"Agonised" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the miracle would make it his duty to try and extract more money from the person cured; if, instead of that, the pain had increased, which was generally the case, then, again, he would impress on the agonised sufferer that had he paid a larger sum in the beginning the gods would not have been vexed at his meanness and the pain would have disappeared. Let him, therefore, now pay more cash by way of making up for it, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... detained. To see spectral visions embodied, and ghosts made flesh, one should come here. Had the excruciating operation of embalming been performed upon live men and women, their poses could hardly have been more multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards Auffassung, are perhaps some ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to enter the side shows to see him. They will carry him about in shawl straps. He will never be able to protest, for he has lost the power of speech. He can only see and hear. Will you be able to look into the agonised eyes of that man as he lies propped up in a chair, a mere trunk, and believe that he is glad to be alive? Will you then rejoice over the fact that we saved him from a much nobler grave than the one he occupies ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground ant the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught the men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of the square at ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... cessation of German cloud attacks is one constantly referred to in the German war memoirs. It was the enormous mechanical and muscular effort required in preparing for such an attack. Few people realise what hours of agonised effort were involved in preparing and executing a cloud gas attack. The cylinders had to be in position in specially chosen emplacements in the front line within certain time limits. The "carrying in" could not be spread over an indefinite period and usually took ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... fashionable Homburg hat. It was like the shadow of some one else passing—some one to whom those clothes belonged. Then he remembered, remembered with a cold shiver which blanched his cheeks and brought a little agonised murmur to his lips. The moment passed, however, crushed down, stifled as he had sworn that he would stifle all such memories. He turned in at a barber's shop, had his hair cut, and yielded to the solicitations ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Nellie," said Capella, in agonised accents. "I am consumed with love of you. Can you not, at ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... rebels had already been tried, and that he had not the power to revoke a sentence which bore the authority of the Crown; that he had not the power to dispose of the Crown property —desperate, agonised shuffling of pride and self-esteem in the coils of trial ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Ossulton (but, perhaps, it will be better in future to distinguish the two ladies, by calling the elder simply Miss Ossulton, and her niece, Cecilia), she was sitting with her salts to her nose, agonised with a mixture of trepidation and wounded pride. Mrs. Lascelles was weeping, but weeping gently. Cecilia was sad, and her heart was beating with anxiety and suspense, when the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... her tears hurt me, the pain stamped on the soft face, and the tumultuous rising and falling of her breast in those agonised sobs, reproached me, but the hurt and the reproach were dull. If she thought her tears would induce me to hesitate or to desist, she was wrong. They were to me simply a favourable sign of her weakness, and urged me to press my advantage. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... an instant, never to be erased from my memory: The ship, with her bow run high upon the berg; her tall masts, with their yards and sails going by the board; the dark ocean and the white-crested seas dashing over her stern, amid which stood a mass of human beings, in all the attitudes of agonised despair and dismay, except those few drilled to obedience, who knew not the danger. Then, again, above our heads, rising to the clouds, the white shining iceberg, which at every flash seemed to glow with flames of fire—the bright light ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... heaven.... To make undying music in the world, Breathing us beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, groaned, and agonised With widening retrospect, that bred despair.... That better self shall live till human time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb Unread for ever. This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... breakfast Anne had to look through the lists of killed, missing and wounded, to save Adeline the shock of coming upon Jerrold's or Eliot's name. Every morning Adeline gazed at Anne across the table with the same look of strained and agonised enquiry. Every morning Anne's heart tightened and dragged, then loosened and lifted, as they were let off for one ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... came with all its terror upon me: I was not in the dormitory nor anywhere near it, but right away in a cellar below the ground where there were some old lockers and play-boxes. Flinging myself first to one side of the cellar and then to the other, I tore at the walls in an agonised endeavour to get out. The last thing that I remember was shrieking loudly and feeling a moisture rise to my dry lips ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... made, but by almost hopeless men against an enemy now full of confidence. To the excited, almost agonised, watchers on shore, it seemed for a brief space that the ships might force a passage; the fight was a frenzied scuffle; but presently the terrible truth was realised—the Athenian ships were being driven ashore. The last hope of escape by sea was gone, for, though there ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... observed that the same dead and stuffed look had come over her face which he had just now noticed on her husband's countenance. Then they both looked up at each other with a glance that to him bristled with significance. An agonised questioning, an imploring petition for silence seemed to inspire it; it was as if each had made unwittingly some hopeless faux pas. Then they instantly looked away from each other again; their necks seemed to crack ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavouring to tear it away, so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonised gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and smile. From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment's safety: not a moment's calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lords and St. Paul's Cathedral. This was but the beginning of a long series of impassioned pleadings with public men in favour of national employment for historical painters. Silence, snubs, formal acknowledgments, curt refusals, all were lost upon Haydon, who kept pouring in page after page of agonised petition on Sir Charles Long, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, and Sir Robert Peel, and seemed to be making no way with ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... voice of the speaker, as well as the mystery about the vessel and its unwitnessed disappearance, leant forward in their seats with strained and breathless attention. My mother could not take her eyes off the stranger's face. As he hesitated over the name of the ship, her very lips grew white in agonised suspense, but when the coroner read "the James and Elizabeth," she sank back in her seat with a low "Thank God!" that told me what she had dreaded, and how terribly. I myself knew not what to think, nor if my ears had heard aright. Part of the tale I knew ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... still keeping his place. He looked down. And upturned to him in agonised appeal was the face of little Emily. They stared at each other for what seemed a long, long time. It was really only the fraction of a second. Then Jo put one great arm firmly around Emily's waist and swung her around in front of him. His great bulk protected her. Emily was clinging to his hand. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Park, the Marshal, and Mr. Wilder, of the Board of Health, went round the islands repeatedly in the Kilauea, and performed the painful duty of collecting the victims, with true sympathy and kindness. The woe of those who were taken, the dismal wailings of those who were left, and the agonised partings, when friends and relatives clung to the swollen limbs and kissed the glistering bloated faces of those who were exiled from them for ever, I shall ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... reduces all apparitions to the subjective rather than the objective plane; in other words the spirit of a murdered man does not return at certain times to the room in which he was done to death; but his agonised mind, in its last conscious moments, left an impress upon that room which produces a subjective picture of the scene, or part of the scene, upon any mind psychically en rapport with that impress. I confess ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... bride." Bride had she been, but they no priest could move To bind in law the couple bound by love. What sought these lovers then by day by night? But stolen moments of disturb'd delight; Soft trembling tumults, terrors dearly prized, Transports that pain'd, and joys that agonised; Till the fond damsel, pleased with lad so trim, Awed by her parent, and enticed by him, Her lovely form from savage power to save, Gave—not her hand—but ALL she could she gave. Then came the day of shame, the grievous night, The varying look, the wandering appetite; The joy assumed, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... For an agonised moment he felt unequal to the occasion. He knew in a flash what arms portended among these foreign devils. But it was too late to do much to forestall it. One speeder load was gone, and the second was emptying fast. He might frighten the silent porters away and perhaps capture the remainder ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... would not have it otherwise. In our more thoughtless or more agonised minutes we are likely to cry out for a life in which the conditions ensuring our happiness could not so easily miscarry; but that would mean a static life, and a static life, above all things, we will not endure. As already seen, we ask for difficulties to conquer, successes to achieve. To contend ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... before it was too late—till the mysterious power that had laid upon him the giant task seemed at last to seek his destruction. With terror he felt an irresistible hand shaking him by the shoulder, while the chorus of voices swelled louder into an agonised prayer to go, go before it is too late. He felt himself slipping, losing his balance, as something dragged at his legs, and he fell. With a faint cry he glided out of the anguish of perishing creation into an imperfect waking that seemed to ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... held up his hand with the quick imperative motion he used to command silence. The sound of the woman's voice came again from above, now quick and high, like one who makes an agonised petition, and now in tones lower that seemed broken ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... "With agonised feelings which no one but a parent, and I will add, an affectionate parent, can possibly form an idea of, I address you on the subject of the act of atrocity committed by that perjured villain, Mannion. You will find that I and my innocent daughter have been, like ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... you do this?" she repeated in an agonised voice. "What can I do? I'm no traitor!... But I'd give you a pistol if I had one——" She checked herself as the girl who had been reading an evening newspaper on a sofa, and to whom Neeland had been talking when Ilse Dumont entered, came ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... himself quickly upon the sill, stepped lightly into the room, and crouched in the shadow of the table. Had the giant heard? He peeped out cautiously. No, he was still intent upon the working girl. But a weapon—he must have a weapon—and Dan's agonised glance, sweeping the room, fell upon the debris of the broken chair. Quickly he crept to it, and his fingers closed about one ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... long this paragon of men—affectionately curtailed to Jabey. Once, when the villain was about to club him, "Look out, Jabey!" cried an agonised female voice. It followed from the happy understanding on both sides of the curtain that—give ear, O envious lessees!—no play ever failed. How could it? It was always ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Science;—how much thou canst suffer, how much thou canst endure, under what pressure and in what Juhannam depths thou canst live; but thy flounces thou canst not dispense with for a day, nor for a single one-twelfth part of a day. Even in thy suffering and pain, the agonised spirit is wrapped, bandaged, swathed in ruffles. It is assuaged with the flounces of thy lady's caresses, and the scalloped intonations of her soft and soothing voice. It is humbugged into health by the malodorous flounces ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... one suspected, as he sat there, so boyish, wistful, and uneasily squirming, that he was agonised to the very centre of his being. All the time, in his sweating soul, he kept trying to persuade himself: "I've given them a hint, anyhow! I've ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... gorge, begin at once. Woods, alternating with precipitous rocks, mountain peaks of great altitude and most picturesque forms, tower aloft; while below, the eye rests upon the gave, now deliciously green and peaceful, and now worming its way with agonised fury through the gorge. Many cascades of rare beauty streamed down from the summit of the precipices, and we were continually crossing high and narrow bridges suspended over deep gulfs. The box luxuriates in this defile, springing in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... stooped, when freed from the restraint of the rein, to browse on the rank verdure; and for a moment Edward envied the unconsciousness of the animal against which he leaned. He pressed his forehead against the saddle, and from the depth of a bleeding heart came up an agonised exclamation. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... this letter through with an agonised terror coming over me, that gripped and wrung my heart, through the cloud of amaze that filled me. Towards the end the words seemed to stab me. As I came to the conclusion the truth broke upon me in a blinding, lightning flash. I had ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... you!" did it, and that firm pressure of the hand. He did like me, then, and was sorry I was going; and though I tried to speak, not a word would come. I could only pinch my lips together and give him an agonised look—the look of an orphan boy going off into what was to him an ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... of Mr. Landale's weighted brow she propped up her own long sallow face, upon its aching side, with a trembling hand, and, full of agonised prescience, ventured to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... not know Paris very well, and wondered where lay that gloomy Conciergerie, where a dethroned queen was living her last days, in an agonised memory of the past. But as they crossed the bridge she recognised all round her the massive towers of the great city: Notre Dame, the grateful spire of La Sainte Chapelle, the sombre outline of St. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... stand it no longer, and laying the bag down by the door of the refreshment-room, turned hastily away. On the instant Mr Bunker, who had watched these proceedings from a safe distance, cried in a loud and agonised voice, "Down with your men, sergeant! Down, lie down! It ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... precautions, Lady Margaret had been spirited away during the night. As soon as he had recovered from the shock of the discovery, Ralph ran to Lord Tamerton and acquainted him with the terrible news. There was a period of agonised and fruitless discussion. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... war continued to darken her heart. She agonised for the cause which her native land had taken up, and many a cry went up to God on its behalf in the hour of trial. Miss Peacock remained several nights, and returned to Ikotobong with a strong presentiment that ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and Schuldthurm (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving-in to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail; thus did the agonised creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him on; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man's death," said Scrooge, quite agonised, "show that person to me, Spirit! I ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... this might be the poor boys' last meeting. Armine could only look at his brother, since the least attempt to speak increased the agonised struggle for breath, which, doctor or no doctor, gave Mr. Graham small expectation that he could survive another ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could receive. That is how I feel in the matter! There is but one hope and guarantee for the future of man, and that is that his sense for the tragic may not die out. If he ever completely lost it, an agonised cry, the like of which has never been heard, would have to be raised all over the world; for there is no more blessed joy than that which consists in knowing what we know—how tragic thought was born again on earth. For this joy is thoroughly impersonal and general: it is the wild rejoicing of humanity, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... strong enough even to cut himself adrift from it all. He must just welter on, a figure visibly touched by depression and ill-fortune, and hammering out the old grammar-grind. Had any writer, any poet, ever agonised thus? The people who discoursed glibly about love, and wove their sorrows into elegies, what sort of prurient curs were they? It was all too bad to think of, to speak of—a mere staggering among the ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... assailants, that the dragoons were obliged to retreat to the entrance of the town. Of this repulse Lord Derwentwater and his youthful brother gained the chief credit. The scene that followed is a detail of fruitless gallantry, and of an agonised but ill-concerted resistance. The fatality which attended the Stuart cause, and which rendered the bloodshed of its gallant champions unavailing to promote it, was here conspicuous. That fatality was doubtless resolvable into a want of common sense, in entrusting the command of the forces into ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... was made under breath, and in a tone which made the very attorney shudder. He tried his hand at ghostly advice, probably for the first time in his life, and recommended as an opiate for the agonised conscience of the Laird, reparation of the injuries he had done to these distressed families, which, he observed by the way, the civil law called restitutio in integrum. But Mammon was struggling with Remorse for retaining his place in a bosom he had so long possessed; and he partly succeeded, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the general entered the hallway, the spaniel, wriggling free from the hound's onslaught, fled upstairs, closely pursued by the other dog, and after the two stamped the officer. On the second floor the fugitive faltered, to cast an agonised glance behind him, but sight of Clarion's open mouth was enough, and up the garret stairs he fled. At the top he once more paused, looking in all directions for a haven of refuge; and seeing a man in the act of retreating behind the loom in the corner, he fled to him for protection. When ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... amiss, That never shamed His Mother's kiss, Nor crossed her fondest prayer: E'en from the tree He deigned to bow, For her His agonised brow, Her, ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... have been Wentworth who had sacrificed himself for her with what desperate rapidity she would have rescued him. How calm her agonised heart would be now. Fay was beginning to learn that it is ill to take a service save from the hand we love. And perhaps, too, in her heart she knew that Wentworth would never have sacrificed himself for her, for Michael possibly, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... brake hath borne Nor gout of blood, nor shred of mantle torn; Nor fall nor struggle hath defaced the grass, Which still retains a mark where Murder was; Nor dabbling fingers left to tell the tale, 760 The bitter print of each convulsive nail, When agonised hands that cease to guard, Wound in that pang the smoothness of the sward. Some such had been, if here a life was reft, But these were not; and doubting Hope is left; And strange Suspicion, whispering Lara's name, Now daily mutters o'er his blackened fame; Then sudden silent when ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... way the old chief held it out, and the amount of dollars he asked for it, was enough to make any one believe that I was in such urgent need of the thing, that I was at his mercy regarding price. I waved it off with a haughty scorn, and then feeling smitten by the expression of agonised bewilderment on his face, I dashed him a belt that delighted him, and went inside and had tea to soothe my ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... recovering consciousness. The Duc d'Orleans was a young man of great promise, and his death was not only a source of deep distress to all connected with him, it was in the end, so far as men can judge, fatal to the political interests of his family. Many of us can recollect still something of the agonised prayer of the poor mother by the dying Prince, "My God, take me, but save my child!" and the cry of the bereaved father, the first time he addressed the Chamber afterwards, when he broke down and could ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... an agonised voice). I couldn't stand it. No, John, I couldn't stay. Any other woman but ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... prayed once more with the bitter, agonised fervour of one who feels that the hour of death is present and inevitable. When I arose, I went once more to the window and looked out, just in time to see a shadowy figure glide stealthily along the wall. The task was finished. ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... upon the self-convicted sinner; but Elisabeth dashes in before the points of their swords, and in broken accents begs pardon for her recreant lover in the name of the Saviour of them all. Touched by her agonised pleading the angry knights let fall their weapons, while Tannhaeuser, as his madness slips from him and he realises all that he has lost, falls repentant and prostrate upon the earth. The Landgrave bids him hasten to Rome, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, 'Below there! Look out! Look out!' It stands waving to me. ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... cried the agonised father. 'Impossible! They cannot all be dead!' Again came the ominous rejoinder, 'Worse, far worse,' and then, in a shout from half-a-dozen throats at once, 'Far, far worse. They are all bewitched!' Bewitched! that was indeed a word of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... grasped his prisoner, appalled the terrified Lucille. 'You have given us a sharp run,' he exclaimed, 'and once I thought you had got off. You should not have left your hiding-place till dark, young gentleman.' And, heedless of the frantic and agonised gestures of the unhappy youth, he drew him ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... reaches the sidewalk, as though she ain't decided yet in her own mind just where she'll go, and then her agonised eye falls on all them peanut-roasters standing in a double row alongside the curbings on both sides of the street. The Italian and Greek gents who owns 'em are already departing hence in a hurried manner, but they've left their outfits behind, and right away it's made plain to me by her actions that ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... the attempt to appear what he is not, the indulged unfounded suspiciousness towards his friends, all the little base defects which must have pained a nature like his more than any real sinfulness, as the prodding of a surgeon's instruments would have agonised such a man more than an actual amputation. He narrates in extenso all his vacillations about nothing at all, all his givings way to laziness, all his insincere confidences made to others. One morning is consumed in debating whether or not he will buy a certain Indian walking-stick: "Torn by ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... George as if he had never heard the glad tidings before; it had never made the hot tear run down his cheek, as he thought of the Saviour suffering for sins not His own, until now; it had never before torn the agonised sigh from his heart, as the truth flashed before him that it was he who had helped to nail the Holy One to the accursed tree; he had never realised before that earth was but the portal to the heavenly ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... there is another side to the case which ought not to be overlooked. The South is proud, very proud; and the older generation, the generation which fought and agonised through the terrible years from '61 to '65, is more than a little inclined to resent what it regards as the condescending advances of the North. This feeling is not confined to those out-of-the-way corners where, as the saying goes, they have not yet heard that the war—the Civil War—is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... 'considering the situation of Louis XVI. and that of his family, agonised as they must have been during his absence, from the Queen's impression that the Parisians would never again allow him to see Versailles, how great was our rapture when we saw him safely replaced in his carriage, and returning to those who were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... among them one or two cases of prolonged and terribly hard labour; and the method adopted by the ignorant old negress, who was the sole matron, midwife, nurse, physician, surgeon, and servant of the infirmary, to assist them in their extremity, was to tie a cloth tight round the throats of the agonised women, and by drawing it till she almost suffocated them she produced violent and spasmodic struggles, which she assured me she thought materially assisted the progress of the labour. This was one of the Southern infirmaries with which I was acquainted; and I beg to conclude this chapter ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... not give him any address, but you must let him know you're well, and why you intend to remain abroad. It is by relieving his mind on these subjects that you'll save yourself from the vexation of his hunting you up here.... Come, now," he said, noticing the agonised and bewildered look on Evelyn's face, "this is the only disagreeable hour in the day—you must put up with it. Here is the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... nerve. The impact of the sudden, startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and—relief. A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. On my knee I dropped and shot him, ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... After an agonised aside "Don't ask about Jack," I murmured an introduction, and we all walked up to the house together. In the hall I managed to tell Gerald of our dreadful position, and implored him to humour the madman as much as possible until we could form ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... some degree to the cachinnation. The laughter is still only rudimental: it is not genuine laughter. It expresses triumph, scorn, passion—anything but a feeling of natural amusement. It is provoked by misfortune, by bodily infirmities, by the writhings of agonised animals; and it indicates either a sense of power or a selfish feeling of exemption from suffering. The 'light-hearted laugh of children!' What a mistake! Observe the gravity of their sports. They are masters or mistresses, with the care of a family upon their hands; and they ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... girlhood, which had led her to confer with him, unknown—there had she first confessed to herself that fancy had begotten love—there had she gone through love's short and exhausting process of lone emotion;—the doubt, the hope, the ecstasy; the reverse, the terror; the inanimate despondency, the agonised despair! And there now, sadly and patiently, she awaited the gradual march of inevitable decay. And books and pictures, and musical instruments, and marble busts, half shadowed by classic draperies—and all the delicate elegancies of womanly ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ARTHUR BALFOUR, in one of his agonised asides, "the fellow did not undisguisedly enjoy such supreme happiness, our lot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... were on her, and her sobs almost mounted to a scream. No heart that had any pretension to humanity could have helped pitying her. Her husband did pity her; but Arundel was carried away by passion, and Bilson had no heart. Through all this tempest, however agonised, firm ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... a wild scream, and with an agonised gesture of terror clutched the highway robber by ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... do if Di suddenly marched away from her, through that bright lobby and into the street. She thought miserably that she must follow. And then her whole concern for the ethics of Di's course was lost in her agonised memory of her ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... all. The waterfalls? Niagara on a larger scale. The great trees? Doubtless their counterparts grew in America. The brother and the babe—would he not naturally be thinking of his brother and his babe? The thing stood self-convicted. Echo, echo, echo, flung back in mockery of our agonised pleadings from ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... the stretchers, each with a little bowl beside him, coughing his life away. And gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their outraged tissue, and the fluid would accumulate slowly—oh, so slowly!—and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness of a bullet, but ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... and wind this silk for me, for I must have my hearer comfortably established, not like the agonised listener in the 'World' leaning against a table, with the corner running ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... white, took a step forward, and then turned to the door. It was shut, and James Bigger, pistol in hand, stood with his back against it. Finlay stood stock still. Neal, looking at him, saw in his eyes an expression of wild terror—an agonised appeal against the horror of death. In a single instant the man had understood that he was to die. Neal felt suddenly sick. Then a faintness overcame him. He leaned back in his chair unable to move or speak. He heard, as if from a great distance, as if out of some other ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... us!' exclaimed the agonised Mrs. Tibbs, as the painful suspicion, and a sense of their situation, flashed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a letter begging a favour which would have been nothing at all to grant, but which was of great importance to me, and he had taken no notice of it. It came to pass that we had in our hands to publish certain very damaging charges against this great man. He found it out, and, humiliated, I may say agonised with shame and fear, he called with a friend, begging that the imputations might not be published. I believe from my soul that if I had not been so badly treated by him I should have refused his request, but, as it was, I agreed to withdraw the charges. It was ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... were very different. That vision of the man I had left well and hopeful and strong not three days since was terrible to me. A brave man had gone to his death, but to what a death, if that agonised face and distorted visage betokened aught! And I had promised to aid him, and was drifting there with the schooner, raising no hand to ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... upon the camp, to be presently broken by the agonised scream of a woman, shrill and startling, followed by wailings and melancholy moans. The Spirit of Death had ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... the quiet parlour of a country vicarage, this anguish of guilty love, these revulsions from shameful ecstasy to shameful despair. Branwell raved on, delirious, agonised; and the blind father listened, sick at heart, maybe self-reproachful; and the gentle sister listened, shuddering, as if she saw hell lying open at her feet. Emily listened, too, indignant at the treachery, horrified at the shame; yet with an immense pity in her ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... in only one of these cases was the individual concerned with psychic matters before the war. Further, he explains that it was the war which induced him to take an active interest in a subject which had been before no more than one of passing curiosity. "In the presence of an agonised world," he writes, "hearing every day of the deaths of the flower of our race in the first promise of their unfulfilled youth, seeing around one the wives and mothers who had no clear conception whither their loved one had gone to, I seemed suddenly to see that ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... to her principles even at the expense of all her natural yearnings. Of what use to her would be her religious convictions if she were to give them up just because her heart-strings were torn and agonised? The man was a goat though he were ten times told her child's husband. So she looked again away into the garden and resolved that she would not ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... dinner, she buried herself in the old, red arm-chair, setting herself to endure her misery to the bitter end. When Cardo entered with Colonel Meredith, Cecil, and the curate, she had passed from agonised suffering to the cold insensibility of a stone. She knew she would wake again when the evening was over, and she was alone with her sorrow; but now she had but to ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the hunted look of some animal at bay, the agonised eyes moved as the head moved; slowly, slowly, inch by inch, the breath coming stertorously as the mouth tried ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... and agonised appeal from within Mr. Slack chose not to heed it. He found the right key on his key ring, applied it to the lock, turned the bolt and shoved the door wide open, giving back then in case of an attack. The front room was empty. Mr. Slack crossed cautiously to the inner room and peered across the ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... inclose us, see the fearful faces of dead and dying men, cut in stone, which the taste or caprice of the architect has considered their fittest ornament. There is something strangely original and attractive in the grotesque hideousness of these heads, agonised with pain, scowling in anger, or frightful with their upturned eyes in the rigidity of death, all bleached and shadowed as they are by the vicissitudes ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... wall. She had followed its ascent with a small interested finger, and her nurse had come by with a duster, and saying: "Nasty thing!" had ruthlessly flicked it off. The fly had fallen—fallen dead, on the nursery carpet.... Lady Ingleby felt she too was falling. She gave one agonised glance upward to the towering cliff, with the line of sky above it. Then everything swayed and rocked. "A mother of soldiers," her brain insisted, "must fall without screaming." Then—A long arm shot down from above; a ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... and her agitated elbows. A short fat man passed in pursuit of her—an elderly man in a black alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw that she had left a trail of little white things on the asphalt. I watched the efforts of the agonised short fat man to overtake her as she swept wraith-like away to the distant end of the terrace. What was the matter? What had made her so spectacularly angry with him? The three or four waiters of the cafe' were exchanging cynical smiles ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... a concise white flat at Knightsbridge. Bruce's father had some time ago left him a good income on certain conditions; one was that he was not to leave the Foreign Office before he was fifty. One afternoon Edith was talking to the telephone in a voice of agonised entreaty that would have melted the hardest of hearts, but did not seem to have much effect on the Exchange, which, evidently, was not ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... absent she binds with her spells, and figures of wax she devises, And in their agonised ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the full story of how her daughter—to whom she pointed—had been shamefully treated by the Germans. The crowd growled. The daughter was, I think, more pleased at being the object of my sympathy and the centre of the crowd's interest than agonised at the remembrance of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... trebled his infamy, a husband and a father. Gracious Heaven! when he reflected—but no; he would confine himself to a simple statement of facts. That simplicity would tell with a double-knock on the hearts of a susceptible jury. The afflicted, the agonised plaintiff was a public man. He was, until lately, the happy possessor of a spotless wife and an inimitable spring-van. It was was a union assented to by reason, smiled on by prudence. Mr. Bonbon was the envied owner ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... the serious business of some situation intended to be dramatic. At such moments the laughter of the House is checked, a sudden gloom comes over the faces that were but now on the broad grin, even the lineaments of Mr. ROBERTS become agonised, and the audience, like Christopher Sly when bored by the Duke's players, mutter to themselves, "would t'were done." But these painful seconds, which, at the time, seem hours, are, we are glad to say, but brief and passing shadows over Mr. ROBERTS' own quaint ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... let anyone in, Burnett, while I examine him. Lock the door;' and Michael obeyed the doctor's orders, though an agonised voice outside ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lay at the beginning of those causes which drove Susannah out upon a strange pilgrimage. But above and beyond her personal jealousy was a consideration certainly dearer to a woman into whose inmost religious life was woven the fibre of the partisan. As she expressed it to herself, she agonised before the Lord in a new fear lest her unconverted son should be established in his unbelief by love for a woman who had never sought for heavenly grace; but, in truth, that which she sought was that both should swear allegiance to her own interpretation of grace. In this prayer some ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... and cleared it, and in a moment was pelting down the slope after the sergeant, who flung back an agonised doubtful glance, and recognising his pursuer grunted with relief. At their feet, and far below, spread a wide plain—a sea of forest rolling, wave upon wave, with a gleam of water between. The river, then—Bateese's river—was near ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... punch; when Time tries to coax them, pointing out the advantages of middle-age, they turn their heads from him and refuse to listen. If at last they are taken away by main force, it is with their backs to the future, and their faces all angry, twisted, agonised, looking back at the garden in ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... was blazing hot and the sweat was dripping from our faces. We were continually on the look-out for wounded, and always alert for the agonised cry of "Stretcher-bearers!" away on some distant knoll or down below in the thickets. Looking back the bay shimmered a silver-white streak with grey battleships ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... mob, after battering the door for a few minutes, had yielded to the agonised entreaties of Peter, who assured them that if those incarnate fiends once broke out upon them, they would not leave a Christian alive in Alexandria. So it was agreed to leave a few to watch for Philammon's coming out; and the rest, balked of their prey, turned the tide of their wrath against ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... admire her for that," replied Washburn, "and I don't blame her. I didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it. What I do admire her for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel. In Berkeley Square she'd have met me at the door with an agonised face and a handkerchief to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... bottles she put down. The eighth, a small one, had an uneven bottom. Before she knew what had happened it overbalanced, rolling over and over towards the table's edge. She tried to stop it, but could not reach it in time. Before her agonised eyes it fell to the floor with a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the sun And east-wind melt it fast, and the long heights With water-courses stream, and down the glades Slide, as they thaw, the heavy sheets, to swell The rushing waters of an ice-cold spring, So melted she in tears of anguished pain, And for her own, her husband, agonised, And cried to her heart with miserable moans: "Woe for my wickedness! O hateful life! I loved mine hapless husband—dreamed with him To pace to eld's bright threshold hand in hand, And heart in heart! The gods ordained not so. Oh had the black Fates snatched me from the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Divine sweeping down the wild waves at night, the winds ceased their raving and the seas were still, so now, beneath the silent reproach of the effigy of the White Christ standing with uplifted hand above the altar, hanging thorn-crowned upon the Rood, kneeling agonised within the Garden, seated at the Holy Supper, on His lips the New Commandment, "As I have loved you, so ye also love one another," their passions flickered down and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... heart with a long-drawn-out moan of unconquerable sorrow sent out into the still morning air its agonised call ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... was clenched with excitement, and uttering the cry of Archimedes—"Eureka!"—fell back with the heaviness of a dead body, and expired with an agonised groan. His eyes, till the doctor closed them, expressed a frenzied despair. It was his agony that he could not bequeath to science the solution of the great riddle which was only revealed to him as the veil was rent asunder by the hand ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... considerable quantity of which served as envelopes to the rest, setting fire to it in such a manner that the contents of the trunk might appear to have been destroyed by the falling of the candle. I succeeded very much to my own satisfaction. Disturbed and agonised as my feelings had been during the discovery, the idea of having defeated the plan of my iniquitous relative gave a zest to my acquisitions almost as great as if I had already taken ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that very moment that Angela Vivian, going into the dressing-room, found a motionless, silent figure, sitting upright in the wheeled arm-chair, a figure, not lifeless, indeed, but with life apparent only in the agonised glance of the restless eyes, which seemed to plead for help. But no help could be given to her now. No more hard words could fall from those stricken lips: no more bitter sentences be written by those nerveless fingers. She might live for years, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... crime, But the victim's intangible shade Can be seen to this day, so the villagers say, In diaphanous garments arrayed. In the gloom of the room where she met with her doom She's appearing once nightly, it seems, And the listener quails as lugubrious wails Are succeeded by agonised screams. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... its upturned face and the purple shadows which fatigue had painted below the closed eyelids, there was an irresistible appeal. She looked so young, so helpless, and the knowledge that she had done this for him—forced her limbs into agonised subjection until at last conscious endurance had failed her—moved ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... addition to the bitter despair and misery, there was a fresh sensation which he connected then with a feeling of sinking that made him gaze piteously at his companion, but only to be struck with his sunken eyes and agonised aspect. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... dogs!" she cried in an agonised voice. "Let that English woman go! It is I you want! Do you hear! I mock at you! I mock at your resolution! Boje Tzaria Khrani! Down ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... self-possession for the next ten minutes. Whenever Larry was on our side of the table I was afraid he was coming to me with another agonised whisper. When he was opposite, I could not but watch him as he hobbled in his misery. It was evident that the boots were too tight for him, and had they been made throughout of iron they could not have ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... stripped, Ngakuku had time to seize his little son and to escape into the bush. He tried to arouse Tarore also, but the child was heavy with sleep and had to be abandoned. When the enemy departed, the agonised father came down from his retreat and found lying in the hut the mangled corpse of his little girl. He carried it to Mr. Brown at Matamata, with the words, "My heart is sad, for I do not know whether my child has ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... had the bad taste—or perhaps it was misfortune—to blurt out an agonised "I told you so" at a time when the family was sitting numb and hushed under the blight of the first horrid blow. He did not mean to be unfeeling. It was the truth ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... midshipmen in it than the number that had left his ship—one being the consul's wife, the other his daughter Agnes! Master Jim, however, had been left behind, owing to the arrangements not having been sufficient to meet his requirements. Poor Mrs Langley had left him with agonised self-reproach, on being assured that he should be fetched off on the morrow. Colonel Langley was of course obliged to ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... with me, and the monotonous murmur of the sea already sounded a gloomy prophecy in my ears, and I foresaw fresh tears, fresh troubles, and fresh losses in the future. "What is she crying about? What is it?" I wondered, recalling her face and her agonised look. I remembered she was with child. She tried to conceal her condition from other people, and also from herself. At home she went about in a loose wrapper or in a blouse with extremely full folds over the bosom, and when she went out anywhere she laced herself in so tightly ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was not that Hilda came back and took her place; it was rather that the other things in his mind dominated him. It was a curious state of affairs. He was less like an orthodox parson than he had ever been, and yet he had never thought so much about religion. He agonised over it now. At times his thoughts were almost ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... thought I did," said Nancy, beginning to sob again in an agonised manner; "but I forgot to put that stick through the staple, and he must have pushed it open. I am ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... as the reading proceeded, broken only by the agonised shriek of some unfortunate, and the gradual sighs of relief of those ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... surprise, by terror. Some one hears him murmur the words, "My God, what can have happened now?" His horror is increased when one of the lads bears to him a revolting trophy, which has been found just outside the window; it is the front phalanges of three fingers of a human hand. Again he utters the agonised moan, "My God!" and then, mastering his agitation, makes for the window; he finds that the catch of the sash has been roughly wrenched off, and that the sash can be opened by merely pushing it up: does so, and enters. The room is in darkness: on the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... preserved or irretrievably lost. Ellen, I cannot attempt to describe to you what I suffered at that time. The wrestling with an impossibility, the struggle after what was unattainable, the incapability of resigning myself to what seemed inevitable, the powerless rage, the smarting pride, the agonised self-reproach; it was dreadful, and no one to speak ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton |
