"Ecstatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical experiment. The galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the deity may, in ultimate analysis, be the changeful basis of right and wrong, but, if so, divine justice differs from human not merely in degree but likewise in character, and not apparently to its advantage. The tuneful Psalmist had sung in ecstatic wonder at the mercy of God: "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour."[54] Job, having looked upwards in ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... major foozled shot after shot; how once his ball hid in a jasmine bower, once behind the stem of a tree, and once in a sort of cavern over which the broom straw waved. But omit not, O truthful and ecstatic one, to mention that dull rage which grew from small beginnings in the major's breast until it became furious and all-consuming, like a prairie fire. At this stage your narrative becomes heroic, and it might be in order for you, O capable and delectable one, to switch from humble stating to loud ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the brain, if when I recall and analyze the moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in the highest degree—an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing with unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?" Vague though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible to Muishkin, though he knew that it was but a feeble ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... such a life, that he may well be called a real hero in a quiet way. Yes, I well may like him! And I am sure he likes me!' said another whisper of the heart, which, veiled as was the lady in the mirror, made Phoebe put both hands over her face, in a shamefaced ecstatic consciousness. 'Nay—I was the first lady he had seen, the only person to speak to. No, no; I know it was not that—I feel it was not! Why, otherwise, did he seem so sorry I was not poor? Oh! how nice it would be if I were! We could work for each other in his glorious ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... another thing to remember, won from the haunting memories of that strange day. At first the King and Queen danced all alone. They began with stately movement, but as the music quickened their feet kept time, and the swing of their bodies with movements kept growing more and more ecstatic at every beat till, in true Balkan fashion, the dance became a very ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... ringing cheer burst out as wells spontaneously from the throats and hearts of men, in the first ecstatic moments of victory—a cheer to which our saddened hearts and enfeebled lungs had long been strangers. It was the genuine, honest, manly Northern cheer, as different from the shrill Rebel yell as the honest mastiff's deep-voiced welcome is from the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... implacable. It was she whose gentle impulsion had facilitated his exit from the parlor car, and beyond question she had witnessed the kissing, a disagreeable circumstance that fell smotheringly upon his ecstatic mood. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... transmigrated into the heroine of the 'Nouvelle Heloise.' Even in stubborn England, where Fielding's masculine contempt for the whinings of 'Pamela' was more congenial, the students of Richardson were prepared to receive 'Ossian' with enthusiasm, and to be ecstatic over 'Tristram Shandy.' That Richardson would have agreed with Johnson in regarding Rousseau as fit only for a penal settlement, and that he actually considered Sterne to be 'execrable,' does not relieve him of the responsibility or deprive him ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... up-stroke; she, pausing an instant, just then, to more perfectly enjoy the sensation; the penis slipping past the now wide open vaginal mouth, which reaches out at every down stroke to engulf it—dallying, delaying, coquetting, tantalizing, both man and woman; playing the game in almost a swoon of ecstatic delight—under such conditions the wife's passion will rush to its fullest development, till, when she will, she can drop her vagina upon the penis in such a way that the two will be made one, in absolute perfection, on a single move, and ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... show me the way up the cliff. His recklessness in running over the sharp stones made me ask him if they did not hurt his feet. 'Oh no!' he replied; 'they are used to it.' It is indeed astonishing what feet are able to get used to. The boy's joy at the few sous which I gave him was almost ecstatic. He had hardly thanked me when he set off running homeward to show how he had been rewarded—for his sharpness in thinking that I should lose my way, and allowing me to do so ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... "That's right," cried ecstatic Belle. "Honest confession is good for the soul. I'll admit that most men and women are made of dust—street dust at that—but Roger Atwood is pure gold. He has the quickest brain and steadiest hand of any fellow ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... her womb, who had fostered at her breast, the beings who called me father; whom I have watched with delight, and cherished with a fondness ever new and perpetually growing; it could not be the same. Where was her bloom? These deadly and blood-suffused orbs but ill resemble the azure and ecstatic tenderness of her eyes. The lucid stream that meandered over that bosom, the glow of love that was wont to sit upon that cheek, are much unlike these livid stains and this hideous deformity. Alas! these were the traces of agony; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... to the social mire, and even dismissed some day from his appointment. The idea of her idol's fall, with a vague vision of the disasters prophesied by Crevel, was such a terror to the poor woman, that she became rapt in the contemplation like an ecstatic. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... hesitated, till Mrs. Thomas, a by no means uncomely woman, said: "Get in, gentlemen, we shall be pleased to have your company." This decided them. They sprang into the waggon, one on each side of the little girl called Marjorie. The horses trotted along, and Muggins hovered about them, with an occasional ecstatic bark. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... often seen piano-forte players and singers make such strange motions over their instruments or song-books that I wanted to laugh at them. "Where did our friends pick up all these fine ecstatic airs?" I would say to myself. Then I would remember My Lady in "Marriage a la Mode," and amuse myself with thinking how affectation was the same thing in Hogarth's time and in our own. But one day I bought me a Canary-bird ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... triumphant. Days went by, Then came a lull; and lo! a whisper shrill, Once heard before, again its poison cold Distilled: "Albeit to Christ this land should bow, Some conqueror's foot one day would quell her Faith." It ceased. Tenfold once more the storm burst forth: Once more the ecstatic passion of his prayer Met it, and, breasting, overbore, until Sudden the Princedoms of the dark that rode This way and that way through the whirlwind, dashed Their vanquished crowns of darkness to the ground With one long cry. Then silence came; and lo! The white dawn ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... with herald clouds of dust; Ecstatic frenzies rend his breast; A moment, and he graced the earth— Now, seek him at the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... arms. In the foreground on the left there is a book and cushion, behind which St. John stands, his hands clasped, bearing a cross. Never was a head designed with more genius than that strange Virgin, ecstatic, mysterious, sphinx-like; with half-closed eyes, she bends her face to meet her God's kiss. In this picture Botticelli sought to realise the awfulness of the Christian mystery: the Mother leans to the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... disillusions, men have yearned for "a benediction perfect and complete where they might cease to suffer and desire." This perfection religion has, as we have seen, accorded them in various ways. Some have found it in the immediate vision, the ecstatic union with the divine that, in intense degree, is peculiarly the mystic's. Some have found it in the assured belief that evil is itself an illusion, and, if rightly conceived, a beautiful dark shadow ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... earliest days of Monasticism men like the hermits of the Thebaid had thought of little else but mortifying the flesh by vigils and fastings, and withdrawing from all human voices to enjoy an ecstatic communion with their Maker. The life in common of monks like those of Nitria and Lerinum had chastened some of the extravagances of these lonely enthusiasts while still keeping their main ends in view. St. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, had shown what great results might ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... originality, the shouting theatre, the crowded tabernacle, the press for once speaking confidently in one tone, the silent joy of hearts to whom this was the first vision of genius—these announced a triumph. The ecstatic musical festivals of Europe, the pilgrimages of artists more royally surrounded than the progress of ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... was written partly in Devonshire and partly in Wales; and from Ireland, where he had gone to regenerate the country, he opened correspondence with William Godwin, the philosopher and author of 'Political Justice'. His energy in entering upon ecstatic personal relations was as great as that which he threw into philanthropic schemes; but the relations, like the schemes, were formed with no notion of adapting means to ends, and were often dropped as hurriedly. Eliza Westbrook, at first a woman of estimable ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... they knew she would!—and, stopping to set the dish down, a sprig of holly dropped from her belt, just as Dot, turning, gave a particularly ecstatic hump to ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... of stones and dirt, feeling for the first time that the curse of Adam was upon him. Other men bereft of a pleasure might have recourse to other delights, but Burney had only two comforts in life. One was his pipe, the other was an ecstatic hope that there would be no Speedways to build on the other side ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... Milk seems to run in his veins instead of blood, but he is of truthfulness and charity all compact. We think it most probable that the secret of his supposed inspiration was the abnormal frequent or chronic turning of his mind into what is called the ecstatic or clairvoyant state. This condition being spontaneously induced, while he yet, in some unexplained manner, retained conscious possession and control of his usual faculties, he treated his subjective conceptions as ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... length very gently her body assumed a vertical position, head downwards, but as a concession to polite feeling the remaining laws of gravity were suspended, like herself, and her skirts were not correspondingly inverted. Slowly the ecstatic lady continued to circulate, the assembly stood at gaze "like Joshua's moon in Ajalon," and presently she was in the vertical position of a swimmer, the phenomenon concluding by her restoration to terra firma. This wonder was ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... daughter: she lay with her face to the window, her head half lifted to catch every sound, from the creaking of the sun-warped shingles above her head to the far-off moan of the rising wind in the pine trees. Sometimes she fell into a breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living over every moment of the stolen interview; feeling the fugitive's arm still around her, his kisses on her lips; hearing his whispered voice in her ears—the birth of her new life! This was followed again by a ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... when fate shall thy fair frame destroy, (That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy!) In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd, Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round, 340 From opening skies may streaming glories shine, And saints embrace thee with a ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church, Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the old ages will break through. In vain theologians may ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... under these carefully reported words, and fearing that Mr. Galton, not being aware of the motive which prompted them, would not know whether to be ecstatic or sarcastic, "you are ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... we had shared an ecstatic embrace, I returned to my room, leaving the door open. As soon as I had reason to suppose that she was asleep, I returned, and passed through her room to Leonilda's. She was expecting me, but did not know of my presence till I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of ecstatic joy, of which I could hardly have believed it capable; his eyes sparkled, as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment I thought him as beautiful as the stranger. She appeared affected by different feelings; wiping ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... she an angel—while the wings, loose down his back, flapped after him in long, mournful gestures. And when finally, from the couch upon which he had drawn her, Dolly opened upon him her blue eyes, humid as twin stars at dawn, he placed her little scissors in her hand, and with head bowed low, in an ecstatic agony of self-renunciation bade her do her duty. The little scissors could not do it this time, though. It took ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... maiden was clasped in the arms of Francisco, Count of Riverola. Impossible were it to describe the ecstatic bliss of this meeting—a meeting so unexpected on either side: for a minute before, Flora had deemed the young nobleman to be far away, fighting in the cause of the cross, while Francisco was proceeding to make inquiries at the cottage concerning his ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... is it, to catch intellectual fine ladies?—to fall into an ecstatic attitude before a picture—But then we must have Alton's genius, you know, to find out which the fine pictures are. I must read up that subject, by-the-by. It might be a paying one among the dons. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Really, I know not what to do. I earnestly desire to be all the Lord's and have His will done in my life, and it is painful to believe that these discouragements hinder God's will in my heart. How do sanctified people feel, anyway? I should think they ought to feel ecstatic joy all the time, being so consecrated and near the Lord as they are. I need help on this line, and will appreciate any advice you ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... Drunk with divinity, Spoon River— Yet bringing poor Eliza Johnson to shame, And myself to scorn and wretchedness. But why will you never see that love of women, And even love of wine, Are the stimulants by which the soul, hungering for divinity, Reaches the ecstatic vision And sees the celestial outposts? Only after many trials for strength, Only when all stimulants fail, Does the aspiring soul By its own sheer power Find the divine By resting ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... tempestuous than Hugh's, her embrace was not less ecstatic. She put her arms round my neck and took her legs off the ground,—a quite simple process, and known to most aunts, I expect. The ultimate result would, no doubt, be strangulation. No one knows, of course, but among aunts it is a very general belief. Unlike Hugh, Betty kept her eyes religiously away ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... for happy subjects Correggio reminds us of Raphael. The two men shrank equally from the painful. But where the Umbrian's ideal of happiness was tranquil and serene, Correggio's was exuberant and ecstatic. Raphael indeed was almost Greek in his sense of repose, while Correggio had a passion for motion. "He divines, knows and paints the finest movements of nervous life," ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... discouragement. To a spirit aware of the new influences abroad, and fresh from contact with evils rooted in the very foundations of the existing system, there was a peculiar irony in being advised to seek guidance and instruction in the society of ecstatic nuns and cloistered theologians. The Duke, with his sickly soul agrope in a maze of Neoplatonism and probabilism, while his people groaned under unjust taxes, while knowledge and intellectual liberty languished in a kind of moral pest-house, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... those must set themselves deep in the very core of the system, don't you think, Colonel? If this woman, now, was descended from a whole line of ancestresses, who had all been trained for their work into a sort of ecstatic fervour, the ecstasy and all that went with it must have got so ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... all praise! great glory to the Achaians! Bring on your ship, and listen to our song. For none has ever passed us in a black-hulled ship till from our lips he heard ecstatic song, then went his way rejoicing and with larger knowledge. For we know all that on the plain of Troy Argives and Trojans suffered at the Gods' behest; we know whatever happens on ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... incredible voracity, particularly the females; and we have likewise endeavored to instil into them the precepts of lunar philosophy. We have insisted upon their renouncing the contemptible shackles of religion and common sense, and adoring the profound, omnipotent, and all perfect energy, and the ecstatic, immutable, immovable perfection. But such was the unparalleled obstinacy of these wretched savages that they persisted in cleaving to their wives, and adhering to their religion, and absolutely set at nought the sublime doctrines of the moon—nay, among other abominable heresies ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... dead!" How many hearts have throbbed with anguish, and eyes overflowed with tears at the utterance of these thrilling words! A tender bud is intrusted to a rejoicing family. Very precious does it become to them. With what ecstatic joy do they note the first dawn of intelligence as it beams from the starry eyes! How merry their own hearts now, as they listen to the shouts of childish glee as they burst from the coral lips! Ay, very, very dear is this little ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... seize the little white hand all ablaze with jewels which hung over the arm of her chair so near to his. He mastered it with a stupendous effort. They sat there in a silence which was to him almost ecstatic. Then Nicholas of Reist stood suddenly before them, his black eyebrows contracted into ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... They loved the novelty and the fun. And on the thin, elegant Angus in his new London clothes, they looked really puzzled, as he sat there immobile, gleaming through his monocle like some Buddha going wicked, perched cross-legged and ecstatic on the red velvet seat. They marvelled that the lower half of him could so double up, like a foot-rule. So they stared till they had seen enough. When they suddenly said "Buon 'appetito," withdrew their heads and shoulders, slammed the ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Joy's ecstatic trial: He, with viny crown advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addrest: But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best: They would have thought who heard the strain ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... open; after that a Seventh, and then an Eighth— How long I should have continued I know not. In vain did the Sphere, in his voice of thunder, reiterate his command of silence, and threaten me with the direst penalties if I persisted. Nothing could stem the flood of my ecstatic aspirations. Perhaps I was to blame; but indeed I was intoxicated with the recent draughts of Truth to which he himself had introduced me. However, the end was not long in coming. My words were cut short by a crash outside, and a simultaneous crash inside me, which impelled me through ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... me smiling, and his face was always very sweet when he smiled. "Why, the rogue will have it that when such a cavalier as Lancelot tumbles into love he becomes a very ecstatic, and sees the world as it never is, was, or shall be. The sun is no more than his lady's looking-glass, and the moon and stars her candles to light her to bed. You are a lover, Messer Guido. Do you think thus of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Saturday, and how we watched the numbers, gazing from the carriage-windows, at the tobacco- shop! Well, not one of those numbers came out! We drove home in silence, with our feathers all drooping. However, we had had the sensation of being millionaires for those two days (ecstatic but short!), and felt that we had been defrauded by ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... published proved to Russians that his day was over. His failure in his self-imposed mission plunged him into the extremes of self-torment, and his lucid moments grew more and more rare. He destroyed what he had written of the second part of "Dead Souls," in the attacks of ecstatic remorse at such profane work which followed. (By some authorities it is believed that he did this unintentionally, meaning to destroy an entirely different set of papers.) In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and went thence to Moscow, where he resided until his death, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... wrenched at his heart? "If I went away from Rachel I would die." Unquestionably sincere.... "I'd die." Not, of course, die. But feel death. Yet, there was something changed. But a man doesn't remain an ecstatic lover. There comes a time. Well, he loved her like this—quietly, happily, and if he went away from her he would feel an end had come to his life. The other love had been words flying in his head. Nice to have felt as he had. But life—practical, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... great passion, to lift him out of himself. He sat and smoked, spiritually bemused, his brain running like a fountain with melodies of music and poetry, notes and words that sang in his ears and murmured on his lips without his hearing them. So a distant curlew thrilled him to a more ecstatic melancholy with its call through the moon-transfigured world, and he did not notice it. All the influences of the gentle night contributed to his inspired mood, but Love was the first violin in that orchestra under Nature's conductorship—Nature, whose hour ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... hardly be said that he was simply ecstatic, but it may interest both the psychologist and the philologist to learn that the expression How is that for high? struck him at once as with a kind of frenzy. It became immediately such a favorite tongue morsel of his that ever since he has been employing ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... called forth such a laudatory buzzing of tongues and such a cordial shaking of hands that one might have easily mistaken the meeting for a successful political rally or a religious revival. The Youngest and Prettiest Trustee fluttered about him, chirping ecstatic expletives, while the Disagreeable Trustee watched her ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... On this occasion she excited their suspicions by leading them by an unaccustomed route down a steep and rocky path, where they had great difficulty in following her. They finally arrived at the grotto, and were astounded to observe the change that came over her. She seemed to be in a state of ecstatic awe. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... drawing and the power of light in this picture that you can imagine you see the resplendent crucifix suddenly thrust into the shadow by the strong hands of invisible spirits, and swayed for a moment only before the dazzled eyes of the ecstatic solitary. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... he took a long, ecstatic drink out of the pitcher itself, set it down, and rose to his feet. He felt suddenly better. For the time the water had cooled him. The racking headache was smoothed away. And, child-like, he had no desire whatever to cut short his surreptitious good time by going to bed. He looked ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... exert over their fellow-countrymen in the hour of stress. The Extremists boldly threw the whole responsibility for the movement on British rule and combined with a perfunctory and dubious condemnation of the crimes themselves an ecstatic admiration for the heroism which had driven the youth of India to follow the example of the Russian intelligentsia in its revolt against an autocracy as brutal and as odious as that of Russia. Mere measures of repression under the ordinary ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... poignant and disgusting attack of the insects ceased. A flood of ecstatic relief swept over the adventurers. Without a word, all three quit squirming, caught their floats under their armpits and swung down ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... understood perfectly. "I'm very glad, too, dearie," she said, simply, looking at the young man with motherly love irradiating her worn face. Albert went to her, and she kissed him, while the happy girl put her arms about them both in an ecstatic hug. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... soul like a passionate woman turns, Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns, Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... her to remove her traveling-dress in ecstatic silence, and robe her in azure silk, just a shade less ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... looked up at the old gentleman who once more, with serious mien and a significant movement of his head toward the door, gestured for silence. The boy's eyes blinked once or twice; then with a weak but ecstatic smile he laid a pale hand upon the furry coat of the little dog that began to bounce about, licking ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... numbers that set out from Western Europe, probably not less than a million, only a remnant of twenty thousand fighting men, with an equal number of followers, had reached the Holy City. Though thus decimated and war weary, the Crusaders were ecstatic with religious fervour; St. George was said to have appeared to them clad in shining armour; the Saracens gave way, and Jerusalem was taken by assault. The usual massacre of the inhabitants followed, and estimates of the slain vary from forty to a hundred thousand. In 1099 was established ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... the inside of the carriage, with Emily between us at the outset; but when we were off the London stones she was often allowed to make a third on the dickey with Clarence and Martyn, whose ecstatic heels could be endured for the sake of the free air and the view. Of course we posted, and where there were severe hills we indulged in four horses. The varieties of the jackets of our post-boys, blue or yellow, as supposed to ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no room for the furniture. These were christened Raphael, Vinci, or Andrea del Sarto; there were none but chefs d'oeuvre, and the father would keep his daughter standing in front of them hours at a time, forcing his admiration upon her, wearying her with his ecstatic flights. He would ascend from epithet to epithet, would work himself into a state of intoxication, of delirium, and would end by thinking that he was negotiating with an imaginary purchaser, would dispute ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... possession of this woman, sought after as mistress, but more intensely ardent than a mistress, with her outbursts of tears and kisses, threw him into ecstasies and possessed him with distracting joy. Something within him whispered, as in the days of early manhood, at the ecstatic hour of sunrise. Already he wished to be on the way to Italy with Marianne, far from the mire and mists ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... little more than a pale, featureless oval to him in the gloom, but he could divine from the vibrations of her voice that she was as ecstatic as a young maid ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... was!—there was authority in it, soul in it: 'Peter, come follow me,' and he dropped the nets, and went out to life's sea to fish for men. Ah, yes, I think as Peter wrote these words he remembered his solemn vows of loyalty, his ecstatic joy on the Mount of Transfiguration, and then, alas! his awful sin when he deserted Jesus in that dark terrible morning of the great trial. Oh, those bitter hours! Peter could not ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... For several ecstatic moments the child munched her biscuits. It had been a long time since she had eaten anything so delicious, although if those same biscuits had appeared on the Cary table a month ago they would have probably been scorned. But eager as her appetite was it did ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... been quite as happy as that of the other Elsie. Indeed, her greater capacity for blissful and ecstatic joy would have rendered it even happier but for the valedictory character all its details held secretly for her. Her youth and temperament, however, which had carried her through the days following her momentous decision, upheld her spirits even when she approached the brink ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... of prayers crushed in by the heavy roof, Durtal, in the midst of kneeling Sisters and women, was struck with a sense as of some early Christian rite buried in the catacombs. Here were the same ecstatic tenderness, the same faith; and it was possible even to imagine some apprehension of surprise, and some eagerness to profess the faith in the face of danger. And thus, as in a vague image, this sacred cellar held the dim picture ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... passions she feared no more than Vergil's Volscian huntress feared the beasts of the forest and plain, the raven still hovered above her exhausted mare, the torn flag was still in her left hand; and the bright laughter, the flash of ecstatic triumph, was still in her face as she sang the last lines of her own war-chant. The leopard nature was roused in her. She was a soldier; death had been about her from her birth; she neither feared to give nor to receive it; she was proud as ever ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... absorbed his talent in so many directions that it could not be concentrated in any. His imagination outran his achievement, and the most famous of his works, his statue of Cleopatra, owes its reputation not so much to its own merit, which is far from overwhelming, as to the ecstatic description of it which Nathaniel Hawthorne included in "The Marble Faun." A master of literature is not necessarily an inspired critic of art, and it is to be suspected that Hawthorne permitted some of the fire of his imagination to play about the cold ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... steak—a great thick slice. He knew she could never eat it, and she knew she could never eat it. But she did eat it all, ecstatically. And in a sort of ecstatic Nirvana the quiet and vastness and peace of the big old frame house ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the song's ecstatic core! But far removed were clangour, storm and feud; For plenteous health was his, exceeding store Of joy, and ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... a record in the minds and memory of all who witnessed the strange proceeding. And it is a very well written statement, and no doubt one hundred years hence it will be read with an interest not less ecstatic than the enthusiasm of its present pioneers; for, in the interval, these advanced women may have won for their withholding sisters the entire list of male prerogatives. What adds to the force of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... I am wholly unable to feel the force of the above. Strauss says that Paul's vision was ecstatic—subjective and not objective—that Paul thought he saw Christ, although he never really saw him. But, says Strauss, he uses the same word for his own vision and for the appearances to the earlier Apostles: it is plain therefore that he did not suppose the earlier Apostles to have seen ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... There were moments, as he sat alone in his rooms at night, when it rose almost to terror; just as there were other moments when awe vanished for a while, and his whole being was flooded with an extraordinary ecstatic semi-earthly happiness at the thought that he and she could yet speak with one another.... Imagine, if you please, a child who on returning home finds that his mother has become Queen, and meets her in the glory of ermine ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... pauses Taffy heard, faint and far below, the noise of cowhorns blown by the street boys gathered at the foot of the tower and beyond the bridge. Close beside him a small urchin of a chorister was singing away with the face of an ecstatic seraph; whence that ecstasy arose the urchin would have been puzzled to tell. There flashed into Taffy's brain the vision of the whole earth lauding and adoring— sun-worshippers and Christians, priests and small children; nation after ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... constant employment in the town of Danbury. He might make arrangements to take his meals on the jump, and would sleep of course with his hat and boots on. Browne is mercurial. Browne would be happy in Danbury. Till he died. For a fortnight, say—one brief, glowing, ecstatic fortnight. Fourteen giddy days would surely finish him. Imagine Browne (him of the eagle eye) up in the morning, his face washed, hair combed, breakfast taken aboard, and everything trim and tight for sailing out into the surging whirlpool of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... I go to my rooms to rest, I find my lodging just as I left it. I run through it, radiant, then I sit down on the divan and I rest there, ecstatic, beatific, feasting my eyes with the view of my knickknacks and my books. I undress, however; I splash about in a great tub, rejoicing that for the first time in many months I am going to get into ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... idleness this morning by the comfortable realisation that he was falling desperately in love. He shook his head at himself and smiled. He was not ill pleased with himself. He would return to a perfectly regulated life later on. In the meanwhile he would give a free rein to these ecstatic moods, these wild emotions. When he had given a free rein to them they ambled round a little paddock, and brought him back to his own front door. It was delicious. He had thoughts of chronicling the expedition ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... her arms again, turned half-aside, and, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, simply remarked, with an ecstatic smile:— ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... do awe of public opinion, gave herself up to the encouraging of any shadow of amusement quite heartily. She was so entertaining in a small way upon this occasion, that Euphemia's frame of mind became in some degree ecstatic. From her place of state across the room, Lady Augusta regarded them with disapproval. It was so very evident that they were enjoying themselves, and that this shocking Dorothea Crewe was not to be suppressed. (Dorothea, be it known, was Dolly's baptismal name, and Lady Augusta held ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and the universe was Naumann's most ardent wish, but he was always put off to some future time as not yet being quite mature and worthy enough. Naumann's illustrations of Tartini's teachings resemble more a mystic and ecstatic sermon than a musical theory. Tartini died without having spoken his last word. His character in this last period of his life appears to have been amiable, mild, and benevolent. The sharp and violent disposition of his wife did not ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... with shrieks of lost illusion. Then Annie Petowski or Jennie Goldstein or Maggie McNamara would watch the Nurse with open hostility and defiance, and her rustling exit from the ward would be followed by swift cessation of cries, and, close to Annie or Jennie or Maggie's heart, there would be small ecstatic gurglings—and peace. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... behind interrupted his ecstatic description"Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and a thousand corroding anxieties which good health would dissipate. We fear and scorn 'materialism.' But he who knew all about it, and could apply his knowledge, might become the preacher of a new gospel. Not, however, through the ecstatic moments of the individual does such knowledge come, but through the revelations of science, in connection with ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... it when you did," pursued Tracey, oblivious to Nat in his own ecstatic temper. "I guess I wouldn't never 've got up the spunk to—to tell Angie what I did to-night, 'f it hadn't been we was talkin' 'bout your engagement to Josie. Then, somehow, it just seemed to bust right out of me, like I couldn't hold it no ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... bathing suit. Even Phebe was forced to admit that he was well-bred, while, in the distance, Cicely capered about madly, half in rapture that the desired meeting had taken place, half in rage that she could not with dignity annex herself to the group. For one short, ecstatic moment, she held her breath; then she vented her feelings by plunging headlong into the next wave and swimming off as fast as she could. Instead of making his bow and then beating the decorous retreat of an eccentric recluse, Mr. Gifford ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... at the idea and reason of everything it probes,—is relieved by a richly sympathetic and imaginative nature,—indeed, is so welded with it, that insight and analysis serve each other, and cool reason gives solidity to ecstatic experience. Perhaps as a seer Dr. Bushnell may be more certain of recognition than as a reasoner. Whatever may be thought of the orthodoxy of the doctrines he has rationalized, there can be no doubt as to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... we have known, Thy rapture, terror, vaunting, fretting, Profound despair, ecstatic tone, Crowning of reason, and ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... presence, it is when, from observing the laws which govern matter, he passes to observe the powers and capabilities of the mind, and thence ascends to the Intellectual Source of light, life, and being, and contemplates the perennial and ecstatic joys which flow from the presence of Deity; soul mingling with soul, love absorbed in love, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... from which the guests had just cleared out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room to room surveying the general displacement of furniture with no ecstatic feeling; rather the reverse, indeed. At last he entered the bakehouse, and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the embers, also lost in contemplation. Winterborne sat down ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... sound, half sob, half ecstatic breath, and he saw she had not been sure he would yield her the bright jewel she had ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... related, and described, and the while thought—where her letters were? Nevertheless she gave herself kindly to her hostess's gratification, and patiently put her own by; and the evening ended with Mrs. Esthwaite being in a state of ecstatic delight with her new-found relation. Mr. Esthwaite had kept silence and played the part of listener for the larger portion of the evening, using his eyes and probably his judgment freely during that time. As they were separating, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... there was one; at home in our gardens and hedges, not often farther away than the roadside, abundant everywhere during nearly every month in the year, and yet was there ever one too many? There is scarcely an hour in the day, too, when its delicious, ecstatic song may not be heard; in the darkness of midnight, just before dawn, when its voice is almost the first to respond to the chipping sparrow's wiry trill and the robin's warble; in the cool of the morning, the heat of noon, the hush of evening — ever the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... frail physique and delicate nerves. Neither did she live very long after this. Her husband and Hawthorne both cordially disapproved of these mesmeric practices; but Mrs. Browning could not be prevented from talking on the subject, and this evidently produced an ecstatic and febrile condition of mind in her, very wearing to a poetic temperament. Hawthorne heartily liked Browning himself, and always speaks well of him; but there must also have been an undercurrent of disagreement ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of that ecstatic light in his eyes) proceeded to answer. But it was a longish story, and lasted through half a dozen of their forward and backward ambulations. Apparently, furthermore, it was a story which, as it developed, became less and less agreeable to the mind of John; for his face, at first all ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... this curious ecstatic condition obviously could not stop at this point. It was a critical moment—would they enter into rivalry or spiritual partnership? If the latter, then who was to be the leader, who would make the first move? It was ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... declared Marion, clasping her hands together with her favorite ecstatic gesture. "If we could just find a cave with a spring away back in it, don't you know, and a ledge outside where you could watch for enemies—wouldn't that be keen? It makes me wish I had done something, so I had to hide out in the hills. And every day at ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... evident emotion, for with a faint cry Caroline had thrown herself on her neck, and buried her cheek upon her shoulder. Every limb trembled with agitation; the ecstatic delight of that one moment—doubt was, indeed, at an end. He loved her, and in spite of her faults he would cherish her with tenderness; he had chosen her as his wife—chosen her, though she had rejected, injured him, in ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... no ruffian feeling in thy breast, Discordant jar thy bosom-chords among; But peace attune thy gentle soul to rest, Or love ecstatic wake ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... you saw flame, Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said, "Appear! Good were it to be ever here. If thou wilt, let me build to thee Service-tabernacles three, Where, forever in thy presence, In ecstatic acquiescence, Far alike from thriftless learning And ignorance's undiscerning, I may worship and remain!" Thus at the show above me, gazing With upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazing Throughout its whole mass, over and under Until at length it burst asunder And ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... of this that the wild birds voice, as they greet the sun at dawn, and again as they give sweet and melancholy notes at his sinking in the quiet of evening. Birds are impressed from without. They are reasonless, ecstatic, spontaneous, giving voice as accurately and joyously as they can to the vibrations of peace and harmony—to the Sounds, which they feel from Nature. Animals and birds are conscious of forces and creatures, we cannot see.... Unless we decide that birds generate ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... a heart the Queen leant on, Thrill'd in a minute erratic, Ere the true bosom she bent on, Meet for love's regal dalmatic. O, what a fancy ecstatic Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on— Love to be saved for it, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... which the hermit soul delights to dwell! Is it not that bizarre silence of the Algerian waste which leads many a Trappist to his fate, rather than the strange thought of God calling his soul to heavenly dreams and ecstatic renunciations? Is it not the wild poetry of the sleeping snows by night that gives to the St. Bernard monk his holiest meditations? When the organ murmurs, and he kneels in that remote chapel of the clouds to pray, is it not the religion of his wonderful earthly situation and prospect ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the unoffending farmers who happened to pass that way. The greater the fear evinced by the victims, the greater was the delight of the humorously inclined menials, and if perchance a dog succeeded in fixing his fangs in the garments or calf of a pedestrian their mirth found vent in ecstatic shouts of laughter. Basilivitch had on more than one occasion been upon such errands as that which brought him to-day, and seemed on terms of familiarity with the liveried guardians of the palace. They obligingly called off their ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... even heard his mother was ill. He had just received her ecstatic response to his wire—and that very night she came to him, vividly, as he hovered on the confines ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... death. And while he rhapsodised, with a congregation of honest bread-and-butter citizens under him, trying hard with their blinkered eyes and blunted souls, to glimpse that imaginary glamour of ecstatic "holiness," there surged and rolled around them the stunted, poisoned, and emaciated life ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... most just. I had, in contemplation, striven To realize the joys of heaven; I had extended fancy's flights Through all that region of delights, Had counted, till the numbers failed, The pleasures on the blest entailed. Had sounded the ecstatic rest I should enjoy on Allah's breast— And for these thoughts I now atone; They were of something of my own, And were not thoughts ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... The place was so plain after the comparative luxury of Elmhurst, and especially of the rose chamber Patsy had occupied, that the old man could not fail to marvel at the girl's ecstatic joy to find herself in the old tenement again. There was one good sized living-room, with an ancient rag-carpet partially covering the floor, a sheet-iron stove, a sofa, a table and three or four old-fashioned chairs that had probably come from ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... Person of Tring, Who embellished his nose with a ring; He gazed at the moon every evening in June, That ecstatic Old Person of Tring. ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... spoiled your nice red tomatoes," said a voice that filled Virginia's whirling mind with a kind of ecstatic dizziness. As the owner of the voice held out his hand, she saw that it was long and thin like the rest of him, with blue veins crossing the back, and slender, slightly crooked fingers that hurt hers with the strength ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Jules La Touche came to disturb her as she drifted off into delicious memories of the past and ecstatic dreams of the future. No thought of the promise she had given, no remorse at her own falsity, troubled her easy conscience. What did she care for Jules La Touche? What was he beside this splendid Mr. Reinecourt? She thought of him—when she thought of him at all—with angry impatience, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... delirium and fever, while listening to the masterpieces of our great masters." He relates the case of a young Provencal musician, who blew out his brains at the door of the Opera after a second hearing of Spontini's "Vestale," having previously explained in a letter, that after this ecstatic enjoyment, he did not care to remain in this prosaic world; and the case of the famous singer Malibran, who, on hearing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the first time, at the Conservatoire, "was seized with such convulsions that she had to be carried out of the hall." "We have in such cases," Berlioz ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... includes life in the various human races on this and other planets, until finally there is a further liberation of the "Awen," which then passes on to the "Circle of Bliss," or "Gwynfid," where it abides for aeons in a state of ecstatic being. But, beyond even this transcendent state, there is another, which is called the "Circle of the Infinite," or "Ceugant," which is identical with the "Union with God" of the Persians and Greek Mystics, or the "Nirvana" of the Hindus. ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... the belt about his waist, and the drawn bayonet in his hand, his appearance, although just a trifle incongruous to my critical eye, was well calculated to produce a profound impression upon his unsophisticated subjects, as was evidenced by the note of admiration which rang unmistakably in the ecstatic shout of "Bayete!" with which his guards greeted him upon his reappearance. He strutted up and down the compound for a few minutes, showing off his fine feathers; called his chief induna to him, and instructed the man in my presence that I was to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... by hypnotising the soul, nor by blessing it into a state of ecstatic insensibility, that the Lord enables the man filled with the Spirit to thus triumph over suffering. Rather it is by giving the soul a sweet, constant, and unshaken assurance through faith: First, that it is freely and fully accepted in Christ. Second, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... in them. First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future—death or a new life—all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome. ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... valuable. Its power to isolate the man from the world and thus minister to religious communion differs in different persons. The Islamic fast of Ramadan is said to produce irritability and lead to quarrels. In general, fasting tends to induce a nonnatural condition of body and mind, favorable to ecstatic experiences, and favorable or not, as the case may be, to a ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the water or the possibility of a steeper slope for the sand-walls, are listened to with attention and respect. You are rewarded by an invitation which allows you to witness the very moment when the dyke is broken and the sea admitted into basin and canal, or the yet more ecstatic moment when the Union Jack waves over ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... up to speak to her, and while I bowed awkwardly and turned away, I saw her gaze looking back at me from the roses and the pink-shaded lamps. A touch on my arm brought the face of young George between me and my ecstatic visions. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... in the seventh heaven of ecstatic delight; Uncle John declared his three girls were sure to become shining lights, if not actual constellations, wherever they might be placed; Major Doyle growled and protested; but was secretly pleased ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... right—whether it was A sharp or A natural? What really matters is that Harmony, having settled the dispute and clinched the decision by running over the score for a page or two, turned to find the Portier, ecstatic eyes upturned, hands folded on paunch, enjoying a delirium of pleasure, and the sentry nowhere ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... two successors, Lasswade and Castle Street were Scott's habitats, with various radiations; while in the spring of 1803 he and Mrs. Scott repeated their visit to London and extended it to Oxford. It is not surprising to read his confession in sad days, a quarter of a century later, of the 'ecstatic feeling' with which he first saw this, the place in all the island which was his spiritual home. The same year saw the alarm of invasion which followed the resumption of hostilities after the armistice of Amiens; and Scott's ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... expression in phrases of magnificent solemnity and in imagery of the profoundest awesomeness. This manner the Greeks never show. Not even AEschylus, the most Hebraic of Hellenes, has any passages in which he loses control of his artistic sense. Neither he nor any other Hellene sees ecstatic visions or dreams ecstatic dreams. There is no place in the Greek comprehension for that state of mind which can beget visions like these: "And I looked, and behold! A whirlwind came out of the north, a gray cloud and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... ventilating opening, were brutes of less advanced ages. On the lowest of the three levels where special lights were available for our benefit even the women ceased to shudder and gave expression to ecstatic cries of rapture, as all the world has ever done when seeing baby beasts ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... ecstatic. He gamboled and capered, he zoomed and zigzagged, he essayed quick, climbing spirals and almost came to grief among the tangled pinnacles on the ridge of the hogback. He swooped downward again in a series of shallow, easy glides ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... a cup of coffee, please, sir? I've been so excited I couldn't eat a mouthful at home." She gracefully slid into the chair Halkins offered, and broke into an ecstatic giggle that would have resulted in a court-martial had she been serving any ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... sacrificial offerings and penances, or of ecstasies, or of asceticism, or of sacred study, stands over against the British ideal of religion in daily life and in practical philanthropies. To the Hindu, the religious mood is that of ecstatic whole-hearted devotion; the Briton reverences as the religious mood a quiet staying intensity in noble endurance ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... and down the children went, the bell answering from above, peal upon peal; when just as they had caught the rhythm of Claude's sturdy pull, and the bell could sound no louder, the small cords gave way from their fastenings, the little ones rolled upon their backs, the bell gave one ecstatic double clang and turned clear over, the swift rope straightened upward from its coil, and Claude and Sidonie, her hands clasped upon each other about the rope and his hands upon hers, shot up three times as high as their finest leap could have carried them. For an instant they hung; then with ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... knowing something of human nature, and of the evanescent character of childish fancies, he ordered shipped to Russia a variety of American mechanical toys, calculated to swell the proud bosom of the small boy who received them. This shameless bid for continued favor met with immediate success. An ecstatic, incoherent little shriek of delight came from the land of the czar in the form of another letter; and the candle, which quite possibly would have burned low or even gone out, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... a thought as this, Parliament Square drove it home. As the coach drew up at the west door of the Abbey, and Monsignor stepped out with his robes about him, he heard, like a ground-bass to the ecstatic pealing of the bells overhead, the great roar of welcome roll out over the wide space, reverberate back from Westminster Hall and the Government Buildings opposite, and die down into heart-shaking silence again, as the vermilion flash was seen at the Abbey doors. The great space ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... procreant truth exhale From me, before my forces fail; Or ere the ecstatic impulse go, Let all my ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... reading, I make bold to tell you," says Trollope, "is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures that God has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be more ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in which there ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... took upon the glistening surface of his trousers the muddy soles of merchants, the clay-bronzed brogans of hired men, the cowhide toboggans of teamsters, and the brass-toed, red-kneed boots of little boys ecstatic in their ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... in vain; For joy (rejoice ye Few that tasted have!) Is Love's obedience Against the genial laws of natural sense, Whose wide, self-dissipating wave, Prison'd in artful dykes, Trembling returns and strikes Thence to its source again, In backward billows fleet, Crest crossing crest ecstatic as they greet, Thrilling each vein, Exploring every chasm and cove Of the full heart with floods of honied love, And every principal street And obscure alley and lane Of the intricate brain With brimming rivers of light and breezes sweet Of the primordial ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... say any more, except that people have no right to falsify the Bible! I HATE such hum-bug as could attempt to plaster over with ecclesiastical abstractions such ecstatic, natural, human love as lies in that great and passionate song!" Her speech had grown spirited, and almost petulant at his rebuke, and her eyes moist. "I WISH I had a friend here to support me; but nobody is ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... in a maze. The past and the future had lost their existence to him, and he was living in the glorified present. He no more coolly realized the situation than would one in an ecstatic trance. In one sense he verified the popular superstition, and was bewitched; and, with the charming witch ever near to weave a new spell a dozen times a day, how could he disentangle himself? He was too innocent, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Lampugnani boldly. "Body of God! It were enough to wake the curiosity of an ecstatic hermit to have a mud-splashed courier from Citta di Castello at Cesena three times within ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... came as clear as a revelation from God. It wakened me in the still of the night and ravished my soul with peace and joy unspeakable. I arose and took a walk into the country to a mountain spring and back. I shall never forget that night, and the ecstatic joy it brought to me. My religious nature had been outraged so long that when it was set free it returned to its Lord with a violent bound. The fittest words I could find to express my feelings are in the 103d Psalm: "Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... Saviour of men elbowed St. Labre. They were of plaster run into moulds, or roughly carved in wood, and were colored with paint as glaring as the red and blue of a barber's pole, and covered with vulgar gildings. Chins in the air, ecstatic eyes shining with varnish, horribly ugly and all new, they were drawn up in line like recruits at the roll-call, the mitred bishop, the martyr carrying his palm, St. Agnes embracing her lamb, St. Roch with his dog and shells, St. John ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... father's jokes. Indeed it was a funny thing that father should come home early from work and make faces at mother from the road. Mother, too, was willing to join in the fun, for she knelt down among the wet flowers, and as her head drooped lower and lower it looked, for one ecstatic moment, as though she were going to turn head over heels. But she lay quite still on the ground, and father came half-way through the gate, and then turned and ran off down the hill towards the station. Jack stood in ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... certainly they achieved no rigour—they were wonderfully amiable and ecstatic about Morgan. It was a genuine tenderness, an artless admiration, equally strong in each. They even praised his beauty, which was small, and were as afraid of him as if they felt him of finer clay. They spoke of ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... they have. We have just had a very pleasant excursion to a mountain called Haystack, and ate our dinner sitting round in the grass in view of a splendid prospect.... I have thus given you the history of our summer, as far as its history can be written. Its ecstatic joys have not been wanting, nor its hours of shame and confusion of face; but these are things that can not be described. What a mystery life is, and how we go up and down, glad to-day and sorrowful to-morrow! I took ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... recalling what happens when we are in the society of a mental inferior. We say things of which he misses the import; we joke, and he does not smile; what makes him laugh loudly seems to us horseplay or childish; he is blind to beauties which ravish us; he is ecstatic over what strikes us as crude; and his profound truths are for us trite commonplaces. His perceptions are relatively coarse; our perceptions are relatively subtle. We try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is aware of his inferiority we may ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... power. They may, in fact, exhibit no striking individual traits which stand impertinently out, and yet from this very cause be all the more potent and influential individualities. Indeed, in the highest efforts of ecstatic action, when the person is mightiest, and amazes us by the giant leaps of his intuition, the mere peculiarities of his personality are unseen and unfelt. This is the case with Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various |
