"Discouraging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Farming under such conditions as we saw, where men and women worked in the fields within range of the guns and amid their constant roaring, or with the eternal white crosses for company, may be more exciting than the usual occupation of the agriculturist, but it must be a sad, discouraging ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... speak English a little better. The pains I take to correct them and weed out the German words that crop up in every sentence are really untiring, and the results discouraging. Indeed, as they get older the German asserts itself more and more, and is threatening to swallow up the little English they have left entirely. I talk English steadily with them, but everybody else, including a small French nurse lately imported, nothing but German. Somebody ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... injuries.—This was of a most discouraging character compared with the prognosis in abdominal injuries as a whole. The cases were of two classes, however: those that died within twenty-four hours, and those that died at the end of from ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... revolving something he wanted to say to her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity—of absorption in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment or with her own personality—an expression that is most of all discouraging to a lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that quiet elasticity that asks for no support. Seth felt this dimly; he said to himself, "She's too good and holy for any man, let alone me," and ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... sequence of events, frustrating, harrying, baffling him, since the first hour he had come to the mine of the Croix d'Or. The rough suggestion of Bully Presby on the first day, discouraging him; the harsh attitude; the persistent attempts to dishearten him and buy him out; the endeavor to buy half the property from, and remove the backing, of Sloan, without which he could not go on; the words of the watchman, who doubtless had discovered Bully ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... to the May Pole, which proved to be a commercial inn, with the air of a drinking-shop, in a by-alley; and, furthermore, they could not take us in. So we drove to the George the Fourth, which seems to be an excellent house; and here I have remained quiet, the size of the town discouraging me from going out in the twilight which was fast coming on after tea. These are glorious long days for travel; daylight fairly between four in the morning and nine at night, and a margin of twilight ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... barometers by some miscalculation were on the No-Name. They were able to make camp on the shore and survey the situation. "No sleep comes to me in all those dark hours," writes Powell. To meet with such a reverse at so early a stage was very discouraging, but Powell had counted on disaster, and, as he was never given to repining, as soon as breakfast was eaten the next morning he cast about for a way to rescue the barometers which were in a part of the wreck ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... themselves understood, and, being willing learners, they very soon made rapid progress—rapid, considering the discouragements under which they labored—being without both grammar and dictionary, or any other book which could materially assist them. Slow and discouraging indeed, compared with the labor of learning some other languages under different circumstances, was their advancement; but when the circumstances under which they commenced and prosecuted the task of learning the language ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... not attempt to describe the service in detail. There was a discouraging droop and quaver in the singing, and the mournful-looking deacon who passed the collection-plate seemed inured to disappointment. The prayer had in it a note of despairing appeal which fell like a cold hand upon one's living soul. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... with a portfolio of drawings, to New York, and with a fluttering heart and trembling hands laid them before two distinguished artists, Mr. C——- and Mr. I——-, to whom Mr. Wyllys had given him letters. The decision of these gentlemen was not discouraging, upon the whole; but they found that he had set out wrong in the arrangement of his colours, and having corrected the mistake, they proposed his painting another piece in oils, to determine whether the faults in the first were the result of ignorance, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... daunted by difficulties, nor dissuaded by discouraging representations. I thought at first of fastening all the loose timber together that had drifted against the rocks, as much in the shape of a boat as I could get it; but on looking over my stock of nails, I found they fell very far short of the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with the most comfortable assurance that I had thoroughly well earned it. But, gentlemen, the competitor having been a worthy one, and the examination, a fair one, I cannot say that I found in that circumstance anything very discouraging. I said to myself, "Never mind; what's the next thing to be done?" And I found that policy of "never minding" and going on to the next thing to be done, to be the most important of all policies in the conduct ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... go into it: the EUREKA out of all these difficulties, which had so long seemed insuperable. Prince Henri "had an Interview with the Austrian Minister next day" (February 19th), who immediately communicated with his Kaunitz,—and got discouraging response from Kaunitz; discouraging, or almost negatory; which did not discourage Friedrich. "A way out," thinks Friedrich: "the one way to save my Prussia and the world from incalculable conflagration." And entered on it without loss ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Reflecting upon this, how can one feel any affection for one's body? Indeed, the body, which is subject to destruction, has no joy in it.' Having heard these words of Panchasikha that were free from deception, unconnected with delusion (because discouraging sacrifices and other Vedic acts), highly salutary, and treating of the Soul, king Janadeva became filled with wonder, and prepared himself to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... variety of woods, thickets, and jungles that go to make up a wooded country—especially in the creek bottoms where a logging road finds often its levelest way—and the piles of windfalls, vines, bushes, and scrubs that choke the thickets with a discouraging and inextricable tangle, the clearing of five miles to street width will look like an almost hopeless undertaking. Not only must the growth be removed, but the roots must be cut out, and the inequalities of the ground levelled or filled up. Reflect further that Radway had but ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... man could not but be a little flattered, and if sometimes, thereafter, in his discouraging work, he allowed the thought that he might perhaps be called to Washington as chaplain of the Senate, to cheer him, who can wonder. The Senator's commendation at least did one service for him, it elevated him in the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... wet, and the ambulances were wandering round like ghosts of wagons, and the wood was too dripping to make a fire, and three men out of my mess were killed, and one was a boy that we'd all adopted, and it was awful discouraging. Yes, we were right tired, damn Yankees and all of us.... Doctor, if I was you I wouldn't bother about that leg. It's all right as it is, and you might hurt me.... Oh, all right! Kin I smoke?... Yuugh! Well, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... subject briefly by quoting the law of the conservation of matter, which says that matter can neither be created nor destroyed by any means known to science. By our knowledge of radioactivity we can make our answer a little more learned, a little less abrupt, but none the less discouraging to the advocate of the development hypothesis. We can tell how the elements of high atomic weight, such as uranium and thorium, are constantly giving off particles and are thus by loss or decomposition being changed over into other elements, such as radium, niton, polonium and lead. But ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... upon industry, a reward for improvident marriage, a stimulus to increased population, and a means of counterbalancing the effect of an increased population upon wages; a national provision for discouraging the honest and industrious, and protecting the lazy, vicious, and improvident; calculated to destroy the bonds of family life, hinder systematically the accumulation of capital, scatter that which is already accumulated, and ruin the taxpayers. Moreover, in the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... far more than usually falls to persons of his age, and he was, by character, prudent and practical; but it would have been impossible for one who had lived as long and as well as himself, to give up every expectation of being restored to his bride, even in circumstances more discouraging than those in which he was actually placed. Still, he had been slowly accustoming himself to the idea of a protracted separation, and had never lost sight of the expediency of making his preparations for passing his entire life in the solitary place where he and Betts had been ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... It is discouraging to note that the improvement of the last fifty years is almost wholly confined to Great Britain. Here and there a book is printed in France or Germany with some pretension to good taste, but the general revival ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... Low-lying alligator, evading the eye-sight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... F. Rhodes in his able and most impartial history of the United States, speaking of the events of the summer of 1864 and the disintegrating and discouraging condition of the Army ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... with hemp from Mid-Russia, and wool from the Ural, and wood from the Valdai Hills, avoid the sudden storms of the lake, was also the work of Peter the Great. I should have gone on shore to inspect the locks, but for the discouraging persistence of the rain. Huddled against the smoke-stack, we could do nothing but look on the draggled soldiers and mujiks splashing through the mud, the low yellow fortress, which has long outlived its importance, and the dark-gray waste of lake which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... on the part of Legaic was the more discouraging, inasmuch as he had, in the first instance, as we have seen, given up his own house for the school. So persistent, however, was his hostility at this time, and so great were the difficulties in the way of attending school, ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... overburdened mother. These she righted and went dashing on her way. Groups waylaid her; people with time to kill sauntered in front of her; wandering, indecisive people tried to stop her for information; and she reached the gate just as it was closing. Through it she could see—down a discouraging length of platform—a Balmacaaned figure disappearing into ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... mankind; his admirable confidence had not been shaken by a long succession of snubs in the quarter under discussion. As for Miss Bouverie, it was her practice to play off one young man against the other by discouraging each in his turn. But this evening she was a different being. She had a vague yet absolute conviction that her fortune was made. She could have sung all her songs to the twain, but for the reflection that Mr. Clarkson himself would hear them too, and report the matter ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... to fall back upon As a journeyman printer he would earn his bread, and preserve the integrity of an upright spirit. And so without a murmur, and with cheerfulness and persistency, he hunted for weeks on the streets of Boston for a chance to set types. This hunting for a job in a strange city was discouraging enough. Twice before had he visited the place, which was to be his future home. Once when on his way to Baltimore to see his mother, and once afterward when on a sort of pleasure tramp with three companions. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... probably an error of judgment which Theodoric had occasion bitterly to regret. For the moment, however, he was completely successful. Descending into the plain he took the towns of Scampae (Elbassan) and Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), both of which, probably owing to the discouraging counsels of Sigismund, seem to have been ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... attempts which, although better than those of his predecessors, were rather discouraging to the exacting coach. Presently, after a particularly atrocious shot, Stillwell strode in distress here and there, and finally stopped a dozen paces or more in front of the teeing-ground. Ed, who for a cowboy ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... bored—he was exasperated; and if so, then Jim might not have been impudent. According to my theory he was not. I imagined he was hopeless. Then it was that our glances met. They met, and the look he gave me was discouraging of any intention I might have had to speak to him. Upon either hypothesis—insolence or despair—I felt I could be of no use to him. This was the second day of the proceedings. Very soon after that exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the next day. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... her a little more. Only He who loved sinners well enough to die for them can deal with the erring. We never see all the heart. He does, and He can convict without condemning, and reprove without discouraging. Oh, for more of the heart of Christ! Take care, brother, how you speak of another's fault. Ere you know, you may be in the same or deeper condemnation. Very significantly does the Master say that ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... into rules, directions, and formulae, by far the larger part of our task being based upon each individual's own innate musical feeling, and upon the general musical training that he has undergone. All this may be discouraging, but on the other hand, granting a fair degree of native musical ability, coupled with a large amount of solid music study, any one possessing a sense of leadership can, after a reasonable amount of intelligent practice, learn to handle a chorus or even an orchestra in a fairly satisfactory ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... street and hadn't time to go in, I'd just shout down the cellar and she'd have an answer back in no time. I used to go down for a few minutes, just to cheer myself up a bit, for there's a lot of discouraging things happen in our sort of work, and she always made me ashamed. She was so content, never wanting more and always ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... have not sufficient forces to undertake a detailed investigation of individual land holdings, and also that they must try to avoid any appearance of discriminating between various land companies in the sense of encouraging or discouraging the sale of land belonging to ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... but to decline. Shirley, fearing that his refusal would be too discouraging, kept it secret from all but Pepperrell and General Wolcott, or, as others say, Brigadier Waldo. He had written to the Duke of Newcastle in the preceding autumn that Acadia and the fisheries were in great danger, and that ships-of-war were needed for their protection. On this, the Duke had written ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... a dingy, discouraging front. Julia twisted the familiar old bell, and got the familiar old odours of carbolic acid and boiling onions, superimposed upon a basis of thick, heavy, stale air. But the hour she spent in the dirty kitchen was nevertheless not an ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond; for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place. And this is the reason of the badness of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... a warning. In a few days I'll be tossing on that black sea of which I have, in the last few days, caught some discouraging glimpses. It doesn't look as if it meant to let me see the Statue of Liberty again, but as surely as I do, I'm going to go into council ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... damp and discouraging for both parties. Duke began to tremble even before he was lifted into the water, and after his first immersion he was revealed to be a dog weighing about one-fourth of what an observer of Duke, when Duke was dry, must have guessed his weight to ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... brusquely on, and yet they were respectable and intelligent-looking. The policeman at the Broadway corner had at least heard of my hostelry; he remembered having seen it when he first came on the force, but he was inclined to believe that it had long since been torn down. This was discouraging, but I did not abandon my search, for Mr. Pound had advised me to make myself known to Mr. Wemple, the head clerk, a friend of his, who would doubtless be of service to me. And now in my great loneliness I wanted to find not the hotel, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... which he waited for her had a gloomy formality, a sort of petrified respectability, most discouraging. On the wall was a large painting, evidently a copy from some famous original, although Maurice did not know what. The picture represented a painter with a model in the dress of a nun. The artist was evidently engaged in painting a saint for some convent, a beautiful sister had ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... from expectation of the unknown and of the half-way mysterious, and from the confidence in the doctor. Of course it can work very differently. The expectation can upset the nervous system and produce unrest instead of suggestibility and, instead of confidence, the patient may feel that discouraging diffidence which settles easily upon those who have tried one fashionable physician after another. But where there is real confidence, based perhaps on the fame of the doctor and on the reports of his powerful achievements, there the conditions for ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... answer that came back over the wire was discouraging. For Tom had not returned, and there was no word from him. There was an urgent message for him, too, from government officials regarding the ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... might charge him with being remiss in his duty. He had sent three detachments of cavalry in pursuit, but only one of them had been heard from, and the news concerning it, which had been brought in by a friendly Indian, was most discouraging. The savages had eluded his pursuing columns in a way that was perfectly bewildering, and the fear that they might surprise and annihilate his men troubled the major to such a degree that he could neither eat nor sleep. He was glad to see anybody who could give ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... as bravely busy herself to fix them up. She knows that the stay is indefinite, that it may be for six months, or possibly six years, but that matters not. It is her army home—Brass Button's home—and however discouraging its condition may be, for his sake she pluckily, and with wifely pride, performs miracles, always making the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... destroys it. [Footnote: The first eight sections of this fragment seem to be taken from speeches of Romans in the senate-house. Nos. 1 and 2 are apparently the words of an unknown individual discouraging the eagerness for war; Nos. 3 and 4 may be spoken by Lentulus, urging war; and Nos. 5 to 8 may contain the opposing arguments ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... leagues from Paris. It was there that the Emperor received from General Belliard, who arrived at the head of a column of artillery, the first intelligence of the battle of Paris. He heard the news with an air of composure, which was probably affected to avoid discouraging those about him. He walked for about a quarter of an hour on the high road, and it was after that promenade that he sent Caulaincourt to Paris. Napoleon afterwards went to the house of the postmaster, where he ordered his maps to be brought to him, and, according to custom, marked ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many others. I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... all reckonings there for hats, and then walked to Paul's Churchyard and after a little at my bookseller's and bought at a shop Cardinall Mazarin's Will in French. I to the Coffeehouse and there among others had good discourse with an Iron Merchant, who tells me the great evil of discouraging our natural manufacture of England in that commodity by suffering the Swede to bring in three times more than ever they did and our owne Ironworks be lost, as almost half of them, he says, are already. Then I went and sat by Mr. Harrington, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... hall of the University, now hidden away in an obscure part of Vienna but still retaining traces of the paintings which then decorated it, the students gathered in large numbers on March 13th. Various rumors of a discouraging kind had been circulated; this and that leading citizen were mentioned as having been arrested; nay, it was even said that members of the Estates had themselves been seized, and that the sitting of the Assembly would not be allowed to take place. To these rumors ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... joy that came to her during this year was the news that Mr. Skeys had found a position for his brother-in-law in Lisbon. But this pleasure was more than counterbalanced by the discouraging bulletins of Fanny's health. Mr. Skeys was alarmed at his wife's increasing weakness, and was anxious to gratify her every desire. Fanny expressed a wish to have Mary with her during her confinement. The latter, with characteristic unselfishness, consented, when Mr. Skeys asked her to go to Lisbon, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... races and other sports inaugurated by the Police had their effect in discouraging the Indians from the barbaric Sun-dance which the Government sought to end as soon as possible, although not desiring to repress them by force. The Sun-dance was a semi-religious, semi-tribal festival for the purpose of enabling ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... three of them, Jack was beginning to show the strain the most. This was his special field, the place where he was supposed to excel, and nothing was happening. Reports coming up from the planet were discouraging; the isolation techniques they had tried to institute did not seem to be working, and the spread of the plague was accelerating. The communiques from the Bruckians were taking on a ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... let him know how much of that unveiling was my act; and there was a moment when I probably should have done so had not one of the ladies of our party, snatching a place at his other elbow, just then appealed to him in a spirit comparatively selfish. It was very discouraging: I almost felt the liberty ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... no reply to this discouraging observation. There are times when speech is worse than useless. He stood by the window, looking over at that shrunken figure on the groat old-fashioned four-post bed, with its voluminous drab damask curtains, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... darkness; Wailing and striving To reach from your feebleness Something you feel Will be good to and cherish you, Something you know And can rest upon blindly: O, then a hand (Your mother's, your mother's!) By the fall of its fingers All knowledge, all power to you, Out of the dreary, Discouraging strangenesses Comes to and masters you, Takes you, and lovingly Woos you and soothes you Back, as you cling to it, Back to some comforting ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... There needed not, as I may say, such a promise to be invented by the wisdom of heaven, and worded at such a rate, as it were on purpose to dash in pieces at one blow all the objections of coming sinners, if they were not prone to admit of such objections, to the discouraging of their own souls. For this word, "in no wise," cutteth the throat of all objections; and it was dropped by the Lord Jesus for that very end; and to help the faith that is mixed with unbelief. And it is, as it were, the sum of all promises; neither can any objection ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... took out his pipe, and, filling it carefully, broke off a sulphur match from the block in his pocket. He felt that this was an extravagance, but he was in need just then of consolation. He had wandered up on the mountain, past the reservoir and the M'Gill University, after a singularly discouraging afternoon, to wait until supper should be ready at ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... because of higher international oil and gas prices. In 2006, Ashgabat raised its natural gas export prices to its main customer, Russia, from $66 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) to $100 per tcm. Overall prospects in the near future are discouraging because of widespread internal poverty, a poor educational system, government misuse of oil and gas revenues, and Ashgabat's unwillingness to adopt market-oriented reforms. Turkmenistan's economic statistics are ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... out her purse. "Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't! I—I'm upset already. Take this, and please—oh, please, don't spend it in getting drunk or gambling or anything horrid," Miss Hugonin implored him. "You all do, and it's so selfish of you and so discouraging." ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... perfect traveler is one whose digestion is perfect, whose disposition is cheerful, who can be enthusiastic under the most discouraging circumstances, to whom discomfort is of no moment, and who possesses at least a sense of the ridiculous, if not a real sense of humor! The perfect traveler furthermore, is one who possesses the virtue of punctuality; one who has not forgotten something at the last minute, and whose ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... outset Percy knew that he had not a single sympathizer. But instead of discouraging him, that fact nerved him to do his utmost. He kept himself well in hand and did not waste an effort. If he could continue to side-step Jabe's quick rushes, and let the latter tire himself out, the fight ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... dwell on it; evidently our influence has not yet been exercised as it should have been, and if Mr. Lincoln now bends somewhat before counsels devoid of energy and dignity, it proceeds in part from our reserve, our silence, our apparent neutrality—who knows? even from the discouraging language that has been sometimes held in our name. The publication of the unlucky Morrill Tariff, (signed, we may say in passing, by Mr. Buchanan, and the revocation of which, I am convinced, will be signed some day by ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... taking home more heathenism than he brings; the Negro, bound tighter by the vices of the whites than ever he was by their iron chains—these three, ignorant of the Christ and grasping the satanic weaponry of our sinful land and age, together form the most discouraging of mission fields. Our laborers are faced by all the serious problems of the foreign land—problems unrelieved by a single romantic charm. When we send our missionaries to Africa they go to labor among the Africans; and when we send them ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... with such enticing and agreeable flowers, as will lead the young sinner on insensibly, even to the most profligate stages of guilt. All therefore that can be done by virtue, unassisted with experience, is to avoid every trial with such a formidable foe, by declining and discouraging the first advances towards a particular correspondence with perfidious man, howsoever agreeable it may seem to be. For here is no security but in ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... that the outlook was discouraging. She scoured a paring knife thoughtfully and polished it off before she ventured ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... real effort to find time to tabulate the information they receive, and they want to receive more, so they are willing to do their part to tabulate the information which will help us as an organization to be more definite about encouraging or discouraging the planting of a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... numbers of people increase. In a more remote stage, the imports may consist in a considerable part of raw materials, which will be wrought into articles for exportation, and will, therefore, require rather the encouragement of bounties, than to be loaded with discouraging duties. A system of government, meant for duration, ought to contemplate these revolutions, and be able to accommodate ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Southern Europe have proved unsatisfactory because they killed at 20 to 25 below zero. It was discouraging to have a ten or fifteen year old tree killed outright by an unusual winter. But it was just these conditions that led to the discovery of the Schafer walnut. This tree survived the winters of 1936 and 1937 in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... unfortunately, preclude their settled belief that Clarence had participated in the fraud, and that even now his restitution was making a dangerous precedent, subversive of the best interests of the State, and discouraging to immigration. Some doubted his sanity. Only one, struck with the sincerity of his motive, hesitated to take his money, with a look of commiseration ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... brown eyes to his. It was the first glance she had given him that day; from coquetry, perhaps, or because sorrow for her lover had softened her heart, or because she felt remorse for the extreme harshness of her note the night before, we must admit that this glance had nothing very discouraging in it. Octave bowed, and spoke a few words as coldly polite as he would have spoken to a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... remind us of some of the best Proverbs of Solomon. In general, we should say that to his mind filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal principle of government. He was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars and violence. He was liberal and tolerant in his views. He said that the "superior man is catholic and no partisan." Duke Gae asked, "What should be done to secure the submission of the people?" The sage replied, "Advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... apples is the mongrel character of the plants on which we work. We know nothing of the parentage of any of our varieties, and it seems quite useless to speculate on what the segregation of characters may be in crosses between different varieties. A further discouraging feature in apple breeding is the long period required to get results from any particular cross. Effort is being made to shorten this period by grafting scions of hybrid seedlings on dwarf stocks and growing the plants in pots. This will help some, but at best the attainment ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... duty is very discouraging. We are hindered and baffled on every side by the people, whose sympathies are always against the law. Now in England your sympathies are with the law, and the people have the sense to support ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... lodge at a distant village, to which he pointed, for the night, and said that in the morning he would give me further instructions how to conduct myself. This was very discouraging. However, as there was no remedy, I set off for the village, where I found, to my great mortification, that no person would admit me into his house. I was regarded with astonishment and fear, and was obliged to sit all day without victuals in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... and weeks I have written nothing in my diary because it has been so discouraging. After Uncle William's offer to take over the presidency of Columbia University had been refused, he debated with Uncle Henry and with Cousin Ferdinand of Bulgaria (who is not living in our boarding house ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... thought, about my own self, toiling up the rocky path in mingled hope and fear towards that grim pile of dark stone towers and high forbidding walls, where it was just possible I might meet with but a discouraging reception. Yet with the letter from him who signed himself 'Your lover' lying against my heart, I felt I had a talisman to open doors even more closely barred. Nevertheless, my courage gave way a little when I at last stood before the heavy iron gates set in a lofty archway of stone through ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... pasting anxious glances about him, like the child that has strayed from its mother's side. Nor need we believe that these disillusions must necessarily give rise to moral discouragement; for the truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods. But indeed no truth can discourage, whereas ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... then, at the confidence which had caused him to scorn all his ideas of the past. The dead command; their power and authority are indisputable. How had it been possible for him, impelled by the enthusiasm of love, to repudiate this tremendous and discouraging truth? Clearly do the dark tyrants of our lives make themselves felt with all the overwhelming weight of their power. What had he done that this corner of the earth, his ultimate refuge, should look upon him as an alien? The innumerable ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... This discouraging information a little dashed the child, who could scarcely repress a tear as she glanced along the darkening road. Her grandfather made no complaint, but he sighed heavily as he leaned upon his staff, and vainly tried to ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... his brother, according to agreement, at Gomera. After a prosperous voyage, the adventurers reached the northern coast of the great southern continent, and anchored off the port of Santa Marta. Here they received such discouraging reports of the countries to which they were bound, of forests teeming with insects and venomous serpents, of huge alligators that swarmed on the banks of the streams, and of hardships and perils such as their own ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... why not?" agreed Dove cordially, afraid lest he had seemed discouraging. "Why not, indeed? For those who can do it. I wish I could. But will you believe me, Guest"—here he seated himself, and settled into an attitude for talking, one hand inserted between his crossed knees—"will you believe me, when I say I find it a difficult business to read at all?—at ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... got the thing through. I felt just like a Russian being "broken." There is a regular system, I believe, in Russia of wearing people out by this sort of official tyranny. I do not know anything more tiring or more discouraging! I had all my papers in order—my passport{5}, my "laissez passer," a letter from Mr. Bevan, explaining who I was and asking for "every facility" for me, and my photograph, properly stamped. I am now so loaded with papers that I feel as if I were carrying a library ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... the arrival of fresh reinforcements, led by the Duke of Wellington, and the shining bravery of the Scotch, the Belgians, and the Prince of Orange, suspended our success. This resistance, far from discouraging Marshal Ney, revived in him an energy, which he had not before shown. He attacked the Anglo-Hollanders with fury; and drove them back to the skirts of the wood of Bassu. The 1st of chasseurs and 6th of lancers ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... "and I must look so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous in me to confess to that infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little more about yourselves. I hardly know how to ask it of you, for I am conscious that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way with me, but I wish ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... been given as a reason for the discontinuance of home weaving, that no product of the hand loom can be as exact or as cheap as that of the power loom. The statement as to cost and quality is true, but so far from being a discouraging one, it gives actual reasons for the continuance of domestic weavings. The very fact that homespun textiles are not exact—in the sense of absolute sameness—and not cheap, in the sense of first cost, is ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... be had, and run from five francs to one hundred francs for a single copy of the Times. Those who do not care to spend so much can rent a paper by the hour—and customers are not wanting on this basis. By way of discouraging this traffic it is said that the Germans have shot several men caught smuggling papers. Those caught selling them in Brussels are arrested and given stiff terms of imprisonment. All taxis disappeared many days ago and altogether ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... accurate a measure it might have taken of Nicholas Dormer. There was food for suspicion perhaps in the wandering blankness that sat at moments in his eyes, as if he had no attention at all, not the least in the world, at his command; but it is no more than just to add without delay that this discouraging symptom was known among those who liked him by the indulgent name of dreaminess. By his mother and sisters, for instance, his dreaminess was constantly noted. He is the more welcome to the benefit of such an interpretation as there is always held to be something engaging ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... hymns and tracts of our infancy. So far from calling on us to deliver their land "from error's chain," they mete out prompt and cruel death to their deliverers. So far from thirsting for Gospel truths, they thirst for the blood of the intruders. This is frankly discouraging, and we could never read so many pages of disagreeable happenings, were it not for the gayety of the letters which Dr. Marshall quotes, and which deal less in heroics than in pleasantries. Such men as Bishop Berneux, the Abbe Retord, and Father Feron, missionaries ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the said Hastings did highly aggravate his offence in discountenancing and discouraging the reestablishment of magistracy, law, and order, in the country of Oude, inasmuch as he did in the eighth article of his instructions to the Resident order him to exercise powers which ought to have been exercised ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... made her in these pictures? When we stand before our looking-glasses, Mr. Dalmain, scowling anxiously at hats and bows, and partings, we usually look our very worst; and that lady, at her very worst, would be of a most discouraging plainness." ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Berlin, after 1798, to provide journeymen and apprentices with some of the rudiments of an education. The creation of a state school system out of the insufficient and inefficient religious schools proved a task of large dimensions, in Prussia as in other lands. Even as late as 1819 Dinter found discouraging conditions (R. 279) among the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... at least of consequence, within Attica, while a journey to Delphi is a serious and highly expensive undertaking. And as a matter of fact Delphi has partially lost credit in Athens. In the great Persian War Delphi unpatriotically "medized"—gave oracles friendly to Xerxes and utterly discouraging to the patriot cause. Then after this conviction of false prophesy, the oracle fell, for most of the time, into the hands of Sparta, and was obviously very willing to "reveal" things only in the Lacedemonian interest. Hellenes generally ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... contrived about one o'clock, to get all the horses and sheep watered; in the evening, however, the whole again fell in, and we gave up, in despair, the hopeless attempt to procure any further supply of water, under such discouraging circumstances. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... thoroughly acquainted with the obstinacy which formed the stamen of Georgia's character, and very cautiously the maternal guidance must be given. She began by gravely regretting the familiar footing Mr. Vincent had acquired in her family, and urged upon Georgia and Helen the propriety of discouraging attentions that justified the world in joining their names. This had very little effect. She was conscious that because of his wealth Vincent was courted and flattered by the most select and fashionable of her circle of acquaintances, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... hardest tasks have generally little remuneration or none. Fortunately there are always men ready for unselfish deeds; and even for those paid only in suffering, though they cost gold, peace, and even life. The part these men play is often painful and discouraging. Who of us has not heard recitals of experiences wherein the narrator regretted some past kindness he had done, some trouble he had taken, to have nothing but vexation in return? These confidences generally end thus: "It was folly to do the thing!" Sometimes it is right so to judge; for it is ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... away into his own domain. It is true that, having read Peter Ibbetson, he tried for a week to emulate that favored dreamer, throwing his arms up, clasping his hands behind his head and being most particular in the crossing of the feet. He dreamed, but only discouraging, tantalizing dreams, and the figure his magic summoned up was not the angelic one, but invariably the elfish eyes and star-pointing nose of Dennis ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... had brought him to New York; instead, in his sonorous, slightly Hebraic voice, he drew other people on to talk about themselves, or else, to artists and writers and their sort, discovered an amazing, discouraging knowledge of the trades by which they earned their living. "One feels," said Mrs. Malcolm, "that one is eyeing a sensitive python. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... invest this wise and prudent though discouraging move with more than its proper importance. Anything is better than to leave small garrisons to be overwhelmed. Until the Army Corps comes, the situation will continue to be unsatisfactory, and the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... While I was thus gathering strength, my thoughts ran exceedingly upon this Scripture, "I will deliver thee"; and the impossibility of my deliverance lay much upon my mind, in bar of my ever expecting it; but as I was discouraging myself with such thoughts, it occurred to my mind that I pored so much upon my deliverance from the main affliction, that I disregarded the deliverance I had received, and I was as it were made to ask ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... deal," explains Nature, but in no discouraging tone; "it is the most expensive thing ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... paper. Then, as the words swam and blurred together in one long, discouraging line, he weakly gave ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... they made a beautiful playhouse, with all the leaves brushed away and the rooms marked out with little sticks, they had to leave it next day. This was very discouraging, of course. Even the fathers and mothers grew discouraged sometimes, when they rode through the beautiful country. It was so sweet and so fair, and somehow it really seemed calling to them in a loving voice. But they always went on and on, from place to place, and no one ever knew what the ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... you this? There is nothing more certain nor clear throughout the Bible: the Apostles themselves appeal constantly to their flocks, and actually claim judgment from them, as deserving it, and having a right to it, rather than discouraging it. But, first notice the way in which the discovery of truth is spoken of in the Old Testament: "Evil men understand not judgment; but they that seek the Lord understand all things," Proverbs xxviii. 5. God overthroweth, not merely the transgressor or the wicked, but even "the words ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... could even be civil to him for his kindness, Letting me come here without him.... But open the gate, Cousin Clement; Seems to me it grows chill, and I think it is healthier in-doors. —No, then I you need not speak, for I know well enough what is coming: Bitter taunts for the past, and discouraging views of the future? Tragedy, Cousin Clement, or comedy,—just as you like it;— Only not here alone, but somewhere that people can see you. Then I'll take part in the play, and appear the remorseful young person Full of divine regrets at not having smothered a genius Under the feathers ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... for himself. He was prepared to perish upon the battlefield or cut a valiant figure in the military hospital. But what he perceived very clearly and did his utmost not to perceive was this qualifying and discouraging fact, that the war monster was not nearly so disposed to meet him as he was to meet the war, and that its eyes were fixed on something beside and behind him, that it was already only too evidently stretching out a long and shadowy arm past ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... making this statute effective for the purposes for which it was enacted. The Knight case was discouraging and seemed to remit to the States the whole available power to attack and suppress the evils of the trusts. Slowly, however, the error of that judgment was corrected, and only in the last three or four years has the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... undertaking still more arduous; the Russians, owing to the badness of the road, speedily became barefoot; the provisions were also exhausted. In this wretched state they reached Muotta on the 29th of September and learned the discouraging news of Korsakow's defeat. Massena had already set off in the hope of cutting off Suwarow, but had missed his way. He reached Altorf, where he joined Lecourbe on the 29th, when Suwarow was already ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... issued forth upon his quest, in no way daunted by the very discouraging prospect before him; and away he walked, up one street and down another—we were going to say, up one hill and down another, only it's all uphill at Clifton—without meeting with anything or anybody that tended to throw the faintest light on the matter in hand. Many were ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of Lester's years—he was now forty-six—to be tossed out in the world without a definite connection, even though he did have a present income (including this new ten thousand) of fifteen thousand a year, was a disturbing and discouraging thing. He realized now that, unless he made some very fortunate and profitable arrangements in the near future, his career was virtually at an end. Of course he could marry Jennie. That would give him the ten thousand ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... production, a scarcity of the article he produced was what each particular producer desired. It was for his interest that no more of it should be produced than he himself could produce. To secure this consummation as far as circumstances permitted, by killing off and discouraging those engaged in his line of industry, was his constant effort. When he had billed off all he could, his policy was to combine with those he could not kill, and convert their mutual warfare into a warfare upon the public ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... said, "twice; I'm very fond of Italy." He spoke of it in a familiar tone that might well have been discouraging to one of her total unacquaintance with it. Presently he added of his own motion, looking at her with his interest in her as a curious study, "You're going to Venice, I think Mr. Dunham ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... PETRIE concluded a brief article on "History in Tools" with a reminder that the history of this subject "has yet to be studied," and lamented the survival of so few precisely dated specimens. What Petrie found so discouraging in studying the implements of the ancient world has consistently plagued those concerned with tools of more recent vintage. Anonymity is the chief characteristic of hand tools of the last three centuries. The ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... is so vital to the world, the decadence of the country church is of far-reaching significance. Home Missions is called to direct its energizing, constructive ability to the solution of this baffling and discouraging feature of its problem to a greater ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... offices, dinner was a pleasanter meal than the earlier ones had been. But Evelyn looked white and woe-begone; and Honor wisely carried her off to bed, leaving Desmond to his pipe and his own discouraging thoughts. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... to the elementary education of the Negro children the whole situation is rather discouraging, but great progress has been made and one may hope for still greater progress in the future. The increase in facilities for education between 1866 and 1870 was quite marked, with a corresponding increase in the number of pupils, as shown by the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... top of it and breathed heavily after his exertions, gazing for a few moments at the vast expanse of shimmering blue water. It was pretty, but discouraging. Not even a fishing-boat was in sight, and he was in a position where every prospect pleases, and only man is in a vile situation. The big iron island had an uncomfortable habit every now and then of ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... was only temporary, and they felt it to be so. They were without food, and the two bottles of water would not last them long. Still, there was a slight return of hope, which survives under the most discouraging circumstances. ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... occasions Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell, Mrs. Devereux Blake, Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers, and I addressed the Committee. Being open to the public, the chamber was crowded. It was nearly forty years since I had made my first appeal in the old Capitol at Albany. My reflections were sad and discouraging, as I sat there and listened to the speakers and remembered how long we had made our appeals at that bar, from year to year, in vain. The members of the committee presented the same calm aspect as their predecessors, as if to say, "Be patient, dear sisters, eternity is ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... slumbers, he seized the lizard and threw him lightly across the tent. In this involuntary flight the little creature unfortunately struck the tent-pole with considerable force, and half of his tail was broken off—a matter of no very great importance to a lizard, perhaps, but still a discouraging reward for a well-meant warning. Notwithstanding this the little reptile returned to the bed, keeping close to his master, but he continued to be very restless and excited for the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... "This is discouraging," he told himself, as he retired that night. "Perhaps I'll have to go to the country or back ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... enthusiasm about the dance, and on Wednesday afternoon, Ella having issued the casual command, "See if you can't get a man or two to dine with us at the hotel before the dance, Emily; then you girls will be sure of some partners, anyway!" Emily had spent a discouraging hour at the telephone. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... did not tell them stories, and he stared at me; if he did not teach them history, and he said, "O yes, they had a little Scripture history—from the New Testament"; and repeated his lamentations over the lack of results. I had not the heart to put more questions; I could but say it must be very discouraging, and resist the impulse to add that it seemed also very natural. He looked up—"My days are far spent," he said; "heaven awaits me." May that heaven forgive me, but I was angry with the old man and his simple consolation. For think of his opportunity! The youth, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried the King, collecting his whole strength; but, overcome by pain, and nearly fainting, he requested the Duke of Lauenburg, in French to lead him unobserved out of the tumult. While the duke proceeded toward the right wing with the King, making a long circuit to keep this discouraging sight from the disordered infantry, his Majesty received a second shot through the back which deprived him of his remaining strength. "Brother," said he, with a dying voice, "I have enough! look only to your own life." At the same moment he fell from his horse, pierced by several more ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... was certainly discouraging and when the train stopped at Wesel—outside the station I afterwards discovered—I acted on the impulse for self-preservation, darted along the corridor, found a place of concealment and tucked myself in. Now I realise that this was ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... 5. How difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may seem, when I consider how many great and extraordinary men have gone before me in the like designs, yet I am not without some hopes—upon the consideration that the largest views are not always the clearest, and that he who is short—sighted will be obliged to draw the object ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... hope, shared by few except pilgrims of World's Fairs, and frankly dropped by the multitude, for, east of the Mississippi, the St. Louis Exposition met a deliberate conspiracy of silence, discouraging, beyond measure, to an optimistic dream of future strength in American expression. The party got back to Washington on May 24, and before sailing for Europe, Adams went over, one warm evening, to bid good-bye on the garden-porch of the White House. He ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... crown, sword, and balance, symbolizing Justice. In this room the painter had much to contend against. These opposite windows at the ends, which fill the space with cross-lights, and around which he must place two of his pictures, must have been discouraging. But the compositions are consummately fine, and the whole is so admirably managed that one does not even think of that which, if the work were less magnificent, would ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... of the General Mining Supply Company's office and laughed. "You ought to win with a disposition like that, Bet Baxter. I don't admire your judgment, but I do like your spunk. I'm with you. I'll never say a discouraging word again." ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... daytime could be, and usually was, repaired during the night, and remained a constant menace to the transports going to or from Washington. Under such circumstances, the work of the Potomac flotilla could only be fatiguing and discouraging. Much of it had to be performed in row-boats; and the crews of the various vessels were kept rowing up and down the banks of the river, making midnight excursions up creeks to examine suspected localities, and lying ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the poem is an expression of ideal democracy, in which equality, sympathy, and a sense of the common brotherhood of man are the basis of all ethical actions and standards. It is the Christ-like conception of human society that is always so alluring in the poetry and so discouraging in the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... healthy-minded but tired and homesick soldier boy. Then again it might be, as in the present instance, that circumstances prevented any display, and the restoration bivouac had to be opened under rather discouraging conditions, while the supplies also ran low, for it was not easy to get them so far ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... two across the floor toward him. He gave no sign that he heard her. How cruel he was! So despotic, so determined, so masterful! She abominated a masterful man! She coughed again, and this time a little more emphatically. Still no attention. It was discouraging! ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... had been sent over to the real Point of Pines to look for the girls. Slim and Pitt immediately went after him and met him when they had gone half way across the lake, returning to camp with the discouraging news that he had not been able to find ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... princes, on the advice of their theologians, asked for a free German synod in which they should have a majority vote, and in this they were supported by Francis I and Henry VIII. Naturally no pope could consent to any such measures; under these discouraging circumstances, the opening of the council was continually postponed, and in place of it the emperor held a series of religious colloquies that only served to make the differences of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... in battles and sieges, not to mention several fortunate actions in Spain. These facts being thus stated, which none can deny, it is natural to ask how we have improved such advantages, and to what account they have turned? I shall use no discouraging terms. When a patient grows daily worse by the tampering of mountebanks, there is nothing left but to call in the best physicians before the case grows desperate: But I would ask, whether France or any other kingdom, would ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... This was discouraging, but they started over again, and they finally came to a narrow cut that seemed to lead into the very heart of the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... industry which gives him better compensation for his work. This benefit by no means generally results from an attempt at "scientific" agriculture, nor is the adoption of a special industry by any means generally successful. Failure in either of these directions is disheartening and discouraging to those who are watching his example. There are many well-tried improvements upon the old methods of our fathers which are universally adopted, especially in the direction of the use of better implements and more judicious care in the application of manure. But the average agricultural ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... had a store of household goods which filled a four-horse wagon borrowed of Ralph Grume, Thomas Lincoln's brother-in-law, to transport the bride to Indiana. It took little time for this energetic and honest Christian woman to make her influence felt, even in those discouraging surroundings, and Thomas Lincoln and the children were the better for her coming all the rest of their lives. The lack of doors and floors was at once corrected. Her honest pride inspired her husband to greater thrift and industry. The ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... introduction into public life; but dissipation, shyness, haughty and reserved opinions, together with the short time I lived in England after my majority (only about five years in all), prevented me from resuming the experiment. As far as it went, it was not discouraging, particularly my first speech (I spoke three or four times in all); but just after it, my poem of Childe Harold was published, and nobody ever thought about my prose afterwards, nor indeed did I; it became to me a secondary ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... at once, and returned an hour later with a very discouraging report. The station was crowded with people. No regular trains were running, but while he was there a large number of cattle- trucks had been run up to the platform, and in these as many of the fugitives as could ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... faults as with horseradish; it is terribly difficult to extirpate it from the earth in which it has once taken root; and nothing is more discouraging to the cultivator who will annihilate this weed from his ground, than to see it, so lately plucked up, shooting forth again freshly to the light from roots which remained buried in the earth. One can get quite out of patience; with the weedy soil, and one is, when this soil is one's own dear ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... rather discouraging testimony, Mr. Prescott made a memorandum of the street and number of the house in which the family lived, remarking ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... for the information of the Council at home all such matters as directions and distances, the nature of soils and forests and the various commodities that they may find. And no man is to return from Virginia without leave from the Council, and none is to write home any discouraging letter. The instructions end, "Lastly and chiefly, the way to prosper and to achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear God, the Giver of all Goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... before school opened; at that moment when Skippy returning from his first sentimental summer had no other thought than to rest up from the fatigue of the vacation and devote his activities to the serious business of life. There were the freshman (a discouraging lot) to be properly educated, taught to punctuate their sentences with a humble "sir," "if you please" and "thank you;" there was a certain score to be settled with Al at the Jigger Shop and the basis of a new credit to be argued, there was the prize room on the third ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... This was rather discouraging, but Peter upon thinking it over on his watch-tower, reflected that Mr. Morgridge used to believe in Santa Klaus, and that the queer fellow only visited boys: besides, he thought it might be owing to the snuff that he disbelieved in him now; for it was by that Peter ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... smile at Tom's drooping spirits, though the discouraging talk made it necessary for him to appear really more cheerful than he felt, as he realized that Big Buffalo really seemed anxious to cause trouble. But he shook his head at John, as he saw the latter about to scold Tom for bringing them into this part of the wilderness only to advise them to ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... shame of mankind, has been the lot of so many of the world's true great, in the deep bitterness of non-recognition; growing, sturdily, in the midst of beating storms and freezing snows of jealousy, malice, criticism incredibly stupid, misfortunes persistent and discouraging; such natures as these are bound at last to blossom, gloriously, in the sunlight of success; and live, nourished by the quiet dews of appreciation; unless, indeed, as in certain cases, the growth has been too delicate, too exquisite, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and no sooner was he settled in his work at the hospital than he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels. In the past he had often tried not to think too circumstantially of his plans for the future, it was only discouraging; but now that his goal was so near he saw no harm in giving away to a longing that was so difficult to resist. First of all he meant to go to Spain. That was the land of his heart; and by now he was imbued with its spirit, its romance and colour and history ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... and when storms rolled the great waves that way, they would dash against the little castles, breaking themselves into snowy spray, and crumbling away at the same time the tiny walls that had been the polyps' work of years. Do you think that was too bad, and quite discouraging to the workers. It does seem so; but you will see how the good God, who is their loving Father just the same as he is ours, had a grand purpose in letting the waves break down their houses, just as ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... wait longer than her beating heart desired. He had his own agitation to master, and possibly his own doubts. This was not the fiery, determined woman he had encountered amid the ruins of Spencer's Folly. WHAT HAD MADE THE CHANGE? Black's discouraging advice? Hardly. Why should she take from that hard-faced lawyer what she had not been willing to take from himself? There must have been ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... This was discouraging. Everything was against me. If the whole affair had been planned with an intent to inculpate me and me only, it could not have been done with more attention to detail, nor could I have found myself more completely enmeshed. Yet I knew, both from ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... arrived; but now she was Taug's and no other male could claim her without first defeating Taug in personal combat. And even then Teeka retained some rights in the matter. If she did not favor a correspondent, she could enter the lists with her rightful mate and do her part toward discouraging his advances, a part, too, which would prove no mean assistance to her lord and master, for Teeka, even though her fangs were smaller than a male's, could use them to ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the director of consciences he became. Here he was obliged to give himself more thoroughly. He was at the mercy of the souls who questioned him, who consulted him as their physician. He spends his time in advising them, and exercises a never-failing supervision of their morals. It is an almost discouraging enterprise to bend these hardened pagans—above all, these Africans—to Christian discipline. Augustin is continually reproaching their drunkenness, gluttony, and lust. The populace were not the only ones to get drunk and ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... numbers. Allurements to foolish expenditures meet old and young at every turn; to spend the dime is made all too easy, whereas to save it and deposit it in a safe place too often calls for wasteful and discouraging efforts from ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... say may all be true, but, with all due respect, I don't believe a word of it. I am rather inclined to think that these people have a future; that there is a place for them here; that they have made fair progress under discouraging circumstances; that they will not disappear from our midst for many generations, if ever; and that in the meantime, as we make or mar them, we shall make or mar our civilisation. No society can be greater or wiser or better than the ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance—who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread—they were left to suffer on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny—ate the bread and drank the waters ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... entirely to my memory, and most of my little pieces have been completed and borne in mind for weeks before I have committed them to paper. From this I am led to believe that there are but few situations in life in which attempts of the kind may not be made under less discouraging circumstances. Having a wife and three children to support, sir, I have had some little difficulties to contend with; but, thank God, I have encountered them pretty well. I have received many little helps ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... may have elapsed after the first manifestation of the lameness before a discovery has been made of the lesion from which it has originated, and there is no recall for the lapsed time. And by the uncompromising seriousness of the discouraging prognosis must the energy and severity of the treatment and the promptness of its administration be measured. The periostitis has been overlooked; any chance that might have existed for preventing its advance to the chronic stage has ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... discouraged future attempts against them. And although having bravely defended Sullivan's Island, in 1776, the southern colonists were latterly less successful than their victorious brethren in the North. The rapid conquest of Georgia and the easy march of Prevost to the very gates of Charleston had a discouraging effect and naturally rendered the southern section vulnerable to attack. In the North the military operations of 1778 and 1779 had produced no important results, and, therefore, the late transactions in ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... at it awhile, that I might bring out to view its grimmest and most discouraging aspect The cares, trials, humiliations of a young physician, his months and years of uncompensated drudgery, passed in awful review before me. I thought of his toils among the poor and lowly, the vicious and depraved,—of his broken sleep,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... see an expression of unconscious placid gravity on her face—an expression that is most discouraging to a lover. He was timidly revolving something he wanted to say, and it was only when they were close to the yard-gates of the Hall Farm he had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... jail for disorderly conduct. The Charity Organization Society, seeing no chance of reforming the man, suggested that his wife leave him, but the German pastor strongly objected to any separation of man and wife, and nothing was done. A discouraging aspect of the situation was that the man taught his children to deceive the hard-working mother. When the seventh baby was born, and charity had supplied a registered nurse, baby linen, {56} a doctor, fuel, and food, it was discovered that ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... as if rain drops were falling. From the picketed animals, looping their trail ropes over the grass, came a sound of low, continuous cropping. The hum of insects swelled and sank, full of sudden life, then drowsily dying away as though the spurt of energy had faded in the hour's discouraging languor. The doctor's voice detached itself from this pastoral chorus intoning the laws that God gave Moses when he was conducting a stiff-necked and rebellious people through ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Suffrage departments are sometimes stopped because no readers write their approval. Individual newspaper policies, belittling or perverting the suffrage issue, are sometimes persisted in because no readers write their disapproval. It is discouraging to an editor when a reader writes a letter complaining of one opposing news item or one cartoon although she has ignored everything which has been printed in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper |
