Desperation

“ We come down into the dust, crumpled, with all courage, ambition and hope absorbed in despair. We pick ourselves up in desperation. All that is best in us is so deadened that even our consciences cannot hear a whisper ”

“ An assembly of the most horrible demons could not exhibit a more appalling effect, recklessness and desperation overshadow every noble trait, which should enlighten the countenance of a human being. Many, in their desperation, stripped themselves on the spot of their clothes, either to stake against money, or to pledge to the table-keeper for a trifle to renew the play, and many instances occur of men going home half naked, after having lost their all. ”

“ The unfortunate men, whom want and ruin have driven to deeds of desperation, are not, with all their temptations, more desperate in their way than are the sons of Corruption in theirs, without any temptation at all. ”

“ Why drive to desperation a free and liberal people? Think you I would be your enemy unless urged by powerful wrongs? No, white man, no! the Great Spirit whom we worship, is also the God whom you adore; for friends we cheerfully lay down our lives; but against foes, our lives are staked with desperation. ”

“ Without any means to provide himself with food or clothing, with a mind borne down with trouble and suffering, and bereft of every hope from which the slightest consolation might be derived, the once honest man was driven to a career of desperation and crime which, if given in its details, would cause the blood-thirsty tales of the yellow-covered trash to pale for their very puerility and tameness. ”

“ Now, in the midst of it, so great has become the excitement, so intense the anxiety, all fear and prudence vanishes, and the men leap to their feet, and fire and load, and fire and load, in the wildest frenzy of desperation. ”

“ By tempting them to turn thieves, when begging fails? By keeping their stomachs just at desperation-point? By starving them out here, to march off, starving all the way, to some town, in search of employment, of which, if they find it, they know no more than my horse? ”

“ Only the hopeless suppression of natural desires, the conflict through years of ardent youth with sordid circumstances, could have brought him to the pass he had now reached—one of desperation centred in self. ”

“ Then desperation took the place of fear, and I felt more than a match for all that could come against me. I had no other than serene feelings, however, and had no wish to pursue the two pirates that fled. ”

“ His dark eyes blazed with their wonted fire—nay, they looked darker and larger from his exceeding paleness, and such intense mental and bodily suffering was imprinted upon his countenance, that, despite its fierceness and desperation, few could have regarded him without sympathy. Real desperation has so much of agony in its character, that no one can witness it unmoved. ”

“ Here desperation finds a remedy, all the languors of disease, all the frustrations and tediousness of life, all the infirmities of age, all the disquiets of the passions, and all the calamities of fortune, with whatever can make a man miserable, vanish in these shades. ”

“ Even self-respect was fast slipping away. Desperation alone remained; desperation lashed almost to fury by the agony in his throbbing leg. He or his companion must have been drunk, hideously drunk, to have met with such a mischance. ”

“ There is nothing more absolutely certain than that the people—who submit to be robbed through the intricate and multifarious processes devised by the cupidity of individuals and of governments—when aroused to a full sense of the wrongs inflicted upon them, will strike down their oppressors in a rage of desperation born of despair. ”

“ What distress, what pauperization, what desperation, brought to the very pitch of rebellion, they have gone through; and recollecting this, can any one think otherwise than that it has been enough to sober any people that is not destitute of every element of high character. ”

“ Guilt and desperation will ever pant for scenes of tumult and disorder, office will ever excite envy, and malevolence delight in slanderous tales. Is it then to be wondered at if my foes are numerous? ”

“ He had the misfortune to look too much like a man who did not need to dig to easily obtain, in labor's parlance, a job to dig. Yet, while he thought of it, such was the man's desperation, his rage against his odds of life, that it seemed to him that a purely physical attack on the earth, to which he was fastened by some indissoluble laws of nature which he could not grasp, would be a welcome relief. ”

“ Yet he toiled ceaselessly, attacking the job with a kind of light-hearted desperation that made nothing of its hardships, bringing to it a tough and unconquerable joy in the mere effort, which drove him ever like a spur. ”

“ And yet, after all, how many of us sit with our hands folded, doing nothing, thinking nothing, but just mentally and physically limp, weighed down by empty, useless time, which we try to kill with yawning desperation. ”

“ Many such kinds there are of desperation, when men are past hope of obtaining any suit, or in despair of better fortune; Desperatio facit monachum, as the saying is, and desperation causeth death itself; how many thousands in such distress have made away themselves, and many others? For he that cares not for his own, is master of another man's life. ”

“ Everything has gone from bad to worse, though I have fought against fate with all the passion of desperation. Our friends have deserted us; that is, all the young society which I care about and really need to keep up my spirits and make me cheerful. ”

“ On the one side, desperation looks upon that good as future, but under so great a difficulty that it forgets the possibility of it, and thereupon surceaseth all endeavours. Presumption, on the other hand, is so keenly apprehensive of the possibility, that it never regards the difficulty, and so thrusts forward into irregular endeavours or expectations. ”

“ I was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths. ”

“ If he could but win back to his room unaccosted and lock himself in until the sharpness of hunger should have exorcised the devil of humiliation, he might hope to be able to face an accusing world with such equanimity as may be born of desperation. ”

“ And when, added to these horrors, the unfortunate victim sees himself deserted by all, deprived of means to employ a lawyer, knowing that the enemies responsible for his misfortune are squandering his money and profiting by his misery, is it a wonder that in a [Pg 272] moment of discouragement and desperation he abandons hope and does away with himself? ”

“ He tells us, by fatal experience, "that the weak contributed to the designs of the wicked, while the latter, out of a conscience of their guilt, grew by desperation worse than they intended to be. That the wise were often imposed upon by men of small understandings. ”

“ Like a gleam of light there suddenly dawned around him a remembrance of the times he had seen her here—the times he had seen her anywhere; the last time—the sweet hand she had laid upon his arm. Vincent’s heart awoke under that touch. With a start he looked down upon the hand which was at this moment on his arm,—not the hand of love,—fingers with the blood pressed down to the very tips, holding with desperation that arm which had the power of life and death. A hurried exclamation came from his lips; he looked at the woman by him, and read vaguely in her face all the passion and agony there. ”

“ When they have to cast themselves down from some {206} precipice, they throw themselves off the painted canvas rock with desperation; when they have to represent a dying man and to writhe in agony, how they soil their clothes, which have often cost much money, and tear their hands with the nails and splinters of the boards! ”

“ In sheer desperation, not even earning enough to pay the rent of a mean attic and keep hunger away, to say nothing of clothing and other things, they have, after spending the last cent, and not having anything to take them home, resorted to the last means. ”

“ We see here the evil thoughts, the loss of conscience, and the desperation that makes men shrink not from the darkest deed within their reach if by this they may further their own interests or gain revenge upon one who has opposed them. ”

“ As there is no courage like a coward's for rashness, when pushed to desperation, so I suppose there is no obstinacy like a weak vacillator's, when they have been pushed to take the Curtius' leap into the gulf of determination. ”

“ In many cases they had broken with their families, who were not inclined to take them back. Many had no means of earning a livelihood. To let them loose upon the world without any provision for them would have been to drive them to desperation. ”

“ but what physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favour, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation? ”

“ Her face was flooded to the roots of her hair with a deep flush. It was a crimson most unlike the tint of blissful shame with which the cheeks announce love's dawn in happy hearts. She threw herself upon the sofa, and buried her scorched face in the pillow while her form shook with dry sobs.
Love had, in a moment, stripped the protecting cicatrice of a hard indifference from her smarting shame, and it was as if for the first time she were made fully conscious of the desperation of her condition. ”

“ For when last need to desperation driveth,
Who dareth most he wisest counsel giveth. ”

“ If you refuse—he is in the hands of desperate men, who will never give him up except on their own terms; they will wait until, driven to despair, you will offer them, through the press, a fortune, and—even then you may receive, after long waiting, only a corpse. ”

“ For despair is the last and most fatal of sins. But you needn’t give up to it just yet!”
“Oh, what do you mean? What hope have I in this world?”
“The hope that lasts as long as life. Listen, Drusilla. I said that your state was desperate—not that your cause was lost. ‘Desperate cases require desperate remedies.’ Your case is such a one, and my remedy is such a one.”
“What remedy have you for me? However desperate, however dangerous, I will not refuse it or shrink from it! I would dare anything, suffer anything, to save my Alick from his sin and win him back to me again!” ”

“ Urged by impending fate, you make a desperate effort to accommodate matters; but in the contest between your pride and your terror you at the same time prove that you are a coward and fail in the negotiation. ”

“ A desperate man, with ruin staring him in the face if he left events to take their course—with power for himself and the kingdom for his family if he tried fortune and found her favourable—would have thrown the hazard with far lighter grounds of hope. ”

“ Let them remember that a time of distress is a time of dreadful temptation, and all the strength to resist is taken away; poverty presses, the soul is made desperate by distress, and what can be done? ”

“ But I often parted with money against my inclination, either because I wanted the resolution to refuse, or dreaded the appellation of a niggardly fellow; and I may be truly said to have squandered my estate, without honour, without friends, and without pleasure. The last may, perhaps, appear strange to men unacquainted with the masquerade of life: I deceived others, and I endeavoured to deceive myself; and have worn the face of pleasantry and gaiety, while my heart suffered the most exquisite torture. ”

“ You must yield first to one temptation and then to another, and so on down, down, down, till there seems to be nothing left to stand on; till you have lost all pride, all self respect, and care for nothing, till you are perfectly hopeless, and ruin and wretchedness stare you in the face; till you tremble instinctively at every footstep, fearing that exposure is on your track, till everybody seems to point you out as a guilty, contemptible wretch, and you grow reckless, desperate, and don’t care where you go or what you do ”

“ After the endurance of a week's delirium, madness, and unconsciousness, they generally find themselves, when robbed of the greater portion of their hard-got earnings, thrust upon the world penniless, wretched, dispirited, and sick, to seek employment and re-enact the same scenes of solitary penance and wild debauchery. ”

“ Can any temptation have sophistry and delusion strong enough to persuade you to so simple a bargain? Or can any carnal appetite so overpower your reason, or so totally lay it asleep, as to prevent your flying with affright and terror from a crime which carries such punishment always with it? ”

“ Now you know when people are starving, and have not bread for their wives and children, they are apt to get desperate. If I were to see you starving, and thought that somebody or something was keeping the bread out of your mouth, I dare say I should do something desperate. ”

“ Are you to build no houses, because desperate men may pull them down upon their own heads? Or, if a malignant wretch will cut his own throat because he sees you give alms to the necessitous and deserving, shall his destruction be attributed to your charity, and not to his own deplorable madness? ”

“ Death Scenes of Desperadoes—How Bad Men Died—The Last Moments of Desperadoes Who Finished on the Scaffold—Utterances of Terror, of Defiance, and of Cowardice.
There is always a grim sort of curiosity regarding the way in which notoriously desperate men meet their end ”