"Mental anguish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first transports of her mental anguish, the suffering mother threw herself on her knees at my feet, and fervently sought the Almighty Being who had hitherto supported her in all her troubles to release her from a world of woe and misery, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... painful to gaze upon this sorrowing group, to contemplate the suffering, the mental anguish that spoke plainly in every face; to think of the wrongs which one man can legally put upon another—the deep sinful wrongs, the outrage of every human principle. Oh, it was terribly painful to look on ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... anything, they caught sight of the Island of Massafuera. They were helpless to bring the boat near to the Island. Whale-boats were steered by an oar. There was not a single man able to lift an oar. In addition to starvation, thirst, weakness, mental anguish, their legs began to swell with a sort of scurvy, giving them excessive pain. Their condition can scarcely be imagined. The breath of ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... bread? Why did you let me lavish in my youth the money which, frugally husbanded, might now have supported us in comfort? Why did you do all this—you who were so boastful of your worldly wisdom?" For a moment, so great was her mental anguish, that she almost looked her age—not that the picture had any terrors for herself, but upon her son's account alone. She may not have been penitent, as good folks are, but her heart was full of another's woe, and had no room left for one selfish ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... the convulsed face of the man who had squared himself before her, mattered little measured by the tick of the watch in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it marked the birth of a new being within the soul of a woman. She had been searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another in the meshes ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... whole story threw a queer light upon the social and political life of Costaguana. The view he took of it was sympathetic to his father, yet calm and reflective. His personal feelings had not been outraged, and it is difficult to resent with proper and durable indignation the physical or mental anguish of another organism, even if that other organism is one's own father. By the time he was twenty Charles Gould had, in his turn, fallen under the spell of the San Tome mine. But it was another form of enchantment, more suitable to his youth, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the history of David Grieve with any sympathy will not find it difficult to believe that this autumn and winter were with him a time of intense mental anguish and depression. The shock and tragedy of Louie's disappearance following on the prolonged nervous exhaustion caused by Lucy's struggle for life had brought him into a state similar to that in which his first young ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would be ready to risk their lives? But oblige them to march for days and weeks to arrive at the battle ground, and on the day of battle oblige them to wait minutes, hours, to deliver it. If they were honest they would testify how much the physical fatigue and the mental anguish that precede action have lowered their morale, how much less eager to fight they are than a month before, when they arose from the ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... attempted, again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate—by some dreadful process the burthen was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an apalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable;—the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned—and if in sketching those that belong to blood-guiltiness I have been at all successful, I owe it mainly to the uninvoked inspiration ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... bound and motionless, awaiting the death which seemed inevitable. Jean had expended all her energies on this scene, and the warriors smoked the peace- pipe, inspected their medicines, and danced a war-dance with befitting solemnity, while the captain writhed uneasily, not so much with mental anguish as on account of the rheumatic twinges which his cramped position had set to running up and down his legs and back. Then, with a close fidelity to the old histories, an imposing throne was brought in, and Jean, as Powhatan, mounted ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... legs sank into the snow up to her knees, and this icy contact gave her new strength. Although she had nothing on but her chemise she did not feel the bitter cold; her mental anguish was too great for the consciousness of any mere bodily pain to reach her brain, and she ran on and on, looking as white as the snow-covered earth. She did not stop once to take breath, but rushed on across wood and plain ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... upon my forehead in great drops, caused, not by the heat, but by the mental anguish, and again and again I said to myself that Jacob had labored for naught, since it would be impossible I could crawl undetected even over ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... he cried, in fierce mental anguish. "I'll tell 'em—if I have to." He seized the outstretched hand in both of his and gripped it with crushing force. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... is fire and brimstone, has yielded somewhat to the metaphysical fact that suffering is a thing of mortal mind instead of body: so, in place of material flames and odor, mental anguish is generally [5] accepted as the penalty for sin. This changed belief has wrought a change in the actions of men. Not a few individuals serve God (or try to) from fear; but remove that fear, and the worst ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... indulged in his propensity of devilment on this occasion, it would have saved them many hours of mental anguish and of bodily suffering, for the angry words uttered in the cell but lately tenanted by the two boys were spoken by ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the hair of my scalp bristle, and a violent shudder thrilled through me as those dreadful cries smote upon my ear, for they seemed to be the utterance of some human being in the very last extremity of both physical and mental anguish, the protest of a lost soul being wrenched violently out of its sinful human tenement, cries of such utter, unimaginable despair as the finite mind of man is unable to find a cause for. Yet, despite the agony of horror that froze my blood, I instinctively thrust ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... soon be added to the mental anguish of dread. For, once the snake's horny snout grazed the top of his head, he would be forced to keep his head raised, on penalty of being pierced by the fangs if he ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... finished his story, buried his face in his hands, as though overcome by the recollection of the mental anguish he had been through, and ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... keeps calm in the heat of provocation, but the latter is the man of most power. In the common circumstances of life we must act, and act lawfully; but to bear and suffer is alone the test of virtue, for there come hours of pain and mental anguish when all action is vain, when motion of limb and mind is ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... human affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism, was undermining Julie's life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance very quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and apparently dormant ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... kitchen, took the bottle of brandy from the sideboard and carried it upstairs. He drank two large glasses, one after another, adding a fresh intoxication to the late one, without quieting his mental anguish. He had done a pretty stroke of work, nom de ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... consulted a prominent gynecologist in this city, who had told her that the attachments of the tumor were so extensive that ovariotomy (removal with the knife) was out of the question, and that, therefore, he could only give her palliative treatment. This unfavorable prognosis only added mental anguish and despair to her physical suffering. On examination, we found a large multilocular cystic tumor, represented by Fig. 17, with very thick walls, extending from the left ovarian region obliquely upwards ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... long passage—haunted by old memories, by the old sickening sense of mental anguish—to the curtained door. Vincent ushered him in. There was a stir of feet, and a voice, but at first he saw nothing. The room was very much darkened. Then ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and more resolved for endurance. In a short time a slumber crept over my senses; still, however, though my senses slumbered, my soul was awake to the painful feelings of my situation, and my dreams were of mental anguish and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... voice gradually drops to the diminuendo, whilst her slow gesticulations and the declining vigour of the music together express her forlornness. Then a ray of joy seems momentarily to lighten her mental anguish; the spirited crescendo notes gently return; the tone of the melody swells; her measured step and action energetically quicken—until she lapses again into resigned sorrow, and so on alternately. Coy in repulse, and languid in surrender, the danseuse ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... strongest emotions of joy or of sadness man can feel; but never had I experienced such real, heartfelt joy as when I heard Anna's words. It is easy to imagine the state of my mind in recollecting the bitter grief I was in for ten days; then can be understood the mental anguish I felt. Having witnessed such strange scenes for a considerable time, it would not have been surprising had I lost my senses. I was an actor in a furious battle; I had seen the wounded falling around me, and heard ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... in the wind—for she had no bonnet on—and a man's silk pocket-handkerchief loosely thrown over a most ample pair of shoulders. The old woman was talking in that low, stifled tone of voice which tells so forcibly of mental anguish; and every now and then burst into an irrepressible sharp, abrupt cry of grief, the most distressing sound that ears can hear. The girl was perfectly unmoved. Hardened beyond all hope of redemption, she listened doggedly to her mother's entreaties, whatever they were: ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Porthos, D'Artagnan is coming, and will detail it to you in all its circumstances; but, excuse me, I am deeply grieved, I am bowed down with mental anguish, and I have need of all my presence of mind, all my powers of reflection, to extricate you from the false position in which I have so imprudently involved you; but nothing can be more clear, nothing more plain, than your position, henceforth. The king ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
