All 50 Uses

despair
in
Les Miserables
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As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it.†
Chpt 1.5

despaired = lost hope
To see her thus, one would never have dreamed that she was an invalid whose life was almost despaired of.†
Chpt 1.8 *
The soul does not surrender to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.
Chpt 4.15 *

despair = hopelessness
The man was on the point of dying in despair.†
Chpt 1.1
He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a star.†
Chpt 1.1
He had entered in despair; he emerged gloomy.†
Chpt 1.2
THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR.†
Chpt 1.2
First of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, all bewildered, like one who seeks to save himself, he tried to find the child in order to return his money to him; then, when he recognized the fact that this was impossible, he halted in despair.†
Chpt 1.2
People arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs!†
Chpt 1.4
Overcome with shame, even more than with despair, she quitted the shop, and returned to her room.†
Chpt 1.5
The Thenardiers, who were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contents drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her.†
Chpt 1.5
He shut the door, leaned his back against it, and listened to Fantine's despairing supplications.†
Chpt 1.5
However that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that word, I, as we have just heard, Police Inspector Javert was seen to turn toward the mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, and a look of despair, his whole body agitated by an imperceptible quiver and an unprecedented occurrence, and say to him, with downcast eyes but a firm voice:— "Mr. Mayor, that cannot be."†
Chpt 1.5
All this was uttered in a proud, humble, despairing, yet convinced tone, which lent indescribable grandeur to this singular, honest man.†
Chpt 1.6
What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life!†
Chpt 1.7
All this was so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took place in him that indescribable movement, which no man feels more than two or three times in the course of his life, a sort of convulsion of the conscience which stirs up all that there is doubtful in the heart, which is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair, and which may be called an outburst of inward laughter.†
Chpt 1.7
With immense despair he faced all that he should be obliged to leave, all that he should be obliged to take up once more.†
Chpt 1.7
His ideas began to grow confused once more; they assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair.†
Chpt 1.7
The wheelwright and the stable-man, in despair at the prospect of the traveller escaping their clutches, interfered.†
Chpt 1.7
It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.†
Chpt 1.7
Shouts despair, knapsacks and guns flung among the rye, passages forced at the point of the sword, no more comrades, no more officers, no more generals, an inexpressible terror.†
Chpt 2.1
The winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to flight; nor Wellington, giving way at four o'clock, in despair at five; nor Blucher, who took no part in the engagement.†
Chpt 2.1
It was high time; one minute more, and the exhausted and despairing man would have allowed himself to fall into the abyss.†
Chpt 2.2
She gazed in despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one, where there were beasts, where there were spectres, possibly.†
Chpt 2.3
Cosette took the doll and laid it gently on the floor with a sort of veneration, mingled with despair; then, without taking her eyes from it, she clasped her hands, and, what is terrible to relate of a child of that age, she wrung them; then—not one of the emotions of the day, neither the trip to the forest, nor the weight of the bucket of water, nor the loss of the money, nor the sight of the whip, nor even the sad words which she had heard Madame Thenardier utter had been able to wring this from her— she wept; she burst out sobbing.†
Chpt 2.3
No words can render that air, at once despairing, terrified, and ecstatic.†
Chpt 2.3
Hope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and touching thing.†
Chpt 2.3
Despair yawns.†
Chpt 2.4
Jean Valjean felt himself caught, as in a net, which was slowly contracting; he gazed heavenward in despair.†
Chpt 2.5
Jean Valjean's despairing glance fell on the street lantern-post of the blind alley Genrot.†
Chpt 2.5
His disappointment bordered for a moment on despair and rage.†
Chpt 2.5
"Ah, come now, conscript," said Fauchelevent, "none of this despair.†
Chpt 2.8
The fathers, in despair, attacked the exempts.†
Chpt 3.1
With M. Gillenormand, sorrow was converted into wrath; he was furious at being in despair.†
Chpt 3.2
good old owls of marquises by the streetful, who had returned, and of ghosts, the "former" subjects of amazement at everything, brave and noble gentlemen who smiled at being in France but wept also, delighted to behold their country once more, in despair at not finding their monarchy;†
Chpt 3.3
He was filled with regret and remorse, and he reflected in despair that all he had in his soul could now be said only to the tomb.†
Chpt 3.3
But the weeks passed by, years passed; to M. Gillenormand's great despair, the "blood-drinker" did not make his appearance.†
Chpt 3.5
you may boast of having driven your grandfather to despair, that you may!†
Chpt 3.5
And, in order that nothing might be lacking to this bewitching face, her nose was not handsome— it was pretty; neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,—which drives painters to despair, and charms poets.†
Chpt 3.6
Despair is surrounded with fragile partitions which all open on either vice or crime.†
Chpt 3.8
It was the dull listlessness which follows despair and precedes the death agony.†
Chpt 3.8
He returned to his hovel in despair.†
Chpt 3.8
All that had taken place since the morning, the appearance of the angel, her disappearance, what that creature had just said to him, a gleam of hope floating in an immense despair,— this was what filled his brain confusedly.†
Chpt 3.8
Here, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to terror, and which did not know the meaning of despair.†
Chpt 3.8
Marius cast a wild glance about him, the last mechanical resource of despair.†
Chpt 3.8
The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night.†
Chpt 4.2
Nevertheless, athwart this painful extrication of indistinct ideas which was not even a monologue, so feeble had action become in him, and he had no longer the force to care to despair, athwart this melancholy absorption, sensations from without did reach him.†
Chpt 4.2
One day, however, he could not refrain from so doing, and, with that vague despair which suddenly casts the lead into the depths of its despair, he said to her: "What a very pedantic air that young man has!"†
Chpt 4.3
One day, however, he could not refrain from so doing, and, with that vague despair which suddenly casts the lead into the depths of its despair, he said to her: "What a very pedantic air that young man has!"†
Chpt 4.3
How he contemplated, with despairing ecstasy, that convent garden, full of ignored flowers and cloistered virgins, where all perfumes and all souls mount straight to heaven!†
Chpt 4.3

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Definitions:

(1) (despair as in: she felt despair)
hopelessness; or distress (such as extreme worry or sadness from feeling powerless to change a bad situation)
(2) (despair as in: do not despair)
lose hope or feel distress
(3) (despair as in: she was the despair of the team)
something that causes hopelessness or great distress
(4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)

despair in Les Miserables (Auto-generated)

despair
in
Les Miserables
(Auto-generated)