"Agonize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Opening the front door I stepped out upon the porch to call for help. The beauty of the morning, its stillness, its serenity, its odorous opulence, struck upon my senses with a kind of ironic benignancy, as if to say, "Why agonize over so small ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... amid a universe of work, find a task fit for him to do, and yet can much less be utterly idle; while to Wordsworth, basking in the sun, or loitering near an evening stream, is sufficient and satisfactory work. To Sartor, Nature is a divine tormentor—her works at once inspire and agonize him; Wordsworth loves her with the passion of a perpetual honeymoon. Both are intensely self-conscious; but Sartor's is the consciousness of disease, Wordsworth's of high health standing before a mirror. Both have ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... aboard was submerged. Thurstane and Clara were overwhelmed by such a mass of water that they thought themselves at the bottom of the sea. Two men who had not mounted the rigging, but tried to cling to the boat davits, were hurled adrift and sent to agonize in the undertow. The brig trembled as if it were on the point of breaking up and dissolving in the horrible, furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on shore the moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description. The vessel and the people ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... it was because I had heard Mr. Beecher question the correctness of the prescription. When a man travelling in the road found out, he said, that he had gone wrong, he did not usually roll in the dust and agonize over his mistake; he just turned around and went the other way. It struck me so, but none the less with deep conviction. In fact, with the heat of the convert, I decided on the spot to throw up my editorial work and take to preaching. ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... [Agitated, she walks about the room.] Are we women never to get up out of the dust? You never asked us if we wanted this war, yet you ask us to gather in the crops, cut the wood, keep the world going, drudge and slave, and wait, and agonize, lose our all, and go on bearing more men—and more—to be shot down! If we breed the men for you, why don't you let us say what is to become of them? Do we want them shot—the very breath of ...
— War Brides: A Play in One Act • Marion Craig Wentworth
... Such are my days and nights; my sleep, my life. Yet, dying, I agonize to live, and fear to drink the last drop ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... as a pretty trifle to caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest seriousness with the affection which he knew that he had awakened in her—so fervid and so impressionable as she was under her reserve—in order that it might not agonize ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... joy, but exalt it. It must weep—and bitterer tears than any that the world can shed—with them that weep; and rejoice too—with a joy which no man can take away—with them that rejoice. It must sink deeper and rise higher, it must feel more acutely, it must agonize and triumph more abundantly, if it truly comes from God and is to minister to men, since His thoughts are higher than ours and His Love ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... to kindle. "Every woman ought to have something! Men have. It should be with women as with men—love a thing apart in their lives, not their whole existence! Then they wouldn't agonize and wear on each other so! I believe there's a chapter in that, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... up the stream, apast the petty promontory of Pointe Saint Charles, stretched the low, umbrageous lapse of Nuns Island, whence the eye followed the bending flood, that trended towards where, with eternal toil and sullen roar, agonize for ever the hoary rapids of Lachine. In the other direction the eye roved downwards over Hochelaga and Longueuil, Longue Pointe and Pointe aux Trembles, towards where lay the islet-strewn shallows of Boucherville, and, lower yet, the village of Varennes. The mountains of Boucherville, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... squeak, mew, gurgle, groan, agonize, quiver, quaver, just as much as you please, Madam,—I have my foot on the fortissimo pedal, and thunder myself deaf! O Satan, Satan! which of thy goblins damned has got into this throat, pinching, and kicking, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... me, but never one of simple grief or sorrow. Its expression is rather of great dignity, and I remember watching in somewhat of awe one which grew near my childhood's home, as its branches writhed and twisted in a violent rain-storm, seeming then fairly to agonize, so tossed and buffeted were they by the wind. But soon the storm ceased, the sun shone on the rounded head of the willow, turning the raindrops to quickly vanishing diamonds, and the great tree breathed only a gentle and benignant peace. When, in later years, I came to know the moss-hung ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... it on a pedestal high as the eternal throne, and there it will stand and burn forever. We must bind our consciences to this standard; they must rise to its height, and shine with its radiance. If to our selfish hearts it appear a blood-stained cross, we must nail them to it, and let them bleed and agonize there. To gratify our selfish desires, God will never lower his claims. We must come up to them. If unwilling to do it in time, we shall meet them in all their solemn realities at the final bar; if we have been ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... you to forgive me, Mary, for I love you still—better now than when I left you—and I hold you above all women. The cup is still at my lips, but if you will grant me forgiveness I will drink no more. I agonize over your grief—if you will let me I will return and try to assuage it. Write me, Mary, and if the word is forgive, for your sake I will bid my friend farewell now and forever. I am still your husband ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale |
