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Desperate   /dˈɛsprɪt/  /dˈɛspərɪt/   Listen
Desperate

noun
1.
A person who is frightened and in need of help.



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"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books



... results had been even greater than he had dared to hope. When Saturday came, it seemed to him that the crisis in his work had been reached. The Holy Spirit and the Satan of rum seemed to rouse up to a desperate conflict. The more interest in the meetings, the more ferocity and vileness outside. The saloon men no longer concealed their feelings. Open threats of violence were made. Once during the week Gray and his little company of helpers were assailed with missiles ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... dreaded to enfeeble the little frame already almost destitute of life. But he no longer remained undecided, and straightway dispatched Rosalie for a dozen leeches. And he did not attempt to conceal from the mother that this was a desperate remedy which might save or kill her child. When the leeches were brought in, her heart failed ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... knowledge, its great achievements, and its wisdom, and by stupidly or dishonestly magnifying its vices, its misery, its ignorance, its great slothfulness, and its folly; it is apt to be the way of the woeful, the unprosperous, the desperate—especially the way of such as find escape from the bore of routine life in the excitements of unrest, turbulence, and change; the past, they say, was all wrong, for it produced the present and the present is thoroughly bad—let us destroy it, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... for a couple of minutes, securing a bottle of Bass and then boarding the guard's van when the train was moving off. On one of these successful forays I saw J—— send three respectable people sprawling on their backs as he violently collided with them in his desperate efforts to overtake the receding train. The victims slowly got up and some nasty remarks about J—— were wafted to us over the veldt. We had a couple of cooks. One of them was an American who had served in the Cuban war, ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... not play with mine anger, do not Wretch, I come to know that desperate Fool that drew thee From thy fair life; be wise, and lay ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... of the inhabitants of Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kirjathjearim, under the Israelites, is quoted in triumph by the advocates of slavery; and truly they are right welcome to all the crumbs that can be gleaned from it. Milton's devils made desperate snatches at fruit that turned to ashes on their lips. The spirit of slavery raves under tormenting gnawings, and casts about in blind phrenzy for something to ease, or even to mock them. But for this, it would never have ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the gauntlet thrown down by Wade. It was not unexpected, and acceptance seemed a relief. Folsom's eyeballs became living fire with the desperate gleam of the reckless chances of life. Cutthroat he might have been, but he was brave, and he proved ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... revolution, is for the time simply impossible. So long as many old leaves linger on the November trees, you know that there has been little frost and no wind; just so while the House of Lords retains much power, you may know that there is no desperate discontent in the country, no wild agency likely to ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... apartment as I went to mine. Wrapped in his blanket, and stretched at full length on the ground, Jim lay there, fast asleep. I passed on, thinking of the wisdom of placing a tired negro on guard over an acute and desperate Yankee. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... soon interrupted by the arrival of her belongings, in charge of her mother's maid, and the immediate necessity of dressing more carefully than had been possible when she had been so rudely roused by the Baroness. She was surprised to find herself so little tired by the desperate adventure, and without even a cold as the result of the never-to-be-forgotten chill she had ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... it, for real life may come on you in a dozen ways when you once leave the safety of the schoolroom, but you will probably get several years of tolerable quiet, and, if I were you, I would not spend my first year in a desperate effort to fill up all the gaps in my education, and to go on with school-work in the school spirit. I should take my first year of freedom as the arbour on the Hill Difficulty, where Christian rested; the lord ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... ceiling. "They have taken fright for some reason. They may have an inkling of the awful truth. She is nineteen. Next year she will be twenty—the year after that twenty-one. Then it would be too late. A desperate experiment is better than inaction. I have much to gain and nothing to lose. I must exhibit Kalora. I shall bring the young men to her. Some of them may take a fancy to her. I have seen people eat sugar on tomatoes and pepper on ice-cream. There may be in Morovenia one—one would ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... civilian dress before the Greek onrush, gave terrible accounts of the mass of struggling refugees in their flight across the mountains; the dead and dying children en route; the aged falling by the wayside; the jam of desperate creatures in a pass; the hideous cruelties of the advancing Greeks. It had been impossible, said the Dutch officers, to hold Koritza with irregular troops against an army with artillery. The Greeks burned as they advanced, and burnt Tepelcni and all the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... this, at the sack of Troy, he had shown a want of self-control, and yielded to a mad passion of desperate fighting that is not to be found in the Aeneas of the last ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... next instant, they saw Russell's head emerge, and then another wave foaming madly by, made them run backwards for their lives, and hid him from their view. When it had passed, they saw him clinging with both hands, in the desperate instinct of self-preservation, to a projecting bit of rock, by the aid of which he gradually dragged himself out of the water, and grasping at crevices or bits of seaweed, slowly and painfully reached the ledge on which they had stood before they took ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... Barney. "We're a pretty hard combination to beat, aren't we, Margaret? There will be a man to take the service at Bull Crossing if I have to take it myself—a desperate resort, indeed." ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... less happily, though I noticed that whenever a camel changed its walk for a trot, each one of the ladies reached back a desperate hand to clutch the saddle and save her spine from the bruising bump! bump! which smote the bone with every step. As for me, that feeling of middle age began to creep on while my coast-guard camel and I were getting acquainted. I tried to distract my thoughts from the end of my spine, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... you think. You may be at rest, my dear madam. I will never approach you again; one has no desire to hear such words a second time. You stand so proud and firm upon your watch tower of virtue and judge so severely. You have no conception what a wild, desperate life can make of a man who goes through the world without home or family. You are right. I believed in nothing in the heavens above or on the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, emperor of Allemaine, Despoiled of his magnificent attire, Bare-headed, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate: Bushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... certainly picked up that ring in that passage, close by this man who was lying there. But I didn't know he was dead; I didn't know he'd been murdered. All I know is that I was absolutely famishing, desperate, in no condition to think clearly about anything. I guess I should do the same thing again, under the circumstances. ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... anything like the same bewildering extent as it had in September, and that the intervening course of events—however disappointing in itself—certainly helped to make his plan suit the occasion far better late than soon. Moreover, in a note to Saunders in August, he had spoken about a 'desperate' plan which he could not trust his brigadiers to carry out, and which he was then too sick to ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood

... ghost entered his mind, he was far too sensible for that, and had no fear of spirits. If they were good spirits, he argued, of course they would not hurt, if they were bad, he might hurt them. He was for advancing at once to investigate, but his little charge clung to him in desperate terror. ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox

... fragrance of the hay aggravated the evil effects of the rolling, and three days passed like an interminable nightmare. Sometimes the bales and bags slid about the place with the rolling of the ship, occasionally he made weak though desperate attempts to help Joe and Jock who struggled on nobly; but eventually Mac managed to drag himself and two blankets to the top of the horse-boxes high on the boat-deck. There lay rows of men like corpses in their blankets, with pinched ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... by this time at Versailles in what a desperate condition was the Commune, by the information of persons devoted to order, but who remained amongst the insurgents to keep watch over and restrain them as ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... long word," admitted Nan. "I didn't quite mean that; but the weather's been so mild up to now that I was getting desperate." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... and had not been with Sir Julian for a whole day, fearing he would find out by looking at her. Nay, he knew nothing,—beside, if he did, he would shield her from Cedric's anger by keeping so great a secret. And yet it almost seemed as if the young lord knew of her desperate act; 'twas written on his face, she saw the pain upon it; and yet, how could it be? These thoughts flashed through Katherine's brain, and she tried to move from him, but an inscrutable presence held ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... a dreadful state of affairs for a small girl at the beginning of her first visit? Katie shut her mouth tight, and clenched her small, hot hands, in a desperate effort to look just ordinary. It was very hard to be brave. She would have liked to run away, but she knew that would be cowardly. Her cheeks kept growing hotter and hotter. It was mean, she had always heard, to listen to things that were ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... with feeling he told of the fight for the bridge; how Dick, and Mathews, who had saved him, reached the Americans; of the desperate hand-to-hand fighting; how the groom had guarded his young master; the impending disaster; ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... day, the genial major sat in his cool veranda, and thought of Jack Walthall and the boys in Virginia. Sometimes between dozes he would make his way to Perdue's Corner, and discuss the various campaigns. How many desperate campaigns were fought on that Corner! All the older citizens, who found it convenient or necessary to stay at home, had in them the instinct and emotions of great commanders. They knew how victory could be ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... General Gibbon opened fire with his heavy artillery, which was responded to, but without much effect, owing to the fog, which, however, disappeared about eleven o'clock. The engagement now became general, and the fighting was of a character more desperate and determined than ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... subdued a great part of the world, they came vnto the sayd olde man, and tooke from him the custody of his paradise: who being incensed thereat, sent abroad diuers desperate and resolute persons out of his forenamed paradise, and caused many of the Tartarian nobles to be slaine. The Tartars seeing this, went and besieged the city wherein the said olde man was, tooke ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... guests were there. She never went out alone, and in every place where I was likely to meet her I was sure to find a triple rampart of women erected between us, through which it was impossible to address one word to her. In short, I was encountering a desperate resistance; and, yet, she loved me! I could see her cheeks gradually grow pale; her brilliant eyes often had dark rings beneath them, as if sleep had deserted her. Sometimes, when she thought she was not observed, I surprised ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... fortunes. That they have been led to believe by their agents and partisans among us that we are a divided people, that the latter are opposed to their own government, and that the show of a small force would occasion a revolt, I have no doubt; and how far these men (grown desperate) will further attempt to deceive, and may succeed in keeping up the deception, is problematical. Without that, the folly of the Directory in such an attempt would, I conceive, be more conspicuous, if possible, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... visiting the neighbouring stations in succession, and pillaging each; intending eventually, to make their way across Bass's Straits to Victoria. Dalton was a very formidable fellow; strong, active, and resolute, reckless of human life, and now rendered desperate by despair. He was, too, a first-rate marksman, and could "stick ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... departed. He was gay, desperate, and free of all hampering doubts. In such a mood Nella-Rose lost all fear of him and walked by his side as complacently as if the one minister in her sordid little world had with all his strange authority said his ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... much of this," he began to say, but at the second word the bobsled struck a huge root, the riders were pitched forward, and for one desperate moment they clung to the scrubby undergrowth that bordered what they supposed was ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... the time Carl had to be on the road selling bonds, and we almost grieved our hearts out over that. In fact, we got desperate, and when Carl was offered an assistant cashiership in a bank in Ellensburg, Washington, we were just about to accept it, when the panic came, and it was all for retrenchment in banks. Then we planned farming, planned it with determination. It was too awful, those good-byes. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... sober more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. His aunt and cousin, to whom he turned an inquiring look, were so used to the staircase that they did not guess the cause of his amazement, and took the glance for an expression of friendliness, which they answered by a smile that made him desperate. ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... towns, cultivated their gardens and fields, and reared domestic animals. They lived in prosperity and peace, until 1696, when the Portuguese prepared an expedition against them. The Palmarisians defended themselves with desperate valor, but were overcome by superior numbers. Some rushed upon death, that they might not survive their liberty; others were sold and dispersed by the conquerors. Thus ended this interesting republic. Had it continued to the present time, it might have produced a very material ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... of the leopardess was the arena of what seemed a desperate although silent struggle. Two vastly differing forms, human and bestial, with entangled confusion of mingling bodies and limbs, writhed and wrestled in closest embrace. It had lasted but an instant when I saw the leopardess out of the cage, walking ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... wild reckless man, though his wife was a most estimable and virtuous lady, and that one day he went into a fit of insane jealousy, or pretended to do so, over the then Vavasour of Weston. Money lenders, too, were pressing him hard, and he had become desperate. Rushing madly into the house, he plunged a dagger into one and then into another of his children, and afterwards tried to take the life of their mother, a steel corset which she wore luckily saving her life. Leaving her for dead, he mounted his horse with the intention of killing the only other ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... petition was presented to Whitelocke from two mariners in hold for speaking desperate words,—that they would blow up the ship and all her company, and would cut the throat of the Protector, and of ten thousand of his party. One of them confessed, in his petition, that he was drunk when he ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... the effect of a man whose heart is in his business, and who intends to thrive. He that cares not whether his books are kept well or no, is in my opinion one that does not much care whether he thrives or no; or else, being in desperate circumstances, knows it, and that he cannot, or does not thrive, and so matters not ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... but if a person has any heart trouble I would not advise their use except under a physician's care. (Sometimes a patient with neuralgia gets desperate, and he will even resort to morphine). Antipyrine is one of the simplest coal tar remedies, and most persons can safely take it. Persons who are subject to neuralgia or headaches need to take good care of themselves. Get plenty of rest and sleep. Neuralgia at first can be cured, but ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... present recovery. Aguilar, the Spanish commander, was admitted to terms; Baltimore and Castlehaven were surrendered. Thus abortively collapsed the last effort of Philip III. The Irish rebellion was broken. Many of the chiefs after vain and desperate resistance escaped to Spain; others surrendered to the Queen's mercy. O'Donnell was of the former; he died soon after reaching Spain. But Tyrone the diplomatic succeeded in making terms. It seemed that once more the English ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... gaming-club,[64] of which Mr. Beauclerk had given me an account, where the members played to a desperate extent. JOHNSON. 'Depend upon it, Sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming? You will not find six instances in an age. There is a strange rout made about deep play: whereas you have many more people ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... meowing anxiously. There was no other bough near which they could gain by a leap. And as Pike, looking back and gasping with fright, crawled straight on toward them, the cat that was farthest out on the end of the limb launched itself through the air in a desperate leap for the ground. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... bounding merrily away at full speed, to be restrained or urged on at the will of their driver, but this is a pure fallacy, for a sled-dog's gallop is like a donkey's, short and sweet. The average gait is a shuffling trot, covering from five to seven miles an hour over easy ground; and even then desperate fights frequently necessitate a stoppage and readjustment of the traces. There are no reins, the dogs being fastened two abreast on either side of a long rope. To start off you seize the sled with both hands, give it a violent wrench to one side, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... broader than the fact of the wish of some stood the need of all! Populous cities without one witness to the grace of God! Wide regions untraversed by the feet of His messengers! Hubert had thought New Laodicea a place of desperate need; and so it was in the matter of vital, fruit-bearing piety. But as he thought of the inky darkness in which China's millions dwelt this seemed ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... thinke) could be betwixt two ships, of which we were full spectators Dureing the whole engagement: and in my Judgment Capt. Passenger behaved himself with much Courage and good Conduct, haveing to Deal with an Enemy under a Desperate choice of killing or hanging, and I believe few men in their circumstances but would elect the first. the Conflict briskly maintained from soon after sunrise untill about 4 afternoon. on thursday May the second Fletcher gott in here and gave the inclosed accot.,[5] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... phenomenon which they could not understand. Her advice seemed to set aside all human prudence. Nothing seemed more rash or unreasonable than to undertake the conquest of so many fortified cities with such feeble means. It was one thing to animate starving troops to a desperate effort for their deliverance; it was another to assault fortified cities held by the powerful forces which had nearly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... the assurance he sought, her desperate, passionate voice grown gentle and quiet again. But she was too tired and spent to be comforted. For a long time she lay so still that he became alarmed, thinking she must have fainted again, and ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... the seventh century, ceased entirely in the ninth or tenth. Not many books were written during this period, but there was then, and for at least three centuries afterwards, an unsatisfied demand for something to write upon. Parchment was so scarce that reckless copyists frequently resorted to the desperate expedient of effacing the writing on old and lightly esteemed manuscripts. It was not a difficult task. The writing ink then used was usually made of lamp-black, gum and vinegar; it it had but a feeble encaustic property, and it did not bite in ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... main the numerous forts and garrison of Valdivia, a fortress previously deemed impregnable, and thus to counteract the disappointment which would ensue in Chili from our want of success before Callao. The enterprise was a desperate one; nevertheless, I was not about to do anything desperate, having resolved that, unless fully satisfied as to its practicability, I would not attempt it. Rashness, though often imputed to me, forms no part of my composition. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... interesting articles in 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' October 1852, and November 1855.) The males are said to be polygamists (4. Noel Humphreys, 'River Gardens,' 1857.); they are extraordinarily bold and pugnacious, whilst "the females are quite pacific." Their battles are at times desperate; "for these puny combatants fasten tight on each other for several seconds, tumbling over and over again until their strength appears completely exhausted." With the rough- tailed stickleback (G. trachurus) the males whilst fighting swim round and round each other, biting and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... what they did against me Buzzing close to their souls, stinging their hearts, And they like scampering beasts when clegs are fierce, Or flinging themselves low as the ground to writhe, Their arms hugging their desperate heads. And then You'll see what 'tis to be an upright man, Who keeps a patient anger for his wrongs Thinking of judgment coming—you will see that When you mark how my looks hunt these wretches, And smile upon their groans and posturing anguish. O watch how calm I'll be, when the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... insane. His principles conquer his desire for children, and his decision is communicated to the fiery Elizma, who, fierce maternalist that she is and coming of a wild stock that never stuck at anything, undertakes a desperate flirtation by way of solving the difficulty in her own heroic way—at least you will certainly make this kind of a guess, but on investigation you may find that you've been wrong! Happily in the end a deathbed confession proves the second ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various

... unwilling to take a young fellow of whom he knew so little under his roof; but this was his nephew, and anything that seemed like to amuse or please Elsie was agreeable to him. He had grown almost desperate, and felt as if any change in the current of her life and feelings might save her from some strange paroxysm of dangerous mental exaltation or sullen perversion of disposition, from which some fearful calamity might come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... that floated over the level sea, and excited the sympathy of the men who were compelled to inflict the suffering in order to preserve their own safety. They felt an instinctive desire to launch a boat and go to the succour of their victims. Curly, who knew the desperate character of these fearful men, advised his shipmates to have neither remorse nor pity. He assured them that the lesson given to the miscreants would not prevent those who might recover or those who had received no injury from taking to their trade with the same thievish and murderous zeal ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... Barbarossa's power, when Charles V., hoisting the crucifix at his masthead, led his crusading Spaniards against Goletta, and it fell, after a month's desperate siege, without pause or rest the troops, half dead with heat and thirst, pressed on to Tunis to liberate twenty thousand Christian captives. It was a splendid achievement, for the campaign was fought in the fierce heat of an African summer. Every barrel of biscuit, every butt of water, had ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... premeditated lie before. Now matters were so difficult, and there seemed such a certainty of there being no other way out, that she resolved to brave the consequences and add to her former sin by a desperate, downright black lie. Accordingly, just before dinner she ran into ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... here, a light, airy dinner, that is seasoned and made interesting by the unanimous worrying of the entire population. Once I make a desperate effort to silence their clamorous importunities, and obtain a little quiet, by attempting to ride over impossible ground, and reap the well-merited reward of permitting my equanimity to be thus disturbed in the shape of a header and a slightly-bent handle-bar. While I am eating, the gazing-stock ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... John Morley's wife. This morning he has risen and gone out in a desperate mood. "No use to try," he says. "Didn't I go a whole year and never touch a drop? And now just because I fell once I'm kicked out! No use to try. When a fellow once trips, everybody gives him a kick. Talk about ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... however, brings loss to the owners of the herds. Despite the stringent law, there is always a certain number of desperate men who take perilous chances in stealing cattle and running them off beyond recovery by their owners. This practice is not so prevalent as formerly, for since the brands are registered, and the agents well known at Cheyenne, Helena, and other shipping-points, ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... Barchester, Mr Snapper protested that Mr Thumble would have to answer for it in this world and in the next if there were no services at Hogglestock on that Sunday. On the Saturday evening Mr Thumble made a desperate attempt to see the bishop, but was told by Mrs Draper that the bishop had positively declined to see him. The bishop himself probably felt unwilling to interfere with his wife's doings so soon after her death! So Mr Thumble, with a heavy heart, went across to the "Dragon of Wantly", ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... laughing, in order that he might seem to comprehend the quotation, "your majesty may be perfectly right in relying on the good feeling of France, but I fear I am not altogether wrong in dreading some desperate attempt." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... spoken after the coming of Frank Jones, but something has to be said of the manner of his coming, and of the reasons which brought him, and something also which occurred before he came. It could not be that Mr. Moss should be wounded after so desperate a fashion and that not a word should ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... he cried between his sobs, "it's not true! I did all I could to stop them—I did not know that they would do things—not really—until now, this morning, when it was too late. It is the others, Sergius, Paslov, Odinsky—zey were always wild, desperate. But we, the rest of us, with us ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... up immediately in front of Cardillac's door. There De Scuderi observed Desgrais, and at his feet a young girl, as beautiful as the day, with dishevelled hair, only half dressed, and her countenance stamped with desperate anxiety and wild with despair. She was clasping his knees and crying in a tone of the most terrible, the most heart-rending anguish, "Oh! he is innocent! he is innocent." In vain were Desgrais' efforts, as well as those ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... or strychnin and the application of mustard or hot cloths over the chest. The head at the same time should be lowered to prevent syncope. Attempts to withdraw the air by suction, and the employment of artificial respiration, have proved futile, and are, by some, considered dangerous. In a desperate case massage of the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... through the small town, although the latter had no amenities to boast of, and the fact of a battle having been fought there between the Russians and Prussians in 1759 would hardly fire their enthusiasm. Matters, however, became desperate when on their return there was still neither sign nor sound of horses. Dr. Jarocki comforted himself with meat and drink, but Chopin began to look uneasily about him for something to while away the weariness of waiting. His search was not in vain, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... by—Perkins dead; Margaret still unconscious; Dorothy lying in her seat, her thoughts a formless prayer, buoyed up only by her faith in God and in her lover; DuQuesne self-possessed, smoking innumerable cigarettes, his keen mind grappling with its most desperate problem, grimly fighting until the very last instant of life—while the powerless space-car fell with an appalling velocity, faster and faster; falling toward that cold and desolate monster ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... of pay and honour did not much allure us; but the vision of that silent night ride, that perilous entrance into the enemy's camp, that swift dash for the person of our greatest foe, that gallop homeward with a roused rebel cavalry, desperate with consternation, at our heels, quite supplanted all feelings of slight in not having been invited earlier. Such an enterprise, for young fellows like us, there ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of his supposed wealth, sat amongst peers and was idolised. Then was the harvest-time of scheming lawyers, parliamentary agents, engineers, surveyors, and traffic-takers, who were ready to take up any railway scheme however desperate, and to prove any amount of traffic even where none existed. The traffic in the credulity of their dupes was, however, the great fact that mainly concerned them, and of the profitable character of which there ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... advanced. Despite his muscles, because of his forty pounds' handicap, he could not cling as did Carson. A third of the way up, where the pitch was steeper and the ice less eroded, he felt the strain on the rope decreasing. He moved slower and slower. Here was no place to stop and remain. His most desperate effort could not prevent the stop, and he ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... was desperate. The hole was still as dry as punk, and boarding the Reeds was nothing less than ruinous; besides, he was nauseated with cooking for three persons whom he detested. They could not be insulted, he discovered, and were determined to make him ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... useless. The boat refused to rise. The oxygen became rapidly exhausted and the lights grew dim. Even the valve supplying fresh air for the nostrils of the occupants of the boat would not work and the situation grew more desperate with the flight of every second. As the atmosphere became oppressively heavy, Boyton wanted to knock the valve off with a hammer; but the engineer showed him if that were ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... commit suicide, as a passionate man will stab another.' He added, 'I have often thought, that after a man has taken the resolution to kill himself, it is not courage in him to do any thing, however desperate, because he has nothing to fear.' GOLDSMITH. 'I don't see that.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, but my dear Sir, why should not you see what every one else sees?' GOLDSMITH. 'It is for fear of something that he has resolved to kill ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... through all the vast region of South Africa; a similar shift in much-troubled Ireland; Socialism reaching out toward power through all central Europe; Woman Suffrage taking possession of northern Europe and western America and striding on from country to country, from state to state; a bloody and desperate people's revolution in Mexico; and a similar one of the Balkan peoples against Turkey! Individuals may possibly feel that some one or other of these steps was reckless, even perhaps that some may ultimately have to be retraced in the world's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... To exalt again the sun's child and the sea's; For as wild mares in Thessaly grow great With child of ravishing winds, that violate Their leaping length of limb with manes like fire And eyes outburning heaven's With fires more violent than the lightning levin's And breath drained out and desperate of desire, Even so the spirit in him, when winds grew strong, Grew great with child of song. Nor less than when his veins first leapt for joy To draw delight in such as burns a boy, Now too the soul of all his senses felt The passionate pride of deep sea-pulses dealt Through nerve and jubilant vein ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... indeed a very strictly dramatic array of the forces of wrong—weakness, blind passion, and pitiless egoism; but there is already a full suggestion of the overwhelming energy of the element of evil; and in LEAR the conception is worked out with a desperate insistence which carries us far indeed from the sunny cynicism and prudent scepticism of Montaigne. Nowhere in the essays do we find such a note of gloom as is struck ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... his dupe. He had formerly been a crafty shoemaker; was known to the police as a notorious character, who, instead of having been engaged in the political struggles of his countrymen, had fled the country to escape the penalty of being the confederate of a desperate gang of coiners and counterfeiters. We had only been two days in Vienna when I found he had disappeared, and left me destitute of money or friends. My connection with him only rendered my condition more deplorable, for the police would not credit my story; and while he eluded ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... grenade into the muzzle of one of the guns, but was blown to bits in the try. Still, over and over it they swarmed, like bees searching for a nook in a flower, the difference being that instead of getting honey they got hell. Then the poor desperate devils, in the frenzy of despair, flung themselves from the top and sides of the titan down into the crater and tried to scamper up the sides to the top, only to be met with a hail of bullets when ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... triple administrative charges, triple pumping and storage costs, and a triple army of turncocks—the whole affording a less effective supply than would have resulted from a single well-ordered service. In this desperate struggle vast sums of money were sunk. The recently-established companies worked at a ruinous loss; and such as kept up a show of prosperity were, in fact, like the East London Company, paying dividends out of capital. The New ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... as himself to make the best time possible. His own impatience increased as the morning lengthened. Jean's assurance that the mysterious enemies who had twice attempted his life were only a short distance behind them, or a short distance ahead, set a new and desperate idea at work in his brain. He was confident that these men from the Wekusko were his chief menace, and that with them once out of the way, and with the Frenchman in his power, the fight which he was carrying into the enemy's country would be half won. There would then be no one ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood

... upon himself as doomed. "How would you like to go out?" Ichi had queried; and his manner had made the question a promise. Well, he would try not to go out alone. His work was cut out for him, and it was desperate work. There was slim chance, he knew, of surviving the execution of his plan, but he contemplated his probable death with the high ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... nephew, that these four villains spoke in Warr's hearing of the master who was behind them, and who was paying them for their infamy? Did you not understand that they were hired to cripple my man? Who, then, could have hired them? Who had an interest unless it was—I know Sir Lothian Hume to be a desperate man. I know that he has had heavy card losses at Watier's and White's. I know also that he has much at stake upon this event, and that he has plunged upon it with a rashness which made his friends think that he had some private reason for being ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... away by my talent, and if I must say so, most captivated by my beauty, was the Duke of Palma, minister of police. I received the minister kindly, and without yielding to his persuasions, conferred trifling favors on him. His confidence in me was immense. When I was stern to him he became desperate, but he professed there was such a charm in my company that he sought constantly to see me. Minister as he was, he became not my sicisbeo, for that I would consent to at no price, but my cavaliero sirviente, thus occupying the second grand hierarchy of love. I learned from the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... And so if you had it you needed not many signs to know it by, at least you would not doubt of it, more than he that sees the light can question it. But, I say, to believe in Christ is simply this: I,—whatsoever I be,—ungodly, wretched, polluted, desperate, am willing to have Jesus Christ for my Saviour, I have no other help, or hope, if it be not in him. It is, I say, to lean the weight of thy soul on this foundation stone laid in Zion, to embrace the promises of the gospel, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... peace until you have given us some kind of a hold on you. You know too much, you see, and as long as you have a clean sheet you are a standing menace to us. That is the position. You know it, and Jezzard knows it, and he is a desperate man, and as ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... severely wounded, and was carried off the deck. At three quarters past nine, the arm-chest, filled with musket-cartridges, blew up, and set fire to several places in the poop and quarter-deck, but was fortunately extinguished. Her situation, however, was still very desperate; surrounded by enemies, and only eighty fathoms to windward of L'Orient entirely on fire, there could not be any other expectation, than falling a prey either to the enemy or the flames. At ten o'clock, the main and mizen ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... and to Lieutenant Langford, the officers and crew of the same ship, who nobly seconded us in the barge until all her crew were killed or wounded: and to the Honourable William Cathcart, who commanded the Medusa's cutter, and sustained the attack with the greatest intrepidity, until the desperate situation I was left in obliged me to call him to the assistance of the sufferers in my boat. The boats were no sooner alongside, than we attempted to board: but a very strong netting, traced up to her lower yards, baffled all our endeavours; and an instantaneous discharge of her guns, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... putting something into my head which I never thought of before. You are tempting me with a new prospect, when all my other prospects are closed before me. I tell you again, I am miserable enough and desperate enough, if you say another word, to marry you on your own terms. Take the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... something about the fellow's actions that told Ted he was desperate, yet at the same time afraid of the act ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... their enemy. The fortress poured out regiment after regiment. Chafing so long upon the defense Southern youth was now at its best. Attacking, not attacked, the farmer lads felt the spirit of battle blaze high in their breasts. The long, terrible rebel yell, destined to be heard upon so many a desperate field, fierce upon its lower note, fierce upon its higher note, as fierce as ever upon its dying note, and coming back in echoes still as fierce, swelled over forest and fort, marsh ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the first, when, I had time to at all think of it," Damaris answered with rather desperate bravery, "I couldn't see there was anything for me to forgive. It was the other way about. For haven't I so much which he might very well feel belonged, or should have ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... time our opponents were within an ace of the match. Miss Wilson served to me in the left court—a good service out on the side line. I played a straight back-hand shot down the line, passing Mr. Gore's forehand—rather a desperate stroke, as if it failed to pass him it meant certain death from one of his straight-arm volleys. Perhaps he was not guarding his line so well as usual, under the impression that I would not have the courage to try to pass him at such a critical moment—anyway, ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... by no means belonged to him. He waited upon Miss Kennedy for the rest of that evening with a devotion which everybody saw except herself. No such trifles as a man's devotion got even a passing notice from her. For the girl was feeling desperate. How many times that night had she been betrayed into what she disliked and despised and had said she never would do? If Rollo had not been there, perhaps she would have felt only shame,—as it was, for the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... but Herbert's superior strength compelled him to yield the flag after a desperate struggle to retain his ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley

... not recognize for rubbish what is really rubbish; and under this head might be reckoned very many things one sees in the British Museum; and, as each generation leaves its fragments and potsherds behind it, such will finally be the desperate ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this reason that we conceive it to be our duty to make one strong effort to bring back the great apostle of the heresy to the wholesome creed of his instructors, and to stop the insurrection before it becomes desperate and senseless, by persuading the leader to return to his duty and allegiance. We admire Mr Scott's genius as much as any of those who may be misled by its perversion; and, like the curate and the barber in Don Quixote, lament the day when a gentleman of such endowments was corrupted by the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... brutal dominance which vibrated in his voice. Here was a desperate character, thought Burke, who was accustomed to command others; he was not the flabby weakling type, like Baxter ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... she stripped the cover off the first of the books the half-back had picked out for her, and really went to work. She bit down, angrily, the yawns that blinded her eyes with tears; she made desperate efforts to flog her mind into grappling with the endless succession of meaningless pages spread out before her, to find a germ of meaning somewhere in it that would bring the dead verbiage to life. She tried to recall the thrill in Rodney's voice ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... many boys are fortunate in their "aunts" and "uncles." Such a one was Martin with his "Uncle Abner." The experiences they had together down in the mountains of Virginia were very remarkable, and often most desperate, as in the case of the following story, but one of the many set down by Martin, grown to be a man, in the book from which this was taken. But, it's enough to make you boys wish you, too, lived with an "Uncle Abner" in a similar early ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... the beginning of April, which for sportsmen in England is of all seasons the most desperate. Hunting is over. There is literally nothing to shoot. And fishing,—even if there were fishing in England worth a man's time,—has not begun. A gentleman of enterprise driven very hard in this respect used to declare that there was no remedy ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... God," replied Montcalm; "but though all hope is not yet gone, our chance is but slender. We have kept the enemy at bay for nearly two months and a half, and on the last day of July we foiled a desperate attack which Wolfe made on the Montmorency redoubts yonder. If we could hold out till winter comes to our aid all would be well, but I have ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... was really frighten'd..." And that may very well be the end: solvuntur tabulae risu. Lord Granville Gower married in 1809, and the confidential correspondence died the death; but Sheridan lingered until 1816, and actually carried on his desperate pursuit within three days of the end. She visited him, and described what took place to Lord Broughton. He assured her, she said, that he should visit her after his death. She asked, "Why, having persecuted her all her life, would he now carry it into death?' ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... The desperate Colonel who had snatched up his cap when he heard Walters coming, grinned painfully, pulling his straggly red and white beard nervously. The strain was beginning to tell on his iron nerves. He removed the cap, and with a few muttered ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... hour. We watched, holding our breaths. The mate paused in her search; we could hear the wash beating along her sides; reared her neck as high as she could reach, blind and lonely in all that loneliness of the sea, and sent one desperate bellow booming across the swells as an oyster-shell skips across a pond. Then she made off to the westward, the sun shining on the white head and the wake behind it, till nothing was left to see but a little pin point of silver on the horizon. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... a fine saddle horse purchased for my special use, besides a horse and buggy that I could drive—but I was not in a physical condition to enjoy myself quite as well as on the former occasion. For six months before graduation I had had a desperate cough ("Tyler's grip" it was called), and I was very much reduced, weighing but one hundred and seventeen pounds, just my weight at entrance, though I had grown six inches in stature in the mean time. There was consumption ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... wait until morning? Perhaps, in the cold gray dawn, he would see more clearly his way through this preposterous tangle. Anyhow, it would be dangerous to give into any woman's keeping just then a package so earnestly sought by desperate men. Yes, he would wait until morning. That was ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... Above the throbbing stillness of the desert night, that came to her murmurously, like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a shell, she could hear the regular beat of horse's hoofs following up the steep mountain grade. She scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a hunted thing, but when she attempted to vault to the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling of her limbs held her captive. With the loss of each moment the beat of the hoofs ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... and the second by striking against a rock." Here my master interposed, by asking me, "how I could persuade strangers, out of different countries, to venture with me, after the losses I had sustained, and the hazards I had run?" I said, "they were fellows of desperate fortunes, forced to fly from the places of their birth on account of their poverty or their crimes. Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... the Invalides, but the gospel which supported the paw that is now on a level with the other foot. The horses also are returned [A.D. 1815] to the ill-chosen spot whence they set out, and are, as before, half hidden under the porch window of St. Mark's Church. Their history, after a desperate struggle, has been satisfactorily explored. The decisions and doubts of Erizzo and Zanetti, and lastly, of the Count Leopold Cicognara, would have given them a Roman extraction, and a pedigree not more ancient than the reign of Nero. But M. de ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... tenacious threads of his web, but still more redoubtable to himself than to his enemies, soon caught in his own meshes,[4138] believing that France and the universe conspire against him, deducing with wonderful subtlety the proofs of this chimerical conspiracy, made desperate, at last, by his over-plausible romance, and strangling in the cunning toils which, by dint of his own logic and imagination, he has fashioned ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the single word "No" passed out. A faint, a quizzical smile flitted over her face; she shrugged her shoulders ever so gently. That gesture—he had seen it before! And in desperate desire to make her understand, he put his hand on her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... ears. I remain sitting on the wall-top, trying to look as if I did not mind, while grave misgivings possess my soul as to the extent of strong boot and ankle that my unusual situation leaves visible. Once the desperate idea of jumping presents itself to my mind, but the ground looks so distant, and the height so great, that my ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... yourself, for their sakes who deserve it not, it will, nevertheless, be made appear, ere long, I fear, to your ruin. Surely, if I had the happiness to wait on you, I could move you to compassionate both yourself and me, who, desperate as my case is, am desirous to die with the honour of being known to have declared the truth. You have no reason to contend to hide what is already revealed—inconsiderately to throw away yourself, for the interest of others, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... saddle, her head drooping on her breast. A young cowboy darted from the crowd, and grabbed her as she fell. He started to lift and carry her away, but, with a desperate effort, she recovered, and stood erect, trying to thrust him from her. He held her nevertheless, supporting her with an arm under ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... male has a rival after the nuptials have been celebrated and the work of housekeeping fairly begun. Every season a pair of phœbe-birds have built their nest on an elbow in the spouting beneath the eaves of my house. The past spring a belated male made desperate efforts to supplant the lawful mate and gain possession of the unfinished nest. There was a battle fought about the premises every hour in the day for at least a week. The antagonists would frequently grapple and fall to the ground, and keep their hold like two dogs. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... a desperate effort he threw her into the next room. She fell onto the table which was laid for dinner, breaking the glasses, and then, getting up, she put it between her master and herself, and while he was pursuing her, in order to take hold ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... transposition of two evidently misplaced words, and the correction of a letter or two palpably misprinted in one of them, is the whole gentle violence that has been used in a passage which has been, as we see, considered desperate. But, as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various

... ages safe?" (A shake of the head from Livingstone.) "I began to be very unhappy; I had no one to tease; my aunts are too good-natured, and mamma is used to it. At last I had the greatest mind to do something desperate—to write to you, for instance—merely to see the household's horror when your answer came. You would have answered, would you not? I should not have opened it, you know, but given it to mamma, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... to rack my brains for answers to your perpetual question, "Why won't you marry me?" It was a desperate risk taking you down to the forest, but you loved me so much that you never questioned the reasons I gave you for my secrecy. I can tell you now, Karl, that in the early days when I used to disappear from Bruges, it was to the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... had seemed to enjoy saying needlessly cruel things to me, perhaps I would have been utterly discouraged when she pricked the bubble of my hope. She had made me realise that the plan I had was useless, perhaps worse than useless; but in my desperate mood I caught at another. I would try to see Ivor, and find out some other way of helping him. At all events he should know that I was for him, not against him, in this time ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... time that I ever saw him Methought he was a brother to your daughter: But, my good lord, this boy is forest-born, And hath been tutor'd in the rudiments Of many desperate studies by his uncle, Whom he reports to be a great magician, Obscured in the circle ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... on the 9th, fell in with St Jago. The 9th June we got sight of Brazil, in lat. 7 deg. S, not being able to double Cape St Augustine; for, being near the equator, we had very inconstant weather and bad winds; in which desperate case we shaped our course for the island of Fernando Noronho, in lat. 4 deg. S. where on the 15th June we anchored on the north side in eighteen fathoms. In this island we found twelve negroes, eight men and four women. It is a fertile island, having good water, and abounds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... her retreat, and shut the church-door after her, Master Potts, pale with rage, cried out to Richard, "You have aided the escape of a desperate and notorious offender—actually in custody, sir, and have rendered yourself liable to indictment for it, sir, with consequences of fine and imprisonment, sir:—heavy fine and long imprisonment, sir. Do you mark ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... have given me a just pretence at any time to do so. But, Madam, as my uncles and my brother will keep no measures; as he has heard what the view is; and his regard for me from resenting their violent treatment of him and his family; what can I do? Would you have me, Madam, make him desperate? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... her desperate impatience with circumstances, she had fancied herself a martyr, with the fagot and stake of a conventional marriage on one hand, and the dreary desert of neglect and enforced seclusion on the other. She had tried to make her own wretched and passionate imaginings ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... desperate attempt. We went at it with a will. Every muscle was strained to the utmost—it was only the buoy we had to reach this time. But to our rage we now saw the buoy being hauled up. We rowed a little way on, to the windward of the Fram, and then tried again to sheer over. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... hands well out before his head, so that he ran no chance of knocking it against the wall. More than once Tom came head over heels down on the ground; but amid the shouts of laughter, in which he himself heartily joined, having stood on his head for a minute, he leaped up, and made a desperate dash at some of the players. At last he caught Buttar, who also made a very amusing blind man, and though he suffered several mishaps, never for ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston



Words linked to "Desperate" :   despair, desperate straits, unfortunate person, brave, resolute, dangerous, goner, courageous, desperate measure, unsafe, desperate criminal, hopeless, unfortunate, toast, imperative, critical, despairing



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