"Rapture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grand trees, we had loitered together in the days of our betrothal. It was his favorite walk; and he had taken me to see it in the early days of our acquaintance. There, he had first asked me to be his wife. There, we had felt the rapture of our first kiss. It was surely natural that I should wish to see once more a place sacred to such memories as these? I am only twenty-three years old; I have no child to comfort me, no companion of my own age, nothing to love but the dumb creature who ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... anything that is underneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... faded walls, yet mine, all mine. Oh, you fine folks, a pauper scorns your pity. Look, where above me stars of rapture shine; See, where below me gleams the siren city . . . Am I not rich?—a millionaire no less, If wealth be told ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... to his encounter with the bishop,—snorting like a racehorse at the expected triumph of the coming struggle. And he read much Greek with Jane on that afternoon, pouring into her young ears, almost with joyous rapture, his appreciation of the glory and the pathos and the humanity, as also of the awful tragedy of the story of Oedipus. His very soul was on fire at the idea of clutching the weak bishop in his hand, and crushing him with his ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... heart, 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, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... Doctor Moore that the first fine, careless rapture of his song was awakened into being when he was sixteen years old, by "a bonnie sweet sonsie lass" whom we now know as "Handsome Nell." Her other name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage. Whether she lived to realize ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... up the characters, and strike home the moral or the philosophical design. But this is unattainable. As a rule, so far from building the fabric of our works exclusively with these, we are thrown into a rapture if we think we can muster a dozen or a score of them, to be the plums of our confection. And hence, in order that the canvas may be filled or the story proceed from point to point, other details must be admitted. They must ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gone by since the moon broke out from the clouds. I had greeted the Vrouw Prinsloo and all my other friends, and been received by them with rapture as one risen from the dead. If they had loved me before, now a new gratitude was added to their love, since had it not been for my warning they also must have made acquaintance with the Zulu spears and perished. It was on their part of the camp that ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... And you have turned Spaniard,' she said, clasping her little hands and examining me from head to foot, in a sort of rapture. 'Ain't she splendid, Mr. Harrington! Those crimson roses look superb in the black lace. I am sick of my bonnet. Just hold my parasol while I ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... on Wrong, Her starry banner in triumphant hands.... Within her face the rose Of Alleghany dawns; Limbed with Alaskan snows, Floridian starlight in her eyes,— Eyes stern as steel yet tender as a fawn's,— And in her hair The rapture of her rivers; and the dare, As perishless as truth, That o'er the crags of her Sierras flies, Urging the eagle ardor through her veins, Behold her where, Around her radiant youth, The spirits of the cataracts and plains, ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... regret or fear she was leaving the little cabin in which she was born, her whole heart full of rapture that she was going to see him, and of the joy he would experience at the sight of her. Small wonder, then, was it that Dermot sighed as he walked homeward that bleak November day, for his heart was well-nigh broken at the thought ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... had hoped for an outburst of rapture on the part of the little gun man he was disappointed, for Willie shifted his holster, smiled evilly through his glasses, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... in a country town among these commonplace country people. This was the end of his dreams of some day writing deathless odes and sonnets or thrilling romances; of treading the boards as the hero of romantic drama while star-eyed daughters of multi-millionaires gazed from the boxes in spellbound rapture. This . . . The thought of the star-eyed ones reminded him of the girl who had come into the office the afternoon of his first visit to that torture chamber. He had thought of her many times since their meeting and always ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... inclosure to each, and the benefit of a general stagnation of the northern winds produced by the whole of them, and thus countervail the advantage of several degrees of latitude. From the first olive fields of Pierrelatte, to the orangeries of Hieres, has been continued rapture to me. I have often wished for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a pleasure you have to come, and an improvement to be added to the many you have already made. It will be a great comfort to you, to know, from your own inspection, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... her had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Lead me, I should love to be led wherever you want to go. I'll close my eyes, and then I shall neither see the sky nor the fields nor anything more; I shall only feel you." She clung to his arm that was round her. Oh, to wander like this through eternity. Her heart was filled with ineffable rapture; this was better than heavenly bliss. She had now no longer the glowing wish to kiss him as she had done formerly, to press her mouth to his fresh lips, so that neither of them had any breath left; oh, no, she ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... rattling by. And there, upon the purple cushions, sat, more beautiful than ever, the divinity who for the last twenty-four hours had monopolised so large a share of the love-sick student's thoughts. He gazed at her with rapture, and involuntarily bowed his head, as to a being not of the earth. She smiled: her look had something inquiring and mysterious; then, as if by accident, she placed her hand upon the edge of the carriage, and let a flower fall. Almost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... burden lying so passive in his strong arms filled him with a rapture such as he had never known. The thought of sex was still far from his mind, and only was the manhood in him yielding to the contact, and teaching him through the senses that which his upbringing ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the eager curiosity and keen discussion which it awakened; the criticism which it called forth; and, above all, the animated delight with which it was received by all who were young or not critical. Distinctly, too, can we recall the breathless rapture with which we hung over its pages, in those happy days when the mind's appetite for books was as ravenous as the body's for bread-and-butter, and a novel, with plenty of fighting in it, was all we asked at a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... she had brought. When some impression had been made she found that it soon disappeared. In ordinary life the people were volatile, quick as fire to resent, and as quick to forgive and forget, and they were the same in regard to higher things. They went into rapture over the Gospel, prayed aloud, clasped their hands, shed tears, and then went back to their drinking, sacrificing, and quarrelling. They kept to all the old ways, in case they might miss the right one. "Yes, Ma," they ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it." ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and I had some nice little talks. She told me elaborately how she admired and loved Mr. Hawthorne's books; how she had found expressed in them what she had found nowhere else; with what rapture one of her sisters read, re-read, and read again "The Wonder-Book;" . . . how Mrs. H. thought him peerless; and so on. There is not the least extravagance about Mrs. Bright, but remarkable sobriety; and so what she said had double force. We talked . . . while we sprinkled pearls over ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... glidingly as if she floated rather than walked, and whose beauty, half hidden as it was by the exigencies of the costume she had chosen, was so unusual and brilliant that it seemed to create an atmosphere of bewilderment and rapture around her as she came. She was preceded by a small Nubian boy in a costume of vivid scarlet, who, walking backwards humbly, fanned her slowly with a tall fan of peacock's plumes made after the quaint designs of ancient Egypt. The lustre radiating ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... field. The male used to perch in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, and, while I stood perfectly still close by, he would circle away, quivering round the entire field of five acres, with no break in his song, and settle down again among the blooms, to be hurried away almost immediately by a new rapture of music. He had the volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack remedy. Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincoln's-opodeldoc! he seemed to repeat over ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... so full of lazy joy, or unutterable rapture, that they belie her belief in the falseness of all things. There must surely be some good in a world that grows such charming things—things almost sentient. And the trees swaying about her head, and dropping ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... boys Never appeals to the principle which sniffs, in his reader None of the passions are reasoned Now little notion what it was about, but I love its memory Prejudice against certain words that I cannot overcome Rapture of the new convert could not last Responsibility of finding him all we have been told he is Secretly admires the splendors he affects to despise Self-satisfied, intolerant, and hypocritical provinciality Should probably have wasted the time if I had not read them So long as we have ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... (He is about to utter his rapture; she will not have it.) Now, not another word of it. Let us forget it. (She resumes her seat at the table.) Give me some more tea. (He hastens to his former seat. As he passes, she puts her left hand on his arm and says) Be good to me, Percy, ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... order to arrive at happiness. We ourselves experience this divine mode of feeling when a single sentiment, absorbing all our faculties, as in the case of ecstasy, temporarily imposes silence upon the other affections. But this rapture exists always only by the aid of contrast and by a sort of provocation from without; it is never perfect, or, if it reaches fulness, it is like the star which attains its ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... seen in the fact that we still require Symbolism to help us to maintain and carry forward abstract thought to higher levels, even as children require picture books for that purpose. The Glamour of Symbolism, Rapture of Music, and Ideal of Art, which come to us in later years, had their beginnings when to the child every blade of grass was a fairy tale and a grass plot a marvellous fairy forest. The great aspiration of the Human Race is to gain a knowledge of the Reality, the Noumenon behind the ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... out of his grasp to stroke his arm and the folds of his cassock. He sat down by her on the bed, and she fell back upon the dingy pillow, breaking into hysterical tears. She caught one of his hands and carried it to her lips, kissing it in a sort of rapture. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... was drawing towards his departure in a great conflict and agony, finding some difficulty in his passage, yet he sensibly, through the strength of God's grace, triumphantly overcame; he cried out in a rapture of holy joy some little time before he committed his soul to God, "Is not the Lord good! Is he not infinitely good! See how he smiles! I do say it, and I do proclaim it." He died on Friday the 25th of June 1658, in the thirty-sixth ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 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; ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... 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 murmurs of the Romans, sold his last ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... and high with you, but if I once began I should go on and on, and "of writing of letters there would be no end." That is a grand passage of Hinton's [on music]. I always feel that music means much more than just music, born of earth—joy and sorrow, agony and rapture, are so mysteriously blended in its ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... diluted her bread-and-milk in the morning. There was something very touching about this little maid's weeping in her sleep, causing Aunt M'riar to give her a cracknell biscuit—to consume if possible; to hold in her sleeping hand as a rapture of possession, anyhow. Dolly accepted it, and contrived to enjoy it slowly without waking. What is more, she stopped crying; and my belief is, if you ask me, that sleep having deprived her of the power of drawing fine ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... men gave it him, to swell his fame. So deem'd he: yet he listen'd, plunged in thought; And his soul set to grief, as the vast tide Of the bright rocking Ocean sets to shore At the full moon; tears gather'd in his eyes; For he remember'd his own early youth, And all its bounding rapture; as, at dawn, The shepherd from his mountain lodge descries A far, bright city, smitten by the sun, Through many rolling clouds—so Rustum saw His youth; saw Sohrab's mother, in her bloom; And that old king, her father, who ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... rod may be beyond one, but there is the pleasure of the pursuit, the rapture of endeavour, the delight of an impossible chase, the joys of nature—sky, trees, brooks, and birds. Happiness in these things is the legacy to us of the barbarian. Man in the future will enjoy bricks, asphalte, fog, machinery, "society," even picture galleries, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... him 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. She led ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... neither. They are for you yourself," said Miss Row, with just the faintest tinge of colour in her cheeks. For one second Penelope looked incredulous; then in a kind of rapture she held her bouquet closer. "Oh, thank you very, very, very much," she said earnestly. "I never had anything so lovely in my life before," and she put up her face with the prettiest grace imaginable to kiss her ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... musing on all that had just happened, and her experiences, if they had caused delight, had yet provoked shame. "Good heavens!" thought she, "am I really so depraved?" Then for the hundredth time she blissfully recalled the rapture that was hers as she first lay in Yourii's arms. "My darling! My darling!" she murmured, and again Sanine watched her eyelids tremble, and her smiling lips. Of the subsequent scene, distressful in its unbridled passion, she preferred not to think, instinctively aware ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... sang or knelt with the rest, timid as a novice, made gentle by the time, and I learned to cross myself in a new way. One by one the peasants advanced and kissed the gold cross in the hands of the priest, and among them I went up and was blessed as they were. And we were all in rapture. Standing at the threshold afterwards, smiling peasants with wet shining eyes confessed to one another their unworthiness and their happiness; and a girl all in laughing tears fell down at our feet, kissing our dusty boots, and asking ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... rapture of first vision which one never feels twice, I turned and entered the room, which made up in neatness what it lacked in luxury. Furniture in a Japanese house there is none. Like all the others, the floor of my room was covered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... before we reached Madeira. I shall never forget the enchanting prospect which Funchal afforded as we glided to our anchorage in the early morning. The misery of the previous week was forgotten in the rapture of a moment. The sky was cloudless and the contours of the lovely island were bathed in opaline light. What joy the first sight, smell, and taste of the tropical fruits brought. Cold storage, by bringing all descriptions ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... what detestable creatures they are," but she looked so lovingly and saucily at her big brother, that Rachel, spite of herself, was absolutely fascinated by this novel form of endearment. An answer was spared her by Miss Keith's rapture at the sight of some soldiers in the uniform of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... state! what a glorious frame of soul is this! Job speaks of it as the candle of the Lord shining upon his head (29:3). The church, in a rapture, cries out, "Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; break forth into singing, O mountains: for the Lord hath comforted His people" (Isa. 49:13). Paul calls this, "The fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ" (Rom. 15:29). O rest not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the very pavement on which she trod vibrate with the words, 'I shall be a mother! I shall be a mother!' She was so overjoyed that she not only made it public throughout France but despatches were sent off to all her royal relatives. And was not her rapture natural? so long as she had waited for the result of every youthful union, and so coarsely as she had been reproached with her misfortune! Now came her triumph. She could now prove to the world, like all the descendants ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... have grown tired of rapture and love's desire; Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Last Ride Together." The rapture of a rejected lover in the one more last ride which he asks for and obtains, discovers for him the all-sufficing glory of love in itself. Soldiership, statesmanship, art are disproportionate in their results; love can be its own reward, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... have we received Jesus as our King?—have our palm branches been cast at His feet? Feeling that He is alike willing and mighty to save, have we joined in the rapture of praise—"Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord to save us?" Have our hearts become living temples thrown open for His reception? Is this the motto and superscription on their portals—"This is the gate of the Lord, into ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... Street a little later he contrasted boldly the two Eugenias he had known—the Eugenia who was his and the Eugenia who was Dudley Webb's. After fifteen years the rapture and the agony of his youth showed grotesque to his later vision; men did not love like that at forty years. He could see Eugenia now without the quiver of a pulse; he could sit across from her, knowing that she was the wife of another, and could eat his dinner. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... in the lighter parts of life, it is too late to get much intelligence. One of his answers to a boastful Frenchman has been related; and to an impertinent he made another equally proper. During his embassy, he sat at the opera by a man, who, in his rapture, accompanied with his own voice the principal singer. Prior fell to railing at the performer with all the terms of reproach that he could collect, till the Frenchman, ceasing from his song, began to expostulate with him for his harsh censure of a man who was confessedly the ornament ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 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 life, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Sun! Thou sheddest roses on the air, Diamonds on the stream, enchantment on the hill; A poor dull tree thou takest and turnest to green rapture, O Sun, without whose golden magic—things Would be no more than what ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... is not given to men to see clearly; anything but that. When Basil Carruthers had finished that dance he longed to escape, lest he should be compelled to go through another. Then came another moment of rapture for him, when, from the midst of a crowd of courtiers, Lady Amelie summoned him to take her to her carriage. Already they seemed like old friends. Basil drew the lace shawl around the white shoulders ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Although somewhat capricious in his sympathies, Brady seemed never to care who knew what he thought on any subject, while the people, captivated by his marvellously easy mode of speech, listened with rapture as he exercised his splendid powers. It remained for Seymour, however, to give character to the discussion in one of his most forcible philippics. He endeavoured to show that the ballot, given to a few negroes in New York, could do little harm compared ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... thou canst bid my spirit throb with rapture's warmest sigh, As gushing winds will make a lute's strings sleeping melody; When other hopes have faded like the flow'rets of the spring, Thou'lt be to me a joyous wreath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... fire while I dressed, and was childishly happy in that great privilege! During the reading he sat on a corner of the platform and roared incessantly. He brought in a lady and gentleman to introduce while I was undressing, and went away in a perfect and absolute rapture. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... he waited for my answer. Suppose I enclose a note for him to give to Harry. There will be rapture enough, and it is a pity he should not ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... inferred that, in spite of his broken engagement and his bitter judgment, Miss Matoaca had managed to retain her place in his memory. As I looked at him, sitting there like a wounded eagle, huddled under his fur rug, a feeling of thanksgiving that was almost one of rapture swelled in my heart. If I had a plain name, I had also a clean life to offer the woman I loved. When I remembered the strong, pure line of her features, her broad, intelligent brow, her clear, unswerving gaze, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... story three times over, for she was hard of hearing. "Well," says the old fairy, for such she was, "I promise to put you in possession of the white mouse with green eyes, and that immediately too, upon one condition." "One condition," replied the prince in a rapture, "name a thousand; I shall undergo them all with pleasure." "Nay," interrupted the old fairy, "I ask but one, and that not very mortifying neither; it is only that you ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... more august appearance. The gentle brook, which murmured soft below, here bursts a cataract. Here you behold the stately Mohawk roll his majestic wave along the lofty Apalachians. Here the mind assumes a nobler tone, and is occupied by sublimer objects. What there was tenderness, here swells to rapture. It is ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... buzzing in Roger's head, which would never have been there save for the war. At present he is chiefly conscious of his clothes. His mother embraces him with cries of rapture, while Mr. Torrance surveys him quizzically over the paper; and Emma, rushing to the piano, which is of such an old-fashioned kind that it can also be used as a sideboard, plays 'See ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... old land by the ties of their race—a race which after displaying such adventurous instincts has now fallen asleep, as it were, at its own fireside. But what a marvellous story it all was—a story to which big and little alike, had listened in rapture, and which to-morrow would, doubtless, arouse within them a passion for glorious enterprise far away! The seed of the unknown was sown, and would grow into a crop of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... again to meet! Till then I fain would sleep; My longings and my thoughts to steep In Lethe's waters dark and deep. My loved one I again shall see, There's rapture in the thought! In the hope tomorrow of thee, My darling, I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Everybody had eyes and ears intent upon the stage, except one, Father Salvi. He seemed to have come to the theatre for no other purpose than to watch Maria Clara, whose sadness gave to her beauty an air so ideal and interesting that everybody looked upon her with rapture. But the Franciscan's eyes, deeply hidden in their hollow orbits, spoke no words of rapture. In that sombre look one could read something desperately sad. With such eyes Cain might have contemplated from afar the Paradise whose delights his ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... few moments of rapture for Peggy, when the beautiful crystal pendant was placed in her own hands, and she looked through it into a world transformed by the magic of its coloring. She saw the room changed in a twinkling, as when a fairy wand transforms ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to tyranny, regarded Nerva's gentle reign with rapture, and even gave to his imbecility (for his humanity was carried too far for justice) the name of benevolence. 6. Upon coming to the throne he solemnly swore, that no senator of Rome should be put to death by his command during his reign, though guilty of the most heinous crimes. 7. This oath he so ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Willa paid her first visit to a famous modiste in Mrs. Halstead's company, and returned exhausted but impressed. The latent feminine instinct for adornment had taken possession of her and through the long evening she dreamed in a hazy rapture. The motive which had so far actuated her on her course was temporarily laid aside and in its stead came vague scenes of the future, when she should have learned how to carry those marvelous creations ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... could well believe that heaven had slipped down to earth, and that she was walking the streets of the new Jerusalem. She sang as she worked in the house, her sweet, ribbony voice filling the room with a gladness and rapture that made her mother, with her mystical Celtic ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... cried he, waving a leg in the air for pure rapture, "Boggsie will treat, sure. We'll get him on his one big weakness; we'll play politics against pinching; you watch the office seek ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... went to bed as wise as ever—so she afterwards told the fossil Major—at the end of the evening. She had enjoyed herself immensely, though the simple material for rapture was only foursquare Halma played by the four acuter intelligences of the six, and draughts for the goozler and the fossil. But then Sally had a rare faculty for enjoying herself, and she was perfectly contented with only one admirer to torment, though he was only old Prosy, as she ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... simple swain was hail'd and crown'd, In mansions where the great reside, And cheering smiles and praise he found, And in his heart rose honest pride. All seem'd with joy and rapture gleaming, He trembled lest he was ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw. Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious. To prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase, and brought out, in a growl of rapture: ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... a watchful sailor guides his ship, and whichever way she turned it the wind always filled his sails. For the first ten minutes he had been ill at ease, but after that he had begun to feel that he had never so much enjoyed talking. In time he forgot everything but what he had to say, and it was rapture to be able to say it, and to feel that never before had he ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... again making themselves felt, and perhaps with better reason than ever before in our history. People who venture to look ahead are asking themselves this question: If this war goes on much longer, what sort of England will emerge? Some are looking forward with rapture to a new heaven and a new earth; others dread the impending destruction "of a social order they loved." Can we not trace something of this dread in Lord Lansdowne's much-canvassed letter? He is one of the most patriotic and most ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... best in Vendean virtue. Along the coast there was a region of fens, peopled by a coarser class of men, who had little intercourse with their inland comrades, and seldom acted with them. Their leader, Charette, the most active and daring of partisans, fought more for the rapture of fighting than for the sake of a cause. He kept open communication by sea, negotiated with England, and assured the Bourbons that, if one of them appeared, he would place him at the head of 200,000 men. He regarded the other commanders as subservient to the clergy, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... he spoke 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 a change, and he received them ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... juice, therefore, even now gladdens the heart of man, and lifts upwards the courage of the dejected, and refreshes the afflicted. Despair not, forsaken one, and abide enduring. In the unsightly cane springs the sweetest juice, and the feeble tendril brings forth inspiration and rapture. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... Not XENOPHON'S Greeks, O benevolent Public, but "Nobody's Boys," Wild Arabs of London, by tenderness tamed, at the sight of the sea vent exuberant joys In vociferous shoutings! Imagine the rapture of wrecks from the gutter and waifs from the slum, When first on their ears falls the jubilant thrill of the sky-soaring lark, or the wild bee's low hum! Imagine the pleasure of plunging at will into June's leafy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... ever, without a doubt, darling?" I murmured, holding her against my breast; and in my rapture almost forgetting that this angelic affection she lavished on me would not ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... rapture of silent bliss. With what breathless deep devotion, Have I watch'd, like spectre from swathing shroud, The white moon peer o'er the shadowy cloud, Illumine the mantled Earth, and kiss The meekly murmuring lips of Ocean, As a mother doth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... Belinda's neatly-shaven grass-plat. He had bidden the ladies adieu in the parlor, and, having stepped into the hall, was fumbling rather excitedly in the umbrella-stand for his own especially slender clerical umbrella, when he was awakened to new rapture by hearing Miss ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he commenced, addressing Madame Dort with an elaborate bow, sweeping the floor with his hat. "Unto me the greatest and ever-much rapture doth it with added satisfaction bring, to tell you of the glorious success of the German arms over our greatly-overbearing and ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... past him; he was tired with the long night's strain, and he had no white ideal to be a rapture in his heart. He loved Claire not because she was perfection, but because she was herself. She was faultless to Lionel, but Winn didn't care whether she was faultless or not. He didn't expect perfection or even want ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Plotinus the monophysites conceived the incarnation as the supreme example of the unio mystica. The unio mystica was a state of rapture, abnormal and temporary in earthly experience, in which the identity of the mystic was actually merged in the cosmic reason. The lower nature disappeared completely into the higher. It was absorption. This word "absorption" was in common use among ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... Pen's hand slowly back on the counterpane, and then he parted his white moustache, as he had done that night at the hotel in New York, and bent over and kissed the boy's forehead. It may have been the rapture of the kiss that did it; God knows; but at that moment Pen's tongue was loosened, his lips ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... smile on your purtty face for all eternity!" muttered Feeny, in a rapture of delight. "The young leddy is right, Mr. Harvey; though it wasn't for me to say it. Shure you can't trust those scoundrels; they'd stab ye in the back, sir, and rob you of your pretty sisters and ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... him most cordially, and could hardly conceal her emotions of joy and rapture until she was safe in her own apartments, where she could give full vent, in tears and cries of joy ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... most reluctantly. He greeted me with enthusiasm; his delight amounting almost to rapture. I am afraid I did not meet him half way, nor anywhere near it. He did ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... her; but there was no warmth in the embrace. She held up her lovely face to be kissed, and he bent his handsome head and gave her the caress she coveted; but for him was gone all the old rapture that a kiss from those flower-like lips would have brought. By Hubert Varrick, at this moment, it was given only from a sense of duty, as love for ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Such eyes are dim and blind, And the sad, aching head that nods above His monstrous books can never know The secret we would find. But let our seer be young and kind And fresh and beautiful of show, And taken ere the lustyhead And rapture of his youth be dead; Ere the gnawing, peasant reason School him over-deep in treason To the ancient high estate Of his fancy's principate, That he may live a perfect whole, A mask of the eternal soul, And cross at last the shadowy bar To ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... receive my visitors with boisterous rapture as the bearers of any gifts of profit or fame. There was no vision of a printed book before me as I sat writing at that table, situated in a decayed part of Belgravia. After all these years, each ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... thy hoary timbers; to have felt the sweet, quick tumult of her bosom! Oh, thrice happy finger-post! To have seen young Barnabas, radiant-faced, and with all heaven in his eyes! Oh, most fortunate of finger-posts to have seen and felt all this, and to have heard the rapture thrilling in ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... heat, the dazzling sight of beautiful dresses, the bewilderment produced in Augustine's brain by the truth of coloring, the multitude of living or painted figures, the profusion of gilt frames, gave her a sense of intoxication which doubled her alarms. She would perhaps have fainted if an unknown rapture had not surged up in her heart to vivify her whole being, in spite of this chaos of sensations. She nevertheless believed herself to be under the power of the Devil, of whose awful snares she had been warned of by the thundering words of preachers. This moment ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... the other day that I came upon a full-grown man reading with something like rapture a little book—Ships and Seafaring Shown to Children. His rapture was modified however, by the bitter reflection that he had already passed so great a part of his life without knowing the difference between a ship and a barque; and, as for ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... common, than for lovers to compare their mistresses eyes to suns and stars. And what does Henriquez say more here than this, 'That though his mistress be obscure by her birth; yet her eyes are so refulgent, they set her above that disadvantage, and make her all over brightness.' I remember another rapture in Shakespear, upon a painter's drawing a fine lady's picture, where the thought seems to me every whit as magnified and dark at the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... then at the rosy child fast asleep in its cradle; and instantly, with a great cry, she fell on it and snatched it up in her arms, and holding it clasped to her bosom, began lavishing caresses and endearing expressions on it, tears of rapture in her eyes! Not one word of inquiry or bitter, jealous reproach—all that part of her was swallowed up and annihilated in the joy of a woman who had been denied a child of her own to love and nourish and worship. And now one had come to her and it mattered ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... presently to a long and lonely stretch of beach, above which Justin sailed, low, and, relaxing his vigilance for the first time, he began his eager wooing—all fire and rapture. ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... which we must all travel before we can lie down in that silent bed prepared for us at our journey's end. In the first, Youth, every thing is rosy, brilliant, hopeful; life is a dream of happiness which deadens the senses with its delirious rapture—deadens them so perfectly that the thorns Youth treads on are such no longer, they are flowers! stones are as soft as the emerald grass, and if a mountain or a river rise before it, all Youth thinks is, What a beautiful summit, or, How fair a river! and straightway it darts joyously up the ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... saw familiar faces and heard voices as if they came from far across the fields, and Edmond was holding her. Her dead Edmond; her living Edmond, and she felt the beating of his heart against her and the agonizing rapture of his kisses striving to awake her. It was as if the spirit of life and the awakening spring had given back the soul to her ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Rapture unalloyed and unprophetic, born of love deep and pure, shone in the eyes of Harold, as he clasped the hand of his promised bride. But an involuntary and mysterious shudder passed over Edith's frame, and she leant close, close, for support upon Harold's ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the sunshine bathed Truth's mountain-springs Quiver'd our glancing wings. Weep for the godlike life we lost afar— Weep!—thou and I its scatter'd fragments are; And still the unconquer'd yearning we retain— Sigh to restore the rapture and the reign, And grow divine again. And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee— Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee; This made thy glances to my soul the link— This made me burn thy very breath to drink— My life in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... consummately during those minutes—some creatively, like the conductor and Millicent; some agonised with jealousy, like Florence Gardner and a few of the chorus; one maternally in tumultuous distress of spirit; and the great naive mass yielding with rapture ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... man who 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 silence—a silence which would ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... in a vision a woman like her Trip down an orchard slope, With rosy prattlers that shout a name In tones of rapture and hope; While the yeoman, gazing at children and wife, Thanks God for the pride and ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... left across the river flickered a few campfires. The chill night, silent and mystical, seemed to close in upon Gale; and he faced the wide, quivering, black level with keen eyes and grim intent, and an awakening of that wild rapture which came like a spell to him ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... after a moment of hopeless depression he would be possessed anew by the old fair vision, his enthusiasm for the wonderful German army, to belong to which had been his pride and his salvation. With eyes full of rapture he pored over the pages of the military history, and for the thousandth time followed the army on its ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... sitting in the foremost rank of the spectators, intent apparently upon the business of the stage. The contents of the phial, well calculated to sustain the credit of the pardoner's legend, set the damsel a-sneezing violently, an admission of frailty which was received with shouts of rapture by the audience. These were soon, however, renewed at the expense of the jester himself, when the insulted maiden extricated, ere the paroxysm was well over, one hand from the folds of her mantle, and bestowed on the wag a buffet, which made him ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... gold-woven dreams goes the dance of the Hours, In space without bounds swell the soul and its powers, And Truth, with no veil, gives her face to the day, And joy to-day and joy to-morrow, But wafts the airy soul aloft; The very name is lost to Sorrow, And Pain is Rapture tuned more exquisitely soft. Here the Pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb, And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim, The load he shall bear never more; Here the Mower, his sickle at rest, by the streams, Lull'd with harp-strings, reviews, in the calm ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... greeting, and a thousand tokens of joy and tenderness, made the first hours vanish in a lively intoxication, and then, when all had become quieter and they looked nearer about them, all looks and thoughts gathered themselves still about Eva with rapture; her beauty seemed now in its full bloom, and a captivating life seemed to prevail in her looks, in her behaviour, in her every motion, which hitherto had not been seen. Her dress of the most modern fashion, a certain development and style about her, a bewitching case of manner, all evinced ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... strand, the fragrance of an earthly rose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had summoned up reminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing beauty amid which he should have had his home. With his native susceptibility of happy influences, he inhales the slight, ethereal rapture into his soul, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... visitor; 'fear not, together we will accomplish much.' So saying, she led forth the gentle girl, and in a few hours their voices might be heard in one united stream of flowing harmony, filling the air with delicious sounds, and the heart of the aged woman with rapture. ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... 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 ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... I cried, 'these glories! scenes divine! Thou whose sad prime in pining want decays; And these, O rapture! these shall all be thine, If thou wilt give to me, not God, the praise. Hath he not given to indigence thy days? Is not thy portion peril here and pain? Oh! leave his temples, shun his wounding ways! Seize the tiara! these mean weeds disdain, Kneel, kneel, thou man ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... laughter shakes the silver wheels; Bends o'er the car, and whirling, as it moves, His loosen'd bowstring, drives the rising doves. 245 —Pierced on his throne the slarting Thunderer turns, Melts with soft sighs, with kindling rapture burns; Clasps her fair hand, and eyes in fond amaze The bright Intruder with enamour'd gaze. "And leaves my Goddess, like a blooming bride, 250 "The fanes of Argos for the rocks of Ide? "Her gorgeous palaces, and amaranth bowers, "For cliff-top'd mountains, and ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... of love was a sort of mild ecstasy, the sacred rapture in which the senses play no part, and noble emotions that cause neither trouble nor remorse. He ever regarded love as a kind of sublime and passionate religion, of which 'Le Lac' was the most beautiful hymn, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... west wind our young prince blew in, his face radiant, his eyes sparkling. He had entirely forgotten the incident on the stairs in the rapture of Kate's kisses, and Willits was once more one of the many guests he was ready to ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... against the horrors that have impelled me to thus perfect myself. In my nonage I believed humanity could be reformed if only it were intelligently preached at for a sufficiently long period. This first fine careless rapture I could no more recapture, at my age, than I could recapture hoopingcough or nettlerash. One by one, I have flung all political nostra overboard, till there remain only dynamite and scientific breeding. My touching faith in these saves me from pessimism: I believe in the future; but this only makes ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... appreciate the feelings of both of us. Don't you hear the note of revelling now?... Why!... it's all revelling. The waters are shrieking with joy. They've come tearing down the Zambesi valley for the rapture of plunging over the precipice, and now they are just beside themselves with the excitement and delight of it. O!... they heard me say I don't care about my fellow-creatures, that they are just a nuisance, and they're shouting ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... from the stairs. Next, grown bolder, she opened the lid wide. There lay the red shawl, just as she remembered it, the coral beads in their lidless box, the blue paper parcels, and, forgetting all consequences in a rapture of curiosity, Mell sat down on the floor, lifted out the red shawl, tied the coral beads round her neck, and plunged boldly into the contents ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... alone warned us of our peril. I shall never again see anything so beautiful as this fringe of the impassable timber belt. I enjoyed it more than anything I have yet seen; it was intoxicating, my eyes were "satisfied with seeing." It was a dream, a rapture, this maze of form and colour, this entangled luxuriance, this bewildering beauty, through which we caught bright glimpses of a heavenly sky above, while far away, below glade and lawn, shimmered in surpassing loveliness the cool blue of the Pacific. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... prepared for the meeting: so, a favourable moment presenting itself, they both hastened across, without any further contemplation of Mrs Richards's bane' That sporting character, unconscious of their approach, again whistled with his utmost might, and then yelled in a rapture of excitement, 'Strays! Whip! Strays!' which identification had such an effect upon the conscience-stricken pigeons, that instead of going direct to some town in the North of England, as appeared to have been their original intention, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... consumed itself and its own horrors, and found herself not insensible to the excitement of the occasion. Lucy was joyous beyond description, looking very pretty, and solicitously decorating her sister, while both bestowed the utmost rapture on their step-mother's appearance. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Royal-Mummery kind in general, there has been, for graceful arrangement, for magnificence regardless of expense,—inviting your amiable Lord Malton, and the idlers of all Countries, and awakening the rapture of Gazetteers,—nothing like it since Louis the Grand's time. Nothing,—except perhaps that Camp of Muhlberg or Radowitz, where we once were. Done, this one, not at the King's expense alone, but at other people's chiefly: that is an unexpected feature, welcome if true; and, except for Sir Jonas, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... friendly with a pretty woman. Revelation was alighting like a bird in his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve! Elle est ton reve! Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous—a bad case of elderly rapture. Having once been ostracised by Society, he had never since had any real regard for conventional morality; but the idea of a love which she could never return—and how could she at his age?—hardly mounted beyond his subconscious mind. He was full, too, of resentment, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with 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 daybreak seemed to come too soon, and when Juliet heard ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... when Loman did come to himself he did not burst out into a rapture of delight and gratitude. On the contrary, he suddenly felt himself growing to such a pitch of misery and low spirits as even in the worst of his troubles he had never experienced. He repented bitterly of ever bringing himself to come and ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... perhaps harm more than it can help. Prudence therefore prevails over my passion for dissection: warned by eminent examples, I fear that any injection of my more mature and less cocksure consciousness into this book might impair its unity—that I "never could recapture the first fine careless rapture." ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... joy and rapture of this thought for perhaps half a minute. It sure complicated matters, what with old Hooper gunning on my trail, and this partner's daughter shut up behind bars. Me, I expected to last about two days unless I did something ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... towards the wood; when she had nearly reached the end of the field, the choristers began the same piece again; at which the hare stopped, turned round, and came swiftly back to about the same distance as before, where she seemed to listen with rapture and delight, till they had finished the anthem, when she returned again by a slow pace up the field, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... father's violin, the one she had wept at leaving behind her. What was she playing? Strange, old-world melodies they seemed, tossed into the air, now laughing, now wailing like sorrowing women voices. Oh, the violin in her hands! Oh, the rapture of hearing it, as her soul vibrated through it and called to him—called to him!—But he would not hear the call. He turned sorrowfully and went down again to the shed and there he lay upon his face and clasped his hands above his head and whispered her name. It was as if his ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... and those who wish to give themselves to others may do so without hinderance from those cares, and even those duties, resting upon men where each must look out first for himself and for his own. Oh, believe me, believe me, you can know nothing of the divine rapture of self-sacrifice while you must dread the sacrifice of another in it. You are not free, as we are, to do everything for others, for it is your duty to do rather for those of ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... deserted chair, stretched it taut by its corners across her hair and eyes, and with a queer little cry—half defiance, half appeal—a quick dart, a long, undulating glide—merged herself into the dagger-blade, the nightingale, the grim mountain fortress, the gay mocking brook, all the love, all the rapture, all the ghastly fatalism of that ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... were ridiculous. To judge from what they said, they belonged no longer to this world; all their thoughts were in heaven, and they considered themselves either on the borders of eternity or on the eve of the day of the Last Judgment. The truly devout Madame Napoleon spoke with rapture of martyrs and miracles, of the Mass and of the vespers, of Agnuses and relics of Christ her Saviour, and of Pius VII., His vicar. Had not her enthusiasm been interrupted by the enthusiastic commentaries of her mother-in-law, I saw every mouth ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fountain of the Bacchic chant swells with gushes of strongly emphasised bold double rhymes, each throbbing like a man's firm stroke upon the strings of lyres. A fine audacity breathes through the praises of the wine-god, sometimes rising to lyric rapture, sometimes sinking to parody and innuendo, but always carrying the bard on rolling wheels along the paths of song. The reality of the inspiration is indubitable. These Bacchanalian choruses have been indited in the tavern, with a crowd ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... not shed Compassion's heart-drops o'er the sweet Mc Rea? Through midnight's wilds by savage bandits led, "Her heart is sad—her love is far away!" Elate that lover waits the promised day When he shall clasp his blooming bride again— Shine on, sweet visions! dreams of rapture, play! Soon the cold corse of her he loved in vain Shall blight his withered heart ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... confessed himself disappointed in her mental qualities, but he laid all that to the want of education, and the blame upon those who brought her up. He delighted in the thought of instructing and cultivating her mind himself, and dwelt with rapture on the prospect of possessing such a creature, formed exactly to his own taste, and according to his own rules of right. The devoted lover indulged himself, in these pleasing expectations during several interviews that he had with his idol, when not interrupted ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... first stickleback, Benjy had carried off our hero to the canal, in defiance of Charity; and between them, after a whole afternoon's popjoying, they had caught three or four small, coarse fish and a perch, averaging perhaps two and a half ounces each, which Tom bore home in rapture to his mother as a precious gift, and which she received like a true mother with equal rapture, instructing the cook nevertheless, in a private interview, not to prepare the same for the Squire's dinner. Charity had appealed against old Benjy in the meantime, representing the dangers of the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes |
