"Rapturous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dolly could only clasp their hands and look in rapturous silence for a minute; then they went down on their knees and revelled in the unexpected ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... scene Michal declares her love for David, and they join in a rapturous duet ("O fairest of ten thousand fair"), which is followed by a chorus in simple harmony ("Is there a Man who all his Ways"). A long symphony follows, preparing the way for the attempt on David's life. After an agitated duet with Michal ("At ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... oftener had she seen him at the other door! How in her grievous reveries had she gnashed her teeth and torn her hair when she saw his start of rapturous delight as he opened the door of the lady! How her soul had burned in agony when she had seen him rush to meet that woman, with her flushing cheek and sparkling eye of triumph; when she had seen him lead her forth, his whole frame kindled with ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... The amorous colocynth Yearns for the aloe, faint with rapturous thrills, How can he hymn their throes Knowing, as well he knows, That they are only ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... front door opened and shut with a bang, flying feet came along the hall, a silk dress rustled stormily, the dining-room door was flung open, and a young lady bounced in and caught Grace in a rapturous hug. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... crushed. The route was lovely. Both banks—one high, steep and white, with overhanging pines and oaks, with the crowds hurrying back along the path, and the other shelving, with green meadows and an oak copse bathed in sunshine—looked as happy and rapturous as though the May morning owed its charm only to them. The reflection of the sun in the rapidly flowing Donets quivered and raced away in all directions, and its long rays played on the chasubles, on the banners and on the drops splashed up by the oars. The singing of the Easter hymns, the ringing ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... it should be, according to all the novels I've ever read. Now, Anne, YOUR heart wouldn't thump for anybody but the genuine Prince Charming, would it? There must be something radically wrong with mine. But I'm having a perfectly gorgeous time. How I wish you were here! It's snowing today, and I'm rapturous. I was so afraid we'd have a green Christmas and I loathe them. You know, when Christmas is a dirty grayey-browney affair, looking as if it had been left over a hundred years ago and had been in soak ever since, it is called a GREEN Christmas! Don't ask me why. As Lord Dundreary says, ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... necklace golden studded full With rarest gems and shining pearls. Our eyes, though sometimes dimmed with tears, In purer lustre sparkle forth Whene'er they fall agaze on thee! Our ears attuned to thy sweet lay Catch every flowing, cadent note And bear it ever safe within Our rapturous hearts, which gladly leap Whene'er thy name is called! Deep in our souls the quenchless fire Of love full brightly burns upon The sacred altar, set apart For sprite commune and sacrifice; Whose high-priest tends with loving care, And unto thee sweet incense burns. Our tongues most gladly sing ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... and beside them my gold ring: then pointing to each, with the words "many- one," I asked which he would rather have? He struck his hand suddenly to his forehead, then clapped both hands, gave a jump as he sat, and with the most rapturous expression of countenance intimated that the one piece of gold was better than the room full of dead flowers With great rapidity he applied the symbol, pointing to the picture, to the ring, to himself, to me, and finally to heaven. In the last position he stood up and ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... laugh behind him caused him to turn round, and he remained with his mouth wide open. Marie was there, and was walking, with a look of rapturous delight upon her face, which was beaming with health. He had never for a moment doubted the miracle, and was not in the least surprised that it had taken place, for he had returned with the conviction that everything would end well, and that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... home he was cheered by a rapturous welcome; it was little short of a triumph, this greeting and homage showered on him by father, sister and friends. In their eyes his success was unshadowed by failure; to them he was Mozart the great composer, the genius among musicians. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... careless way, which every one knew the secretary would, as a matter of course, afterwards state much better and more correctly than himself. But the mayor was a respected, well-meaning man, and, although his speech was listened to with manifest impatience, his sitting down was hailed with rapturous applause. ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... the big one like a hot brick and grabbed the two smaller ones. At the door she found opportunity to scan him once more, and to murmur under her breath, "Lor', ain't he wonderful!" before her master came along and ended her rapturous soliloquies. He entered the room and nodded ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... a little rapturous murmur, and somehow it broke the spell which had rested upon the man outside. He started, shivered slightly and turned away. He went up to the bare coldness of his own room and sat down, forgetting that it was either cold or bare. Suddenly, as he had looked at the woman's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... only tragedy which Shakspeare has written entirely on a love-story. It is supposed to have been his first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said of ROMEO AND JULIET by a great critic, that "whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... asked him what impressed him most in America, he promptly answered with his eyes on Sada, "Them girls. They are rapturous!" ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... a flying machine. The first one that had floated across his sky had very nearly been the death of him. Because, forgetting danger in his rapturous excitement, he had leaned out dangerously, and might have fallen if he had not suddenly thought of Grandpa, and thrown himself backward into the kitchen to fetch the wheel chair. The little old soldier had only been mildly diverted by the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... neighbouring farms who considered themselves her social superiors. She welcomed Monsieur de Boisdhyver graciously, enquiring with interest of his journey and with solicitude as to his rest during the night. She received with satisfaction his rapturous compliments on the comforts that had been provided him, on the beauty of the surrounding country upon which he had looked from the windows of his chamber, and on her own condescension in vouchsafing to breakfast with them. She was delighted that he should find the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... that had asserted its control over both at the self-same instant. I forgot the world, the flesh and the devil, the czar, Russia, and nihilism, and she forgot even that uppermost terror that was tearing at her heart, in that supreme moment of the rapturous recognition ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... was a delicate oval. In the long eyes, about the brow, the cheeks, there was a strained expression that suggested to me more than a gravity—almost an anguish—of spirit. As I looked at it, I thought of Eleanora Duse. Was this the ideal of joy in the time of the Ptolemies? Joy may be rapturous, or it may be serene; but could it ever be like this? The pale, delicious blue that here and there, in tiny sections, broke the almost haggard, greyish whiteness of this first hall with the roof of black, like bits of an evening sky ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... the real production of small spiders, which swarm in the fields in fine weather in autumn, and have a power of shooting out webs from their tails so as to render themselves buoyant, and lighter than air. But why these rapturous insects should that day take such a wonderful aerial excursion, and why their webs should at once become so gross and material as to be considerably more weighty than air, and to descend with precipitation, is a matter beyond my skill. If I might be allowed to hazard a supposition, I should ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... conscientious sense of the responsibilities of power and place modified Sissy's rapturous delight in her position, so that she kept it despite a fiercely jealous class-spirit developed by a strict credit-system, by the emulative temper which the rarefied atmosphere of the little mining ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... breath Melodious Philomela's wakeful strain Attemper, could not man's discerning ear Through all its tones the sympathy pursue, Nor yet this breath divine of nameless joy Steal through his veins and fan the awaken'd heart, Mild as the breeze, yet rapturous ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the scent, that, alas! forgetful of my manners, I gave a loud sniff, and with a rapturous smile ejaculated, "Oh! Auntie! ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... resignation, "John" begins and ends with hope and praise. In the former there is no chorus like the opening "Herr, unser, Herrscher," no chorale so triumphant as "Ach grosser Koenig," and certainly no single passage so rapturous as "Alsdann vom Tod erwecke mich, Dass meine Augen sehen dich, In aller Freud, O Gottes Sohn" (with the bass mounting to the high E flat and rolling magnificently down again). So in the "John" Passion Bach has given us, first, a vivid picture of the turbulent crowd and of the ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Florestan's dungeon. The prisoner sings an intensely mournful aria ("In des Lebens Fruehlingstagen"), which has a rapturous finale ("Und spuer' Ich nicht linde"), as he sees his wife in a vision. Rocco and Fidelio enter and begin digging the grave, to the accompaniment of sepulchral music. She discovers that Florestan has sunk back exhausted, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... highway were beaten into frosty dust by the tread of marshaled men; and the shrill shriek of the fife, and the hoarse boom and jar and rattling patter of the drums stirred every breast with something of that rapturous insanity of which true patriots and heroes ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the biographers of Burns are agreed that this Highland lassie was the object of by far the deepest passion he ever knew. They may be right. Death stepped in before disillusion, and she was never other than the adored Mary of that rapturous meeting when the white hawthorn-blossom no purer was than their love. Thus was his love for Mary Campbell ever a holy and spiritual devotion. Auguste Angellier says: 'This was the purest, the most lasting, and by far the noblest of his loves. Above all the others, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... there was something sublimely beautiful in life that she had never yet experienced, something that unknowingly she had been waiting for; something that must come to her at last. . . . She wondered if the young man sitting so close to her were ever stirred by such rapturous, intangible thoughts. With quickened interest she turned to look at him, and met his deep eyes intent on ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... determines to amend in future—that he shook off the recollection, whenever it returned, with wilful stubbornness; and resolved on forgetting, for the present, the being whom a few short hours before, he would have deemed it impossible that he should ever think of but with joy and rapturous anticipation. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... contain much poetic allusion to the objects of nature that surround the homes of the savage. The speech being finished, the chief sits down amid a universal "Ho!" uttered by the company with an emphatic prolongation of the last letter—this syllable being the Indian substitute, we presume, for "rapturous applause." ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... rapturous throng, Unmoved by the rush of the song, With eyes unimpassioned and slow, Among the dead angels, the deathless Sandalphon stands listening, breathless, To ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... rapturous sense of holding the post of danger, kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipation that the hours passed like minutes. The dusty roads, the intolerable thirst, and the nauseous, tepid water, the blistered feet, the abraded hips, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... he-ear my lo-ove calling." A rapturous smile swept into his face. "It must be clo-osing time." He changed his tone to one of indicative solicitude. "More to the left, sweet chuck. No. That's the water-trough. I've got the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... up to the carriages on fiery steeds, to display their horsemanship, and exchange compliments with their friends, and make pretty speeches, which are received by the bright-eyed damsels with little ogles, and flirts of their variegated fans, and rapturous delight. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... drunk, amid rapturous applause. "Well said, Varin!" exclaimed Bigot; "that toast implied both business and pleasure: the business was to sweep out the granges of the farmers; the pleasure is to drink in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... insolvency, will walk in the front of his confident creditor as if he were the lord of a thousand argosies; the meditating suicide will smile on the arm of a companion as if to breathe in this sunny world were the most ravishing and rapturous bliss. We cling to our stations in our fellow-creatures' minds and memories; we know too well the frail tenure on which we are in this world great and considered personages. Experience makes us shrink from the specious sneer of sympathy; and when we are ourselves falling, bitter Memory ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... came, for it was already late, and Annie slipped away, leaving both her father and Gregory sleeping. To her great joy Hunting stepped down from the train and was quickly seated by her side. As they drove away in the dusk he could not forbear a rapturous kiss and embrace ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... arms again. Night had fallen and all was still. No words were spoken between them for many minutes. Those rapturous moments were theirs alone, none could see, none could know. At length it was Rosebud who looked up from the pillow of his breast. Her lovely eyes were shining ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... canary, and filled the room with its rapturous demi-semi-quavers, its throat swelling, its little body throbbing with joy of the sunshine. And then Lancelot remembered—not the joy of the sunshine, not the joy ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... heard his little prayer, For in the morn, with rapturous face, He toddled to the chimney-place, And found this ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... fateful march of the cothurns was stayed by the single pause in the play, and Darrow had led Miss Viner out on the balcony overhanging the square before the theatre, he turned to see if she shared his feelings. But the rapturous look she gave him checked the depreciation on ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... day came, the weather was fine, and the attendant crowd rapturous. The King and his Knights, in nodding plumes and robes of thorn-stamped velvet, made the show of their lives; organ music rolled from within, bands played without, and massed choirs sang like angels from the parapets and galleries above the west ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... thick piece of cloth well steeped in water round his head, so that he might not hear the lovers whispering together. This was the first time they unburdened all their hearts to each other, swearing eternal fidelity in the midst of tears and rapturous kisses. The old gentleman could have no idea of what was going on, for Marianna ceased not, frequently from time to time, to ask him how he felt, and even permitted him to press her little white hand to ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of slumber suddenly I seemed to wake, and know The little feet, that followed me, Were ashes long ago! And in a burst of rapturous tears I clung to her and said: "Dear Pitty-pat! The lonesome years They told me ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... unique as this, What happiness abounds! Who—who could paint my rapturous bliss, My joy ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... adventure. When the Literary Man from London crossed her mind she laughed him to scorn for a prophetic popinjay. She had broken no man's heart, and her own was whole. The tribes of Crim Tartary had exhibited no signs of worry and had left her unmolested. She had furthermore taken rapturous delight in cathedrals, expensive restaurants, and the set pieces of fashionable scenery. Rattenden had not a prophetic leg ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... the cloud which, since early evening, had been resting on the summit of Mount Get, like a kite awaiting its prey. The snow crunched under our feet. The atmosphere grew so rarefied that to breathe was painful; ever and anon the blood rushed to my head, but withal a certain rapturous sensation was diffused throughout my veins and I felt a species of delight at being so high up above the world. A childish feeling, I admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become as children: each attribute acquired ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... unceasing vigil can appreciate what such a day means. To be spared for a few brief hours the irksome round of routine, to smoke Woodbines the livelong day; to share, in the grateful sunlight, some vantage point with a "Raggie," and join in the full-throated, rapturous roars of excitement that sweep down the mile-long lane of ships abreast the sweating crews. This is to taste something of the fierce exhilaration of the Day that the Fleet is waiting for, and has awaited ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Beach-Mandarin winning Lady Harman's heart by every rule of the game, rejoicing effusively in those crowning triumphs of a woman's being, there was Miss Sawbridge vociferous in support and Mrs. Sawbridge almost offering to join hands in rapturous benediction, and there was Lady Harman wearing her laurels, not indeed with indifference but with a curious detachment. One might imagine her genuinely anxious to understand why Lady Beach-Mandarin was in such a stupendous ebullition. One might have supposed her a mere cold-hearted intellectual ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has been staged with magnificent ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... the myriads of blossoms above and around them. The mystic scene—radiant sunshine, smiling landscape, balmy, odorous air, humming of bees, and pyramids of apple blossoms—increased the preacher's rapturous love of nature, God's revelation of his glory, and by a reasonable transition his heart beat with a warm, tender, and holy affection for the beautiful girl at his side. Her mind also was open to the beauties of the scene, and a thousand voices were calling her to sip the magic waters ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... carried away the last scruple. The hand which repelled me felt my heart beat. She struggled to get away, but fell back overcome with tenderness. We talked together through that silence in the language of thought. Nothing is more rapturous than these mute conversations. Madame de T——- took refuge in my arms, hid her head in my bosom, sighed and then grew calm under my caresses. She grew melancholy, she was consoled, and she asked of love all that love had robbed ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the Madeleine forms a half-circle, and is very richly ornamented. The great altar is splendidly sculptured. The principal group represents the Magdalene in a rapturous posture, borne to heaven on the wings of angels. A tunic is wrapped around her body, and the long hair with which she wiped her Savior's feet. This group of sculpture alone cost one hundred and ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... for an instant, with a dreamy smile, upon the faces surrounding him. His eyes closed with a gentle sigh, but while those about him anxiously awaited the next breath, they again opened, full of the light of recognition, while a rapturous smile grew and deepened upon his face, irradiating his features with joy, his lips moving in a whisper so faint that only the mother's ear ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... begun that morning at 6.30 when the grey-headed, simple-minded servant allotted to him had wakened him, according to instructions, with a mug of tea. Perhaps it was the far, thin sound of bugles that produced the rapturous effect, or the fresh air blowing in through the broken pane of the hut, or the slanting sunlight, or the feeling that he had no responsibility and nothing to do ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Infanta's passion required to be set forth more musically, and Rodrigo's achievements against the Moors more especially, i. e., with greater vividness of detail: and probably they were so in the Spanish original. The rapturous applause, which, on its first appearance, universally welcomed a piece like this, which, without the admixture of any ignoble incentive, founded its attraction altogether on the represented conflict between the purest feelings of love, honour, and filial duty, is a strong ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... speechless; he looked not at her, indeed, with any doubt of her existence, but as if what he had heard was to him as amazing as to her what she saw. At length, however, tormented by the dog, who jumpt up to him, licked his hands, and by his rapturous joy forced himself into notice, he was moved to return his caresses, saying, "Yes, dear Fidel! you have a claim indeed to my attention, and with the fondest gratitude will I ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to Deane had approached even his exacting criterion of what was fit for her. He envied the skin its rapturous reception, the sparkle of bright eyes its beauty would invoke. It was characteristic that his vision did not carry him to the daily contact of pink toes he had assigned as its function. And it was characteristic of him, too, that he did not think of ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... if the sun had leaped up again in a fiery flurry, till the hills and the plain and the river were all flooded with flushed light, gleaming and glowing, it would have but dimly symbolised the transfiguration of her world. In the twinkling of an eye her stark despair was changed into rapturous relief, a miracle which just at first made the marvellous cloak seem almost a matter of course. Any good thing might naturally be expected to befall her since Thady was not estranged and lost to her after all. "Whethen now, and is ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... near the coming of sunset when Carley first looked down into the Grand Canyon. She had forgotten Glenn's tribute to this place. In her rapturous excitement of preparation and travel the Canyon had been merely a name. But now she saw it ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... that he can not bear long to remain out of her sight. Now he sings a tender serenade, then his joy rises to ecstasy. He takes wings and floats up and down the imaginary waves, circling higher and higher, his sweet notes growing more rapturous until finally they reach their climax as he goes abruptly skyward. Then his fluttering wings close, and he drops from a height of perhaps forty or fifty feet, to alight again on his original perch ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... flowers, Ere March came in with Marlowe's rapturous rage: Peele, from whose hand the sweet white locks of age Took the mild chaplet woven of honoured hours: Nash, laughing hard: Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers: And Lilly, a goldfinch in a twisted cage Fed by some gay great lady's pettish page Till short sweet songs gush clear ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... try to draw Dora (my blotter Is all overscrawled with her head), If I fancy at last that I've got her, It turns to her rival instead; Or I find myself placidly adding To the rapturous tresses of Rose Miss Dora's bud-mouth, and her madding, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... called forth electric sparks from her dress or hands. She found enjoyment, too, in peering through the great telescopes at the heavenly wonders. Lorand was always ready to answer her questions; but the poor girl was far from understanding all. Yet how rapturous the thought of knowing all! Once when Lorand was explaining to her the properties of the sun-spectrum, the girl sighed and, suddenly bending down to Lorand, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for the career of pleasure and fashion. The park! delicious excitement! The theatre! the saloon!! the green-room!!! Rapturous bliss—the opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to KNOCK DOWN A CHARLEY there! There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights and little cocked hats, coming from the opera—very much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now. There they are at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... art galleries, did she give him the slightest ground for encouragement. And, to further disturb his sense of contentment, she was delighted—positively delighted—over the coming of Prince Ugo. For a week she had talked of little save the day when he was to arrive. Quentin endured these rapturous assaults nobly, but he was slowly beginning to realize that they were battering down the only defense he had—the inward belief that she cared for him in spite ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... this place and awful; porch of heaven: Behold, God's Church is founded on a rock: It stands, and shall not fall: the gates of Hell Shall not prevail against it.' From the barge Of Sebert and his Queen, antiphonal Rapturous response was wafted: 'I beheld Jerusalem, the City sage and blest; From heaven I saw it to the earth descending In sanctity gold-vested, as a Bride Decked for her Lord. I heard a voice which sang, Behold the House where God will ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... thoughts have seemed to me no more profound or pungent than my own. All that is best in these authors goes into their work. But, though I complain of them on this count, I admit that the thrill for me of their triumphs is the more rapturous because every time it catches me unawares. One of the greatest emotions I ever had was from the triumph of THE GIFT OF GIFTS. Of this novel within a novel the author was not a young man at all, but an elderly clergyman whose life had been spent in a little rural parish. He was a dear, simple ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... her eyes, and she said, 'Oh, that is good and great; I shall get much out of him; I had always feared he was impossible.' And 'Paracelsus,' too, stirred her; but when I recited the thrilling fragment, 'Prospice,' on to that closing rapturous cry— ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... summer wind lifting his hair, With nostril expanded, and scenting the air Like a mettled young war-horse that tosses his mane, And frettingly champs at the bit and the rein,— Stands eager, exultant, a twelve-year-old boy, His face all aflame with a rapturous joy. ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... supernatural detection of the Dauphin (Charles VII.) amongst three hundred lords and knights. I am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? But I admire not stage artifices, which not La Pucelle, but the Court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself a dupe to a conjuror's leger-de-main, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. Southey's "Joan of Arc" was published in 1796. Twenty ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... too vast! oh thought too glad: An awe most rapturous it stirs. From world to world God's beacons shine: God means to save ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... delightful avocation. There will be no indolence there, as we often find in earthly homes; but all will be continually engaged. "They serve Him day and night in His temple." There will be one unbroken worship, which will afford you rapturous delight. You shall be presented, before God's glory, with exceeding joy; for "in His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures for evermore." These joys will be eternal,—forever and ever. That better home will never be dissolved, cannot be ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... song employs all nations; and all cry, "Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us!" The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks Shout to each other, and the mountain-tops From distant mountains catch the flying joy; Till, nation after nation taught the strain, Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round. Behold the measure of the promise fill'd! See Salem built, the labor of a God! Bright as a sun the sacred city shines: All kingdoms and all princes of the Earth Flock to that light; the glory of all lands Flows into her; unbounded is her joy, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... ridiculous) they are so bolstered up in an airy imagination, as to promise themselves an everlasting name, and promise, by their balderdash, at the same time to celebrate the never-dying memory of others. To these rapturous wits self-love and flattery are never-failing attendants; nor do any prove more zealous or constant devotees ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... 70 fathoms. We passed some distance from the western end of Samow Island in the morning; but the high peaks of Timor were not seen till near noon. The eager eyes of the native whom we had brought with us from Swan River were the first to descry them; and he exclaimed in tones of rapturous astonishment, "Land! big fella! all the same cloud!" I shall not easily forget the amazement of this savage, accustomed as he was to behold the level plains of his native land, when he saw, towering in alpine grandeur to the sky, the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... There were but two things for which he cared to have money—to give them comforts and to start a magazine of his own. He never spent any money on himself. Everything was intrusted to Mrs. Clemm, who managed all his household affairs. His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes. "I have seen him," says Mr. Graham, "hovering around her when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born—her slightest cough causing him a shudder, a heart chill, that was visible. ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... hardly remembered Dinah, was startled by another budget from Sancerre—eight leaves, sixteen pages! He heard a woman's step; he thought it announced a search from the Marquise, and tossed these rapturous and entrancing proofs of affections into ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods of life and motion, and could pass my days contentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the colors of my carpet; examining the knots in the wood of the floor or counting the bricks in the opposite houses; with rapturous intervals of excitement during the filling of the water-cart, through its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at the pavement edge; or the still more admirable proceedings of the turncock, when he turned and turned till a fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. But the carpet, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... giving auntie a rapturous hug, and, at the same time, sending her heels kicking out behind, like a little wild pony. "I've had an awfully ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... a quiet elysium, with a bright and rapturous dream of the future; for she saw she had hit on a good vein of business, and should soon be independent, and able to indulge herself with a husband, and ask no ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... seeks with tender treatment to conquer a refractory body, wants common sense. If thou art minded to forsake all, do so to good purpose." The stern command was obeyed.[261] Very soon—it is the usual experience of ascetic mystics—he was encouraged by rapturous visions. One such, which came to him on St. Agnes' Day, he thus describes:—"It was without form or mode, but contained within itself the most entrancing delight. His heart was athirst and yet ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... costly endeavor Only was subtler betrayal. O me, from the pang of confession, Sprang what strange delight, as I tore from its lurking that horror— Brooded upon so long—with the hope that at last I might see it Through his eyes, unblurred by the tears that disordered my vision! Oh, with what rapturous triumph I humbled my spirit before him, That he might lift me and soothe me, and make that dreary remembrance, All this confused present, seem only some sickness of fancy, Only a morbid folly, no certain and actual ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... child that died in her arms forty years ago. Did God implant that divine love in her only to disappoint it? God forbid! A thousand times, no. In that world the mother shall meet her child, and the lonely widow shall meet her husband, and they shall learn fully the love of God in that rapturous meeting with Christ's benediction resting ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... by Demetrios of Anatolia leaves her soul immaculate and almost unperturbed. In this tale love is canonized: throned on alabaster above all the vulgar gods it diffuses among its worshipers a crystal radiance in which mortal imperfections perish—or are at least forgotten during certain rapturous hours. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... under the conditions which you attach to it. I am conscious my wooing has been too late in life to expect the animated returns proper to youthful passion—Blame me not if I remain satisfied with those calmer sentiments which make life happy, though they cannot make possession rapturous. Your hand remains In my grasp, but it acknowledges not my pressure—Can it be that it refuses to ratify ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... that I may note. Another of the Evangelists tells us that it was when the humble cortege swept round the shoulder of Olivet, and caught sight of the city gleaming in the sunshine, across the Kedron valley, that they broke into the most rapturous of their hosannas, as if they would call to the city that came in view to rejoice and welcome its King. And what was the King doing when that sight burst upon Him, and while the acclamations eddied round Him? His thoughts ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... birds, in the two chancel scenes, that this side of Gozzoli's art is most fascinating. He has travelled a long way from his master Fra Angelico here: the heaven is of the visible rather than the invisible eye; sense is present as well as the rapturous spirit. The little Medici who endured the tedium of the services here are to be felicitated with upon such an adorable presentment of glory. With plenty of altar candles the sight of these gardens of the blest must have beguiled many a mass. Thinking here in England upon ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... really say pie, Bob?" asked Jimmy in a rapturous voice. "And apple pie at that? Or was it all only ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... hastening toward the abyss. Out of the profligate slave-dealer, John Newton, Methodism formed one of the purest and most unselfish of saints. It taught criminals in Newgate to mount the gallows in an ecstasy of rapturous devotion. It planted a fervid and enduring religious sentiment in the midst of the most brutal and most neglected portions of the population, and whatever may have been its vices or its defects, it ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... count was tenderly caressing the hand of his beloved, and smiling and chatting with an expression of rapturous happiness. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... for following the only regular profession commanding fame and fortune the kind consideration of man has left open to her. For two centuries women have been free to follow this profession, onerous and exacting though it be, and by doing so have won the rapturous applause of generations of men, who are all ready enough to believe that where their pleasure is involved, no risks of life or honour are too great for a woman to run. It is only when the latter, tired of the ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Chinese traveller had arrived at Versailles on the morning of Holy Thursday, he would have found the King of France humbly washing the feet of twelve poor and aged men, yet, as Frenchmen knew, this would be no occasion for rapturous exultation over the lowliness and humanity ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... added that he had just become a Fellow of Trinity, Borrow remarked, "Ah! Fellows of Trinity always marry their bed-makers." Agnes Strickland was another victim. Being desirous of meeting him and, in spite of Borrow's unwillingness, achieving her object, she expressed in rapturous terms her admiration of his works, and concluded by asking permission to send him a copy of The Queens of England, to which he ungraciously replied, "For God's sake, don't, madam; I should not know where to put them or what to do with them." ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... sweeping round the Great Bend or Acute-Angle, resumes its general course. Here the guide ignited a Bengal light. This vast amphitheatre became illuminated, and a scene of enchantment was exposed to our view. Poets may conceive, but no language can describe, the splendor and sublimity of the scene. The rapturous exclamations of our party might have been heard from afar, both up and down this place of wonders. Opposite to the Great Bend, is the entrance of the Sick Room Cave, so called from the fact of the sudden sickness of a visiter a few years ago, supposed to have been caused by his smoking, with ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... which she abandoned to my rapturous kisses. I had reached this pleasant stage in the proceedings when M. le Noir was announced, he having come to enquire what the Pope's niece had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... smart woman at the expense of her audience. The latter, nevertheless, bravely did their duty. Neither "Le Cid," nor "Polyeucte," nor "Andromaque," nor "Athalie"—Corneille and Racine's masterpieces—ever produced such rapturous enthusiasm. Monsieur Mery dashed off extemporaneously, in Marseillais accent, admiring paradoxes which lacked nothing but splendid rhyme. Monsieur Theophile Gautier, who looked like an obese Turk habited in European ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... A rapturous feeling, full of peace and calm, filled Janina's heart, for the entire past was vanishing from her memory; all her miseries, all her disappointments, and all her struggles faded away, paled and dispersed, as though absorbed by that pale autumn sun ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... annoyance this scene had caused me. We continued to lead a life entirely devoted to pleasure and love. The increase of our wealth only redoubled our affection. There none happier among all the devotees of Venus and Fortune. Heavens! why call this a world of misery, when it can furnish a life of such rapturous enjoyment? But alas, it is too soon over! For what ought man to sigh, could such felicity but last for ever? Ours shared the common fate—in being of short duration, and ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... was headed away from Tallyn and its owners, only to fall into a rapturous debate with Fanny over a racing bet which seemed to have been offered and taken on the journey which first made them acquainted. Fanny had lost, but the young man ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into view, at the end of a brief aisle of trees, the horse—a vigorous black brute with white socks and muzzle—running freely, apparently under constraint neither of whip nor of spur. In the saddle a girl leaned low over the horn—a girl with eyes rapturous, face brilliant, lips parted in the least of smiles. A fold of her black habit-skirt, whipping out, almost snapped in Amber's face, so close to him she rode; yet she seemed not to see him, and very likely did not. A splendid sketch in black-and-white, of youthful spirit ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... as any of the gentlemen about him now, that the Reform cause stood in peril of but one misfortune—the retirement of the great, unselfish, popular, and devoted man who had already led the Reformers to victory. (Rapturous applause.) He did not fail to appreciate the modesty that led Mr. Ruse to undervalue his magnificent services to the city. He could well understand his (Mr. Ruse's) desire to return to his counting-room and his fireside free of the burdens and anxieties incident to a great ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... but in rapturous wonder at the light in his eyes, listening spellbound to the delight of her name so spoken, forgetting who she was, where she was, in the whirl of bliss where her senses momentarily swam. Then he ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... or seemed to hear! ... and yet she gave no answer! ... No sign! ... No promise!—no gesture of farewell! ... only a look of divine, compassionating, perfect love, . . a look so pure, so penetrating, so true, so rapturous, that flesh and blood could bear the glory of her transfigured Presence no longer,—and blind with the burning effulgence of her beauty, he shut his eyes and covered his face. He knew now, if he had never known it before, what ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and blushed as one of them placed her foot on the rest. She looked in amazement at the elegantly furnished apartments of Madame Louise, and the wonderful structures of feathers and lace and ribbon, which the voluble saleswoman assured them were cheap at thirty dollars, and was lost in a rapturous delight, as, with the calmness of experienced shoppers, her cousins went from one department to another in White's and Hovey's, laying in a supply of airy nothings of which she did not even know the use; always being treated ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... because of the divine power of its influence, to his mind a pure, old, genuine "Jesus wine." This was the well known "Habermaennchen," the epic poem and the private chapel of the warrior as well as of the serving man. And not alone with the exalted spectacle of divine omnipotence on the furious or rapturous sea—but even in the camps and quarters the masses of soldiers did not neglect public worship any more than they neglected a simple military duty. So with the ancient fear of God of the patriarchs in their hearts the Hessian people landed ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... youths return to us," writes Lilienblum,[14] "and our hearts were filled with joy. In their restoration we found balm for our wounds, and with rapturous wonderment we asked 'who has borne us these?'" The poets welcomed them with songs. Gordon, whose sorrow had silenced his muse, was inspired once more ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... for his rapturous greetings to subside, but finally he dropped upon the couch beside her, pressed to her, temporarily exhausted, but still wriggling spasmodically whenever her hand moved upon him. And then Juliet, for ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... that overpowered all others was transport at the sudden change in my whole fortunes. A home—a name—a rank—wealth awaited me; and love painted a still more rapturous prospect in the distance. I hastened to Bianca, and threw myself at her feet. "Oh, Bianca," exclaimed I, "at length I can claim you for my own. I am no longer a nameless adventurer, a neglected, rejected outcast. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... outer rapturous fringe of hungry boyhood and slowly approached the counter where Al, guardian of the jigger, dished out the jiggers and watched the counters with uneasy eye. Not that he had any hope, but it was only fair to give even the most abandoned ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... plaintive note, from which he gets one of his names, and always amiable. So far as I know, he never utters a harsh sound; even the young ones, asking for food, use only smooth, musical tones. During the pairing season his delight often becomes rapturous. To see him then, hovering and singing,—or, better still, to see the devoted pair hovering together, billing and singing,—is enough to do even a cynic good. The happy lovers! They have never read it in a book, but it is ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... I adopted the fiction of a Spanish monk as the chronicler. Fray Antonio Agapida was intended as a personification of the monkish zealots who hovered about the sovereigns in their campaigns, marring the chivalry of the camp by the bigotry of the cloister, and chronicling in rapturous strains every act of intolerance toward the Moors. In fact, scarce a sally of the pretended friar when he bursts forth in rapturous eulogy of some great stroke of selfish policy on the part of Ferdinand, or exults over some overwhelming disaster of the gallant and devoted ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... I could let those three notes of admiration go to you instead of a letter. They mean everything that is rapturous and delightful—grandeur, cheerfulness, health, enjoyment, novelty, freedom, etc., etc. I have just dropped into the very place I have been seeking, but in everything it exceeds all my dreams. There is health in every breath ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... youth! "And if a god, the lovely Cupid sure! "But if of mortal mould, blest is thy sire! "Blest is thy brother! and thy sister blest!— "If sister hast thou;—and the fostering breast "Which fed thy infant growth: but far 'bove all "In rapturous bliss, is she who calls thee spouse; "Should nymph exist thou deem'st that bliss deserves! "If wedded, grant a stol'n embrace to me; "If not, let me thy nuptial couch ascend. "The Naiaed ceas'd: a bashful glow suffus'd "His face, for nought ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... your suffering from ennui, I guess," laughed Toinette. "I will guarantee to keep you occupied. And then, daddy, after all is over we'll go off together, and won't we have glorious times!" and she gave a rapturous little bounce at the thought of the delightful days ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... dear to Brock, had died, she had not let the lads go with her to the house of death for fear of saddening their youth, and how, when she and their father came home from the hard, terrible business of the funeral, they met little Hugh on the drive, rapturous at seeing them again, rather absorbed in his new dog. But Brock, then fourteen, was in the house alone, quiet, his fresh, dear face red with tears, and a black necktie of his father's, too large for him, tied under his collar. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... everyone coming to her to thank her and to praise her, and to share in the joy of her beauty; she herself had never been more radiant and more exulting in all her exulting life, drinking in even Mr. Harrison's rapturous compliments and finding nothing exaggerated in them. And in the meantime, Aunt Polly having suggested a waltz to close the festivities, the furniture was rapidly moved to one side, and the hostess herself took her seat at the piano and struck up the "Invitation ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... warm spring morning, and Sheba, having made herself ready, wandered into the garden to wait among the flowers. The rapturous first scents of the year were there, drawn by the sun and blown by vagrant puffs of wind from hyacinths and jonquils, white narcissus and blue violets. Sheba walked among the beds, every few minutes kneeling down upon the grass to bury her ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was only a version of the old photographer's joke which produces the same figure twice on one plate, making a man play chess with himself, dine with himself, and so on. But these plates were more hysterical and ambitious—as, "Miss Hunt forgets Herself," showing that lady answering her own too rapturous recognition with a most appalling stare of ignorance; or "Mr. Moon questions Himself," in which Mr. Moon appeared as one driven to madness under his own legal cross-examination, which was conducted with a long forefinger and an air of ferocious waggery. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... released from his embrace to fall into the gentler ones of the elder cousins, who took advantage of the general excitement to welcome both blooming girls with affectionate impartiality. Then the wanderers were borne ashore in a triumphal procession, while Jamie danced rapturous jigs before ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... of the pair was sufficiently established. They believed that here was indeed material for the making of an ideal union. Their belief seemed justified by the facts in the outcome, for bride and groom showed all the evidences of rapturous happiness in their union. It had only been revealed during this present visit to the household by the aunt that, somehow, things were not as they should be between these two erstwhile so fond.... And now, at last, the truth was revealed in all its revolting nudity. Mrs. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... for one last, rapturous survey of herself in the cheval-glass, then put out the lights and went to ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... she lay on the borderland of sleeping and waking, she half dreamt, half knew, that a face bent over her, and that lips were pressed against her own; and such a thrill struck through her that, though now fully conscious, she had not power to stir, but lay as in the moment of some rapturous death. For when the presence entered into her dream, when the warmth melted upon her lips, she imagined it the kiss which might once have come to her but now was lost for ever. It was pain to open her eyes, but when she did so, and met ...
— Demos • George Gissing |
