"Agonising" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... objurgating and pleading with the spirits, who, she said, were vexing her child which had convulsions. "Observe," said the Doctor in his impressive way, "these were distinctly prayers, appeals for mercy, agonising protests, but there was no praise, no love, no thanks, no confession of sin." I said, considering the underlying idea, I did not see how that could be, thinking of the thing as they did, and the Doctor and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... dreams that he had entertained, the visions of gay things which he had suffered the enchanter Imagination to call forth from the former obscurity of his fate, were all dispelled by the words that he had just heard spoken; and everything dark, and painful and agonising, was spread out around him in its stead. He was as one who, having fallen asleep in a desert, has dreamt sweet dreams, and then suddenly wakes with the rising sun, to find nothing but arid ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... delights, whether their delightfulness would not seem heartless as laughter in a house of mourning to this woman whose delight lay in a grave, and if they were sorrows, whether coming to a woman who had wept so much they would not extort some last secretion more agonising ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... his ball for some time in agonising indecision before he finally drove off. A cloud of sand rose; the ball was nowhere to be seen, and, taught by experience, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... dying like animals before they can reach the ambulance station, while somewhere, far away, a woman with longing in her heart is dreaming beside an empty bed. All those are sick who fail to hear the moaning, the gnashing of teeth, the howling, the crashing and bursting, the wailing and cursing and agonising in death, because their ears are filled with the murmur of everyday affairs. These blind and deaf ones are sick, not I. Sick are those dumb beings whose soul can give voice neither to compassion nor ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... (continued the renegade, mournfully), where I remained for many hours. At last I rose in a frenzy quite indifferent as to life or death. I went on deck, where I found my crew much in the same condition, from their agonising thirst; but I mocked them, and laughed at the smooth expanse of water, which, far as the eye could reach, was not rippled by the slightest breeze, and turned my eyes up in derision to the sun, who poured down his vertical streams of light and heat, as if he would consume us with his powerful ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... these dark solitudes, quite overwhelming to a youth of Dick's temperament; his heart began to sink lower and lower every day, and the utter impossibility of making up his mind what to do became at length agonising. To have turned and gone back the hundreds of miles over which he had travelled would have caused him some anxiety under any circumstances, but to do so while Joe and Henri were either wandering about there or in the power of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... demands it. I depart myself to-morrow. And now that we're recovering our tone I daren't be left with such a houseful of men on my hands any longer. While we were tearing our hair over poor Kitty's possible demise, and agonising as to the uncertain sex of the baby, it did not matter. But now even that dear creature, Saint Julius, is beginning to pick up, and looks less as if his diet was mouldy peas and his favourite plaything a cat-o'-nine-tails. Scourge?—Yes, of course, but ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... up, sending an agonising shoot of pain through my leg, and hastened to meet her. Dumps, as if jealous of me, sprang wildly on before, and danced round his mistress ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... his wig elegantly, took up and minutely examined his crowbar, and casting first a coxcomb look at the breathless spectators, brought the bar into the air with a flourish, and down with a crash on the right thigh of the poor prisoner. The agonising cry of the helpless man was drowned in a tremendous outburst of applause from the crowd. When he had been disposed of in each of his four limbs, Bec was treated in the same manner. Then the assistants, seizing Hugues, threw him on the cross, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... in fact will make all the difference between minuteness and subtlety or refinement; for a small or trivial effect may in given circumstances imply the operation of a great power. Stillness may be the result of a blow too powerful to be resisted; silence may be imposed by feelings too agonising for utterance. The minute, the trifling and insipid is that which is little in itself, in its causes and its consequences; the subtle and refined is that which is slight and evanescent at first sight, but which mounts up to a mighty sum in ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... with pain. He had been shot through one hand, and there is no more agonising injury. He ran blindly, and as it chanced almost in a ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... in the early records of the Lower Murray (between New South Wales and Victoria), and was quoted long since. A number of blacks died in agonising convulsions. Some thirty had succumbed, before a dear old German doctor, who wandered up and down the river, a loved and welcome guest at every station, happened along when a gin was stricken. He diagnosed strychnine poisoning. The greatest ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... was talk of their being married in a year or so. But the exposure of a bitter winter's night, risked in the struggle across one of the bleakest flats of the district to carry the Sacrament to a dying parishioner, had brought on a peculiar and agonising form of neuralgia. And from this pain, so nobly earned, had sprung—oh! mystery of human fate!—a morphia-habit, with all that such a habit means for mind and body. It was discovered by the poor fellow's brother, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was the end! With agonising shriek He turned and fled, the spectral perspiration Dewing his brow and coursing down his cheek; Fled, and was lost to man's investigation (For full discussion of his little tricks See Psychical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... far as for the convicted persons to give Drafts of Exchange, to be honoured by their Agents in London, so soon as word came from the Plantations that they had been placed in Tolerable Servitude, instead of Agonising Slavery. For although there was then, as there is now, a convenient Fiction that a Felon's goods became at once forfeit to the Crown, I never yet knew a Felon (and I have known many) that felt ever so little difficulty in keeping ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... over it, tears—tears, how human!—fell from his eyes like rain! And the little one smiled through the tears that bathed its cheeks! Ah, with what happy tears we welcome the stranger into our sorrowing world! With what agonising tears we dismiss the stranger back to the angels! Unselfish joy; but how ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Narrows, Evan thought he heard one of the sliding doors squeak, and his heart leaped. Jumping up he flattened himself against the deck house. There was an agonising pause. If only he dared peep around the side. Then Corinna ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... watching for them at the door—heard the landlady's cousin wailing, "Lil! Lil!"—and again plunged under, arms wide and eyes staring, and heart bursting with despair. Everything in him seemed bursting—an agonising sensation—as his overstrained lungs collapsed, and the power of his strong limbs failed him; then everything seemed to break away and let in the floods of Lethe with a rush—confusion and forgetfulness and a whirl of dreams, settling to a ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Irish Daily Mass Crusade; Total Abstinence; devotion to the Passion; devotion to the agonising Heart ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... took courage to approach, and form a second circle outside. The most furious despair now took possession of the souls of the devoted Pequodees: and their terrible war-cry was heard resounding high, and mingled with the agonising yells of the women and children, and helpless aged men, who were expiring amid the flames. Many of the warriors climbed the palisades, and leaped down among their foes, hoping to escape; but they were quickly ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... discovered that it was a stringent and trustworthy emetic that he had swallowed. His audience had mistaken his signs of gratitude for efforts on his part to explain to them that he was poisoned, or, at all events, was suffering from acute and agonising indigestion, and had done what they could to ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... his side, and with her face upturned and her hands clasped together, she now implored him to stop. She uttered no dissent, she made no protestations; but she beseeched him, by their long and tender love, by all the common ties which bound them together, to cease to speak on a subject which was so agonising. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... your humour as you patrol the reefs, it is liable to be changed in a flash into clashing tints by inadvertent contact with a warty ghoul of a sea-urchin, a single one of whose agonising spines never fails to bring you face to face with one of the vividest realities of life. A slim but shapely mollusc known as Terebellum or augur, to mention another conceited little disturber of your meditations, stands on its spire in the sand, and screws as you tread, cutting, a delightfully ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... completely throw aside those traditions. Within the individuality itself of such persons, goes on, in an intensified form, that very struggle, conflict, and disco-ordination which is going on in society at large between its different members and sections; and agonising moments must arise, when the individual, seeing the necessity for adopting new courses of action, or for accepting new truths, or conforming to new conditions, will yet be tortured by the hold of traditional convictions; and the man or woman ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... full on fancy's gushing eye The mournful image of Parthenia's fate, That hour, O long beloved and long deplored! When blooming youth, nor gentlest wisdom's arts, Nor Hymen's honours gather'd for thy brow, Nor all thy lover's, all thy father's tears Avail'd to snatch thee from the cruel grave; Thy agonising looks, thy last farewell 200 Struck to the inmost feeling of my soul As with the hand of Death. At once the shade More horrid nodded o'er me, and the winds With hoarser murmuring shook the branches. Dark As midnight storms, the scene of human things Appear'd before me; deserts, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... began to fear that she would be utterly unable to get to the house. Once when she was sitting, panting on the bank by the road-side, one of the labouring peasants recognised her—saw she was ill—and offered to get her a country car. Oh, what an agonising struggle she made to answer the man cheerfully, when she assured him that she was quite well—that she was only sitting there for her pleasure—that she required no assistance, and that she should walk home directly. The man well ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... again. "Calm yourself. That's enough. What are you afraid of? Surely you know me?" said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, trying to soothe her; but it was long before he could succeed. She gazed at him dumbly with the same look of agonising perplexity, with a painful idea in her poor brain, and she still seemed to be trying to reach some conclusion. At one moment she dropped her eyes, then suddenly scrutinised him in a rapid comprehensive glance. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... quick breathing nearer and nearer, and then he felt her hand on his arm. She had crept closer, involuntarily, he could believe, but drawn by the instinct to be saved. He felt his own heart beating thickly, with sorrow for her, an agonising ruth that she should have to sue to him. But he spoke sharply, not looking at her, his eyes ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... wholly out of the hearts of men. Still the quest of the Holy Grail exercises its deathless fascination, but the seekers no longer raise eyes to heaven, nor search over land and sea, for they know that it waits them in the suffering at their doors, that the consecration of the holiest is on the agonising masses of the poor and the despairing, the cup is crimson with ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... seconds of agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had ceased to move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool from the leg of the chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than any cat, I tiptoed toward the chair—and, indeed, at that moment I blessed the sudden yowl ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... his own life looked to Joseph when he woke! Hesitations and agonising doubts of his betrothed's purity had vanished with the night, and, instead of the dread that her child would be the offspring of shame, had come a divinely given certainty that it was 'a holy thing.' In the rush of the sudden revulsion, all that was involved would not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... while the ship of Theseus is seen departing in the distance. It was found necessary that three Ariadnes, similarly costumed, and identical in appearance, should lend their aid to accomplish this thrilling termination. Mrs. Mowatt, as Ariadne the first, paced the shore, and received the agonising intelligence of the desertion of Theseus. A ballet-girl, as Ariadne the second, climbed the rocks of the Island of Naxos, reaching the highest peak to catch the last glimpse of the vanishing vessel. The third Ariadne was a most lifelike lay figure, which, on a given signal, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... me then, mother; and have you no kiss to spare for me?" said the playful voice of a boy enveloped in a sailor's blue shell-jacket; and then it was Walter's turn to feel in that long embrace what is the agonising ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... His sufferings were agonising, but he was easy between the fearful convulsions, and at the end of the third day after he had reached home, whither his companions had succeeded in conveying him, he ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... And thus we lay agonising until the moon rose and then, by common consent, we stumbled on, seeking our great desire. And now as I went, my mouth parched, my tongue thickening to the roof of my mouth, I must needs think of plashing brooks, of bubbling rills, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... that it was filled by our little party of six; yet I felt there another presence which none of us could see—a grey ghost agonising for his sins, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... she turned that way? What mocking fiend had driven her back against her will? The thought maddened her, but she could not move. The passionate love in her heart anchored those weary feet. She flung up her arms towards a window through which a light shone dimly—the window of his room, and an agonising cry of farewell broke from her. It was his name that fled from her lips like a burning arrow, and reached her husband in the gloomy stillness of ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... to see a day into the future, we might have spared ourselves this agonising, for all our doubts and fears were suddenly dispersed in an entirely unexpected manner. Happily these interior problems are not infrequently resolved by ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Baronet to Baronet that there must be a line somewhere. Bishops as a rule say but little to each other, and now were afraid to say anything. The Church, which had been, which was, so truly beloved;—surely that must be beyond the line! And yet there crept through the very marrow of the party an agonising belief that Mr. Daubeny would carry the bulk of his party with him into the lobby of the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... hours that Prussian was agonising in the corn. Either he was calling out or some one was ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... slow in advancing to the relief of starving, agonising Paris, there were sufficient reasons for his delay. Most decidedly and bitterly, but loyally, did he denounce the madness of his master's course in all his communications to that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... them fled the woman, terror lending her an incredible speed which agonising physical pain augmented. She dived under horses, she squeezed through vehicles, she twisted and turned, caring naught for the native drivers, who, indifferent to the daily sufferings of their wretched little horses, lashed ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... And had she only known it, she had never before looked so pretty as she did that night. This also she did not know, that her mother, catching a sudden picture of her under the candle-light, felt a deep pang of almost agonising envy. She, making her last desperate bid for love, was old and haggard; the years for her could only add to that age. Her gambler's throw was foredoomed before she had ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... of explosives, all their methods of making toxic gases— in fact, all the military secrets that made them so terrible. This clause was a very just one. It is not fair that when we have gone through this agonising struggle, and when we are still suffering from the consequences of all the wealth of knowledge and ingenuity which they employed for their infamous purposes— it is not fair, I say, to allow them to keep these ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... clash of arms, the inevitable volley of oaths, the call for help, the final moan of anguish. They were the ever-recurring brief tragedies which told of denunciations, of domiciliary search, of sudden arrests, of an agonising desire for life and for freedom—for life under these same horrible conditions of brutality and of servitude, for freedom to breathe, if only a day or two longer, this air, polluted ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... "I shall never regret having kept my promise! Indeed, I never felt tempted to break it, except one day, when, in the old church, I met your father face to face. Never shall I forget the agonising longing I felt to throw myself at his feet and tell him all, and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... she was Miss Goodwin. While she was ringing the bell I did all I could to increase the shabby squalor of your room. She was shown in here, and I introduced myself as your friend. We chatted. I drew an agonising picture of your struggle for existence. You were brave, talented, and unsuccessful. Though you went often hungry, you had a plucky smile upon your lips. It was a meritorious bit of work. Miss Goodwin cried a good deal. She is charming. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... congregation if they would not leave the responses to a paid choir. "Lor, bless yer," as Betsy Jane Ward would say, a choir will sing, anything put before them if it is set to music; and they think no more of getting through all that sad business about personal sinfulness, agonising repentance, and a general craving for forgiveness, than the odd woman did when she used to kiss her cow and say it was delicious. There was once a period when all Parish Church goers made open confession joined audibly in the prayers, and said "Amen" as if ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... move, and a great cry of agony rose to his throat—not of physical pain, though that was great too, but the wild, agonising shriek of mental torment, of disappointment and wrath and misery, greater ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... worse beyond the hills, Where flashing gun and culverin were heard; There the unhappy bore their heavy cross, And suffered, more than elsewhere, agonising pain, Were killed and strangled, tumbled into wells; 'Tween Penne and Fumel the saddened earth was gorged. Men, women, children, murdered everywhere, The hangman even stopped for breath; While Blaise, with heart of steel, dismounted ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... feet, pale as death, overwhelmed with awe. To have the answer of his prayers, the agonising of his soul for years, answered in the hour of utter defeat thrilled him with a sense of solemnity he had never felt. The man was not a man. He was the messenger swift and beautiful from the courts of heaven, for whose coming his eyes had long strained and ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the housekeeper, "that when he was agonising in prayer it came into his mind to wait until August this year. He hasn't any assurance what it may have meant; but that may come later, and p'r'aps the days may be told him; and he's awaiting, and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... scornfully admitted his share in the outrage, and scoffed at the agonising grief of the poor old man. A challenge followed, as a matter of course, and a meeting was arranged for the following morning; but when that morning dawned, the French officer was found dead in bed, stabbed to the heart. The ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... In this agonising situation a horseman was seen approaching from the opposite side of the road. Only with the utmost difficulty could he force his way through the densely packed mob. Indeed, they would not have stirred a stump had he not kept on waving in his hand a piece of paper, and shouting incessantly ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... was the chief of what Bart himself saw. That unquenchable instinct in a man's heart that if he had only tried a little harder he would certainly have attained to righteousness gave the lie to his sense of agonising struggle, with its desperate, rallies of courage and sinkings of discouragement, gleams of self-confidence, and foul suspicion of self, suspicion even as to the reality of his own effort. All this was in the region of unseen spirit, almost as much unseen to ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... returning composure, drove her to desperation. A conviction that the Mountain and the cakes were delicious, an amiable desire that the palate of her spoiled child should be gratified, some reasonable maternal anxiety that after so long and fatiguing a drive he in fact needed some refreshment, and the agonising consciousness that all her own physical pleasure at the moment was destroyed by the mental sufferings she endured at having quarrelled with her son, and that he was depriving himself of what was so agreeable only to pique her, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... shrill, sometimes deep; and he abandoned himself to laughter at an absurd story or jest as completely as anyone I have ever seen. Rose was an excellent mimic, and Father Payne used to fall into agonising paroxysms of laughter at many of his representations. But he always said that laughter was with him a social mood, and that he had never any inclination to laugh when ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said, 'You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars, and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.' Jim, Jim Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that girl's heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought surrounded the sign of Randolph & Randolph. I did not see it, Jim, but I did see myself, and I didn't feel proud of the picture. My ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... anguish I feel at the death of our sweet Annie. To know that I shall never see her again on earth, that her place in our circle, which I always hoped one day to enjoy, is forever vacant, is agonising in the extreme. But God in this, as in all things, has mingled mercy with the blow, in selecting that one best prepared to leave us. May you be able to join me in saying 'His will be done!' ...I ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... I stayed at the school, and, in the absence of companionship and the sedative of work, suffered such agonising depression as led to physical illness, until one evening, after wandering aimlessly in the city, I fell fainting as I tried to reach the porch of a great church. When I recovered consciousness, I found ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... could have bitten off his tongue, and then his heart seemed to stand still, for there suddenly arose a shriek from the lagoon—a shriek that was terrible in its agonising intensity; there was the sound of splashing, and the water became ablaze with a beautiful lambent phosphorescent light, while there was an outburst of yelling and shouting on board the praus, accompanied by tremendous splashing, as if ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... to his heart with the sudden movement of one who feels there an agonising spasm—his cheek, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some slight protection. Keeping close in the shadow of this creature's frowzy skirts, she had not so feared and dreaded those light eyes of Bough's, and the padding, following footsteps had kept aloof. As the woman passed her now, a rage of unspeakable, agonising fear rose in her bosom. She cried out to her, and clutched at her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... is the sound as of the tuning up of a thousand fiddles! I hear the agonising scrape of strings, the squeal of the bows! I have heard it all before at many a concert, but this time it is intensified a thousandfold and penetrates even into my dreams. I imagine I am in a concert hall and spring up wildly with ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... winding-sheet of Edward's race: Give ample room and verge enough The characters of Hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death through Berkley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonising king![5] She-wolf of France,[6] with unrelenting fangs That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee[7] be born who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heaven. What terrors round him wait! Amazement ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... scene. In a hard masterful voice he speaks at length: "Bruennhilde! A suitor is come whom your fire does not alarm! I seek you for my wife; follow me unresistingly." It is all so strange, so like the agonising impossibilities of a dream,—Bruennhilde falls to trembling. "Who are you, dreadful one? Are you a mortal? Do you come from Hella's army of the night?" Still watching her, motionless on his point of vantage, he replies: "A Gibichung am I, and Gunther is the hero's name, whom, woman, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... later," she said, "and there are many diseases which are fatal after protracted suffering of the most agonising description. These we have been spared. The wretch who lingers in torment, visited by some loathsome disorder, would envy us, could he see the comparatively easy manner in which we are ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... this agonising possibility that instead of listening for the striking of the clock, he began to listen for the sound of some passing footstep—the footstep of someone passing by chance who might be sent to the parson ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... room; and although the darkness was intense, his form and features were as clear and as defined as if it were noon-day. Fear would have inclined me to recoil from,—his loved presence to fly towards him. I remained on the spot where I was, choked with agonising sensations. When he had entered the room, the windows and shutters closed of themselves, and the candle was relighted—then I thought it was his apparition, and I fainted on ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and to resect enough of the terminal portions to prevent them again becoming adherent. When this is difficult, a portion may be resected from each of the nerve-trunks at a higher level; and if this fails to give relief, a fresh amputation may be performed. When there is agonising pain dependent upon an ascending neuritis, it may be necessary to resect the corresponding posterior nerve roots within the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... agitates the breast of the man-o'-war's man; in his thoughts is conflict agonising. On either side are pros and cons, requiring calm deliberation; and there is no time to ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... as she had told her husband—the taking of her own life, in a great despair with the world. Seriously she had thought of it; it was an escape perfectly in accord with her morality. The useless and agonising were put out of the world by common consent; the Euthanasia houses witnessed to it. Then why not she?... For she could not bear it!... Then Oliver had come, she had fought her way back to sanity and confidence; and the phantom had ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... "but the mode of your death is in our hands: it rests with us to make it slow or quick, painless or agonising; so ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... (4) a stout unpointed pole or stake set upright in the earth, from which the victim was suspended by a rope round his wrists, which were first tied behind him so that the position might become an agonising one; or to which the doomed one was bound, or, as in the case of ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... darkened chamber of the fine house at Steamingbath, lies on a sofa Honoria Lavington—beautiful no more; the victim of some mysterious and agonising disease, about which the physicians agree on one point only—that it is hopeless. The 'curse of the Lavingtons' is on her; and she bears it. There she lies, and prays, and reads, and arranges her charities, and writes little books for children, full of the Beloved ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... our storm-lashed coast in tempest and in dark, Guardian of homeward-bound Poor JACK, to spread the news of fear, And tell him, battling with the storm, that rescuing hands, though near, Are not made helpless in his hour of agonising need, By ignorance that heeds not, and neglect ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... or was she not going away with Owen to Paris on Thursday night? The agonising question continued at every moment to present itself. Whatever she was doing or saying, she was always conscious of it, and as the time drew near, with every hour, it seemed to approach and menace her. She seemed to feel it beating ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... asking Betty about George. Betty's twin had been away at the time of Radmore's break with Old Place—away in a sense which in our civilised days can only be brought about by one thing, an infectious illness. At the time the agonising debate was going on at Beechfield, he had been in a fever hospital close on a month, and they were none of them to see him for three more weeks. It had been at once a pain and a relief that he should not be there—yet what good could a boy of nineteen ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... agonising thought she sank down on her couch and fell into a faint. In that state she was found by her women, reclining, still as death, with eyes closed, the whiteness of death in her face; and thinking her dead they rushed out terrified, crying aloud and lamenting that the queen ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... days of Egyptian Mummies are past, how dare Mrs. Prodgit require, for the use of my son, an amount of flannel and linen that would carpet my humble roof? Do I wonder that she requires it? No! This morning, within an hour, I beheld this agonising sight. I beheld my son - Augustus George - in Mrs. Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee, being dressed. He was at the moment, comparatively speaking, in a state of nature; having nothing on, but an extremely short shirt, remarkably disproportionate to the length of his usual outer garments. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... of war dealt equal woe and counterchange of death; in even balance conquerors and conquered slew and fell; nor one nor other knows of retreat. The gods in Jove's house pity the vain rage of either and all the agonising of mortals. From one side Venus, from one opposite Juno, daughter of Saturn, looks on; pale Tisiphone rages among the many thousand men. But now, brandishing his huge spear, Mezentius strides glooming over the plain, vast as Orion when, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Norah came stealing out of the room with the news that Lettice had cried all night long, could not be induced to eat, and lay on her bed icy cold and trembling as if with an ague. Miss Carr was too much upset to be able to leave her bed, and Geraldine's straightforward questions were for once agonising to ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... immovable. You can no more clothe the soul in 'perhapses' than a man can make garments out of a spider's web. Religion consists of the things of which we are sure, and not of the things which are probable. 'Peradventure' is not the word on which a man can rest the weight of a crushed, or an agonising, or a sinking soul; he must have 'Verily! verily!' and then he is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... made the usual request, in an authoritative voice, that the team would move on. The team began to obey, but, on feeling themselves free, and the sledge light, they proceeded to the left instead of the right, and, despite the agonising remonstrances of the little boy, began to trot. Then, appreciating doubtless the Eskimo version of "Home, sweet Home," they suddenly went off down-hill ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... souls of mortals—would now partake of all and each in an equal degree with the children of the earth. I would have my bosom torn with the conflicting passions of humanity—be chilled with the horrid doubts of jealousy, and with agonising fears for the duration of the affection which will become a ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... lumbago, as well as from a proud spirit and a broken heart. He had a dread of 'coming to the Workhouse.' Spectral fear which haunts ever the sensitive and poverty-stricken! Unreasonable? Perhaps. But not the less agonising. What comfort may Political Economy and an admirable Poor Law yield ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... cried. "If you are going home now, take my arm," he said, and they walked together along the path leading across the meadow. "You have been fighting a hard and despairing battle, Vera. So much you do not conceal. Are you going to conquer this agonising ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... distressed, and made up his mind that he must go to Luard and tell him that the story was an invention. Though he dreaded humiliation more than anything in the world, he hugged himself for two or three days at the thought of the agonising joy of humiliating himself to the Glory of God. But he never got any further. He satisfied his conscience by the more comfortable method of expressing his repentance only to the Almighty. But he could not understand ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... fairly groaned with impatience and an agonising dread of what was to follow the disclosure to Ellen; but her husband coolly went on with his preparations, which indeed were not long in finishing, and then taking the lamp, he at last went. He had in truth delayed on purpose, wishing the final leave-taking to be ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... stiff, and stretched his limbs to such an extent that we could hear the bones crack. His back became arched, and then he expired with horrible convulsions, which held his limbs stiffened and extended to their utmost limits—truly, the most awful and agonising of deaths, and a torture in the last moments that must have been excruciating—a punishment worse, indeed, than any that man-made law ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... fairer face to look upon,—fairer, perhaps, than her mother's had ever been; but it was less expressive, and in it there was infinitely less capability for anger, and perhaps less capability for the agonising extremes of tenderness. But Kate was taller than her mother, and seemed by her mother's side to be slender. Nevertheless she was strong and healthy; and though she did not willingly join in those longer walks, or expose ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... exceeding awkwardness of my situation, and to realise, too, that if deliverance was to come to me I must bestir myself and do what might be possible to meet it, for to remain passively lashed to that inert piece of drifting wreckage might very well mean a slow and agonising death by starvation. Yet, after all, what could I do? The land was my nearest refuge, and that, I considered, must be at least twenty miles distant, altogether too far to dream of swimming to it, although I rather prided ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... I thought 'the Chinese did both sides at once or one after the other.' With my mind running on baths, I said they probably began on their feet and washed upwards. By the time the misunderstanding had been cleared up, I was thoroughly awake and remained in a hideous and agonising condition of sleepless lassitude for the space of one hour. The tea came sharp at half-past seven, and the shawl rolled up twenty seconds later. I tell you I'm sick of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... came from the Roman sepulchre of an early Christian, and the hand for which it was originally fashioned may have aided in the conquering war of the first Christian emperor; or may have been convulsed in an agonising death, "thrown to the beasts" of the circus, but reposing after death with the first martyrs to ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... to the ground, and crushed out the life and the light of her nature. As she lay there, she longed to die, as she had never longed for anything while she lived, and she would have had small hesitation in killing the heart that beat with such agonising pain in her breast—saving that one thought prevented her. She cared not for revenge any more. What was the life of that cold, cruel thing, the queen, worth, that by taking it, she could gain comfort? But she felt and knew that, before she died, she must see Zoroaster once more, and tell ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Give ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death thro' Berkley's roof that ring, Shrieks of an agonising king! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him wait! Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... would be unshakable; therein lay the pure, upright life which he was absolutely certain of living. What mattered the rest if he alone suffered, if nobody in the world suspected that his heart was reduced to ashes, that nothing remained of his faith, that he was agonising amidst fearful falsehood? His rectitude would prove a firm prop; he would follow his priestly calling like an honest man, without breaking any of the vows he had taken; he would, in due accordance with the rites, discharge his duties as a minister of the Divinity, whom he would praise and glorify ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... have given for now many hundred years their priceless value to the little Book of Psalms ascribed to the shepherd outlaw of the Judean hills, which have sent the sound of his name into all lands throughout all the world. Every form of human sorrow, doubt, struggle, error, sin—the nun agonising in the cloister; the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper shivering over the embers in his hovel and waiting for kind death; the man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations of commerce; the prodigal son starving in the ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... hands and feet at the end of ten weeks, and their faces, especially the eyes and mouth, seemed to be permanently, though slightly distorted. All the men agreed in one particular, that at midday they suffered most—agonising cramps, accompanied by shooting pains in the head and continuous vomiting to the point of exhaustion, these symptoms being very pronounced during the first week or eight days after the fish had ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... if he died thus gloriously, it would have to be before he saw Nina. Better so. If he saw her again he felt that death would be too terrible. With horror he, the descendant of Rajahs and of conquerors, had to face the doubt of his own bravery. His desire of life tormented him in a paroxysm of agonising remorse. He had not the courage to stir a limb. He had lost faith in himself, and there was nothing else in him of what makes a man. The suffering remained, for it is ordered that it should abide in the human body even to the last breath, and fear remained. Dimly he could look into the depths ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... commonly called "Khazuk", is a stout pole pointed at one end, and the criminal being thrown upon his belly is held firm whilst the end is passed up his fundament. His legs and body are then lashed to it and it is raised by degrees and planted in a hole already dug, an agonising part of the process. If the operation be performed by an expert who avoids injuring any mortal part, the wretch may live for three days suffering the pangs of thirst; but a drink of water causes hemorrhage and instant death. This was the case with the young Moslem ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... scene of horror which the sudden conflagration produced in these two ships. The collision in which the fore-top-mast of the Hermenegildo fell on board of the Real Carlos, added to the general dismay; and the agonising screams of the unhappy crews, deserted by their countrymen and allies in that dreadful hour, could not fail to pierce the hearts of the brave conquerors; but to render them any assistance while the hostile flag was flying was impossible. The ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... "vain and fatuous" man, setting his tie straight. "It's absurd and pitiful, my friend, pitiful and absurd, but what's to be done? Homo sum. . . . And I praise Mother Nature all the same for her transmutation of substances. If we retained an agonising memory of toothache and of all the terrors which every one of us has had to experience, if all that were everlasting, we poor mortals would have a bad time of it in ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Miller's to dinner, for the first time. My reception was quite to my mind: from the lady of the house quite flattering. She sometimes hits on a couplet or two, impromptu. She repeated one or two to the admiration of all present. My suffrage as a professional man was expected: I for once went agonising over the belly of my conscience. Pardon me, ye, my adored household gods, independence of spirit, and integrity of soul! In the course of conversation, Johnsorfs Musical Museum, a collection of Scottish songs with the music, was talked ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... rose bright and joyous over this scene of anxiety and pain. On came the vessel flying before the gale, while the seas chased her as if they would fain overwhelm her. It was fearful to see her scud—agonising to know that she was ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... present crisis had stirred a thousand feelings and associations, in Hadria, which had long been slumbering. She seemed to be sent back again, to the days of her childhood. The intervening years were blotted out. She realized now, with agonising vividness, the sadness of her mother's life, the long stagnation, the slow decay of disused faculties, and the ache that accompanies all processes of decay, physical or moral. Not only the strong appeal of old affection, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... went out to the hill, and lay all night wrestling and agonising to be sure whether there was a God. You know he 's just a small farmer, and it seems to me splendid that such a man should give himself to the big problems of the universe. Do you know," and Carmichael turned to the General, who was smoking in great ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... was one of most agonising suspense. Would she or would she not alter her course before observing our signal? The helmsman was not steering quite as steadily as he might have done, and our hearts went into our mouths and a cry of anguish ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Men were carrying out dead bodies from the train; there were already at least fifty corpses laid on the platform, and the tale of dead increased every minute. Others, stricken with the fell disease, were lying on the platform, still alive, but in a state of collapse, or in the agonising cramps of this swift-slaying scourge. There happened to be two white doctors in the train, who did all that was possible for the sufferers, but, beyond the administration of opium, medical science is powerless in cholera ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... dispatch'd the Persian lord; Or like a man that feels a strong disease His shivering members in a moment seize— Such direful throes convulsed the despot's frame. His hands, that veil'd his eyes, confess'd his shame, And mental pangs, more agonising far, In his sick bosom bred a civil war; And hate and anguish, with insatiate ire, Flash'd in his eyes with momentary fire.— Not raging Ocean, when its billows boil; Nor Typhon, when he lifts the trembling soil Of Arima, his tortured limbs to ease; Nor ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... his veranda, awaiting this same judge, annoyed as two boats came in without the expected guest. And never for one instant did he dream that his creature sat closeted with Plank, tremulous, sallow, nearing the edge of cringing avowal—only held back from utter collapse by the agonising necessity of completing a bargain that might save himself from the degradation of the punishment that had seemed inevitable. All day long he sat with Plank. Nobody except those two knew he was there. And after a very long time Plank consented ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... particular poisons; that other poisons are used for suicidal purposes; that the photographer takes cyanide of potassium, the medical man and chemist prussic acid or morphia, the poor man vermin-killer or oxalic acid, or carbolic acid, or some such agonising destroyer of life. And thus, though all poisons lead to the same end—stoppage of the breathing and blood circulation—yet each has its own particular way of sending the soul to eternity. He can therefore often tell the analyst detective how to take ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various |
