"Ecstasy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could not get admitted. "Not at home—not at home," was the invariable answer, though Afy might be sunning herself at the window in his very sight. Mr. Jiffin, throwing off as best he could the temporary disappointment, was in an ecstasy of admiration, for he set it all down to Afy's retiring modesty on the approach of the nuptial day. "And they could try to calumniate her!" he ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stimulating afresh or re-creating again and again the passion which drew them together. Under the influence of art they enjoyed a mystical communion with each other, not wholly spiritual, but like all mysticism, a mixture of the physical, the ecstasy of contact, actual or imagined, with yearnings and emotions in which the ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... every twelve days, and, master of his respiration he embraces God in his thought. At the fifth he stands as still as a pole; he no longer sees anything but Baghavat, and God touches his cheek to bring him out of his ecstasy." ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... hardly be greater, For home-staying fogies of mollyish mood, But think of the joy of the Skater! Gr-r-r-r-! Nose-nipped antiquity squirms in the street, When the North-Easter sounds its fierce slogan; But oh, the warm flush and the ecstasy fleet Of the fellow who rides a toboggan! FISH SMART's on the job in the ice-covered fens, And at Hampstead and Highgate they're "sleighing." There is plenty of stuff for pictorial pens, And boyhood at snowballs ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... of sitting down Mrs. Penfold ran to the window, exclaiming on the beauty of the view, the garden, the trees, and the bold profile of the old keep, thrown forward among the flowers. There was nothing the least distinguished in her ecstasy. But it flowed and bubbled with perfect sincerity; and Lady Tatham did not ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... told how in the ecstasy of his misery he poured out the sorrows of his bleeding heart before his brethren at the debating club. They, with that ready sympathy which they always evince for the success or failure of any celebrated brother, at once adjourned themselves; and Robinson walked out, followed at a distance ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... the Paradox of Love, the Church holds both these passions, at full blast, both at once. As human love turns joy into pain and suffers in the midst of ecstasy, so Divine Love turns pain into joy and exults and reigns upon the Cross. For the Church is more than the Majesty of God reigning on earth, more than the passionless love of the Eternal; she is the Very Sacred Heart of Christ ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... me as the sap of the trees in spring, that thrills me with ecstasy and makes me forget all else. And I will feel it so!—drown my sad autumn and my joyless winter in the delight of spring. And I bless the fate that led you to me—there is none ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... that on removing the ashes I should find a cake. But my watch had struck her fancy, and her curiosity had to be gratified by an immediate sight of it. I took off the gold chain that secured it, from around my neck, and presented it to her. She was all ecstasy, spoke of its beauty, asked me its value, and put the chain round her brawny neck, saying how happy the possession of such a watch should make her. Thoughtless, and as I fancied myself, in so retired ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... would have been disappointed had it been proved to them that six of those labours had been performed by some quite obscure person. The divided reverence would have seemed tame. Conversely, it is pleasant to revere Bacon, as we do now, and to revere Shakespeare, as we do now; but a wildest ecstasy of worship were ours could we concentrate on one of those two demigods all that reverence which now we ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... bower, Sing her a song; Tell her that every hour, All the day long, Thoughts of her come to me, Filling my brain With the warm ecstasy Of love's refrain. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... country in the night from farm to farm, accesses of coughing arose and spread, and died in the distance, and sprang up again. Each miserable shiverer caught the suggestion from his neighbour, was torn for some minutes by that cruel ecstasy, and left spent and without voice or courage when it passed. If a man had pity to spend, Papeete beach, in that cold night and in that infected season, was a place to spend it on. And of all the sufferers perhaps the least ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were in an ecstasy of delight over the orange orchard with its wealth of golden fruit, glossy leaves, and delicate blossoms, the velvety lawn with its magnificent shade trees, the variety and profusion of beautiful flowers, and the ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... bit the hand that fed me. Noble iniquity that yields such delicious crumbs of love as Henry and I stole in moments of ecstasy in park and parlor, in pavilion and veranda, on our drives and rides, be blessed a hundred times. Ah, the harvest of little tendernesses, the sweet words I caught on the wing—recompense for the weeks ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... than the story we started to git. Why, Dave Beasley'll be in a padded cell in a month! It'll be all over town to-morrow, and he'll have as much chance fer governor as that nigger in there!" In his ecstasy he smote Dowden deliriously in the ribs. "What do you think of your ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... pause, the mountains and cliffs seemed to whirl past him in a vast headlong procession. So it was in Meynell's mind with thoughts and ideas. Gradually they calmed and slackened, till at last they passed into an abstraction and ecstasy of prayer. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... veritably came upon him, just as he could enjoy a tankard of old ale or linger to gaze upon a sympathetic face; but he refused to pamper such feelings, still more to simulate them; he refused to allow himself to become the creature of literary or poetic ecstasy; he refused to indulge in the fashionable debauch of dilettante melancholy. He wrote about his life quite naturally, "as if there were nothing in it." Another and closely allied cause of perplexity and discontent ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... growled. This was his private hunting ground—the preserve he kept free of invaders. Dane put the cat down. The Salarik had found what he was seeking. He stood on tiptoe to sniff at a plant, his yellow eyes half closed, his whole stance spelling ecstasy. Dane looked ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... his life before, lifted Billy to his shoulder and trotted up and down the room. "Nice little boy!" he laughed, Billy's damp fists hitting at him in ecstasy. "I'll just take him to the sitting-room while you finish your dinner." He did his best to pretend that the situation was not unusual, to act as if, in his own home, a man could be nothing but at home. All these confounded ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... and jumping from side to side like devils incarnate, they showered bullets and arrows upon the logs; not a Blackfoot was hurt, but several Crows, in spite of their leaping and dodging, were shot down. In this childish manner the fight went on for an hour or two. Now and then a Crow warrior in an ecstasy of valor and vainglory would scream forth his war song, boasting himself the bravest and greatest of mankind, and grasping his hatchet, would rush up and strike it upon the breastwork, and then as he retreated to his companions, fall dead under a shower of arrows; yet no combined ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... stepped from the buggy and placed the sleeping baby in the mother's arms, and only the heavenly Father knows the language she spoke as she crooned over her little one. As the schoolmaster wended his way homeward, cold, hungry, and worn he was buoyant in spirit to the point of ecstasy. But he was chastened, for he had stood upon the Mount of Transfiguration and knew as never before that the mission of the schoolmaster is to find and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... a very ecstasy of delight then. Golden primroses and pale cowslips came; the sweet violets bloomed, the green leaves budded, the birds began to sing; it was spring, delicate, beautiful spring, and in June he ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... we camped at Bridge Creek on a river-flat. Beside us, the creek rolled and foamed. The horses, in their rope corral, lay down and rolled in sheer ecstasy when their heavy packs were removed. The cook set up his sheet-iron stove beside the creek, built a wood fire, lifted the stove over it, fried meat, boiled potatoes, heated beans, and made coffee while the tents were going up. From a thicket near by ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other assembly upon the conclusion of such an impassioned if verbally conventional an harangue; but these Asiatics who heard Paul Boriskoff, who watched the tears stream down his hollowed cheeks and beheld the face uplifted as in ecstasy, had no applause to give him. Had not they also suffered as he had suffered? What wrong of his had not been, in some phase or other, a wrong of theirs? How many of them had lost children well beloved, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... a home by the sea— A cottage, a cabin, a tent! Existence should ecstasy be Till summer ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the river; Olive had not allowed him to come to the house with her, for his face was so radiant with the ecstasy of not having been discarded by her that she did not wish him to be seen. From her window Mrs. Easterfield saw this young man on his return from his promenade, and she knew it would not be many minutes before ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... of the Cavalleria, the subtle minor of Wagner, the exquisite sweetness of Beethoven and Schubert filled the moonlit canon, and still she played on, melodies new to Adam, intoxicating, full of a wild ecstasy, that filled his very soul, and thrilled through him till he felt all power of resistance swept away. Every other desire in the world was lost in the supreme and overwhelming longing to gather her to his heart and hold her there ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... large to be expressed in the terms of a single passion. Friendship, patriotism, parental tenderness, filial devotion, the ardour of adventure, the thirst for knowledge, the ecstasy of religion,—these all have their dwelling in the heart of man. They mould character. They control conduct. They are stars of destiny shining in the inner firmament. And if art would truly hold the mirror up to nature, it must reflect these greater and lesser lights ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... his hound Couch'd beside him on the ground. —Ah! what trouble's on his brow? Hither let him wander now; Hither, to the quiet hours Pass'd among these heaths of ours By the grey Atlantic sea; Hours, if not of ecstasy, From violent anguish ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and spiritualism, and the followers of the system, as it developed, became believers in the efficacy of certain exercises and symbols to cure diseases. They entered as Kingsley wrote, "the fairy land of ecstasy, clairvoyance, insensibility to pain, cures produced by the effect of what we now call mesmerism. They are all there, these modern puzzles, in those old books of the long bygone seekers for wisdom." It is wonderful how mankind in their pursuit ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... and there, led the eye to the shining of the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills. It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the sixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... M——, to have thought of this place! I must write her a letter of passionate thanks. Never before, it seems to me, have I known pure coast-scenery. Never before have I relished the beauties of wave, rock, and cloud. I am filled with a sensuous ecstasy at the unparalleled life, light, and transparency of the air. I am stricken mute with reverent admiration at the stupendous resources possessed by the ocean in the way of color and sound; and as yet, I suppose, I have not seen half of them. I came in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... She had always known that she liked him; but now—now—As he had told his story, she had felt, first, pity, and then something else; something incomparably sweeter; something that made her heart beat wildly, that seemed almost to choke her with its ecstasy. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two names; and from the nature of their merriment, and the wrath that gathered on her brow, there must be something ticklish in the second. The husband pronounced it; ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tempted me: the shape Was Julian's to the very finger-nails. Non nobis, Domine! I overcame. I am sure of one thing—music tortures him: I saw him once, amid the Gloria Patri, When the whole chapel trembled in the sound, Rise slowly as in ecstasy of pain, And stretch his arms abroad, and clasp his hands, Then slowly, faintingly, sink on ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Mrs. Rockerbilt's chiefest glory. It was so like that none but an expert in gems could have told the copy from the original, and when I bore the package back to Newport and displayed its contents to my mistress she flew into an ecstasy ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... feet, were let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event of the day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; and the exulting music of the mass echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn aisles, and brought a rapt look of deep calm ecstasy over Friedel's sensitive features. The beggars evidently considered a festival as a harvest-day, and crowded round the doors of the cathedral. As the Lady of Adlerstein came out leaning on Ebbo's arm, with Friedel on her other side, they evidently attracted ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for each interpreter, and two pieces for the canoes. I should have given four fathoms for each man and the same for each boat. The final scene was most gratifying to the African mind: I solemnly invested old Nessala with the grand cloak which covered his other finery; grinning in the ecstasy of vanity, he allowed his subjects to turn him round and round, as one would a lay figure, yet with profound respect, and, lastly, he retired to charm ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Jacky attempted to explore out-of-the-way corners of the farm-yard, and stepped suddenly up to the knees in a mud-hole, out of which he emerged with a pair of tight-fitting Wellington boots, which filled him with ecstasy ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... friend, I still believe; I pray and recite the Lord's Prayer with ecstasy. I am very fond of being in church, where the pure and simple piety moves me deeply in the lucid moments when I inhale the odour of God. I even have devotional fits, and I believe that they will last, for piety is of value even ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... scene—the whole of it—passed through my fevered, unbalanced brain. I lived those moments of ecstasy over again. I felt her soft hand in mine. I looked again into those wonderful, fathomless eyes; I heard that sweet, musical voice; I listened to those solemn words of warning. I believed myself to be once more beside the mysterious girl who had come ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... was torn from his beloved museum, Felix came down in suppressed ecstasy, declaring it the loveliest and most delicious of places, all bones and stones, where his father must come and see what Fergus thought was a megatherium's tooth. The long word was pronounced with a triumphant delicacy ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who knew death, and the life beyond, and then a return again to this life. It was not indifference that kept them away. They loved tenderly, and were tenderly loved. Their absence is surely most significant. Mary's ointment had already been used. This morning in glad ecstasy of spirit she and her brother ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... more dawns gradually upon her. There are those near at hand dear to her, to whom she is also dear, whose queen she is. Oh the joy of it all! She clasps her hands in ecstasy, and the pretty reflection in the pool is more than ever lovely, only ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... Under the dancing leaves? Do you remember the delicate blue of the sky And the gold-dust in the air? And the tawny harvest fields, and the heavy sheaves? Summer was surely in one of her bravest moods . . . And oh, the rare Swift joy that lifted life to an ecstasy, That shining day I danced for you, dear, ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... man who boards at the Graham House." He said,—"You can sleep near the railroad, and never be disturbed: Nature knows very well what sounds are worth attending to, and has made up her mind not to hear the railroad-whistle. But things respect the devout mind, and a mental ecstasy was never interrupted." He noted, what repeatedly befell him, that, after receiving from a distance a rare plant, he would presently find the same in his own haunts. And those pieces of luck which happen only to good players happened to him. One day, walking with a stranger, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... saw something that wrought him up to ecstasy. Zorka was singing a sad Bosnian song in her tender, crooning voice, and dancing with graceful steps round the little bear, who, to tell the truth, also danced more lightly than the heavy Ibrahim, and was very amusing when ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... which was shapely enough. Her face was exactly like those of Albert Durer's saints, or those of the painters before Perugino; the same plump, though slender modeling, the same delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guilelessness. Everything about her, even to her attitude, was suggestive of those virgins, whose beauty is only revealed in its mystical radiance to the eyes of the studious connoisseur. She had fine hands though red, and a pretty ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... Yesterday ecstasy over new church; to-day in the depths again. Joy shortlived. This way: very stormy night; soaking rains; morning whirlwind, frightful; hurried to the church; one side already blown loose; mighty burst ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... Arthur was in ecstasy. If there was one kind of spree he liked it was a picnic at an abbey; and if there was one sort of conveyance he doated on it was a tricycle. He wiped off every score on his mental slate against Marky, and voted him the greatest brick going, and worthy to be backed up to the very end—especially ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... no smoke. The cigarette was not burning, though Johnny had made a hasty dab at it with a lighted match. The other eye was as coldly critical as was humanly possible when the whole heart of Johnny was swelling with ecstasy. His head was tilted a little, his hands were on his hips except when he used them to push and test and try ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... great distress: being pursued by a huge eagle, he took his bow, which he always carried abroad with him, and aiming at the eagle, let fly an arrow, which pierced him through the body, so that he fell down dead; which the crow seeing, came in an ecstasy of joy, and perched upon a tree. "Avenant," said the crow, "you have been extremely generous to succour me, who am but a poor wretched crow; but I am not ungrateful and will do you as good a turn." Avenant admired the wit of the crow, and continuing his journey, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... writings are plain, calm, and unexaggerated, ... natural and rational, ... without any trace of spiritual pride, any arrogant claims to full perfection of virtue; ... teaching heartfelt piety to God without any affectation of rapturous ecstasy or extravagant fervour.'[645] On the other hand, he illustrates the extravagances into which enthusiasts have been led, from the history of Indian mystics and Greek Neoplatonists, from Manichaeans and Montanists, from monastic saints, from the Beghards of Germany, the Fratricelli of Italy, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... paralytics. They did not say, "Efficiently elevating my right leg, using, you will notice, the muscles of the thigh and calf, which are in excellent order, I—" Their feeling was quite different. They were so filled with the beautiful vision of the man lying flat at the foot of the staircase that in that ecstasy the rest followed in a flash. In practice, the habit of generalizing and idealizing did not by any means mean worldly weakness. The time of big theories was the time of big results. In the era of sentiment and fine words, at the end of the eighteenth century, men were really robust and ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... but the courtiers, perceiving that the King broke at last into a smile, lost all control over themselves, and giving vent to loud peals of laughter, clasped one another by the shoulders and reeled to and fro in an ecstasy of enjoyment. The King gave way also and laughed heartily, clapping me again and again on the back, so that in fine there were only two serious faces to be seen, that of the poor Boisrose, who took all for lunatics, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... revived in the city, if not in the field, the memory of him who sang the "Monk and the Miller's wife." But notwithstanding these and other productions of equal merit, Scottish poesie, it must be owned, had lost much of its original ecstasy and fervour, and that the boldest efforts of the muse no more equalled the songs of Dunbar, of Douglas, of Lyndsay, and of James the Fifth, than the sound of an artificial cascade resembles the undying thunders ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to him. Faber took her, and sitting as far back in the saddle as he could, set her upon the pommel. She screwed up her eyes, and grinned with delight, spreading her mouth wide, and showing an incredible number of daintiest little teeth. When Ruber began to move she shrieked in her ecstasy. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... wonder. That which thus moves them, and goes on to draw them closer and closer, comes with them from the very source of their being, and is as reverend as it is lovely, rooted in all the gentle potencies and sweet glories of creation, and not unworthily watered with all the tears of agony and ecstasy shed by lovers since the creation of the world. What it is, I can not tell; I only know it is not that which the young fool calls it, still less that which the old sinner thinks it. As to Letty's disobedience of her aunt's extravagant orders concerning Tom, I must leave ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... a sort of stupid pleasure in giving a child sweets, a fool his bells, a dog a bone. You are repaid by seeing the child besmear his face with sugar; by witnessing how the fool's ecstasy makes a greater fool of him than ever; by watching the dog's nature come out over his bone. In giving William Crimsworth his mother's picture, I give him sweets, bells, and bone all in one; what grieves me is, that I cannot behold the result; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... incentive could scarcely be matched; amid poverty but slightly raised above actual want; untouched by the temperamental hopelessness which lies just beneath the surface of these dull, simple folk, this child lived a life of such ecstasy as might well excite the envy ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... finally, will be profound enough and have great enough power to be thus a support of a future world-consciousness unless it be a religion of feeling rather than primarily of ideas—a religion in fact capable of inspiring ecstatic moods. And this ecstasy of feeling can never in our modern world be a prevailing quality of the religious life unless religion be something that extends over all life and draws its power from all the energies and capacities of the psychic life. The religion of our new era, we may be sure, if it be in any real sense a religion ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... his hands with ecstasy, as well he might. Just at this moment the English captain came upon deck, followed by two of the privateer's men, one of whom had taken possession of his laced cap, and the other of his silk sash. He brought his sword in his hand, and presented it to the captain of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... detail and aiming at more passion than Luca's taste permitted. For the oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia he designed the facade partly in stone and partly in baked clay—crowded with figures, flying, singing, playing upon instruments of music, with waving draperies and windy hair and the ecstasy of movement in their delicately modelled limbs. If nothing else remained of Agostino's workmanship, this facade alone would place him in the first rank of contemporary artists. He owed something, perhaps, to his material; for terra-cotta ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... an ecstasy of joy Your goodness raises me! this was an act Of kindness, which no service e'er ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Dick Kincaid's face was one to inspire confidence, and as he approached they came forth timidly. Their first fright gave place to delirious joy. The smaller threw his arms about Kincaid's long legs and hugged them in an ecstasy of delight while the elder clung to his hand as though afraid he might vanish. The woman merely glanced at him with vacant eyes ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the sainted seer Some radiant visitant from high, When heaven's own strains break on his ear, And wrap his soul in ecstasy." ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... utterly to the sheer primitive exultation of life. The supreme ecstasy of that hour could never have been experienced but for the long hopeless months which had preceded it. For a long time he lay there in a transport of the senses, without thinking. As soon as thought regained dominance over his feelings there came a subtle change ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... not answer. His eyes had filled. He rode with his hand on the pommel of the saddle. Her words had fallen like whiplashes. It was true. You could not cut out and disconnect with life. He had dreamed of this last ride as a sort of mid-heaven ecstasy; and behold, instead of love's dream, the lifting kick to a limp spine. If only one's friends would oftener give us that lifting kick instead of the softening sympathy! If only they would brace our back bone instead ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... who find ecstasy in vertigo when thought, turning on itself, exhausted by the stress of introspection, tired of vain effort, recoils in fright; thus it would seem that man must be a void and that by dint of delving ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... rose a headland of hoary aspect Gnawed by the tide, Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there Guilelessly glad - Wherefore they knew not—touched by the fringe of an ecstasy Scantly descried. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... cried Lulu, clapping her hands and dancing about the room, while Grace clasped her hands in ecstasy, saying, "Oh, I am ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... or to the left, as if she had too great thoughts on her mind to give any heed to the people. Day after day she repeated her visits, kneeling in her accustomed place and giving herself up to a state of ecstasy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... she cried, weeping, "by one word you have effaced all my sorrows. Ah! I can bear them.—This is my son," she said, "I bore, I reared this man," and she raised her hands above her, and clasped them as if in ecstasy, then she lay ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... that Daniel granted it, though he did not feel like playing. As Gertrude listened, she became paler and paler: her diagnosis was being corroborated with fearful exactness. What had once been a source of ecstasy was now the cause of intense torture. The tones and harmonies seemed to be eating into her very soul; the pain she felt was so overwhelming, that it was only with the greatest exertion that she mustered up ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... his cheek. She rained kisses on his ice-crusted brows and snow-beaten eyes. Her arms held him rigidly. He could not move nor speak till she would let him. Transformed, this mountain girl who gave herself so shyly, forgot everything. Her words crowded on his ears. She repeated his name in an ecstasy of welcome, drew down his lips, laughed, rejoiced, knew no shamefacedness and no restraint—she was one freed from the stroke of a descending knife. A moment before she had faced death alone; it was still death she faced—she realized this—but it was death, at ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... upon which she had rested on the occasion of their former visit, in the very midst of the vast ruined city, and the little company of travellers on board her spent a never-to-be-forgotten hour on her deck watching, in an ecstasy of delight, the constantly changing and magical effects of light, shade, and colour as the sun went down in a blaze of glory, lighting up with his departing beams the stupendously imposing and marvellous remains of ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... night- wind, sighing by, could not catch the accents and bear the sound to alien ears; but I heard it, and my heart throbbed in a delirious tempest of happiness; I lost my senses almost: my head swam in a whirlwind of tumultuous joy: I was intoxicated with ecstasy! ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in unconscious ecstasy at this vision, so amazing that it seemed to have strayed into his existence from beyond the limits of the conceivable. It was impossible to guess her thoughts, to know her feelings, to understand her grief or her joy. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... place, the seeming impossibility of relieving her, and his unspeakable eagerness to contrive some scheme for profiting by the interesting discovery he had made, concurred in brewing up a second ecstasy, during which he acted a thousand extravagances, which it was well for him the attendants did not observe. Perhaps it was well for the servant that he did not enter while the paroxysm prevailed. Had this been the case, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the garden of Gethsemane, his face was flushed with the rapt stillness of pious ecstasy; hours had vanished during his passionate reverie, and he ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... of life are sounded by emotions—cold reason lags behind. As thought cannot compass, so words cannot describe the anguished spirit's flight; and whether it soars to ecstasy or sinks to despair it comes back wide-eyed and silent. So any action which has been prompted by passion cannot be explained by a calculating mind, and to seek a reason where none exists is to stray still farther from the ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... at meeting a Whipple on terms of seeming equality. They had eyes and desire solely for this delectable refection. Again and again the owner enveloped the top of the candy with prehensile lips; deep cavities appeared in her profusely spangled cheeks. Her eyes would close in an ecstasy of concentration. The twins stared, and at intervals were constrained ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... I whispered, in a fit of ecstasy, for my beautiful unknown in rising had recognized me, and given me another thrilling glance from her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the lovely vision of the changed hearts—the heart of Jesus placed by the hands that bled beneath her pure bosom, and her heart hidden in the side of Him who died for her. It is a St. Theresa who melts into ecstasy at the brooding presence of the heavenly Lover, and can only think of the Evil One himself with commiseration as one who cannot love. It is true that Francis of Assisi also thought and spoke of Christ with a lover's ecstasy, ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... Freemason, probably; a solemn drunkard, who became intoxicated oftener on big words than on native wine, and spoke in a loud, pretentious voice, gazing before him with large, stupid eyes swimming in a sort of ecstasy; his whole person made one think of a boozy preacher. He immediately inspired the engraver with respect, and dazzled him by the fascination which the audacious exert over the timid. M. Gerard thought he discerned in Combarieu one of those superior ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... also had undergone a material change. If king Mithradates had once come forward as the liberator of the Hellenes, if he had introduced his rule with the recognition of civic independence and with remission of taxes, they had after this brief ecstasy been but too rapidly and too bitterly undeceived. He had very soon emerged in his true character, and had begun to exercise a despotism far surpassing the tyranny of the Roman governors—a despotism which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and in those who have attained notoriety. This kind of subject, after having at first passively submitted to his hysteria, afterwards uses it rather than submits to it, and finally by means of it attains in his ecstasy to that divine union after ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... chair. With great deliberation he took out of his vest pocket a little black box with bright flowers painted on the lid. He fingered it lovingly for a moment, then he took a pinch of snuff, closing his eyes in ecstasy and inhaling deeply. He did this three times and blew his nose vigorously. Then he put the box away, brushing off the gray grains of powder that had fallen down his vest front. All day long, every time the train stopped, he refilled his little blue enameled teapot ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... what ecstasy, Will in the Saviour's garden be! How will it sound when 'fore Thee, All with united heart and voice, Ten thousand seraphins ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... him after a protracted sitting, and up among the dreamy chimney-pots he was reviving in fancy the sensations of the morning. He was brought back from his ecstasy by Katherine's voice calling, "Ted, come down this minute—I've got something to show you"; and, rousing himself very much against the grain, he dropped ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... This passage is the first of Lamb's outbursts of gustatory ecstasy, afterwards to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... now, going up to her, kisses her impulsively. Joyce returns the caress with fervor. It is natural that she should never have felt the sweetness, the content of Barbara so entirely as she does now, when her heart is open and full of ecstasy, and when sympathy seems so necessary. Darling Barbara! But then she must love Felix now just as much as she loves her. She rather electrifies Barbara and Felix by ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... the trenches and after the traffic of London, it was freedom and sport and ecstasy to be there, with the rush of salt air on the face! Our commander was under thirty years of age; and that destroyer responded to his will like a stringed instrument. He seemed a part of her, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... hardly be got to eat their meals. But how should I describe the final scene, when in the dark evening two night-lights shone out of the giant's eyes, and flames came out of its monstrous mouth?... It was nothing less than wild ecstasy. Their father also taught them skating; there was very little danger except from falls, for they began in the meadows about the house, where they skated over shallow pools left in the hollows by rain-water ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... very still in the steamer chair. Life and love and mystery wrapped her round, the great reverie of the race, the ecstasy of devotees that sent to death and crusade in the Middle Ages, the lovelight of life brooding warm and radiant. She no longer saw the shining pageant of sunlight on the argent fields of an infinite universe; ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... out into the rejoicing world, and it was like penetrating at last into the heart of that "land a great way off" which holds captive the wistful thought of the children of earth, and reveals itself as elusively as ecstasy. If one can remember some journey that he has taken long ago—Long Ago and Far Away are the great touchstones—and can remember the glamourie of the hour and forget the substructure of events, if he ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... A Presbyterian elder receiving from a Baptist preacher seven hundred dollars for his wife and children. James Kyle and uncle Jack used to tell that story with great Christian sensibility; and uncle Jack would weep tears of anguish over his wife's piteous tale, and tears of ecstasy at the same moment that he was free, and that soon, by the grace of God, his wife and children, as he said, 'would be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... wait for him on a lonely part of the road near Rijeka, and as Marko was passing along he stepped suddenly on to the road pistol in hand. Marko in no way attempted defence, but simply transfixed the man with a glance. The wretched man in an ecstasy of terror shot himself, so penetrating was the glance which the Voivoda had given him. So runs the story. Suffice it to remark that Marko arrived safe and sound the same evening in Cetinje, and a dead criminal was found on the next day by the roadside. Now Yussuf, the Governor, was himself ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... I'd only thought so long ago! How lovely you are!" exclaims Bill, in an ecstasy. "And how refined! And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Austrians, Spanish and Levantine aristocracy; wives and daughters of American railroad kings, of oil magnates, and of coal barons; brunette beauties from India, Japan, South America, and even fair Australians, all unconsciously assuming an air of ecstasy as they revelled in the fabric and fashion of dress; and stalking among them, that presiding genius, M. Worth, who in his mitre-shaped cap of black velvet, and half mantle or robe, strikingly resembled the great ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... were, for the most part, written by lovers, by newly-married couples, by solitary dreamers. All expressed some sentiment of love, grave or gay; they sang the praises of a beauty or mourned a lost delight; they told of some burning kiss or ecstasy of languor; they thanked the ancient wooded glades that had sheltered their love, pointed out some secret nook to the happy visitor of the morrow, described the lingering charms of a sunset they had watched. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... not understand the joy Beatrice felt over the crude gifts of the fishermen's wives, nor her ecstasy when a poor girl whom she had once befriended, brought her a dozen yards of narrow and very dirty crotchet edging. Beatrice almost kissed that edging, and her eyes filled with tears as she folded it ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... were his life that was ebbing away. And the pang when she drew herself from him was like a bayonet- thrust. Even when she and Stephanie had melted into the shadows, he stood motionless under the spell of that caress, its ecstasy ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... who has ever done anything worth doing has done less highfalutin than Morris. He was always the craftsman who kept close to his material, and thought more about the block and the chisel than about aesthetic ecstasy. The thrills and ecstasies of life, he seems to have felt, must come as by-products out of doing one's job as well as one could: they were not things, he thought, to aim at, or even talk about overmuch. I do not agree with Morris, but that is beside the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... keep under lock and key with "Don Juan" and the "Decameron." It contains both the grandest morality and most degrading obscenity ever conceived in the brain of mortal man. There are passages whose beauty and power might cause the heart of an angel to leap in ecstasy, others that would call a blush of shame to the brassy front of the foulest fiend that ever howled and shrieked through the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... attention paid it, trilled upward in a mounting ecstasy of shrillness that went up and up and up through her head ... louder and louder ... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird and cage became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim must have carried her to the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... live for! I will confide to you something that no one but you now knows. I am dying—dying every day. No one knows as well as I do myself how much is left of me. It is little, and it will soon be less." She spoke in a cold, pale kind of ecstasy. "You are the only creature I have told this to—the only one on this earth I really care about; hear it and forget it. And now, adieu," she said; "if we ever meet again in this world, don't let the ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... by promotion to the grade of sergeant, he was as proud of his stripes as he would have been of a throne. His father's career continually occupied his thoughts and filled his imagination with a sort of ecstasy. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... it seemed, a command, congratulation, to judge by the ecstasy of the figure below. The warrior turned once to throw himself before the image of the sun; he repeated this again and yet again before he crept back to his fellows. The group arose and rushed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... adjusted her so that she sat on his lap, with her face against his throat. He was recalling that other Sylvia: the Sylvia of the dining-room, of the balcony; the circumspect, sensible, comprehending Sylvia. But the discoveries he was making were not unwelcome. Folly wore for him a face of ecstasy, of beauty. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... silence. His enemy should not have the satisfaction of wringing from him one cry for mercy. He would die a thousand times sooner than sue to him. He thought of Joan — realizing that for her sake he should be called upon, in some sort, to bear this suffering; and even the bare thought sent a thrill of ecstasy through him. Any death that was died for her would be sweet. And might not his be instrumental in ridding her for ever of her hateful foe? Would not Gaston raise heaven and earth to discover his brother? Surely he would, sooner or later, find out what had befallen him; and then might Peter Sanghurst ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... looked with suspicion on posthumous fame; 'so silly a creature is man, as that, intoxicated with the fumes of vanity, he can feast on the thought of the praises that shall be paid his memory in future ages, with so much ecstasy as to neglect his present life, nay court and covet death, if he but imagines that it will add to the glory he had acquired before.' But the most notable institution of pride is the love of honour. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... long time he had been first in every one's thoughts. He had now to retire from the privileges of an invalid to the everyday position, the everyday life of a healthy child. While at Torquay his mother had no thought for any one but him; but now, this very morning, she had clasped the baby in such an ecstasy of love to her heart, that little spoiled Harold felt quite a pang of jealousy. It was with a shout therefore of almost ecstasy that he hailed Hinton. He flew to open the door for him himself, and when he entered the dining-room he instantly ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... glowing and languishing with inspiration, happiness and beauty; it swelled and melted away; it touched on all that is precious, mysterious, and holy on earth. It breathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the heavens. Lavretsky drew himself up, and rose cold and pale with ecstasy. This music seemed to clutch his very soul, so lately shaken by the rapture of love, the music was glowing with love too. "Again!" he whispered as the last chord sounded. The old man threw him an eagle glance, struck his hand on his chest and saying deliberately ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... habit of retiring no one knew whither, but perhaps into some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric state until the moon was full. Then, returning to the tribe quite emaciated, he excited himself, as others do who pretend to the prophetic AFFLATUS, until he was in a state of ecstasy. These pretended prophets commence their operations by violent action of the voluntary muscles. Stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or beating the ground with a club, they induce ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... close to him, put her arm about his neck, drew his head down as if to whisper her confidence in his ear. Her breath was on his cheek, his heart was afire in one foolish leap. She put up her lips as if to kiss him, and he, reeling in the ecstasy of his proximity to her radiant body, bent nearer to take what she seemed ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... found concealed beneath a stack of corn a seal's skin; and, delighted with the prize, he ran with it to his mother. Her eyes glistened with rapture—she gazed upon it as her own—as the means by which she could pass through the ocean that led to her native home. She burst forth into an ecstasy of joy, which was only moderated when she beheld her children, whom she was now about to leave; and, after hastily embracing them, she fled with all speed towards the sea-side. The husband immediately returned, learned the discovery that had taken place, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... misfortunes and trials can be graphically described, but happiness and the causes of happiness either cannot be or are not. A grand new branch of literature opens to my view: a drama in which people begin in a poor way and end, after getting gradually happier, in an ecstasy of enjoyment. The common novel is not the thing at all. It gives struggle followed by relief. I want each act to close on a new and triumphant happiness, which has been steadily growing all the while. This is the real antithesis of tragedy, where things get blacker and blacker ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lavenders With frenzy, till it is a Tower of Flame Wherein the soul shrieks burning, since the myrrhs And music of our beauty are mixed with shame Inextricable,—some drug of poppies give This bitter ecstasy ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... out Blanche, in an ecstasy. But he withdrew his hand, which was upon her side, and turned from her with a quivering ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him in questioning wonder. Truth to say, the doctor could not but betray his surprise at the idea of the cold-looking Arnold in the light of a musician; his doubts took instant flight after the opening chords. Rubenstein's Melody in F, played by a master-hand, is one long sound of divine ecstasy thrilling the listener to exquisite rapture. Played by Louis Arnold, what the composer had conceived in his soul was magnificently interpreted. As he finished, there was not a murmur; and the next minute he had dashed into a quaint tarantelle that ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... grapes given to him for the first time, and he at once called them mammut (berries). Being asked, "How do you like them?" he pressed his hand on his heart in an ecstasy of delight that was comical, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... and patient waiting, the proud man who had never loved any one but the fair young girl in his arms, abandoned himself to the ecstasy of possession. He kissed the eyebrows that were so lovely in his sight, the waving hair on her white temples, and again and again the soft sweet trembling lips that glowed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... at one time. Now it weeps not for fear and through torment, but by virtue of constraining grace and mercy, and is at this very time, so far off of disquietness of heart, by reason of the sight of its wickedness, that it is driven into an ecstasy, by reason of the love and mercy that is mingled with the sense of sin ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... arms" has just been passed. The men leave their letters and their newspapers; Private Webb, who earned his living in times of peace by drawing thin, elongated ladies in varying stages of undress for fashion catalogues, puts aside his portrait of the Sergeant, who is still smiling with ecstasy at a tin of chloride of lime; the obstinate sleepers are roused, to a great flow of bad language, and all stand to their arms in ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... them, he will be mourned over as unsound in the next. Men grumble at taxes and tolls; alas! nobody is stopped at so many gates and questioned in so many ways as he. If he take in hand the tender matter of consoling stricken hearts, the ecstasy of his visions will not save his topic from being regarded by some as painful, and by others as a mere shining of the moon. He will receive special requests not to harrow up the feelings he only meant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... synthetic drugs; transit point for US-bound ecstasy; source of precursor chemicals for South American cocaine processors; transshipment point for cocaine, heroin, hashish, and marijuana entering Western Europe; despite a strengthening of legislation, the country remains vulnerable ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... in which the aim of the good man is not so much to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering, and martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of certain spiritual emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... the country was new to us," exclaimed Lucile, with sparkling eyes and cheeks like twin roses. "Oh, girls, there's my bird again," she added, and stood, finger on lips, while the clear note, starting soft and sweet, swelled to a height of trilling ecstasy and abandon, when all the welled-up joy of summer poured liquidly golden from a bursting little heart; then slowly, hesitatingly, with soft, intermittent trillings and gurgles, died and faded ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield |
