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Frustration   Listen
noun
Frustration  n.  The act of frustrating; disappointment; defeat; as, the frustration of one's designs.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Frustration" Quotes from Famous Books



... to seek refuge in the waters of the river. She went first to Battersea Bridge, but it was too public for her purpose. She could not risk a second frustration of her designs. There was no place in London where she could be unobserved. With the calmness of despair, she hired a boat and rowed to Putney. It was a cold, foggy November day, and by the time she arrived at her destination the night had come, and the rain fell in torrents. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... field glasses and stood for a full minute filled with a keen frustration. The splitting din about him roared on uninterruptedly, and yet somehow he had been hoping the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... first he might have seen there was no spirit, no quality suited to be his partner in a fashionable world; he vowed to think no more of a weak, capricious fool, so he now termed the girl he had fancied that he loved. As may readily be imagined, he felt his self love very deeply wounded by the complete frustration of his intentions, and being incapable of appreciating the better principles which had fortunately actuated the resolve of Caroline, a spirit of revenge entered his heart. He crushed the letter in his hand, and paced the room in fury, and would have torn it to atoms, when the thought struck him, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... been so beautifully planned, and with so much pleasure, turned out to be, when finished, just like all the others. But Carmen did not bear the frustration of their cherished hopes as calmly as the old man. Her visit to Wollmershain, although it had not given rise to any new tastes or dislikes regarding the home customs, had strengthened the long-buried desires which lay within her breast, and quickened her natural spirit ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus

... modern school of writers care only to talk of misery and gloom and frustration, I retain a taste for joy and sweetness and kindliness. Life has so many sharp crosses, so many inexplicable sorrows for us all, that I hold it good to snatch at every moment of gladness, and to keep ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... unfortunate men, who paid so dearly for their dishonesty and disobedience of orders; for they had been seen with a canoe, which they had taken from one of the fishing places. These events were much regretted by Governor Phillip, as tending entirely to the frustration of the plan he had so much at heart, of conciliating the affections of the natives, and establishing a friendly ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... had been its original advocate.' But both he and Lord Holland have been so vehemently committed in opposition to it, that, without any imputation of unpatriotic feelings, it is not in human nature they should not find a sort of satisfaction in the frustration of those measures which they so strenuously resisted, and this clearly appears in all Lord Holland said to me, and in Lady Holland's tone about Palmerston and his ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... see that we get much ahead by trying to sentimentalize the situation," he said, with a gesture that seemed one of frustration. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... under Emil's gaze of acute pathos—human life aware of its present frustration. Then suddenly Emil became once more an animated and hungry monkey with no ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... rest till they had produced the desired melioration of the state. The expedition sailed in May; but the Government was enabled to take such precautions as, from the very first, proved a complete frustration to their designs. Argyle lingered timidly in his own country, and, finally, against the advice of Cochrane and Hume, who were his chief officers, made some unfortunate movements, which ended in the entire dissolution of his army, and his own capture and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... call Faith, and Hope, and Charity. For Folly cried, 'I know not, but I believe'; Squalor, 'I am vile, but I hope'; and the oppressed, 'I am despised, but I love.' That was the Christian Trinity, the echo of man's frustration, as the other was the echo of his accomplishment. Yet both he needs. For because he grows, he is dogged by imperfection. His weakness is mocked by those shining forms on the mountain-top. But Faith, and Hope, and Charity walk beside him in the mire, to kindle, to comfort and to help. And ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... not considered a safe place for a white man who was opposed to secession after the ordinance was passed. This probably accounts for the statement in the last part of the affidavit relative to the frustration of the plans. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... meet with a great disappointment. 'Success but signifies vicissitude,' and looking at the history of the growth of the Church, it is impossible not to observe that almost in all cases, immediately upon any extensive progress, there has followed what seems like a strong effort of the Evil One at its frustration, either by external persecution, reaction of heathenism, or, most fatally and frequently during the last 300 years, from the reckless misdoings of unscrupulous sailors and colonists. The West Indies, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... command of the German army as completely thwarted in its design as it had been at the Marne. It had fallen to Foch to defeat the German plan on the east (Lorraine), in the center (Marne) and on the west (Ypres). And the consequences of this frustration that he dealt them in Flanders were calculated to be "at least equal to the victory of the Marne." Colonel Requin calls that Battle of the Yser "like a preface to the ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... got to his feet. The breath had been partly knocked out of him. Baleful eyes rolled at Pan. Instinctive wrath, however, had been given a setback. Hardman had been forced to think of something beside the frustration of his ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... guards to the plainclothes man and back, in frustration. Finally he spun on his heel again and re-entered the car. He slapped the elevation lever, twisted the wheel sharply, hit the jets pedal with his foot and shot ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... unflinchingly supported by a brave and intrepid race, should never have attained the blessing of success. A more signal instance than that which Ireland can supply of the baffling of a nation's hope, the prolonged frustration of a people's will, is not on record; and few even of those who most condemn the errors and weakness by which Irishmen themselves have retarded the national object, will hesitate to say that they have given to mankind the noblest proof they possess of the vitality of the principles of freedom, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... of sadness. For the moving tragedy of circumstance, of lovers sundered by fate only to be swiftly joined in exultant death, we have the profounder tragedy of mutually destroying energies, of grievously miscalculating men, of failure and frustration dogging the steps of the strenuous and the wise, of destiny searching out the fatal weakness of the strong. To the poet has now been added the reader; to the master of the pathos of passion the student of the tragedy of universal life. It is thus by culture and experience—culture ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... of seeing the Comte de Lorgnes at dinner in Lyons; of the uneasiness he manifested, and the cumulative feeling of frustration and failure he so plainly betrayed as the last hours of his life wore on; of the Apaches who watched de Lorgnes in the cafe and the fact that one of them had contrived to secure a berth in the same carriage ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... Their minds had had no concept of such horror, such relentless, racking pain. The blazing lights, the questions screaming in their ears, Frankle's vicious eyes burning in frustration, and their own screams, rising with each question they would not answer until their throats were scorched and they could no longer scream. Finally they reached the limit they could endure, and muttered ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse

... things left her uneasy, her mind a cockpit of emotions. Her grasp could not encompass all her desires at once, it seemed; and whilst she could gloat over the gratification of one, she must bewail the frustration of another. Yet in the main she felt that she should account herself ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... forty years the Whig party usually had the upper hand. In 1834 Parliament revolutionized the system of public relief to the needy which had existed for fifty years, to the extreme demoralization of the poorer working-classes and the frustration of really benevolent purpose. The old law had assumed that each parish owed every native a living. A sliding scale was accordingly provided by which, as the rate of wages declined, the parish should pay to the workman enough to bring his ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... sufficiently cultivated their gifts, or that they have not done their best to bring them into use? Or may they not have wanted to use them for ends of their own and not of God's? I feel as if I must stand up against every difficulty lest God should be disappointed in me. Surely any frustration of the ends to which their very being points must be the person's own fault? May it not be because they have not yielded to the calling voice that they are all their life a prey to unsatisfied longings? They may have gone picking and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... rational it may appear, or recommending to us at present, did not by any means facilitate the plan then. On the contrary, to disparage those qualities which the highest characters in the country valued themselves most upon, was a sure way of making powerful enemies. As if the frustration of the national hope was not enough, the long-esteemed merit of ritual zeal and punctuality was to be decried, and that ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... spectator, seeing and hearing the world through Dulaq's eyes and ears as the Acquatainian Prime Minister advanced through his nightmarish ordeal. He felt the confusion, frustration, apprehension and growing terror as, time and again, Odal appeared in the crowd—only to melt into ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova

... rejoicing in honor of a victory, has come to signify also a peculiarly exultant, complete, and glorious victory. Compare conquer. Antonyms: defeat, destruction, disappointment, disaster, failure, frustration, miscarriage, overthrow, retreat, rout. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... glimpse of a shapeless, battered, gory mass under trampling feet. Maddened by the little they were able to accomplish, and with the torture-lust that is as old as humanity itself roused to fury by frustration, the posse turned from that which had been Jake, to old Neptune, standing motionless by his doorway. Neptune had not moved or spoken since Peter had answered the posse's questions. He had not even appeared to hear the vile abuse heaped upon him. He was not in the least afraid for his life: ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... respondent to Julian. It is enough to refer to Lecture II. and Note 19, in relation to him. It is worthy of observation, that the circumstance that he should consider it necessary to reply to Julian's work, at so long a period after the death of the author, and the frustration of his schemes, seems to show the continued existence of a wavering in the faith of Christians, of which we seldom have the opportunity of finding the traces ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... Constantinople was very wroth at the frustration of his plan to get influence over the Pope by the appointment of Laurentius, and reproached Pope Symmachus with moving the Roman senate ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... choice. They teleported at once into the presence of the two nearby natives—and met with frustration beyond Ciriimian experience. ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee

... Max, from the knowledge he had gained, while at Liege, of the great trains loaded with troops and munitions that constantly passed through at all hours of the day and night, was very well aware of it. Next to his darling scheme for the frustration of the Germans' plans as regards the Durend works, the breaking of the great railway through the town had seemed the most serious blow that could be aimed at the Germans by a few men working independently of the great military forces ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... universities, the churches, the hospitals, the workhouses, and every other institution. He bids us leave it with its large grasp on the private and public life of the community, and go on with our constructive work in face of all this overwhelming frustration. No doubt he means well, but we are not foolish enough to take his advice. We tell Dr. Coit that he does not understand the obstructive power of theology, and that he is thus unable to appreciate the work of the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... with the gun in my hand and looked into a face white with frustration and rage. "Okay, Mister McCann," ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake

... civilisation, who has come to consider the idea of ultimately herding and breeding the workers like cattle, has certain contemporary problems to review. He has to consider what forces still exist in the modern world for the frustration of his design. The first question is how much remains of the old ideal of individual liberty. The second question is how far the modern mind is committed to such egalitarian ideas as may be implied in ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... on, there is a Battle of Lauffeld coming, 2d July, 1747; with similar results; frustration evident, retreat evident, victory not much to speak of. And in this gloriously delightful manner Saxe and the French Nation have proceeded, till in fact the Netherlands Territory with all strongholds, except ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... that appearance of softness and imbecility which is commonly necessary to conciliate compassion. But if the same attention had been applied to the search of arguments against the folly of pre-supposing impossibilities, and anticipating frustration, I know not whether many would not have been roused to usefulness, who, having been taught to confound prudence with timidity, never ventured to excel, lest they ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... would accomplish in the penetrating light of day with two others holding his hands, and a third reposing upon his head, I formed the perhaps immature judgment that the one to whom I was indebted for the entertainment would be suffering a grievous frustration of his hopes and a diminution of his outward authority. Therefore, without sufficient consideration of the restricted surroundings, as it afterwards appeared, I threw myself into a retrospective vision, and floating unencumbered through space, I sought for Kwan Kiang-ti, the ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... the frustration and overthrow of a deaf and raucous Jingoism is a renascence of the love of the native land. When that comes, all shrill cries will cease suddenly. For the first of all the marks of love is seriousness: love will not accept sham bulletins ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... this there is 'hard boot', which connotes hostility towards or frustration with the machine being booted: "I'll have to hard-boot this losing Sun." "I recommend booting it hard." One often hard-boots by ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... now. As military commander of a district he has attained power, enabling him to dispense with any left-handed assistance; and of late more than once has wished himself rid of such suspicious auxiliaries. Therefore, but for the frustration of his present plans, he would rather rejoice than grieve over the tidings brought by the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... parasite's belly. We have been amused, perhaps astonished, on further reading, at meeting our new-found friends in other plays, clothed in different names to be sure and supplied in part with a fresh stock of jests, but still engaged in the frustration of villainous panders, the cheating of harsh fathers, until all ends with virtue triumphant in the establishment of the undoubted respectability of a hitherto somewhat dubious ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... plot discovered and frustrated always strengthens the hands of the existing government; but this maxim is far too general, and consequently often proves false and dangerous in application. The conditions under which the discovery and frustration of a plot do really strengthen the hands of government are peculiar. There must be circumstances attending upon the whole transaction which, when the plot is exposed, either destroy the means of future conspiracies ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... The foyer was crowded with people waiting to get out. The word passed that it was raining heavily. I wondered how I should find my cab. I felt very lonely and unknown; I was overcome with sadness—with a sense of the futility and frustration of my life. Such is the logic of the soul, and such the force of reaction. Gradually the ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... Greeley believed so confidently in the goodness of the people and none so much desired their happiness. Nor was ever altrurian more bitterly disappointed. The frustration of a high hope and the selfishness of interests alike find exemplification in the eight years of Jefferson. Assuming office with an aversion to coercion in any form, assuring the people that the energies of the nation ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... old E left the administrative board hanging in a vacuum of indecision, frustration. Angry determination ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... breast of his doublet. The keen air of the February afternoon fanned his face. His heart was full of tender thoughts of Cherry and her sweet affection for him. How soon would it be possible, he wondered, to claim her as his own; and what would Martin Holt say to the frustration of ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the frustration of that scheme, Theodore was out, having been sent on an errand by his grandfather; and the old captain himself, who was lounging on the front steps, was the one who first met the lame boy. Tony, who was not able ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... us we will die if we listen to the magter!" Ulv shouted, his voice cracking. Not with fear, but with frustration at the attempt to reconcile two opposite points of view. Up until this time his world had consisted of black and white values, with very few shadings ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... secular duel. For Scotland it spelled independence, for Navarre the loss of independence; in Castile it set on the throne the new dynasty of Trastamare; to Aragon the result was the appearance of a new rival in Mediterranean commerce, the frustration of hopes which had centred round Provence and Languedoc, the imperilling of others which were fixed on Italy. With each successive triumph of French over English arms, the influence of France penetrated farther to the south and east; and by the marriages or military successes ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... and even subtle, and he was very swift in grasping a situation, very sharp in reading character, very cunning in the pursuit of his pleasure, very adroit in deception, if he thought that publicity of pursuit would be likely to lead to the frustration of his purpose. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... in Paul's voice now, bitterness and frustration. "I built it, because I had to be sure. I've tested its thrust. I could launch this model for Alpha Centauri tonight—and it would get there. If there were little men who could get into it, they'd get there, too—alive. Starship Project ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse

... need hardly be said, a stronger impression of the owner's intellectual quality than the acquisition by him of the finest library could have conveyed. One of the experiences which disgusted him with St. Kitt's was the frustration by its authorities of an attempt he was making to teach a negro boy to read, and the understanding that all such educative ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... College at Court, in the T'ang Dynasty, there were four classes of Masters, attached to its two High Medical Chiefs: Masters of Medicine, of Acupuncture, of Manipulation, and two Masters for Frustration ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... at that. For youth no dream is quite too extravagant or incredible to be potentially true. No grim specters of failure and disillusionment and frustration dog its bright path. All possibilities are its ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... the hundreds who had felt the light but faintly—the skull told the story. They had died as they slept, died thousands of years ago, and their skeletons were all that remained to mock at their king and the frustration of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... outward cosmos, fettered to the law of periodic recurrence. Its chains had been dissolved forever by the Persian seer through his self-realization. "How oft hereafter rising shall she look . . . after me-in vain!" What frustration of search by a frantic ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... purely governmental solution for every problem. We have lived too long with that false promise. In trusting too much in government, we have asked of it more than it can deliver. This leads only to inflated expectations, to reduced individual effort, and to a disappointment and frustration that erode confidence both in what government can do and in what ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... blinded and misled by Sekosini's plausible arguments and misrepresentations, I might have done so. But that time is past; even before the arrival of the Healer I had begun dimly to foresee the evil that must come to the nation through the plot; and it was in my mind to take steps for its frustration, but ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... of the Apostasy! But all the miracles, which the legends of Monk or Rabbi contain, can scarcely be put in competition, on the score of complication, inexplicableness, the absence of all intelligible use or purpose, and of circuitous self-frustration, with those that must be assumed by the maintainers of this doctrine, in order to give effect to the series of miracles, by which all the nominal composers of the Hebrew nation before the time of Ezra, of whom there are any remains, were ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of this family of plants. The broad bean, on the other hand, seems to me to exude morality—not least, when it parts with its head to save its life. There is no better preacher in the vegetable garden. It is the very Chrysostom of the gospel of frustration—the gospel that a great loss may be a great gain—the gospel that through their repressions men may all the more ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... The frustration of Mary's hope of becoming a mother, her subsequent ill state of health, and the resolute refusal of the parliament to permit the coronation of her husband, who had quitted England in disgust to attend his affairs on the continent, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... time, it was difficult to see how the members of the Association could carry out their pledge without a breach of the law; stronger legal measures for the defence of the Queen and the frustration of assassination as a means to secure the inheritance in any particular quarter were required. Parliament was summoned at the end of November. Ministers wished to have definite provision made for carrying on the Government in case of the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... adventurous sailors began to experience all the anxiety which is inseparable from an action involving much danger, liability to frustration, and requiring the utmost caution ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... country home of Mrs. Willoughby Brock, to play tennis. As however there was only one court and quite a number of young and middle-aged people were standing near it with racquets in their hands and an expression on their faces in which frustration and anticipation fought for supremacy, it followed that other beguilements had to be found. My own fate was to fall into the hands of Mrs. Brock, whose greatest delight on earth seems to be to have a stranger to whom she can display the beauties of her abode ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various

... departed. His voice and his presence had staved off a nightmare idea that was on the watch to seize on her—how if chance had brought Sally across this unsuspected relation of hers, and events had forced a full declaration of their kinship? Somnus jumped at the chance given by its frustration; the sea air asserted itself, and went into partnership with him, and Rosalind's mind was carried ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... apprehensions were quickened by the receipt of a telegram from Dublin Castle, and another from the Home Office in London, warning them that a plot was on foot for the liberation of the prisoners. The magistrates doubted the truth of the information, but they took precautions, nevertheless, for the frustration of any such enterprise. Kelly and Deasey were both handcuffed, and locked in separate compartments of the van; and, instead of three policemen, not less than twelve were entrusted with its defence. Of this body, five sat on the box-seat, two were stationed on the step behind, four followed ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... paid the reckoning and sauntered off, a prey to contending thoughts. That the cruel plot should come to nought, if its frustration were within his means, he unhesitatingly resolved. That Querto's confidence—unasked though it had been—should be used against himself, was equally unwelcome to Alain's ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... carry him off to Vienna. In the father's case this was easily managed, but the mother only yielded when it was pointed out that her son's singing in the cathedral choir did not necessarily mean the frustration of her hopes of seeing ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... the problem contained five distinct factors: The upper Northeast wanted a railroad starting at Chicago. The Central West wanted a road from St. Louis. The Southwest wanted a road from New Orleans, or at least, the frustration of the two Northern schemes. Big Business wanted new soil for slavery. The Compromise of 1850 stood in the way of the extension ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... Anger, frustration flared in him. His hand shot out, gun at ready. He turned around slowly. Through the settling trail of suspended sand, ...
— Cully • Jack Egan

... unfortunate women of a past generation, who, in offering no allurement to the masculine eye, appeared to defeat the single end for which woman was formed. As her very right to existence lay in her possible power to attract, the denial of that power by nature, or the frustration of it by circumstances, had deprived her, almost from the cradle, of her only authoritative reason for being. Her small, short-sighted eyes, below a false front which revealed rather than obscured her bare temples, flitted from ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... discouraged Slidell from following Mason's example of demanding recognition and the formal communication was withheld, Mason acquiescing[726]. Slidell thought new disturbances in Italy responsible for this sudden lessening of French interest in the South, but he was gloomy, seeing again the frustration of high hopes. ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... shuddered at the thought. "Picture the beauty of it," he said. "Not red, which would cause all automobiles to stop, but green, the signal to go! Imagine their mad desire to rush forward in righteous obedience to the law, and their awful frustration to find every other automobile and truck obeying the same law, regardless of the direction from which it is coming. It has been estimated by noted mathematicians who are involved in this plan, that ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis

... revealing their contents—the bodies of good Mussulmans, on their way to the consecrated soil of Mecca for burial. Carelessly shambled the mules along, stumbling as they jogged over the uneven ground, their boxes tilting from side to side, sorely shaken, some of them, in frustration of dying hopes, scattering their contents over the track—for here and there a mule carried but a wreck of coffins. On and on over the rough gravelly waste, under the dead cold moon, weltered ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... and ring for Mrs. Davies,' he would say in so casual a way that of course you would ring. On Mrs. Davies's appearance he would be fumbling about among the papers in his pocket-book, and presently he would say, with a look of frustration that went to one's heart—'I've got a ten-pound note somewhere here for you, Mrs. Davies, to pay you up till Saturday, but somehow I seem to have lost it. Yet it must be somewhere about. Perhaps you'll find it as you make the bed in the morning. I'm so sorry ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... Matlock, he judged that he had come to the end of his passion for her; and here he was again at the very beginning of it. Instead of perishing it had thrived on absence. He found himself on the verge of a new and unforeseen adventure, with impulse sharpened by antagonism and frustration. Yet his only chance, he knew, was not to be impulsive, but cool rather, calculating and cautious. The fight he was in for would have to be fought with brains; his ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... been absorbed in the sea of beauty that surrounds it, only the moments pass, and the reunion, ever sought, seems ever more hopeless. Over and over again Shelley's song gives us both the fugitive glimpses and the mystery of frustration. ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... this one couldn't be. These people believed that this report in itself was proof enough to officially accept the fact that UFO's were interplanetary spaceships. And when some people refused to believe even this report, the frustration was actually ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... in a very singular manner, led him to gain much of that sort of knowledge which the Lords of the Congregation thirsted for; and second, he had no doubt that Winterton was in pursuit of him to Kilmarnock, for some purpose of frustration or circumvention, the which, though he was not able to divine, he could not but consider important, if it was, as he thought, the prime motive of that ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... maladies of civilization, aristocracy and the proletariat: Labor, in dividing itself according to the law which is peculiar to it, and which is the primary condition of its productivity, ends in the frustration of its own objects, and destroys itself, in other words: Division, in the absence of which there is no progress, no wealth, no equality, subordinates the workingman, and renders intelligence useless, wealth harmful, and equality impossible. All the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... of national suicide. But was it not more? Was it not the frustration of the purpose and the promise of God? So it certainly appeared to be. Yet He is not mocked. Even through human sin His purpose holds on its way. The Jews brought the Son of God to Pilate's judgment-seat, ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... tax as income the official salaries paid by the other government.[18] This doctrine traces immediately to Marshall's famous judgment in McCulloch v. Maryland,[19] and bespeaks a conception of the federal relationship which regards the National Government and the States as bent on mutual frustration. Today the principle of tax exemption, except so far as Congress may choose to apply it to federal instrumentalities by virtue of its protective powers under the necessary and proper clause, is ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... For the frustration of attempts to admit light into scriptural studies in Roman Catholic Germany, see Bleek, Old Testament, London, 1882, vol. i, pp. 19, 20. For the general statement regarding recent suppression of modern ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... recklessness and mockery penetrated his blood. He could not forget Gudrun's lifted, offered, cleaving, reckless, yet withal mocking weight. And Birkin, watching like a hermit crab from its hole, had seen the brilliant frustration and helplessness of Ursula. She was rich, full of dangerous power. She was like a strange unconscious bud of powerful womanhood. He was unconsciously drawn to her. She ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... rightfully its owners, and the remembrance of my morning in the Villa Medici will remain a pure joy. So few joys in this world, even in the very capital of it, are without some touch of abatement. I could not so much as visit the Catacombs of Domatilla without suffering a frustration which, though incidental merely, left a lasting pang of unrequited interest. As we drew toward the place, I saw in a field the beginning of one of those domestic dramas which are not attributable to Italy alone. Three peasants, a man and two women, were engaged in controversy ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... laid before the Directory in the summer of 1795, looked primarily to the subjugation of Piedmont, by separating it from the support of the Austrian Army. The bearing of Vado Bay upon this project is not definitely recognized by Nelson. He sees in the possession of it only the frustration of both the enemy's supposed alternatives,—invasion of Italy by the Bocchetta, and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... might profit by the purchase, and who saw in the success of the mission the chief danger to their plans, artfully enlisted the pagan party, of which Red Jacket was the leader, to oppose the missionaries, and thus effectually led to the final frustration of Red Jacket's policy; in and by the defeat of the missionary enterprise. But as this question is discussed in the sequel, I will not anticipate. Thus much it was necessary to premise, in order to explain the nature and ends of my interview with ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... Well—we know it's hard to win these prizes when we're poor, but is it so easy when we're rich? To live shut off on a little island, calling the rest common and unclean—is that being happy and free, is it having life abundantly? I look around, and don't find it so. And that's sad, isn't it?—double frustration, the poor disinherited by their poverty, the rich in their riches.... Don't you think we shall find a common meeting-place some day, where these two will cancel out?... when reality will touch hands with ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... together before I read it; it seemed so improbable that my brother would feel himself able to help me towards the accomplishment of the desire of my soul, and I feared to find in that letter the frustration of my life's endeavour. When, after some days of vacillation between hope and doubt, I could bear the situation no longer, and opened the letter, I was not a little astonished that it began by addressing me at once in terms of the most moving sympathy. As I read on the contents agitated me deeply. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... foreseen that the entire country would be laid waste in any case as the war proceeded, nothing could have saved the mines. But the devastation of Boer homesteads was not to begin until a much later period, and to this fact the "Destroyers" no doubt owed the frustration ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... and their conflicts; in the desires and satisfactions of the simpler appetites for food and personal necessities; in the natural interplay of anticipation and fulfilment of desires and their occasional frustration; in the selection of companionship which works helpfully or otherwise—for the moment or more lastingly throughout the many vicissitudes of life. All through we find situations which create a more or less personal bias and chances for success or failure, ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... to his own surprise and satisfaction that he could devise a plan and put it through; that he could bring an iron hand to his dealings with men. And buoyed up by this fresh knowledge he was impatient at the frustration of any of his plans and hopes. Lois had shaken down the pillars of his life once; but she could not repeat that injury. He had built himself a new argosy and found a new companion for his voyaging. Nan should marry him; if she liked they would remove to Indianapolis ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... but these sounds; what had gone before; the strangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his return from the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he would have been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonable time; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal for any friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even his heart ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... and weeks into months without the slightest inkling of Miriam's whereabouts to set at rest the fear that my rash pursuit had caused her death, I myself grew utterly despondent. Like all who embark on daring ventures, I had not counted on continuous frustration. The idea that I might waste a lifetime in the wilderness without accomplishing anything had never entered my mind. Week after week, the scouts dispatched in every direction came back without one word of the fugitives, and I began ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... of her very vital rapture, she could still find time for remembrance of the little, crescent-shaped scar upon her temple, and for remembrance of Katherine Calmady, who had, unwittingly, fixed that blemish upon her and had also more than once frustrated her designs. This time frustration was not possible. She was about to revenge the infliction of that little scar! And, at the same time the intellectual part of her was agreeably intrigued, trying to disentangle the why and wherefore of Richard's late action ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... the slit cave Ross's fear was ready to be expressed in anger, the anger of frustration over his own helplessness. With no chance of trying to penetrate the castle, he could not learn whether or not Ashe had been taken prisoner. And until the workers left the beach he could not prowl there hunting the grimmer evidence his mind flinched ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... road along which he should travel, but had simultaneously revealed all its obstacles, insurmountable for him solitary and unequipped. In those days his mind was constantly fumbling at some insoluble problem with the sense of frustration that one has who gropes vainly in the dark, well knowing how a single unattainable match-flare would put what he is seeking into his hands. And no brighter prospect seemed to lie before ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... the chair, obviously looking for the cat. As Rick watched, Dismal gave up the search and walked from under the chair. Instantly he was batted on the nose from above by a paw that moved with supersonic speed. Rick laughed as Dismal gave a cry of pure frustration and headed for the kitchen at a trot. The cat had been playing, since the blow was struck with claws sheathed. If Shah had wanted to hurt the pup, raking claws ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... slowed in frustration, the other darted in, slashed once, twice, scoring on Joe's left arm, ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... especially the frustration of her intention, brought another mood to the surface of Sansome's intoxication. The polished society man with the habit of external unselfishness disappeared. Another Sansome, whom Nan did not recognize, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... telephone in its cradle and turned again to the Master Selector. Among the kaleidoscope of voices and figures not all were scenes of frustration and discontent. Yet enough of them were so that Mrs. Mimms was seriously disturbed. Then again, the apparatus had its indiscriminate faults: at one scene Mrs. Mimms blushed deeply and flicked the dial to another setting. Suddenly she was surprised to hear a familiar voice. The pilot monitor showed ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight

... nature, had to have an escape-valve, and he poured through it a fetid stream of meaningless obscenity—the waste of a priceless psychic material!" Thus, Brooks lumps 1601 with Mark Twain's "bawdry," and interprets it simply as another indication of frustration. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... fence rail, bustling along—why and whither? Who knows? And when you come to man, what a chaos of hungers and impulses keep thrusting him through his cycle of quaint tasks! And in every human heart you find some sorrow, some frustration, some lurking pang. I often think of Lafcadio Hearn's story of his Japanese cook. Hearn was talking of the Japanese habit of not showing their emotions on their faces. His cook was a smiling, healthy, agreeable-looking young fellow whose face was always cheerful. Then one day, by ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... too deep for any utterance but that of tears. If I know anything of village people I know this, that they shape their lives according to Nature, and are outraged to the root of their being by the frustration of Nature's laws and the stultification of man's function in the scheme of things. What the function of man is, what the power, what the dignity have been ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett

... they ought to consider every one, whether willing or unwilling, as bound by the Covenant. Were the matter of the Covenant against the law of God, it would not be obligatory on any one; and rulers would punish the frustration of it only at their peril. Were the matter of it right, the people would all be under obligation to adhere to it, both in consequence of the Divine law enjoining it, and also of their voluntary engagement as a people to perform it. The individual who would fail in attaining ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... emotional shallowness and sexual frivolity. The prevention of choice is only one of the obstacles to love, but it is one of the most formidable, because it has acted at all times and among races of all degrees of barbarism or civilization up to modern Europe of two or three centuries ago. And to the frustration and free choice was added another obstacle—the separation of the sexes. Some Indians and even Australians tried to keep the sexes apart, though usually without much success. In their cause no harm was done to the cause of love, because these races are constitutionally incapable ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... advanced, driving them before them with resolute impetuosity, and pushing forward so far as to take in reverse with their concentrated fire the great barrier and its defenders. The clansmen, recognising the frustration of their devices, deserted the position in its rear, and rushed tumultuously away to crags and sungahs where knife and jezail might still be plied. The centre column then advanced unmolested to the deserted barricade, through which ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... the universe," therefore, and all other living souls are compelled, in so far as they give themselves up to the creative energy, to direct their will towards the eternalization of this idea. But is there not an inevitable frustration and negation of this ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... congregation, who wept and shouted with him. Tired and discontented housewives found their vague sorrows and vaguer longings were only the result of their "unregenerate" state; the lazy country youths felt that the frustration of their small ambitions lay in their not being "convicted of sin." The mourners' bench was crowded with wildly emulating sinners. Dr. Blair turned away with mingled feelings of amusement and contempt. At the door Jim Slocum tapped him on the shoulder: "Fetches ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... there was bitterness in his heart and frustration, and a rebellious, smouldering anger. The old man would never know how close he ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara

... there, because it WORKS to do so, everything we know conspiring with the belief, and nothing interfering, so we assume that thing to be a clock. We USE it as a clock, regulating the length of our lecture by it. The verification of the assumption here means its leading to no frustration or contradiction. VerifiABILITY of wheels and weights and pendulum is as good as verification. For one truth-process completed there are a million in our lives that function in this state of nascency. They turn us TOWARDS direct verification; lead us into the SURROUNDINGS of the objects ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... watching Tom's left as though it was a snake and trying unsuccessfully to get through his guard. But the sharp lefts kept snapping his head back and his face began to redden, not only from the sting of the blows but with the mounting fury of his frustration. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... system to the deaf and dumb, as soon almost as she learnt to speak she learnt to read what people were saying by watching their lips. Devoting her whole life to the improvement of a very singular natural aptitude, and employing it in the discovery and frustration of crime, she has become, as we find in this book, a constant source of wonder and delight, and a ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... wasn't fear. It might not have been any emotion we have, but an emotion that we'd expect a creature made of energy to have. An emotion of frustration! It had me cornered. I escaped. The energy sphere met resistance. When energy meets ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham

... America; and that he should accept an invitation from his uncle, to accompany him through Spain to Lisbon. The reader has had cause to believe that Mr. C. himself had relinquished this wild plan, but it was by implication, rather than by direct avowal. Perhaps, in the frustration of so many of his present designs, a latent thought might linger in his mind, that America, after all, was to be the fostering asylum, where, alone, unmingled felicity was to be found. The belief is hardly admissible, and yet the admission, extravagant as it is, derives some ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... then sketched compactly but vividly the critical situation of 1780, and tells at length the story of Arnold's treason, its frustration by the capture of Andre and his pathetic fate. This "one romance of the Revolution" is a thrilling tale, and all adornment is given to it. The account of the struggle to save Andre's life gives the interest ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... glad you brought Sophy home in such good time. For I'm in a state of perfect frustration this afternoon. Here's a bride gown and bonnet to make, and a sound of ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... a permanent military general staff. The duties of this organization would be to keep a hawklike eye on the misdemeanors, actual or threatened, of any state or group of states, and to be empowered with authority to call into instant action a great international military force for the frustration or suppression of such aggression. The French have frankly in mind the possibility that an unrepentant and unregenerate Germany is the most likely menace not only to the security of France, but to the peace of the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... Ally,—As often as we look upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally your Majesty with our Commonwealth. How much, and with what zeal, that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... of comprehension is accompanied by an instantaneous act of acceptance. He is like a man who contemplates a perfect work of art; but the work of creation has been his, and has consisted in the gradual adjustment of his vision until he could see the frustration of human destinies and the arbitrary infliction of pain as processes no less inevitable, natural, and beautiful than the flowering of a plant. Not that Tchehov is a greater artist than any of his great predecessors; he is merely more wholly an artist, which is ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... hoarse-voiced realities to the intangible sadness of unrelated dreams! The effect was one of rather haunting melancholy; and it was characteristic of the lad that he did not resent it, though rejoicing in the reputation at school of being high-spirited enough, impatient of restraint or of any frustration of purpose. His mother had always been sacred. She remained so, even though her sympathies had become imperfect, and she moved in regions which his sane young imagination failed to penetrate. One thing was perfectly ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... confidence in a single detail or fact in your existence which lies beyond my sight. Far from me so curious an insolence; but I do ask you this: Reflecting on your past life as a whole, have not your chief sorrows had a common idiosyncrasy? Have they not been strangely directed towards the frustration of some one single object—cherished by your earliest hopes, and, as if in defiance of fate, resolutely ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... grew up, and as he grew the cherry-tree grew likewise, but in the strangest fashion; for though it flourished past all expectation, it never put forth either leaf or blossom. This bitterly vexed Old Gerard, who had hoped in time for fruit, and the frustration of his hopes became to him a cause of grievance against the boy. A further grudge was that by no manner of means could he succeed in lighting any wick or candle in the silver lantern, of which ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... slower, more laborious, more painful than in fact it has been. No doubt there have been a few splendid spurts, which we may, if we please, trace to the genial goading of the Invisible King. But all the great movements have dribbled away into frustration and impotence. There was, for example, the glorious intellectual efflorescence of Greece. There, you may say, the Invisible King was almost visibly at work. But, after all, what a flash-in-the-pan it was! Hellas was a little island of light surrounded by ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... included only a very small number of men, and it has never been quite certain whether it was not originally put in motion by the machination of some of the paid spies and informers whom it was believed, at that time, to be the duty of the Ministry to keep in its service for the detection and the frustration of revolutionary conspiracy. It was the common practice of spies and informers, in those days, to go {16} about secretly in quarters where revolutionary conspiracy was believed to be in existence, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of what was afoot, and his hopes had run high once more, only to suffer cruel frustration when he learnt that Ferdinand had sailed, himself, for Naples. In his despair the duke roused himself to a last effort to ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini



Words linked to "Frustration" :   foiling, disappointment, interference, hinderance, hindrance, annoyance, thwarting, vexation, letdown, frustrate



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