"Ecstasy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... experienced it?—that human happiness cannot touch certain heights without drawing the lightning upon itself. Clotilde in the midst of her ecstasy shuddered suddenly and started to her feet. She had just heard a smothered cry, followed by the dull sound of a falling body. She ran, opened the door, and in the center of the adjoining room saw ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... more satisfactory. All the essentials of a well-attested miracle had been complied with. A man was dead, another man had seen the dead man in an ecstasy of prayer, and, to make all complete, refused to testify himself, sending the Bishop as a sort of pious phonograph. No true believer in such a case could doubt, and all went well till it appeared a man from Itatines, charged with a message to the Jesuit college, had passed the night before ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... melancholy face, gazing upward passionately, while he wrestled for her salvation; Philly, looking downward, tracing with a trembling finger the pattern of the beadwork on the ottoman before which she knelt, listened with an inward shiver of dismay and ecstasy. But when they rose to their feet she had nothing to say. He, too, was silent. He went away quite exhausted by his struggle ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... king in ecstasy. "Give them to me at once." And Louis broke the seal of a little letter, inclosing the verses which history has preserved entire for us, and which are more meritorious in intention than in execution. Such as they were, however, the king was ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... as hers once seen is engraved eternally on the memory of its generation. And yet when, in a mood of lyrical and rapt ecstasy, she began her opening song, "In Lichter Waffen Scheine," her face was upon the instant forgotten. She became a Voice—pure, miraculous, all-compelling; and the listeners seemed to hold breath while the matchless melody wove ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... back on the mysterious flight to which they were now bent. After persuasion the man-bird agreed, and Sindbad was carried up into the firmament till he could hear the angels glorifying God in the heavenly dome. Carried away by ecstasy, he shouted praise of Allah into the holy place, and instantly the bird fell to the ground, for they were evil and incapable of praising God. But Sindbad returned to his wife, and she told him how evil were those people, and that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... alike to understand and to act varies at every stage. It is, therefore, useless to give to all the same religious teaching; that which would help the intellectual man would be entirely unintelligible to the stupid, while that which would throw the saint into ecstasy would leave the criminal untouched. If, on the other hand, the teaching be suitable to help the unintelligent, it is intolerably crude and jejune to the philosopher, while that which redeems the criminal is utterly useless to the saint. Yet ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... think if I had yielded to the impulse of my heart, I would have poured out all those protestations of a lover's ecstasy, incongruous here upon this starlit public deck, to a girl I hardly knew. I think, too, she might have received them with a tender acquiescence. The starlight was mirrored in her dark eyes. Misty eyes, with great reaches of unfathomable space in their depths. Yet I felt ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... new life, new energy. The passion of my hatred was stunned by some greater passion. If my dream were indeed true, if the voice were not a mockery, Ruth was not yet married, and she loved me. For hours I lived in blissful ecstasy, the smooth waters were written all over with messages of joy, the sky seemed full of the angels ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... that I had this hoary old tarantula, I had another smaller, coal-black fellow who went into a perfect ecstasy of anger and ferocity every time any one came near him. He would stand on his hind legs and paw wildly with fore legs and palpi, and lunge forward fiercely at my inquisitive pencil. I found him originally in the middle of an entry into a classroom, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Borrow would appear a silly enigma, or a boor. For, when "the Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work," comes that rare time when the spirit—unconsciously worshipping—is uplifted in an ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity the dull eye ever abased to the grime of ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... in her little blue cloak and hood; and going about with the woman was such a pure-hearted thing to do. She danced once or twice that day, striking the tambourine, he remembered; the sound of it seemed to put her in a sort of ecstasy, laughing till her eyes were full of tears, and her tangled hair fell all about her red cheeks. She could not help but do it, he believed, for at other times she was shy, terrified, if one spoke to her; but he wished he had not seen her dance then, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... knowledge that she could make this man—who loved her in spite of everything—at one moment furious with rage or wild with grief, and then an instant afterward plunge him into the rapture of a senseless ecstasy by a word, a smile, or a caress. For such was her power, and she often exercised it mercilessly. Even after the frightful scene that Pascal had witnessed, she had made another appeal to the baron, and he had been weak enough to give her the thirty ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... mother's arms, and only the heavenly Father knows the language she spoke as she crooned over her little one. As the schoolmaster wended his way homeward, cold, hungry, and worn he was buoyant in spirit to the point of ecstasy. But he was chastened, for he had stood upon the Mount of Transfiguration and knew as never before that the mission of the schoolmaster is to find and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Agnes, in an ecstasy of fear and apprehension, in which there mingled some strange troubled gleams of happiness. "Well, then, I will. Ah! I hope ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... wanted to help him forget his troubles—he would see the white drifts overhead shift and change, and there would be the vision of a magnificent man larger and more beautiful than any mortal; and then Larry would hold his breath in ecstasy, while the man's face grew graver and darker, and his strong arm seemed to lift and beckon to something from afar, and then from out a great stack of clouds would break one milk-white one which, when Larry looked closer, would prove to be a colossal ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... answered it, the sleepers sprang to their feet; one pointed, the rest followed his direction with their eyes, and there, upon the edge of the forest, and betwixt two trees, we beheld the figure of a man reaching forth his hands like one in ecstasy. The next moment he ran forward, fell on his knees at the side of the camp, and burst ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... word of God,' and began to read from the pages of his Bible. He read first the story of David and Saul, his great voice trembling with ecstasy. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... everybody spoke at once. "It's almost too good to be true," was Jack's quick exclamation. "What do you suppose the surprise will be?" Norman's eager question. While Mary, clasping her elbow with her hands, as if hugging herself in sheer ecstasy, cried, "Oh, I just love to be knocked flat and have my breath taken away with unexpected news like that! It makes you tingle all over and at the same time have a queer die-away feeling too, like when you swoop ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... afternoon, one of the Gloucester's men, being upon a hill in the middle of the island, perceived the Centurion at a distance, and running down with his utmost speed towards the landing-place, he in the way saw some of his comrades, to whom he hallooed out with great ecstasy, "That ship! The ship!" This being heard by Mr. Gordon, a lieutenant of marines, who was convinced by the fellow's transport that his report was true, Mr. Gordon ran towards the place where the Commodore and his people ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... exactitude of genius. But he makes his man cry out for the greatest bliss and the greatest imaginable glory to be bestowed upon the judge who pronounces the sentence. And this is merely exaggeration. One takes pleasure in rebuking the false ecstasy by a word thus prim and prosaic. The poet intended to impose upon us, and he fails; we "withdraw our attention," as Dr. Johnson did when the conversation became foolish. In truth we do more, for we resent exaggeration if we care for our English language. For exaggeration writes relaxed, and ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... of mountain-climbing, the breathless joy of the diver, the languid joy of the dancer, the feel of the canoe-paddle shaken in the rapid, the delicious lassitude of sleep in wayside-inns, and lastly the ecstasy of love and fatherhood—all these he relinquished for a tombstone that should be handsomer than Jenkins's. Jenkins, meanwhile, was articled to his father, and, having passed the necessary examinations with credit, became ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thought, and audacity, which were very extraordinary. These articles were amongst the ablest specimens of newspaper writing which had ever been known in Ireland. Their effect was electric; they maddened the young men of the movement with a fierce spirit of nationality. The clubs read them with ecstasy, and John Mitchell was the idol and hero of all men of extreme opinions. His defiance of government, his incitements to rebellion, were so open and intrepid, that they seized upon the imagination of the people, and much disturbed the government. Pikes and side-arms ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Campana's music, only not as I had ever heard it sung; for the melody of M'appar sulla tomba had been so transmuted and etherealized, as it were, that the composer himself would have listened in wondering ecstasy to the mournful strains, which had passed through the alembic of their more delicately organized minds. Listening, I remembered with an unaccountable feeling of sadness, that poor Campana had recently died in London; and almost at ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... come to an end. Happy in being her husband's sole delight, she believed that her inextinguishable love would always be her greatest grace in his eyes, as her devotion and obedience would be a perennial charm. And, indeed, the ecstasy of love had made her so brilliantly lovely that her beauty filled her with pride, and gave her confidence that she could always reign over a man so easy to kindle as Monsieur de Sommervieux. Thus her position as a wife brought her ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... she had ampler outlines, and health more absolutely unvaried, for she had yet to know the experience of a day's illness. Kate seemed born to tread upon a Brussels carpet, and Hope on the softer luxury of the forest floor. Out of doors her vigor became a sort of ecstasy, and she walked the earth with a jubilee of the senses, such as Browning attributes ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... fractional parts of General Garth and the Duke of Cumberland; which sights gave her great gratification. She tugged at her daughter at every opportunity, exclaiming, 'Now you can see his feather!' 'There's her hat!' 'There's her Majesty's India muslin shawl!' in a minor form of ecstasy, that made the miller think her more girlish and animated than her ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... robber, whose incognito we need no longer preserve, and who, as our readers are doubtless aware, answered to the name of Pepper,—"heavens!" cried he, looking upward at the starry skies in a sort of ecstasy, "what a jolly life this is! Some fellows like hunting; d—-it! what hunting is like the road? If there be sport in hunting down a nasty fox, how much more is there in hunting down a nice, clean nobleman's carriage! If there be joy in getting a brush, how much more is there in getting ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... substitute, superstition, desist, persist, resist, insist, assist, exist, consistent, stead, rest, restore, restaurant, contrast; (2) stature, statute, stadium, stability, instable, static, statistics, ecstasy, stamen, stamina, standard, stanza, stanchion, capstan, extant, constabulary, apostate, transubstantiation, status quo, armistice, solstice, interstice, institute, restitution, constituent, subsistence, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... be blind," quoth Colonel Boyce, and opened the door, from which he came back with a laugh to his glass of port. Over drinking it he went through all the tricks of the connoisseur and ended with a cultured ecstasy. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... the cross a melody, That, indistinctly heard, with ravishment Possess'd me. Yet I mark'd it was a hymn Of lofty praises; for there came to me "Arise and conquer," as to one who hears And comprehends not. Me such ecstasy O'ercame, that never till that hour was thing That held me in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a species of ecstasy, in which the convulsionist, whose soul seems entirely absorbed by some vision, loses the use of his senses, wholly or in part. Some convulsionists have remained in this state two or even three days at a time, the eyes open, without any movement, the face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... rapture in the way he struck the last chords, that, if it did not evince ecstasy, seemed ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... first verdict was given, the father, and mother clung to one another in an ecstasy of relief and thankfulness. Throughout those last terrible days, when every conscious breath had carried with it a prayer, Joan had looked deep into her own soul and beheld with opened eyes the precipice on which she stood. How far, how far she had travelled ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... he dragged the stuff out and smelt at it. "Gold, gold, gold! Hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of gold! Let's make a bargain, Englishman, and I won't kill you as I meant to do. You take the girl and give me all the gold," and in his ecstasy he began to pour the glittering ingots over ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... with their muskets piled, and wrapped in their cloaks, against the inclemency of the night. Further off, and in the centre, feebly seen by the low blaze, was a wooden structure, on whose corners torches were flaring in the wind. "Voila, la guillotine!" exclaimed my captor with the sort of ecstasy which might issue from the lips of a worshipper. As I raised my eyes, an accidental flash of the fire showed the whole outline of the horrid machine. I saw the glitter of the very axe that was to drop upon my head. My first sensation was that of deadly faintless. Ghastly as was the purpose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... destruction; and, while shell after shell, and shot after shot, from battery after battery, screams a savage accompaniment to the boom and flash and bellow of the guns, that lean old man works his clutched fingers in an ecstasy of fiendish pleasure, and chuckles: "Aye, I told them at Columbia that night, that the defense of the South is only to be secured through the lead of South Carolina; and, old as I am, I had come here to join them in that lead—and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... uttered such a thought he would have kicked me out of the house! Oh no, that would never have done. The only way to get him to avoid his hard outline would be to entreat him to paint harder. West came one day laughing to me, and said, "All London is in ecstasy beholding the Lazarus in Sebo Deltz, painted they say by M. A. Ha! ha! they don't know it is my painting. L., who brought the picture over, came to me in the greatest distress, 'The set is ruined by the salt water; you must try and restore the Lazarus.' ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the sound of that voice saying, "Good-bye till this evening," and seeing the smile with which ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... through his arm. She was feeling wildly excited—her father and she were together. It might be an hour, or it might be two hours, that they were to spend together, but the time was only beginning now. They were together, and she felt all the warm glow of love, all the ecstasy of perfect happiness ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... one of the servants to call a chair, and I went to the Duchess of Montrose, who had always borne a part in my distresses. She came to me; and as my heart was in an ecstasy of joy, I expressed it in my countenance as she entered the room. I ran up to her in the transport of my joy. She appeared to be exceedingly shocked and frighted, and has since confessed to me that she apprehended my trouble had thrown me out of myself till I communicated ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... other more than we do. It would be absurd of us not to marry." I kissed her, and she accepted my caresses and did not argue with me any more; so I felt happier, and when she rose to leave our good-bye was very tender, our last kiss an ecstasy. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... it was that Kate discovered the motor attachment of the new machine and was divided between ecstasy and ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... Oh, know we well How each of us must prove Love's infidel; Still out of ecstasy turn trembling back To earth's same empty track Of leaden day by day, and hour by hour, and be Of all things ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... and dots she saw romance, and the key of the future; she saw the philosopher's stone. She saw a new religion that had already begun to work like leaven in the town. The revelation was deliciously intoxicating. She was converted, as by lightning. She yielded to the ecstasy of discipleship. Here—somehow, inexplicably, incomprehensively—here was the answer to the enigma of her long desire. And it was an answer original, strange, distinguished, unexpected, unique; yes, and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... authority to reason, and admit no other principles of knowledge or rule of life than supernatural or direct revelation. To this system belong the doctrines of Patanjali, which teach that man must emancipate himself from metempsychosis through contemplation and ecstasy to be attained by the calm of the senses, by corporeal penance, suspension of breath, and immobility of position. The followers of this school pass their lives in solitude, absorbed in this mystic contemplation. The forests, the deserts, and the environs of the temples ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... merits and their failures are alike identical. We have to form what broken impression we can of their early habits. Joseph is presented to us as wandering in the woodlands, lost in a melancholy fit, or waking out of it to note with ecstasy all the effects of light and colour around him, the flight of birds, the flutter of foliage, the panorama of cloudland. He and Thomas were alike in their "extreme thirst after ancient things." They avoided, with a certain disdain, the affectation of vague and conventional ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... tell you, dear friends, with what eagerness I drank in the contents of the letter, and with what ecstasy of joy I leaped and shouted at the news it brought. In one word, my brother lives, and it is possible that before this epistle to you shall be finished, he himself will sit at my side. But to put you in possession of the whole case, I shall transcribe for ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... French novelists, he lacks humor. In their search for happiness his characters suffer a great deal and know only temporary ecstasy. They are often witty, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Petersburg, shut in by the long winter darkness, the homesick man dreamed of the vast landscape he loved, in the warm embrace of the sky at noon, or asleep in the pale moonlight. The first sentence of the book is a cry of longing. "What ecstasy; what splendour has a summer day in Little Russia!" Pushkin used to say that the Northern summer was a caricature of the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... her hand to take the parasol, but he pressed it to his bosom and spoke passionately, without restraint, yielding again to the sweet ecstasy he had felt the night before, sitting ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... distressing society of five hundred mocking apes. It was pleasant to see the morning sun and feel no sickness in my stomach, no sense of depression in my tired brain. Across the room my brother gurgled and choked in his sleep, and in some subtle way contributed to my ecstasy of tranquillity. I was no longer concerned for the duration of my happiness. I felt that this peace that I had desired so long must surely ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Cevennes, who had fled to London after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and whose paroxysms of religious hysteria at length brought them into trouble with the authorities (1707). Paris saw an outbreak of the same kind of ecstasy, though on a much more formidable scale, among the Jansenist fanatics, from 1727 down to 1758, or later. Some of the best attested miracles in the whole history of the supernatural were wrought at the tomb of the Jansenist ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... so earnest the pressure of the lips that seemed to devour every part of her face by turns. In the midst of this, Norton came with the strawberries, and he too stood still and offered no interruption. But when a pause in Mrs. Laval's ecstasy gave him a ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... yelled another street-boy in an ecstasy of delight, which immediately drew to the spot ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... greenish-white water which curved upwards from either bow, and rolled astern in a welter of foam. There was an awe-inspiring fury in the thunder of the 700 h.p. engines revolving at 1350 per minute, and a feeling of ecstasy in the stiff breeze of passage and the atomised spray. When waves came the slap-slap-slap of the water as the sharp bows cleft through the crest and the little vessel was for a brief moment poised dizzily on the bosom of the swell caused tremors ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... cheerier in Adam's little cottage; the lamp was lighted; Jinny had set out a wonderful table, too. Benny had walked around and around it, rubbing his hands slowly in dumb ecstasy. Such oranges! and frosted cakes covered with crushed candy! Such a tree in the middle, hung with soft-burning tapers, and hidden in the branches the white figure of the loving Christ-child. That ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Canterbury in April, 1854, on the subject of the landing of Augustine. I will not spoil the emphasis of the passage by comment as I read, but must take leave afterwards to intimate some grounds for abatement in the fervour of its self-gratulatory ecstasy. ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... but her look, her breathless voice made up for their lack of originality. Once she said: "I never saw it so lovely before; it is an enchanted land!" with no suspicion that the larger part of her ecstasy arose from the presence of her young and sympathetic companion. He, too, responded to the beauty of the day, of the golden forest as one who had taken new hold ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... or me. But the next moment she brightened up, pressed herself close to him, and caught step. They had not owned each other long enough to have settled into sedate possession, though they sometimes thought they had done so. There was still a tingling ecstasy in one another's touch and glance that prevented them from quite behaving themselves ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... were to stick to previous ones. Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair, and by this time every couple had been suitably matched. It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Clarissa, are incapable of comprehending that the immense majority of novels produced in the eighteenth century were nevertheless terrible rubbish. They go to a foreign land, deliberately confine their attention to the artistic manifestations of that country, and then exclaim in ecstasy: "What an artistic country this is! How different from my own!" To the same class belong certain artistic visitors to the United States who, having in their own country deliberately cut themselves off from intercourse with ordinary inartistic persons, visit America, and, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... expression or an absent expression, which Ramuntcho had often seen in her. She looked attentively in front of her, although there were on the road only the leafless trees, the brown mass of the crushing mountain; but it seemed as if Gracieuse was enraptured in melancholy ecstasy by things perceived beyond them, by things which the eyes of Ramuntcho could not distinguish—And during their silence the angelus of noon began to ring, throwing more peace on the tranquil village ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... orange velvet lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven! He prayed, and prayed aloud, no longer terrified at the sound of his own voice, for he fell into a sort of ecstasy. He laid every action of his life before the Almighty, proposed tasks to accomplish, and at the end of every prayer introduced the entreaty oftener addressed to man than to God: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the greater celandine, meaning a swallow, was given it because it begins to bloom when the first returning swallows are seen skimming over the water and freshly ploughed fields in a perfect ecstasy of flight, and continues in flower among its erect seed capsules until the first cool days of autumn kill the gnats and small winged insects not driven to cover. Then the swallows, dependent on such fare, must go to warmer climes where plenty still fly. Quaint ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... their utmost to distinguish between mere fashion and hope of gain and a true faith; but after all their siftings, large numbers were ready for baptism, and the hope was so great that the Bishop was full of thankful ecstasy, and could hardly sleep from agitation, joy, and anxiety. One hundred and fifty converts were baptized at once, at a place called Anunda Bass. The examination was thus, the Bishop standing in ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... averted and morose, and shrinks up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose approach is the alleviation of pain. For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only." "What then?" "The love of generation and birth in beauty." "Yes," I said. "Yes, indeed," she replied. "But why of birth?" I said. "Because ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... their bout with Stoddard, they realized the true value of their mine; in the dim light of the balcony and speaking secretly into her ear, he had won, for one instant, a kiss. But it was a kiss of ecstasy, of joy at their triumph and the thought that she had saved him from defeat; and when he laid hold of her and demanded another she had fought back and leapt up and fled. And after that, repentance; the same, joyless waiting; ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... painting (subject, Virgin and Child) so divine in its expression, so pure and yet so warm and rich in its tone, so fresh in its touch, at once so glowing in its colour and so statuesque in its repose, that our bore cried out in ecstasy, 'That's the finest picture in Italy!' And so it is, sir. There is no doubt of it. It is astonishing that that picture is so little known. Even the painter is uncertain. He afterwards took Blumb, of the Royal Academy (it is ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... hills, or rushing down the streets, to the horror of timid watchers, towards the cool spaces by the river. A shrill music, a laughter at all things, was everywhere. And the new spirit repaired even to church to take part in the novel offices of the Feast of Fools. Heads flung back in ecstasy—the morning sleep among the vines, when the fatigue of the night was over—dew-drenched garments—the serf lying at his ease at last: the artists, then so numerous at the place, caught what they could, something, at least, of the richness, the flexibility of the visible aspects ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... grace of Heaven that restoreth thee, dear Mother," quoth the angel. "Presently thou shalt be filled with the new life, and thou shalt be young again; and thou shalt sing with rapture, and thy soul shall know the endless ecstasy of Heaven." ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... on elders, on boys as well as upon bishops. When their devout minds were sufficiently prepared by a course of prayer, of fasting, and of vigils, to receive the extraordinary impulse, they were transported out of their senses, and delivered in ecstasy what was inspired, being mere organs of the Holy Spirit, just as a pipe or flute is of him who blows into it. [75] We may add, that the design of these visions was, for the most part, either to disclose the future history, or to guide the present administration, of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... child had been silent. Now his voice rose again in pitiful appeal, a very ecstasy of loneliness and terror. There was a note in the cry that shook the settler's soul. He had a vision of his own boy, at home with his mother, safe-guarded from even the thought of peril. And here was this little one left to the wild beasts! "Thank God! Thank God I came!" ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... heroism, when heroism is the permanent condition of the soul; above heroism, when heroism is simply the soul's transient mood. Thus, Demosthenes had flashes of splendid heroism, but his valor depended on his genius being kindled,—his brave actions naming out from mental ecstasy rather than intrepid character. The moment his will dropped from its eminence of impassioned thought, he was scared by dangers which common soldiers faced with gay indifference. Erskine, the great advocate, was a hero at the bar; but when he entered the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... dreadful boy shot right into his mouth,' said Val, while Fergus went into an ecstasy of laughter. 'Wasn't it ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dismay was the answer. The two wretches burst into a grotesque mixture of weeping and cursing, and I heard them literally dancing about the room in the ecstasy of their terror. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... Hallelujah Saturday, when at noon the mourning ended. It was a breathless moment. The priests kneeled in gorgeous robes, chanting monotonously, with their foreheads upon the altar-steps; and the hushed multitude hung upon their lips, in concentrated ecstasy, waiting for the coming joy. Suddenly burst the words, Gloria in Excelsis. In an instant every door was flung open, every curtain withdrawn, the great church was bathed in meridian sunlight, the organ crashed out triumphant, the bells pealed, flowers ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... with his hands clasped in ecstasy, and looking up to heaven, with the strong expression of delight in his aged countenance. I saw every line of his face; for the light of the candle was full upon it. The daughter, a beautiful girl, kneeling beside him, held the light for the young man, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... mutual agreement we let our unwelcome visitors choose their sites and erect their huts, allowing them to enjoy the ecstasy of a vigorous abuse of the humble Sakai village and everything they could find within reach; then one fine morning, to their infinite wonder, we left them to their own devices and betook ourselves to the heights from whence flowed down the little river Bidor. This sudden ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... contributing to the awful energy of the world—faint chimings and whistlings in the grass, and endless flutter, rustle, and whirr. His own body, on which hair and nails grew daily like vegetation, startled and appalled him. Consciousness of self, that miserable ecstasy, was ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... his bundle and gazing with anxious, frightened eyes toward the mountainous masonry of Manhattan, catching sight of the green sunlit image of Liberty with her benign unfaltering regard, holds his breath and feels within his bosom a fierce but short-lived ecstasy of joy. For one brief instant (I still quote the cynical American) faith and hope flame in his heart and the future lies before him as a shining pathway of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... after a protracted sitting, and up among the dreamy chimney-pots he was reviving in fancy the sensations of the morning. He was brought back from his ecstasy by Katherine's voice calling, "Ted, come down this minute—I've got something to show you"; and, rousing himself very much against the grain, he dropped ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the hula was not marred by the presence of groaning victims and bloody sacrifices. Instead we find the offerings to have been mostly rustic tokens, things entirely consistent with light-heartedness, joy, and ecstasy of devotion, as if to celebrate the fact that heaven had come down to earth and Pan, with all ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... Prince Dmitri Nekhliudoff. He was a tall and commanding figure, with an extraordinary intellect. Whenever he found me alone, we seated ourselves in some secluded corner and found mutual delight in metaphysical discussions. With ecstasy in those moments I soared higher and higher into the realms of thought. This strange friendship grew. We agreed to confess everything to each other, and thus we should really know each other and not be ashamed; but, in order that we should not be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... now!" whispered Pocket, close to the folding-doors. He caught the sound of laboured breathing on the other side. "There it is—there it is—there it is!" cried the doctor's voice in mingled ecstasy and mad excitement. A deep sigh announced the blackening of the plate at the conclusion of the first process. A tap ran for a moment; interminable minutes ensued. "It's gone! It's gone again!" cried the wild voice, with a sob; "it's gone, gone, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... appealed to simple feelings. We are no longer satisfied with such simplicity, and even long for powers that do not appeal, but twist us with something stronger than our hardened selves, until we ourselves appeal to the unknown, in a sort of despairing ecstasy of unsatisfied delight, asking of possibility to stretch itself out to the impossible. We are in a strange phase of development. We see the elaborately artificial world-scape painted by Science on the curtain close before our eyes, but our ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... conversations and melodramatic situations of the mediocre performance. When the curtain went down he felt that he now had a subject to inspire his Muse forever. He quitted the theatre in a state of intense excitement, and rode homeward in a state of numb ecstasy. Notwithstanding his sentimental mood, Pen was so normal in mind and body that he slept as soundly as ever, but when he awoke he felt himself to be many years older than yesterday. He dressed himself in some of his finest clothes, and came down to breakfast, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... defensibly send somebody to bed the next Saturday afternoon, all vanished from before me, swallowed up in a mild glory, which contained but two objects,—an angel with low neck and short sleeves, and an insensate hippopotamus of a piano, which did not wriggle all over with ecstasy when her white ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... playing over mountain and fjord, until I wept, as though I had done something wrong; and where I, descending on my snow-shoes into some valley, would pause as though bewitched by a loveliness, by a longing, which I had not the power to explain, but which was so great that above the highest ecstasy of joy I would feel the deepest apprehension and distress—here in the parsonage of Naesset were awakened my ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bower, Sing her a song; Tell her that every hour, All the day long, Thoughts of her come to me, Filling my brain With the warm ecstasy ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... good Archie, I lay at her feet To spurn or to thrill with an ecstasy sweet;" (And he reverently took her white hand,) "That hand is his, Archie, and so is my heart To have and to keep until death do us part To meet in the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... nectarines, apricots, and cherries that he could find. He then went to the orchard of the palace and sowed them, as the serpent had desired. In an instant the trees shot up, and stems and branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit were all of glittering gold—at the sight of which the King was in an ecstasy of amazement, and cried aloud ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the Winnebagos in wonder and ecstasy. "You here!" "How perfectly gorgeous!" "How did ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... fell On the pavement of the cell, And the monk still lingered there In the ecstasy of prayer; Fuller floods of glory streamed Through the window, and it seemed Like an answering glow of ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... point for South American drugs destined for the US and Europe; has become a transshipment point for ecstasy from the Netherlands and Belgium destined ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... sometimes sat; the sunsets when the sky was "crimson, golden red, and blue," and the hills "looked purple and lilac," till the hues grew softer and the outlines dimmer. Prince Albert, an ardent admirer of natural scenery, was in ecstasy with the mountain landscape. But her Majesty has already permitted her people to share in the halcyon days of those ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... of people in dire distress, and fire, and the crash of giant waves, and all that makes for horror, the shock of these brute irresponsible forces of nature is too tremendous for fear to obtrude. Thought is suspended—you are in an ecstasy of awful emotion, emotion made perfect by the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... having gathered up a little added strength, and after coaxing, ordering and cajoling, the girls were rewarded by seeing the little creature creep to the edge of the board, take to the water again and paddle ashore, crouching at their feet in an ecstasy of joy. ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... would have to be content to bide his time till after dinner, which now began to lose some of its disadvantages. There was a most engaging nook, he remembered, in the corner of the garden facing the Sound, where the shadows were deep; where sentiment could thrive on its own ecstasy; where no confounded menial dared to show his face—although he had to admit that the chauffeur was most punctilious ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... land I'd save, Nay, spurned by those for whom I'd die, Unknown where your fond welcome gave, There's still a throb of ecstasy. Even though the latest I may feel on earth. In lingering o'er the scene where thou ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Christmas bells came chiming through the frosty air, we turned out bags of gold, piles of silver and priceless jewels warranted to redeem Dacrepool Grange twice over if necessary, and sending Jack into a very ecstasy of joy. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... standing in a balcony of his palace at Madrid, he observed a student on the banks of the river Manzanares, with a book in his hand, which delighted him so that, every now and then, he broke into an ecstasy of laughter. The king looked at him, and, turning to his courtiers, said, "That man is either mad ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... lad," cried the old sinner in an ecstasy of approbation, "Get thee unto it! Tha'rt shapin' reet I see. Why, I'm dom'd," slapping his knee as usual—"I'm dom'd if he is na goin' to ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... love, seized at that last moment when a hideous death approached; seized, too, when the choice lay between objects of far greater intrinsic value and these precious trinkets—precious because speaking with silent eloquence of long gone throbs of ecstasy, and of a bliss such as these women, even had they escaped, could never again have known. Glance around the room in which you are now seated, and, whether you are gray haired and dignified, or with youthful happiness are anticipating to-night's cotillion, dare ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... frankly overdone. Chesterton conceives of God, having carried the Creation as far as this world, sitting down to look at the new universe in a sort of ecstasy. "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold it was very good." He enjoyed His new toy immensely, and as He sent the earth spinning round the sun, His pleasure increased. So He said "Do it again" every time the sun had completed ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... by the attention paid it, trilled upward in a mounting ecstasy of shrillness that went up and up and up through her head ... louder and louder ... shriller and yet more shrill ... bird and cage became misty, swum around her.... Missus and Tim must have carried her to the bed ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... contemporary would suddenly give it wings that it could wave in the blue. Her consciousness was so mixed that she scarcely knew where the different parts of it would lead her, and she went about in a repressed ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often in the things she looked at a great deal more than was there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Ralph said, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reechoing tourists had departed and ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills. It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the sixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more picturesque then, crowning ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... in rows and stared at them with ecstasy—where is the woman who would not have done so?—till in contemplating them she even forgot the present terrors of her position—forgot everything except the gorgeous loveliness and infinite value of the wealth of gems, which she had been ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Baile-Cuinn (the Ecstasy of Conn, a rhapsody so called) dixit: "A Tailcend shall come who will found cemeteries, make cells new, and pointed music-houses, with conical caps [bencopar], and have princes bearing croziers." "When these signs shall come," said they, "our adoration and ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... neighbourhood of Syracuse he at length perceived it covered with thorns and brambles (Cic. Tusc. Quest lib. v. cap 23.) But if they had cause to be delighted, much more surely had Philip the apostle reason to be so when addressing Nathanael, he cried out in ecstasy—We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... burst upon me! How sublime were my sensations! I waved the flag of my country; the cheers of the multitude from a thousand housetops, reached me on the breeze; and a taste of the rarer atmosphere elevated my spirits into ecstasy. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... who claimest to be prey of love and ecstasy; * Thou, who for passion spendest nights in grief and saddest gree: Say, dost thou (haughty one!) desire enjoyment of the moon? * Did man e'er sue the moon for grace whate'er his lunacy? I verily will counsel thee with rede the best to hear: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... The widder in question 'appened to be a trifle par-say, I'll admit, also it was 'inted that one of 'er—lower limbs was cork. But then, 'er money, sir—'er jools!" Mr. Brimberly raised eyes and hands and shook his head until his whiskers quivered in a very ecstasy. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... that the smallest income in nature would be enough for me. Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth; grandeur I detest: I would not settle in London for the universe. A cottage in some retired village would be ecstasy. There are some charming ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... trust to-morrow's mind: Ere that can come, there's a whole life behind. Methinks, already crowned with joys I lie, Speechless and breathless, in an ecstasy! Not absent in one thought: I am all there: Still close, yet wishing ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... heard speak," he writes, "of a very beautiful and honourable lady, who gave her lover an assignation to sleep with her, on the condition that he should not touch her... and he actually obeyed her, remaining in a state of ecstasy, temptation and continence the whole night long; whereat she was so well pleased with him that some time afterwards she consented to become his mistress, giving as her reason that she had wished to prove his love ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... will scourge himself for forty days, And labor towards the clean extermination Of earth's corrupting vermin, shall be saved." Oh, what vast peace this message brought my soul! I have learned to love the ecstasy of pain. When the sweat stands upon my flesh, the blood Throbs in my bursting veins, my twisted muscles Are cramped with agony, I seem to crawl Anigh his feet ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... of the guests were strolling about here. Priscilla's eyes sparkled at the sight of the lovely flowers. She forgot herself and made eager exclamations of ecstasy. Helen, who up to now had thought her a dull sort of girl, began to ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... into the rejoicing world, and it was like penetrating at last into the heart of that "land a great way off" which holds captive the wistful thought of the children of earth, and reveals itself as elusively as ecstasy. If one can remember some journey that he has taken long ago—Long Ago and Far Away are the great touchstones—and can remember the glamourie of the hour and forget the substructure of events, if he can recall the pattern and forget the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... notice that, any more than the smoke," said Bellingham, with a look of satisfaction in his hero for his other guests. "It's a sort of ecstasy. Do you remember that fellow of Bret Harte's, in How Christmas came to Simpson's Bar, who gets a shot in his leg, or something, when he's riding to get the sick boy a Christmas present, and doesn't know it till ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... five-and-twenty respectively, belonging to good families of immense fortune, and educated regardless of expense. No homely Boston phrase defiled their anglicized lips, their great collars stood up under their chins in an ecstasy of stiffness, and their shirt- fronts bore two buttons, avoiding the antiquity of three and the vulgarity of one. Well-bred Anglo-maniacs both, but gentlemen withal, and courteous to the ladies. Mr. Topeka was a widower, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... cold or summer's heat, To the convent portals came All the blind and halt and lame, All the beggars of the street, For their daily dole of food Dealt them by the brotherhood; And their almoner was he Who upon his bended knee, Rapt in silent ecstasy Of divinest self-surrender, Saw the Vision and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in their way as faithful and affectionate—Emily's large house-dog which lay at the side of her dying bed, and followed her funeral to the vault, lying in the pew couched at our feet while the burial service was being read—and Anne's little spaniel. The ecstasy of these poor animals when I came in was something singular. At former returns from brief absences they always welcomed me warmly—but not in that strange, heart-touching way. I am certain they thought that, as I was returned, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... all the intervals of like and dislike are antechambers to either, we possess the key to joy and sorrow, by which alone we can attain to the mystery that may not be mentioned here, but beyond which ecstasy awaits us. ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... caps with three ostrich feathers, to accompany her aunt in hood and cloak, and be challenged by Hal, who had, together with the bow and papa's old regimental sword, been borrowed to personate the robber of Hexham. Everybody screamed with ecstasy except Fergus, who thought it very hard that he should not have been Prince Edward instead of a ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of children. More sliding? Oh no! This is a sport of higher pretension. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and his own pretty little boys, and two or three other four-year-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of joy and wonder! Oh what happy spectators! And what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am glad I came this ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... position, 6; Torquato's birth, 7; the death of his mother, 9, 15; what Tasso inherited from his father, 11; Bernardo's treatment of his son, ib.; Tasso's precocity as a child, 12; his early teachers, ib.; pious ecstasy in his ninth year, 13; with his father in Rome, 14; his first extant letter, 15; his education, 16; with his father at the Court of Urbino, 17; mode of life here, 18; acquires familiarity with Virgil, 19; studies and annotates the Divina Commedia, ib.; metaphysical ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the curtain, [129] or who pressed their beating hearts to the sacred black stone built into the Kaaba, none, thought Burton, felt for the moment a deeper emotion than he. But he had to confess the humbling truth that while theirs was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm, his was but the ecstasy of gratified pride. Bare-headed and footed and in company with Mohammed, he first proceeded to the holy well, Zem-Zem, said to be the same that was shown by God to Hagar. [130] They found the water extremely unpleasant to the taste, and Burton noticed that nobody drank it without making ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the communication first with silence, then with a shout of triumph, after which he ran completely round his brother several times, jumping over the stream and flourishing a great stick that he held, with boyish ecstasy, not at all dignified, but very sincere. When he had made at least three complete circles, and jumped the stream six times, Giles gravely walked on, and Valentine presently ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow |
