| 1. | They all stood despondent and silent. - from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy |
| 2. | I sat about in the darkness of the scullery, in a state of despondent wretchedness. - from The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells |
| 3. | Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering face watched the nurse walking to and fro. - from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy |
| 4. | He expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favourable result. - from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| 5. | The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration. - from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens |
| 6. | For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face gazed at the baby but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out of the room. - from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy |
| 7. | Once as he sat with his knees pressed together, and his eyes almost closed, in a despondent attitude, his daughter ventured to say to him-. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |