desperation Quotes

“Hunger makes thief of any man.”

“Jess drew the way some people drank whiskey. The peace would start at the top of his muddled brain and seep down through his tired and tensed-up body. Lord, he loved to draw.”

“Jesus!” the old lady cried. “You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!”

“Endurance is not a desperate hanging on but a traveling from strength to strength.”

“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.”

“He came from a large family—thirteen, fourteen, fifteen: I don’t know how many—and he had to fight for every crumb of food he got.”

“In desperate situations, people could live for three minutes without oxygen, three hours without warmth, three days without water, three weeks without food.”

“It was flight now, a desperate, hopeless flight, that carried him on for some hours.”

“I see the damage and pain of hard years. I see the emptiness and desperation of existence without hope. I see a young life that has been too long.”

“He just screamed and screamed and all that time we didn’t know that he was screaming because he hurt.”

“In war, when soldiers come, they take everything. You must bury anything to save it. You must hide your childrens, also.”

“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness - they’re heartbreaking.”

“Crazy to live without a wall to protect you. Even in Robledo, most of the street poor—squatters, winos, junkies, homeless people in general—are dangerous. They’re desperate or crazy or both. That’s enough to make anyone dangerous.”

“The woman says: We have your son in Texas, but $1,200 is not enough. $1,700.”

“Two hundred yards further the full force of the fire, artillery, Maxims and rifles, had burst on them. In places desperate rushes to get on at all costs, had been made by devoted, fearless men. In such places the bodies lay so thickly as to hide the ground. Occasionally there were double layers of this hideous covering.”

“Bringing desperate men in alive, is a good way to get yourself dead.”

“It is no longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women.”

“I’ve thrown myself on your mercy, told you that without your help I’m utterly lost. What else is there?”

“But then a sudden terrible silence like suffocation came, blotting out all sound of the storm. In the moment of its last desperate chance, breaking across the barrier that had been holding it at bay, the Dark came for Will. Shutting out the sky and the earth, the deadly spinning pillar came at him, dreadful in its furious whirling energy and utter quiet. There was no time for fear. Will stood alone. ”

“I was so mad I smashed up the bike so I don’t even have that anymore. And now I’m in a new children’s home and they’ve advertised me in the papers but there weren’t many takers and now I think they’re getting a bit desperate.”

“Hungry people make poor shoppers.”

“Now, in a moment, all control vanished. The sight of spilt food was too much for the orderly queue. They burst their ranks and sprang upon it, a rabble of wildly hungry children.”

“The situation was desperate, but with each narrow escape I was getting more and more weary of the whole business. I just wanted this wild adventure to end, even if it ended in capture.”

“And while he sought, he cried and prayed and promised everything he could think of.”

“In desperation Bruce scrunched himself up into a ball, hoping the witch would mistake him for part of the rock. But there was no chance of fooling old Roxy, and holding her lantern out over the creek she spotted the bear in a flash.”

“Emira, I don’t care what you look like. I’ll pay for your cab here and your cab home.”

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.

He cursed everything. He had done for himself in the office, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got drunk. He began to feel thirsty again and he longed to be back again in the hot reeking public-house.

“If you will only do it! If you will only—only believe me! It wasn’t my fault—I couldn’t help it—it will be all right—it is nothing—it is no harm. Oh, Jurgis—please, please!”

“And I!—how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy?”

“Oh,” he exclaimed, running furiously and tearing his hair—“Oh, who will deliver me from this man? Wretched—wretched that I am!”

“He fancies he possesses an immense treasure. The first year he offered government a million of francs for his release; the second, two; the third, three; and so on progressively. He is now in his fifth year of captivity; he will ask to speak to you in private, and offer you five millions.”

Dantès had exhausted all human resources, and he then turned to God.

“I’ve just been in jail,” Jurgis cried—he was ready to get down upon his knees to the woman—“and I had no money before, and my family has almost starved.”

“Please, sir,” said Jurgis, “can I have something to eat? I can pay.” To which the farmer responded promptly, “We don’t feed tramps here. Get out!”

“I need your help: that is I thought like a madman that you could lend me your assistance in a case where God alone can succor me.”

Morrel pulled the bell, but though he nearly broke the cord no one answered. He turned towards Noirtier; the pallor and anguish expressed on his countenance momentarily increased.

“I will offer six millions, and I will content myself with the rest, if they will only give me my liberty.”

Without giving himself time to reconsider his decision, and, indeed, that he might not allow his thoughts to be distracted from his desperate resolution, he bent over the appalling shroud, opened it with the knife which Faria had made, drew the corpse from the sack, and bore it along the tunnel to his own chamber, laid it on his couch, tied around its head the rag he wore at night around his own, covered it with his counterpane, once again kissed the ice-cold brow, and tried vainly to close the resisting eyes, which glared horribly, turned the head towards the wall, so that the jailer might, when he brought the evening meal, believe that he was asleep, as was his frequent custom; entered the tunnel again, drew the bed against the wall, returned to the other cell, took from the hiding-place the needle and thread, flung off his rags, that they might feel only naked flesh beneath the coarse canvas, and getting inside the sack, placed himself in the posture in which the dead body had been laid, and sewed up the mouth of the sack from the inside.

Oh, my God, I have suffered enough surely! Have pity on me, and do for me what I am unable to do for myself.

That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope. He who had been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his arrest.

It took just as much effort to get back to where he had been earlier, but when he lay there sighing, and was once more watching his legs as they struggled against each other even harder than before, if that was possible, he could think of no way of bringing peace and order to this chaos.

The last thing he saw was the door of his room being pulled open, his sister was screaming, his mother ran out in front of her in her blouse (as his sister had taken off some of her clothes after she had fainted to make it easier for her to breathe), she ran to his father, her skirts unfastened and sliding one after another to the ground, stumbling over the skirts she pushed herself to his father, her arms around him, uniting herself with him totally—now Gregor lost his ability to see anything—her hands behind his father’s head begging him to spare Gregor’s life.

“I’d like to eat something”, said Gregor anxiously, “but not anything like they’re eating. They do feed themselves. And here I am, dying!”

“Father, Mother”, said his sister, hitting the table with her hand as introduction, “we can’t carry on like this. Maybe you can’t see it, but I can. I don’t want to call this monster my brother, all I can say is: we have to try and get rid of it. We’ve done all that’s humanly possible to look after it and be patient, I don’t think anyone could accuse us of doing anything wrong.”

“Should he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!”