"Agitating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by no means solely to blame for unhealthy working conditions. A shortsighted employee is as anxious to work overtime for double pay as a shortsighted employer is to have him. Among those who are agitating for an eight-hour day are many who, from self-interest or interest in the cause, work regularly from ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know that department of philosophy which is called the investigation of nature; to know the causes of things, and why a thing is and is created or destroyed appeared to me to be a lofty profession; and I was always agitating myself with the consideration of questions such as these:—Is the growth of animals the result of some decay which the hot and cold principle contracts, as some have said? Is the blood the element with which we think, or the air, or the fire? or ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... old woman, had come in search of him. Aubrey could no longer support himself; his rage not finding vent, had broken a blood-vessel, and he was conveyed to bed. This was not mentioned to his sister, who was not present when he entered, as the physician was afraid of agitating her. The marriage was solemnized, and the bride and ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... own act have made them strangers to the republic?' Such reasonable and liberal sentiments were combated by members who asserted that the signatures could not belong to law-abiding citizens, since they were actually agitating against the law of the franchise, and others whose intolerance was expressed by the defiance of the member already quoted, who challenged the Uitlanders to come out and fight. The champions of exclusiveness and racial hatred won the day. The memorial ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... silent flight made a sad impression upon the heart of the looker-on. "Here I am, then, at the bottom of the river," again thought Lavretsky. "And here life is always sluggish and still; whoever enters its circle must resign himself to his fate. Here there is no use in agitating oneself, no reason why one should give oneself trouble. He only will succeed here who traces his onward path as patiently as the plougher traces the furrow with his plough. And what strength there ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... you are; nothing will come right until you drop your insincere chatter, your haggling, your agitating and compromising, and begin to think. Here is a people that has lost the basis of its existence, because, in its blind faith in authority, it staked that existence on prosperity and power; and both are gone. Do you want to stake ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... of the peace. Orkhan excused his son, saying that it was not force of arms which had opened the gates of the towns of the Greek empire, but the divine will manifested by the earthquake. The Emperor made representations that he was not agitating to know whether it was by the gates or by the breaches that Suleiman had penetrated into the places in question, but whether or not he possessed them legitimately. Orkhan then asked a delay for reflection, and subsequently ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... developed, by drawing over a subject veil after veil of suggestion. His native temperament aided him in his research after the symbol. He was naturally a cultivator of terror, one who loved to people the world with strange and indefinable powers. His dreams were innocent and agitating, occupied with supernatural terrors, weighed upon by the imminence of shadowy presentments. He trembled at he knew not what; in this he was related to the earliest poets of the world, and in his perpetual recurrence to ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... rubbed my cheeks with the brushes, and kissed the palette. Ah, could I be let loose in the House of Lords!' In the absence of commissions, he now turned to lecturing as a means of support. He lectured in Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham, as well as in London, and did good service by agitating for the establishment of local schools of design, and by arousing in the minds of the wealthy middle classes some faint appreciation ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... ruffians, and spirited away, for behoof of those treacherous Courts:" so that Friedrich Wilhelm fell into a gloom of melancholy, and for long weeks "never slept but with a pair of loaded pistols under his pillow:"—of this Clement, an adroit Phenomenon of the kind, and intensely agitating to Friedrich Wilhelm;—whom Friedrich Wilhelm had at last to lay hold of, try, this very year, and ultimately hang, [Had arrived in Berlin, "end of 1717;" stayed about a year, often privately in the King's company, poisoning the royal mind; withdrew to the Hague, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... agitating the upper air, and the thunderous echoes reverberated through the mountains, the work on the plain went rapidly forward. However the scholars and the theologians might decide the questions at issue ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... within what the land will pay. For thirty months many hundreds of them, thanks to Mr. Balfour, have enjoyed an additional income of fifteen shillings a week, but they have not paid their rents any better than before. They have so many people agitating for them, both here and in England, that whatever they do or fail to do, they know they are sure of substantial support. While Irishmen only were working for them, they felt less secure, but now Mr. Gladstone and his following have ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... questions agitating the public mind I will always express my views to Congress and urge them according to my judgment, and when I think it advisable will exercise the constitutional privilege of interposing a veto to defeat measures which I oppose; but ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... passed the year I come out, made it rayther difficult gitting hold o' land, about which thar war a great deal o' disputing; and which war kept up till the commissioners came out and settled the matter; and so while this war agitating, I took my family to Boonesborough, whar they remained, excepting Isaac, who went along with me, until we'd got all matters fixed for moving 'em here. But as you've axed considerable many questions, pray may I know ef you're ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... of Lophiads or "anglers," not unfrequent on the English coast; which conceal themselves in the mud, displaying only the erectile ray, situated on the head, which bears an excrescence on its extremity resembling a worm; by agitating which, they attract the smaller fishes, that ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... be not a record of actual conversation, it is an embodiment of a most wonderful ideality. The eternity of God, the grandeur of Nature, the profundity of the soul, move in silent panorama before you. The great and agitating problems of human existence are depicted with astonishing energy and precision, and marvellous is the conduct of the piece to us who behold it as a painting away back on the dark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... aether, resembles a tuning-fork sending its pulses through the air. Let us look for a moment at this thrilling medium, and briefly consider its relation to the bodies whose vibrations it conveys. Different bodies, when heated to the same temperature, possess very different powers of agitating the aether: some are good radiators, others are bad radiators; which means that some are so constituted as to communicate their atomic motion freely to the aether, producing therein powerful undulations; while the atoms of others are unable thus ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... lessons. Rose and Deborah came and went. Coffee was served. The parson was again left to Miss Keene, who would not be pumped for confidences, further than to admit that Mary was keeping her room with a headache, in consequence of the agitating visit of Captain Carey, but laboriously talked parish to him, without appearing to know anything of the subject. So the poor man actually became so bored that he changed his mind about staying for the night. He remembered that there was a good ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the scene which I have just mentioned, Lord Glenfallen having, as usual, early retired to his study, I was left alone in the parlour to amuse myself as best I might. It was not strange that my thoughts should often recur to the agitating scenes in which I had recently taken a part; the subject of my reflections, the solitude, the silence, and the lateness of the hour, as also the depression of spirits to which I had of late been a constant prey, tended to produce that nervous excitement which places us wholly at the mercy of the ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... confirmation of his title to liberty had been sought. That great and good man displayed, in every debate, the generosity of his temper: always the enemy of despotism, every form of oppression called him into action, and the emancipists were largely indebted to his eloquence. After long delay, this agitating question was settled, but with a reservation of serious moment. The new law[131] confirmed all the pardons granted in New South Wales, with the rights they included; rendering them of full effect when they ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... comprehend the signification of her words; but as this had occurred on other occasions, and with other persons, she felt no surprise at the circumstance, attributing it, as was natural, to her own extreme cultivation and philological proficiency. She therefore smiled, and still gently agitating the fan before ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... day witnessing it, under a scorching sun, on foot, and in every description of vehicle from a corn-cart to a coroneted carriage. Yes, the review was very fine to the mass; but it was only a confused, hollow, agitating play to Chrissy as to Bourhope. Still she lost sight of the grand general rank and file, by concentrating her regard on one little scarlet dot. It was to her a play with its heart a-wanting, and yet the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... couple sank down on their knees beside me. I left them, and beckoned from the door to Tom, who flew up, and in a moment was in their arms. I assisted him to put his mother into her chair, and then went out to recover myself from the agitating scene. I remained about an hour outside, and then returned. The old couple seized me by the hands, and invoked blessings ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the fact of so many treacherous ledges and reefs to be navigated safely in a four-knot tide that was agitating the half-dozen "guests" at Mis' Shannon's boarding-house. It need hardly be said that Mis' Shannon was a widow, but her distinction lay in being called mis' instead ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... The first agitating question upon marriage is that of residence. Happily Randolph and Constance were agreed upon this point. Both were indifferent to the city; both were lovers of the country. Randolph had once read a certain sweet pastoral termed "Liberty and ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... greater delicacy and difficulty, was the part taken by the Catholic clergy. On my arrival in America, I found a fierce contest agitating, dividing and enfeebling the Irish-American population. It was asserted on one side that the entire failure was attributable to the Catholic priests, and that in opposing the liberation of Ireland they acted in accordance with some recognised ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... agitating questions to be brought forward. Herbert had behaved very fairly well ever since the escapade of the pied rook; the lad kept his promise as to betting faithfully in his uncle's absence, and though it had not been renewed, ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most lovers of its music. I never gaze upon its restless waves, nor hear the sound of their ripple on the sands, or their thunder on the rocks without being reminded of one episode in my life peculiarly agitating to remember; but perhaps when I have told it to you, you may have power to exercise the restless spirit which rises in ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... difficulty. It may, however, be resolved by saying that the very violent and rapid motion of the subtle matter which renders water liquid, by agitating the particles of which it is composed, maintains this liquidity in spite of the pressure which hitherto any one has been minded to apply ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... flight before the maddened animal. When he reached the bank, and sprang into the river, the infuriated beast was scarcely six feet behind him. Towards evening, after the day's labour in wood-cutting was over, some of the men went fishing. They followed the common African custom of agitating the water, by giving it a few sharp strokes with the top of the fishing-rod, immediately after throwing in the line, to attract the attention of the fish to the bait. Having caught nothing, the reason assigned was the same as would have been given ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... diamonds and surmounted by a white plume. He kept his eye constantly on his master, and, for reasons with which the reader is not unacquainted, was, among Leicester's numerous dependants, the one who was most anxious that his lord's strength and resolution should carry him successfully through a day so agitating. For although Varney was one of the few, the very few moral monsters who contrive to lull to sleep the remorse of their own bosoms, and are drugged into moral insensibility by atheism, as men in extreme agony are lulled by opium, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... lot of the slave, accounting for his tendency to escape from bondage, the traffic in human flesh, the free people of color, the colonization movement in the South, and abolition in the North. This chapter culminates in a discussion of the efforts of William Lloyd Garrison, the agitating editor of the Liberator, of Wendell Phillips, the abolition orator, of Prudence Crandall, the sacrificing worker, and of Elijah Lovejoy, the martyr in the cause. Prof. Channing does not go into details as to the achievements of the abolitionists. His account ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... diverse strata, lie the great tragedies, produced while he was in the very rush and swirl of town life, and reflecting accurately, as we have seen, many of the doubts and speculations that were agitating the minds of men who were ardently searching out truth. It is worth noting too, in passing, that directly Shakspere steps out of his beaten path to depict, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," the happy country life and manners of his day, he at the same time returns ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... questions, which are agitating us to-day, have agitated the world ever since it has been a world of life at all. The difference is that whereas we seek to deal with them consciously, voluntarily, and deliberately, throughout by far the greater part of the world's life they have been ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... decided on immediate marriage. Sophia had recovered from her invalidism, and the lifelong headache she had experienced disappeared. It remained only to inform Madam Hawthorne of the engagement which had been so long concealed. He felt some trepidation, since, he says, "almost every agitating circumstance of her life had cost her a fit of illness." But his fears were groundless; she came out of her chamber to meet him as soon as he arrived, looking better and more cheerful than usual, and full of kindness. "Foolish me," he writes happily to Sophia, "to doubt that my mother's ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... a mile out there is a sort of boiling, agitating the surface of the sea, and showing some deep trouble in the waters. I was then near the rail on the starboard quarter, and, smoking my cigar, was looking at the harbor disappearing behind the point round ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the exuberant honour of agitating the communicator of the ingress door, that the maid may receive the information that some attendant individuals are leisurely waiting at the exterior of the mansion to propose their interrogatories after the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... But both Ropes and the corporal passed him without a suspicion of what was agitating him; and he felt immensely relieved when they returned up the stairs, and ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... laying out East Bridgeport, he was the author of the improvements on the water-front known as Seaside Park. The idea of such a thing occurred to him first in 1863, when he rode over the ground and observed its fitness for the purpose. He then began agitating the matter, and urging the immediate acquirement by the city of land for a park and public drive-way along the margin of the Sound. It was necessary, he represented, to do it at once, before the natural ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 1854 he was employed on the Boston Journal. Many of the editorials upon the Kansas-Nebraska struggle were from his pen. His style of composition was developed during these years when great events were agitating the public mind. It was a period which demanded clear, comprehensive, concise, statements, and words that meant something. His articles upon the questions of the hour were able and trenchant. One of the leading newspapers of Boston down to 1856 was ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... the garrison by entering at that late hour, he obtained an indifferent lodging in the town for the night, and determined to go to the Castle early on the succeeding morning. He was not sorry thus to gain a few hours of solitude, to think over the agitating events ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... husbands. Coaches dashed by and the occupants cast up eyes and hands. The gay life of Nevis pulsed unheeded about the high walls, whose gates were always locked. The kinsman of the leading families of the Island and the most beautiful daughter of old John and Mary Fawcett were a constant and agitating theme, but two people lived their life of secluded and poignant happiness, and took Nevis or St. Kitts ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... frustration gave added eagerness to his desire that the great opportunity he sought should not be deferred. The desire was eager in him on another ground; he trembled lest his memory should go again. Whether from the agitating presence of that fear, or from some other causes, he had twice felt a sort of mental dizziness, in which the inward sense or imagination seemed to be losing the distinct forms of things. Once he had attempted to enter the Palazzo Vecchio and make his way into ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... of suffrage is now agitating the public mind, it is the hour for woman to make her demand. Propositions already have been made on the floor of Congress to so amend the Constitution as to exclude women from a voice in the government. As this would be to turn the wheels ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to the other German centres of learning as his desires prompted him. Always the same independent and rebellious spirit that he had shown himself as a boy, he sympathized warmly with the democratic movements then agitating Switzerland and the Rhine provinces, and devoted both his purse and his pen to aid the anti-oligarchic and anti-clerical party. In 1848 he had intended to go back to England, but in the spring of that year a slight wound received while dissecting infused a poison into his system that undermined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... sense, will be variously answered according to each man's variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect of sudden death there is, one modification, upon which no doubt can arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the most agitating—viz., where it surprises a man under circumstances which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, flying, inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sudden as the danger which it affronts must be any effort ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... went to my aunt's house at Hartfield, in Sussex, and as soon as we had made the move safely he went on to Moor Park for a fortnight's water-cure. I can recall now how on his return I could hardly bear to have him in the room, the expression of tender sympathy and emotion in his face was too agitating, coming fresh upon me ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... abruptly, went to the window, and looked gloomily into the garden. Clearly something was agitating his consciousness, something that needed deciding. Kirsha quietly walked up to him, stepping softly upon the white, warm floor with his sunburnt graceful feet, high in instep, and with long, beautiful, well-formed toes. He touched his father ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... and thoughts prevailing in the tap-room were not in tune with those agitating our hearts, and as soon as Captain Falconer and his friend came in, we took our leave, exchanging a purposely careless greeting with the newcomers. We turned in silence from the road, crossed a little sparsely wooded hill, and ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... he speaks up then. He was a young man. Old Doctor Park had died the year before, and this was a young fellow just out of college. 'Mrs. Miller is not strong,' says he, kind of severe, 'and she is quite right in not agitating herself.' ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... respectable note-shavers,[142] to croak against the march of intellect, and shake public confidence in the prosperity of their great country,[143] to ally themselves with fanatic abolitionists, and introduce agitating political questions into the pulpit; crying, Woe to him that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work.[144] To crown all, they organized abolition clubs to procure immediate emancipation, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... answer, but went on with what I was doing; scooping up the gravel and sand, and agitating my hand till the light sand was washed away and only the stones remained. It was in imitation of what I had seen Gunson and Quong do scores of times, and in the idlest of moods that I did this, partly, I think, because the water felt cool and pleasant to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... was no fear of her doing so if he could help it! He was more than willing to follow this receipt. Indeed, there was something about her so agitating and alluring that he knew in his heart all men would feel the same towards her in a more or less degree, and wild jealousy coursed through his veins ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... multifarious and painful meditations were agitating his perturbed mind, Dr. Cavendish found repose on a couch; and Pembroke Somerset, resolving once more to try the influence of entreaty on the hitherto generous spirit of his father, with mingled hope and despondence ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... instructor, or met the wistful eye and hearty grasp of parting schoolfellows, and ancient dames, and obliging servants, you will easily discover how embarrassing a task it must be to depict in words the agitating sensations which at such a moment spread their varied influence over the mind. I had taken care to secure the box seat of the old Oxford, that on my approach I might enjoy an uninterrupted view of the classic ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... saw what I must soon prepare for, I did not tease them any more with questions, but tried not to give way, and endeavoured to keep up as long as it would be of consequence to him; for even after all hope was gone and the disorder increased rapidly, I felt that if by agitating him I should afterwards imagine I had shortened his life by one hour, that reflection would embitter my whole life. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I succeeded even better than I could have hoped; ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... that potatoes contain too much mucilage in proportion to their starch, which prevents them from being converted into good bread. But that if the starch be collected from ten pounds of raw potatoes by grating them into cold water, and agitating them, as above mentioned; and if the starch thus procured be mixed with other ten pounds of boiled potatoes, and properly subjected to fermentation like wheat flour, that it will make as good bread as the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... contribute if possible to the relief of your Majesty from embarrassment, and the protection of the public interests from injury, is induced to make this confidential communication to your Majesty explanatory of his position and intentions with regard to the great question which is now agitating the public mind. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... have become, irked by the placid routine of Senior Common-Room existence, and yearned for adventure. So he came to London, and got his first dose of it as a labour-agitator and backer of strikes. I suppose that the atmosphere of labour-agitating and strike-backing is skilfully conveyed (that of Oxford donship undoubtedly is), but I can't tell you how antique it all seems. These scornful quotations from an imaginary Capitalist press and the fierce denial that industrial strife was ever assisted by foreign agencies—it all sounds like a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... had been agitating. He had not visited the penitentiary, but he had sent a copy of the illustrious letter to the chaplain of that institution, and accompanied it with—apparently inquiries. He got an answer, dated four days later than that other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strange, however much it may be regretted, that such an exuberance of enterprise should cause some individuals to mistake change for progress and the invasion of the rights of others for national prowess and glory. The former are constantly agitating for some change in the organic law, or urging new and untried theories of human rights. The latter are ever ready to engage in any wild crusade against a neighboring people, regardless of the justice of the enterprise and without looking at the fatal consequences to ourselves and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... good match, and that he's your ideal of what a son-in-law ought to be. All the same, it was Cuthbert's idea to stow the things away in the cottage, and it was his motor that brought them. He was only doing it to help his friend Pegginson, you know—the Quaker man, who is always agitating for a smaller Navy. I forget how he got involved in it. I warned you that there were lots of quite respectable people mixed up in it, didn't I? That's what I meant when I said it would be impossible for old Betsy to ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... prophetic. Thus: "Never at the beginning of great periods in history was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it apparent that slavery can and must be abolished; it has set every press and every tongue in the land to agitating the subject of slavery, and has made the pillars of that institution to rock and reel. It has diminished the value of slave stock. Two hundred million dollars, says a Southern paper, John Brown destroyed that Sunday night, and has led how many families to look for a speedy ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... Oregonians place their main reliance on their agricultural interests. The yield of wheat is said to be not only double per acre that of the Atlantic States, but it is a never-failing crop. The people in Oregon City are agitating the subject of a railroad to connect the Willamette Valley with the Columbia river, at some point accessible to large vessels. It is estimated that the whole cost will only be about $500,000, which it is proposed to raise in one thousand shares of $500 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... of the Revolution of September, 1870, to military or political activity. The only form of literature which had power to attract young writers was the novel, which they could fill with the description of all the passions then agitating the public mind. That a man of real intellectual strength should then give his undivided attention to pure literature seemed a most unlikely phenomenon; but all had to acknowledge that the unlikely had happened, soon after Ferdinand Brunetiere had become the regular literary critic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... for the first time in forty years, he fell upon his knees—upon his knees! Indeed, the doctor found him so at midnight, when he came with a request from his daughter to come to her room. The doctor, with a word of warning against agitating the sufferer, wisely retired from the solemn reconciliation which, without knowing the circumstances, he knew was to take place between father and child. She was propped up upon pillows whose texture her flesh rivaled in whiteness. She opened ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... would be a fine subject for an Oriental poem. The details are dramatic and noble, and could be grandly touched by a fine artist. If the mother had borne a daughter, the child would have been safe; that perplexity might be pathetically depicted as agitating the bosom of the young wife about to become a mother. A son is born: you can see her despair and the pitiful look she casts on the child, and the way in which she hugs it every time the curtains of her door are removed. The Sultan hesitated probably; he allowed the infant to ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chastise me in what I love, for I have greater fear of that than of any other evil. * * * In a few weeks it must be decided whether I shall be made Envoy here or stay at Reinfeld. The Austrians at Berlin are agitating against my appointment, because my black-and-white is not sufficiently yellow for them; but I hardly believe they will succeed, and you, my poor dear, will probably have to jump into the cold water of diplomacy; and the boy, unlucky wight that he is, will have a South-German ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... impossibilities having been duly noted by Monsieur Popinot, by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to examine every detail, by the public prosecutor himself, and by the sergeant of the gendarmerie at Nanterre, this murder became an agitating mystery, in which the Law and the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... wished for anything that morning. The wish about the Red Indians had not stuck in anyone's head. It was a most anxious morning. Everyone was trying to remember what had been wished for, and no one could, and everyone kept expecting something awful to happen every minute. It was most agitating; they knew from what the Psammead had said, that they must have wished for something more than usually undesirable, and they spent several hours in most agonizing uncertainty. It was not till nearly dinner-time that Jane tumbled over The Last of the Mohicans,—which ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... He had never pretended to be a match for her in words. But the agitating incident seemed to have lifted him temporarily at least out of the nether depths of his depression, for although he talked little at dinner he appeared to eat with more relish. As he settled himself ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... what he was doing, the arid futility of every bit of the web of small details which, in their sum, were his life, flowed upon his soul like stagnant water forced into movement by some horrible machinery. He was like something agitating in a vast void, something whose incessant movements produced no effect, had no sort of relation to anything. In his loneliness of the cities he had begun to lose that self-respect which belongs to all happy Englishmen of his ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... upon as possible, would shake his head and say: "We can't wish it prolonged," and then Charlotte caught Ernest unawares and said: "You know, dear Ernest, that these ups and downs of talk are terribly agitating to papa; he could stand whatever comes, but it is quite too wearing to him to think half-a- dozen different things backwards and forwards, up and down in the same twenty-four hours, and it would be kinder of you not to do it—I mean not to say ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... is directing its exclusive exertions against slavery. "Are there not other great interests?" ask all manner of Whig and Democrat editors and politicians. "Consider, for instance," say the Democrats, "the mighty question which is agitating us, whether a 'Northern man with Southern principles' or a Southern man with the principles of a Nero or Caligula shall be President." "Or look at us," say the Whigs, "deprived of our inalienable right to office ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... at this great man's last departure from England. For the Sun on that day at the 6th hour shrouded his glorious face, as the poets say, in hideous darkness agitating the hearts of men by an eclipse; and on the 6th day of the week early in the morning there was so great an earthquake that the ground appeared absolutely to sink down; an horrid noise being first heard beneath ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... full knowledge of this arrangement, with the knowledge that we were in arms and agitating for our rights, the Government Commission handed to us a resolution by the Executive Council, of which ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... young chieftain from place to place expressed, in their variety and rapidity, the restlessness that was agitating his mind. He glanced back frequently from the warriors around him to the remote and opposite quarter of the suburbs, occasionally directing his eyes towards the western horizon, as if anxiously awaiting the approach of some particular hour ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... was full of many and somewhat agitating thoughts. She went upstairs with a restless haste, which she would have been the first to condemn, to the room where the others were congregated, when they had laid Mr. May on his bed with no small difficulty, and ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... went on debating and dividing in the House, agitating and lecturing all over the country, for some years without any marked Parliamentary success following their endeavors. An immense and overwhelming majority always voted against them in the House of Commons. They ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... down in the chair and her head drooped fainting to one hand. There was something in the scent of the various plants blossoming around that reminded her of that wedding-morning when the air was literally burthened with like fragrance. She was about to see her husband for the first time since that agitating day, to see him thus, crouching as a spy among those delicate plants, her heart beat heavily, she loathed herself for the seeming meanness that had been forced upon her. Yet there was misgiving at her heart—a vague, sickening apprehension that chained ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... before us. Scarcely another artistic personality was as largely upon us. There were pictures, on the walls of music-rooms, of gray-bearded, helmeted warriors holding mailed blonde women in their arms, of queens with golden ornaments on their arms leaning over parapets and agitating their scarves, of women throwing themselves into the sea upon which ghastly barks were dwindling, of oldish men and young girls conversing teasingly through a window by a lilac-bush, that were Wagner. There were books with stories of magical swans and ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... less agitating Ann had not failed to observe that the thread about the messenger's wing was not of the kind that Master Simon used. But her eyes opened wide as they fell on the handwriting, and still wider as ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... touch, like the beam of a scales. This being done, say to your audience: "Here is a pipe placed on the edge of a goblet; now the question is to make it fall without touching it, without blowing against it, without touching the glass, without agitating the air with a fan, and without ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... enjoyed Stanley Weyman's A Gentleman of France will be engrossed and captivated by this delightful romance of Italian history. It is replete with exciting episodes, hair-breath escapes, magnificent sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian history when Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous Borgias ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... dreamed of before, and a lot of things, too." Sofya lit another cigarette, turning the kind glance of her gray eyes on the mother. "Yes, you speak of arranging an escape. But how will he be able to live as a fugitive?" The mother finally gave expression to the thought that was agitating her. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... thought, is the most beautiful species of idealism in our day. 'Tis finely manifested in Wallenstein, where the two common men sum up their superficial observations on the life and doings of Wallenstein, and show that, not until this agitating crisis, have they caught any idea of the deep thoughts which shaped that hero, who has, without their feeling ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... you have read on sex information, no matter what question is agitating your mind, the information given in this wonderful book will solve your problem. Dr. Robinson not only gives a full treatise on the delicate formation of woman's wonderful body, but he also explains ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... a plot, then?" inquired Ishmael, with forced calmness, for he wished quietly to draw out the woman's story without agitating and confusing her. "There ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... relief was tempered by a mild element of self-reproach. She had been agitating herself about nothing—allowing her uneasiness about Molly to become a perfect obsession, leading her into the wildest imaginings. Here had she been disquieting herself the entire afternoon because Molly had not ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... strong antipathy to violence of every kind, Dana would naturally have found his place amongst the men who in politics prefer orderly and regular and especially respectable associations. He came into active life when a small band of earnest men and women were agitating for the abolition of slavery. Some among them were also attacking the church, and proposing all sorts of changes in society. But Dana was a man of strong religious principles and feelings, and he had little faith in any violent change in the social order. His diaries and letters ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... castings. It was in consequence of this difficulty that many makers resorted to the addition of hematite pigs. The Bessemer process was used much more extensively upon the Continent than in this country in the manufacture of castings. It seemed likely that Mr. Allen's agitator for agitating the steel in the ladle so as to remove the gases would be taken up largely for open-hearth castings and open-hearth mild steel, as it had a wonderful effect. The Wilson gas producer, working in conjunction ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... when two parties, loud, restless and violent, each with plausible declarations, and both perhaps without any distinct determination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections.... They had a perceptible influence on the conversation of the time, and taught the frolic and the gay to unite merriment with decency, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... and the Crichtons had failed to make either Jane or Elsie take any interest in a theological dispute on a point of doctrine between some neighbouring ministers which was agitating all Swinton at the time; and when at last Jane was forced to give an opinion on one side or the other, she gave it quite on the contrary side from the right one, so that they were sure the girls were quite as bad ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... routes why not palm off their vessels upon the Government? A highly favorable time it was; the Government, under the imperative necessity of at once raising and transporting a huge army, needed vessels badly. As for the other question momentarily agitating the capitalists as to what new line of activity they could substitute for their own extinguished business, Vanderbilt soon showed how railroads could be made to yield a far greater ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the caution of the Mosstrooper, even in that agitating moment! How good it is, and how wonderfully ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... of aerial navigation seems at present to be agitating as many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not many years ago, or the philosopher's stone at a more remote period. It possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the danger connected with the experiments—the source, we suppose, of the eagerness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... purposes. One of the most important derivatives of hypochlorous acid is bleaching powder. Sodium hypochlorite can be prepared by the electrolysis of brine solution in the presence of carbon electrodes, having no diaphragm in the electrolytic cell, and mixing the anode and cathode products by agitating the liquid. The temperature should be kept at about 15 deg. C., and the concentration of the hypochlorite produced must not be allowed to become too great, in order to prevent reduction ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... seventy years of age, found his heart swelling with indignation because he received only new mortifications in return for his new services to the state, in whose behalf he had this time fought with reluctance. A spirit of dire vengeance was agitating his heart, the results of which ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... week afterwards Kitty shut herself up one evening in her room to write to Ashe. She had just passed through an agitating conversation with Margaret French, who had announced her intention of returning to England at once, alone, if Kitty would not accompany her. Kitty's hands were trembling as she began ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of nearly thirty minutes. The mountain goat is found on the great platforms of the Rocky Mountains, and also at the broad waters of the rivers Brasos and Colorado. Though of a very timid nature they are superlatively inquisitive, and can be easily attracted within rifle-range by agitating, from behind a tree, a ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... up much of a defence: he was cowed, for once. He could only say that he had had no evil intention—he had merely been agitating against the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... is what every one is talking about," Easton said. "The question that is agitating us is whether all the Camel Corps will go; and if ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... an agitating experience for the aunts. But Mabel was none the worse for the wetting; and though she naturally made light of her performance, congratulations on her pluck and presence of mind came pouring in. David Walker suggested that the Humane Society ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... the hammock, agitating itself again, and showing a glimpse of a smooth throat and ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... was written between two and three years ago, in the hope that it might help to call the attention of wiser and better men than I am, to the questions which are now agitating the minds of the rising generation, and to the absolute necessity of solving them at once and earnestly, unless we would see the faith of our forefathers crumble away beneath the combined influence of new truths which are fancied to be incompatible with ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... till the age of thirty-two for that springtime of the soul which we call love, Clive had not waited for nothing. Eva was a woman to enravish the heart of a man whose imagination could pierce the agitating secrets immured in that calm and silent bosom. Slender and scarcely tall, she belonged to the order of spare, slight-made women, who hide within their slim frames an endowment of profound passion far exceeding that of their more voluptuously-formed sisters, who never coarsen into stoutness, and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the house to ax whar old Washoe Pete keeps his hotel,' replied the stranger, rightly surmising the query which was agitating him, 'and I cotched a glimpse of yer old machine. Thought I'd come in and see what in blazes it war. Looks to me like a man that's gwine to run ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... Methodist preacher, until she came to the words, "Lost!—Sinners!" when there was a great change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause before the exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts that showed themselves in her features. Her pale face became paler; the circles under her eyes deepened, as they did when tears half-gather without falling; and the mild loving eyes took an expression of appalled pity, as if she had suddenly discerned ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... feels, "God's will be done" is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic array of martyrs, missionaries and religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil-mindedness, under naturally agitating or distressing circumstances, which ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... made it possible to evade it, and it was evaded by unscrupulous men in many cases. "The necessity of a large measure of land reform, we admit," he says; "we must get this by constitutional means. Real wrongs must be redressed by agitating lawfully, persistently, continually and patiently, till they are redressed constitutionally. We must remain steadfast and never give in, but never transgress the law in any case or take it into our own hands. ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... was more than satisfied that Behmen was all, and more than all, that his most devoted admirers had said he was. And, accordingly, Walter laid a plan so as to draw upon Behmen's profound and original mind for a solution of some of the philosophical and theological problems that were agitating and dividing the learned men of that day. With that view Walter made a round of the leading universities of Germany, conversed with the professors and students, collected a long list of the questions that were being debated in that day in those ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... quantity of warm Wort in a Hand-bowl, which for a little while swims on the Top, where it works out and leisurely mixes with the Wort, that is first quite cold in Summer, and almost so in Winter; for the cooler it is work'd the longer it will keep, too much Heat agitating the spirituous Particles into too quick a motion, whereby they spend themselves too fast, or fly away too soon, and then the Drink will certainly work into a blister'd Head that is never natural; but when it ferments by moderate degrees into ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... Eustace's disappearance was still agitating everyone when Sub-Inspector Durham rode up to the bank. Listening, without comment, to all Brennan had to report, he went through the premises with Harding and Brennan, saying nothing till he came to ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... there existed (as has been supposed,) between the Indians and the Governor from the time of his arrival with the Northern Division of the army at Fort Pitt, a secret and friendly understanding, looking to the almost certain result of the commotions which were agitating America, then was the battle at Point Pleasant, virtually the first in the series of those brilliant achievements which burst the bonds of British tyranny; and the blood of Virginia, there nobly shed, was the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... clipped, but in every other regard the same as when the constable invited him to forsake a too prosaic and ungrateful world: and had Mr Levisohn been wise and guarded, the discovery would never have been made by me; for we had met but once before, then only for a short half hour, and under agitating circumstances. But my curiosity and attention once roused by his exclamation, it was impossible to mistake my man. I fixed my eye upon him, and the harder he pulled at his chop, and the more he attempted to evade ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... dwelt too much upon the repose of this extraordinary statue, too little upon its vivacity and agitating unrest, his description serves our purpose as well as any other. He does not seem to have felt the turbulence and carnal insolence which break our sense ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of course, with only Alderberg, Zelanoi, and ourselves, on the matter of the forestry ukase. But about you—there's another matter he wants you for: the petition for the families of convict-exiles to follow them to Siberia. The Council has rejected it twice; but Benckendorf is still agitating the question. His Majesty still seems to object, strongly. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the grave at the foot of a pine-tree in that far western wilderness, Little Tim, with his son and Indian friends, followed Bounding Bull to his camp, where one of the very first persons they saw was Skipping Rabbit engaged in violently agitating the limbs of her jumping-jack, to the ineffable delight ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... danger, he could laugh with his friends at the absurdity of losing himself in the bush. He remained at Rosehall a few hours longer than he intended, at the solicitation of his friend Mr Lauray; who was deeply interested in a question that was then agitating the whole population of Moreton Bay; and which we will take the ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... amiable. The men play whist placidly by the light of candles with little green shades. The women talk and laugh while they work at their embroidery. They all take tea together. To sum up, everything announces good order and harmony. Well, underneath are agitating passions; the drama stirs, it prepares itself secretly, till it blazes forth like ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... it was, there were many members and senators present—eating, drinking coffee, and talking of Franklin, or of the question of the Senate sitting with closed doors, or of some other of the great little subjects then agitating society. Hyde took no notice of any of these disputes until a man—evidently an Englishman—called Franklin "a beggar-on-horseback-Yankee." Then he put down his knife and fork, and looked steadily at the speaker, saying with the ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... on, or rather at, the wing; and he flew upon the stage in a tantrum, to silence the geese. Mr. Yates spoke—we need not say how or what. Everybody knows how he of the Adelphi shrugs his shoulders, and squeezes his hat, and smiles, and frowns, and "appeals" and "declares upon his honour" while agitating the buttons on the left side of his coat, and "entreats" and "throws himself upon the candour of a British public," and puts the stamp upon all he has said by an impressive thump of the foot, a final flourish of the arms, and a triumphal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... when, before a crowded and throbbing audience, the secretary read the name of one young writer after another, pausing for the president to respond by the words "Mort au champ d'honneur!" In each case there followed a brief silence more agitating in its emotion than any eloquence ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... fight for independence. But one by one her followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She became finally the only figure in the nation appealing for the rights of women when the rights of black men were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was, she could not tolerate without indignant protest the exclusion of women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy of Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half century later when confronted with ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... night, serene and without a moon, was propitious; no other light than the discreet glistening of the stars which would help to guide him, without being bright enough to betray or disturb him; the air was calm, a scarcely perceptible breeze stirred at intervals the leaves of the trees without agitating the branches. Thanks to this combination of favorable circumstances, Gilbert's enterprise was not desperate; but he did not dream of deceiving himself in regard ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... establishments. As the glare of the coloured fires lighted up the pale faces of the crowd with a ghastly hue, and I heard the silly and too often obscene remarks bandied between the bystanders and the returning revellers, I could not help agitating the question, whether it would not be possible to devise some innocent recreation, with a certain amount of refinement in it, to take the place of these—to say the best—foolish revelries. In point of fact, they are worse than ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... been interrupted up to the present day, for, as I am pursuing my pleasant task of bringing these letters together for publication, in the year of our Lord 1911, the newspapers are agitating the question of a fitting commemoration of a hundred years of peace between Great Britain ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... meeting which was convened in the District of Columbia, for the express purpose of agitating the subject of colonizing us in some part of the world, Mr. Clay was called to the chair, and having been seated a little while, he rose and spake in substance, ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... is no part of my purpose in any manner whatever to speak disrespectfully of the large number of intelligent ladies, sometimes called strong-minded, who are constantly going before the public, agitating this question of female suffrage. While some of them may, as is frequently charged, be courting notoriety, I have no doubt they are generally earnestly engaged in a work which, in their opinion, would better their condition and would do no ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... he had never seen Imogen looking graver than on that night when he came again. Her face seemed calm only because she so compressed and controlled all sorts of agitating things. Her mother was with her in the lamp-lit library and he guessed already that, in any case, Imogen, before her mother, would rarely show gaiety and playfulness. Gaiety and playfulness would seem ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... duties effectually from day to day, for them Saturday afternoon was really a holiday; and on this particular afternoon they were sitting in the open, sunning themselves, and talking with the Prodigal of the latest news from Ballarat, where the leaders of the diggers' cause were agitating resolutely for alterations in the mining laws and reform of the Constitution, when a party of about twenty men approached them from the direction of Forest Creek. The party halted at a distance of about fifty yards, and after a short conference ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and overthrown! There, in the splendid space that had witnessed the games and tournaments of that Arab and African chivalry—there, where for many a lustrum kings had reviewed devoted and conquering armies— assembled those desperate men; the loud winds agitating their tossing torches that struggled against the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not, my kind friend, what mental struggles I have passed through this afternoon, nor how conflicting feelings are yet agitating my soul. I hear the voice of duty, but it calls me to tread a rugged path. Could I always remain with you, secluded from the gay world, far removed from its temptations and allurements, then, indeed, would I gladly make my choice, ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert |
