"Agitate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she had by chance left me a legacy, there it goes.) You would like, ma'am, to see the rooms upstairs? Here is the landlord to conduct your ladyship. Frank will be quite ready to receive you when you come down. I am sure I need not beg of your kindness that nothing may be said to agitate him. It is barely three weeks since M. de Castillonnes's ball was extracted; and the doctors wish he should be ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "you have moved me strangely. There is about you an influence that cannot be resisted. It is like what Pindar says of music; if it does not give delight, it is sure to agitate and oppress the heart. From the first moment you spoke, I have felt this mysterious power. It is as if some superior being led me back, even against my will, to the days of my childhood, when I gathered acorns from the ancient oak that shadows the fountain of Byblis, or ran ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... of preparing this water for use is to agitate it strongly with a large surface exposed to the fixed air. By this means more than an equal bulk of air may be communicated to a large quantity of water in the space of a few minutes. But since agitation promotes the dissipation of fixed air from water, it cannot be made to imbibe ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... foreign paper contained a article saying that the object of the London stage is "to introduce living pictures to say pretty things for young girls," and that "of the social, religious, economic or intellectual struggles which agitate our time no trace is observable in the English stage literature of the day," and that English stage literature "has become nothing more than an insipid and dying study of the doings of the aristocratic and ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... to the labourer, as an inducement to agitate briskly, that, in time, a state of things will be brought about when every man will have a small farm of four or five acres upon which to live comfortably, independent of a master. Occasional instances, however, of labourers endeavouring to exist upon a few ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... merely to perplex, deceive, and destroy all those who came within the magic of her glance? History had its long, terrible catalogue of such women whose words are now forgotten, whose portraits leave us cold, yet whose very names still agitate the heart and fire the imagination. Was ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... most selfish and yet the most disinterested of the passions; the gentlest and yet the most terrible of impulses that can agitate the human bosom; the most ennobling and the most humble; the most enduring and the most transient; slow as the most subtle venom to its work, yet impetuous in its career as the tornado or the whirlwind; sportive as the smile of infancy, and appalling as the maniac's shriek, or the laugh of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... now is, 'Put down the rebellion! but don't tech slavery, and don't bring in the nigger!' As if, arter dogs had been killing my sheep, you should preach to me, 'Save your sheep, neighbor, but don't agitate the dog question! You mustn't tech the dogs!' I say, if the dogs begin the trouble, they must take the consequences, even ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... for you, than the establishment which will one day be mine? Come then, Alice, and since you condemn me to banishment—since you deny me a share in those stirring achievements which are about to agitate England—come! do you—for you only can—do you reconcile me to exile and inaction, and give happiness to one, who, for your sake, is willing ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... rigid furrows of his stern, hard face. The man of iron, brass, and lead became a being of flesh and blood and bones. If he happened to be standing with his back against the corner pillar motionless, a cry from Veronique would agitate him and send him flying over the mounds of iron fragments to find her; for she spent her childhood playing with the wreck of ancient castles heaped in the depths of that old shop. There were other days on which she went to play in ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... me to say more, my heart is too full: too many emotions agitate it; I should badly ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... run downwards towards Evesham, and so on almost continuously. I thought it might be caused by the passage of electricity, but I cannot get a satisfactory explanation. No trains were passing, there was no wind, the rime was not thawing or falling off, and apparently there was nothing to agitate either ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... ceased to agitate against the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. Thus Sir Nicholas Plunket had done legal battle against the first, till an express resolution excluded him by name from appearing at the bar of the council. Then Colonel Talbot (Tyrconnell) led the opposition effort for ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... it is as an application of this truth that we are about to consider the series, which is an exposition of the passions that agitate man, an initiation into imitative language. It is a poem, and at the same time it lays down rules through whose aid the self-possessed artist can regain the gesture which arises from sudden perturbation of the heart. It is ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... something like joy, a secret joy which in spite of herself was perceptible through her restlessness and her gesticulations. In our poor human nature, joy and sorrow often manifest themselves by the same symptoms; and a piece of good news will agitate us in the same way as ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... asking for further grants. Permission for forty per cent of the whole volume of water had been granted. J. Horace McFarland, as President of the American Civic Association, called Bok's attention to the matter, and urged him to agitate it through his magazine so that restrictive legislation might ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... benumbed us, while we dragged ourselves through the softened plains which evening was darkening. At one halt I saw one of those men who used to agitate at the depot to be sent to the front. He had sunk down at the foot of the stacked rifles; exertion had made him almost unrecognizable, and he told me that he had had enough of war! And little Melusson, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... of the charge against her was so firm, and so positively made, that it very much shook her friend's suspicions. When Feemy begged to be sent home, she told her not to agitate herself at present—that they would all see how she was in a day or two—and then speaking a few kind words to ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... It is of importance that they should succeed in their first trials, otherwise they will be discouraged from repeating their attempts, and they will distrust their own memory in future. The fear of not remembering, will occupy, and agitate, and weaken their minds; they should, therefore, be animated by hope. If they fail, at all events let them not be reproached; the mortification they naturally feel, is sufficient: nor should they be left to dwell upon their disappointment; they should have a fresh and easier trial given ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... manufacturing activity became paralyzed at once. Many houses of business were actually closed and abandoned, and thousands of workmen were left without the means of life. Lancashire suddenly roused itself into the resolve to agitate against the corn laws, and Manchester became the headquarters of the movement which afterward accomplished ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... of court days is becoming an old man. Talbot has been a legislative councilor for life, but it is not on record that he ever attended the council in Toronto. Still he views with high disfavor this universal discontent with "being governed." The secret meetings held to agitate for responsible government, Tom Talbot regards as "a pestilence" leading on to the worst disease from which humanity can suffer, namely, democracy. The old bear stirs uneasily in his lair, as reports ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... discussions in Congress and on the stump. The Southerners, however, would not take warning. As they saw their long ascendency in the government coming to an end, their demands rose higher. Some of them actually began to agitate for a revival of the African slave trade; and this also Douglas had to oppose. His following in the Senate was now reduced to two or three, and one of these, Broderick, of California, a brave and steadfast man, was first defeated by the Southern ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... malignants among them; and they kept in a body apart under Ker. They called themselves the protesters; and their frantic clergy declaimed equally against the king and against Cromwell. The other party were denominated resolutioners; and these distinctions continued long after to divide and agitate the kingdom. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Nicaragua and Panama routes for the interoceanic canal, a press bureau is usually an important factor in the campaign. The big navy craze and the Japan war cry can hardly be accounted for except on the theory that it has been for somebody's interest to agitate them through the press. Whenever the Naval appropriation bill comes before Congress, the Far-Eastern war-clouds threaten in thousands of newspaper sanctums, while all of us shudder at the danger of war, for the benefit of ordnance manufacturers, ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... which is led from one stall to another, and, instead of questioning him, thought only of hastening his interview with the goldsmith? If his mistress, who had left him full of anxiety from the fear that her departure would deeply agitate the blind man, should learn how indifferently he had received it! He, Gras, certainly would not betray it. Eternal gods—these artists! He knew them. Their work was dearer to their hearts than their own lives, love, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... how far children should be asked to contribute to the support of the community. In approaching it we must put aside the considerations that now induce all humane and thoughtful political students to agitate for the uncompromising abolition of child labor under our capitalist system. It is not the least of the curses of that system that it will bequeath to future generations a mass of legislation to prevent capitalists from "using up nine generations of men in one generation," as they began ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... needed timber for his fleet. The law was then that if a crow built for three successive years in a tree, the tree became the property of the Crown. This has not been rescinded, so Field please note and agitate in your country and save your beloved partridges and the eggs of our grouse. Now two green parroquets have gone shrieking joyfully past. I suppose I must believe they are wild, but it takes faith to believe they have not just escaped from a cage; they are uncommonly pretty colour, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... "Pray do not agitate yourself, Charlie. You've done a very wrong action, Margot! You really ought to have more consideration for your father: no one knows how impressionable he is. ... Please tell Mr. Flower that we do not approve ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... their own tools and raw materials—of the mines, the railways, the factories, the shipping, the land—of all those things which only have value through their labour. Let the co-operators co-operate with each other, with trade unionists, and Social Democrats for the same object. Let us all agitate, educate, and organise to form the workers of the world into a gigantic Trade Union, an International Co-operation, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... pathetic Greek incident that seems to agitate Jesus so. This group of earnest seekers, from the outside, non-Jewish world brings to Jesus a vision of the great hungry heart of the world, and of an open-mindedness to truth such as was to Him these days as a cool, refreshing drink to a dusty mouth on ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... shake like an aspen leaf; shake to its center, shake to its foundations; be the sport of the winds and waves; reel to and fro like a drunken man; move from post to pillar and from pillar to post, drive from post to pillar and from pillar to post, keep between hawk and buzzard. agitate, shake, convulse, toss, tumble, bandy, wield, brandish, flap, flourish, whisk, jerk, hitch, jolt; jog, joggle, jostle, buffet, hustle, disturb, stir, shake up, churn, jounce, wallop, whip, vellicate[obs3]. Adj. shaking ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet there was in him a mixture of that disease the nature of which eludes the most minute inquiry, though the effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation of gloomy wretchedness. From him, then, his son inherited, with some other qualities, "a vile melancholy," which, in his too strong expression of any disturbance of the mind, "made him mad all his life—at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... we get up a musical society next year," suggested Ingred. "It's impossible this term—we've too much on our hands already—but if the societies are rearranged in September, we'll agitate to let music take a much bigger place than it ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... great education question of the day. It is not easy to stir up any deep feeling about the comparative merits of the two classes of elementary schools. Most people do not care a jot whether their children go to one or the other. It is not the masses who agitate about denominational or secular teaching, but those limited classes who have some direct interest ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... no fault; none; you knew her well; but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness." Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and began with much management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame, submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet in which her most important papers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for the use of posterity by one of his most distinguished successors—to cultivate free commerce and honest friendship with all nations, but to make entangling alliances with none. A strict adherence to this policy has kept us aloof from the perplexing questions that now agitate the European world and have more than once deluged those countries with blood. Should those scenes unfortunately recur, the parties to the contest may count on a faithful performance of the duties incumbent on us as a neutral nation, and our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... familiar delights of a bacon-roast, and they turned out in such numbers that Bob had to ride a fat little carriage horse and Babbie bravely mounted the spirited mare "Lady," who had frightened her so on Mountain Day. But there was no storm this time to agitate Lady's nerves, and they kept clear of the river and the ferries; so everything went smoothly and the Moonshiners cantered up to the Club house at half past eight in ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... way, naturally stretched out his hand to steady his freight, just as if it had been a sack of corn; and, as if he had touched an electric wire, fell dead, as the story graphically says, 'by the ark of God.' What confusion and panic would agitate the joyous singers, and how their songs ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... what had happened no farther off than on the hill above them; but, seeing her excitement, and recollecting her own momentary interview with the young officer, and the forced intimacy and link that had been established between them by the kiss, he feared to agitate her further by telling her that that gay and beautiful young man had since been slain, and deposited in a bloody grave by his hands. And yet the recollection of that kiss caused a thrill of vengeful joy at the thought that the perpetrator had since expiated his offence with his life, and that ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all events, gentlemen, the respective advantages of aristocracy and democracy are a moot point. Well then, finding the question practically settled in this country, you will excuse me for not wishing to agitate it. I give you complete credit for the sincerity of your convictions; extend the same confidence to me. You are democrats; I am an aristocrat. My family has been ennobled for nearly three centuries; they ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... lighted by two petroleum lamps. The next day I saw Mignon sitting on one of the shafts of the caravan and gnawing the 'drumstick' of a fowl. The child-actress was the prop of her mother and the donkey; her talent also kept the youth, who began to agitate the nerves of Beynac with his diabolical ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... energy in time of excitement. Its decisions, if not instantly accepted, never fail to have a profound and calming influence on the public mind. It is the safety-valve of the nation. The discontents, the suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people, find there their vent, their resolution, and ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... 1883), is a much stronger document. It deals with the distribution of the National Income, giving the workers' share as 300 out of 1300 millions sterling, and demands that the workers should "educate, agitate, organise" in order to get their own. Evidently it attracted some attention, since we find that the second edition of a pamphlet "Reply" by Samuel Smith, M.P., then a person of substantial importance, was ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... TWO questions may agitate around; The one, if 'mong the brotherhood renowned, The husband, who thus felt disgraced, Should (with the usual ornaments) be placed? But I no grounds for such conclusion see: Both friend and wife were from suspicion free; Of one another they had ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... of Lahore, as well as for assistance towards defraying the cost of "political missionaries." In one of these letters also Lajpat Rai, after remarking that "the people are in a sullen mood" and that "the agricultural classes have begun to agitate," adds significantly that his "only fear is that the bursting out may not be premature." Lajpat Rai's correspondent was another prominent Arya, Bhai Parmanand, who, whilst he was Professor at the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, was found in possession of various formulae ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... book buyers. The answer is not easy, for our book buyers do not realize that they are untrained, and, even if they realized it, the task of training them in the knowledge and love of the well-made book would be difficult. But we can do at least three things: agitate—proclaim the existence of a lore to be acquired, an ignorance and its practices to be eschewed; illustrate—show the good book and the bad together, and set forth, point by point, why the good is superior; ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... "Do not agitate yourself so, Harriet, I will send Matthew directly over to the village for the doctor; but ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... by a clergyman, who appoints the teacher, and public feeling is so strong on the matter that in any neighbourhood even a small group of families of any particular denomination is always provided with a separate school of its own. Of late, indeed, opinion has begun to agitate for associating the laity with the clergy in the management of schools; but this does not indicate any desire to lessen the importance given to the part played ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... sorry when I began to descend rapidly upon the river, which at first seemed to me a white thread, afterwards a ribbon, and then a piece of cloth. As I followed the course of the river, the fear that I should have to descend into it, made me agitate the oars very rapidly. I believe that it is to these movements that I owe my being able to cross the river transversely, and get above dry land. When I saw myself upon the plain of Billancourt, I recognised the bridge of Sevres, and the road to Versailles. ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... answered, in a low voice. "Mind, you are to do or say nothing that can agitate her. You must be quiet and cheerful. If you see a change you must take care to ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... dust raised by the hurricane of his wings, overwhelmed the celestials with it. And the latter, overwhelmed with that dust, swooned away. And the immortals who guarded the amrita, blinded by that dust, could no longer see Garuda. Even thus did Garuda agitate the region of the heavens. And even thus he mangled the gods with the wounds inflicted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... above indicated, they had failed: but now a stronger and more tactful grasp was to succeed in a feat which naturally became easier every year that removed the passions of the revolutionary epoch further into the distance. Men cannot for ever perorate, and agitate and plot. A time infallibly comes when an able leader can successfully appeal to their saner instincts: and that hour had now struck. Bonaparte's appeal was made to the many, who cared not for politics, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... They, themselves, never knowingly ill-treat a dumb creature, and when they are told stories of inhuman conduct, they say in surprise, 'Why, these things surely can't exist!' You see they have never been brought in contact with them. As soon as they learn about them, they begin to agitate and say, 'We must have this thing stopped. Where is ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... your grapevine. The survivors have greater powers of resistance—a larger measure of that mysterious something we call vitality. One horse will endure hardships and exposures that will kill scores of others. What will agitate one community will not in the same measure agitate another. What will break or discourage one human heart will sit much more lightly upon another. Life introduces an element of uncertainty or indeterminateness that we do not find in the inorganic world. Bodies still ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... changeless green, and grasping close the rock, Up towers the mountain pine. The Winter blast May like an ocean surge be on it cast; Proud doth it stand, and stern defy the shock, Unchanged in verdure and unbroke in crest, Although wild throes may agitate its breast, And clinging closer when the storm is gone, Tired, but unbent upon its granite throne, Not always doth it wrestle with the storm! Skies smile; spring flowers make soft its iron roots; Its sturdy boughs are kissed by breezes ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... my steward, and very recently entered into my service, I chanced to look at him inadvertently, when my attention was arrested by seeing him rapidly change colour. I could not at the moment conceive what could thus agitate him, and making a sign for him to depart immediately upon his commission, he slowly left the room, regarding me as he went in such a manner, that I could not fail recognising him: and here, my friend, I must lay aside every particle of self-love and ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... young friend," said he, "whatever is of sufficient importance to agitate you is worthy of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... genius. Near the close of the season she appeared in Verdi's "Vepres Siciliennes," in which, we are told, "she sang magnificently and acted with extraordinary passion and vigor. At the close of the fourth act, when Helen and Procida are led to the scaffold, the conflicting emotions that agitate the bosom of the heroine were pictured with wonderful truth and intensity by Mlle. Titiens." From London the singer made a tour of the provinces, where she repeated the remarkable successes of the capital. At the various musical festivals, she created an almost unprecedented reputation ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... with you in whatever will agitate the people's ideas," wrote Caesar; "but if they start to play orators and revolutionists, and you folks come along with pedantic notions, then I for my part shall ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Hilda that he was still in an encouraging condition, and told her that she herself must keep calm, so that her recovery might be more rapid. For several days he forbade a renewal of the subject of conversation, with the intention, as he said, of sparing her every thing which might agitate her. Whether his precautions were wise or not may be doubted. Hilda sometimes troubled herself with fancies that the doctor might, perhaps, suspect all the truth; and though she succeeded in dismissing the idea as absurd, yet ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... of ten lectures which he delivered in Boston in February, 1840, on the "Present Age" gave him little pleasure. He could not warm up, get agitated, and so warm and agitate others: "A cold mechanical preparation for a delivery as decorous,—fine things, pretty things, wise things,—but no arrows, no axes, no nectar, no growling, no transpiercing, no loving, no enchantment." Because ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... "Don't agitate yourself," said Jack. "It's all serene. He is thoroughly enjoying himself. Where are you two off to? Going to sit out in the dark? Shall I come ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... general question of the reason why the Uitlander should agitate and why the Boer was obdurate. The details of the long struggle between the seekers for the franchise and the refusers of it may be quickly sketched, but they cannot be entirely ignored by any one who desires to understand the inception of that great ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... story which he tells of a certain Cornish St. Kieran. The saint with thirty of his companions, was preaching within the frontiers of a lawless pagan prince; and, disregarding all orders to be quiet or to leave the country, continued to agitate, to threaten, and to thunder even in the ears of the prince himself. Things took their natural course. Disobedience provoked punishment. A guard of soldiers was sent, and the saint and his little band were decapitated. The scene of the execution was a wood, and the heads ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... never occurred to you that she may have broken it off herself?—that besides this queer adventure with those drunken fellows there was something else to agitate her? Be just, Margaret. She came to us utterly inexperienced, even ignorant. She hasn't much mind, I'll admit, but she is innocent of wrong intent. Is it not possible that driving home he may have spoken to her in a way she could not mistake, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... reason that if you cast a stone in standing water which is near the surface of the earth, it causes many circles, and not if the water be deep in the earth? A. Because the stone, with the vehemence of the cast, doth agitate the water in every part of it, until it come to the bottom; and if there be a very great vehemence in the throw, the circle is still greater, the stone going down to the bottom causing many circles. ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... the good of the State required that they should not appear before the judges"; and they feared that by pushing the investigations farther they might bring on some great political trial that would agitate the whole west of France, always ready for an insurrection, and shown in the reports to be organised for a new Chouan outburst. It is certain that d'Ache's capture would have embarrassed Fouche seriously, and ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... him into his own room. "The general is particularly engaged," said he, "and I cannot venture to disturb him; but in five minutes I will inform him of your arrival. Meanwhile, what is the matter, Luis? What has happened thus to agitate you?" ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... continually dinning into his ears their declaration that the measure passed in favor of the Roman Catholics had not put a stop to agitation in Ireland, and that, on the contrary, O'Connell was now beginning to agitate for a repeal of the Act of Union. At that time, as at all times, the opponents of any great act of justice were eager to make out that its concession must have been an utter failure, because instead of satisfying ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sudden thin exaltation shook him like a fever chill. "I am more than a lion, Nedjma, I am a man—just as the Roumi" [Romans—i.e., Christians.] "are men—men who decide—men who undertake—agitate—accomplish ... and now, for the last time, I have decided. A fate has given thy loveliness to me, and no man shall take it away from me to enjoy. I will take it away from them instead! From all the men ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... properties had been disarmed and neutralized by the vital forces of the plant, or by the benignity of nature. If any future Shakspeare were likely to arise, it might be a problem of great interest to agitate, whether the condition of a poor man or of a gentleman were best fitted to nurse and stimulate his faculties. But for the actual Shakspeare, since what he was he was, and since nothing greater can be imagined, it is now become a matter of little moment whether his course ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... authorities; Udny and Wellesley were the first to begin action against an atrocity so long continued and so atrocious. While the Governor-Generals and their colleagues passed away, Carey and his associates did not cease to agitate in India and to stir up Wilberforce and the evangelicals in England, till the victory was gained. The very first number of the Friend of India published their essay on the burning of widows, which was thereafter quoted on both sides of the conflict, as "a powerful and convincing ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... experience of past ages is lost for the living—since the errors of progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient examples are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the tremendous scenes it has forgotten. New revolutions will agitate nations and empires; powerful thrones will again be overturned, and terrible catastrophes will again teach mankind that the laws of nature and the precepts of wisdom and truth cannot be infringed ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... agitators, they will always agitate. When one source is dried up they'll invent another. They have their living to get, and agitation is their trade. And a paying trade it is. Are they disloyal to England? I believe them Fenians at heart—that is, Fenians in the matter of loyalty. They would use any power they ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... state of the case," said Caddy. "If I ever blame myself, I still think it's Ma's fault. We are to be married whenever we can, and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won't much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is," said Caddy with a sob, "that I shall never hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr. Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the heirs of a person lynched to sue the county in which the crime is committed for from $500 to $5,000. This is the right way to do. Every state in the Union ought to be made to pay either one of these amounts. Why not let us agitate on these lines. The government can never find the offenders, but under this law they can find ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... as if about to go, but he now sat down again. Chester did not understand the strange twitching of the minister's lips or the pallor of his face. What had he said or done to agitate the ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... are for the most inflexible, stern and immovable. The passions which agitate or distract the mind, never alter its expression, nor do the highest ecstacies of which their nature is susceptible, ever relax its rigidity. With the same imperturbability of feature, they encounter death from the hand of an enemy, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... most agreeable of acquaintances, ever ready to take part in the joys as well as the anxieties of those whom she honored with her friendship, without permitting this somewhat superficial sympathy to agitate the depths of her heart, she had during her life but one veritable passion, which she admitted nobody to share with her. Her daughter, Madame de Grignan, the prettiest girl in France, clever, virtuous, business-like, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... conquered. A ridiculously false story is almost constantly followed by a charge of lying; a quarrel is the consequence; and the conversation is generally terminated with some blows of the poignard. They can never agitate even the most indifferent question, without having their eyes inflamed with rage. Fury is depicted in every the least motion, and they cannot even converse upon domestic affairs, without ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... shunned to-night any discussion of the perplexed question of fate and free will, which I attempted to agitate. 'Sir, (said he,) we know our will is free, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... programme, then I can well imagine any wise statesmen, especially if they happened to be in Opposition, thinking twice before they committed themselves to it. But if by a constructive policy is meant a definite set of principles, a clear attitude to the questions which most agitate the public mind, a sympathetic grasp of popular needs, and a readiness to indicate the extent to which, and the lines on which, you think it possible and desirable to satisfy them—then I agree that the Unionist party ought to have such a policy. And I venture to say that, if it has such a policy, ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... regard to the rivers, that the winter floods break down the drifts in the banks and agitate the auriferous detritus, thus acting as natural sluices, and cause the metal to accumulate in favourable spots; whilst on the New Zealand coast the heavy seas breaking on the shingly beach, carry off the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... misrepresentations. Thus, inwardly corroded by the venom it distills, his physical machine gets out of order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in the tribune "his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction;" sudden tremors agitate "his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively to and fro."[31150] "His bilious complexion becomes livid," his eyelids quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! "Ah," said a Montagnard, "you would have voted as we did on the 9th of Thermidor, had you seen his green eyeballs!" ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far to strengthen our public credit, which ought to be the best in the world." "The question of suffrage," he said, "is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the Nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now; and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... comrades to Sidi-bel-Abbes after the long march and a satisfactory fight with the "Deliverer," he soon received news of the lost one. With roars of derision he refused to believe in the little "corporal's" voluntary desertion, and from the first moment began to agitate. What! punish a hero for his heroism? That, in Four Eyes' vilely profane opinion, expressed with elaborate expletives in the Legion's own choicest vernacular, was what it would amount to if St. George were branded "deserter." Precisely why Max had joined Stanton's ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... coming to his aid, proves too many for the passions which agitate him; and he at length sinks into a profound slumber, not broken till the curassows send up their shrill cries—as the crowing of Chanticleer—to tell that another day is ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... refus'd "To grant her wish, and with opprobrious speech "And threats revil'd her, should she there remain. "Nor rested thus,—the lake with hands and feet "Muddy they trouble; with malicious leaps "They agitate the pool, and upward stir "From the deep bottom clouds of slimy ooze. "Anger her thirst diverted. Rage deny'd "More supplication from th' indignant dame. "Their threatening words, no more the goddess brook'd; "But raising high to heaven her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... sufficient food and clothing, but that they would have been very glad to accustom themselves to more comfortable habits if only the paternal wisdom of all the Chinese governments had not always prevented it by most severely punishing all the attempts of the workers to agitate and to unite for the purpose of giving effect to their demands. Workers who united for such purposes were treated as rebels; and the wealthy classes of China—this is their folly and their fault—have always ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... temporal and spiritual, there has been much controversy; but where the facts are all so buried and inaccessible it is unseemly to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind which Columbus himself sheltered this incident of his life. "Acquainted with poverty" is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come down to us; acquainted also with love and with happiness, it would seem, as many poor persons undoubtedly are. Enough ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... quietly. The speech from the Throne extolled the success of the Ministerial policy in Ireland and Egypt, and promised a series of useful but not exciting measures. Meanwhile the more active Members of the Liberal Party, among whom I presumed to reckon myself, began to agitate for more substantial reforms. We had entered on the fourth Session of the Parliament. A noble majority was beginning to decline, and we felt that there was no time to lose if we were to secure the ends which we desired. Knowing that I felt keenly on these subjects, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... throwing the whole weight of passion and prejudice into one scale, and leaving the other quite empty. While the blow is coming, we prepare to meet it, we think to ward off or break its force, we arm ourselves with patience to endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate ourselves with fifty needless alarms about it; but when the blow is struck, the pang is over, the struggle is no longer necessary, and we cease to harass or torment ourselves about it more than we can help. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a molehill mountain. You shouldn't let a thing like this agitate your noble nerves. Bless the dear little woman. I'll run on to Common Garden, Central Avenue, as we say in some suckles, bully the beggar for not sending it, start him, and be back for you ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... President Johnson had differed with his party as to the best method of reconstructing the State governments of the South, which had been destroyed and impoverished by the war, and the press began to agitate the question of the next President. Of course, all Union men naturally turned to General Grant, and the result was jealousy of him by the personal friends of President Johnson and some of his cabinet. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... her address to the coachman and returned home, profoundly depressed, with a desire to take to her bed, to see no one, to sleep and forget. Having shut herself up in her room, she remained there until the dinner hour, lying on a couch, benumbed, not wishing to agitate herself longer with that thought ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs, and began to ask for greater privileges, they betook themselves to the platform. Now the Boers had no objection to their forming political organizations, or holding public meetings in which they could agitate for redress of grievances. But what they did object to, and very strongly, was the blatant manner in which these Uitlanders referred to their governments and themselves. Instead of exercising the art of "gentle ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... M.—Miss Augusta's eyes have a strange, lustrous brilliancy whenever she speaks of subjects which seem to agitate the depths of her being. How and why is it that an excessive amount of feeling always finds its first expression in the eye? One kind of emotion seems to widen the pupil, another kind to contract it. TO be noticed in future, how particular emotions ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... notice of the group, and confirmed all their suspicions,—Mr. Avenel, with a serious, thoughtful face, and a slow step, approached the group. Nor did the great Roman general more nervously "flutter the dove-cots in Corioli," than did the advance of the supposed X. Y. agitate the bosoms of Lord Spendquick and his sympathizing friends. Pocket-book in hand, and apparently feeling for something formidable within its mystic recesses, step by step came Dick Avenel towards the fireplace. The group stood ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meeting of those interested in founding the People's College. Horace Greeley, Lucy Stone and herself were entertained by Mrs. Stanton. The three women were determined it should be opened to girls as well as boys. Mr. Greeley begged them not to agitate the question, assuring them that he would have the constitution and by-laws so framed as to admit women on the same terms as men, and he did as he promised, making a spirited fight. Before the college was fairly started, however, it was merged into ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... fair young mother smiled upon her children. Just the same passions crowded into human hearts that day, just the same delusions were followed, the same pleasures felt, arid the same griefs deplored on that bright day in Imperial Rome, as now agitate, or delight, or torture us who have beheld that great ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... The reign of the Stuarts indeed did much to create a more general and continuous attention to public affairs. In the strife of the Exclusion Bill and in the Popish Plot Shaftesbury taught how to "agitate" opinion, how to rouse this lagging attention, this dormant energy of the people at large; and his opponents learned the art from him. The common statement that our two great modern parties, the Whig and the Tory, date from ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... by whom they were apprehended narrowly escaped assassination at Stockport; and government immediately adopted vigorous measures for the discovery of the offenders, and to put a stop to these seditious meetings. A proclamation was issued against them; but still the reformers were resolved to agitate. Those of Manchester being informed that a meeting they had given notice of, to be held for the purpose of proceeding to the election of a representative as at Birmingham, was illegal, relinquished it; but they held another for the avowedly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... so confused as to make him do wrong. An animal, or a boy either, living in constant fear of ill-usage whether he deserves it or not, will get either so stupid or so careless, as seldom to do what is required. Think a little, and you will understand this. An angry tone and hard words agitate a dog very much. Mr. Blaine, who wrote a book about their diseases and cures, says that he has often known a dog, weakened by illness, to go into convulsions on hearing another dog violently scolded. I tell you this to explain why ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... its situation it possesses many important advantages. Standing on an isthmus, which is washed on one side by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the other by the South-sea, it might possess a powerful influence over the political events which agitate the world. A king of Spain, resident at this capital, might, in six weeks, transmit his orders to Europe, and, in three weeks, to the Philippine islands in Asia. There are, however, difficulties ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... state—in Ireland, which, owing to moral force, was no longer so, save in theory. In fact, already the majority, that is, almost the whole of Ireland, was an immense power. Its members were at liberty to combine openly, to show themselves, to speak, to write, to agitate; they were, in a word, a people, and the Protestant minority no longer ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... you Who wear a suit a year or two, Then agitate for something new, Look at Regina, the patrician! Her cleverness is more than gold Who so transforms from fabrics old The things a marvel to behold, ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... one or two instances, prove fatal; but I suspect that the world has grown more wicked, or the human heart less susceptible, for I doubt whether there is any body now alive who has ever experienced a sufficient degree of pleasure at once to do more than agitate the nerves ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... of life!" cried Palla, turning to look around her at the agitated audience. "The only law in the world worth obedience is the Law of Love and of Service! No other laws amount to anything. Under that law every problem you agitate here is already solved. There is no injustice that cannot be righted under it! There is no aspiration ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Distracted as you naturally are with all these unexpected and terrible events, you must recognize the truth that you are in no condition to take upon you the care of your son now. He would not know you, I fear, yet your voice might agitate him fatally. I do not forbid you to see him, but I do forbid that you should speak to him now, and I shall not answer for the ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... to his new townsfolk, as he told his wife, "and so increasing the circle of our present trade, don't ye understand?"—for another, he was as keen as the keenest that the railway should come and enhance the value of his property. "We must agitate," he cried, when Sandy Toddle murmured a doubt whether anything they could do would be of much avail. "It's not settled yet what road the line's to follow, and who knows but a trifle may turn the scale in our behalf? Local opinion ought to be ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... of course as applicable to them, as to any of the more complex sounds in which consonants are joined with them. All sounds imply time; because they are the transient effects of certain percussions which temporarily agitate the air, an element that tends to silence. When mighty winds have swept over sea and land, and the voice of the Ocean is raised, he speaks to the towering cliffs in the deep tones of a long quantity; the rolling ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to the total income of Great Britain, and the manner in which it is at present distributed. Labour was represented as getting less than one-fourth of the whole, and the labourers were informed that if they would but "educate themselves, agitate, and organise," the remaining three-fourths would automatically pass into their possession. This document, it is true, was issued some twenty years ago;[4] but that the form which socialism takes, when addressed to the masses of the population, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... his every movement was watched; he could not hope to leave Rome without being stopped and interrogated. If he desired to carry out Leander's project—and he desired it the more ardently the longer he reflected—his only course was this. Why did it agitate him more than his treachery hitherto? Why did he shake and perspire when he left Pelagius, after promising to bring Veranilda to Rome? He knew not himself—unless it were due to a fear that he ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... of all control over the subject of African slavery, are you agitated in relation to it? With Pharisaical pretension it is sometimes said it is a moral obligation to agitate, and I suppose they are going through a sort of vicarious repentance for other men's sins. [Laughter.] Who gave them a right to decide that it is a sin? By what standard do they measure it? Not the Constitution; ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... free citizens, have the absolute right to agree or disagree with the present laws regulating suffrage; and if we want more people brought in as partakers in government, or some people who are already in, barred out, we have a right to organize, to agitate, to do our best to change the laws. Powerful organizations of women are now agitating for the right to vote; there is an organization which demands the suffrage for Chinese and Japanese who wish to become citizens. It is even conceivable that a society might be founded to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... which somewhat astonished Ronald, accustomed to the more phlegmatic temperaments of the north. He tried to comfort him, but in vain, and when the surgeon came he intimated to Ronald that he had better leave him, as talking to a stranger seemed to agitate him ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... solid, more steady in their opinions, than any people I ever had the fortune to see. [This is pretty well laid on, though, for a new beginner.] But if there should ever come a time when the propagation of those doctrines should agitate the public mind, I am sure for every one of your Lordships, that no attack will be made on the constitution, from which it is truly said that we derive all our prosperity, without raising every one of your Lordships to its support It will then be found that there is no difference among us, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... diminish, her vital energy ebb away to other lands; as a market for our goods and as a source of revenue for Imperial purposes she must remain undeveloped and unprogressive. She will continue rightly to agitate for Home Rule, and this agitation will always be baneful both to her and to us. It will distract her energies from her own economic and social problems. It will embitter and degrade our politics, and dislocate our Parliamentary institutions. She must suffer, we must suffer, the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... it has been full two minutes, by my watch, since I caught the last beam from your eye. Let us forget the idle wranglings of the hour, and compose our minds to the great subjects which agitate eternity. One of those insects which infest ancient church edifices has been hovering about Captain Keeler's mouth. It has been drawn in. It has disappeared. Such are we, hovering on the vortex of eternity. How calm and undisturbed the old captain's face! how utterly unconscious of the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... a sermon on Foreign Missions, an unusually large contribution was taken up. In the afternoon, he listened to another sermon, by a brother, on Home Missions, and the subject became so important that he was led closely to agitate the question how much he should himself give to the cause. "I was, indeed, in a great strait between charity and necessity. I felt desirous to contribute; but, there I was, on a journey, and I had given so much in the morning that I really feared I had no more money ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... the manager of the main mill that there was to be a meeting of workers to agitate for a strike for higher pay. A French-Canadian who had worked in the mills of Maine and who was a red- hot socialist was the cause of it. He had only been in the mills for about three months and had spent his spare time inciting well-satisfied ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... why agitate for Woman's Suffrage, if trifles like these are to obstruct a girl's path ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... Pasha had finally the usual effect on the Cretans, and they began to agitate for a petition to the Sultan, a procedure which time had shown to be absolutely useless as an appeal against the governor; and, while the agitation was in this embryonic condition, I decided to go back to Rome and get my wife and children. We were still in the state of siege by the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... rises up the smoke of the warriors, a delight to the Lord the Giver of Life; the shield-flower spreads abroad its leaves, marvelous deeds agitate the earth; here is the place of the fatal flowers of death which cover ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... man, but quite mistaken there. You see, my heart never beats fast, but when I am agitated, and I was out of breath this morning with the stairs—O dear! [Places his hand to his heart.] Thou dost agitate me, girl—but there is no disease here—no! no! I am very ill—but ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... from his father and his murderer, that help which it was beyond the power of one of earth to give. The changes in the poor child's countenance showed that it had few minutes to live. Sometimes it lay so still I thought the last pang was over; when a slight convulsion would agitate its frame, and a momentary pressure of its little hands, would give the gasping father a short ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... she believed herself the least in love with Wilton Brown, but she felt that she COULD love him, and that feeling was quite enough. It was enough, while she fancied that he was Lord Sherbrooke, to agitate her with joy and hope; and, though the mistake lasted but a short time, the feelings that it produced were sufficient to effect a change in all her sensations towards him through life. During the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... financiers there. A considerable number of them are fat men. Because thinkers and workers cannot appreciate financial value, many of them complain loudly because the fat man sits in an easy chair and reaps the profits from their efforts. They restlessly agitate for an economic system which will yield them all the profits from their ideas and labor. They want to eliminate the capitalist—to condemn the fat man to a choice between scholarship or working as they work and ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... portion of the situation; they sufficed; it was useless to persist; it was obvious that the working-class districts would not rise; we must turn to the side of the tradesmen's districts, renounce our attempt to rouse the extremities of the city, and agitate the centre. We were the Committee of Resistance, the soul of the insurrection; if we were to go to the Faubourg St. Antoine, which was occupied by a considerable force, we should give ourselves up to Louis ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Socratic Dialogues. But neither in them, nor in the Apology, nor in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, does Socrates express any doubt of the fundamental truths of morality. He evidently regards this 'among the multitude of questions' which agitate human life 'as the principle which alone remains unshaken.' He does not insist here, any more than in the Phaedo, on the literal truth of the myth, but only on the soundness of the doctrine which is contained in it, that doing wrong is worse than suffering, and that a man should be rather than ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... heart, that when the truth was spoken for the purpose of deceiving, it was little better than a lie in disguise. But it was no time to agitate ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... against the warmer days Be sent to Quilca down to graze; Where mirth, and exercise, and air, Will soon your appetite repair: The nutriment will from within, Round all your body, plump your skin; Will agitate the lazy flood, And fill your veins with sprightly blood. Nor flesh nor blood will be the same Nor aught of Stella but the name: For what was ever understood, By human kind, but flesh and blood? And if your flesh and blood be new, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift |
