"Agony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But why need I tell of her grief, her agony, her despair? For months she did not leave her room; and when at last she crawled into the open air, the nearest neighbors scarcely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the last hour—had become conscious of the awakening of a spirit. What remained with him now was the splendid glow of gladness that he had been of service to Thorne. And by the intensity of Mercedes' abandon of relief and gratitude he measured her agony of terror and the fate ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... protection against all dangers. There are few moods of the religious life that are not represented in the Psalms: penitence, intellectual perplexity, domestic sorrow, feebleness, loneliness, the approach of death, the excitement of great events, the agony of persecution, quiet contemplation of nature, each has its word. The imprecations of some of the Psalms show a trait of the national character without which the picture would be incomplete. It may ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... wrung for the young woman whose fine eyes stared with dumb agony from a face that looked very white in the shining moonlight. He put an arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the hotel ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... with horror.] Ha!—Begone! [Going. Her heart draws her back.] Yet, she is unfortunate: she is unfriended! Her image is repentance—Her life the proof—She has wept her fault in her three years agony. Be still awhile, remorseless prejudice, and let the genuine feelings of my soul avow—they do not truly honour virtue, who can insult the erring heart that would return to her sanctuary. [Looking with sorrow on her.] Rise, I beseech you, rise! My husband and my brother may surprise us. I ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... in the great gallery spilled some hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all kindness and compassion, and when, after a while, she asked him how he was feeling, the little fellow looked up in her face, and replied, 'Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.' ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... State for the Home Department and to request the honour of a private interview, which, he begs to assure the right honourable gentleman, would be mutually advantageous. The words, 'Safe conduct.—W. B.,' together with time and place proposed, in the agony column of The Times, he will accept as a sufficient guarantee of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... took down the hat, and as he lowered it towards his head cast a last look down the room, and—there stood Marguerite. She had entered just in time, it seemed to him, but just too late, in fact, to see and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They bowed to each other with majestic faintness, and then each from each was gone. The girl at the desk saw ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... triumph see, And gnash their teeth in agony To find their expectations crost: They and their envy, pride and spite, Sink down to everlasting night, And all their names in ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... on his knees and breathed out piercing supplications. Every nerve and fibre within him seemed tense with his agony of prayer. It was not the outcry for purity and peace, not a tender longing for forgiveness, not a filial remorse for sin, but the nervous anguish of him who shrieks in the immediate apprehension of an unendurable torture. It was the cry of a man upon the rack, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Hina, mourned the loss of his companion of the long nights of winter and the shower-sprinkled nights of summer. Neither could he regain possession of her, for the ridge of Haupu grew till it reached the heavens. He mourned and rolled himself in the dust in agony, and crossed his hands behind his back. He went from place to place in search of some powerful person who should be able to restore to him his wife. In his wanderings, the first person to whom he applied was Kamalalawalu, ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... had like to have lost her this morning! They had poulticed her feet to draw the gout downwards, and began to succeed yesterday, but to-day it flew up into her head, and she was almost in convulsions with the agony, and screamed dreadfully; proof enough how ill she was, for her patience and good breeding make her for ever sink and conceal what she feels. This evening the gout has been driven back to her foot, and I trust she is out of danger. Her loss would be irreparable to me at Twickenham, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... regretted it, for all of a sudden I heard a roar and saw something yellow flash past me and light on poor Kaptein. Then came a bellow of agony from the ox, and a crunch as the lion put his teeth through the poor brute's neck, and I began to understand what had happened. My rifle was in the waggon, and my first thought being to get hold of it, I turned and made a bolt ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... and sanguinary, was supreme, and was moved from time to time to violent action by individuals or groups which played upon and pandered to its passions. On June 20 a carefully engineered insurrection exposed the king and queen to cruel insults and imminent danger. The long agony of the monarchy was drawing to a close. After protracted delays the allies began to move, and, on July 25, Brunswick published an ill-judged manifesto which excited the French to fury. The British ambassador, Lord ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... was only a small thatched roof, like a bird's nest; under which stood a rude wooden image of the Saviour on the Cross. A real crown of thorns was upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly beyond all expression; and wore a look of unutterable bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given it this, but his art ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... attitude of a condemned galley slave, loaded with fetters, awaiting his doom. His form was bowed; his wrists were crossed; his manacles were almost visible as he stood like an embodiment of helplessness and agony. After a solemn pause, he raised his eyes and chained hands towards heaven, and prayed, in words and tones which thrilled every heart, 'Forbid it, Almighty God!' He then turned towards the timid loyalists of the House, who were quaking ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... evangelists the qualities of a perfectly heroic soul, that they paint it so perfectly in Jesus Christ? Why do they make Him weak in His agony? Do they not know how to paint a resolute death? Yes, for the same Saint Luke paints the death of Saint Stephen as braver ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... agony.] No, no, Phil! It mustn't end like this! Good lord, man, reflect—consider what you're chucking away! You're mad—absolutely mad! [PHILIP calmly presses a bell-push at the side of the fireplace.] I'll go after 'em—and talk to her. I'll talk to her. [Running to the vestibule ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... the reflections of that poor young creature, while dreading the entrance of the hoary villain who sought her ruin? We can but imagine them: doubtless she thought with agony of her poor grandfather and little Charley, both of whom she knew would suffer all the anguish of uncertainty and fear, with reference to her fate. Then, perhaps, her mind reverted to the happiness she used to enjoy within ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... or palaulays with others of her age. I see her frocks lengthening, though they were never very short, and the games given reluctantly up. The horror of my boyhood was that I knew a time would come when I also must give up the games, and how it was to be done I saw not (this agony still returns to me in dreams, when I catch myself playing marbles, and look on with cold displeasure); I felt that I must continue playing in secret, and I took this shadow to her, when she told me her ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Mulford obeyed, throwing the brig up into the wind, and allowing her to set to windward, but filling again on the same tack, as ordered. This, of course, delayed her progress toward the land, and protracted the agony, but it carried the vessel in the direction she most wished to go, while it kept her not only end on to the steamer, but in a line with the bluff, and consequently in the position most favourable ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... curtain at the end, Douglass slipped out upon the pavement, his eyes blinded by the radiant picture she made in her splendid bridal robes. It was desolating to see her represent such a role, such agony, such despair; and yet his feet were ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Now that he was gone, and I found a respite from his torturing menace, my eyes turned mechanically to the plain. I there beheld a spectacle, that under other circumstances might have filled me with horror. Not so then. The agony of my thoughts was already too keen to be further quickened. Even the gory skull of one of my comrades, who lay scalped upon the sward, scarcely added an emotion. It was a sight I had anticipated. They could ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the former lying stark and cold in the light of the moon, some of them with limbs disposed as though they merely slumbered, while the contorted bodies of others showed that they had passed away in the throes of mortal agony; some with eyes decently closed, others with their sightless eyeballs upturned until only the whites were visible: while from the lips of the wounded there issued one low, continuous moan of: "Water—water! For the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... own. I accuse us, not of acting imprudently, but of fighting against a natural force that is stronger than we. We can only retard, we cannot annihilate, the attraction exerted by the greater masses on the lesser. We can only hope that we may not live to feel the agony. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... the most retired solitude. And therefore resuming all the courage I had, I took a flaming firebrand, and in I rushed again. I had not proceeded above three steps, when I was more affrighted than before; for then I heard a very loud sigh, like that of a human creature in the greatest agony, succeeded with a broken noise, resembling words half expressed, and then a broken sigh again. Stepping back, Lord! (thought I to myself) where am I got, into what enchanted place have I plunged myself, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... I was puzzled. Ideala's variableness was all on the surface, and I felt sure that this sudden change, which looked like ease after agony, meant ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... witnesses, that there are pleasures which seem only and are not, and there are others again which have great power and appear in many forms, yet are intermingled with pains, and are partly alleviations of agony and distress, both ...
— Philebus • Plato
... woman shrank before the storm of passionate sorrow. Then she braced herself to bear it, for she realized that it was the flood which must inevitably follow the breaking down of the dykes that for months had pent in the seas of a daily and hourly agony such as a weaker soul than that of ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... future, the pen fell from my hand; I recoiled with horror; the contrast was more than I could bear. These were terrific moments; I had already felt them, but never with such intense susceptibility as then. It was agony. This I attributed to extreme excitement of the passions, occasioned by expressing them in the form of letters, addressed to persons to whom I ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... gratitude to God for having made her known to him. Helen would believe him, Helen would understand everything—and nothing else really mattered. It was curious how the thought of Helen, which had been agony an hour ago, now filled him with ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that agony; though why was beyond my comprehension. I descended cautiously to the lower regions, and landed in the back-kitchen, where a gleam of fire, raked compactly together, enabled me to rekindle my candle. Nothing was stirring except a brindled, grey cat, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... cousin—would help her, would supply the art Mira herself, in her prairie upbringing, only groped for. She would make of the 3-bar-Y a home for the whole Cypress Hills district. Every day of delay was agony. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... For a moment he was back in time, feeling for the water bulbs he should be carrying. Then the incautious movement of his questing fingers brought a sudden stab of raw, red agony and he moaned. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... dragon time to gather himself up, the knight dealt him a blow under the left wing. With a roar of agony, the beast snapped the spear asunder with his claws, and pulled out the head. At that a sea of blood gushed from the wound which would have turned a water-mill, and in his pain and rage flames of fire gushed ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... him that he could have touched her. Her beauty overcame his senses. Forgetting all else, in an agony of love, he was about to clasp her in his arms, but she drew back with a gentle gesture ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... pitiful as death but rarely travels singly. Dear Heaven! how could they tell the broken-hearted man, who wept in such agony beside the wife he had loved so well, of another mighty sorrow that had fallen upon him? Who was there that could break the news to him? The tiny, fair-haired infant had been stolen from their midst. They would have thanked God if it had been lying ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... motionless, then the intolerable agony clutched her throat with an aching sense of suffocation, and she sat up, with nerveless hands lying on the package in her lap. She was prepared for, expectant of the worst, but the details added keener ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... happened already, that a single knight, having to choose between disgrace and death had attacked whole armies? But he felt that he might meet disgrace, and, at that thought, his heart groaned with agony as a wolf howls when it feels ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... tempted to do what he asked of me," she said in conclusion, almost in a whisper. "He was in such fearful agony. You will never know how he has suffered. My heart ached for him. I cannot understand how a good and gentle God can inflict such pain upon one of his creatures. Why should this Christian be crucified? But I must not say such things. Twice I came near to putting ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... dead man was distorted and blackened by the agony of strangulation. The coroner and the jurymen looked at that dead face with wondering, awe-stricken glances. Sometimes a cruel stab, that goes straight home to the heart, will leave the face of the murdered as calm, as the face of a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sleep—and I hope they were successful—cheered the flight of time. He, when he was not catching flies or playing tricks upon his neighbours, gloated with a fixed, truculent eye upon the stages of my agony; and once, when the service was drawing towards a close, he winked at me across ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... present, the living and the dead." This, he says, was "tolerated by Calhoun, because Randolph's ribaldry was all pointed against the Administration, especially against Mr. Clay and me." Again he writes of Randolph: "The rancor of this man's soul against me is that which sustains his life: the agony of [his] envy and hatred of me, and the hope of effecting my downfall, are [his] chief remaining sources of vitality. The issue of the Presidential election will kill [him] by the gratification of [his] revenge." So it was also with W. B. Giles, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... sin got the victory, and he set all the force of his rough nature against the conviction of his conscience. He drank and swore,—was wilder and more brutal than ever. And, one night, when his mother, in the last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet, he spurned her from him,—threw her senseless on the floor, and, with brutal curses, fled to his ship. The next Legree heard of his mother was, when, one night, as he was carousing among drunken companions, a letter was put into his hand. He opened it, and a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... my peace, that she might be gone without making any noise, or else protested that she would make all the world know of it. So with most perfect confusion of face and heart, and sorrow and shame, in the greatest agony in the world I did pass this afternoon, fearing that it will never have an end; but at last I did call for W. Hewer, who I was forced to make privy now to all, and the poor fellow did cry like a child, [and] obtained what I could not, that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... night closed down again, and her agony, sharp or lingering, was blotted out. There was no help possible; no arm that could throw across the three hundred yards that separated her from the cliffs; no swimmer that could carry a rope across those breakers; nor any boat that could, with a ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the ordinary sense, growing old. He was in the very flush and prime of his manhood. I have explained with what feeling and affection he regarded his daughter, and how his daughter regarded him. But for Joel Burns is coming the hour of agony and trial. Reader, if perchance you begin to take some interest in this narrative, do not blame Sarah Burns. Could she oppose the vis naturae? Could she, if she would, battle against that subtle and irresistible ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... down your cheeks, you must look as if nothing was the matter. If the blood should gush from your head by means of the black pin, you must let it gush; if you are uneasy to think of making such a blurred appearance, you must be uneasy, but you must say nothing about it. If, however, the agony is very great, you may, privately, bite the inside of your cheek, or of your lips, for a little relief; taking care, meanwhile, to do it so cautiously as to make no apparent dent outwardly. And, with that precaution, if you even gnaw ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... she drifted, shrieks that rent one's heart while we, spectators, stood frozen at a window which overhung the river at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the slightest effort to save her, but dumbly watching her last supreme agony and her disappearance. A shattered wreck, with no life visible, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is a terrible object, for it suggests a huge terror, the proportions of which are veiled. But it now struck me, for the first time, that there must ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call the eel into a new existence, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... its bewildered pondering over the words that were said to her last night? And the morrow,—she must leave that. Perhaps when it should dawn he would come to her, and call her "little maid," and laugh at her dreadful dream. But now, while it was to-day, she could not think of him without an agony of pain and bewilderment. He was ill, too, and suffering. Oh, she must leave the thought of him alone! Back then to the long yesterdays she traveled, and played quietly, dreamily, with Robin on the green grass beside the shining stream, or sat on the doorstep, her head on Molly's lap, and watched ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... carried into the house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old man's breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and Anastasie were innocent little maidens, before they began "to think for themselves," as he had moaned out in his agony. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... this journey (which consumed several nights and days) the handcuffs were not once removed. The prisoners slept sitting up or falling over one another. They urinated and defecated with the handcuffs on, all of them hitched together. At various times they complained to their captors that the agony caused by the swelling of their wrists was unbearable—this agony, being the result of over-tightness of the handcuffs, might easily have been relieved by one of the plantons without loss of time or prestige. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... hearing her sigh, seeing her wretched effort not to show how unwillingly her kind spirit despised him. The reason for the act—she would ask for that! Rose would not be so philosophic as her mother. She would grasp at every chance to excuse the deed. He cried out against his scheming sister in an agony, and while he did so, encountered Miss Carrington and Miss. Bonner in deep converse. Juliana pinched her arm, whereupon Miss Carrington said: 'You look merry this morning, Mr. Harrington': for he was unawares smiling at the image of himself in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immediately near me I knew little, unless by their cries. Some struggled hard, and died in great agony; but it was not always those whose strength was most impaired that died the easiest, though, in some cases, it might have been so. I particularly remember the following instances. Mr. Wade's servant, a stout and healthy boy, died early and almost without ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned down," he always regarded as a sort of creative agony, marking the origin of the roundhouse and machine-shops, and our connection with the great Halliday railway system of which it made us a part. The street-car project went more easily; and, during the autumn, the geological and manufacturing ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... fierce and raucous and death-telling and terrifying that even the hardened hunters leaped with affright. At the same moment a dark object shot through the air and landed on the back of the creature in the shallow pit. The tiger was abroad! There was a wild bleat of terror and agony, a growl fiercer and shorter than the first hoarse cry of the tiger, and, then, for a moment silence, but only for a moment. Snorts, almost as terrible in their significance as the tiger's roar, came from the marsh's edge. A vast form loomed ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Narcissus? Would he think of inopem me copia fecit, and a dozen more of such expressions, poured on the neck of one another, and signifying all the same thing? If this were wit, was this a time to be witty, when the poor wretch was in the agony of death? This is just John Littlewit in Bartholomew Fair, [Footnote: Jonson's play of that name, act i. sc. i.] who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit. On these occasions the poet should endeavour to raise pity; but instead of this, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... her, and her children are slain before her eyes. The children, already feeling the arrows of the gods, are flying to her for protection. She tries in vain to shield her youngest born beneath her mantle, and turns as if to hide her face with its motherly pride just giving place to despair and agony. The whole group is free from contortion and grandly tragic. The original exists no longer, but copies of parts of the group are found in the Uffizi Gallery ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... which sweeps perennially through a frightful solitude of its own making in the mind of the Gamester; the slowly quickening, but ever quickening, descent of appetite down which the Miser is propelled; the agony and cleaving oppression of grief; the ghost-like hauntings of shame; the incubus of revenge; the life-distemper of ambition ... these demonstrate incontestably that the passions of men, (I mean the soul of sensibility in the heart of man), in all quarrels, in ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... depression of look and tone gave me a momentary insight into the author's heart. He thought, I know, of the agony of mind this book had cost him; of those long months of waiting and their deadly struggle, of the hopes which had made all he passed through seem so well worth while; and the bitterness of the disappointment was no doubt intensified ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... the little lad in Olive Schreiner's "Story of a South African Farm," who, waking at midnight, sees multitudes drifting over the precipice into eternal night, and throws himself on his face on the floor, crying out in the agony of his burdened heart to God to ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... rock, and hung there, her feet resting on the shelving bank. Thirty fathoms down swirled and poured and rolled the waters of the Golden Falls. A fathom above, red in the red light of evening, lowered the pitiless face of Swanhild. Gudruda looked beneath her and saw. Pale with agony she looked up and saw, but ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... sons saw their danger, and the struggle for life became the only consideration. They were as brave, loving boys as ever blessed a mother's heart; and I watched their efforts to escape, with such an agony as only mothers can feel. They were so far off that I could not speak to them; but I could see them closing nearer and nearer to each other, as their little island ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... thought in the Lord's Prayer—"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." He follows that with a scathing arraignment of the cruel servant, who, having been forgiven a debt almost incalculable in amount, refused to forgive a small debt due to him. Even when in agony upon the cross the thought of forgiveness was uppermost in the Saviour's heart and He prayed: "Father, forgive them, for they ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... on Winchester was apprehended, and the terrors of the people rose to agony. They now turned to Washington as their main hope. The women surrounded him, holding up their children, and imploring him with tears and cries to save them from the savages. The youthful commander looked round on the suppliant crowd with a countenance beaming with pity, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... so they were forced to remain. Off she flew; but, however, it happened, before she was aware, she got entangled in a springe of horse-hair, which some boys had set upon a bough. The horse-hair drew itself tightly round her leg, so tightly as though it would cut it in two. That was an agony, a fright! The boys ran to the spot and caught hold of the bird, and that too in no very ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... got much better yet." For even to himself he would not allow the possibility of anything worse than her not being "much better." And yet she had looked very ill that last evening. He thought of it sometimes in the middle of the night, and started up in a sort of agony of fright, feeling as if at all costs he must set off there and then to see her—to know how she was. Often he did not fall asleep again for hours, and then he would keep sobbing and crying out from time to time, "Oh, mamma, mamma!" But there was no ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... even more hopeless a dependence than Ester; and Mr. Ried cried out in the very agony of despair: "What shall we do? Is there ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... for a long time been listening to a sound which had seemed only the natural accompaniment of the drama taking place in his soul, as though some inspired organist were expressing in exquisite music the undercurrent of his agony. Only gradually did he become aware that it arose from the nave of the church, and, turning, his eyes fell upon the bowed head and shoulders of a woman kneeling in one of the pews. She ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... me. From morning to night, as he paced his cell, he groaned dismally: not fitfully but continually. It was like the wail of a dog suffering excruciating agony, only a thousand times more irritating and nerve-racking. Even during the night he groaned, apparently in his sleep. Another day, when similarly paraded beside him, I asked if he would like a piece of black bread. He made no reply, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... windows, all different in their tracery, are of Powell's quarry glass. The alabaster reredos by Philip exhibits in its three medallions the Feeding of the Multitude, the Institution of the Holy Communion, and the Agony in the Garden; and on the E. wall are illuminated, by Castell, of London, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Creed. The pulpit and font are of Painswick stone, with serpentine marble shafts; and ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... Cross, not as if dead, as is the common use, but with a Divine gesture. Raising His face to the Father He seems to say, "Eli, Eli." The body does not hang like a corpse but as if still living, and contorted by the bitter agony of His death. ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... like a barrier staying her feet. Almost involuntarily she paused before a half-open door. It was as though some unseen force compelled her. And, so pausing, there came to her a sound that gripped her like a hand upon her heart—it was the broken whispering of a man in an agony of prayer. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... sprang from the brain of Jupiter fully equipped, so the American Constitution came forth from the hands of its framers complete and, what is of more importance, practically in material matters unchangeable except by the agony of an internecine war or some overwhelming passions. The British Empire, on the other hand, is, as respects its component members, ever in progress and flux. An Anglo-Saxon colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy under the maternal care of a governor, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... agony of his party, Condorcet found shelter in a lodging-house at Paris. There, under the Reign of Terror, he wrote the little book on Human Progress, which contains his legacy to mankind. He derived the leading idea ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the eye, so gracious in their gentle doings, were not made to belabour men's faces. The moment the deed was done, Eleanor felt that she had sinned against all propriety, and would have given little worlds to recall the blow. In her first agony of sorrow she all but begged the man's pardon. Her next impulse, however, and the one which she obeyed, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... about the War, or about Field Ambulances and Hospital Work, and do not want to see any of these things "across a temperament." For the Solid Facts and the Great Events they must go to such books as Mr. E. A. Powell's "Fighting in Flanders," or Mr. Frank Fox's "The Agony of Belgium," or Dr. H. S. Souttar's "A Surgeon in Belgium," or "A Woman's Experiences in the Great ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... had been forced by his master to swallow some, and had died in great agony. Thus it was proved that Rasputin and the camarilla had, on the very night of the outbreak of war, plotted to sweep off at one blow our most famous Russian generals, and leave our country practically without any military leaders of experience ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... produced the most violent effect my nature had so far experienced. The bitter separation of my mother's death I had thought the measure of all anguish. Now an agony at separation from my Divine Mother was an indescribable torture of the spirit. I ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... was something far different from this, it was the birth-throes of the divine. They suffer, because in them the Word is made flesh, and at Gethsemane, as under the olive-trees of Greccio, they are in agony "because ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Hugh. But she knew that she should fail. And Rachel would triumph over her. Women always did over a defeated rival. Lady Newhaven had not gone. The frightful injustice of it all wrung Lady Newhaven's heart to the point of agony. To see her own property deliberately stolen from her in the light of day, as it were, in the very market-place, before everybody, without being able to raise a finger to regain him! It was intolerable. For she loved Hugh as far as she was capable ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... as a slender, graceful, womanly shape came noiselessly in and appeared by the lieutenant's side, quivering, shaking in an agony of shame and misery and nervousness, the lonely patient threw himself over towards the wall, and burying his distorted face in his arms, burst into a passion of tears, the attendant meantime slinking ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... father's fortitude to sustain the blow, with the added agony of self-reproach that he himself had been unwittingly the cause of it. Had he not sent old Peter into the house, the child would not have been left alone. Had he kept his eye upon Phil until Peter's return the child would not have strayed away. He had neglected his child, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... of pain. Instinctively Dave moved his legs higher and clamped them tighter. The yell rose again, became a scream of agony. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the hammock itself in the schooner's waist, and Charlie was made as comfortable as possible therein. They could do but little for him, however; and he was taken from time to time with spells of coughing that racked him with a dreadful agony. At length one noon, just after Moran had taken the sun and had calculated that the "Bertha" was some eight miles to the southwest of San Diego, she was surprised to hear Wilbur calling her sharply. She ran to him, and found him standing in the waist ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... can't be anything but happy when I think of the two horrible tragedies that have been averted. For seven minutes, while the doctor was penned in that blazing third floor, I lived through the agony of believing them both gone, and I start awake in the night trembling ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... delight in the fact that he could quickly and easily set the wrong right, for he was one of the trustees. He saw all this, and yet—and yet—he went away a very unhappy and perplexed man, for he had seen something else—he had seen a woman's agony and despair. Sandy Wilson possessed the very softest soul that had ever been put into a big body. He never could bear to see even a dog in pain. How then could he look at the face of this girl which, all in a moment, under his ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... were going to make an offering with me, and perform some magic; which I still believed they dealt in. As the waves were very high I thought the Ruler of the seas was angry, and I expected to be offered up to appease him. This filled my mind with agony, and I could not any more that night close my eyes again to rest. However, when daylight appeared I was a little eased in my mind; but still every time I was called I used to think it was to be killed. Some time after this we saw some very large fish, which I afterwards ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... set out on foot for the country. Delighted as he was with his sale of the business, he was not quite easy in his mind as to the payment. To the throes of the vendor, the agony of uncertainty as to the completion of the purchase inevitably succeeds. Passion of every sort is essentially Jesuitical. Here was a man who thought that education was useless, forcing himself to believe in the influence of education. He was ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... stopped. As he came out from the shadows of the trees, she saw that he was of Alessandro's height. She quickened her steps, then suddenly stopped again. What did this mean? It could not be Alessandro. Ramona wrung her hands in agony of suspense. An almost unconquerable instinct urged her forward; but terror held her back. After standing irresolute for some minutes, she turned to walk back to the house, saying, "I must not run the risk of its being a stranger. If it is ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... she prayed for Ben, with what an agony of deep-felt intercession did she plead for Thomas Acton, that own only brother of hers, just a year the younger to endear him all the more, her playmate, care, and charge, her friend and boisterous protector. The many sorrowing hours she had ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... as I supposed, at hand. I felt the dog moving his jaws higher up my leg, as if he evidently was about to pull me to the ground, while the pain he inflicted almost paralysed me. I certainly was no coward, but I shrieked in my agony. In another moment he would have mastered me, when, by the faint light which came through the door of the room above, I saw a dark figure spring down the steps. The dog let go his hold of me to fly at the new-comer but was met by the point of a sharp dagger, which ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bird, compassionately, as the woman slowly unclosed her large, dark eyes, and looked vacantly at her. Suddenly an expression of agony crossed her face, and she sprang up, saying, "O, my Harry! ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... time, all was in readiness for a new start, and luckily provisions from the reductions on the Parana arrived. So they embarked again, and on the journey a raft in which a woman and two children were sitting upset, to Montoya's agony, as he knew that 'in that river there are fish that the people call culebras,* which have been seen to swallow men entire, and throw them out again with all their bones broken as if it had been done with stones.' ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... with horrific despair, the premature destruction of his indulged hopes; sighs deeply at the thoughts of home; with aching heart, thinks of the cherished friends his streaming eyes will never more behold in an agony of soul dwells upon the faithful affection of an adored wife, who will never again repose her drooping head upon his manly bosom; grows wild with the appalling remembrance of beloved children, his wearied arms will never more encircle with parental fondness; then sinks for ever, the unhappy victim ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... if there isn't a little human pity in him for a fellow-being in agony—to end my suspense and know whether or not he means to ruin me and my happiness and my ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... raised his eyebrows incredulously. As they left the city, the bells of all the churches were tolling for the martyred Archbishop. And not for him alone was there mourning and lamentation through the city: death and agony were everywhere; in some of the streets, each house was a hospital, and many a groan and cry of mortal pain was uttered through that fair summer-day. Louis, in a low voice, reminded Isabel that, on this same ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to person visiting the Hall. There was universal, and as she was compelled to see, honest admiration of the host. Not a soul had a suspicion of his cloaked nature. Her agony of hypocrisy in accepting their compliments as the bride of Sir Willoughby Patterne was poorly moderated by contempt of them for their infatuation. She tried to cheat herself with the thought that they were right and that she was the foolish ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... terrified, and cast himself on the ground in an agony of remorse and prayer. It seemed to him as if no punishment or penance could atone for such deception and ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... centennial poem which, as the "Psalm of the West", was published in "Lippincott's Magazine", June, 1876, and for which he received $300. "By the grace of God," he writes to Bayard Taylor, April 4, 1876, "my centennial Ode is finished. I now only know how divine has been the agony of the last three weeks, during which I have been rapt away to heights where all my own purposes as to a revisal of artistic forms lay clear before me, and where the sole travail was of choice out of multitude." This poem was written with the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... and dark—a wrack sails from the west. Peace, peace, Banshee—"keening" at every window. The storm did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks. Peace, be still! Oh, a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice; but when the sun returned, his ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Her eyes were full of agony, and she sought to free her imprisoned hand. "Oh, hush! I beg of you, hush! You—you hurt me so. I will not permit you to speak such words. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... you and myself the misery of an interview. It must be agonising to you, and there would be dishonour as well as pain to me, in witnessing that agony. If, as I fully believe, you have been hitherto blind to the injustice of your connecting yourself with me, from a sense of duty and expediency, when you had not a first genuine love to give, I think you will see it now; and I pity your suffering in the discovery. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... an agony of haste. He heard his footsteps on the leaf carpet, saw the crazy flickerings of the light through the trees, and had a sudden intense desire to follow. But he paused, curious, mastering his fear. And then the outline of the clearing came slowly to his ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... a year the poor archbishop died of despair, not before he had gnawed his own arms in his agony. ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to consciousness. Clasping her child to her bosom, in an agony of pitying love and hopeless sorrow, again and again she cried: "Oh! God of Love! But our ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... expecting some answering voice, as distinct and tangible as his own. But nothing broke the black silence that blanketed him in from the rest of all the world and all its living things. The sweat of agony came out on his face; his body hung forward, relaxed ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... able t wander about at all hours with the acquaintances her husband did not even know by name, and Julian had no longer the strength even to implore her to have pity on him. He absence racked him with nervous fears; her presence tortured him to agony. Weakness in him had reached a criminal degree. Once or twice he had all but made up his mind to flee secretly, and only let her know his determination when he had gone; but his poverty interposed such obstacles that he ended by accepting them as excuses for his hesitation. The mere thought of ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... to repeat the stroke, when, in an agony of apprehension at the imminent danger which threatened the man who had shown me so much kindness, I drew a pistol from my belt, and, thrusting its muzzle into the Frenchman's face, pulled the trigger. The man flung up his arms and ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled days of sickness and distrust—days of an overshadowing fear—days of preparation for something that was to be prevented, that WAS prevented, with mortal agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have been—she dared not say HAD been—and wondered. It was six years ago; if it had lived, it would have been as old as Carry. The arms which were folded loosely around the sleeping child began to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... speak of the accident before. He was carried in a dying state into the cottage of this Mrs. Jool and her daughter. In my despair, I repeated several times: 'It is my fault; I have killed him, I have killed him.' The daughter knelt beside Blount in the wildest agony; and Harry could just murmur, 'My wife, my poor wife; have pity on her, Miss Francis!' I did not know until this moment that they were secretly married. I promised solemnly I would care for her, and even if I had ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... the struggle into night, Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour; As oft repeated since the birth of light As the strong agony and mortal fight Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross, Whose ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... agony and disappointment had jarred loose men's concentration on the accepted version of the war. Their interests were no longer held by the ordinary official pronouncements, and their attention began to wander, fixing now upon their own ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... when I heard Freddy softly calling me from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone. Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure to pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight per cent. miserable it's hell not to reach par. I was sore all over, and I wanted the balm—the consolation—to be found in the company of those cold old stars, who had looked down in their time ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... naturally, set off his face which, pale and grave as it was, both touched and attracted her ir resistibly. The thought that this splendid creature had once courted her, loved her, kissed her—that he had once been hers, and that she had lost him to another, was a pang like physical agony, mounting from her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at the same time yearn for them with an agony of longing. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... before, I had no wife then, no child, but I remembered who I was, and when I thought I was the last of our race, and that I was in all probability going to spill the little blood that was spared of us in a foreign soil, oh, Constance, I do not think I ever could forget the agony of that moment. Had it been for England, I would have met my fate without a pang. No! Constance, I am an Englishman: I am proud of being an Englishman. My fathers helped to make this country what it is; no one can deny that; and no consideration in the world shall ever induce me ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... to lie in the mere attitude of repose were to do so, in his dressing-room, and thus I had an opportunity of witnessing, far oftener than I wished it, the fearful workings of his mind. His agony often broke out into such fearful paroxysms that delirium and total loss of reason appeared to be impending. He frequently spoke of flying from the country, and bringing with him all the witnesses of the appalling scene ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... assistance of the ship, the sea was running too high: it beat against the unfortunate vessel, and dashed over her. The people on shore thought that they heard cries of distress—cries of those in the agony of death; and they saw the desperate, useless activity on board. Then came a sea that, like a crushing avalanche, fell upon the bowsprit, and it was gone. The stern of the vessel rose high above the water—two people sprang from it together into the sea—a moment, and one of the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... were now too distant to be joined again. In spite, of every possible attention, M. d'Aubray grew continually worse; the marquise was faithful to her mission, and never left him for an hour. At list, after four days of agony, he died in his daughter's arms, blessing the woman who was his murderess. Her grief then broke forth uncontrolled. Her sobs and tears were so vehement that her brothers' grief seemed cold beside hers. Nobody suspected a crime, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... position of Pope Clement XIV. when obliged, against his will and against the interests of the Catholic Church, to sign the bull for the revocation of the charter of the Jesuits. Compulsus feci! compulsus feci! he exclaimed, with mental agony. George IV. could have said the same. He procrastinated; he lay all day in bed to avoid seeing his ministers; he talked of his feelings; he threatened to abdicate, and go to Hanover; he would not violate his conscience; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... done a stroke of work for days on her account, and she cares no more for me than she does for ... for anybody. I won't go and meet her to-morrow, damn her! I'll send a messenger to say I can't come, and then I'll drop her. It isn't worth while going through this ... this agony for a woman who doesn't care a ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... so soon to fail him; he tugged at his bonds till the veins rose on his forehead, but the silk held and the confines of the prison permitted him no room for struggle; then he leaned forward, to press with all his might upon the bricks before him; he grunted, he sweated with the agony of his exertions, but not a brick was stirred, not a crack was made in the mortar that gripped them tighter ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... still, with these sentiments he wanted to die! Oh, how I prayed against his prayer!" she exclaimed, with an effort of enthusiasm, "how I begged of God, to turn a deaf ear to his mad supplication, and lend a willing one to mine. I suffered an agony of suspense, and at last, the crisis came, he struggled with it, conquered it, and got better. So far my prayer was heard, but my trouble was not over, he regained his health and his strength, but he was a changed man otherwise. He hated his past life and the woman ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... describes the fate of Antony Babington and those who suffered with him in 1586. "They were all hanged but for a moment, according to the letter of the sentence, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was still unimpaired, and cut in pieces afterwards with due precautions for the protraction of the pain. If it was to be taken as part of the Catholic creed that to kill a prince in the interests of Holy Church was an act of piety and merit, stern English common ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... quarter, had a different effect. He fell into a state of extreme excitement, and spent the evening and a great part of the night in walking restlessly up and down the room, wrestling with the fears and anxieties which beset us, and now talking fast to himself, now biting his nails in an agony of impatience. In vain I adjured him not to meet troubles halfway; or, pointing to the pallet which he occupied at the foot of my couch, bade him, if he could not devise a way of escape, at least to let the matter rest until ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... though in different forms, in all lands and in all ages. Isaac's heart was rent by the deceit of Jacob, and by the self-will of Esau. Jacob lived to see his own sin repeated in his sons, and he who deceived his father when he was old and blind, suffered for years an agony of grief because he had been falsely told that Joseph, his ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... and creaking at every timber, as if in the last throes of mortal agony; and the manner in which she rolled when she got into the trough of the sea, between the intervals of the following billows, would have dispelled any idea one might have possessed as to her proper angle of stability, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... of blood and the intense agony of his wound, the sufferer was borne to a house hard by, and attended by Dr. Craik, by special order of the commander-in-chief. The doctor gave his patient but feeble hopes of recovery, even with the chances of amputation, when Nash ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... little man, who was behind her, pinched her funny-bone with his lean fingers, and, as everybody knows, that is agony; so Amelia ran on, and tried to get away. But when she went too fast, the dwarf trod on her heels with his long-pointed shoe, and if she did not go fast enough, he pinched her funny-bone. So for once in her life she was obliged ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Grace, soothing her, comforting her as best she could, and petting her as a mother might pet a stricken child. The poor girl was on the verge of prostration, and from hysterical spasms of sobs and weeping passed to stretches of silent, dry-eyed agony which were harder to witness and ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... arranging and rearranging his armour and weapons. Until the furies got hold of him he was a simple soul, content with simple things. The happiest times of his life had been passed here among the inanimate objects which he loved, and here he was now spending the hours of his greatest agony. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... their pans of cooling taffy. There were wild shrieks and a general flight. Neither Jim nor Sam ever knew how he got back to their room, but Jim was overcome with the enormity of his offense, while Sam was in an agony of laughter. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the familiar objects, which are animated, as far as I am concerned, by a kind of animal life. Above all, I am afraid of my own dreadful thoughts, of my reason, which seems as if it were about to leave me, driven away by a mysterious and invisible agony. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of salvation in which she trusted, and received that absolution from her sins which her church considers necessary. Who can say how deeply she had repented of her misdeeds during the many hours of silent agony ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... stupid bewilderment on his face was so intensely comic that both Dick and Torpenhow, still panting and unstrung from a fight for life, had roared with laughter, in which the man seemed as if he would join, but, as his lips parted in a sheepish grin, the agony of death came upon him, and he pitched grunting at their feet. Dick laughed again, remembering the horror. It seemed so ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... first, in the churchyard, or going into it, but the buriers and the fellow that drove the cart, or rather led the horse and cart; but when they came up to the pit they saw a man go to and again, muffled up in a brown Cloak, and making motions with his hands under his cloak, as if he was in great agony, and the buriers immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one of those poor delirious or desperate creatures that used to pretend, as I have said, to bury themselves. He said nothing as he walked about, but two or ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... himself prone upon the ground and was groaning as if in great agony, offering no ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... the city jail and thrown without ceremony upon the cement floor of the "bull pen." In the surrounding cells were his comrades who had been arrested in the union hall. Here he lay in a wet heap, twitching with agony. A tiny bright stream of blood gathered at his side and trailed slowly along the floor. Only an occasional quivering moan escaped his torn lips as ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be killed, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon labourers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these—all the meanness and agony without end, I, sitting, look out upon; See, hear, and ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... of agony was accompanied by a feeling of rage against the cause of it, and in blind fury I fired both barrels of my gun in the direction of the Indians, almost at the same moment as my uncle and the carpenter ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... despite its alliance and championship, the "peculiar institution" was being consumed in the fire of war. It had withered in popular elections, been paralyzed by confiscation laws, crushed by executive decrees, trampled upon by marching Union armies. More notable than all, the agony of dissolution had come upon it in its final stronghold—the constitutions of the slave States. Local public opinion had throttled it in West Virginia, in Missouri, in Arkansas, in Louisiana, in Maryland, and the same ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... screaming inwardly with the excitement, glee, and agony of his position, entered the hotel, wrote a hasty note to Ethelberta and despatched it by hand, looked to his dress and appearance, ordered a carriage, and in a quarter of an hour was being driven towards the Hotel Beau Sejour, whither his note ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... after nightfall for fear of encountering him. He shot a man on horseback in open daylight; a boy saw him commit the crime, and was the means of his identification and conviction. It is the belief in the district that Whitfield was gibbeted alive, and that he hung for several days in agony, and that his cries were heartrending, until a mail-coachman passing that way put him out of his misery by ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... things, and to make the most of them. The universe is to me a grand spectacle that fills me with awe and wonder and joy, and with intense curiosity. I have had no such religious burden to bear as my fathers did—the conviction of sin, the struggle, the agony, the despair of a soul that fears it is lost. The fear of hell has never troubled me. Of sin in the theological sense, the imputed sin of Adam's transgression, which so worried the old people, I have not had a moment's concern. That ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... vegetable detritus thus detached could not have been much, if at all, less than half a mile in extent. It came surging and hurling down— trees and roots and rocks and mud intermingling in a chaos of grand confusion, the great cable-like creepers twining like snakes in agony, and snapping as if they were mere strands of packthread; timber crashing; rock grinding, sometimes bursting like cannon shots, and the whole plunging into the water and raising a great wave that swept the alligators from the mud-flats, and swallowed up the reeds and ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... part of it," she said. "It doesn't seem strange at all. It seems as if I had been wanting to hear your voice—as if I had known of you all my life——" She tried to suppress her coughing, and he was in agony during the paroxysm. The nurse came hurrying out, and while he waited at one side Clement felt that if he could have taken her by the hands he could have prevented it. It was a singular conviction, but it was most definite, and had a peculiar air ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... on the tongue of the victim and effectually restrained her from using it. Sometimes the iron tongue was embellished with spikes so as to make the movement of the human tongue impossible except with the greatest agony. Imagine the poor wretch with her head so encaged, her mouth cut and bleeding by this sharp iron tongue, none too gently fitted by her rough torturers, and then being dragged about the town amid the jeers of the populace, or chained to the pillory in ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... be, presently, without startling results. In the darkness of the street the picture suddenly grew distinct on the screen of the rector's mind, the face of the banker subtly drawn with pain as he had looked down on it in compassion; the voice with its undercurrent of agony: ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whom he had known, admired, and loved, threw him into a series of paroxysms of rage, but nothing upset him. In hearing of the death of Napoleon, he swore that he would eat the heart of England; the slow agony of the pale and interesting heir of the Empire, inspired him with a passion to tear the vitals out of Austria. When the drama was over and the curtain fell on Schoenbrunn, he dashed away his tears and said: "It is well. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... into time To light and burn and know itself a fire; Yet doomed—ah, fate of the fulfilled desire!— To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime Of living glorious in the denser air Of our material earth. A strange despair, An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet And tender as an unpassionate caress, Filled me ... Oh laughter! youth's conceit Grown almost conscious of ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... anguish of that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman's life. Only from three years of loneliness would it be possible to draw strength to speak of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony, monsieur, usually ends in death; but this—well, it was the agony of death with no tomb to end it. Oh! I ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... breezes pause and die, Letting the rose-leaves fall: But the solemn oak-tree sigheth, Thick-leaved, ambrosial, With an ancient melody Of an inward agony, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... this frightful week changed everything. Oh! why, why, why did you ever come?' She threw back her pale face, biting her lip, and even in that deepening gloom her small pearly teeth glimmered white; and then she burst into sobs and an agony of tears. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sightless, nor did know That I had ears until I heard the cry As of a mighty man in agony: "How long, Lord, shall I lie thus foul and slow? The arrows of thy lightning through me go, And sting and torture me—yet here I lie A shapeless mass that scarce can mould a sigh." The darkness thinned; I saw a thing below, Like sheeted ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... in a way that I marvel at, through such agony as I had not conceived. I now look at Anne, and wish she were well and strong; but she is neither; nor is papa. Could you now come to us for a few days? I would not ask you to stay long. Write and tell ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... making her his wife. So time slipped away, without his taking any precautions on the subject; and now it was too late. Immersed in debt as he was, the law did not allow him to dispose of anything without consent of creditors; and he owed ten thousand dollars to Mr. Grossman. Oh, agony! sharp agony! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various |
