"Ecstasy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... amusement; in fact, during the carnival, parties, balls, and concerts succeed one another without cessation. The Hungarians dance as though it were an exercise of patriotism; with them it is no languid movement half deprecated by the utilitarian soul—it is a passion whirling them into ecstasy. But dancing was not the only diversion. The winter I was at Buda-Pest a long spell of enduring frost gave us some capital skating. The fashionable society meet for this amusement in the park, where ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... this moment of stupefaction to let herself fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes the heart of a woman, when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all joy, all happiness, and sparks flew from them. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... seen the contemplative life; a woman praying, holding a closed book, opening it, reading it; she shuts it to meditate on it, teaches others, and falls into an ecstasy. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the performance: "Thank God, as I do, beloved wife, for the glorious success of 'Euryanthe.' Weary as I am, I must still say a sweet good night to my beloved Lina, and cry Victory! All the company seemed in a state of ecstasy; singers, chorus, orchestra;—all were drunk, as ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... You know me!" she gasped, and she flung herself into his arms. Straining herself to him in half frantic ecstasy, she murmured in a broken whisper: "Yes! I am—am Belle! It is wicked and selfish to tell you; but to have you go down there without first—I could not bear it! Yet I—I shall not drag you down—disgrace you. Never that! I'll go ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... think of it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find the path again. What was it that I was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Confutsee; they may fetch that state about again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one opportunity of ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... no inquiry. Here again the story-books which had informed him of romantic life in his very young days had been at fault; they made such an idealised picture of all that had just taken place, and they told about the joy in the heart of a man and the ecstasy in the heart of a woman. Osborn looked down upon a tiny, red and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... patter of tiny feet sounded on the stairs. One by one, out of the shadows, old joys and old loves came toward her; forgotten hopes and lost dreams. Hands long since mingled with the dust clasped hers once more with perfect understanding—warm lips were crushed upon hers with the old ecstasy and the old thrill. Even the sorrows, from which the bitterness had strangely vanished, came back out of the darkness, not with hesitancy, but with assurance, as though already welcomed by ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... at his feet, freely to be partaken of did he choose, it is true that his face showed lines of restraint, a serene restraint, like unto that which the great old painters limned so beautifully upon the face of the martyr. But the martyrs of old in their ecstasy were not more resolute than Potts. It is probable that he looked forward to a period of post-election refreshment; but pending the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, his determination was such that it stamped his face with something akin to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... thousand small outcries contributing to the awful energy of the world—faint chimings and whistlings in the grass, and endless flutter, rustle, and whirr. His own body, on which hair and nails grew daily like vegetation, startled and appalled him. Consciousness of self, that miserable ecstasy, was heavy ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... with hisses when she appeared, and discharged with hisses and laughter when she had finished—then instantly encored and insulted again! And how the high-born knaves enjoyed it! White-kidded gentlemen and ladies laughed till the tears came, and clapped their hands in very ecstasy when that unhappy old woman would come meekly out for the sixth time, with uncomplaining patience, to meet a storm of hisses! It was the cruellest exhibition—the most wanton, the most unfeeling. The ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... woman's instinct warned her to be wary. The shutters were flung open, and the young soldier stepped flamboyantly into the room. "I am here, cara, cara mia!" he cried. "I, Vibrato Adagio!" With a sibilant cry she fell into his out-stretched arms. "Mio, mio," she echoed in ecstasy, "I am yours and you are mine!" So lightly was the first stepping-stone passed on her reckless path of immorality and vice. Her fickle heart soon tired of the debonair Vibrato, and in a fit of satiated pique ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... removing her hands from his eyes, and clapping them in ecstasy. "Look at him! See where he stands before you, healthy and strong! Your own dear son. Your own dear living, loving ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... the streamers of their Highland bonnets waving, their arms glistening in the sun, and the bagpipes playing "The March of the Cameron Men." The pipers themselves were mercifully hidden from us on that first occasion, and it was well, for we could never have borne another feather's weight of ecstasy. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... school, when she learned that Miss Smith, her Algebra teacher, received a letter every day from an army officer. An army officer!—and a letter every day! And she knew Miss Smith very well, indeed! Ecstasy! Miss Smith, who looked too pretty to know so much about Algebra, made an adorable heroine ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... richness?" exclaimed Polly, gazing all about her in an ecstasy. "Oh, Jasper, what pictures we'll take—and do see that woman's cap! and those pot-hooks of hair over her eyes, and that ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us amend nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be something impracticable in the first maxim, and something vague in the second. Asceticism, quietism, enthusiasm, ecstasy—all systems which imply an unnatural repression or an unnatural excitation of our faculties—are ill-suited for the mass of mankind. And on the other hand, if we are told to follow nature, to develope our original character, we are too ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... man. Like myself he was waiting for his ship to sail, but not to England—to France. He was a returning French reservist. Across the many miles of ocean the hand of duty had stretched and touched him; he was ecstatically glad that he was wanted. In those first days this ecstasy of gladness was a little hard to understand. Thank God we all share it instinctively now. He was speaking excitedly, addressing the crowd. They cheered him; they were in a mood to cheer anybody. His face was thin with earnestness; he was a spirit-man. He ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... to flow in and mix with the reading, I cannot tell, no more than I can number them; the whirr of a bird's wing, the liquid note of a wood thrush, the stir and movement of a thousand leaves, the gurgle of rippling water, the crow's call, and the song-sparrow's ecstasy. Once or twice the notes of a bugle found their way down the hill, and reminded me that I was in a place of delightful novelty. It was just a fillip to my enjoyment, as I looked on ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... spirit of Christianity finds a bright comment and illustration in the Madonnas and Cherubim of Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... she asked dreamily, her eyes gazing out on the calm ecstasy of colour, which seemed to have broken the bonds of law, and ushered in a new chaos, fit matrix of new heavens and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... covered his body with his shield. The other danced round him triumphantly, and with one blow pretended to cut off his head; then, head in hand, he capered with the wildest gestures, expressive of the very ecstasy of savage delight But, on looking at his trophy closely, he recognized the features of a friend, and, smitten with remorse, he replaced the head with much solicitude. Then, moving with a slow, measured tread, he wept, and with many sighs of grief adjusted the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... when at the window, listening in the stillness then reigning over the city, a distant but strangely familiar sound fell faintly upon my ear—very faintly; but never did the finest harmony born of Wagner's genius so fill a human soul with ecstasy. There was no mistaking it: it was a French bugle. The French were entering Mexico. We were safe, and now might go ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... lay in bed, the winds had carried to him the clangoring of the church bell as some enthusiast jerked the rope frantically to tell the twisted news of a great battle. This voice of the people rejoicing in the night had made him shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of excitement. Later, he had gone down to his mother's room and had spoken thus: "Ma, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... brought his gun down for an instant's aim, and then unerringly hit the mark; and then, when some unwary youth fired his piece into the ground at half-cock such guffawing and delight, such rolling over and over on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made the "Ethiopian minstrelsy" of the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... ecstasy of delight, as she heard these words, she took up his hand and kissed it; but she dropped it again, as she remembered that she had not yet received the assurance that she needed. "But you do believe me about ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon him in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan trembled with ecstasy, so that her diamonds smote the eye almost with pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahan's acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... it and rose, once again, with the lyre in his hand, And smote out the cry that his white-lipped sorrow denied: And the grief's mad ecstasy swept o'er the summer-sweet land, And gathered the tears of all Time in ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... charity. But Mrs. Strangeways uttered the name without misgiving, and behaved as though nothing conceivable could have afforded her more delight than to meet Alma again. It was her habit to speak in superlatives, and to wear a countenance of corresponding ecstasy. Any casual remark from either of the ladies she received with a sort of rapture; her nerves seemed to be in a perpetual thrill. If she referred to herself, it was always with depreciation, and not at ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... track that led to the hut. This was difficult, for the snow was already thick enough to efface all trace of a path. We scrambled through the bushes, and after crossing a ditch, we managed at last to reach the hut and get inside. The dogs, in ecstasy, rolled over and over on the dry ground, barking. Our satisfaction was ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... would be when mine. Those lips with the mark of mine upon them; those delicate nerves stung to frenzy; that form tense, and the limbs strung with passion; those eyes terror-stricken between anguish and ecstasy. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... Besides, the world would have been free from the reproach of accepting the fruits of his bright genius while condemning the worker to a life of misery, relieved only by the beauty of his own thoughts and the ecstasy awakened in him by the ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... the room, Heaven knows how, and found myself running towards Long's at the top of my speed. Within that same hour I was rattling along towards Bristol as fast as four posters could burn the pavement, thinking with ecstasy over the pleasures of my reception in England; but far more than all, of the kindness evinced towards me by him who, in every feeling of his nature, and in every feature of his deportment was "every ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... we suddenly came on the gun we had been sent to capture; it was perched high on a long, loopholed barricade, and stood quite silent and alone. We gave a shout and pitched forward in a momentary ecstasy of delight, but like a flash the scene around us changed. Dozens of soldiers jumped up around us, looking every bit like startled pheasants in their bright uniforms, and retired, firing rapidly. This, as if ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... to suppose Harry in an ecstasy of meek devotion. He was quite sure that she had behaved to him very badly. He admitted no excuse for her eagerness to hurt him as soon as she was tired of him. She might hate him; but after all there were obligations of courtesy, of decency, of womanhood, and her venomous temper had ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... (misprinted amusement). Windham's Diary, p. 20. In her Memoirs of Dr. Burney (ii. 82), Mme. D'Arblay says that Johnson 'at times, when in gay spirits, would take off Dr. Warton with the strongest humour; describing, almost convulsively, the ecstasy with which he would seize upon the person nearest to him, to hug in his arms, lest his grasp should be eluded, while he displayed some picture or some prospect.' In that humourous piece, Probationary Odes for the Laureateship (p. xliii), Dr. Joseph is made to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... together, and it was delicious to be propelled by her strong arms. We halted, on our way to Kensington Gardens, to listen to a German band. The voluptuous waltz-music affected me strangely, and I was sorry that, owing to my position in the vehicle, her face was hidden from me. In the midst of my ecstasy, a square object on wheels came round the street corner. It was painted a bright vermilion and bore the initials of K.V.—"Kytherea Victrix!" I cried in my heart; but as it passed, at a slow pace, it rained a flood of tears ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... takes a mystical turn; and Dante's ghostly friends, after propounding their aristocratic philosophy, to justify God in other men's eyes, are themselves on the point of quitting the lower sphere to which God had assigned them and plunging into the "sea" of his absolute ecstasy. For, if the word God stands for man's spiritual ideal, heaven can consist only in apotheosis. This the Greeks knew very well. They instinctively ignored or feared any immortality which fell short ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... pulls him in," cried Jack, in a most unfeeling ecstasy, for Miss Tremaine was no pocket Venus—rather answered the Irishman's description of "an ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Geoffrey! dear good Uncle Geoffrey," cried Henrietta, in an ecstasy; "you were as delightful as a knight of old, only as you could not fight tournaments for her, you were obliged to read for her; and pining away all the time ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the king in ecstasy. "Give them to me at once." And Louis broke the seal of a little letter, inclosing the verses which history has preserved entire for us, and which are more meritorious in invention than in execution. Such as they were, however, the king was ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of small drawers and pigeonholes at the back of it, and a suspicion of alluring and unattainable treasures in every separate receptacle. To ransack all of these was Keith's most audacious dream, but when the dream came true at last, it was fraught with no ecstasy of realization, for he was a middle-aged man, and in the room behind him his mother ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... spurted in their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... breathed the life-giving breath of the sea, when she could distinguish the green line of ocean beyond the trees, she clapped her hands with ecstasy. She became a guide for Genevieve, explaining to her the conformation of Carnac, and recounting with pretty fancy the legends of the country ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... delight at times to be dragged by the hair. So strangely can the mind of a man be warped. He can be dragged by the hair over hill and dale, and if asked what is happening, can answer in ecstasy: 'I am being dragged by the hair!' And if anyone asks: 'But shall I not help you, release you?' he answers: 'No.' And if they ask: 'But how can you endure it?' he answers: 'I can endure it, for I love the hand that drags me.' Eva, do you know what ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... in a deck-chair, examined the caravan in a kind of ecstasy. "What a lovely place it is!" she said. "Do you really live ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... religion he had lost the intimate life which the priesthood had once given him. The Mass was a mere Latin formula, and the vestments and the chalice, the Host itself, a sort of fetishism—that is to say, a symbolism from which life had departed, shells retaining hardly a murmur of the ancient ecstasy. It was therefore his fate to go in quest of—what? Not of adventure. He liked better to think that his quest was the personal life—that intimate exaltation that comes to him who has striven to be himself, and nothing but himself. The life he was going to might lead him even to a new ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... probably the Chleuh boys with sidelong eyes and clean caftans would come instead of the singing-girls, and weave the arabesque of their dance in place of the runic pattern of the singing. But the result would always be the same: a prolonged state of obese ecstasy culminating in the collapse of huge heaps of snoring muslin on the divans against the wall. Finally at the week's end the wool-merchant and his friends would all ride back with dignity ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... these noises, I heard a voice which sent the blood ebbing and flowing in my heart and caused the back of my neck to quiver with ecstasy. ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... had experienced once when given chloroform for a slight operation. Directly the idea of repeating that blissful sensation seized upon him he was mad for it. To go out of life like that, to take that way of opening the window into eternity, into another phase of existence or into oblivion, what ecstasy! He remembered that when under the chloroform, a wonderful certainty, a comprehension, seemingly, of the true import of life and death and of the hereafter, had seized him. He remembered a tremendous assurance which he had received under the influence of the drug, of the ultimate joy ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... A box!" cried Daria, seizing one of the old man's hands, and dancing round him in an ecstasy of delight. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... liberty, and devoutly attached to the doctrines of Calvin. They abominated all pleasures and pursuits which diverted their minds from the contemplation of God, or the reality of a future state. Cromwell himself lived in the ecstasy of religious excitement. His language was the language of the Bible, and its solemn truths were not dogmas, but convictions to his ardent mind. In the ardor of his zeal and the frenzy of his hopes, he fondly fancied that the people of England were to rise in simultaneous confederation, shake ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Rome; and in contradiction to the multiplied superstitions with which that communion was loaded, they adopted an enthusiastic strain of devotion, which admitted of no observances, rites, or ceremonies, but placed all merit in a mysterious species of faith in inward vision, rapture, and ecstasy. The new sectaries seized with this spirit, were indefatigable in the propagation of their doctrine, and set at defiance all the anathemas and punishments with which the Roman ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the vision, the hour of exultation; that is but the setting of the task. Now you will take that ecstasy, and hold on to it, hold on with soul and body; you will keep yourself at that height, you will hold that flaming glory before your eyes, and you will hammer it into words. Yes, that is the terror—into words—into words that leap the hilltops, that bring ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... of thought, and audacity, which were very extraordinary. These articles were amongst the ablest specimens of newspaper writing which had ever been known in Ireland. Their effect was electric; they maddened the young men of the movement with a fierce spirit of nationality. The clubs read them with ecstasy, and John Mitchell was the idol and hero of all men of extreme opinions. His defiance of government, his incitements to rebellion, were so open and intrepid, that they seized upon the imagination of the people, and much disturbed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... one another, and their merits and their failures are alike identical. We have to form what broken impression we can of their early habits. Joseph is presented to us as wandering in the woodlands, lost in a melancholy fit, or waking out of it to note with ecstasy all the effects of light and colour around him, the flight of birds, the flutter of foliage, the panorama of cloudland. He and Thomas were alike in their "extreme thirst after ancient things." They avoided, with a certain disdain, the affectation of vague and conventional ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... grace of Heaven that restoreth thee, dear Mother," quoth the angel. "Presently thou shalt be filled with the new life, and thou shalt be young again; and thou shalt sing with rapture, and thy soul shall know the endless ecstasy of Heaven." ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... few yards of narrow path, a steep precipice at one side. With a whispered "may I?" his arm is around her in guiding her steps; no word is spoken and we all know the silent ecstasy of such moments. A turn in the path and they come upon Lady Esmondet, seated on a rocky seat (she having taken a safer way) and listening to ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... a whole world full of evidence denying, of such maunderers as you! See here; he was the most sensible of men; balanced; keeping his head always;—a mind no mood or circumstances could deflect from rational self-control, either towards passion or ecstasy. One explanation remains—as in the case of Joan, or of H.P. Blavatsky;—he was neither deceiving nor deceived, but what he claimed to hear, he did hear; and it was the voice of One that stood behind him, and might not appear in history at all, or in the outer world at all: ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Dicaeopolis, makes a separate peace on his individual account with the Peloponnesians and drives a brisk trade with the different cantons, the enthusiasm reaching its height when the Boeotian appears with his ducks and his eels. This ecstasy can best be understood by those who have seen the capture of a sutler's wagon by hungry Confederates; and the fantastic vision of a separate peace became a sober reality at many points on the lines of the contending ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... exclaimed, looking up at him with an ecstasy of joy, and yet with a great terror upon her face; "but what will happen— what will happen to you? What will ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... lacks humor. In their search for happiness his characters suffer a great deal and know only temporary ecstasy. They are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... very sorry for it. Unanimity is everything in the direction of such an undertaking as this. With unanimity we can do—everything.' Mr Melmotte in the ecstasy of his enthusiasm lifted up both his hands over his head. 'Without unanimity we can do—nothing.' And the two hands fell. 'Unanimity should be printed everywhere about a Board-room. It ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... to menace me, and even though Zara's brother Ivan, and others of his kind, fanatics all, in their nihilistic tendencies, wild beasts in their blood lusts, fiends in their methods, as they were—whatever they might threaten, seemed small indeed to me, in that moment of ecstasy. For it was a moment of ecstasy; the word "moment" being measured by the rule of ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... greet me, as he always does when he sees me return after an absence, he fought a little longer, then pretended to be whipped, and ran around the saw-mill, followed by the other dog. The other dog came back, but Lion didn't. I was quite surprised, when I got home, to see him rush out to meet me in an ecstasy of delight, as if he then saw me for the first time. His whole manner seemed to say, 'I am tickled to see you, Jack! and if you think you saw me fighting the sawyer's dog just now, you're much mistaken.' I don't know but ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... thrilled with her ecstasy, agony, woe— Hath she a mood that I do not know? The winds of her music tumultuous have seized me and swayed me, Have lifted, have swung me around In their whorls as of cyclonic sound; Her passions have torn me and tossed me and brayed me; ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... This conception was abhorrent to Shelley, both because poetry ought not to do what can be done better by prose, and also because, for him, the pleasure and the lesson were indistinguishably one. The poet is to improve us, not by insinuating a moral, but by communicating to others something of that ecstasy with which he himself burns in contemplating eternal truth ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... it me.—Gods! How it glides to my heart by the sweetest of roads! Oh, how it kisses me, tickles me, bites me! Oh, how my eyes loosen sweetly in tears! I'm ravished! I'm rapt! Heaven finds me admissible! Lost in an ecstasy! blinded! invisible!— Hearken all earth! We, Bacchus, in the might of our great mirth, To all who reverence us, are right thinkers; Hear, all ye drinkers! Give ear and give faith to the edict divine; Montepulciano's the King of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... 'Who after all is right, thou, or the crucified Galilean about whom these men are so enthusiastic?' And when he had got as far as this, the result, with his bodily and mental characteristics, naturally followed in an ecstasy in which the very same Christ whom up to this time he had so passionately persecuted, appeared to him in all the glory of which his adherents spoke so much, shewed him the perversity and folly of his conduct, and called him to come over to ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... scene, which was coming. In that scene the wonderful variety of his acting completed his triumph. Trembling with excitement, he resumed his half-dried clothes, and, glad to escape, rushed home. He was in too great a state of ecstasy at first to speak, but his face told his wife that he had realized his dream—that he had appeared on the stage of Drury Lane, and that his great powers had been instantly acknowledged. With not a shadow of doubt as to his future, he exclaimed, "Mary, you shall ride in your ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... from the lights, which there appear'd to me, Gather'd along the cross a melody, That, indistinctly heard, with ravishment Possess'd me. Yet I mark'd it was a hymn Of lofty praises; for there came to me "Arise and conquer," as to one who hears And comprehends not. Me such ecstasy O'ercame, that never till that hour was thing That held ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... had fallen when my uncle and I fired together, for I believe I missed; but as Ebo and I picked up the result of our expedition here the sun rose, and in the bright light that came between the trees we stood gazing in ecstasy at the lovely creatures. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... Barchester, and Mr Arabin went over with his budget of news to the archdeacon. As Dr Grantly was not there, he could only satisfy himself by telling Mrs Grantly how that he intended himself the honour of becoming her brother-in-law. In the ecstasy of her joy at hearing such tidings, Mrs Grantly vouchsafed him a warmer welcome than any he had yet received ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Chiloes for each interpreter, and two pieces for the canoes. I should have given four fathoms for each man and the same for each boat. The final scene was most gratifying to the African mind: I solemnly invested old Nessala with the grand cloak which covered his other finery; grinning in the ecstasy of vanity, he allowed his subjects to turn him round and round, as one would a lay figure, yet with profound respect, and, lastly, he retired to charm ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh Nature veritable; And though he speak in midnight dark,— In heaven no star, on earth no spark,— Yet before the listener's eye Swims the world in ecstasy, The forest waves, the morning breaks, The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be, And life pulsates in rock or tree. Saadi, so far thy words shall reach: Suns rise ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the conclusion of such an impassioned if verbally conventional an harangue; but these Asiatics who heard Paul Boriskoff, who watched the tears stream down his hollowed cheeks and beheld the face uplifted as in ecstasy, had no applause to give him. Had not they also suffered as he had suffered? What wrong of his had not been, in some phase or other, a wrong of theirs? How many of them had lost children well beloved, had known starvation ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... she first conceived the romance of girlhood, which had led her to confer with him, unknown—there had she first confessed to herself that fancy had begotten love—there had she gone through love's short and exhausting process of lone emotion;—the doubt, the hope, the ecstasy; the reverse, the terror; the inanimate despondency, the agonised despair! And there now, sadly and patiently, she awaited the gradual march of inevitable decay. And books and pictures, and musical instruments, and marble busts, half shadowed by ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... One of their number now called aloud, in words that were far from appalling, tho not more intelligible to those for whose ears they were intended than their expressive yells. It would be difficult to convey a suitable idea of the savage ecstasy with which the news thus imparted was received. The whole encampment in a moment became a scene of the most violent bustle and commotion. The warriors drew their knives, and flourishing them, they arranged themselves in two lines, forming a lane that extended from the war-party to the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... everything was destroyed except the mantel over the fireplace in the drawing-room. On this stood a terra-cotta statuette of Harlequin. It is one you have often seen. The legs are wide apart, the arms folded, the head thrown back in an ecstasy of laughter. It looked exactly as though it were laughing at the wreckage with which it was surrounded. No one could have placed it where it was after the house fell, for the approach to it was still on fire. Of all ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... to three funerals and a revival meeting—" ecstasy made her voice tremble—"but I've never been to a wedding. Gladys went to one and she said it was grand. Her grandmother cried all the time and her grandfather blew his nose six times. Gladys counted. Oh, Mrs. Schuneman, will Miss Lottie really invite me? It would be something," and she ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... the mamma, restraining the impetuosity of the darling, whose little fat legs were kicking, and stamping, and twining themselves into the most complicated forms, in an ecstasy of impatience. 'Be quiet, dear, that's ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... it is, Miss Slopham, it is always at your service;" and Mr. Blagg closed his eyes in a faint ecstasy. Unlike literary persons as a class, he was not reluctant to be openly appreciated. "As for the facts," he continued, "they were easily secured. I had occasion to write another article on the Indian question, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... slave; he must have met many of the best and kindest Northern friends of the negro; and he went to Lincoln distressed at some points in his policy, particularly at his failure to make reprisals for murders of negro prisoners by Southern troops. When he came away he was in a state little short of ecstasy. It was not because he now understood, as he did, Lincoln's policy. Lincoln had indeed won his warm approval when he told him "with a quiver in his voice" of his horror of killing men in cold blood for what had been done by others, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... landlord, instead of denying or resenting it, says, "Ah, that fellow hides his meaning so cleverly that one can never make out what he means, it is all so fine spun and fantastical." G. B. S. calls a statesman a liar to his face, and the statesman cries in a kind of ecstasy, "Ah, what quaint, intricate and half-tangled trains of thought! Ah, what elusive and many-coloured mysteries of half-meaning!" I think it is always quite plain what Mr. Shaw means, even when he is joking, and it ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to conduct business through offshore entities and various intermediaries; transit country for and consumer of South American cocaine, Southwest Asian heroin, and Western European synthetics; domestic cannabis cultivation and limited ecstasy production ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... though he could spell and always got the right answer to a sum in school. Elizabeth knew exactly what it meant, though she could not have explained. It was just what she was doing now, as she leaped from pool to pool with her skirts and her pinafore in a string about her waist—fleeing in ecstasy away, away, to that far-off undiscovered country ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of life was summed in one expression - tenderness. In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy of tenderness. The beasts and plants had no souls; they were here but for a day, and let their day pass gently! And as for the immortal men, on what black, downward path were many of them wending, and to what a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attuned musical instrument that God has created. It is capable of a cultivation beyond the dreams of those who have given it no thought. It maybe made to express every emotion in the gamut of human sensation, from abject misery to boundless ecstasy. It marks the man without his consent; it makes the man if he ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... he spoke of—all this together, threw me into such an ecstasy, that suddenly I interrupted him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was "yes." Was he not a baronet? Was she not a well-trained English girl? And the ecstasy of pride, of joy, of that city soap-boiler's family, who shall paint? "Awake my muse" and—but, no! it passeth all telling. They bowed down before him (figuratively), this good British tradesman and his fat wife, and worshipped ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... passed out with a murmured word. He knew so little of women and yet some wonderful instinct kept him always in the right path. Perhaps, too, he feared speech himself, lest the ecstasy of those ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... devotion, extravagance, inspiration, vehemence, eagerness, fanaticism, intensity, warmth, earnestness, fervency, passion, zeal. ecstasy, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Hopkins, in an ecstasy of admiration. "To think that I had all that evidence in my hand and never knew it! I had intended, however, to go the round ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had heard of carpets to be had, of bold pattern and primary colouring; he had heard of bridal crowns of silver-gilt worthy of any collector's cabinet. He also bought boots and tried his elegant leg in a flame-coloured sock. And to crown the rocking edifice, Lancelot came home in a kind of still ecstasy which only uttered itself in convulsions of the limbs, and sudden and ear-piercing whistles through the fingers. From him above all she gained assurance. "Oh, Mr. Urquhart, he'll put all that straight, I bet you—in two ticks!..." and once it was, "I say, Mamma, I wonder ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Yes, sweet it is, heavenly sweet, to be lulled into the sleep of death by the song of the beloved. Perhaps our dreams continue in the grave—a long, eternal, never-ending dream of Charles—till the trumpet of resurrection sounds—(rising in ecstasy) —and thenceforth and forever in his arms! (A pause; she goes to the piano ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... lady's bower, Sing her a song; Tell her that every hour, All the day long, Thoughts of her come to me, Filling my brain With the warm ecstasy Of ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... or Wiesbaden. They could not, of course, be seen "punting" at the play-table at Ems; but here is a legitimate game which all may join in, and where, certainly, the anxiety that is said to impart the chief ecstasy to the gamester's passion rises to the very highest It is heads and tails for a smashing stake, and ought to interest ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... there is a young general, whose glory is filling the whole world, who has attached victory to his colors, and who intoxicates the nations by his republican phrases of liberty and fraternity, so that, in their mad joy, they overturn thrones, expel their sovereigns, and awake them from their ecstasy under the republican yoke of France. Your majesty, I believe it to be the duty of every prince to preserve his people from such errors, and, jointly with his people, to raise a bulwark against the evil designs of France. Austria and Russia have already ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... and fired, and as I was quite close to them he dropped in his tracks stone-dead. When I stood over the handsome creature I was positively sorry for having killed him. Not so Moota, however, who rushed up in ecstasy, and before I could stop him had cut his throat. This was done, as he remarked, "to make the meat lawful," for Moota was a devout follower of the Prophet, and no true Mohammedan will eat the flesh of any animal unless the throat has been cut at ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... were in an ecstasy of delight over the orange orchard with its wealth of golden fruit, glossy leaves, and delicate blossoms, the velvety lawn with its magnificent shade trees, the variety and profusion of beautiful flowers, and the ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... a minute or so, during which She appeared, if one might judge from the almost angelic rapture of her face—for she looked angelic sometimes—to be plunged into a happy ecstasy. Suddenly, however, a new thought struck her, and her expression became the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the showroom floor in an ecstasy of imaginary hunger, and as he was making the hundredth trip the elevator door opened and Max Linkheimer stepped out. His low-cut waistcoat disclosed that his shirtfront, ordinarily of a glossy white perfection, had fallen victim to a profuse perspiration. Even his collar had not ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... heaven what the gutter had yielded him. He held up his find in the radiance and regarded it admiringly. It was a little earring of amethyst-coloured glass, and in the sun looked lovely. The boy was in an ecstasy over it. He rubbed it on his sleeve, sucked it to clear it from the last of the gutter, and held it up once more in the sun, where, for a few blissful moments, he contemplated it speechless. He then caused it to disappear somewhere about ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... among them sobbing with ecstasy, and her tears splashed their hands like holy water. It was all outrageously illegal, and sentimental, and harmful to the sanctity of the law. And yet, is it entirely desirable that men should ever grow unmindful of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... was that Kate discovered the motor attachment of the new machine and was divided between ecstasy and ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... Bosom, the fairest Observation; while she, you must think, knew nothing of the Concern she gave others, any other than as an Example of Devotion, that threw her self out, without regard to Dress or Garment, all Contrition, and loose of all Worldly Regards, in Ecstasy of Devotion. Well, now the Organ was to play a Voluntary, and she was so skilful in Musick, and so touched with it, that she kept time not only with some Motion of her Head, but also with a different Air in her Countenance. When the Musick was strong ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... lo, the seed Of blessed dreams, sown in his heart, takes roots; He is like mind entranced in ecstasy, Born upon wings! ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... Christendom. He it was who with pitying gesture as of a kind father, his eyes suffused with tender joy, received Dante from the hands of Beatrice in the highest of celestial spheres, and after singing the beautiful hymn to the Virgin, led him to the heaven of heavens, to the very ecstasy and culmination of beatitude in the contemplation and comprehension of the triune God Himself. But religious no less than seculars are subdued by what they work in. Already in the tenth century Richer complained that the monks of his time were beginning to wear rich ornaments ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... sweetened it was the sin'; to a tender human affection: 'And now he lives in Abraham's bosom: whatever that be which is signified by that bosom, there lives my Nebridius, my sweet friend'; and from that to the saint's rare, last ecstasy: 'And sometimes Thou admittedst me to an affection, very unusual, in my inmost soul, rising to a strange sweetness, which if it were perfected in me, I know not what in it would not belong to the life to come.' And even self-analysis, of which there is so ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... and had repeated some words of them; when, as though against and contrary to my design, I was carried away by such rapturous effusions that, to this hour, when I reflect thereon, I cannot believe but I was moved to them by a much more than human impulse. However, this ecstasy did not last above a quarter of an hour; but it was considerably longer before my spirits subsided to their usual frame. When I had a little composed myself, how was I altered! how did I condemn myself for all my past disquiet! what calm thanks did I return for the ease and satisfaction of mind ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... representing each, and a description annexed. It would be impossible for me to convey to the reader my astonishment and delight. I had never seen a picture or drawing in my life. I did not know that such things existed. I was in an ecstasy of delight as I turned over the pages, hardly taking sufficient time to see one object before I hastened on to another. For two or three hours did I thus turn over leaves, without settling upon any one animal; at last my pulse beat more ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... the door, advanced a few steps towards the stairs, and after listening half a minute, returned into the room in all the agitation which a conviction of having heard him would naturally produce; in the ecstasy of her feelings at that instant she could not help exclaiming, "Oh, Elinor, it is Willoughby, indeed it is!" and seemed almost ready to throw herself into his arms, when Colonel ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... their stews, Whether bull-frogs, old gloves, or old wigs, or old shoes Notwithstanding, when offer'd I rarely refuse, Any more than poor Blogg did, when seeing the reeky Repast placed before him, scarce able to speak, he In ecstasy mutter'd, "By Jove, Cocky-leeky!" In an instant, as soon As they gave him ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... short ejaculatory expressions of rapture. This condition, occasioned by excessive emotion, as in praying, singing, exhortations, and sympathetic appeals, is contagious, often spreading with mysterious rapidity. Its culmination, ecstasy, is popularly termed "the power." When gradually induced, it is called trance, and each state is regarded by many as supernatural, caused by the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit. The explanation is this: when the emotive faculties are suddenly and powerfully excited, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... expressionless, save that his mouth dropped and that his arms were tightly folded as if he were hugging himself in a sheer ecstasy of pain. From the street outside came the roar and rumble of London's traffic, the dull murmur of countless voices and the shrill high-pitched ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... strength in his arms, the taste of meat and wine, the cunning of horsemanship, of boat-sailing, of mountain-climbing, the breathless joy of the diver, the languid joy of the dancer, the feel of the canoe-paddle shaken in the rapid, the delicious lassitude of sleep in wayside-inns, and lastly the ecstasy of love and fatherhood—all these he relinquished for a tombstone that should be handsomer than Jenkins's. Jenkins, meanwhile, was articled to his father, and, having passed the necessary examinations with credit, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ecstasy or hysteria of terror. She was mumbling incoherently: "O Lord, I will give nine-tenths of my all. I will give all. I will give even the two bolts of pina cloth, the mandarin coat, and the entire dozen silk stockings . ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... manorial outbuildings, and of the glittering pinnacles of the church, and felt his heart beating, and knew, without being told by any one, whither he had at length arrived—well, then the feeling which had been growing within his soul burst forth, and he cried in ecstasy: ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... are desperate: their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, 105 Now 'gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you, That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly, And hinder them from what this ecstasy May now ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... reached Mrs. Brownlow's house, and the old lady was delighted to receive them. Of course she began to discuss at once the great news. Sir Thomas had had his arm broken, and was now again a member of Parliament. Mrs. Brownlow was a thorough-going Tory, and was in an ecstasy of delight that her old friend should have been successful. The success seemed to be so much the greater in that the hero had suffered a broken bone. And then there were many questions to be asked? Would Sir Thomas again ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... words like one fascinated; and she fell into a sort of ecstasy in her passionate desire to see this strange ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... She was perfectly untamable, fighting everybody in school, the despair of her teacher, till on Thanksgiving, reluctantly included in the general amnesty and mince-pie, she was caught cramming the pie into her pocket, after eying it with a look of pure ecstasy, but refusing to touch it. "For mother" was her explanation, delivered with a defiant look before which the class quailed. It is recorded, but not in the minutes, that the board of managers wept over Fighting ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... to his note-book, balanced on the window-sill, but his hand shook. Huneefa, in some sort of drugged ecstasy, wrenched herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by Kim's still head, and called upon devil after devil, in the ancient order of the ritual, binding them to avoid the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... at once, with some noise, an officer walked in very jauntily, with a peculiar swing of his shoulders at each step. He tossed his cockaded cap on the table and sat down in an easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped from her seat on seeing him, and fell to curtsying in a sort of ecstasy; but the officer took not the smallest notice of her, and she did not venture to sit down again in his presence. He was the assistant superintendent. He had a reddish moustache that stood out horizontally on each side of his face, and extremely small features, expressive of nothing ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... they were intended to represent and of such brilliancy that Rosalie was completely dazzled by them. But scarcely had she seen this rare and unparalleled tree, when a noise louder than the first drew her from her ecstasy. She felt herself lifted up and transported to a vast plain, from which she saw the palace of the king falling in ruins and heard the most frightful cries of terror and suffering issue from its walls. Soon Rosalie saw the prince himself creep from the ruins bleeding and his clothing almost ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... up a steep hill? Latin, French, English, German, failed to make me understand the situation. At last I took in the Pfarrer's meaning. I was to send it by the milkman after leaving it at a certain hotel. "Ja," I cried in an ecstasy of joy, at last grasping his meaning, "Ja, ich mittam der Gepaeck von der milkman." I arrived the next day. I found the Pfarrer knew Latin, Greek (but he pronounces both quite differently from me), German, French, Russian, Syriac, Hebrew, and a little English. His ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson |
