"Disheartening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Far to the north and east the horizon was as level and uniform as that of the sea; apparently spinifex everywhere; no hills or ranges could be seen for a distance of quite thirty miles. The prospect was very cheerless and disheartening. Windich went on the only horse not knocked up, in order to find water for the horses. I followed after his tracks, leading the two poor done-up horses. With difficulty I could get them to walk. Over and through the rough range I managed to pull them along, and found sufficient ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... are evidences rather of the decline than of the progress of a state. We, who have so long been eager in the pursuit and accumulation of riches, are now to show more generous energies in the free spending of our means to gain the invaluable objects for which we have gone to war. There is nothing disheartening in this prospect. Our people, accustomed as they have been during late years to the most lavish use of money, and to general extravagance in expense, have not yet lost the tradition of the economies and thrift of earlier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... hope, and see only the worst side,—"people whose very look curdles the milk and sets your teeth on edge." They are often worthy people who think that pleasure is wrong; people, said an old divine, who lead us heavenward and stick pins into us all the way. They say depressing things and do disheartening things; they chill prayer-meetings, discourage charitable institutions, injure commerce, and kill churches; they are blowing out lights when they ought to ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... medical men wept in despair. Wireless messages throbbed disheartening reports on his condition to anxious regimental comrades on other fronts and at Archangel. At last the heroic struggle ended. On the tenth of May Phillips bled to death of ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... mind and action. His desperate desire for success after his self-acknowledgment that he loved Miss Presby, and then the blows that had been rained on him and the mine, the failure of the green lead to hold out when it had at least promised and justified operation—all cumulated into a disheartening climax which was testing his fortitude as it had never been tried before. He was not of those who lack either persistence, determination, or moral bravery; and it was this last characteristic, coupled with a certain maturing caution, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... "What a disheartening scene for a lover! Here was a lonely woman, without friends or kin, without the religion of love, without faith in any affection. Yet however slightly she might feel the need to pour out her heart, a craving that every human being feels, it could only be satisfied ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... long wanted to see you and have a talk about our work. At times it is rather disheartening. The problem is vast, and we pass few milestones. The one great accomplishment of the Commission, I think, in the last three years, has been the enforcement of the law as against rebating. We have a small force now that ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... a most disheartening reflection that the great obstacle in the way to any extraordinary improvement in society is of a nature that we can never hope to overcome. The perpetual tendency in the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... neveu de son oncle!'[184] A curious precedent for a president, certainly; but, oh heavens and earth, what curious things abroad everywhere just now, inclusive of the sea serpent! I agree with you that much of all is very melancholy and disheartening, though holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it always is God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we shall drink pure. Meanwhile, the saddest ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... a long remorseless meal that will not end until he be destroyed. He is shut out from his fellows. As they approach he must cry, 'Unclean! unclean!' that all humanity may be warned from his precincts. He must abandon wife and child. He must go to live with other lepers, in disheartening view of miseries similar to his own. He must dwell in dismantled houses or in the tombs. He is, as Trench says, a dreadful parable of death. By the laws of Moses (Lev. 13:45; Numb. 6:9; Ezek. 24:17) he was compelled, as if he were ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... improvement was controlled by clergymen, and was largely influenced by sentimental considerations. The chief object seemed to be to grow a great crop of negro preachers, lawyers and doctors. The result was so disheartening that, fifteen years after the war was over, there were grave doubts whether the coloured race in the South was not lapsing into a barbarism worse than that of slavery. Fortunately, among those educators and philanthropists there was at least one ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... refused to be done. Hence he was hemmed in, shut up, incarcerated in stubborn circumstance, from a long reaching range of duties, calling aloud upon his conscience and heart to hasten with the first, that he might reach the second. What rendered it the more disheartening was, that, having discovered, as he hoped, how to compass his first end, the whole possibility had by his sister's behaviour, and the consequent disappearance of Lenorme, been swept from him, leaving him more ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... almost superhuman efforts in urging forward his chilled, water-soaked, foot-sore command; and when hunger added its torture to the already disheartening conditions, his courage and energy seemed to burn stronger and brighter. Beverley was always at his side ready to undertake any task, accept any risk; his ardor made his face glow, and he seemed to thrive upon hardships. The two men were a source of inspiration—their ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... keep in view the consoling and self-recompensing character of their work, does not conceal that, though they were rewarded by patience and thankfulness in far the greater number of cases, their charities were sometimes met by disheartening selfishness and ingratitude. But they bore up under all, and gave the world such an illustration of practical Christianity as it had never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... The disheartening part of it was that he needed about a dozen more men than he had; for the rock wall which was the rim of the Frying-pan seemed alive with shooters who waited only for a fair target. Then the Native Son, crouched down between a rock and ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... never came near it for pleasure's sake, although in dry summers, when the springs were low, the fury of the scene passed into grandeur, and even beauty. But a Yordas (long ago gone to answer for it) had flung a man, who plagued him with the law, into this hole. And what was more disheartening, although of less importance, a favorite maid of this lady, upon the exile of her sweetheart, hearing that his feet were upside down to hers, and that this hole went right through the earth, had jumped ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... scarlet stockings. I did have a new and not unpleasant sense of housewifely dignity while engaged at this task, and undoubtedly assumed an air calculated to serve as an impressive exponent to my emotion. The poor scarlet stockings lengthened, meanwhile, but it was a disheartening and almost imperceptible growth. Where the article should have been most voluminous, at the calf of the leg, it grew, in spite of me, more alarmingly narrow at every round. This was after I had graduated from under Grandma Keeler's tuition, and assumed my own responsibility ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the sixth cataract. He had forced himself to be cool—mentally, of course, bodily coolness was quite out of the question—all the way along, with looking upon Berber as the end of his voyage. And here he had to go on another two hundred miles, and up another tedious cataract. It was very disheartening. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal and disheartening, excited Stephen's brain, over which its fumes seemed ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... stretch of about four hundred miles of low, swampy country, where the Yukon evidently loses its courage to run swiftly, for it spreads out indolently in all directions between treacherous and shifting sand-bars, fairly disheartening to all not familiar ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... wouldn't convert, and no matter how many switches they shoved in, there was no power output. The inside telemetered equipment, of course, was self-powered. Some of them were dead, too, but from those which still worked Mohammed Matsui got a uniformly disheartening story. ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... influenced by any unreasonable partiality for the land of my adoption. Canada may not possess mines of gold or silver, but she possesses all those advantages of climate, geological structure, and position, which are essential to greatness and prosperity. Her long and severe winter, so disheartening to her first settlers, lays up, amidst the forests of the West, inexhaustible supplies of fertilising moisture for the summer, while it affords the farmer the very best of natural roads to enable him to carry his wheat and other produce to market. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... what I have imagined. But too often different is rational conjecture from melancholy fact. This exordium, as contrary to all the rules of rhetoric as to those more essential rules of policy which our situation would dictate, is intended as a prelude to a deadening and disheartening proposition; as if all that a minister had to fear in a war of his own conducting was, that the people should pursue it with too ardent a zeal. Such a tone as I guessed the minister would have taken, I am very sure, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... for the first time two pictures signed by Dore appeared on the walls of the Salon. But the canvases passed unnoticed. The Parisians would not take the would-be painter seriously, and the following year's experience proved hardly less disheartening. Of four pictures sent in, three were accepted, one of these being a historic subject, the other two being landscapes. The first, "La Bataille de l'Alma," evoked considerable criticism. The rural ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... advance Germany's request for an armistice, if it looked toward peace—this in reply to Page's message that Great Britain would not receive such a proposal in a kindly spirit—seemed to lay the basis of further misunderstandings. The interview was a disheartening one for Page. Many people whom the Ambassador met in the course of this visit still retain memories of his fervour in what had now become with him a sacred cause. With many friends and officials he discussed the European situation almost like a man inspired. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... successful we realize either the emptiness of the prize we had desired, or the distance we are in reality from the goal we had set ourselves. Generalizing thus from his own experience, the individual notes the similar disheartening discrepancies throughout human life. He sees the good suffer, and the wicked prosper; the innocent die, and the guilty escape. Disease is no respecter of persons, and death comes to the just ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... religious faith, some the most degraded, others the most exalted, should live on the same soil, among the same people, is indeed a disheartening truth, enough almost to shake one's belief in the common origin and the common destinies of the human race. And yet we must not shut our eyes to the fact that amongst ourselves, too, men who call themselves Christians are almost as widely separated ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... fainter falls the boom upon their ears; duller and duller at each successive detonation, which tells that the distance between them and the frigate, instead of diminishing, increases. However sad and disheartening, they cannot help it. They dare not put the barque about, or in any way alter her course. They must keep scudding on, though they may never see ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... sent against them, and surrounded its camp. We can imagine the clattering of the hoofs on the hard stones of the Via Latina as five anxious messengers, who had managed to escape before it was too late, hurried to Rome to carry the disheartening news. All eyes immediately turned in one direction for help. There lived just across the Tiber a member of an old aristocratic family, one Lucius Quintius, better known as Cincinnatus, because that name had been added to his others to show that ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... confidence was what I whispered to my gastric juices. You see, being still in ignorance of the full scope of the ration scheme in its application to the metropolitan district, and my disheartening experience at the meal just concluded to the contrary notwithstanding, I had my thoughts set upon rashers of crisp Wiltshire bacon, and broad segments of grilled York ham, and fried soles, and lovely plump sausages bursting from their jackets, and devilled ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... that no great change has come over Miss Rachel Harding, during the years that have intervened. She takes the same disheartening view of human nature and the world's prospects as ever. Nevertheless, her own hold upon the world seems as strong as ever. Her appetite continues remarkably good, and, although she frequently expresses herself to the effect that there is little use in ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... boy should, ere ten years had passed, have filled a wide and lofty space in the world's thought; that his existence should have influenced the mind of nations, and his death eclipsed their gaiety! His death! Terrible and disheartening thought! Plantagenet was no more. But he had not died without a record. His memory was embalmed in immortal verse, and he had breathed his passion to his Venetia in language that lingered in the ear, and would dwell for ever on the lips, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... lost twenty days at the beginning of our voyage, and at its close had been almost taken by an English squadron. Under these circumstances, how rapturously we inhaled the balmy, air of Provence! Such was our joy, that we were scarcely sensible of the disheartening news which arrived from all quarters. At the first moment of our arrival, by a spontaneous impulse, we all repeated, with tears in our eyes, the beautiful lines which Voltaire has put into the mouth of the exile ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... watching her indulgent appreciation of the little boys in Never Never Land, he unconsciously reflected that, after all, this must be the real woman. That other personality, some sudden disheartening side of which he got from time to time, was not his new friend who laughed like a young girl over the crocodile with the clock inside, and showed a sudden swift moisture in her brown eyes when the actress pleaded for the dying fairy. When ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... produced a disheartening effect on the troops to see that cordon closing in on them in the distance and enveloping them as in the meshes of some gigantic, invisible net. Even Pache and Lapoulle had an opinion ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... nothing more disheartening to any high-minded young man than the idea that he will have to spend his life among human beings whom he can never respect or love—natives, as they are called, not to use even more offensive names—men whom he is ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... flight, and at another on resistance; and was unable to decide whether he could less trust the courage or the fidelity of his subjects. Thus, to whatever direction he turned his thoughts, the prospect was equally disheartening. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... more disheartening, since it denies the separate conscious existence of the ego. There cannot be divine fellowship, therefore, but only the current of thoughts and emotions like the continuous flame of a burning candle. Not our souls will ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... said, "fires, keep those women and children quiet," in a tone that classed her with both. She longed to ask him what he thought of Mrs. May nard's condition; but she had not the courage to invoke the intelligence that ignored her so completely, and she struggled in silence with such disheartening auguries as her theoretical ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... nonplused. We landed on Elcho Island and spent a day or two there. Being still under the impression that Cape York was higher up, I steered west, and soon found myself in a very unpleasant region. We explored almost every bay and inlet we came across, but of course always with the same disheartening result. Sometimes we would come near being stranded on a sandbank, and would have to jump overboard and push our craft into deeper water. At others, she would be almost swamped in a rough sea, but still we stuck to our task, and after passing Goulbourn Island ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the sagebrush took on new and fantastic shapes, and danced like demons to the tune. In gray-brown desolation the sand dunes rolled away to the foothills, far and violet and dim. All was cold and bleak and forbidding, and the sun itself appeared to be retiring eagerly from a scene so dreary and disheartening. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... message-bearing to his own flock, in the light of what he knows of Christ and the Word on the one side, and of the needs of the flock on the other, and he will find a most useful encouragement, or a most useful corrective, as the need may be. "O my Lord, I am not eloquent," [Exod. iv. 10.] will be no disheartening thought, as he carries to the pulpit the ever-growing weight of pastoral experience, all giving point and freshness to the unalterable message. And the secret temptation to think the sermon a light thing because mere words come easy, will be ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... the slowness of it all that is so disheartening; the impossibility that dogs the efforts of the high-minded, the kind, the just, of prevailing against tradition and prejudice and stupidity; the grim acquiescence in sanctioned oppression that characterises a certain type of respectable virtue; the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... against what was believed to be intended by the return to office of the Tories; ignorant as we were how much wiser than his party the statesman then at the head of it was, or how greatly what we all most desired would be advanced by the very success that had been most disheartening. There will be no harm now in giving one of these pieces, which will sufficiently show the tone of all of them, and with what a hearty relish they were written. I doubt indeed if he ever enjoyed anything more than the power of thus taking part occasionally, unknown to outsiders, in the sharp conflict ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... am very poorly, and the trial of it is that I cannot see any positive prospect of a definite, speedy recovery. But it will come; I have never seriously doubted it. God won't let me finish off in this disheartening manner—disheartening, I mean, to my comrades, and to those I have to leave with the responsibility of keeping the Banner flying. God will still do wonders, in spite of men ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... want of nourishment suited to her feeble condition. Moreover, both nerves and mind found relief and rest in the consciousness that the decisive step had been taken. She was no longer shuddering and recoiling from a past in which each day had revealed more disheartening elements. Her face was now toward a future that promised a ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... disheartening conviction that they were no nearer Fort Meade than when they forded the last stream early on the ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... boiled white fish formed the menu. Perhaps there is nothing quite so slippery and disheartening as boiled white fish grown luke warm or cold. The navvies ate ravenously enough, but Hogan and Deschaillon ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... theatrical artificiality of style which was in vogue. But if he had broken away from all traditions, he could have gained no hearing whatever; he died young—twenty years more might have left him a much greater figure; and he wrought in disheartening loneliness of spirit. His accomplishment was that of a pioneer. He was the first American author to see that the true field for his fellows was America and not Europe. He realized, as the genius of Chateaubriand realized at almost the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... coast, keeping the crew in sight, who, with the boy, travelled on foot, sometimes singing as they marched. So they began the long and terrible journey, the later horrors of which I dare not give in the words here set down. The first weeks were painful and disheartening, although they still had food. Their chief discomfort arose from the extreme cold at night and the tortures from the sand-flies and mosquitoes on their exposed bodies, which they tried to remedy by covering themselves with sand, but ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... day, therefore, the majority of my neighbours, whose ability for the work they have been prepared to do proves them to be no fools, are, nevertheless, pitiably helpless in the management of their own affairs. Most disheartening it is, too, for those whose help they seek, to work with them. In the cricket-club committee, on which I served for a year or two, it was noticeable that the members, eager for proper arrangements to be made, often sat tongue-tied and glum, incapable of urging their views, so that only after ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... staircase, which he had no sooner quitted than he heard exclaimed from an opposite window, "My eyes! a'n't that a swell!" He felt how true the observation was, and that at that moment he was somewhat out of his element; so he hurried on, and soon reached that great broad disheartening street, apostrophized by the celebrated Opium-Eater,[1] with bitter feeling, as—"Oxford Street!—stony-hearted stepmother! Thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children!" Here, though his spirits were not just then very buoyant, our poor little dandy breathed more ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... soldier as I have ever known," he exclaimed heartily. "I served with him in two campaigns. But what are you two young fellows doing here? for it would be hard to conceive of a more disheartening place of residence. Surely, De Croix, you are not permanently located in ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... around to that coast and anchored it so as to guard the dike and to be guarded by it. Yet daring as all this work was, it was but the smallest part of his work. Richelieu found that his officers were cheating his soldiers in their pay and disheartening them; in the face of the enemy he had to reorganize the army and to create a new military system. He made the army twice as effective and supported it at two-thirds less cost than before. It was his boast in his Testament that, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... of a feebleness destructive of all government, and disheartening for him who bears all the responsibility for it, with the weight of affairs besides. But he was not, and did not pretend to be, the Cardinal Richelieu. He had not his character, nor his ambition, nor his superior gifts. He did not even envy them. Had he been quite different in this regard, to ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... few correspondents. Opposite to us was the great Conservative party, with a majority exceeding our whole representation, united, flushed, led by the craftiest of living statesmen, and the ablest of living generals. Oh, how disheartening it was then, when, day by day, we found prophecy and exhortation, lay and labour, flung idly before a distracted People! May we never pass through ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... but pot and plate make a difference in the proposition. Army cheese runs to rind rapidly, and a pound of beef is often easily bitten to the bone: sometimes, in fact, it is all bone and gristle, and the ravages of cooking minimise its bulk in a disheartening way. One and a half pound of bread is more than the third of a big loaf, but minus butter it makes a featureless repast. Breakfast and tea without butter and milk does not ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... long, that night, dreaming dreams of future success, but awoke to a disheartening sense of pain and impotence. There were no letter-carriers in the village, and Gus seldom had reason for frequenting the post-office unless on a bright day, to meet the girls. As he should not begin work to-day, however, he thought he would stroll in that direction. The office, a mere box in one ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in my head and trying to make a guess as to what sort of employment it could be which needed such curious qualifications. A strong physique, a resolute nature, a medical training, and a knowledge of beetles—what connection could there be between these various requisites? And then there was the disheartening fact that the situation was not a permanent one, but terminable from day to day, according to the terms of the advertisement. The more I pondered over it the more unintelligible did it become; but at the end of my meditations I always came back to the ground fact that, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inspection of Strength and Force, whose threats serve only to excite a useless compassion in Vulcan, who is nevertheless forced to carry them into execution; then his solitary complainings, the arrival of the womanly tender ocean nymphs, whose kind but disheartening sympathy stimulates him to give freer vent to his feelings, to relate the causes of his fall, and to reveal the future, though with prudent reserve he reveals it only in part; the visit of the ancient Oceanus, a kindred ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... smote the arm of his chair a heavy blow. "I do foresee such a struggle—I have never denied it; and for twenty years I have laboured to prepare for it. You can understand, then, what a blow it is to me—how terrible, how disheartening—to have all my calculations blasted by such accidents as ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... ship, a great scarcity of water, and a crew so universally diseased that there were not above ten foremast men in a watch capable of doing duty, and even some of these lame and unable to go aloft; under these disheartening circumstances, I say, we stood to the westward; and on the 9th of June, at daybreak, we at last discovered the long-wished-for ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... answer to her and said: "I know thee, goddess daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus: therefore with my whole heart will I tell thee my thought and hide it not. Neither hath disheartening terror taken hold upon me, nor any faintness, but I am still mindful of thy behest that thou didst lay upon me. Thou forbadest me to fight face to face with all the blessed gods, save only if Zeus' daughter Aphrodite should enter into battle, then to wound her with the keen bronze. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... mission, in company with several missionaries. Freedom in Antigua was the engrossing and delightful topic. They rejoiced in the change, not merely from sympathy with the disinthralled negroes, but because it had emancipated them from a disheartening surveillance, and opened new fields of usefulness. They hailed the star of freedom "with exceeding great joy," because it heralded the speedy dawning ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was most disheartening; the boats were no longer available; the water was gaining on the vessel; and the rockets and blue lights, as they darted into the air, served but to show them the rugged face of the high rocks, which appeared to afford no footing by which the summit could be gained, even if they should be so ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... to me, especially when those letters contained any disheartening news, I have detected a tone of despondency, a latent doubt as to whether the cause to which both of us are so firmly bound was really progressing; whether it was not fighting against hope to continue the battle any longer; ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... by his environment. During two centuries Russia has been coming slowly out of the middle ages—indeed, out of perhaps the most cruel phases of mediaeval life. Her history is, in its details, discouraging; her daily life disheartening. Even the aspects of nature are to the last degree depressing: no mountains; no hills; no horizon; no variety in forests; a soil during a large part of the year frozen or parched; a people whose upper classes are mainly given up to pleasure and whose lower classes are sunk in fetishism; all their ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Isolated and Inhospitable Indian Island, At an enormous and disheartening distance ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... wanted to go home. They were sick of the discomforts of camp. By January (1776), only ten thousand men were left, and there was danger of the poorly defended lines being taken. But for some reason, the British made no attack. During this disheartening time, General Greene was a great help, with his courage and ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... thanking him, but he hates being thanked. If he would only get into some terrible scrape, Giulia and I would set out to rescue him at once; but you see he gets out of his scrapes before we hear of them. It is quite disheartening not to be able to ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... of representations, choice and rare spectators, and posters rapidly replaced without giving his name a chance of being known. When one has worked twenty of talent and life, this obstinate refusal of the public to comprehend is wearying and disheartening, and one ends by thinking: "Perhaps after all they are right." Fear paralyses and words fail. Our acclamations and enthusiastic greetings somewhat cheered him. "Really do you think so? Is it well done? 'Tis true I have given all I knew." And his feverish ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... inaccessible by telephone, Marian summoned Harwood and demanded tickets for the convention; she would make an occasion of it, and Mrs. Owen and Sylvia should go with them. Mrs. Bassett and her family had always enjoyed the freedom of Mrs. Owen's house; it was disheartening to find Sylvia established in Delaware Street on like terms of intimacy. The old heartache over Marian's indifference to the call of higher education for women returned with a new poignancy as Mrs. Bassett inspected Sylvia's diploma, as proudly displayed by Mrs. Owen as though it marked the achievement ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... making my disheartening rounds when the others drove into the yard, and the wails of lamentation rose long and ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... Jolly had never dreamed there were so many words in the world,—pages and pages and pages of 'em! The prospect of ever finding one particular word was disheartening, but he plunged in sturdily, ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... most disheartening to find that so many of the highest paid workmen in the kingdom should spend so large a portion of their earnings in their own personal and sensual gratification. Many spend a third, and others half their entire earnings, in drink. It would be considered monstrous, on the part of any man whose lot ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... and then notice the difference between the two. Also, make tracks on ordinary ground, grass, sand, etc., and practice following them up. Finally, practice tracking men sent out for the purpose. The work will probably be very difficult, even disheartening at first, but you will gradually improve, if ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... attired in immaculate white linen in contradistinction to the inevitable khaki. Later, however, the young officer who had been sent ashore to make the final adjustments in the Dumaguete office, came aboard with the disheartening information that Misamis could not be raised, and the ensuing depression on the Burnside ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... prejudice and opposition with which Lord John had to contend in his efforts to help their country, or to give him due credit for the constructive statesmanship which he brought to a complicated and disheartening task.[16] Lord John Russell was, in fact, in some directions not only in advance of his party but of his times; and, though it has long been the fashion to cavil at his Irish policy, it ought not to be forgotten, in common fairness, that ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... indicate that the angel of mercy was at length spreading his wings at the same time over both heads of this unfortunate family. She had been having one of her most disconsolate days, and was sitting alone in her little room, gloomily pondering over her disheartening trials, without being able to see one ray of light in the dark future, when she received a call from one of her husband's chief creditors; who announced that those creditors, at a recent meeting, having ascertained her meritorious conduct and needy situation, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... cheered bravely, and the band struck up the national anthem, how gravely and discreetly the rest of the 'Alligonians, in the circumambient fog, echoed the sentiment by a silence, that, under other circumstances, would have been disheartening. What a quiet people it is! As I said before, to make the festivities complete, in the afternoon there was a procession to lay the corner-stone of a Lunatic Asylum. But oh! how the jolly old rain poured down upon the luckless pilgrimage! There were the "Virgins" of Masonic ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... his sleep was troubled. He dreamed that Lawrence Peabody was a captive, and that the chief was about to scalp him, when suddenly he awoke. He could not at first tell where he was, but a glance revealed the disheartening truth. ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... bridge. Had the gulf been merely one of tastes and inclinations, it would not have been so hopeless. But to realize they had no standards in common and that the only tie that bound them together was the frail thread of kinship was a disheartening ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... same balloon, under the impulse of a lively gale, will tear itself loose from the aggregated avoirdupois of all who can lay hands upon it, and wrench great branches from the forest giants over which it skims. Doubtless, to the disheartening influence of a practical knowledge of the real difficulties in the way of aerial navigation is due the fact that the great mass of those who have attempted it have been scientists without practice, or fools without either scientific training or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... declivities, up and out of which they had to dig their way. In such descents they were forced to let go the helpless man, whose body rolled ahead of them like a boneless sack; but these very mishaps helped to keep the spark of life in him, for at every disheartening pause the others rubbed and pounded him, though they knew that their efforts were hopeless, and would have ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... stop to my researches in ornithology. I shall relate it, merely to show how far enthusiasm—for by no other name can I call my perseverance—may enable the preserver of nature to surmount the most disheartening difficulties. I left the village of Henderson, in Kentucky, situated on the banks of the Ohio, where I resided for several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked to my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... the savage gorges of Anti-Lebanon, we entered a wide, disheartening plain, bounded by an amphitheatre of dreary mountains. Our horses had had no water for twenty-four hours, and we had had no refreshment of any kind for twenty. After two hours of more hard riding I came to another range ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... special attention to their grave spaces, and we want to see the custom kept up. Our Parish Church yard has a sad, forsaken appearance; if it had run to seed and ended in nothing, or had been neglected and closed up by an army of hypochondriacs, it could not have been more gloomy, barren, or disheartening. The ground should be looked after, and the stones preserved as much as possible. It is a question of shoes v. gravestones at present, and, if there is not some change of position, the shoes ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... sinking boat, far out at sea, in a dark and tempestuous night, with no other dependence for reaching the shore than a few small and tattered sails, our condition might be considered truly awful. But, with all these disheartening circumstances, hope, delusive hope, still supported us. Although it was evident that we must soon sink, and our progress towards the land was very slow, still we cherished the expectation that the boat would finally be run on shore, and thus most of us be delivered ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the Philippines of the closing quarter of the century just past the phenomena so frequently met with in modern societies, so disheartening to the people who must drag out their lives under them, of an old system which has outworn its usefulness and is being called into question, with forces actively at work disintegrating it, yet with the unhappy folk bred and reared ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... been a disheartening struggle, this hewing for herself a way along the rocky paths of prejudice, and many had been the thorns under her feet. Though she kept a brave heart and never faltered, she had tired inevitably of the perpetual effort it entailed. Three weeks ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Adams brought disheartening news to the travel-weary passengers on the Neptune: England had declined the offer of mediation. Yes; he had the information from the lips of Count Roumanzoff, the Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Apparently, said Adams ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... Erlanger, also a Frankfort financial magnate, and by birth a Hebrew. In the conversation that ensued between this lady and Baron Rothschild, the latter said: "Madam, my sympathies are entirely with your country; but is it not disheartening to think that there are men in Europe who are lending their money and trying to induce others to lend it for the strengthening of human slavery? Madam, NONE BUT A CONVERTED JEW WOULD ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Salonika difficult. When a man attacks you in Turkish, Yiddish, or Greek, and you cannot understand him, there is some excuse, but when he instantly renews the attack in both French and Spanish, it is disheartening. It makes you regret that when you were in college the only foreign language ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... the morning Sir Moses received a letter from Monsieur Cremieux, informing him that he had started for Cairo. Sir Moses, who felt himself in duty bound not to quit his post for fear of injuring his cause, determined, notwithstanding the disheartening state of politics, to go to the Pasha and ask for an answer to the petition that he had presented on ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... the truth through the ministrations of the Rev. Samuel McClanahan, who was said to be very powerful in argument; but he had found fault with Mr. McClanahan's logic on Fast Day in a way that was quite disheartening, and he evidently did not intend to come forward this communion at all. Her father had spoken several times in a very hopeless manner of Lloyd's continued resistance of the Holy Spirit, and Marg'et Ann thought with a shiver of Squire Atwater, who was an infidel, and was supposed by ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... with no private ownership of land nor other encouragement for steadygoing thrift, the only chance for personal gain was through a stroke of discovery. No wonder the loss of time and strength in futile excursions. No wonder the disheartening reaction in ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... listening to this disheartening recital—"supposing that your relatives will not help you, have you any plans laid to meet such a contingency? 'Hope for the best and provide for the worst' is a favourite motto of your friend Bob; and I really think it is singularly ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... whom to devolve the duty of seeing to the observance of the understandings that we call laws. Like all else that men do, this work is badly done. The best that we can hope for through all the failures, the injustice, the disheartening damage to individual rights and interests, is a fairly good general result, enabling us to walk abroad among our fellows unafraid, to meet even the tribesmen from another valley without too imminent peril of braining and evisceration. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the most disheartening event in civilization since the Russians made their separate peace with Germany, and infinitely more unworthy on our part than it was on that of the Russians. They were threatened with starvation and revolution had swept their country. Our soldiers fought side by ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... a great scholar; he is a statesman who, aloof from faction, ought to be accustomed to take just and comprehensive views; and a priest who ought to be under the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. He says I am a visionary. All this might well be disheartening; but now comes one whom no circumstances impel to judge my project with indulgence; who would, at the first glance, appear to have many prejudices arrayed against it, who knows more of the world than Lord Eskdale, and who appears to ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Very disheartening talk with the PM today. It seems the whole business of setting a date was an error from beginning to end. No one gave any such promise. It dare not be denied now, however, for fear of the effect upon the public. I must begin to think ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... any fate, Lafayette started on the long, wearisome journey northward. There were rivers deep and swift to cross; the roads were bad and the wintry storms made them worse. Floating ice crowded the fords. Rain and hail and snow and slush made up a disheartening monotony. ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; joyless, cheerless, comfortless; dismal, disheartening; depressing, depressive; dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous; woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable; sad, affecting, touching, pathetic. irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... unlikely, most extravagant and funniest cases, and had won legal games without a trump in his hand, although he had worked out the obscure law of divorce, as if it had been a Californian gold mine Maitre[4] Garrulier the celebrated, the only Garrulier, could not check a movement of surprise, nor a disheartening shake of the head, nor a smile when the Countess de Baudemont explained her affairs to him for ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Johnny's" piped up my little sister amid a very disheartening roar of laughter from the {321} school. There was no use in my denying the statement. Her reputation for veracity was much higher than mine, and I recognized the futility of trying to convince any one that she was ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... for a great prize in Meshach Browning's account of himself, and have been disappointed. Not that some very fair grains of wheat may not be had for the winnowing, but the proportion of chaff is disheartening. Meshach has been edited, and has not come out of that fiery furnace unscathed. Mr. Stabler has not let him come before us in his deerskin hunting-shirt, but has made him presentable by getting him into a black dress-coat, the uniform of perfect respectability and tiresomeness. He has corrected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... his first disheartening experiments with sulphur, he had an opportunity of escaping at once from his troubles. A house in Paris made him an advantageous offer for the use of his aquafortis process. From the abyss of his misery the honest man promptly ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... at once that despite his most violent efforts he would fail to overtake the flying Atalanta before she completed the circuit of the tent. Even the golden apples of Hesperides would have availed him little against such disheartening odds; but with undismayed perseverance he pressed on, stumbling headlong over the outstretched feet of his female persecutors, and getting constantly entangled in the ample folds of the reindeerskin curtains, which were thrown with the skill ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... deep, but are high and broad. It is a delightful experience to pass from this brown, depressing landscape to the rich beauties of the Sind Valley and Kashmir. But to make the journey the other way round, and to pass into the gloomy region after being spoilt by the luxuries of Kashmir, is sadly disheartening ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... believe that to them is to be attributed a considerable part of that patriotic feeling which, after a suspended animation of several years, awoke in the spring of 1861 and asserted itself with such unexpected power, and which sustained the country during four years of a peculiarly disheartening war. How pleasant and spirit-stirring was a celebration of the Fourth of July as it was conducted in Webster's early day! We trust the old customs will be revived and improved upon, and become universal. Nor is it any objection ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... was not a little embarrassed, for although accustomed to short, informal temperance talks in public, I had no idea, woman that I was, of taking his place at such a critical moment. What added to my embarrassment was the disheartening fact to all of us that Mr. Pope was just then unexpectedly called away to another part of his extensive field and was gone two days. So there was no help for it. I looked over my old notes—nothing ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... around, for the wolves had been making merry over it, and had hollowed out the entire carcass. It was covered with myriads of large black crickets, and from its appearance must certainly have lain there for four or five days. The sight was a most disheartening one, and I observed to Raymond that the Indians might still be fifty or sixty miles before us. But he shook his head, and replied that they dared not go so far for fear of their ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... It must be disheartening work learning a musical instrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical instrument. But ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... of my difficulties, I took the type-written pages to a number of charitable friends and asked them to read what I had said, and give me the benefit of their advice. The experience was rather disheartening. Each and every man had his own prejudices and his own hobbies and preferences. They all wanted to know why, where and how I dared to omit their pet nation, their pet statesman, or even their most beloved criminal. With some of them, Napoleon and Jenghiz Khan ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... keys, accompanied us to see his church, which, funnily enough, we could only reach by the help of a small boat—all very well in the summer when boats can go, or in the winter when there is ice to cross, but rather disheartening at the mid-seasons, when crossing becomes a serious business and requires great skill. There was a "church boat" lying near by, a great huge cumbersome sort of concern that twelve people could row at a time, and two or three times as many more stand or sit in, and on Sundays this ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... "Oh, I grant you, there's a disheartening deal of imitation in this matter. But America's new to aesthetics. Don't ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... not come to a decision; the next day saw him obstinately, even a little stupidly, pursuing the course he had planned before his disheartening disillusionment. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... kitchen (where the drenched and weary postman was receiving the hospitable attentions of the servants) to make inquiries. The disheartening answer returned was that the newspaper could not have arrived as usual by the morning's post, or it must have been put into the bag along with the letters. No such accident as this had occurred, except ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... for literature this heritage may prove to be will not appear until this institution—and others with like purposes—has fully developed by cultivation, training, and careful fostering the artistic impulses so abundantly a part of the Negro character. A race which has produced, under the most disheartening conditions, a mass of folk-poetry such as Negro Folk Rhymes may be expected to create with unlimited opportunities for self-development, a literature and a ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... a conclusion of the whole matter with profound gratitude to God. But there are many more to whom such a confession of the Church's inability to appreciate and unwillingness to meet the spiritual needs of a civilization wonderfully unlike anything that has preceded it would be most disheartening. Least of all is there valid ground for hope in the case of those who fancy that if they can only annihilate this project, the day will speedily come when they can revise the Prayer Book in a manner perfectly conformable to their own conception of the "Ideal Liturgy," and after a fashion which ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... English now named Pittsburg, in honor of War Minister Pitt; and Frontenac (Kingston), the marine arsenal of the French at the foot of Lake Ontario, surrendered and was destroyed. The effect of these losses was disheartening to the French, though before the season's campaign closed Montcalm defeated the English, under General Abercrombie, in an attack on the French post on Lake Champlain, afterward named Ticonderoga. When the year 1759 opened, the English were ready to resume operations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... unlucky transactions, died, leaving a numerous family without the means of support. His children were obliged to commence life alone and unaided, which, in a country where labor is so cheap, is difficult and disheartening. Our friend chose the profession of a machinist, which, after encountering great obstacles, he succeeded in learning, and now supports himself as a common laborer. But his position in this respect prevents ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... whole body of the Highland clans shall have taken arms in our favour. The opposite opinion maintains, that a retrograde movement, in our circumstances, is certain to throw utter discredit on our arms and undertaking; and, far from gaining us new partisans, will be the means of disheartening-those who have joined our standard. The officers who use these last arguments, among whom is your friend Fergus Mac-Ivor, maintain, that if the Highlanders are strangers to the usual military discipline of Europe, the soldiers whom they are to encounter are no ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... harmless information from fools clad in a little brief authority, the mingled hope and dread of coming upon the object of the search at the next place, the recurring feeling that the whole fatiguing pursuit is a wild goose chase and that the missing person is now safe at home, are a few features of the disheartening business. The labors of Larcher and Tompkins elicited nothing; lightened though they were by the impecunious lawyer's tact, knowledge, and good humor, they left the young men dispirited and dead tired. Larcher had nothing to telegraph Miss Kenby. He thought of her passing a sleepless ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... manner was a strong man, there had been combined with his resolution some tact and temper, he might have exercised a beneficial influence. As it was he became sullen and despondent, and retired behind an 'uncommunicative and disheartening reserve.' Brave as he was, he seems to have lacked the inspiration which alone could reinvigorate the drooping spirit of the troops. In a word, though he probably was, in army language, a 'good duty soldier,' he certainly was nothing more. And ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the hand advanced impulsively and a smile broke from under the shaggy yellow bang and another where the hand remained in a stationary receptive cup, or sometimes caressed the limp ends of the mustache in a way most discouraging and disheartening to the delinquent debtor. When Doc Macnooder arrived, however, he paid him the further honor to carefully close the glass cases where eclair and fruit cake were waiting the call to service, and braced ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... course of my experience as a teacher, had to deal with imbeciles, had to deal with mere idiots; but for sheer, determined, monumental asininity I have never met the equal of this aggregation. I trust this morning's painful, disgraceful, disheartening experience may never, never be repeated. You ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... currants were being looked over, and a third, more brilliant than either, while she chopped the candied peel. The trouble was that when she came to mix all her ingredients into the batter, her plans began to mix up too, until all was hopeless confusion. It was most disheartening! And the wedding, now, only a few days off. She wanted to go away into a corner and wring her hands, but if she did, some one might notice—and then "They" would have the chance they were looking for. Aunt Amy ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... rule, of the law and order and security for life and property which it had established, had gradually worn away, those who had never experienced the evils from which it had freed India should begin to chafe under the restraints which it imposed. What is disheartening and alarming are the lengths to which this reaction has been carried. For among the younger generation of Hindus there has unquestionably grown up a deep-seated and bitter hostility not only to British ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... cared to risk even a semblance of rivalry with that monstrous aggregation of capital, for the interlacing of financial interests was amazingly intricate, and financiers were fearful of the least misstep. Everywhere O'Neil encountered the same disheartening timidity. His battle, it seemed, had been lost before it ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... fact that the exquisite picture of virtue, the whole-hearted attack on vice, the genial humour, the sunny portraits of humanity, the splendid cheerfulness of Tom Jones, that 'Epic of Youth,' came from a man in middle age, immersed in disheartening struggles, and fighting recurrent ill health. Superficial critics have called Fielding a realist because his figures are so full-blooded and alive that we feel we have met them but yesterday in the street; to eyes so shortsighted ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... was possible to navigate it further. Accordingly, on the following morning, three men were despatched along the south bank, while Mr. Hunt and three others proceeded along the north. The two parties returned after a weary scramble among swamps, rocks, and precipices, and with very disheartening accounts. For nearly forty miles that they had explored, the river foamed and roared along through a deep and narrow channel, from twenty to thirty yards wide, which it had worn, in the course of ages, through the heart of a barren, rocky country. The precipices ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... cannot, he dare not be dead!" sobbed Mercedes. "The news which Beauchamp acquainted me with was disheartening enough. My poor son, captain in the first Zouave regiment, or the so-called Jackals, about three months ago, after an expedition against the Kabyles, disappeared; they fear the wild horde has taken ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... kept on to the south-east, hoping at last to strike some of the inhabited townships; and the unvarying solidity of forest was well-nigh disheartening him, when he saw, after several miles' walking, the distinctly defined imprint of a man's foot on some clayey soil near a clump of chestnut trees. Yes, there could be no mistake: some person had passed not long since; and though the tracks led away considerably from the south-easterly direction ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... wiped away, but a new source of strength to our forces was provided by the emancipated negroes, who were enlisted to aid in the confirmation of their freedom by final victory. The first half of the year 1863 witnessed what was perhaps the gloomiest and most disheartening period of the war. Hooker succeeded Burnside, only to meet at Chancellorsville the same disastrous fate which had overtaken his predecessor at Fredericksburg. General Lee was encouraged to assume the ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... inspect us. All is right, and we are allowed to go into the yard to find our friends and our luggage. Both are difficult tasks, the second even harder. Imagine all the things of some hundreds of people making a journey like ours, being mostly unpacked and mixed together in one sad heap. It was disheartening, but done at last was the task of collecting our belongings, and we were marched into the big room again. Here, on the bare floor, in a ring, sat some Polish men and women singing some hymn in their own tongue, and making more ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... languid hands of the younger guests, and those ridiculous mottoes, which could hardly amuse anyone out of Earlswood Asylum, were looked at a shade more contemptuously than usual. The weather was too warm for enthusiasm. And Violet's pale set face was almost as disheartening as the skeleton at an Egyptian banquet. When Mrs. Tempest retired to put on her travelling-dress Violet went with her, a filial attention the mother had in ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... this magical volume is doubtless rather disheartening: but the sight of the original silver clasps (luckily still preserved) will operate by way of a comforter. Upon ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... night,—it was our united opinion that the speculation was a failure. This conviction was mutual and profound. The cow was not only gone, but she had shown such disinclination to be domesticated, and such a misapprehension of the true purpose of life, that the prospect was truly disheartening. ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... excitement than with labor, for it seemed that we were approaching the moon,—so bleak and high the roadway ran. I had miscalculated sadly. It had looked only a couple of hours' brisk walk from the hotel, but the way lengthened out toward the last in a most disheartening fashion. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... voyage, anticipated. Indeed, clouds rested over the range of mountains that intersects the island lengthways. The rain had fallen somewhat heavily, and the aspect of the place was so decidedly dismal and disheartening, that, as the two squires landed, their countenances expressed ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... It was disheartening. They thought of the unfortunate men shut up for twenty-six days in the projectile. Perhaps they were all feeling the first symptoms of suffocation, even if they had escaped the dangers of their fall. The air was getting ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... 2 or 3 miles in a S.W. (?) direction under sail by alternately throwing her aback, then filling sail and pressing through the narrow leads; probably this will scarcely make up for our drift. It's all very disheartening. The bright side is that everyone is prepared to exert himself to the utmost—however poor the result of our labours ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... saw must have been frightfully disheartening. Where the busy city had stood was now a level plain of white ashes, so deep that not a house-top could be seen, and only the upper walls of the great theatre and the amphitheatre were visible. Digging into the fleecy ashes, many of them recovered articles of value, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... pleasant summer weather brought many sunshiny days and starlit nights, the cold, damp, and dismal days took all the poetry out of this roving life, and sodden forests and relentless foes brought dreary and disheartening hours. Trust me, boys, this so-called "free and jolly life of the bold outlaw," which so many story-papers picture, whether it be with Brian Boru in distant Ireland, nine hundred years ago, or in Sherwood Forest with Robin Hood, or with some ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... all the content of their mutual society"; "a violence to the reverend secret of nature"; "to force a mixture of minds that cannot unite"; "two incoherent and uncombining dispositions"; "the undoing or the disheartening of his life"; "the superstitious and impossible performance of an ill-driven bargain"; "bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or, as it oft happens, to an image of earth and phlegm"; "shut up together, the one ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... what he was striving to accomplish." Hence, too, no half-formed and then abandoned projects were among the stepping-stones of his career. A plan or an idea, once conceived, was certain to be shaped, developed and matured; and whatever the result, it left up disheartening effect, no feeling of distrust, to cripple ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... grounds. Here, if anywhere, is the paradise of the Lews. There is a profusion of dells, burns, glades, ivy-grown bridges, and far-extending vistas over sea, moorland, and town. As with a knife (so precise is the division) the well-wooded policies are separated from the barren and disheartening moor. When one gets to the highest point of the grounds and gazes over the long, tiresome slopes of the island, one's belief in design in nature gets a sudden stab. A man will think long and sore before he arrives ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... his bishopric (July 4), to become archbishop of Manila. On the next day he reports to the king his arrival at Manila, and the present condition of affairs in the islands, which is very disheartening. The Mindanao pirates have ravaged the coasts, and carried away many captives. The richest part of the city, including the merchandise stored in the warehouses, has been destroyed by fire; and the ships from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... rather gratified at this. There was, then, to be another interview, and that was a proof that Woodward had not been finally discarded. So far, matters did not seem so disheartening as she had anticipated. She looked upon Alice's agitation, and the tears she had been shedding, as the result of the constraint which she had put upon her inclination in giving him, she hoped, a favorable reception; and with this impression she went to communicate what she conceived to be the good ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton |
