Jackson would fail if he vetoed the bill passed ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... if you again utter these desperate words—if, after having received proof of your high birth, you still remain poor-spirited in body and soul, I will comply with your desire, I will depart, and renounce forever the service of a master, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... in which God has certainly put you, to seek, by some desperate venture, a new, and, as you fancy, a grander one for yourself? Look out of that window, lad; is there not poetry enough, beauty and glory enough, in that sky, those fields,—ay, in every fallen leaf,—to employ all your powers, considerable as I believe them to be? Why spurn the pure, quiet, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... life, riches, power, and a limited ubiquity; but failing a fresh victim at the end of each hundred years his own soul should be the forfeit. He lived four or five centuries, and then, in spite of his most desperate efforts, was disappointed of his expected victim on the last night of the century; and when the clock struck twelve the devil burst into his castle on a black steed and bore him off in a storm of lightning ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... them even, by splendid feats of arms. Fortune was kind to him. Opportunity smiled upon him. Was it running the blockade off Charleston, or passing through the enemy's lines with despatches in Virginia, or heading a desperate attack on Little Round Top in Pennsylvania, he always won the plaudits of men, often the love of women. And in it all he seemed to bear a ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Catesby, went over to Flanders to arrange some preliminary affairs there, and to communicate the design to Mr. Fawkes, who was personally known to Catesby. At Ostend, Wintour was introduced to Mr. Fawkes by Sir Wm. Stanley. Guy Fawkes was a man of desperate character. In his person he was tall and athletic, his countenance was manly, and the determined expression of his features was not a little heightened by a profusion of brown hair, and an auburn-coloured beard. He was descended ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... my law experience that suicide is either a desperate impulse or a cold-blooded and calculated finality. A man who kills himself while dressing comes under the former classification, and will usually seize the first method at hand. But there was something else, too. Shaving is an automatic process. It completes ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Straits, the Dingdings, the Little Paternosters, the Gulf of Boni, Thursday Island, Java Head. Of cannibal feasts in New Guinea, of head-hunters in Borneo, of strange dances by dusky temple-girls in Bali, of up-country expeditions with the White Rajah of Sarawak, of desperate encounters with Dyak pirates in the Sulu Sea, he discoursed at length and in fascinating detail, while I, sprawled on the verandah steps, my knees clasped in my hands, listened raptly and, when the veteran's flow of reminiscence showed signs of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... but the wheel didn't go so fast as its tail, and that span round and round—ho-ho-ha-ha!—you never saw the like. And its little feet had buckled shoes and bows on them, and they went up and down in a desperate hurry. And all the time that small, little, black Thing kept bumming and booming away ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... weapons went over into a poor man's garden, where his son and some other boys were weeding it. One of them fell upon the little fellow's leg, and cut it in so desperate a manner that he cried out, quite terrified at the blow and sight of the blood. The other boys directly took the alarm, and picking up some stones as large as that which had done the mischief, they mounted ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... Dick Venner had given him. Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in feeling that there might be some dangers in the way of his investigations. Some rumors which had reached him about the supposed suitor of Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate kind of fellow, and whom some believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious, romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and psychological inquiries he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... not be done, yet understands Nought with firm mind, nor as the calm truth is: This is of Rajas, Prince! and "passionate!" Evil is Intellect which, wrapped in gloom, Looks upon wrong as right, and sees all things Contrariwise of Truth. O Pritha's Son! That is of Tamas, "dark" and desperate! ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... They could not afford oatmeal, and even of their Indian meal porridge they could only afford to have two meals a day. They have been so ashamed of their coarser food that they have done all that was possible to hide their desperate state from those about them. It has only been by accident that it has been found out, and then they have been caught hurriedly putting away the dishes that contained their loathsome food. A woman, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... the kindly Dyer. Lamb once suddenly asked him what he thought of the murderer Williams,—a wretch who had destroyed two families in Ratcliff Highway, and then cheated the gallows by committing suicide. "The desperate attempt," says Talfourd, "to compel the gentle optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature produced no happier success than the answer, 'Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... in the great city. The king gave entertainments on a magnificent scale; and, in the midst of his dazzling splendor, the mournful predictions of Belteshazzar were well-nigh forgotten. Occasionally they would rush to the monarch's mind, but with a desperate effort they would be banished as troublesome intruders and ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... laughter. It was rude and ungallant, I confess; but how could I help it? Mrs. Raymond made a desperate effort to become angry; but so ludicrous was the whole affair, that she could not resist the contagious influence of my mirth; and she, too, almost ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... an argument against protection exactly that after which they are—unconsciously, it is true—eagerly longing. Protective tariffs, trade guilds, and whatever else the ingenious devices of the last decades may be called, I now understand and recognise as desperate attempts made by men whose very existence is threatened by the ever growing disproportion between the power to produce and consumption—attempts to restore to some extent the true proportion by curbing and checking the power to produce. Whilst ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... equally intense: the appeal of the lecture-room, in its essence a heavy extra, so exhausted our resources that even the sustaining doughnut of the refreshment-counter would mock our desire and the long homeward crawl, the length of Broadway and further, seem to defy repetition. Those desperate days, none the less, affect me now as having flushed with the very complexion of romance; their aches and inanitions were part of the adventure; the homeward straggle, interminable as it appeared, flowered at moments into rapt contemplations—that for instance of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... howling horribly—chanting my funeral dirge. Like grim death, I held on to my railing, and longed, with a desperate longing, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... a prodigious notoriety all over the islands. The natives of Nukuheva would frequently recount in pantomime to our ship's company their terrible feats, and would show the marks of wounds they had received in desperate encounters with them. When ashore they would try to frighten us by pointing, to one of their own number, and calling him a Typee, manifesting no little surprise that we did not take to our heels at so terrible an announcement. It was quite ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... in the early part of this day, had lain over the field of the great battle of Dresden; we were now about to traverse the scene of another conflict scarcely less desperate,—the affair, as by the French writers it is designated, of Kulm. It would have been strange indeed, had I failed to look round with more than common interest while traversing these scenes of mighty strife. I endeavoured also to look at them with a soldier's eye. I did my best to trace the positions ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... ransom of fifty pieces of silver for each of them, and seized the ships of Zemar, Beyrout, and Sidon. The forces sent from Gebal to Zemar were made prisoners by the Amorite chief at Abiliya, and the position of Rib-Hadad daily became more desperate. Pa-Hor, the Egyptian governor of Kumidi, joined his opponents, and induced the Sute or Beduin to attack his Sardinian guards. Yapa-Hadad, another governor, followed the example of Pa-Hor, and Zimridi ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... him in the result. Should she refuse him, he would be and remain for a long time excessively unhappy. He obliged himself to regard this alternative, and his heart sank before the possibility. Not that the idea of dying or doing anything desperate presented itself to him. Such extravagance would have seemed out of keeping with respect either for her or for himself. Doubtless he might recover some day, but the interim would be terribly hard to endure. Rejection meant a dark, dreary bachelorhood; success, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... next moment a tall figure emerged from my door, the figure of the Russian sailor. Over his shoulder was the white form of the young girl, and even in his haste he seemed to bear her tenderly and with gentle reverence. I could hear her wild cries and see her desperate struggles to break away from him. Behind the couple came my old housekeeper, staunch and true, as the aged dog, who can no longer bite, still snarls with toothless gums at the intruder. She staggered feebly along at the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... OF THE MAINLAND. Las Casas became at one time a missionary to a tribe of the most desperate warriors located on the southern border of Mexico, in a region called by the Spaniards the "Land of War." Three times a Spanish army had invaded the country, and three times it had been driven back by the native defenders. Las Casas wished to show the Spaniards that more could be accomplished ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... were opinions to her? The one thing in life to which she clung now was Katherine's affection and esteem; for her she would sacrifice much, but she would not flatter her into a fool's paradise of trust and wedded love with De Burgh by concealing anything, neither would she counsel her against the desperate experiment, should she be inclined to risk it. He might be a very ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... minute's time, by the Saint-Albert pass, but now the way could be no longer open to them, the black swarms of Prussians had certainly anticipated them and were on the plain of Donchery. There were two courses left for them to pursue, both desperate; and the most promising, as well as the bravest, of them was to drive the Bavarians into the Meuse, and cut their way through and regain possession ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... made me desperate," cried Mollie, the tempestuous, flinging down the unfortunate sweater once more. "I know what I'd do if I were a man, and Betty and all the rest of us girls! But either they didn't know or they wouldn't tell. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... came, the Carnutes, under the command of Cotuatus and Conetodunus, desperate men, meet together at Genabum, and slay the Roman citizens who had settled there for the purpose of trading (among the rest, Caius Fusius Cita, a distinguished Roman knight, who by Caesar's orders had presided over the provision department), and ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... weeks indoors had lightened the tan on his face so that his blushes showed very plainly—and made desperate denial. "I'm only going up to Butte. But a fellow can't have any kind of a time there without a fair-sized roll, and—I'll be back in two or three weeks—soon as my ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he was planning, what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both he and Rossland knew there would be some way of sheltering Mary Standish in Sokwenna's cabin; they were accepting a desperate gamble, believing that Alan Holt would find a safe place for her, while he fought until he fell. It was the finesse of clever scheming, nothing less than murder, and he, by this combination of circumstances and plot, was the victim marked ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... their great fair cities there was neither seeking For power of gold, nor greed of lust, nor desperate pain Of multitudes that starve, or, in hoarse anger breaking, Beat at the doors of princes, break ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... do believe that horrid creature never posted my letters,—I daresay they are in her pocket now,—and I could not get out by myself until to-day. Now just think, Ursula, what sort of a Christmas Day I was likely to have; and then you never came to me, and I got desperate; so when Fraeulein said she had one of her headaches,' and here Jill made a comical grimace, 'I just made up my mind to take French leave, and spend Christmas Day with you, and here I am; and scold me if you dare, and I will ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... rendered his home degraded and wretched, and his friends and scholars fell off from him. In disgust he quitted Florence, and entered the service of Francis I, of France; but his wife, for whom his regard was a desperate infatuation, imperiously summoned him back to Florence, to which he returned, bringing with him a large sum of money, entrusted to him by the king for the purchase of works of art. Instigated by his wife, Andrea del Sarto used this money for his, or rather her, purposes, and dared not return ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... apparent to the bystanders. When the coach arrived and he had overcome this consciousness, it was too late. Yuba Bill had discharged his passengers for Indian Spring and driven away. Miss Nellie was in the settlement, but where? As time passed he became more desperate and bolder. He walked recklessly up and down the main street, glancing in at the open doors of shops, and even in the windows of private dwellings. It might have seemed a poor compliment to Miss Nellie, but it was an evidence of his complete preoccupation, when the sight of a female face at ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... In a desperate attempt to clinch, the German exposed his jaw. Jack's right flashed out quickly and then the lad stepped back. His fist had found its mark; and the German staggered back, reeled, swayed—fell to the ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... absence of Fog (and the season happened to be remarkably dry), made it difficult for me to trust to Sight Recognition, especially at the short distance at which I was standing. Desperate with fear, I rushed forward with an unceremonious, "You must permit me, Sir—" and felt him. My Wife was right. There was not the trace of an angle, not the slightest roughness or inequality: never in my life had I met with a more perfect Circle. He remained motionless ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... you to notify me," Sarah replied without looking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the direction of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little community with Madame de Vionnet. "But I hope I shan't miss her ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... a matter of strength," he said to himself, "and I feel desperate and strong enough now to ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... promised to marry a sporting boor, and I can't yet make up my mind to sink to it. Don't let's talk of it! I only hope he'll vote straight in the next few months. But the thought of being kept through August drives him desperate already. Ah! here they are—plagues of the human race!—" and she waved an accusing hand towards the incoming stream of gentlemen. "Now, I'll prophesy, and you watch. Lady Tressady will make two friends here—Harding Watton—oh! I forgot, he's ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "For many Snows I have been sitting on the Side Lines watching the Dear Boy take Desperate Chances. To begin with, he married into Our Family. Once, at Asbury Park, he acted as Judge at a Baby Show. Later he put a lot of Money into a Bank, the President of which wore Throat Whiskers and was opposed ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... change of light and shadow it seemed to her that the rigid features became more living, that a mournful smile formed itself on the closed lips, that the tightly- shut eyelids quivered. A wild cry rang through the whole room. With a desperate shriek: "His eyes! He is looking at me!" the general's wife staggered forward and fell fainting to the ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... men—of either the restless and ambitious, or of the better class—were literally sent away. But such has been the politic practice of this church for many ages; and we may safely believe, that when she was engaged in an unscrupulous and desperate contest for the recovery, by fair means or foul, of her immense losses, there might be many in the ranks of her pious priesthood whom it would be inconvenient to retain at home. And during that conflict especially, with the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... go directly to St. Domingo; and we will soon follow them. We can produce as good soldiers on our estates, as those in France. Our own arms shall make us independent and respectable. If we are once forced to desperate measures, it will be in vain that thousands will be sent across the Atlantic to bring us back to our former state." On hearing this, I entreated the deputies, to wait with patience. I observed to them, that in a great revolution, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... desperate. She didn't care very much to have Johnny or anybody else as a beau. She wished there were no such things as beaux on the face of the earth, but her pride was stung to the quick. She began to imagine that Johnny grinned when he saw her. Suppose he had heard. She wanted ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... and hairiest-looking of the sailors, and the echoes of his approbation only died away to let the song begin. Then the notes of Sambo's fiddle also dropped off, and I heard Dennis O'Moore's beautiful voice for the first time as he gave his head one desperate ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... this should be known To that saucy, satirical thing, Miss MALONE! What a story 'twill be at Shandangan for ever! What laughs and what quizzing she'll have with the men! It will spread thro' the country—and never, oh! never Can BIDDY be seen at Kilrandy again! Farewell—I shall do something desperate, I fear— And, ah! if my fate ever reaches your ear, One tear of compassion my DOLL will not grudge To ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... my youth with desperate knives, to wear This paltry age's gaudy livery, To let each base hand filch my treasury, To mesh my soul within a woman's hair, And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom,—I swear I love it not! these things are less to me Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, Less than the thistledown ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... explained hastily, "that I like to know they're wrong about us. And now what was it that Biddy and you wanted to say? Oh, poor Mabel's letter! How thankful I am to get it! I've been wondering if I dared write, and thinking of all sorts of desperate plans. But, Biddy thought we must wait till Wretched was off his guard. You see, we shall have to rescue her when ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson |
