"Agonising" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of them fled the woman, terror lending her an incredible speed which agonising physical pain augmented. She dived under horses, she squeezed through vehicles, she twisted and turned, caring naught for the native drivers, who, indifferent to the daily sufferings of their wretched little horses, lashed at her with their whips, with ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... folded very small, and written in pencil. There was a strange faintness at my heart, and my fingers trembled as I opened them. Fear, fear was clutching me, compressing me in an agonising grip. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... wrong," said Murray, warmly; "but have some pity for me too. Doctor Barnes, you cannot be blind to what I think and feel. All this is agonising to me. Look here, sir; do you think I have not brains enough to see that this man reads me and my sentiments toward your daughter. The scoundrel—the insolent barbarian! he is actually jealous, and under his smiling civility, ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... not think that Aunt Flora should see a doctor? The pain is so agonising that she seems quite stupid ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... that ill-fated afternoon, and then all, save for the songs of the birds and the rippling of the deep waters of the lake, was wrapped in silence. Then followed the report—whispered through the party assembled to do honour to the future bride and bridegroom—that "Bill" was missing. Then came the agonising suspense and the eight hours' search throughout ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... had hitherto kept aloof, now took courage to approach, and form a second circle outside. The most furious despair now took possession of the souls of the devoted Pequodees: and their terrible war-cry was heard resounding high, and mingled with the agonising yells of the women and children, and helpless aged men, who were expiring amid the flames. Many of the warriors climbed the palisades, and leaped down among their foes, hoping to escape; but they were quickly despatched by the muskets and bayonets of the English; or if any had power to break ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... way, resembled Grandmother Starr; the lady looked like Rosemary, except that she was beautiful. "Father!" cried Rosemary, in an agonising whisper. "Mother!" Face to face at last with those of her own blood, dead though ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... meeting, he had avoided asking Betty about George. Betty's twin had been away at the time of Radmore's break with Old Place—away in a sense which in our civilised days can only be brought about by one thing, an infectious illness. At the time the agonising debate was going on at Beechfield, he had been in a fever hospital close on a month, and they were none of them to see him for three more weeks. It had been at once a pain and a relief that ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... for those in their last agony.' He did as requested, and she answered the Litany in a firm voice. After some little time, the bell for the agonising was heard, and a person came in to ask Anne Catherine's prayers for his sister, who was just dead. Anne Catherine asked for details concerning her illness and death, as if deeply interested in the subject, and the friend above-mentioned heard the account given by the new comer of a consumption ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Clement were, poor children! used enough to illness to attend to their brother with a collectedness that amazed their cousin; and without calling for help, Edgar came shuddering and trembling to himself, and then burst into silent but agonising sobs, very painful to witness. He was always—boy as he was—the most easily and entirely overthrown by anything that affected him strongly; and Mr. Thomas Underwood was so much struck and touched by his exceeding grief, especially now that he looked on him as his own property, that after ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Laubardemont; "but the mode of your death is in our hands: it rests with us to make it slow or quick, painless or agonising; so take this paper ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of terror, followed by the clash of arms, the inevitable volley of oaths, the call for help, the final moan of anguish. They were the ever-recurring brief tragedies which told of denunciations, of domiciliary search, of sudden arrests, of an agonising desire for life and for freedom—for life under these same horrible conditions of brutality and of servitude, for freedom to breathe, if only a day or two longer, this air, polluted by filth ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... commonly called "Khazuk", is a stout pole pointed at one end, and the criminal being thrown upon his belly is held firm whilst the end is passed up his fundament. His legs and body are then lashed to it and it is raised by degrees and planted in a hole already dug, an agonising part of the process. If the operation be performed by an expert who avoids injuring any mortal part, the wretch may live for three days suffering the pangs of thirst; but a drink of water causes hemorrhage and instant ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... before Denis managed to go to sleep that night. Vague but agonising miseries possessed his mind. It was not only Anne who made him miserable; he was wretched about himself, the future, life in general, the universe. "This adolescence business," he repeated to himself every now and then, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... The Irish Daily Mass Crusade; Total Abstinence; devotion to the Passion; devotion to the agonising Heart of Jesus. ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... lamp, which was close to the window, blinding him. At times he caught the clink of a bottle, and fancied that the men were supping; but he knew nothing for certain, and by-and-by the light was put out. A brief—and agonising—period of silence followed, during which he thought that he caught the distant tramp of horses; but he had heard the same sound before, it might be the beating of his heart, and before he could decide, oaths and exclamations broke the silence, and there was a sudden bustle. In less ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... been so similar to yours. Many times, while reading it, the memory of the old heart-break has been so vivid that I have had to lay the book down and look round the familiar room in order to convince myself that it was you, and not I, who was agonising over one of the King's own children who was being crowded back into darkness and hurled down to destruction, because Satan's wrath is great as he realises that his ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... purest hour, desire to do so? She could not save him, but, as she valued her most precious human privileges, she dared not taste the fruits of life of which he was for ever robbed. Between her and happiness loomed that agonising face, She might disregard it, might close her eyes and press on, might live down the old sacred pity and give herself to absorbing bliss what would be the true value of that she gained? Nay, it was idle to affect that she had the choice. She ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... my poor brother, how miserable I am. I have just learned that a very dangerous person has discovered more about that dreadful evening than we believed known to anybody in Gylingden. I am subjected to the most agonising suspicions and insults. Would to Heaven I were dead! But living, I cannot endure my present state of mind longer. To-morrow morning I will see Dorcas—poor Dorcas!—and tell her all. I am weary of urging you, in vain, to do so. It would have been much better. But although, after that ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Egyptian Mummies are past, how dare Mrs. Prodgit require, for the use of my son, an amount of flannel and linen that would carpet my humble roof? Do I wonder that she requires it? No! This morning, within an hour, I beheld this agonising sight. I beheld my son - Augustus George - in Mrs. Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee, being dressed. He was at the moment, comparatively speaking, in a state of nature; having nothing on, but an extremely short shirt, remarkably ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... out to the hill, and lay all night wrestling and agonising to be sure whether there was a God. You know he 's just a small farmer, and it seems to me splendid that such a man should give himself to the big problems of the universe. Do you know," and Carmichael turned to the General, who was smoking in great peace, "I believe that is the ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... remorse. When he thought over this incident he was very much distressed, and made up his mind that he must go to Luard and tell him that the story was an invention. Though he dreaded humiliation more than anything in the world, he hugged himself for two or three days at the thought of the agonising joy of humiliating himself to the Glory of God. But he never got any further. He satisfied his conscience by the more comfortable method of expressing his repentance only to the Almighty. But he could not understand why he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... snapped the excited little American. "I'm one of a party of eight. We're all school-teachers And this guide"—she waved a hand in the direction of a rapt little group standing in the agonising position the ceiling demands—"just informed us that the ceiling is by Raphael. And we're paying ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... and breasts. But more than by anything else, he was disgusted by himself, by his perfumed hair, by the smell of wine from his mouth, by the flabby tiredness and listlessness of his skin. Like when someone, who has eaten and drunk far too much, vomits it back up again with agonising pain and is nevertheless glad about the relief, thus this sleepless man wished to free himself of these pleasures, these habits and all of this pointless life and himself, in an immense burst of disgust. Not until the light of the morning and the beginning ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... One spectacle was particularly agonising. It has been mentioned that Mrs. Dawson, one of the passengers, had declared before the vessel started, that, if she could, she would leave it, and would not sail. But her husband did not come in time, and she had therefore gone with the rest. She was among the number of those ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... room; and although the darkness was intense, his form and features were as clear and as defined as if it were noon-day. Fear would have inclined me to recoil from,—his loved presence to fly towards him. I remained on the spot where I was, choked with agonising sensations. When he had entered the room, the windows and shutters closed of themselves, and the candle was relighted—then I thought it was his apparition, and I fainted on ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to see a day into the future, we might have spared ourselves this agonising, for all our doubts and fears were suddenly dispersed in an entirely unexpected manner. Happily these interior problems are not infrequently ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... and alter, or completely throw aside those traditions. Within the individuality itself of such persons, goes on, in an intensified form, that very struggle, conflict, and disco-ordination which is going on in society at large between its different members and sections; and agonising moments must arise, when the individual, seeing the necessity for adopting new courses of action, or for accepting new truths, or conforming to new conditions, will yet be tortured by the hold of traditional convictions; and the man or woman ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... found the pious clergyman reading prayers with great fervency, while Don Diego stood with his right hand upon his breast, looking steadfastly upon the agonising Fathom, and the young woman kneeled, with her streaming eyes lifted up to heaven, in an ecstasy of grief and devotion. The physician had run to an apothecary's shop in the neighbourhood, from whence he soon returned with an assistant, who applied a large blister to the back of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... a paid choir. "Lor, bless yer," as Betsy Jane Ward would say, a choir will sing, anything put before them if it is set to music; and they think no more of getting through all that sad business about personal sinfulness, agonising repentance, and a general craving for forgiveness, than the odd woman did when she used to kiss her cow and say it was delicious. There was once a period when all Parish Church goers made open confession joined audibly in the prayers, and said "Amen" as if they meant it; although ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... nearly bereaved, that dinner was announced as ready, through the half-opened door, as the living sister was closing the eyes of the dead one. She could now no more stay the welled-up grief of her sister with her emphatic and dying 'Take courage,' and it burst forth in brief but agonising strength. Charlotte's affection, however, had another channel, and there it turned in thought, in care, and in tenderness. There was bereavement, but there was not solitude;—sympathy was at hand, and it was accepted. With calmness, came the consideration ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... enough to be dismayed by what stares him in the face. Charles Dickens had lucid intervals in which he was vaguely conscious of the abuses around him; but his spasmodic efforts to expose these brought him into contact with realities so agonising to his highstrung literary nerves that he invariably sank back into debauches of unsocial optimism. Even the Swan of Avon had his glimpses of the havoc of displacement wrought by Elizabethan romanticism in the social machine which ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... universal with the special it is that the great catastrophes of history arise, yet it sometimes happens that the efforts which seem to perish with their authors exercise a more lasting influence on the progress of events than does the power of the conqueror. In the agonising struggles of men's minds appear ideas and designs which pass beyond what is feasible in that land and at that time, perhaps even beyond what is desirable: these find a place and a future in the colonies, the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... lowing of these poor beasts pierced me to the heart. Jacques questioned me with his eyes; he would have liked to try and deliver them. Their agonising moans soon became lamentable, and a great cracking sound was heard. The oxen had just broken down the stable doors. We saw them pass before us, borne away by the flood, rolled over and over in the current. And they disappeared amid the roar of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... that moment a snake ran out from a tuft of grass at his feet and wriggled wildly over the sod. The dragoman shrieked, of course, but one of the soldiers put his heel upon the head of the reptile and it flung itself into the agonising knot of death. Then the whole crowd powwowed, turning from the dead man to the dead snake. Coleman signaled his contingent and proceeded ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... slower. Her captor had fallen back behind the horses; he was now close beside her, and presently she found herself listening to his hurried, laboured breathing, until she could hear nothing else, and all her agonising fear fastened on it. What if this man should fall, with the blood streaming from his lips, in the Corso itself? That blood would be upon her head, for it was her defiant pride which had challenged his desperate ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Terror, agonising, soul-shaking terror such as she had never imagined, took hold of her. The flaming light of desire burning in his eyes turned her sick and faint. Her body throbbed with the consciousness of a knowledge that appalled her. She understood his purpose with a horror that made each separate ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... and the cakes were delicious, an amiable desire that the palate of her spoiled child should be gratified, some reasonable maternal anxiety that after so long and fatiguing a drive he in fact needed some refreshment, and the agonising consciousness that all her own physical pleasure at the moment was destroyed by the mental sufferings she endured at having quarrelled with her son, and that he was depriving himself of what was so agreeable only to pique her, quite overwhelmed ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... miracle was wrought without intercession, as the outcome of Christ's own determination that His hour for working it was come. The second miracle was drawn from Him by the imperfect faith and the agonising pleading ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... and compassion on her end. She fled from her native place, and a feeling of shame forced her to conceal the state in which she found herself, and to which thou hadst reduced her. Alone, in solitude, and without help, amid agonising throes and deadly pains, she became a mother. The child died as soon as it saw the light of day. She, the wretched victim of thy momentary pleasure, was cast into prison, and publicly executed as an infanticide. Thou shouldst have seen her in the last moments of her life; ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... For if the agonising old nations fail to regenerate themselves, what can befall? What, when even Imperialism has been tried and failed, as fail it must? What but that lower depth within the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... What were Saul's characteristics now? The story tells of bursts of ungovernable fury, of unslumbering and universal suspicions, of utter misery, seeing enemies everywhere and complaining, 'None of you hath pity upon me,' of ferocious cruelty and gloomy despair, of paroxysms of agonising but ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... October. In England he was full of strength and vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn-tennis player. In China he is always ill, anaemic, wasted, and dyspeptic, constantly subject to low forms of fever, and destitute of appetite. But more agonising than his bad health is the horrible reality of the unavailing sacrifice he is making—no converts but "outcasts subsidised to forsake their family altars;" no reward but the ultimate one which his noble self-devotion ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... in modern times of men who, in the last extremes of disease or suffering, scrupled, through religious motives, about availing themselves of the simplest alleviations,[21] and something of the same feeling is shown in the desire to prolong to the last possible moment hopeless and agonising disease. All this is manifestly and rapidly disappearing. To endure with patience and resignation inevitable suffering; to encounter courageously dangers and suffering for some worthy and useful end, ranks, indeed, as high ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... sticking in my left arm, close to the former wound, and three entering my right leg almost simultaneously, taking effect about six inches above the knee. I still staggered on, however, and, in about two minutes more, which spread themselves out to the length of ages in that exhausting and agonising race, I reached the canoe in which Ella had already placed ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... before a tempest. Cameron and Ross both spring to him. On the hillsides men stand rigid, pale, shaking; women shriek and faint. One ghastly moment of suspense, and then a horrid sickening thud; one more agonising second of silence, and then from a score ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... motif of evil enchantment is woven through the whole of this scene. In a hard masterful voice he speaks at length: "Bruennhilde! A suitor is come whom your fire does not alarm! I seek you for my wife; follow me unresistingly." It is all so strange, so like the agonising impossibilities of a dream,—Bruennhilde falls to trembling. "Who are you, dreadful one? Are you a mortal? Do you come from Hella's army of the night?" Still watching her, motionless on his point of vantage, he replies: "A Gibichung am ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... her, and bowed her to the ground, and crushed out the life and the light of her nature. As she lay there, she longed to die, as she had never longed for anything while she lived, and she would have had small hesitation in killing the heart that beat with such agonising pain in her breast—saving that one thought prevented her. She cared not for revenge any more. What was the life of that cold, cruel thing, the queen, worth, that by taking it, she could gain comfort? But she felt and knew that, before she died, she ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... she approached the Narrows, Evan thought he heard one of the sliding doors squeak, and his heart leaped. Jumping up he flattened himself against the deck house. There was an agonising pause. If only he dared peep around the side. Then Corinna came ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... in answer to her scream and lifted Bivens to his stateroom, while Nan bent low over the prostrate form, holding his hand to her breast in a close, agonising clasp, while ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and blistering words poured out of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... somewhere. Bishops as a rule say but little to each other, and now were afraid to say anything. The Church, which had been, which was, so truly beloved;—surely that must be beyond the line! And yet there crept through the very marrow of the party an agonising belief that Mr. Daubeny would carry the bulk of his party with him into the lobby of the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... until after eleven o'clock that she dragged herself up two flights of stairs toward her room on the attic floor at the Palace. She had been walking the streets like a mad creature all that intervening time, trying to still the agonising pain in her heart. Preston Cheney had long been her ideal of all that was noble, grand and good, she worshipped him as devout pagans worshipped their sacred idols; and, without knowing it, she gave him the absorbing passion which an intense ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to overdo her part, and made no further allusions to the supposed BILLET DOUX, which had caused Sir Andrew Ffoulkes such an agonising five minutes. She watched his anxiety melting away under her sunny smile, and soon perceived that, whatever doubt may have crossed his mind at the moment, she had, by the time the last bars of the minuet had been played, succeeded in completely dispelling it; he never realised ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... grave you have prepared, when she lies languid and exhausted before you, her dim eyes raised to heaven, and the damp of death upon her pallid brow, there you stand at her bedside like a condemned criminal, with the bitter feeling that your whole fortune could not save her; and the agonising thought wrings you, that all your efforts are powerless to impart even a moment's strength to the departing soul, or quicken her with ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Mission which then happened to be proceeding which, instead of inspiring him with hope, convinced him that his case was past recovery. For some weeks he tasted, day by day, the dreary bitterness of the cup of dark and causeless depression, and laboured under an agonising dejection of spirit. This intensity of suffering seemed to shake his whole life to its foundation. It made havoc of his work, of his friendships, of the easy philosophy of his life. He began to learn the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tutor of Nero; acquired great riches; was charged with conspiracy by Nero as a pretext, it is believed, to procure his wealth, and ordered to kill himself, which he did by opening his veins till he bled to death, a slow process and an agonising, owing to his age; he was of the Stoic school in philosophy, and wrote a number of treatises bearing chiefly on morals; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sound as of the tuning up of a thousand fiddles! I hear the agonising scrape of strings, the squeal of the bows! I have heard it all before at many a concert, but this time it is intensified a thousandfold and penetrates even into my dreams. I imagine I am in a concert hall and spring up wildly with the intention ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... at hand. The master of the strange craft, though well stocked, was not disposed to be generous, until tempted by the sight of a lovely yellow pearl, about the size of a small marble and of satiny lustre—sweet to look upon, sweeter still to possess. Aware of the other man's agonising needs, he drove a hard bargain, and the gem became his at the cost of a box of tobacco. He hugged himself for joy, and after a decent lapse, during which he acted the part of the virtuous who had relieved another's necessities out of sheer goodwill (for the pearl was only a curio, was ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... settled melancholy took possession of him, and all that had formerly delighted him now gave him pain, inasmuch as it brought to his mind a host of recollections of the most agonising character. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... quiet talk with him. But the Germany that had watched those rushes with a slightly doubting pride had her eyes now full of tears and blood. She had believed, she had obeyed, and no real victory had come. Still she fought on, bleeding, agonising, wasting her substance and the substance of the whole world, to no conceivable end but exhaustion, so capable she was, so devoted, so proud and utterly foolish. And the mind of Germany, whatever it was before the war, would now be something residual, something left over and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... were already at least fifty corpses laid on the platform, and the tale of dead increased every minute. Others, stricken with the fell disease, were lying on the platform, still alive, but in a state of collapse, or in the agonising cramps of this swift-slaying scourge. There happened to be two white doctors in the train, who did all that was possible for the sufferers, but, beyond the administration of opium, medical science is powerless in cholera cases. The horrors of that railway platform fixed themselves indelibly on ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the world and his own life looked to Joseph when he woke! Hesitations and agonising doubts of his betrothed's purity had vanished with the night, and, instead of the dread that her child would be the offspring of shame, had come a divinely given certainty that it was 'a holy thing.' In the rush of the sudden revulsion, all that was involved would not be clear, but the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... what a dreadful walk that was. He can remember it vividly across all the intervening years, and he declares that no criminal on his way to the gallows could have suffered from more agonising apprehensions. He pictured his reception in a thousand dismal forms. He saw himself knocking at the door; the moment's suspense; the servant facing him. What ought he to say? "Is Lady Charlton at home?" But that was ridiculous, since he ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... through the Peninsular campaign, and who had been in the habit of entertaining his friends and family with such graphic accounts of storming breaches, bombarding fortresses, lopping off heads, arms, and legs, screwing bayonets into men's gizzards and livers, and otherwise agonising human frames, and demolishing human handiwork, that the hair of his auditors' heads would certainly have stood on end if that capillary proceeding had ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... found that other tomb; she knelt; And o'er it went her wandering palms, as though Some stone-blind mother o'er an infant's face Should spread an agonising hand, intent To choose betwixt her own and counterfeit; She found that cross deep-grav'n, and further sign Close by, to her well known. One piercing shriek - Another moment, and her body lay Along that grave with kisses, and wild hands ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... pale as death, overwhelmed with awe. To have the answer of his prayers, the agonising of his soul for years, answered in the hour of utter defeat thrilled him with a sense of solemnity he had never felt. The man was not a man. He was the messenger swift and beautiful from the courts of heaven, for whose coming his eyes had long strained and his ears listened. Not ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... and the room applauded; people danced and Rachel amongst them; young gentlemen were introduced to me, and I told them "I don't dance" with my cold lips. There was an agonising pressure on my senses, of sound, light, perfume. I thought it was these things that gave the pain, while from my heart, which seemed perfectly still, came forth at intervals the repetition "I will get over it, I will get over it." John found me out, and ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... down on her knees and lifting her rigid hands to heaven. The gentlemen were not at home when the rumour arrived, but they came in an hour or two afterwards, each from his hunt for news. The Scotch tutor did not dare to meet the widow's agonising looks. Harry Warrington was as pale as his mother. It might not be true about the manner of the General's death—but he was dead. The army had been surprised by Indians, and had fled, and been killed without seeing the enemy. An express had arrived from Dunbar's camp. Fugitives ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... breathless speed, sometimes crept on slow, unwilling feet, sometimes stood motionless to stare blindly about me, raged at and torn by conflicting thoughts ... agonising ... irresolute. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... me whether I thought 'the Chinese did both sides at once or one after the other.' With my mind running on baths, I said they probably began on their feet and washed upwards. By the time the misunderstanding had been cleared up, I was thoroughly awake and remained in a hideous and agonising condition of sleepless lassitude for the space of one hour. The tea came sharp at half-past seven, and the shawl rolled up twenty seconds later. I tell you I'm sick of the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... man could hold from weeping, If Christ's mother he saw keeping Watch with mother-heart undone? Who could hold from grief, to view her, Tender mother true and pure, Agonising ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... it by an agonising thirst, almost, of curiosity to see his face once more, there can be no doubt. But could she have said, during that moment, whether she most desired that he should have utterly forgotten her, or that he should remember her and claim her as his wife? Probably she would not have hesitated to say ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... louder; they became an agonising wail; the painful shrieking of a lover before the mutilated corpse of his affections. With unsteady hands he touched the limbs lying in confusion around him; the head, the torso, the arms that had snapped in twain; above aught else the bosom, now caved in. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Lear calls upon the heavens to avenge his cause, "for they are old like him," there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identification of his age with theirs; for there is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... back of health, the escape from daily friction, and ugly, violent thoughts, overflowed all her young senses. She was a child on a holiday. The nightmare of the Raid—of those groups of fighting, dishevelled women, ignominiously overpowered, of the grinning crowd, the agonising pain of her arm, and the policeman's rough grip upon it—began to vanish ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the paroxysms of Her Majesty's agonising agitation after leaving Versailles, for the past, the present, and the future state of the Royal Family, when the Princesse Elizabeth and myself were in vain endeavouring to calm her, a deputation was announced from the National Assembly and the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... tender radiant dawn, it seemed to Serge as if the sky were suddenly overcast. His feet now trod on brambles, the beads of the Rosary pricked his fingers; he cowered beneath the horror of the five Sorrowful Mysteries: Mary, agonising in her Son in the garden of Olives, suffering with Him from the scourging, feeling on her own brow the wounds made by the crown of thorns, bearing the fearful weight of His Cross, and dying at his feet on Calvary. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... the convent could not. What more tragical than her discovery in herself of a capacity for love which could never be satisfied within that prison? And when that capacity began to vindicate itself in strange forms of disease, seemingly to her supernatural, often agonising, often degrading, and at the same time (strange contradiction) mixed itself up with her noblest thoughts, to ennoble them still more, and inspire her not only with a desire of physical self-torture, which would seem holy both in her own eyes and her priest's, but with a love for all ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... knowledge of hidden dangers and unexpected horrors, that the safety of our lives is due, and, when we peeped occasionally at our steersman as we flew over the great rapid, where for over an hour every nerve, every fibre of his body was strung to agonising pitch, we looked and wondered. His eyes were fixed steadfastly before him, and as he flung all the weight of his body on to his pole, the whole boat trembled, but in a second obeyed his bidding and twisted whither he wished. Second, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... to wait for the arrival of the post. For both of us the delay was a suspense; for me an almost agonising one. At length, at an unlooked-for moment, Branston did enter the room with the post-bag. There was a large letter, with the Feltram post-mark, addressed to Lady Knollys—it was Doctor Bryerly's despatch; we read it together. It was dated on the day before, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... roll, And deep emotions thrill his generous soul. But struggling nature now reluctant yields; Down drops the arm the infant's face that shields, To bear the precious burthen all too weak; When, hark!—the mother's agonising shriek! Once more he's roused,—his eye no longer swims, And tenfold strength reanimates his limbs; He nerves his faltering frame for one last bound,— "Your child!" he cries, and sinks upon ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... end of his work just as wise as we were at the beginning. It was doubtless some philosophical wild-goose chase of the kind that made the old poet Macrobius rail in such a passion at curiosity, which he anathematises most heartily as "an irksome, agonising care, a superstitious industry about unprofitable things, an itching humor to see what is not to be seen, and to be doing what signifies nothing when it is done." But ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... came from the Roman sepulchre of an early Christian, and the hand for which it was originally fashioned may have aided in the conquering war of the first Christian emperor; or may have been convulsed in an agonising death, "thrown to the beasts" of the circus, but reposing after death with the first ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... of this agonising suspense! Oh! ye gods, how this waiting hurts! She pressed her hands against her side where a terrible pain turned her ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... one ray of light brightens his lot. He can never better himself. He suffers, he is meant to suffer, the loss of all he holds dear (and even a murderer holds some things dear). This absolute loss, this complete severance of all ties, produces a most agonising mental state and afflicts the poor wretch with untold horrors. He is made to drag out an existence under most unnatural conditions, conditions in which every effort he makes towards self-improvement is a useless one, every aspiration is routed, the ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... Guilty. The crowd of people in court were evidently surprised at the result, although I was not, and they gave vent to groans and hisses. The tumult was indescribable. Suddenly there rang out from the gallery overhead the agonising cry of my young wife, whom I had implored not to come, and whose presence there I never suspected. She had crept in and listened all day to my trial, never leaving her seat for fear of losing it; and now, overwearied and faint for want of food, she reeled under ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... meets it, if it is to be, calmly and proudly, and then it is over; whatever offensive may follow after it, is concealed, or at least passed lightly over. Here, on the contrary, everything most offensive is dwelt upon with an agonising intensity, and the triumph of death is made to extend, not over the body only, but over the soul, whose heroism it turns to mockery. The cause in which a man dies, is what can make his death beautiful; but here nature herself, in her stern, awful ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood. I have suffered much sorrow since I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... were slow in advancing to the relief of starving, agonising Paris, there were sufficient reasons for his delay. Most decidedly and bitterly, but loyally, did he denounce the madness of his master's course in all his communications to that master's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... agonising suspense, the elevator boy remained cowering in a corner of the car, staring at Lanyard as at some shape of terror, while the ignored buzzer droned without cessation to persistent ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... little Book of Psalms ascribed to the shepherd outlaw of the Judean hills, which have sent the sound of his name into all lands throughout all the world. Every form of human sorrow, doubt, struggle, error, sin—the nun agonising in the cloister; the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper shivering over the embers in his hovel and waiting for kind death; the man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations of commerce; the prodigal son starving in the far country and ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... "vain and fatuous" man, setting his tie straight. "It's absurd and pitiful, my friend, pitiful and absurd, but what's to be done? Homo sum. . . . And I praise Mother Nature all the same for her transmutation of substances. If we retained an agonising memory of toothache and of all the terrors which every one of us has had to experience, if all that were everlasting, we poor mortals would have a bad time of it in ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... should never awaken the phantasy of this malevolent thing. The perfect government of woman is a task to rend a man's heart, and we are compelled to remain in perfect submission to them; that is, I imagine, the best manner in which to solve the most agonising enigma of marriage. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... dear child, propriety demands it. I depart myself to-morrow. And now that we're recovering our tone I daren't be left with such a houseful of men on my hands any longer. While we were tearing our hair over poor Kitty's possible demise, and agonising as to the uncertain sex of the baby, it did not matter. But now even that dear creature, Saint Julius, is beginning to pick up, and looks less as if his diet was mouldy peas and his favourite plaything a cat-o'-nine-tails. Scourge?—Yes, of course, but it's all ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... this, now he would go home. He had not had the slightest prickings of conscience, the slightest longings, until now; all at once they were uncontrollable. SHE stood upon the hilltop, pure and noble. It became agonising. He must go at once, or it would drive him mad. This anxiety was made less acute by the sight of his mother's sincere pleasure. She came up to him when she heard that he had shut himself into his room. ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... fight, with the certainty (if we think at all) that we are sending a percentage to be killed. We recently sent out two hundred thousand with the sure and certain knowledge that some thousands must die; and these (we say) were men agonising for a righteous cause. Why did it not afflict us to send them?—whereas it would have afflicted us inexpressibly to send a man to end the difficulty by putting a bullet or a knife into Mr. Kruger, who ex hypothesi ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were agonising, but he was easy between the fearful convulsions, and at the end of the third day after he had reached home, whither his companions had succeeded in conveying him, he ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... was not unhappy at El-Largani. When my time of novitiate was over I took the eternal vows without hesitation. Many novices go out again into the world. It never occurred to me to do so. I scarcely ever felt a stirring of worldly desire. I scarcely ever had one of those agonising struggles which many people probably attribute to monks. I was contented nearly always. Now and then the flesh spoke, but not strongly. Remember, our life was a life of hard and exhausting labour in the fields. The labour kept the flesh in subjection, as the prayer lifted up the spirit. And then, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... reach the ambulance station, while somewhere, far away, a woman with longing in her heart is dreaming beside an empty bed. All those are sick who fail to hear the moaning, the gnashing of teeth, the howling, the crashing and bursting, the wailing and cursing and agonising in death, because their ears are filled with the murmur of everyday affairs. These blind and deaf ones are sick, not I. Sick are those dumb beings whose soul can give voice neither to compassion nor ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland |
