"Agonizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ourselves; yet at this instant what horrors are being enacted in every part of the world! Men are perishing by every conceivable form of cruelty and natural anguish. Sailors are gurgling out their life in sea-storms; soldiers are agonizing on battle-fields; men, women, and children are being burnt, boiled, hacked, squashed, rent, exploded to death in every town and almost every village of the globe. Here in Paris, and over there in London, there is no end ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... revolving, a shriek rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting from a son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her emotion, was borne away, frantically raving in the delirium of grief. I have never forgotten that agonizing scene, or the despairing wail that was enough to pierce the hardest heart. I imagined my heart was about to break; and when we put out to sea in a damp and dreary drizzle, and the shore-line dissolved away, while on board there was overcrowding, and confusion ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... out into the world without one morsel of food, one cent of money, one foot of land. Naked and unarmed he was pushed forward into a dark cavern and told to beard the lion in his den. In childlike simplicity he undertook the task. Soon the air was filled with his agonizing cries; for the claws and teeth of the lion were ripping open every vein and crushing every bone. In this hour of dire distress the negro lifted up his voice in loud, long piteous wails calling upon those ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... sprinkling the deck with hot vinegar, to remove the stains and odor of blood. The dead numbered forty-three, and sixty-one were wounded. An eye-witness of the terrible spectacle writes of it: "Fragments of the dead were distributed in every direction, the decks covered with blood,—one continued, agonizing yell of the unhappy wounded. A scene so horrible of my fellow-creatures, I assure you, deprived me very much of the pleasure of victory." Yet, with all this terrific destruction and loss of life on the "Macedonian," the "United States" was but little injured; and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... it reached the seat of my trousers. There it pinched, presumably to ascertain whether or no I were malingering, a most agonizing pinch like to that of a pair of blacksmith's tongs. So sharp was it that, although I did not stir, who was aware that the slightest movement meant death, it tore a piece out of the stout cloth of my breeches, to say nothing of a portion of the skin beneath. This ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Madame de la Tour saw me coming, she eagerly cried,—"Where is my daughter—my dear daughter—my child?" My silence and my tears apprised her of her misfortune. She was instantly seized with a convulsive stopping of the breath and agonizing pains, and her voice was only heard in sighs and groans. Margaret cried, "Where is my son? I do not see my son!" and fainted. We ran to her assistance. In a short time she recovered, and being assured that Paul was ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... he rushed toward the spot from whence the sound proceeded, but could see no one. Calling the name of his bride, he dashed forward through the thicket, but could see or hear nothing of her. He called loudly again, but received no response. The silence was agonizing, and he listened for several moments, when he heard the crackling of some branches in the distance. He rushed frantically to the spot, but his career was quickly stopped by an object on the ground. It was the torn and now ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... chills the Champion's heart, His brain whirls round with agonizing smart; O'er his wan cheek no gushing sorrows flow, Senseless he sinks beneath the weight of woe; Relieved at length, with frenzied look, he cries: "Prove thou art mine, confirm my doubting eyes! For I am Rustem!" Piercing was the groan, Which burst from his torn heart—as wild and lone, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... brought out, a dozen of the bravest fell upon him at once; and, with their ungainly blunt swords, hacked away at his hands and feet with all the delight an Abyssinian has for spilling blood. Whilst submitting to this agonizing torture, Lij Barie never lost his courage or presence of mind, and it is very remarkable that whilst they were so unmercifully murdering him, he prophesied, almost to a letter, the fate that before long ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... his soul in prayer. Marcellus felt as though his own soul was being lifted up to the courts of heaven, to the presence of the Saviour, by the power of that, fervent and agonizing prayer. The words seemed to find an echo in his own soul. In his deep abasement he rested his wants upon his companion so that he might present them in a more ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... sees men approach in dazzling cloaks, of which the hoods cover their eyes and face, like those worn by the monks of Cologne; but he finds that they are crushing weights of gilded lead—splendid semblance and agonizing, destroying reality. Again, when the two poets, Dante and Virgil, came to the Abyss of Evil-pits (Malebolge), down which the crimson stream of Phlegethon leaps in "a Niagara of blood," he is on the edge of the Circle ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... brain-fever demon starts on a low but steadily rising key, and is a spiral twist which augments in intensity and severity with each added spiral, growing sharper and sharper, and more and more painful, more and more agonizing, more and more maddening, intolerable, unendurable, as it bores deeper and deeper and deeper into the listener's brain, until at last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies. I am bringing some of these birds home to America. They will be a great curiosity there, and it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with many the suffering is too great for self-deception, and they come home to look back upon those long halls, filled with the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, as mere torture-chambers, whence nothing is brought away but backache, headache, weary feet and an agonizing confusion of ideas. Some of them avenge themselves by making fun of the whole matter: they tell you that there is a great deal of humbug about your great pictures and statues; that Raphael is nearly as much overrated as Shakespeare; that it is all nonsense ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the Peasant from that little cot, Where PEACE and LOVE have blest his humble life? In vain his agonizing wife With tears bedews her husband's face, And clasps him in a long and last embrace; In vain his children round his bosom creep, And weep to see their mother weep, Fettering their father with their little arms; What are to him the wars ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... with a sense of despair in his heart. Added to the anxiety caused by this hasty departure, jealousy entered his soul, and in this agonizing moment of disappointment the most distressing explanations crowded ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... air was full of thoughts that he could not apprehend. Behind the benignant evasiveness of the doctors he seemed to discern a fact, like a thunderbolt withheld. He recoiled from his conjectures, to cower amid these shadows which he felt might be less agonizing ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... they were all but saved or all but lost. And while the strife hung in the balance, you might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various sounds which are wrung from a great host in extremity of danger. Not less agonizing were the feelings of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... human hearts endure, That part which kings or laws[11] can cause or cure. Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity we make or find[12]; With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestick joy: The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, To men remote from power, but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... on that lonely, patient, wistful little creature making the best shift she could with those pitiable playthings, something came up from that man's breast into his throat. He had not supposed he had any of it left in his soul—it was tender, agonizing, heartrending pity. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... detective, and alms-house reports; city missionaries' explorations, and the testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, who, about to take the final plunge, have staggered back just for a moment, to utter the wild shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... heavens! do not even mention the appalling word; there is something more terrible than death in the very idea. No, no," she continued, with vivid earnestness; "I do not; I cannot; I will not doubt of your affection. If ever such agonizing——" ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... animal and sensual pleasure in the look of blood, and in the inspection of mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the phenomena which meet my eye in Africa. In almost all the towns on the Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying animals in some agonizing position." [189] ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... live—what regrets, what hopes, what fears! The sky was darkening, earth fading; wealth, power, fame, the prizes most esteemed of men, were as nothing. His only hope lay in the Saviour of whom his mother had taught him. I doubt not his earnest, agonizing prayer was heard. Nay, to doubt would be to question ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... climbed the stairs to bed, it was understood that the hour of retribution had arrived. Dorothy wept softly while undressing, and uttered agonizing shrieks as she underwent her chastisement. Down-stairs the girls looked at one another aghast, and Hobo whined uneasily, as if asking permission to interfere. Then the uproar ended abruptly, and Dorothy climbing upon Peggy's knee, pledged herself solemnly ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... that was yet more painful, when my Sigurd they ingloriously slew in his bed; though of all most cruel, when of Gunnar the glistening serpents to the vitals crawled; but the most agonizing, which to my heart flew, when the brave king's heart ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... the rescue, when the dog with a sudden, desperate jerk freed himself. Mad with rage and pain, he tried to seize the raccoon's throat. But his enemy managed to elude the strangling grip, and getting on his feet, again caught Tiger, this time by the cheek, causing another agonizing yelp. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... night appeared now to Andras as an almost fantastic dream. Since then he had erected a mausoleum of marble on the very spot where Prince Sandor fell; and of all the moments of that romantic, picturesque war, the agonizing moment, the wild scene of the burial of his father, was most vivid in his memory—the picture of the warrior stretched in the snow, his hand on the handle of his sword, remained before his eyes, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... 65th swept on, yet it felt the cold air from the cavern. It had, of course, seen accidents, men injured in various ways, but never had it viewed so many, nor so much blood, and never before had it rushed past the helpless and the agonizing. There were surgeons and ambulances—there seemed to be a table of planks on which the worst cases were laid—the sufferers had help, of course, a little help. A Creole from Bayou Teche lay writhing, shot through the stomach, beneath a pine. He was raving. "Melanie, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... to human anguish so inured That thou hast neither sentiment of grief Nor sense of pity for terrestrial ills? Can agonizing and heart-rending scenes Relax thy obdurate and placid face To semblance of emotion? Can man's woes Excite thy tranquil immobility To the pathetic look of tenderness, Or touch thy bosom's calm indifference ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... brow darkened already with the shades of death; then, with a convulsive groan, with a half start, he lifted his eyes above. They rested not on the face of the editor nor on the pitying brows of his relenting judges. He saw them not; they were as if the vast space was desolate and bare; one pale agonizing face alone was all he recognized—one cry of a broken heart was all that, amidst the murmurs and the shouts of the populace, reached his ear. The ferocity vanished from his brow; a soft, a tender expression ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... he was wicked in not staying in the library and continuing his duties to the party. He had to crowd into a minute all his agonizing and be ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... and the distressed orphan, in all his brilliant array, shot backwards into some shrubs of a prickly nature, whose sharp thorns added to his agonizing sensations. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... They had their moments of rapturous love—passionate attempts at self-surrender. They had long hours of cool discussion, as impersonal as if they had been talking about the characters out of a hook instead of about themselves. They had stormy nerve-tearing hours of blind agonizing, around and around in circles, lacerating each other, lashing out at each other, getting nowhere. They ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death, thro' Berkley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing King! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heav'n. What terrors round him wait! Amazement ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... commonplace, humdrum spot, as you think, when your visions had been in other fields. He might make you a seed-sower, like lonely Morrison in China, when you wanted to be a harvester like Moody. Here is the real battlefield. The fighting and agonizing are here. Not with God but with yourself, that the old self in you may be crucified and Jesus ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... into the sea, and had a glorious swim. You cannot sink. You make very little way in the water, and tire yourself if you try to swim fast. If a drop of the water happens to get into your eye, nose, or mouth, it is agonizing; it is so salt, hard, and bitter. Next day I felt very ill from the effects of my bath. In the first place, I was too hot to have plunged into the cold water at once; and, in the second place, I stopped in too long, because, being the only woman, and the place of disrobing being somewhat ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... him.] No, I live that I may still your agonizing cry,— Live that I may lean my bosom on your breast ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... credited with possessing either fear or a heart, but now he showed that he was a moral as well as a physical coward, and was racked by most agonizing fears. ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... hour from the sound of the first warning bugle the head of the column began to move, just as daylight was breaking. Comparatively few of the officers of Ralph's regiment were married men, and there were therefore fewer of those agonizing partings that wrung the hearts of many belonging to regiments that had been quartered for some time at home; but Ralph saw enough to convince him that the soldier should remain a single man at any rate ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... The agonizing suspense in which Helen had been living for the last few days had laid a heavy hand upon her. Her cheeks were thin, and had been woefully pale until the sudden excitement of this visit had called up a faint hectic flush which had no kindred with the color of health. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... plan is quite as 'practical' as the other. Interest has to be paid on a mortgage, and if it can't be paid, why it's foreclosed, both in real life and Irish melodramas where the lovely heroine has the most agonizing alternatives offered her. Suppose, anyhow, we just let Mr. Storm tell us—since he's an expert—what he means by the 'right way' of turning Kidd's Pines into a hotel. Maybe he means something ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... give my love to Sairey and the little uns." And Mr. Bouncer "went the complete unicorn," for the last time in that term, by extemporising a farewell solo to Verdant, which was of such an agonizing character of execution, that Huz, and Buz his brother, lifted up ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Anderson was silent all this time. She was sighing and groaning in a spasmodic devotion. She was "seeking strength from above to do her whole duty," she would have told you. She was "agonizing" in prayer for her daughter, and she contrived that her stage-whisper praying should now and then reach the ears of its devoted object. Humphreys remained seated, pretending to read the copy of "Josephus," but watching the coming storm with the interest ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... father! she's my child! she's my child!" I reached the door, which was guarded by the sheriff, in a condition of mental exaltation (or concentration), which to this day reflects itself at the recollection of that agonizing cry of the beautiful young mother, set upon by the myrmidons of the law whose base inhumanity shames the brute! "Who is it?" "What is it?" "What does it all mean?" were the anxious queries put up on all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... through the bosom steal, Like one who stands upon a precipice, And sees below a mangled sacrifice, Feeling that he himself must ere long fall, With none to save him, none to hear his call, Or wrest him from the agonizing thrall? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... bigness, of nobility, he of all men, when, after his outburst in the little drawing-room that night, he had stood back to wait until Joan had grown up. He had waited for six weeks, going through tortures of Joan-sickness that were agonizing. He had asked her to do what she could for him in the way of a little kindness, but had not received one single line. He was prepared to continue to wait because he knew his love to be so great that it must eventually catch hold of her ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... always been a source of great amusement to citizens, but what a horror to plebes. Those torturous twistings and twirlings, stretching every nerve, straining every sinew, almost twisting the joints out of place and making life one long agonizing effort. Was there ever a "plebe," or recruit, who did not hate, did not shudder at the mere mention of squad drill? I did. Others did. I remember distinctly my first experience of it. I formed ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... ended as an offensive victory for the French. And so this terrible drama is an epitome of the whole great war: a brief term of success for the Germans at the start, due to a tremendous preparation which took careless adversaries by surprise—terrible and agonizing first moments, soon offset by energy, heroism, and the spirit of sacrifice; and finally, victory for the Soldiers ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... horrified by the sight which met his gaze. There, upon the bed, lay the poor, unhappy girl swollen to an enormous size, her body moving about the bed as if Beelzebub himself were in her, while between her gasps for breath she exclaimed in agonizing sobs: "Oh, my God, I wish I were dead! I ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... times they seem to run into each other. Maggie erred in not closing the gate of her heart inexorably, and in not resisting the sway of a purely "physiological law." The vivid description of this sort of love, with its "strange agitations" and agonizing ecstasies, would have been denounced as immoral fifty years ago. The denouement is an improbable catastrophe on a tidal river, in the rising floods of which Maggie and her brother are drowned,—a favorite way with the author in disposing of her heroes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... great richness of the soil. The luxuriance of the vegetation on the slopes of Etna attracts the attention of every traveler; and Mr. Gladstone remarked upon this point: "It seems as though the finest of all soils were produced from the most agonizing throes of nature, as the hardiest characters are often reared amidst the severest circumstances. The aspect of this side of Sicily is infinitely more active and the country is cultivated as well as most ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... if his brain were on fire, each nerve-centre agonizing separately in the intolerable, all-enveloping flames. And through the dreadful stillness he heard the beat, beat, beat, of his heart, like the feet of a runaway along ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... in the tent till the sun had slightly warmed the air, and then attempted to prepare breakfast by the fire; but no one could eat anything, and the native from Waimea complained of severe headache, which shortly became agonizing, and he lay on the ground moaning, and completely prostrated by mountain sickness. I felt extreme lassitude, and exhaustion followed the slightest effort; but the use of snow to the head produced great relief. The water in our canteens was hard frozen, and the keenness of the cold aggravated ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... loving, trusting little ones. The wretched children of our time,—alone in wretchedness,—alone in the universe of nature,—who found, where nature promised them a mother's love, the knife, or the more cruel agonizing drug of death. Was there any cause in nature for it? Yes. They did it for the 'burial fee,' perhaps, or for some other cause as good. They had a reason for it. Let our naturalists throw their learning 'to the dogs,' and come ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... interpret His prophecy that He would build again His temple, nor understand the spirituality of His kingdom. These facts seem to me utterly to demolish the theory of a vision called up by eager, yea, agonizing, expectation. The idea of the Resurrection justifies His prophecies as to Himself and the fact accounts, better than any theory which denies the fact, for the faith and founding of the early Church as well as for the course of subsequent history and ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... fearing even to receive it then lest it announce the death of the loved ones. No telegraph, no railroad, no postal service, no newspaper might offer relief, only the letter brought by some friend, or the bit of news told by some passing traveller. It was a time of agonizing anxiety. There were months when the wife heard nothing; we have seen from the letters of Mrs. Adams that three months sometimes intervened between the letters from her husband. In 1774, when John Adams was at Philadelphia, such a short distance from Boston, according to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... was slight and graceful, and her face very beautiful. She had long, black, glossy hair, straight, regular features, a rich olive complexion, and large, dark lustrous eyes, which, as she sat opposite the open door, were fixed on the thick, gloomy woods with an earnest, almost agonizing gaze, as if they were reading in its tangled depths the dark, uncertain future that lay before her. Never shall I forget the expression of her face. Never have I seen its look of keen, intense agony, and its full, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... uttered loud screams; upon which the assassin, fearful of detection, ran away, and escaped from the house. The cauzee's wife awaking in a fright, alarmed her unhappy hosts, who, striking a light, came to her assistance; but how can we describe their agonizing affliction when they beheld their beloved child expiring, and their unfortunate guest, who had swooned away, bathed in the infant's blood. From such a scene we turn away, as the pen is incapable of description. The unhappy lady at length revived, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... spake, he threw to him across the table jewelled orders and diamond crosses, saying: 'Wear these in memory of me!' The Herald then drew near, and read to him from the Black Book the form of abjuration. The agonizing and swooning man mechanically repeated the words one by one after him, not even hearing the sound of his own voice. His head had fallen on the bosom of his bride, his lips still moved, but his eyes were glaring in the whiteness of death—and so he uttered all the prescribed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them.... Men, women, and children stand silent, famishing with hunger. Their only appeal comes from their sad eyes, through which one looks as through an open window into their agonizing souls. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... to be ever admitted on the English stage; but it furnishes occasion for the display of consummate art in the imitation of the most terrible and overpowering emotions; and it is difficult to conceive a more powerful representation than they exhibited of the gloomy forebodings of suspicion, of the agonizing suspence of unsatisfied doubt, and the "sickening pang of hope deferred"—heightened, rather than diminished, by the consciousness of innocent intention, and the feeling of undeserved affliction, and giving way only to the certainty of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... talked over the poor king's situation, and Sir Lucas was very open and comforting. How many sad meetings have I had with him heretofore ; first in the alarming attacks of poor Mr. Thrale, and next in the agonizing fluctuations ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... no hint of the tumult in his breast, though some malign spirit seemed to whisper the agonizing question: "Will you permit her to fall into the hands of the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... how eagerly everybody watched it! The poor toll-gatherer, if he had had the courage, would have run after the children, and snatched them back from their doom. Every looker-on was anxious; yet all the anxiety of the multitude could not equal the agonizing suspense in that one father's heart. He thought he knew the strength of the piers; he thought he could tell how long they would stand against the ice; but what if he ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... stout Whigs doubtless bled at the thought of what Fenwick must have suffered, the agonizing struggle, in a mind not of the firmest temper, between the fear of shame and the fear of death, the parting from a tender wife, and all the gloomy solemnity of the last morning. But whose heart was to bleed at the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... itself pretty well known at that day, and whose fate, pathetic at all times, out-tragedies almost any other in the history of letters. She was seized with hydrophobia from the bite of her dog, on a railroad train; and made a long journey home in the paroxysms of that agonizing disease, which ended in her death after she reached New York. But this was after her reign had ended, and no such black shadow was cast forward upon Pfaff's, whose name often figured in the verse ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... now admitted, but still one which bound him in fetters of steel. His life had been one of grossest inconsistency. He was utterly out of tune with the universe. His incessant clash with the world of people and events had sounded nothing but agonizing discord. And his confusion of thought had become such that, were he asked why he was in Simiti, he could scarcely have told. At length he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... my mind could make no headway against its monstrous assemblage of horror. There was something in that jagged black hill against the moonshine and the gigantic basin of darkness out of which it rose that seemed to gather all these gaunt and grisly effects into one appalling heap of agonizing futility. That rock rose up and crouched like something that broods ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... highly-susceptible temperament of Merton. From that moment peace fled his mind. He went instantly home; but instead of devoting himself, as before, to those studies in which he delighted, and in which he was wont so highly to excel, he immured himself in his chamber, giving way to gloomy abstraction, and agonizing his spirit with painful and most distressing fancies. The great power of his imagination caused him, in a peculiar manner, to suffer from the remembrance of what he had witnessed; and, accordingly, his waking as well as his sleeping hours were haunted with visions of noses,—noses of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... rarest fruit, And birds, enamoured, ne'er were mute. Bowed down with terror and distress, Watched by each cruel giantess,— Like a poor solitary deer When ravening tigresses are near,— The hapless lady lay distraught Like some wild thing but newly caught, And found no solace, no relief From agonizing fear and grief; Not for one moment could forget Each terrifying word and threat, Or the fierce eyes upon her set By those who watched around. She thought of Rama far away, She mourned for Lakshman as she lay In grief and terror and dismay Half ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the dark is more real than God in his heaven as "protector." We must remember that not what we feel is of value, but what the child feels is of value is what will appeal to his interest and attention. And no exertion or agonizing on our part will create interest in the child in matters for which his own understanding and experience have not fitted him. For example, probably no child is ever interested in learning the church catechism or Bible verses which ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... which has swallowed all my teens, which is greedily devouring my youth, which will sap my prime, and in which my old age, if I am cursed with any, will be worn away! As my life creeps on for ever through the long toil-laden days with its agonizing monotony, narrowness, and absolute uncongeniality, how my spirit frets and champs ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... untarnished gold. Yet he could not and would not speak, and she came on till she stood opposite him, the dead woman lying there between them. Then for the first time she lowered her eyes and he awoke with a start of agonizing pain. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... was agonizing as he tried one dissolvent after another without success. Turpentine merely dissolved his skin; alcohol had no effect whatever. He imagined himself in a long room in which stood vast rows of vats bearing different labels, and in and out of these he climbed, ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... where I might, from that hour to this, I have never been free from agonizing remorse, nor have I been able for one moment to banish from my memory the sight of that face,—the face of my brother, killed by my own hand, and a discovery which I made within the first few hours of my flight made ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... and winter, with ghosts of memory, with figures in literature, and has finally obtained a respectable audience without once raising his voice. He has written surprisingly little love poetry; the notes of passion, as we are accustomed to hear them, seldom sound from his lute; nor do we hear the agonizing cries of doubt, remorse, or despair. There is nothing turbulent and nothing truculent; he has made no contribution to the literature of revolt. Yet many of his poems make an irresistible appeal ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... sounds had once more commenced to well up from the dark depths, and in a most agonizing fashion too. Even Rod felt a thrill, although he could give a pretty good guess concerning the nature of the poor unfortunate who was the contributing cause ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... suffice it to say that he passed from celluloid to a blue flannel shirt and from blue to grey. The sight of a red cotton handkerchief in his wash at length warned me that his disappointed love had unhinged his mind, and I feared the worst. Then came an agonizing interval of three weeks during which he sent me nothing, and after that came the last parcel that I ever received from him an enormous bundle that seemed to contain all his effects. In this, to my horror, I discovered one shirt the breast of which was stained a deep crimson with his ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... the passage. She advanced, and listened. When she came to the second, she heard a voice, apparently in complaint, within, to which she continued to listen, afraid to open the door, and unwilling to leave it. Convulsive sobs followed, and then the piercing accents of an agonizing spirit burst forth. Emily stood appalled, and looked through the gloom, that surrounded her, in fearful expectation. The lamentations continued. Pity now began to subdue terror; it was possible she might administer comfort to the sufferer, at least, by expressing sympathy, and she laid ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... began to see him I could not say. Every impulse and vital force of nature centered in my eyes, and they fastened themselves upon that one irregular shadow in the opposing corner which slowly—oh! with such agonizing slowness—assumed the outlines of a man. My fascinated gaze wandered not nor wearied. When in the moist light of the morning I clearly saw Broussard, haggard, pale and sunken-eyed, watching me thirty feet away, it seemed that I had ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... reason for Jean's high head and burning cheeks, and in spite of his sense of agonizing humiliation, he was glad to ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... sunlight is brightest a strange darkness came over all the scene, the sun's light being obscured or failing wholly. And for three hours this strange, weird spectacle continues. Then the hushed silence is broken by an agonizing cry from the lips of Jesus, "My God—My God—why—didst—Thou—forsake—Me?" One of the bewildered bystanders thinks He is calling for Elijah, and another wonders if something startling ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... back to you in after years, when his grave is green in the quiet valley, and the worn and weary hands that have toiled for you are forever at rest, how patiently he submitted while his daughter pinned the clean, stiff, agonizing white collar about his neck, and brushed the velvet collar of his best coat; how he toiled up the long, dark, lonesome stairs, not with the egotism of a half century ago, but with the light of anticipated ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... no friend—a young girl at the mercy of soldiers, who could not be expected to regard her with any sympathy beyond that which is accompanied with repulsive leers and hints. Day after day her loneliness and helplessness became more agonizing. Farnsworth, it is true, did all he could to relieve the strain of her situation; but Hamilton had an eye upon what passed and soon interfered. He administered a bitter reprimand, under which his subordinate writhed in ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... have moved if I wanted to. I could scarcely breathe. Then I felt the blood within me pounding, pulsing, beginning to answer in spite of myself. I tasted once more the warm, salty fluid on my lips. Eve's body was liquid in my arms; warm, heady, narcotizing. Once again I felt the agonizing, dagger sharp ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... Sancho continued with the lashing, which he administered to a perfectly innocent tree with such brutality and ferocity that the bark flew in all directions. All the while he gave vent to his pain by fierce shrieks, and then there came one long agonizing cry, which nearly rent Don Quixote's heart, and Sancho exclaimed piteously: "Here dies Sancho, and all with him!" Don Quixote hastened to his squire's side, and insisted for the sake of his unsupported wife and children that he go no further, but ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... when Dr. Stirling came back, but it was barely eleven o'clock, and people were only just returning from Hanbridge Theatre and Hanbridge Music Hall. The use of the electrical apparatus was a dead spectacle. Sophia's inertness under it was agonizing. They waited, as it were, breathless for the result. And there was no result. Both injections and electricity had entirely failed to influence the paralysis of Sophia's mouth and throat. Everything ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the mean of truth on one side, as the foundation of the subject,—"the humble truth," as he termed it at the beginning of "Une Vie,"—and of the agonizing of beauty on the other side, in composition, determines the whole use that Maupassant made of his literary gifts. It helped to make more intense and more systematic that dainty yet dangerous pessimism which in him was innate. The middle-class ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... become damp with perspiration. Moreover, as our long marches and short sleeps had brought us round to the calendar day, we were facing the sun, and this, with the southwest wind, burned my face so badly that it was little short of agonizing. But I consoled myself with the reflection that we were now less than a hundred miles from land. I tried to forget my stinging flesh in looking at the land clouds which we could see from this camp. There is no mistaking these clouds, which are permanent and formed of the condensation of ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... horror of that agonizing thrill! (I can feel the place in frosty weather still). For a week from ten to four I was fastened to the floor, While a mercenary wopped ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... sights I have ever seen in China. Seven dogs were dragging a corpse from a coffin, barely covered with earth, which formed one of the grave mounds which skirt the road. No one was disturbed by the scene; it was not uncommon. But the foreigner suffered an agonizing sickness, for which his companions would have been at a loss to find any possible reason, and was ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... until she came down. In this state did J. find me on his return from England. His family was up in Aaleih, and he used to ride over occasionally to see P. and prescribe some new medicine for him, but his skill was baffled with this terrifying disease, and poor P. remained in this agonizing state of suffering for five whole months without leaving his bed. He was carried down on a litter to Beirut, where he has been since. He took a little room by himself, and gives lessons in English until something more prosperous turns up for him. Twenty years' experience ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... short her weeping and make an end of this agonizing state of affairs, I ought to have gone up to my wife and comforted her, caressed her, or apologized; but how could I do it so that she would believe me? How could I persuade the wild duck, living in captivity ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his own side), and hurried up the steps. Passing through another door bolted like the first within side, he issued upon the roof. He was now on the highest part of the cathedral, and farther from his hopes than ever; and so agonizing were his feelings, that he almost felt tempted to fling himself headlong downwards. Beneath him lay the body of the mighty fabric, its vast roof, its crocketed pinnacles, its buttresses and battlements scarcely discernible through the gloom, but looking ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... boilers continued for a long time before public opinion quelled the boyish love of victory which tempted not only the steamboatmen but their passengers too. These joined with the captain in forcing the boat to the top of its speed, at the risk of a swift or agonizing death to all on board; and it was no doubt with their full approval that the master of the beautiful new steamer Moselle took the chance that resulted in the loss of more than two hundred lives on the 26th of April, 1838. She had just left her moorings at Cincinnati for her ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Major, faint with the terror of his helplessness and the crushing weight of the quivering masses of muscle about him, would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded from behind him. With the smashing reports the poised head thudded ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond the stolid and heavy ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... could get no sleep; she could not swallow food half the time or retain it. She was beset by horrible visions. She was racked by an inexpressible longing. But she held on. Those who knew her and watched her agonizing battle with astonishment and sympathy told her that she was killing herself. "It may be," she would answer, "but I shall die true to my oath." "But," they would urge, "a habit like yours, which has obtained for years, should be broken gradually." "I will master ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... witnesses, vainly endeavouring to tell the truth, forced by the ingenuity of lawyers into falsehood and perjury! What awful denunciations and what light wit, almost in the same breath! Of what laughter hardly suppressed by judicial authority would it tell—what agonizing sobs altogether unsuppressable would it describe—how many a clever, smiling, self-sufficient barrister would it, from long knowledge, have learnt to laugh to scorn—of how many a sharp attorney would it declare the hidden ways! But yards ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... endless months had gone to the preparation of a deed that had taken one second! That transformed him! His life on earth, his spirit in the beyond, could never be now what they might have been. And he sobbed through grinding teeth as he felt the disintegrating, agonizing, irremediable forces at work on ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... love and their little knowledge that no case could be like theirs, they beseeched God with bitter weeping for their lovers' lives, because, forsooth, they could not bear it if hurt came to them. The answers to many thousands of these agonizing appeals of maid and wife and mother were already in the ...
— An Echo Of Antietam - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... great dryness and constriction of skin, loss of appetite, difficult breathing, tendency to syncope, and utter indifference. Baron Mueller, in his ascent of Orizava (17,800 feet), found great difficulty in breathing, and experienced the sensation of a red-hot iron searing his lungs, and agonizing pains in the chest, followed by fainting-fits and torrents of blood from his mouth; Humboldt, in scaling Chimborazo, suffered from nausea akin to sea-sickness, and a flow of blood from the nose and lips; while Herndon, on the slope of Puy-puy (15,700 feet), said he thought ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... each other disgracefully. Lucy had a spasm of envy. Granted that they wished to misbehave, it was pleasant for them to be able to do so. They were probably the only people enjoying the expedition. The carriage swept with agonizing jolts up through the Piazza of Fiesole and into the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the worthy lady who contrived this somewhat original device, understand fully my opinion upon the matter—good morning"; and with these words he left me again in doubt, and involved in all horrors of the most agonizing suspense. I had reason to think that Lord Glenfallen wreaked his vengeance upon the author of the strange story which I had heard, with a violence which was not satisfied with mere words, for old Martha, with whom I was a great favourite, while attending me in ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 agonizing sense of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... fruit remained. If, in the palmy days of Athenian greatness, any field of human inquiry had been successfully explored; if human reason had achieved any conquests; if any thing true and good had been obtained, that must endure as an heir-loom for all coming time; and if those centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat remained for the instruction of future generations. Either the problems they sought to solve were proved to be insoluble, or ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and thrilling theories of the entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of the world a being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigorous seclusion of my home, watched with an agonizing anxiety over all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that we are hereby more conformed to the example of our blessed Master: though we must ever recollect one important difference, that the sufferings of Christ were voluntarily borne for our benefit, and were probably far more exquisitely agonizing than any which we are called upon to undergo. Besides, it must be a solid support to us amidst all our troubles to know, that they do not happen to us by chance; that they are not even merely the punishment of sin; but ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Rushville, and—O, curse of curses!—gave way to my appetite. The moment the whisky began to affect me, I forgot that I had crutches, and set my lame leg down with my whole weight upon it. The sudden and agonizing pain caused me to give a scream, and yet I repeated the step a number of times. But the insufferable pain caused me to ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... and he himself was slain. Yet was the token preserved to us, and yet again the sign from heaven will come. And then—thou knowest—" But here a shiver of pain went through him, and his speech gave place to agonizing moans. When he spoke again his words were but a whisper. "Lay me—in front of—the altar," he said. "Now ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... his rightful reign When from the woods he comes again. The Brahmans on the prince's head King-making drops shall quickly shed, And Sita, Earth, and Fortune share The glories which await the heir. For him, when forth his chariot swept, The crowd that thronged Ayodhya wept, With agonizing woe distressed. With him in hermit's mantle dressed In guise of Sita Lakshmi went, And none his glory may prevent. Yea, naught to him is high or hard, Before whose steps, to be his guard, Lakshman, the best who draws the bow, With spear, shaft, sword rejoiced to go. His wanderings in the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... refusing to acknowledge Thee, Vain man denies his own reality; But tho' the boon of life he may receive From God, and still affect to disbelieve, What are his views at death's resounding knell? Just Heaven! Sure, man ne'er died an infidel. Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain, All human aid inefficacious, vain, Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where? The past, all gloom! the future, all despair! 'Tis then, O Lord, the skeptic turns to Thee, Then the proud scoffer humbly bends the knee; Feels in this darksome hour there's much ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... the agonizing strivings, he was too late. It was a rough quarter-mile down to the shadowy group of buildings whence the humming of the dynamo and the quick exhausts of the high-speeded steam-engine rose on the still ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... of the really dead—these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth—we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of God's servants, has been that of an overwhelming sorrow, which has taken away all taste for the pleasures and comforts of life. And this was the thought by which John was penetrated. On the one hand, there was his deep and agonizing conviction of the sin of Israel; and on the other, the belief that the Messiah must be nigh, even at the doors. Thus the pressure of the burden increased on him till he was forced to give utterance to the cry it extorted from his soul: ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... venture with my old frame to travel hither a-foot in search of the fairy Sybella, she had a glass, which if she showed him, he would be cured of this dreadful melancholy, and I have borne the labour and fatigue of coming this long tiresome way, that I may not breathe my last with the agonizing reflection, that all the labours of my life have been thrown away. But what shall I say to engage you to go with me? Can riches tempt, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... he suffered from the strange and terrible delusion that he was the centre of the universe and that it was his task to keep the whole world in equilibrium. The myriad forces of all creation were united in him and he felt with agonizing constancy, how the suns and the planets were circling about him, and how everything was rushing and whirling through space. If a chain of skaters revolves around one man who is in the middle, that man will feel the extraordinary force with which ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... For an agonizing moment they faced each other angrily, both of them lost in the labyrinth of their own situation. At the slightest plea for help on her part, Quin would have broken through his own difficulties and rushed ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... return, my Laura," said he, with a forced smile. "I am no hero; I shall not fall upon the battlefield. I know this; I feel it. I feel also that if this was to be my fate, I should be spared many sorrowful and agonizing hours; how much better a quick, glorious death, than this slow torture, this daily death of wretchedness! Oh, Laura, I have presentiments, in which my whole future is covered with clouds and thick darkness, through which even your lovely form ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the teeth of an almost unceasing north-east wind which was freezingly cold. Night after night they were obliged to dig deep holes in the snow for their sleeping places. La Verendrye nearly died of agonizing pain and fatigue during this journey, and was a long time recovering from ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... two armies on shore, while victory hung in the balance, were a prey to the most agonizing and conflicting emotions; the natives thirsting for more glory than they had already won, while the invaders feared to find themselves in even worse plight than before. The all of the Athenians being set upon their fleet, their fear for the event was like nothing ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... and the terrible excitements of watching the decorators at work, her scheme developing beneath their hands, and the awful knowledge that now it was being done it was done for good or bad—no altering it now!—and the agonizing excitements of putting down the carpets—how can you tell exactly how a carpet is going to look until you see it actually down upon its floor and between its walls?—and the increasing excitement all the time of the knowledge that everything was ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... gone out. Not, however, till the loss of blood had so relieved the agonizing pressure on the brain, that reason had evidently returned—for she opened her eyes, with a sweet, sad smile, looked at us all—saw every thing—knew every thing that had passed. She raised her hand to her neck, and then pointed upward, and breathing more and more softly, like the dead child ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... was a trouble to his father,—but not an agonizing trouble, as are some sons. His faults were not of a nature to rob his father's cup of all its sweetness and to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Old Wharton had never had to ask himself whether he should now, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Tell un, there's a lovey!" said Mrs. Lake. "Who did daddy put in the hopper?" But still Jan gazed at nothing in particular with a sly twinkle in his black eyes, and continued to squeeze poor Sandy to a degree that can have been little less agonizing than the millstone torture; and obdurate he would probably have remained, but that Abel, bending over him, said, "Do 'ee tell ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... them with the aid of a damp rag. But these precautions only half reassured him, for he knew that he could not see properly and that certain stains had very likely escaped him. He stood irresolute in the middle of the room, a prey to a somber, agonizing thought, the thought that he was going mad, that at that moment he was not in a fit state to come to a determination and to watch over his security, that his way of going to work was probably not the one the circumstances demanded. "Good heavens! I ought to go, to go away at once!" murmured ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the apprehension on the faces of the occupants of the canoe was agonizing to watch. Once Frank saw the old man arise as if to cast himself into the water rather than face what lay ahead, but Lathrop ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... horse slowly down the upper, steeper portion of the track toward Zeitoon, swearing to myself, and dreading the smoother going where I should feel compelled to gallop whether my ankle hurt or not. As a matter of fact I began to suspect a broken bone or ligament, for the agonizing pain increased and made me sit awkwardly on the horse, thus causing him to change his pace at odd intervals and give me more pain yet. However, gallop I had to, and I reached the bridge going at ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... "a message sent without wires; it came by one of those underground currents that convulse an unconscious world, sometimes agonizing mountains, at others perplexing a simple maid like yourself. You see, Joan, all things conspire to draw ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the west side, lay through an open grove, filled with sharp-shooters, who were speedily dislodged; when being up with the front of the attack, and emerging into open space, at the foot of a rocky acclivity, that gallant leader was struck down by an agonizing wound. The immediate command devolved on Brigadier-General Cadwallader, in the absence of the senior brigadier (Pierce) of the same division, an invalid since the events of August 19. On a previous call of Pillow, Worth had just ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... deep heart. You may never know it; but should you, you will remember that I told you there was but one Alice. In all her feelings she is intense; her love is a flame—her hate a thorn; the fragrance of the one is an incense—the piercing of the other is deep and agonizing. Shan't we go in, sir; I see the damp of the dew is on your boot-toe, and you have been ill. The absence of the sun is the hour for pestilence to ride the breeze in our climate, and you cannot ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... nearly friendless, and with enemies so many and so great... A boy "up aginst" so huge and difficult circumstances always, that (you would say) there was no time, no possibility, for him to look ahead: in every moment the next agonizing perilous step that must be taken vast enough to fill the whole horizon of his mind, of any human mind perhaps;—ay, so vast and compelling that every day with wrenches and torsion that horizon must be pushed back and back ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... faint and low, Like the sighing of an evening breeze, Comes through these painted lattices The ceaseless sound of human woe, Here, while her bosom aches and throbs With deep and agonizing sobs, That half are passion, half contrition, The luckless daughter of perdition Slowly confesses her secret shame! The time, the place, the lover's name! Here the grim murderer, with a groan, From his bruised conscience rolls the stone, Thinking that thus he can atone For ravages ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... paled lips, and they cover their heads weeping. At times when the obligate goat's laugh bleated in among the melodious pangs, I caught a glimpse in the background of a crowd of small women-figures who nodded their odious heads with wicked wantonness. Then a rush of agonizing sounds came from the violin, and a fearful groan and a sob, such as was never heard upon earth before, nor will be perhaps heard upon earth again, unless in the valley of Jehoshaphat, when the colossal trumpets of doom shall ring out, and the naked corpses ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Mr. Samuel Wright's embarrassment became more agonizing, nor was it lessened by the very old man's quite obvious interest in it; his head, in its brown wig, was inclined a little to one side, like a canary's, and his black eyes helped out the likeness—except that there was a carefully restrained gleam of humor in ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... knowing it, driven by the secret agonies within, and all the time conscious that he could not escape from them. Then that befell which put a term to these agonizing imaginings. As he walked he came suddenly on the ashes of a camp fire. For a moment he stared at it uncomprehendingly. Then his interest quickened, as the state of the ashes showed some one had camped at this place quite recently. He began to ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... the near-sighted one replied. "Every time I look at him I see a bleedin' bullet-hole in his abominable regions, about here." He laid a finger upon his stomach, and Glass felt a darting pain at precisely the same spot. It was as agonizing as if Willie's spectacles were huge burning-glasses focussing the rays of a tropic sun upon his bare flesh. He folded protecting hands over the threatened region and backed toward the prayer-rug, mumbling "Allah! ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... brother!] His tide of wrongs he could not stem, His brothers filch'd his diadem. There sleeps the king who aim'd to spurn The daring Scots, at Bannockburn, But turn'd him back, with humbled fame, And Berkley's "shrieks"[B] declare his name. [Footnote B: "Shrieks of an agonizing king."] ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... Damrosch's effort, or, perhaps, because of it, there is a deal of monotony in the music of the first act. There is a fine ingenuity of orchestration throughout, however, and an amount of daring in harmonization which sometimes oversteps the limits of discretion. In an agonizing scene between Chillingworth and Hester at the close of the first act the orchestra and the two chief personages are wholly engrossed with an exposition of the dramatic feeling of the moment, while the chorus (supposed to be worshiping in the neighboring meeting-house) sing the "Old ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in Necia's eyes, and her cheeks were blanched with the pallor of a great resolution. She did not stop to reason why or how she had been led to this disposal of her future, but clutched desperately at Stark's plan of rescue from her agonizing predicament. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... tells the whole truth about himself. We seem to be born liars in that particular, all of us, and I am no different. I'm starting out now to tell the bitter, agonizing truth about myself, but before I am through I shall probably be lying at the rate of a mile a minute and cracking myself up something awful! A man can tell only so much truth; then he begins ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... by an excruciating pain, a spasm so agonizing that she thought, "I am going to die! I am dying!" And her soul was filled with a furious hatred; she felt she must curse this man who was the cause of all her agony, and this child which was killing her. She strained every muscle in a supreme effort ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... and forth and from side to side and little by little, inch by inch, she could feel something giving way; she was not sure, yet, whether it was the tub, the paint or herself; but something was giving way. And at last, with one agonizing jerk, she broke away and arose to her feet. And then she turned and looked down into the tub to see what had happened; and what she saw there brought a sigh of relief to her lips; for she discovered that she ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... or less ethereal and slightly morbid love it is characterized by remarkable power. Its heroine, Madame Mortsauf, tied to a nearly insane husband and pursued by a sentimental lover, undergoes tortures of conscience through an agonizing sense of half-failure in her duty. Balzac himself used to cite her when he was charged with not being able to draw a pure woman; but he has created nobler types. The other stories of the group are also decidedly more interesting. The distress of the abbe Birotteau over his landlady's treatment, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... With an agonizing jerk of his neck the Senior Surgeon rooted his mud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneous speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one two stones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, prickly tickle ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... bed, and looked about him vacantly. In the earnest and watchful countenance that bent above his pillow, he slowly recognized his friend, companion, and servant, Valdemar Svensen, and though returning consciousness brought with it throbs of agonizing pain, he strove to smile, and feebly stretched out his hand. Valdemar grasped it—kissed it—and in spite of his efforts to restrain his emotion, a sigh, that was almost a groan, escaped him. The bonde smiled again,—then lay quiet for ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... character; but it lacks pathos, tenderness, and humanity; its power is out of all proportion to its geniality; the characters, while they stand definitely out to the eye, are seen through no visionary medium of sentiment and fancy; and the reader feels the force of Leantio's own agonizing complaint, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various |
