"Agonizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with recognition and a smile? The lawyer half expected her to and stepped near enough to see, but the eyes which had opened upon the white wall in front of her stared on, and when they did turn, as they did after one halting, agonizing minute, it was in response to some movement made by Mr. Ransom and not in reply ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... brave fellows; the surgeon was deceived, and rash to consent to his removal. Your commander has sunk beneath the fatigue. I thought it would be so. Peace," he exclaimed, as the tears fell fast from his eyes, "peace to thy manes, brave, generous St. Clair." An agonizing shriek from above startled all; and in another moment the lady (the traveller in the diligence) fell on what appeared to be the soldier's bier. "Heavens! what dream is this?" exclaimed the officer who had been so assiduous in his attention to the unfortunate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... of being glad to get off so easily from a terrible affair that would cost her many a year behind grim prison walls, this girl's agonizing cry was that she should remain there and prove ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... of my error. I claim no merit in doing this, except that I can look backward as far as your great leader can look forward. Booker Washington has always been from fifteen to twenty years ahead of any other leader of his race.... While most of us were agonizing over the Negro's relation to the State and his political fortunes, Booker Washington saw that there was a great economic empire that needed to be conquered. He saw an emancipated race chained to the soil by the Mortgage ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... be most effectually given, how they were even to be preserved from receiving injuries instead of benefits at our hands,—whence were we to learn this but from their language and from our own hearts? They had spoken of unrelenting and inhuman wrongs; of patience wearied out; of the agonizing yoke cast off; of the blessed service of freedom chosen; of heroic aspirations; of constancy, and fortitude, and perseverance; of resolution even to the death; of gladness in the embrace of death; of weeping over the graves of the slain, by ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... have been a minute or a year that we drifted in a rapturously agonizing kiss; but slowly her eyes opened, her lips sighed and, touching them to my cheek, she whispered my name over ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and Aunt Ann and Aunt Matilda rigidly confronted them, having stolen upon them unseen, unheard, unthought of, and they stood now in grim horror, merciless and implacable. They advanced in a swooping body, after one moment of agonizing suspense, and snatched Adnah into their midst, glaring three kinds of loathing scorn upon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... later I was trotting a good horse slowly down the upper, steeper portion of the track toward Zeitoon, swearing to myself, and dreading the smoother going where I should feel compelled to gallop whether my ankle hurt or not. As a matter of fact I began to suspect a broken bone or ligament, for the agonizing pain increased and made me sit awkwardly on the horse, thus causing him to change his pace at odd intervals and give me more pain yet. However, gallop I had to, and I reached the bridge going at top speed, only ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... to me, Letitia. He's listening to the voice of the universe, calling to him. The voice of unborn generations, clamoring, agonizing! What do you suppose it means, man... this storm that has shaken us? It is Nature's trumpet-call... it is the shout of discovery of the powers within us! For ages upon ages life has been preparing it... and now suddenly we meet... ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... specimens of Bunyan's picturesque imaginative power, and his command of forcible and racy language. Each will reward perusal. His work on "Prayer" is couched in the most exalted strain, and is evidently the production of one who by long and agonizing experience had learnt the true nature of prayer, as a pouring out of the soul to God, and a wrestling with Him until the blessing, delayed not denied, is granted. It is, however, unhappily deformed ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... up by a paviour, who, to every stroke of his rammer, adds a loud, distinct, and echoing, Haugh! The pedestrian cutler is grinding a butcher's cleaver with such earnestness and force, that it elicits sparks of fire. This, added to the agonizing howls of his unfortunate dog, must afford a perfect specimen of the ancient chromatic. The poor animal, between a man and a monkey, piping harsh discords upon a hautboy, the girl whirling her crepitaculum, or rattle, and the boy beating his drum, conclude the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... and harrowing beyond telling. A scream so thin and so high that it roughened his skin, so keenly shrill that it tortured his nerves; a sound of that peculiar frequency that is more agonizing ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... afflicted mother weeping, Near the cross her station keeping Whereon hung her Son and Lord; Through whose spirit sympathizing, Sorrowing and agonizing, Also passed ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... greatness, any field of human inquiry had been successfully explored; if human reason had achieved any conquests; if any thing true and good had been obtained, that must endure as an heir-loom for all coming time; and if those centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat remained for the instruction of future generations. Either the problems they sought to solve ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the height alone did not bother me, but the others did not fare so well. Most of the men had blinding headaches, Kyla's slashed side must have given her considerable pain, and Kendricks had succumbed to mountain-sickness in its most agonizing form: severe cramps and vomiting. I was desperately uneasy about all of them, but there was nothing I could do; the only cure for mountain-sickness is oxygen or a lower altitude, neither of ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... deceptive efforts of dishonest men to appear independent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate men to remain independent, may both be in some degree checked by a better administration and understanding of laws respecting the poor. But the ordinances for relief and the ordinances ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... to silence these agonizing whisperings of her heart! With what restlessness of sorrow she rushed into the gayeties and amusements of a court life! How she sought, in charitable occupations, in the joys of society, in every thing ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... he designed to escape. The king's courtiers saw the handsome Hebrew, and extolled her beauty before him. He summoned her to the apartments of the palace, and captivated by her loveliness, determined to make her his bride. During the agonizing suspense of Abram, and the concealed anguish of Sarai in her conscious degradation, the hours wore heavily away, until the judgment of God upon the royal household brought deliverance. Pharaoh, though an idolater, knew by this supernatural infliction, that there was ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... more conformed to the example of our blessed Master: though we must ever recollect one important difference, that the sufferings of Christ were voluntarily borne for our benefit, and were probably far more exquisitely agonizing than any which we are called upon to undergo. Besides, it must be a solid support to us amidst all our troubles to know, that they do not happen to us by chance; that they are not even merely the punishment of sin; but that they are ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... gladness, as millions of other fellows were doing. But he had started wrong, and the farther he stumbled down the wrong road the harder it was to struggle back. Each hour he had let himself be confronted with agonizing thoughts of pain and death—strangling in the cruel embrace of the one, or being drawn whimpering into the mysterious uncertainty of the other; vivid prospects, these, that drew him into a state of dumb hysteria. He loathed himself, he ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... mortal ear into which he could pour the story of his sins and sufferings, and for some human tongue to utter friendly words of counsel to him. It was not enough to pour out his confessions before God in agonizing prayer; that he had done, and was doing daily. But it was not all. The natural yearning for man's forgiveness, spoken in living human speech, grew stronger within him. There was no longer a chance for him to make even a partial reparation of the wrong he had committed; ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... to recall her. The agonizing agitation passed from her and a great quiet fell upon her soul. The struggle was done. She had made the ancient sacrifice demanded of women since ever the first man went forth to war. It remained only to complete with fitting ritual this ancient ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... drawing the air into his starving lungs. Then he raised himself and gazed about him. At first glance everything seemed the same except for the fact that, whereas before his own boat had been alone, there were now two. Then Locke heard an agonizing ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... malady does a horse suffer more than in phrenitis, or inflammation of the brain. Possibly in severe cases of colic, probably in rabies in its fiercest form, the pain is equally intense. These three are the most agonizing of all the diseases to which the noblest of animals is exposed. Had my pistols been with me, I should then and there, with whatever strength Heaven granted, have taken my companion's life, that she might be ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... that while thrones were being hurled to the ground, and an epoch was passing away in violent convulsions, a few alterations in the electoral law would restore order and bring back normal conditions to the agonizing nations, is an instructive illustration of the blurred vision which characterizes contemporary statesmen. The Anglo-Saxon delegates at the Conference were under a similar delusion when they undertook to regenerate the world by a series ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a little earlier than the doctor. Lester was already there, and each young wife found the presence of her husband a comfort and support while, in an adjoining room, they waited in almost agonizing suspense to hear that the operation was over and ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... 1) Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud. Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot, What pangs of agonizing memory? ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... came together, her body was shaken, strained, and convulsed in every part: she was breathless, flushed, and faint. But it seemed as if nothing short of unconsciousness could bring cessation: the sobs still tore their way out of her bosom, and the laughter came with a terrible wrench that was more agonizing to hear ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... charity, so there may perhaps be some uncovenanted absolution for one who so earnestly loved mankind at large, and especially the poor and the oppressed; who in his old age and misery was found by their sick-bed; who willed to be with them in his death and burial. And yet we feel something of that agonizing uncertainty which forced from the aged Abbe Jean the bitter cry, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... ropes. exciting, absorbing, riveting, distracting &c. v.; impressive, warm, glowing, fervid, swelling, imposing, spirit-stirring, thrilling; high- wrought; soul-stirring, soul-subduing; heart-stirring, heart-swelling, heart-thrilling; agonizing &c. (painful) 830; telling, sensational, hysterical; overpowering, overwhelming; more than flesh and blood can bear; yellow. piquant &c. (pungent) 392; spicy, appetizing, provocative, provoquant[obs3], tantalizing. eager to go, anxious to go, chafing at the bit. Adv. till one ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... elbow. The Very Young Man crooked his arm through the little square orifice window that he found at his side, and, with a signal to his companions, all three in unison heaved upwards with all their strength. There came one agonizing instant of resistance; then with a wrenching of wood, the clatter of falling stones and a sudden crash, they burst through and straightened upright ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... last spark of life had not been extinguished in every one of the three; but the most prompt, wise, and vigorous measures were instantly taken and continued for hours—hours of agonizing suspense to those ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... you will do. You will have the pleasure of dying along with him—of BEING ROASTED, madam: an agonizing death, from which your father cannot save you, to which he will be the first man to condemn and conduct you. Ha! I see we understand each other, and you will give me over the cash-box and jewels." And so saying I threw myself back ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which was on the same floor with the kitchen, I heard groans issuing from it, and Hetty's voice saying: "Dear me! Oh, dear me!" in the most despairing, agonizing tones. Hetty always makes the most of a ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... was shunned. The senior president called angrily to the herald; but none heard his words in the rending din. The twain shot up the track elbow to elbow, and into the rope. It fell amid a blinding cloud of dust. All the heralds and presidents ran together into it. Then was a long, agonizing moment, while the stadium roared, shook, and raged, before the dust settled and the master-herald stood forth beckoning ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... idealist's exaltation. He has learned to express the beautiful mystery of life and he is no longer haunted in his nerves by the ugliness of circumstances. Not that he has shut himself up in an enchanted world: he still remains a poet of this agonizing earth. In The Stronghold he summons up a vision of "easeful death," only to turn aside from it as Christian turned aside from the temptations on ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... so intent on escape that he had gone some distance down stream before realizing he was no longer pursued. Suddenly an agonizing cry was borne on the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... traitor! thou insulting tyrant! Dost thou behold my poor, distracted, heart, Thus rent with agonizing love and rage, And ask me, what it means? Art thou not false? Am I not scorn'd, forsaken, and abandon'd; Left, like a common wretch, to shame and infamy; Giv'n up to be the sport of villains' tongues, Of laughing parasites, and lewd buffoons? And all because my soul has doated on thee With love, ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... Emilio the information I have been able to obtain here, in order that in view thereof you [plural] may consider the best solution of our present political problem, which is an exceptional case in history. In my opinion, the most critical moment, which I call agonizing, whether correctly or not I know not, is the capture of Manila, where General Merritt will constitute a provisional government, in compliance with the instructions from his Government. It is unnecessary to ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... snow which raced with them, only to glide away into the background. The whole ice-floe was already gray and indistinct from the drift. To pick a landing-place seemed impossible. For several moments of agonizing suspense they sped on; then, just as they were about to despair, there appeared before them a long expanse of white. Wide as three city boulevards, endless in extent, it appeared to offer just the ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... the imperturbable Nella resumed. 'For quite three minutes I thought I should perish in that grating, Dad, with my shoulder inside and the rest of me outside. However, at last, by the most amazing and agonizing efforts, I pulled myself through and fell into this extraordinary cellar more dead than alive. Then I wondered what I should do next. Should I wait for the mysterious visitor to return, and stab him with my pocket ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... felt the reproval of a guilty conscience; remorse took possession of his breast, and he beheld in his imagination the form of his departed sister standing before him, threatening vengeance upon the murderers of her child. And the agonizing voice of Lewis Mortimer and her brothers seemed borne to him in every breeze across the ocean, from a foreign land, calling on Heaven to avenge the wrongs of ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... to me a sort of lay figure in a tragic attitude, a mere, "female in general," without any peculiar or specific characteristics whatever; placed as Belvidera is in the midst of sordidly painful and coarsely agonizing circumstances, there was nothing in the part itself that affected my feelings or excited my imagination; and the miserable situations into which the poor creature was thrown throughout the piece revolted ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... we can see, without hope. They were not able yet to interpret His prophecy that He would build again His temple, nor understand the spirituality of His kingdom. These facts seem to me utterly to demolish the theory of a vision called up by eager, yea, agonizing, expectation. The idea of the Resurrection justifies His prophecies as to Himself and the fact accounts, better than any theory which denies the fact, for the faith and founding of the early Church as well as ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... mighty Juno with a melting Eye, Beheld her dreadful Anguish from the Sky; And bade fair Iris from the starry Pole, Fly, and enlarge her agonizing Soul. ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... informed—that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead—these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth—we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... uttered loud screams; upon which the assassin, fearful of detection, ran away, and escaped from the house. The cauzee's wife awaking in a fright, alarmed her unhappy hosts, who, striking a light, came to her assistance; but how can we describe their agonizing affliction when they beheld their beloved child expiring, and their unfortunate guest, who had swooned away, bathed in the infant's blood. From such a scene we turn away, as the pen is incapable of description. The unhappy lady at length revived, but their darling boy was gone for ever. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... hour passed in silence, then the agonizing certainty came upon her that there must be an end. ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... this word his murmuring ceased. All his energies were now absorbed in listening at the low door separating him from what he was agonizing to know—a door impossible to enter, impossible to enlarge—a barrier to all help—an opening whereby sound might pass but nothing else, save her own small ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... my dear Mrs. Lefanu, you will excuse my dwelling on this most agonizing scene. I have a melancholy pleasure in so doing, and fancy it will not be disagreeable to you to hear all the particulars of an event so interesting, so afflicting, to all who knew the beloved creature! For my part, I never beheld ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... hardly suggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal division of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he did not allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing conviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which all minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many were in tears. Years afterward in ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was too entirely filled with a more agonizing anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her conduct by the world of St. Ogg's; anxiety about Stephen, Lucy, Philip, beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of mingled love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... comfort me, anyway, Emma. I'll know that while I'm smirking on the sprightly Miss Sweeney, your face will be undergoing various agonizing twists in the effort to make American prices understood by an Argentine who can't speak anything ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... spiritual life and its surroundings. It was written manifestly in the first instance to meet special and pressing current trials; it bears the impress of a time of severe sifting, a time when foundations were challenged, and individual faith put to even agonizing proofs, and the community threatened with an almost dissolution. Such a writing must have a voice articulate and sympathetic for a period ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death, through Berkley's roof that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing king! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of heaven. What terrors round him wait! Amazement in his van, with flight ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... an agonizing moment, and I felt that shutting of the heart which blinds the eyes and makes the brain reel. "Eveleth," I gasped, "did you expect to return to ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... Madame Vulpes, set me on a new track. What if this spiritualism should be really a great fact? What if, through communication with more subtile organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal, which perhaps a life of agonizing mental toil would never enable ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... course that phase of life was suspended in Europe during the war. All the women I knew or heard of worked as hard as I did. Whether that terrible interregnum left its indelible seal on them, or whether they have rebounded to the old life, where conditions are less agonizing than in ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he was wicked in not staying in the library and continuing his duties to the party. He had to crowd into a minute all his agonizing and be ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... into Cuzco had been a fine headlong thing, considering the torrent, the trench, the wounded horse, the lovely lady, with her agonizing fears, mounted behind Kate, together with the meek dove-like dawn: but the finale crowded together the quickest succession of changes that out of a melodrama can ever have been witnessed. Kate reached the convent ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... lassitude and discomfort. Bart, gasping under it, heard the girl moan, saw her slump lax in her chair, half fainting. Her face was so deathly white that he began seriously to be afraid she would die of her fear. Fighting his own agonizing weakness, he pulled himself upright. He reached the girl, dug his claws cruelly ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... moments a deep and solemn hush seemed to fill the room, Rosie still kneeling there with her head pillowed on her mother's breast, Elsie's heart going up in an almost agonizing ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... revived, and lingered, for nearly eight years; now filling the mind of her husband and her daughter with unreasonable hope, now delivering them to that renewed anguish, that heart-rending grief, which the attendant upon a declining relative can alone experience, additionally agonizing because it cannot be indulged. Mrs. Dacre died, and the widower and his daughter returned to England. In the meantime, the Duke of St. James had ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... world.—Alas! a boy in his late teens and early twenties, so nearly friendless, and with enemies so many and so great... A boy "up aginst" so huge and difficult circumstances always, that (you would say) there was no time, no possibility, for him to look ahead: in every moment the next agonizing perilous step that must be taken vast enough to fill the whole horizon of his mind, of any human mind perhaps;—ay, so vast and compelling that every day with wrenches and torsion that horizon must be pushed back ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls upon the heavens to avenge his cause, "for they are old like him", there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identification of his age with theirs; for there is no other image which could do justice to the agonizing sense of his wrongs and ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting from a son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her emotion, was borne away, frantically raving in the delirium of grief. I have never forgotten that agonizing scene, or the despairing wail that was enough to pierce the hardest heart. I imagined my heart was about to break; and when we put out to sea in a damp and dreary drizzle, and the shore-line dissolved away, while on board there was overcrowding, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... spake, he threw to him across the table jewelled orders and diamond crosses, saying: 'Wear these in memory of me!' The Herald then drew near, and read to him from the Black Book the form of abjuration. The agonizing and swooning man mechanically repeated the words one by one after him, not even hearing the sound of his own voice. His head had fallen on the bosom of his bride, his lips still moved, but his eyes were glaring in the whiteness of death—and so he uttered all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... morning, almost surrounded by expert musicians who were conscious of my every movement, and then, those men were soldiers accustomed to military precision, and the fear of making a mistake and leading them wrong was agonizing. At the farther end of the hall the Rev. Mr. Clark was standing, reading along in an easy, self-assured way that was positively irritating. And again, there was the congregation, each one on the alert, ready to criticise, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... materialistic world view, was thrown aside, and a gaping void opened in the soul of the writer. This frame of mind is reflected in Lilienblum's self-revelation, "The Sins of Youth" (Hattot ne'urim, 1876), this agonizing cry of one of the many victims of the mental cataclysm of the sixties. The book made a tremendous impression, for the mental tortures depicted in it were typical of the whole age of transition. However, the final note of the confession, the shriek of a wasted ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... himself all this while—though he would have protected Grace's good repute as the apple of his eye—was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. In face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a man's weakness. Since it was so—since it had come to this, that Grace, deeming herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to demonstrate that he loved ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... ivy bush—the chick of the oak, a blinking eyed witch, greedy of mice, with a visage like the bald forehead of a big ram, or the dirty face of an old abbess, which bears no little resemblance to the chine of an ape. Of its cry he says that it is as great a torment as an agonizing recollection, a cold shrill laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the rattling of sea-pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Parisian children play at soldiers or at digging gravel in the paths, are more incongruous mediaeval bits of architecture and sculpture,—placid Madonnas and Annunciations, much defaced by time; gargoyles from the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, in what may be called the size of life, agonizing and tormented by queer little beasts like weasels under their throats or bellies, and, guarding the gateway at the angle of the boulevards, three great, deformed figures of the animals of the Evangelists, the Lion, the Eagle, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... all I had left on earth. I labored day and night to support him and myself, and sought to train him in the right way. But, as he grew older, evil companions won him away from me. He ceased to care for his mother's counsels; he sneered at her entreaties and agonizing prayers. He became fond of drink. He left my humble roof, that he might be unrestrained in his evil ways. And at last one night, when heated by wine, he took the life of a fellow creature. He ended his days upon the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... produced which uttered savage hatred against all who were not fully orthodox, and the sects practiced violence and cruelty against each other to the full extent for which they found opportunity. "Never, perhaps, was the infliction of mutilation, and prolonged and agonizing forms of death, more common" than in the seventh and eighth centuries.[539] "Great numbers were deprived of their ears and noses, tortured through several days, and at last burned alive or broken slowly on the wheel."[540] At Byzantium, in the ninth century, a prefect of the palace was ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... unhesitatingly accorded to them, the distinction of being sacred? The emotional nature of this primitive man was a mystery which he could neither understand nor control. Often, he suffered untold tortures from the agonizing perturbations to which it easily became a prey. Hidden in the deep shade of his sacred grove, in his happier moments, the sighing of each passing breeze through his leafy canopy, become to his untrained ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... again, and was startled at the beauty of the face that the trembling flame revealed. He could observe her a few seconds only, and then she had vanished, and he must remain alone in the darkness and the rain. He walked restlessly up and down, and an agonizing longing once more to see her face lighted up by the pale flame, and the white arm that she had held out to take the lamp, grew more and more strong in him and accelerated the pulses of his throbbing heart. As often as he passed the cave, and observed the glimmer of light that came ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had been in their service. It is said that when the emperor's younger brother died (B.C. 2) they buried along with him his living retainers, placing them upright in a circle around him and leaving their heads uncovered. Night and day were heard the agonizing cries of these thus left to die of starvation. The emperor was greatly moved and resolved that this terrible custom should be abolished. Four years later the empress herself died, and the emperor called together his counsellors to ...
— Japan • David Murray
... the Lord, "the high places and the groves were not destroyed." Take the case of the Aztecs. Crushed beneath the iron heels of Spain's hardy buccaneers, an utterly broken and conquered race, Cortez turned them over to the ministering care of his zealous priests. The prison, agonizing torture, and the awful stake succeeded, at last, in Christianizing them; they became children of Holy Mother Church! And yet, hundreds of years after this "glorious victory of the cross," Biart finds the humble offerings of their ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... which the cessation of the use of morphia brings about, are interesting. Agonizing pains show that the nerves, long muffled, have become more acutely sensitive than they were before the fatal drug was first employed. A host of lesser troubles—insomnia, pain, and indigestion—attend the cure. I know nothing more pitiful than such an ordeal, and, despite the most watchful ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... room, where he saw Runnels, Colonel Jolson, Anson, Clifford, a dozen or more Panamanian officials, and—he stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell upon a huge, white-crowned figure that came to meet him. His heart leaped wildly, a great drumming set up in his ears, something gripped his throat with agonizing pressure and robbed him ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... hung in the balance, you might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various sounds which are wrung from a great host in extremity of danger. Not less agonizing were the feelings ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... Christian lifted up his soul in prayer. Marcellus felt as though his own soul was being lifted up to the courts of heaven, to the presence of the Saviour, by the power of that, fervent and agonizing prayer. The words seemed to find an echo in his own soul. In his deep abasement he rested his wants upon his companion so that he might present them ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... sufficiently rooted in him. He was a humanist, whose sympathies went with the republic of letters, not with the wants of the soul and the needs of the people. When he got into trouble he appealed to the pope. And though he lived to see Luther in agonizing conflict with the hierarchy of Rome, he refrained from making common cause with him, and died in connection with the unreformed Church, whose doctrines he had questioned and whose orders he ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... exasperating that I grew more and more bellicose every day we traveled in company. He was terribly seasick crossing the Channel, to my intense satisfaction. As he always boasted of his distinguished countrymen, I suggested, in the midst of one of his most agonizing spasms, that he ought to find consolation in the fact that Lord Nelson was always seasick on ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the glorious fun shines upon them but in vain, and all the sweets and delicacies of life are tasteless and unenjoyed; what punishment can be more severe than the loss of so great a blessing? But if to this deprivation of liberty, we add the agonizing pangs of banishment; and if to the complicated stings of both, we add the incessant stripes, wounds, and miseries, which are undergone by those, who are sold into this horrid servitude; what crime can we possibly imagine ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... simple doctrine of a people, chosen and consecrate, so grew his sense of far-reaching destinies, of a linked race sprung from the mysterious East and the dawn of history, defying destruction and surviving persecution, agonizing for its faith and its unfaith—a conception that touched the springs of romance and the source of tears—and his vision turned longingly towards Amsterdam, that city of the saints, the home of the true faith, of the brotherhood of man, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... account to the last word, a flush of agonizing humiliation deepening on his face as he did so. When he had finished, he doubled the paper carefully, and laid it on the chair next to his. Then he lighted a cigarette and sat with folded arms, unseeing eyes on the newspaper. When Jonas came in an hour later, the cigarette, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... comes back to you in after years, when his grave is green in the quiet valley, and the worn and weary hands that have toiled for you are forever at rest, how patiently he submitted while his daughter pinned the clean, stiff, agonizing white collar about his neck, and brushed the velvet collar of his best coat; how he toiled up the long, dark, lonesome stairs, not with the egotism of a half century ago, but with the light of anticipated rest at last in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... plunged in agonizing reflections I cannot tell; all that I know is, that on raising my head again, I saw only my uncle and Hans at the bottom of the crater. The Icelanders had been dismissed, and they were now descending the outer slopes of Snfell ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... strike her with horror:-but when I said, We fought, and he fell; -"My son," cried she, "you have then murdered your father!" and she sunk breathless at my feet. Comments, Madam, upon such a scene as this, would to you be superfluous, and to me agonizing: I cannot, for both our sakes, be too concise. When she recovered, she confessed all the particulars of a tale which she had hoped never to have revealed.-Alas! the loss she had sustained of my father was not by death!-bound to her by no ties but those of honour, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Oh, my God, help me to bear it—help me to keep the horrible truth from the husband I love! She will not tell him. She knows he would never endure her from the hour she would make the revelation; and that thought alone restrains her. It will kill me—this agonizing fear and horror! And better so—better to die now, while he loves me, than live to be loathed when ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... till the sun had slightly warmed the air, and then attempted to prepare breakfast by the fire; but no one could eat anything, and the native from Waimea complained of severe headache, which shortly became agonizing, and he lay on the ground moaning, and completely prostrated by mountain sickness. I felt extreme lassitude, and exhaustion followed the slightest effort; but the use of snow to the head produced great relief. The water in our ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... to end, no one could help feeling that his love for his own country, and passionate absorption of every thought in the strife upon which its existence as a nation depended, were his very life during all this agonizing period. He can think and talk of nothing else, or, if he turns for a moment to other subjects, he reverts to the one great central interest of "American politics," of which he says in one of the letters from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... well-nigh overcome by the deafening uproar going on around him. The incessant and terrible crash of musketry, the roar of the cannon, the continual zip, zip, of the bullets as they hiss by him, interspersed with the agonizing screams of the wounded, or the death shrieks of comrades falling in dying convulsions right in the face of the living,—these things are not conducive to that serene and judicial mental equipoise which the historian enjoys in ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... those slowly closing fingers, with their own strained on their tomahawks. That was half the death-signal! Would he give the other half,—the downward gesture? The baffled rebels tasted all the bitterness of death in that agonizing suspense. They felt that their lives were literally in his grasp; and so the stern autocrat wished them to feel, for he knew it was a lesson ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... heaven or earth can heal; To live in groans, and yield their parting breath Without a joy in life—or hope in death. Yet, for a while, one living hope remains, That nerves each fibre and the soul sustains; One desperate hope, whose agonizing throes Are bitterer far than all the worst of woes; A hope of crime and horrors, wild and strange As demon thoughts—that hope is thine, Revenge! 'Twas this that gave, oh! Ellinor, to thee A strength to bear thy matchless misery: Though the hot blood ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... long in this deep and agonizing suspense; for no sooner did the Roman herald reach the tents of the allied armies, and hold brief parley with their chiefs, than he again turned toward the Roman intrenchments at a quick pace, and at the same moment the tents of the other party were struck, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed: gloried in the fact that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... prayer, and in imitation of the illustrious, for the ennoblement of their own lives. No book has sold more largely than the Imitation of Christ. But was it not often a blind struggle in the dark, an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... some part of the den was praying in a highly nervous, excited way, slobbering out his agonizing sentences, and dwelling hard upon his more open vowels, and keeping several other inmates in sympathy or equal misery, as they piped in answer to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... with might and main to beat these ruffians, he had been made the victim of an infernal instrument but seldom seen in these days, and one of the most agonizing and diabolical devices of man's ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... I cease to grieve! And sure repentance pardon may obtain! Can woe unfeign'd incite heav'n to relieve A wretch opprest with agonizing pain? ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... the woof,{18} The winding sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death, thro' Berkley's roof that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing king!{19} She-wolf of France,{20} with unrelenting fangs, That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of heaven.{21} What terrors round him wait! Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, And Sorrow's ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... doom. She saw her peril in her mother's face; in the reiterated visits of the medical man, whom she no longer spurned; in the calling in of the Avoncester physician; in the introduction of a professional nurse, and the strong and agonizing measures to which she had to submit, every time with the sensation that the suffering could not possibly be greater without exceeding ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pink-faced man in gold spectacles, Obviously the doctor. Then there was a sort of nurse whom he liked very much, but she was not in uniform. Who could she be? He realized that he was ill, as weak as a butterfly; and the pain when he coughed was agonizing. It was all very odd. How had he come here? He remembered walking along a dusty road in the blazing sun, his head bursting, every limb a moving ache. He also vaguely remembered being awakened at night by a thunder storm as he lay snugly asleep beneath a hedge. The German ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... an agonizing moment, for Konate. But lo, instead of jumping upon him, the wolf trotted forward, and gently licked his wounds, and then lay ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... [35] How agonizing will be the cry of the lost soul—'The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved' (Jer 8:20).—Ed. Upon the brittle thread of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of," the other commented; "just imagine those agonizing journeys in the teeth of an Arctic wind, traveling over hundreds of miles of trackless wilderness to get less than one-tenth as many people as a city enumerator would find in ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... agonizing cry the bride flew to his arms, and, moved by an instinctive impulse, he turned to bear his beloved away. One instant the count stood fast, clutching the hilt of a dainty rapier at his side, the gift of the king. The next ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... reality; but its voice is troublesome, and the captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such as these:—"This voice of duty—whence comes it? and what would it have? May not conscience be a prejudice, the result ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... kept weaving back and forth and from side to side and little by little, inch by inch, she could feel something giving way; she was not sure, yet, whether it was the tub, the paint or herself; but something was giving way. And at last, with one agonizing jerk, she broke away and arose to her feet. And then she turned and looked down into the tub to see what had happened; and what she saw there brought a sigh of relief to her lips; for she discovered that she was still intact; and the tub was all there; what ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... Victor to acquiesce in the arrangement was yet more difficult. It required the exercise of authority to sever the ties that bound the son to the father. But it was done—Victor resigned his task to a little dog that was procured by the merchant, and after an agonizing farewell was ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... of volunteers—who had previously stacked their arms—Alfred Wentworth and his wife were bidding that agonizing farewell, which only those who have parted from loved one can feel. His little bright-eyed daughter was clasped in his arms, and every minute he would stoop over his infant and kiss its tiny cheeks. Marks of tears were on the ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... now to Andras as an almost fantastic dream. Since then he had erected a mausoleum of marble on the very spot where Prince Sandor fell; and of all the moments of that romantic, picturesque war, the agonizing moment, the wild scene of the burial of his father, was most vivid in his memory—the picture of the warrior stretched in the snow, his hand on the handle of his sword, remained before his eyes, imperishable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... white arms of beauty, pressed desperately close as if to imprison the divine fugitive moment, the song seems to come nearest. Who has not held some loved face in his hands, and gazed into it with an almost agonizing effort to realize its reality, to make eternally sure of it, somehow to wrest possession of it and the transfiguring moment for ever, all the time pierced with the melancholy knowledge that tomorrow all will be as if this ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... this monomania in him took its instant rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... so easy or so difficult as, in opposite moods, he had expected to find it. Everything is possible; but without labour and failure nothing is achievable. The labour, however, comes naturally, and experience grows without agonizing transitions; while the failure generally points, in its detected cause, to the way of future success. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... open, or capable of being opened; or even if incapable of being opened, not positively detrimental to you as long as you are on the right side. But that feeling of a prison under the open air is very terrible, and is rendered almost agonizing by the prisoner's consciousness that his position is the result of his own imprudent temerity, of an audacity which falls short of any efficacious purpose. When hounds are running, the hunting man should always, at any rate, be able to ride on, to ride in some direction, even though it be in ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... he can do to understand life and forgive its existence. As a rule he digs himself in with his dream and with the arts, until the time comes when he has got used to his incarnation, and the grub has achieved its agonizing passage from larva to winged insect. What a need he has for peace and meditation during these April days so full of the trouble of maturing life! But they come after him to the bottom of his burrow, look him up, drag him from the dark while still so tender in his new-made skin. ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... causes debility, paralysis, and other things. Sulphuric acid is strongly corrosive,—a powerful caustic, attacking the teeth, even when very dilute; eating up flesh and bones alike when strong enough; and, if taken in a large enough dose, an awfully tearing and agonizing fatal poison. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... an epidemic has a material cause; the Christian healer says it has a mental cause. Before there is an object to fear there must be the sentiment of fear. Let scarlet fever appear in a community, and every parent will immediately send out the most agonizing thoughts of fear. Where will they go? Everywhere, because thoughts can not be restrained. Their influence goes out in every direction. To the tender children especially, because particularly directed to them. All who have left the door open to fear, though they may be sleeping ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... Within are a series of whipping-posts, to which these poor creatures are bound before applying the lash to their bare bodies. The sight of this fiendish procedure is cut off from the public, but more than one person has told us of having heard the agonizing cries of the victims. And yet there are people who will tell us these poor creatures are far better off than when in their native country. One slave-owner said it was necessary to make an example of some member ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... finished education, and an honorable position in life. How unremittingly these parents watch over the sick-bed of their children and of each other; and oh, what burning tears gush forth as the utterance of their agonizing hearts, when death threatens to blight a single bud, or lay his cold ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Well, after the first agonizing five minutes, my stage-fright left me, never to return. I know if I was going to be hanged I could get up and make a good showing, and I intend to. But I shall never forget my feelings before the agony left me, and I got up here to thank you for her for helping my daughter, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... brought to bear on his youth had operated but feebly on his conscience, and not at all on his affections. It had, however, so wrought upon his apprehensions, that, when afterward persuaded there was no ground for agonizing anticipation, he welcomed the conviction as in itself a redemption for all men; "for, surely," he argued, "fear is the worst of evils!" The very approach of such a relief predisposed him to receive whatever ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Mrs. Anderson was silent all this time. She was sighing and groaning in a spasmodic devotion. She was "seeking strength from above to do her whole duty," she would have told you. She was "agonizing" in prayer for her daughter, and she contrived that her stage-whisper praying should now and then reach the ears of its devoted object. Humphreys remained seated, pretending to read the copy of "Josephus," but watching the coming storm with the interest of a connoisseur. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the length of his service entitled him to more consideration than most of those who cried out bitterly for "vengeance," could write in his book ("These From the Land of Sinim"), "In the heat of the conflict, and under the agonizing strain of anxiety for imperilled loved ones, many hard things have been said and written about the officials who allied themselves with the Boxers. But these men were eminent in their own country for their ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... seized by an excruciating pain, a spasm so agonizing that she thought, "I am going to die! I am dying!" And her soul was filled with a furious hatred; she felt she must curse this man who was the cause of all her agony, and this child which was killing her. She strained every muscle in a supreme effort to rid herself ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... discovered first the reason. Ah, my darling, it was then, and then for the first time only, that I knew how dear you were to me; that above all things in heaven or on earth I loved my own sweet Aster. But how helpless now, how agonizing was that love which my misfortune had fanned into such a ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... wonderful cavern in the back of his mouth and at the base of the nose. Some should be kept barbarians that they may continue to be vocal instruments. No one who has heard him only as a "minstrel" can have any conception of the exquisite mournfulness, the agonizing pathos, which the negro voice is capable of expressing; nor, we may fairly add, of the wild, devil-may-care jollity; but this last is more truly represented on the stage, the invariable adjuncts of caricature not only contributing to stimulate the comedian, but broadening the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... when she urged me, that it was with a view to my advancement and lasting benefit. I conveyed my mother's communication immediately to Anna. She made no observation on its contents—bade me seek counsel of her father; and with her eyes streaming with agonizing tears, left me to pray upon my knees for counsel and direction from on high. Her father—I could not blame him—a man who had struggled hardly for his bread as a clergyman and a scholar—and seen more of the dark shadows than the light of life—received my intelligence with unmingled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... pursued his task in quite a fury. Carefinotu, tortured as he was, showed no lack of zeal. What he suffered, even to get his feet into the first position can be imagined! And when he passed to the second and then to the third, it was still more agonizing. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne |
