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Rapture   Listen
noun
Rapture  n.  
1.
A seizing by violence; a hurrying along; rapidity with violence. (Obs.) "That 'gainst a rock, or flat, her keel did dash With headlong rapture."
2.
The state or condition of being rapt, or carried away from one's self by agreeable excitement; violence of a pleasing passion; extreme joy or pleasure; ecstasy. "Music, when thus applied, raises in the mind of the hearer great conceptions; it strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture." "You grow correct that once with rapture writ."
3.
A spasm; a fit; a syncope; delirium. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Bliss; ecstasy; transport; delight; exultation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rapture" Quotes from Famous Books



... defeatures" on the soul, and the image treasured by memory corresponds with the reality, then the communion of heart with heart seems sweeter than it ever seemed before its interruption. And this happiness, this rapture of the soul which makes life seem angelic for a season, the two friends now experienced in full measure. For an hour they sat together, holding each other's hands, feeling a strange inexpressible pleasure in merely listening to the sound of each other's voices, noting ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... distinctly. It was that of a beardless youth of twenty years. It possessed the beauty of a girl and the daring force of a man; it bore a mocking, cryptic smile. Maskull felt the fresh, mysterious thrill of mingled pain and rapture of one who awakes from a deep sleep in midwinter and sees the gleaming, dark, delicate colours of the half-dawn. The vision smiled, kept still, and looked beyond him. He began to shudder, with delight—and many emotions. As he gazed, his poetic sensibility acquired such a nervous and indefinable ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... with a great uplift of the spirit, and a great longing, which was completely appeased when he had come into Celia's presence. Each evening he retired filled with an impatience for the coming day, and with divine rapture of little memories of what had that day passed. It seemed to him that hour by hour he and Celia drew closer in a sweet secret, intimacy that nevertheless demanded no outer symbol. When he spoke to her of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... say admiration. At times it would also be tinged with a longing that he could not explain or express. And if ever the father gave him the slightest evidence of friendliness, he would be thrown into a rapture of happiness that nothing done by ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... for his money he wanted a very great deal, almost the impossible; his German sentimental soul dimly thirsted after innocence, timidity, poesy, in the flaxen image of Gretchen; but as a man he dreamt, desired, and demanded that his caresses should bring a woman into rapture and palpitation and into ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... thing will come of it. You don't want him hanged or shot—or treated worse, as that Gentile boy was treated in Glaze for fooling round a Mormon woman. Marry Tull. It's your duty as a Mormon. You'll feel no rapture as his wife—but think of Heaven! Mormon women don't marry for what they expect on earth. Take up the cross, Jane. Remember your father found Amber Spring, built these old houses, brought Mormons here, and fathered them. You are the daughter ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... turning white as the sheet of paper he held. Then the letter dropped from his hand, and he stood as if stupefied for some moments; but presently rapture darted through him; a five-pound bank-note was in his hand, and it had been enclosed in ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... plainer words, she, with her smattering of accounts, was to manage a great house, an army of servants, possibly an estate. Excessively in love as she was, with all the music of it in her untried ears, she knew already in herself that her mind must have other food than her heart's rapture. I think, indeed, that she would have declined him altogether if he had proposed nothing more tangible to her than perpetual honeymoon. That was what Senhouse would certainly have proposed to her—she saw that in every look of his, and read it in every line he ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... and Jane had gone to Chichester, Jane leaving behind her a letter the really meritorious neatness of which was blotted by two or three distinct tears. Jane respectfully expressed her affectionate rapture at the wondrous news which "Modern Society" had revealed to her before Miss Fox-Seton herself had time ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... use to attack sentiment with argument, or to attack argument with sentiment. A question of sentiment can hardly be discussed; it is like a question of taste. A man is enraptured with a landscape by Corot; you cannot argue him out of his rapture; the sharper the criticism the greater his admiration, because he feels that it is incumbent upon him to defend the painter who has given him so much real pleasure. Some people imagine that what they think ought to exist must exist, and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... matter her name—she lives still. She was vile; aye, but not in my sight till too late. Why is it that the heart which is pure never makes ours beat upon it with the rapture sin gives? Through month on month my picture grew, and my passion grew with it, fanned by her hand. She knew that never would a man paint her beauty like one who gave his soul for the price of success. I had ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... his eyes glowing. The nonos that settled in a swarm on his swollen, poisoned hands were nothing to him in the rapture of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... remain in contact with both if her arms are thrust inside them, but insomuch as her sleeves are stiff and expansive, and require a perceptible pull to withdraw them, will remain suspended in mid-air without further support, to enjoy the rapture or endure the torture of the current, as may prove to be the case. From this arises an advantage—namely, that her mamma will be able to give her attention to the regulator, and shift the wire bundle in and out, with a due regard to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... out: he spared neither his wit, his humour, nor his sarcasm—he seemed to say to all—"I am a man, and you are no more; and why should I not act and speak like one?"—it was remarked, however, that he had not learnt, or did not desire, to conceal his emotions—that he commended with more rapture than was courteous, and contradicted with more bluntness than was accounted polite. It was thus with him in the company of men: when woman approached, his look altered, his eye beamed milder; all that was stern in his nature underwent ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... says the son and biographer of the latter, 'with the beau ideal of academical eloquence which adorned the Moral Chair in the person of Dugald Stewart. Long after he had sat under this admired leader, he would describe with rapture his early emotions while looking on the handsomely erect and elastic figure of the Professor—in every attitude a model for the statuary—listening to expositions, whether of facts or principles, always clear as the transparent stream; and charmed by the tones of a voice which ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... with a strange rapture. She crouched in front of the window, clenching her face in her hands, in a sort of trance. At last she had arrived, she had reached her place. Here at last she folded her venture and settled down like a crystal in the navel of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... have something of the scent and perfection of wild flowers, and that mystic rapture which is not to be found in Goethe's more worldly Faust. We may, if we like, call the Auto da Alma (as also the witch-scene in the Auto das Fadas) a 16th century Faust, but really no parallel can be drawn between the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... its opponents than from any number of Bloomer conventions. The modern idea of the fashionable belle, floating like a bird of paradise through the soiree; the impersonation of motion and grace in the ball-room, indulging alternately in syncope and rapture over the marvelous adventures and despair of the hero of a mushroom romance, her rapid transition from one excitement to another, to fill up the dreary vacuum of life, provoking as it does the secret derision of sensible men; all this comes from that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... stage,—a man of extraordinary personal strength and slight of hand. He performed a variety of juggling tricks, and distorted his body into a thousand surprising and unnatural postures. The audience were transported beyond themselves: if they had felt delight in Hamlet, they glowed with rapture at the mountebank: they had listened with attention to the lofty thought, but they were snatched from themselves by the marvel of the strange posture. 'Enough,' said I; 'I correct my former notion. Where is the glory of ruling men's minds, and commanding ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... am a wolf in sheep's clothing," he said; "while Oakes admits the happiness he feels in seeing his ship ploughing through a raging sea, in a dark night, he maintains that my rapture is sought in a hurricane. I do not plead guilty to the accusation, but I will allow there is a sort of fierce delight in participating, as it might be, in a wild strife of the elements. To me, my very nature ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Carson did not hear them; a frenzied paroxysm seized her, and she lay on the floor screaming in the wild tones of madness, and utterly incapable of any exertion. She saw the money she had received with such rapture carried away from before her eyes, but she felt nothing: money had become terrible to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... dwindled. Yet half-way on this journey fortune smiled on him suddenly. It was in Derbyshire. He went a little out of his way to visit his native place—he had left it at ten years old. Here an old maid, his first cousin, received Grace with rapture, and Hope pottered about all day, reviving his boyish recollections of people and places. He had left the village ignorant; he returned full of various knowledge; and so it was that in a certain despised field, all thistles ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... Appiani. At an earlier period this garden had been well known to all of them, as it had been a sort of public promenade, and under its shady walks had many a tender couple exchanged their first vows and experienced the rapture of the first kiss of love. But for the four last years all this had been changed; a rich stranger had come and offered to the impoverished old Count Appiani a large sum for this garden with its decaying villa, and the count had, notwithstanding ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... and "jollied" her with an irreverent freedom that turned Tansey's heart into cold lead in his bosom. The signs of his adoration were few—a tremulous "Good morning," stealthy glances at her during meals, and occasionally (Oh, rapture!) a blushing, delirious game of cribbage with her in the parlour on some rare evening when a miraculous lack of engagement kept her at home. Kiss him in the hall! Aye, he feared it, but it was an ecstatic fear such as Elijah must have felt when the chariot lifted ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... some sealed perfume longing to burst out And give its prisoned rapture to the air;— A brooding hope, a promise through a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... decree Pronounc'd Achaia once again was free; Assembled Greece enrapt with fond belief Heard the false boon, and bless'd the villain Chief; Each breast with Freedom's holy ardor glows, From every voice the cry of rapture rose; Their thundering clamors burst the astonish'd sky, And birds o'erpassing hear, and drop, and die. Thus o'er the Persian dome their plaudits ring, And the high hall re-echoed—live the King! The Mutes bow'd reverent down before their Lord, The assembled Satraps ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... her solitude—what led him to that lonely place—how he had got over the wall—were queries which first arose in her mind. He likewise could not conceive by what miracle he should find her in a remote, desolate building, which he had supposed to be uninhabited. With rapture he took her trembling hand; tears of joy choaked their utterance. "You are wet, Alonzo, said Melissa at length; we will go up to my chamber; I have a fire there, where you can dry your clothes."—"Your chamber; replied ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... drops of brandy were poured into the prince's mouth; he was gently slapped all over and wrapped in hot towels, and he came to life with a little cry. Napoleon, wild with joy, kissed him. The thought that he had a son filled him with rapture such as none of his triumphs had given him. "Well, gentlemen," he said, when he went back to his own room, "we have got a fine, healthy boy. We had to urge him a little, to persuade him to come, but there he is at last!" And then he added, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... mystic dimness. "As the thread of my song," says the poet in his preface, "unrolled itself, I saw that my heart was full of mind, that its pulses were of thought, that my feeling had something musical and difficult to measure, and that I accepted the rapture of contemplation just as a lad accepts his sweetheart's kiss. And then I saw that I am the poet, surely a poet among many—a mere soldier of the verse, but always the poet who desires to close within his verse the longings and questions ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... has each devoted a portion of his time and talents to the mighty ocean; but that part of it which it has fallen to my lot to describe is very different from those portions about which poets have sung with rapture. Here, none of the many wonders of the tropical latitudes beguile the tedium of the voyage; no glittering dolphins force the winged inhabitants of the deep to seek shelter on the vessel's deck; no ravenous sharks ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... which had been planned in the first days of their acquaintance, when Anna had thought no pleasure could compare to a ramble in the country with Delia. Fresh from the rattle and noise of London, its stony pavements, and the stiff brilliancy of the flowers in the parks, it had been a sort of rapture to her to wander freely over the fields and through the woods. Aunt Sarah's garden was beautiful, but this was better still. All the flowers found here might be gathered, and Delia knew exactly where they all grew in their different seasons, and the best ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton

... him. He strives in every way to make Saul happy, yet the king remains sad, depressed, and unhappy. At last David's heart and his reason grasp the one great fact of God's transcending love, and the poem ends with a burst of rapture. His discovery is that, if his heart is so full of love to Saul, that in his yearning for his good, he would give him everything, what must God's love for him be? Of his own love ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... lords and gentlemen!' said Redgauntlet; is it delight and rapture that keep you thus silent? where are the eager welcomes that should be paid to your rightful king, who a second time confides his person to the care of his subjects, undeterred by the hairbreadth escapes and severe ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... the Singhalese was the cotton "comboy," worn only on the lower half of the body[2], their grains were sesamum and rice; their food the latter with milk and flesh-meat; and their drink coco-nut toddy, which Marco calls "wine drawn from the trees." He dwells with rapture on the gems and costly stones, and, above all, on the great ruby, a span long, for which Kubla Khan offered the value of a city. With singular truth he says, "the people are averse to a military life, abject and timid, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... modesty would have led him into trouble, but he never makes it. "Reader," he writes, "if you and I are to be real comrades we must share the same adventures of fancy and of soul.... My fairies must be thy fairies and my gods thy gods. Hand-in-hand we must thrill with a single rapture—'le coeur en fleur et l'ame en flamme.'" For myself I am well content (whether he addresses me in the second person singular or plural, or both—as here) to have vicariously achieved such heights in the person of so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various

... with joy, said: "I will pay the most profound attention to this inexhaustible treasure; and to preserve it from breaking I will exert every faculty of my soul." Upon saying this he received the bowl, with which he returned on the wings of rapture, and for some days enjoyed his good fortune better than might be expected. The necessaries and comforts of life were provided for his family, his creditors were paid, alms distributed to the poor, the brittle bowl of plenty was guarded with discretion, and everything around him was arranged ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... themselves; tugging and straining until they grow red in the face, exhausted. The perspiration streams from their foreheads, they show every symptom of distress; the eyes of all are fixed, not upon each other, nor upon their boot-straps, but upon the sky above. There is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and then, amid grunts and groans, they cry ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... then the man sees himself but in his own dim mirror, whereas ere he turned to look in that, he knew himself in the absolute clarity of God's present thought out-bodying him. The shoots of glad consciousness that come to the obedient man, surpass in bliss whole days and years of such ravined rapture as he gains whose weariness is ever spurring the sides of his intent towards the ever retreating goal of his desires. I am a traitor even to myself if I ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... if she was to play her part as the Andalusian, she must be at the theatre by seven o'clock. Yet she had returned to gaze at the unconscious poet, lulled to sleep in bliss; she could not drink too deeply of this love that rose to rapture, drawing close the bond between the heart and the senses, to steep both in ecstasy. For in that apotheosis of human passion, which of those that were twain on earth that they might know bliss to the full creates one soul to rise ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... the salvation of souls. It was during those darkest hours for the Church in France, that Jean, with a number of other children, met in private to be prepared for the reception of his First Holy Communion. With what holy rapture did he approach the table of the Lord. That event was ever held in cherished remembrance by all who ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous

... frame a soothing rejoinder; but the Duke passionately interrupted him. "Alas, cousin, no rest is possible for one who has attained the rapture of the Beatific Vision, yet who trembles lest the mere mechanical indulgence of the senses may still subject him to the common penalty of sin! As a man who has devoted himself to the study of theology is privileged to argue ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... Cameron; "and who could stand on this lovely spot and witness so much beauty and magnificence, without feeling a glow of rapture pervade his whole frame, and chain him to the place in delighted admiration! How happy ought the man to be who can call a place of such loveliness and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... for him alone; Her renovated beauties all his own? No:—let our April showers by night descend, Noon's genial warmth with twilight stillness blend; The broad Atlantic pour her pregnant breath, And rouse the vegetable world from death; Our island spring is rapture's self to me, All I have seen, and ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... So these two began their life under the shadow of a cloud. At the very first hour, when they should have been all rapture, there had come into the chamber of their hearts this grisly spectre—that was to haunt them for so ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... seventeen. Ah, what a sad love-story hers had been. How cruelly love's young dream had been blighted," she told herself; and yet she would not have exchanged that one thrilling, ecstatic moment of rapture when Rex had clasped her in his arms and whispered: "My darling wife," for a whole lifetime of calm happiness with any ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... whom we meet with elsewhere as 'duke's son, Y'. The descriptions of various sacrifices prove that the lords of L, whether permitted to use royal ceremonies or not, did really do so. The writer was evidently in a poetic rapture as to what his ruler was, and would do. The piece ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... in a rapture; and so it was, for the pink and white was all covered with animals, and the blue was full of birds and butterflies and bees flying about as naturally as possible. Really lovely were the little figures and the clear, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... face glowing with sudden rapture: "There are six books—half a dozen! Maybe you've heard of some of them. Bill's read 'em over lots of times. He begins with the first on the shelf and when he's through the row, he just takes 'em up, all over again. I like ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... seen him get up early in the morning, walk hastily out, and look anxiously to the woods and snuff the autumnal winds with the highest rapture; then return into the house and cast a quick and attentive look at the rifle, which was always suspended to a joist by a couple of buck-horns or little forks. The hunting dog understanding the intentions ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... The rapture was all gone from Attwater's countenance; the dark apostle had disappeared; and in his place there stood an easy, sneering gentleman, who took off his hat and bowed. It was pertly done, and the blood burned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... others or myself, and I am not willing to lose tranquillity here for the chance of obtaining pleasure elsewhere. Pleasure is indeed a holiday sensation which does not occur in ordinary life. We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments. ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Miss Beaton with a sudden rapture, and henceforth gazed upon her with secret adoration. She made excuses to consult books in Miss Beaton's room, that she might be near her; she dreamed, and the sweetness and the sadness of it centred ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... conversational salad like a drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality and such wearing iteration, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... longing wishes expressed during the drive, no ancestral home, beloved by inheritance, could have been entered with more affectionate rapture than that with which Frederick Langford sprung from the carriage, and flew to the arms of his mother, receiving and returning such a caress as could only be known by a boy conscious that he had done nothing to forfeit home ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... depression and deadening of his powers. He schooled himself to stoical endurance, but he was not superhuman, and in the absence of sympathy not only was any possibility of development checked, but he ceased to write with the spontaneity and rapture of his earlier verse. His resolute industry was productive of many wise, impressive, and charitable reflections, and many casual felicities of diction, but the poet very seldom reached the highest level of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... what this love may be That cometh to all but not to me. It cannot be kind as they'd imply, Or why do these gentle ladies sigh? It cannot be joy and rapture deep, Or why do these gentle ladies weep? It cannot be blissful, as 'tis said, Or why are their ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... the tissue-paper, she gazed with delight at the coveted stockings. The knobs might glare as much as they liked; the sparrows might scold themselves hoarse on the window-sill; 'Mazin' Grace was lost in the rapture of the moment, and refused to consider consequences. She traced the pattern of the embroidery with her stubby finger, she rubbed the silk against her cheek, and even tied one stocking around her head and stood on tiptoe to see the result in the mirror. The more she handled ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... scatter at that moment—what light plays on his cheeks—how handsome he is! There is nothing ideal in him: but then the earthly is grand, is captivating. I myself, carried away and deeply moved, receive on my breast the youth fainting from rapture: he breathes long, with slow sighs, and then casting down his eyes, lowering his head as if ashamed to look at the light—not only on me—presses my hand, and walks away with an uncertain step; and after that one cannot extract a word from him for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... thorns, and forced into His hand the sceptre of reed, was taught here—the lesson that meekness conquers, and that His kingdom is founded in suffering, and wielded in gentleness. The lesson of the ancient psalm, which in rapture of prophetic vision beheld the coming of the Bridegroom, and said with strange blending of images of war and of peace: 'Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies; in Thy majesty ride prosperously, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... and bolder than all of the rest Was Bohdo,(1) their chieftain;—'twas strange that a breast, Which nothing like kindness or pity might move, Should glow with the warmth and the rapture ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... in early spring Might please a sated Caesar, Rapture asparagus can bring, And dearer still green peas are: Oh! far and wide, where mushrooms hide, I'll search, as wide and far too For watercress; but all their pride Must ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... wood and lane— The gossamer, silk night-robes of the flowers, Fluttered apart by amorous morning hours. Yea, as the weaving of the gossamer, If truly that the mystic golden boom, Is the strange rapture of my hidden loom, As I sit in the light of the thought of her; And it weaveth, weaveth, day by day, This parti-coloured roundelay; Weaving for ease of misery, Weaving this rhyme of my lady and me, Weaving, weaving this warp of rhyme For lovers in ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... more—since on that same hill-side he had held Diana in his arms in the first rapture of love. What was it that had changed? How was it—for he was frank with himself—that the love which had been then the top and completion of his life, the angel of all good-fortune within and without, had become now, to some extent, a burden to ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... abruptly by his father between his fourteenth and fifteenth birthday. His father—who had long since forgotten the time when his son's little limbs seemed to have come straight from God's hand, and when he had kissed five minute toe-nails in a rapture of loving tenderness—remarked: ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... listening, but Diane seemed uninterested in scientific speculations. "The trees!" she breathed in rapture; ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... naughty children in the forest. I remember how we all knelt down at last and recited our prayers until suddenly we heard the bugle-call of Aeolus sounding close by us. The poor old man, wild with rapture at having found us, kissed and shook us so violently that we almost wished ourselves ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... marvellous when it is dry, which is much more satisfactory. In a life of average prosperity and no small public distinction, including an intimacy with a professional tenor and two or three free lunches with noblemen, I can recall few moments of such genuine rapture as the one when you creep down to the basement to find the whitewash dry at last and brilliant as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various

... little place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose Monaco is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not look a bit wicked from here. I declare, I should like ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... in her glittering renown as a singer as Handel in his as a composer, with the difference—which is in Frau Lind's favor to boot—that Handel's works weary many people and do not always succeed in filling the coffers, whereas the mere appearance of Frau Lind secures the utmost rapture of the public, as well as that of the cashier. If, therefore, we place the affairs of the Musical Festival simply on the satisfying and commercial debit and credit basis, certainly no artist, and still less any work of Art, could venture to compete with, and to offer an equal ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... was! Whatever could it be! Then at last the knot gave way, and Mona lifted the lid, and pushed the silver paper aside. "Oh, mother!" She clapped her hands in a rapture, her eyes sparkled with joy. "Oh, mother! It's—it's lovely. I didn't know, I didn't think you could get me ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... to see this little dark-complexioned, dark-eyed girl, the merest handful of flesh and bone, divest herself at will of her personality, and assume the tragic horror of Lady Macbeth, or the passionate rapture of Juliet detaining her husband-lover on the balcony of her chamber. Hubert watched in wonderment this girl, so weak and languid in her own nature, awaking only to life when she assumed the personality of another. There she lay, her wispy form stretched in his arm-chair, her great dark ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... itself o' nights had been frozen too—fixed and impervious—and the darkness had become already palpable. Yet the moon looked out so calm, so pure and beautiful, and the stars so spark-like and piercing, that it was a holy and a heavenly rapture to gaze upon their glorious forms, and to behold them, fresh and undimmed, as when first launched from the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... listened memory drew aside the curtains of twenty years. He beheld again the sweet-faced wife glorified with the blessed halo of motherhood. He thrilled at the remembrance of her intense rapture as she clasped her babe in moments of vivid ecstasy, or held it tenderly in her arms as she sang the slumber song. The man was lost in revery—the sweet voice of the mother had suddenly grown weak and drifted into ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... defeat was the result. And yet in her heart of hearts Mary was glad that it was so. There is something splendid and breathless in trying to shut away a forbidden rapture, and being unable to do so; in telling oneself one will never try repression again but will shamelessly acknowledge the forbidden rapture and register a desire to thrill to it ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... my heart, where affection holds sway! On the Rhine is my heart, where encradled I lay, Where around me friends bloom, where I dreamt away youth, Where the heart of my love glows with rapture and truth! May for me your hearts e'er the same jewels enshrine. Wherever I go is my heart on ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... at human distance. 'Tis the nature of perfection to be attractive; but the excellency of the object refines the nature of the love. It strikes an impression of awful reverence; 'tis indeed that love which is more properly a zeal than passion. 'Tis the rapture which anchorites find in prayer, when a beam of the divinity shines upon them; that which makes them despise all worldly objects; and yet 'tis all but contemplation. They are seldom visited from above; but a single ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... Mr. Geoffrey. Then it goes on to say, 'within the tennyment house known as Mulligan's are warned'—hum! I wonder why 'warned'?—'are warned that all rents will be re-dooced by fifty per cent!' Fifty per cent!" she repeated in a dreamy rapture, "which is jest half, y' see. An', Mr. Geoffrey, that's jest what's got me plumb scared—it's all so unnacheral. I've heard o' rents bein' rose—constant, but who ever heard of 'em bein' took down before? Well, well! My ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... throw useless rags from hand to hand in the dirty market-place, and shout, and swear and abuse each other, so they embarked on a rabid and fiery bargaining. Intoxicated with a strange rapture, running and turning about, and shouting, Judas ticked off on his fingers the merits of Him whom ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... following no spring. Nature demanded of those who lived here that they struggle to find subsistence. In that conflict human beings forgot that they had been brought into the world to enjoy it with careless rapture. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... made up, dear, now that you have come," Miss Blanchet said when the first rapture of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... his dear wife, gaining secret admission to her chamber, from the orchard in which he had heard her confession of love the night before. That had been a night of unmixed joy and rapture; but the pleasures of this night, and the delight which these lovers took in each other's society, were sadly allayed with the prospect of parting, and the fatal adventures of the past day. The unwelcome day-break seemed to come too soon, and when Juliet heard the morning-song of the lark, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... thorns under his tongue, and I will cut off his eyelids with little scissors, and set him facing the sun. Caballero, you would love me; I have a gentle spirit. I am a pleasant companion." He rose and squeezed round the table. "Listen"—his eyes lit up with rapture—"you shall hear me. It is divine—ah, it is ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... were ordinary passersby. You must only speak with me a few moments, and let me look once deep in your eyes, and then you must pass on,—out of my life forever! But I shall have at least one moment of blissful rapture! You will know me, because I shall wear white, with pink roses in my hat, and a pink parasol. I can hardly wait for ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... walked off, and he, at any rate, on that occasion was a happy lover. For a few minutes,—perhaps for an hour,—he did allow himself to believe that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... tell her that I loved her. But I did do it, I scarcely know how. The softest whisper seemed too loud against her glowing cheek. She trembled from head to foot. I was faint and silent with rapture when she first put her little hand in mine, and suffered me to draw her to my heart. Ah! I am sick with joy yet when I think of it. I—I first, I alone, woke that sweet young heart to life. She ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... then my spirit bloomed in leafy rapture— I loved; and once I looked death in the eyes: So, suddenly made wise, Spoke of such beauty ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... and invigorated by a most delectable lunch, eaten in the beautiful dining-room of the hotel, our travelers were ready for the last stage of the preparatory journey. Nothing remained now but the short ride to the wharf and then—the rapture of embarking on the wonderful "Mauretania," which had hitherto been but a magic name to them, breathing of romance and wonder. Then a final farewell to their friends, and before them stretched the great European continent, holding the unfathomed mysteries ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... go to her at once," and he sped towards the window, opened it and walked up to Mary. Miss Bussey followed him and arrived just in time to see the lovers locked in one another's arms, their faces expressing all appropriate rapture. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... church. The arches the pillars the quadrangles rose in incessant and astonishing succession. My eyes turned from building to building, gazing with avidity, adding wonder to wonder, and filling the mind with rapture. 'It is all that I had imagined,' said I, 'and much much more! Happy city, happy people, and happy I, that am come to be one among you! Now and now ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... but to learn the answer, and this she did, by tugging firmly, coyly, to free her wrist. The answer was rapture; his grip had tightened. She pulled harder, and felt herself being drawn toward him. Yes, yes, her triumph was a fact. Slowly an arm of iron, a tremulous, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... killdeer, jacksnipe and the ever active and interesting spotted sandpipers. A few meadow-larks now and again are heard singing their exquisite song, reminding one of Browning's wise thrush which "sings each song twice over, lest you should think he cannot recapture that first fine careless rapture." ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... his face," murmured Russell, "and they shall see his face" Eric paused and looked at him; a sort of rapture seemed to be lighted in his eyes, as though they saw heavenly things, and his countenance was like an angel's to look upon. Eric closed ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... did not know what to do, did not know in what words to express his rapture. His lips trembled. His eyes filled with tears. His nature prompted him to take her in his arms, to kiss her as a child kisses, full on the lips, with a full heart. But a feeling of intense respect paralyzed his yearning. And, overcome with emotion, he fell at Florence's feet, stammering ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... consort[178] from the spheares To recreate a love-perplexed heart? The more it sounds, the more it refresheth. I see no instruments, nor hands that play; And my deare brothers, durst not be so bold. 'Tis some celestiall rapture of the minde, No earthlie harmonic is of this kinde. Now it doth cease: speake, who ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... Dorothy and I were driving about the country or sitting under the trees in the yard, living through great rapture, mothered by Mrs. Clayton, and so constantly served by Mammy and ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... religion of the good. Confidence, modesty, forgiveness, renunciation, purity, absence of laziness, absence of cruelty, absence of delusion, compassion to all creatures, absence of the disposition to calumniate, exultation, satisfaction, rapture, humility, good behaviour, purity in all acts having for their object the attainment of tranquillity, righteous understanding, emancipation (from attachments), indifference, Brahmacharyya, complete renunciation, freedom from the idea of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... likeness for thy vision? O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom? What of despair, of rapture, of derision, What of life is there, what of ill or good? Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood? Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, The faint fields quicken any terrene root, In low lands where the sun and moon are mute And all the stars ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... deliberate step, stared in dim bewilderment at the long rows of palatial residences, and a chill sense of loneliness crept over him. The hopeless strangeness of everything he saw, instead of filling him with rapture as he had once anticipated, Sent a cold shiver to his heart. It is a very large affair, this world of ours—a good deal larger than it appeared to him gazing out upon it from his snug little corner up under the Pole; and it was as unsympathetic as it was large; he suddenly felt ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... the house half a day before Madame C. informed them that 'Mademoiselle, the so charming miss whom they beheld at dinner, was to be married very soon; and they should have the rapture of witnessing a wedding the ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... his head up above the rocks, and really saw the SEA, nothing could exceed the affecting display of gratitude and enthusiastic rapture!—some embraced, some cried like children, some stamped like madmen, some fell on their knees and thanked the gods, others were mute with gratitude, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... holding 120 gallons of water. We had no time to visit the interior of the castle, but it was interesting to read, in one of his letters, what Dr. Adam Clark saw there in 1797: "I was almost absolutely a prey to astonishment and rapture while I contemplated the painting of the wife of Schneider by Rubens, such a speaking canvas I never beheld." He saw the large Etruscan vases collected by Sir William Hamilton, some bronze cups dug out of the ruins of Herculaneum, and the bed ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... sometimes—and after asking the candidate a few unimportant questions, proceeded to enrol him a member of the Great Protestant Association of England. If anything could have exceeded Mr Dennis's joy on the happy conclusion of this ceremony, it would have been the rapture with which he received the announcement that the new member could neither read nor write: those two arts being (as Mr Dennis swore) the greatest possible curse a civilised community could know, and militating more ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... fellow, my enemy would say a slow coach. I might enlarge on my ecstatic delight in my baths, my healthy glow, my light-heartedness, my feelings of elasticity, which made me fancy I could trip along the sward like a patent Vestris. I might go much farther, I might indulge in poetic rapture—most unbecoming my mature age—and after all, fall far short of the reality. The reader will do well to allow a large percentage of omitted ecstatic delineation in consequence of want of ardour on the part of the writer. This is in ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... later Mademoiselle Therese received the sodden hat with rapture, anxiously counting over the hat-pins, while the French youth, with some relief, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie

... with tears not yet dried from the late conflict, lifted up her voice in a rapture of miniature delight; "Dinnie says, 'gobble the food'! Dinnie says, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... not hear, for she answered them in low tones,— contented, happy tones. She saw faces we couldn't see, for she looked at them with wondern' rapture in her eyes. She was away from us, fur away from us who loved her,—we who were on this earth still. Love still held her here, human love yet held her by a slight link to the human; but her sweet soul had got with its true kindred, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... who wait to welcome you to the blessings of our society. There they stand, like the majestic statues that line the entrance to an eternal pyramid. And when I look upon one statue, and another, and another, and contemplate the colossal greatness of their proportions, as Canova gazed with rapture upon the sun-god of the Vatican, I envy not the man whose heart expands not with the sense of a new nobility, and whose eye kindles not with the heart's enthusiasm, as he thinks that he too is numbered ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... It was a day on which mere existence was a privilege; and now that her spirits had been soothed by her confidential talk with Rorie, Vixen could enjoy those sights and sounds and sweet wild scents of the woodland that had ever been a rapture to her. ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... that before my arrival I felt an occasional qualm Lest the shock of the unexpected might shatter my wonted calm; But it gave me the richest rapture to find I was wholly free From the crude and vulgar emotions ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... of rapture, half of pain—from a very small person in the lumbering old trap. The horse was drawn up with a jerk, and a girl, with very little of the woman about her, for she was still all curls, and curves, and child-like roundness, ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... meeting announced that the candidate was outside the doors, speaking to the mob, the excitement reached fever heat. When some one cried, "He is here!" and the orchestra struck the first bars of "Hail Columbia," we rose to our feet, waving multitudinous flags, and shouting out the rapture ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... old dear if I hurt you, No doubt it is all very nice, With the lilies and languors of virtue And the raptures and roses of vice. But the notion impels me to anger That vice is all rapture for me, And if you think virtue is languor Just ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... me in the least. The sixth, when burning with passion I crawled on my knees before her and implored her to take a beggar and marry me, she consented. . . . What she said to me was: 'I don't love you, but I will be true to you. . . .' I accepted that condition with rapture. At the time I understood what that meant, but I swear to God I don't understand it now. 'I don't love you, but I will be true to you.' What does that mean? It's a fog, a darkness. I love her now as intensely as I did the day we were ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Hutchinson had come to New York because he had been told that he could find backers among profuse and innumerable multi- millionaires for the invention which had been the haunting vision of his uninspiring life. He had not been met with the careless rapture which had been described to him, and he was becoming violently antagonistic to American capital and pessimistic in his views of American institutions. Like Tembarom's father, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... should thy verse appear Halting and harsh, and all unaptly wrought, Touch the crude line with fear, Save in the moment of impassioned thought; Then summon back the original glow, and mend The strain with rapture that with ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... country, thee— Land of the noble free— Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills, My heart with rapture ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... to the eighth sphere Were meet and fit, that so The heavens new joy might know Through all their shining courts that name to hear, Which on this earth doth sound Like music spreading gladness round, Breathing with charm intense Peace to the soul and rapture to the sense. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Arab improvisatore would have seemed tame beside Manetho's nervous exaltation. Save for the tingling satire of the violin-strings, his rhapsody might easily have lapsed to madness. From this point, however, his rapture somewhat abated, and he began to descend towards prose, his music ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... increasing rapture.] Aye, here it is quiet! Aye, here it is fair! Behold, my hall for the ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... with rapture. He thanked her for what she had done for him, in granting him her colours, and upon that Mademoiselle asked his permission to embrace him, and to tell him how amiable and worthy of belonging to the King she found him. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... of a cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly: that, too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which broke from the man who had not seen ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... were wont to feel joy and rapture, transcendent bliss, in the presence of their Creator: their beatitude was measureless. Glorious ministers 15 magnified their Lord, spoke his praise with zeal, lauded the Master of their being, and were excellently happy in the majesty of God. They had no knowledge of working evil or wickedness, ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous

... his hands And crows with rapture strange and vague; Without, beneath the rosebush stands A ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... answered, passionate face! For I am worthy, worthy now at last After so long unworth; strong now at last To give myself to beauty and be saved; Now, being man, to give myself to thee, As once the tumult of my boyish heart Companioned thee with rapture through the world, Forth from a land whereof no poet's lip Made mention how the leas were lily-sprent, Into a land God's eyes had looked not on To love the tender bloom upon the hills. To-morrow, when ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... some of them are normal and not morbid; their inheritance as in the Jukes family; epileptics and their nervous instability; insanity; religious rapture; strange views of the insane on individuality; their moody segregation; the religious discipline of celibacy, fasting and solitude (see also 125); large field of study among the insane ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... our rosy fillets shed Blushes o'er each fervid head, With many a cup, and many a smile, The festal moments we beguile. And while the harp impassioned flings Tuneful rapture from the strings, Some airy nymph, with fluent limbs, Through the dance luxuriant swims, Waving in her snowy hand, The leafy Dionysian wand, Which, as the tripping wanton flies, Shakes ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... condescendingly; but Lisa, in describing her expedition of the previous day to Panshin, had spoken of Lavretsky as an excellent and clever man, that was enough; he felt bound to make a conquest of an "excellent man." Panshin began with compliments to Lavretsky, with a description of the rapture in which, according to him, the whole family of Marya Dmitrievna! spoke of Vassilyevskoe; and then, according to his custom, passing neatly to himself, began to talk about his pursuits, and his views on life, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... dust he clung; The murmurs grew about him like a cloud— He breathed an atmosphere of spirit-voices, Most sighing sad, but with a sound between, As of one born to hope that still rejoices, In a sweet foreign tongue, That seemed exulting, starting from its shroud, To a new rapture for the first time seen! This better voice, as with a crowning spell, On the chief's spirit fell; Up starting from the earth, he cried aloud: "Ah! thou art there, and well! I thank thee, thou sweet ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... it!—the need, the pain, the bewilderment, the hot sleeplessness, the mad audacity of a blessed dream, the flushed awakening, stunned rapture—and then the gray truth, bleaching the rose tints from the fading tapestries of slumberland, leaving her flung across her pillows, staring ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... book of Out-of Doors, capitulo nullo folio nigro, or wherever you choose to open it, written as distinctly, plainly, and sweetly as the imprint of a school-boy's knife and fork on a mince-pie, or in the uprolled rapture of the eyes of Britannia when she inhaleth the perfume of a fresh bunch of Florentine ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... pocket, burst into a heart-freezing scream, and began to thrash about in her seat. The hymn rolled on in stronger volume. The Yankee precentor caught the tune and tried to lead, but Uncle Jimmie's voice soared over him with the rapture of a lark and the shriek of an eagle, two or three more pair of hands clapped time, the other Suez pastor took a trochee, and the four preachers filed down from the high pulpit, singing as they came. Garnet began to pace to and fro in front of it and ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... word, when de ain't a single stah admissible in de ske-eye?—De Lawd's na-ame be pra-aise'!" Her father, mother, and brother were all looking at it with her, now, and she glanced from one to another with long heavings of rapture. ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... throb of all his being he bursts the barrier, he rends the veil; and infinite passion rolls in in floods upon him, he clutches all existence in his arms; and from his lips there bursts a mad frenzied shout of rapture—that makes his torturers stand transfixed, listening, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair



Words linked to "Rapture" :   transport, bliss, spirit, emotional state, seventh heaven, blissfulness, ecstasy



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