"Mental anguish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infinitely more intense than mere physical pain, and the more cultivated the mind, the deeper is its capacity for such "agony unmix'd." Mental anguish doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw the inwards, and create a condition in which "not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world shall ever medicine" the victim to that sleep which he enjoyed before. His heart is turned to stone; he strikes ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism, was undermining Julie's life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance very quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and apparently dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... this particular vice excites so much odium in her case is, that the inconveniences of her breaches of contract are greater than those of almost any other member of the community. They touch us in our most intimate social relations, and cause us an amount of mental anguish out of all proportion to their real importance. But her spirit about contracts is really that of the entire community in which she lives. Her way of looking at her employer is, we sincerely believe, about the way of looking at him common among all employees. The only real restraint on laborers ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... potent warning that you stand back from that gate of hell. Oh, man, oh, woman, tampering with this great evil, have you fallen back on this as a permanent resource because of some physical distress or mental anguish? Better stop. The ecstasies do not pay for the horrors. The Paradise is followed too soon by the Pandemonium. Morphia, a blessing of God for the relief of sudden pang and of acute dementia, misappropriated and never ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed as if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. He made one despairing stride towards the door. He would leave her forever without another word. He was wretched; and the Duchess was laughing within herself over mental anguish far more cruel than the old judicial torture. But as for going away, it was not in his power to do it. In any sort of crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity of things to say; so long ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... perceived the other children could assume at pleasure. He stood for hours looking at his own little chair, solemnly seating himself at long intervals where no chair was. But his mind was working, and work, as we know, is the panacea for mental anguish. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... in London, in which I was believed by my family to have abandoned myself to debauchery of all kinds, and 'thus' to have involved myself in disreputable pecuniary embarrassments. God knows, so intense was my mental anguish, that during the whole time I was physically incapable even of a 'desire'. My whole body seemed stunned and insensate, from excess of inward suffering—my debts were the 'cause', not the effect; but that I know there can be no substitute for a father, I should say,—surely, surely, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... spared herself some mental anguish if she could have known that Seabeck was brooding over the wonder of a woman's love that pardons and condones a man's sins. He was wishing that such a love as Billy Louise's had come to him, and he was wondering how a man could be tempted to go wrong when such a girl loved him. He was laboring ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... of his kingdom to give what relief he could to his suffering subjects. After being away three days, he returned to his palace, his mind weighted down by all the death and sickness he had seen. When he reached his garden, he called to his two birds to come sing for him and relieve his mental anguish; but neither of the birds came. Sinukuan went through his gardens, but he called in rain. "O birds! where are you?" he cried. Thinking that perhaps they had flown away and had been attacked by the pestilence, he determined to make another trip through ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... of the voice sat on the table and hummed fiercely. In the stress of mental anguish caused by his position, Henry made a miscalculation, and in turning bumped the ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... Uncle Bob appear any moment. The judge and Mahaffy had mingled with the others in the hope of free drinks, but in this hope there lurked the germ of a bitter disappointment. There was plenty of drinking, but they were not invited to join in this pleasing rite, and after a period of great mental anguish Mahaffy parted with the last stray coin in the pocket of his respectable black trousers, and while his flask was being filled the judge indulged in certain winsome gallantries with the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... there was not a man strong enough to do anything, they caught sight of the Island of Massafuera. They were helpless to bring the boat near to the Island. Whale-boats were steered by an oar. There was not a single man able to lift an oar. In addition to starvation, thirst, weakness, mental anguish, their legs began to swell with a sort of scurvy, giving them excessive pain. Their condition can scarcely be imagined. The breath of life was there, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... discovered by the observer, either the sleeper or the patient in stupor might be dead. Briefly stated, then, our hypothesis of the psychological determination of stupor is that the abnormal individual turns to it as a release from mental anguish, just as the normal human being seeks relief in his bed from physical and mental fatigue. When this desire for refuge takes the shape of a formulated idea, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... into the snow up to her knees, and this icy contact gave her new strength. Although she had nothing on but her chemise she did not feel the bitter cold; her mental anguish was too great for the consciousness of any mere bodily pain to reach her brain, and she ran on and on, looking as white as the snow-covered earth. She did not stop once to take breath, but rushed on across wood and plain without knowing or thinking ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... and was so much like his old cheerful self that Mary wrote long hopeful letters to Joyce and Betty about his improvement. He joked with the nurse and talked so confidently about going back to work, that Mary began to feel that her worst fears had been unfounded, and that much of her mental anguish on his account had been unnecessary. Sometimes she shared his hopefulness to such an extent that she half regretted leaving school before the end of the year. When the girls wrote about the approaching Commencement and the good times they were having, and of how ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... you shall have it. Three days ago, through an accident, I drifted, in an oarless boat, out from the river-mouth at Fort Dearborn to the open lake. None knew of my predicament. A storm blew me helpless to the southward, and after hours of exposure to danger, and great mental anguish, I was driven ashore amid the desolation of this sand. This comrade of yours found me scarce alive, ministered to my sore need, protected me through the hours of the night, stood but now between me and your ribaldry, counting his life but little beside the reputation ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... friends and allies; they were hearing the experiences of dust-stained and travel-worn Imperialists, and telling their own; and one and all, they were thanking God Who had led them, through bodily fear, and mental anguish, and bitter privations, to hail the dawn of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of his face showed the mental anguish he was at that moment enduring. Suddenly, he ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... tale, till at last his infamy should pass into one of the traditions of the place. A man like Gregory could not long have endured such a prospect. He would have died, either by every physical power speedily giving way under mental anguish, or by his own hand; or, if he had lived, reason would have dropped its sceptre and become the sport of wild ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... mere recital of his case had brought him again into the bewilderment of that mental anguish he had gone through. Eleanor made a murmur of sympathy. He faced her ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dutifully repaired; and wasted the rest of that evening, which he had thought would prove so amusing, watching Dupont and company watch de Lorgnes, to whom Dupont's barely dissembled interest plainly meant nothing at all, but whose mental anguish grew to be all but unbearable. Nor did the quantities of veeskysoda consumed by the unhappy nobleman help him bear it, though undoubtedly he assured himself it did. By midnight he was more than half-fuddled and wholly in despair. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... man is never a prophet in his own country. He left us with regrets, which proved his esteem for us, and when the moment of separation arrived, he ran from cabin to cabin embracing every one. It is impossible to describe the mental anguish of the young man when he left. He gazed at the vessel, burst into tears, and crouched in despair in the bottom of his pirogue. We saw him again, stretching out his arms to us, as we ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... This mental anguish and the effort he put forth to respond to these words caused great beads of sweat to start out upon his face. Suddenly, as if a giant hand was lifted, the effects of the shock resulting from his fall passed away. He opened his eyes, and there was Madge, with her ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... adverse and trying circumstances, satisfied that at some future time I should prove my character to be above pecuniary considerations or mercenary motives. I have looked forward to the restoration of those honours, of which I was most unjustly bereaved, and to freedom from mental anguish, endured throughout an isolation from society of one-third of a century. I cannot contrast with such sufferings, nor with my plans, any sum that Government could bestow. Nevertheless, I have implicitly relied that collateral deprivations and losses would be taken into consideration ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... of Parliament had been passed-full of atrocious penalties, imprisonments, transportation, and hanging-to deter poor pilgrims from the way to Zion. "The way was full of snares, traps, gins, nets, pitfalls, and deep holes." Had the darkness of mental anguish been added to these dangers, he must have perished. The butcheries of Jefferies strewed the way with blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of pilgrims. Pope reared his ugly head, and growled out, "More of you must be burned." The desolating tyranny of the church was curbed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... year I became a helpless invalid, and lay in bed for five months at one time. When I first became helpless, I thought I was dying. I knew if I went into eternity as I then was I would be lost, and suffered terrible mental anguish. My dear mother came to my bedside with comforting words: "Mary, put your trust in the Lord." I could move neither hand nor foot but could only say, "Mother, I am trying to," knowing at the same time that I was not ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... for his bed but a little damp and mouldy straw; around his waist was a chain which was fastened to the wall and barely permitted him to turn from one side to the other. No light was admitted into his cell. To increase his miseries, almost insupportable mental anguish was added to his physical suffering. He was made to believe that he was only saved for a public execution, while at the same time he was not permitted to know whether his family were still alive or had perished under the axe ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... man, was known to be in Reggio where he was employed in the Municipio. His father went from Caltanissetta to look for him and returned after four days, during which he had searched for his son and suffered mental anguish and physical discomfort. His friends went to the station to meet him. He talked politics to them and asked their opinion about ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... most proficient and engaging in every department, mean or high-minded, have certain attributes of respect among those beneath them, so that they might justly be content with the lowest reward in whatever calling they professed, the least skilful and most left-handed being compensated for the mental anguish which they must undoubtedly suffer by receiving the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world,"—all ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... my scalp bristle, and a violent shudder thrilled through me as those dreadful cries smote upon my ear, for they seemed to be the utterance of some human being in the very last extremity of both physical and mental anguish, the protest of a lost soul being wrenched violently out of its sinful human tenement, cries of such utter, unimaginable despair as the finite mind of man is unable to find a cause for. Yet, despite the agony of horror that froze my blood, I ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... shoulders fell long hair of ruddy yellow, while his face was young and yet very bitter, tortured by both physical and mental anguish, as it seemed. He bound up the deep slash in his shoulder with a strip of cloth torn from his cloak, felt his wealed cheek tenderly, then flung the cloak about him again and drew down his broad-brimmed hat as he ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... who claimed her as his wife, and was unfortunate enough to be retaken, a spear, or some similar weapon, was thrust through the fleshy portion of one of her limbs, effectually disabling her from making another attempt of the kind; and not unfrequently the combined bodily pain and mental anguish terminated in death—a ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... interesting ladies in London literary society in the period of which I am writing was Mrs. Jameson, the dear and honored friend of Procter and his family. During many years of her later life she stood in the relation of consoler to her sex in England. Women in mental anguish needing consolation and counsel fled to her as to a convent for protection and guidance. Her published writings established such a claim upon her sympathy in the hearts of her readers that much of her time for twenty years ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... enthusiasm, and governed by the necessities of a preaching becoming daily more exalted, Jesus was no longer free; he belonged to his mission, and, in one sense, to mankind. Sometimes one would have said that his reason was disturbed. He suffered great mental anguish and agitation.[1] The great vision of the kingdom of God, glistening before his eyes, bewildered him. His disciples at times thought him mad.[2] His enemies declared him to be possessed.[3] His excessively impassioned temperament carried ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... of her youthful beauty, had suggested to him on the steps of "Elm Bluff," an image of Hygeia? Here insouciante girlhood was dead as Manetho's dynasties, and years seemed to have passed over this auburn head since he saw it last. Human faces are Nature's highest type of etchings, and mental anguish bites deeper than Dutch mordant; heart-ache is the keen ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... when he had failed himself? The flight of his daughter was in every mouth, and in some measure he would be held responsible for her sin. Was not Eli punished for his son's transgressions? The duty before him was a terrible one. It made his brown face blanch and his strong, stern mouth quiver with mental anguish. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... filling up the cards of invitation, I had such a blinding headache that I could scarcely see the letters my pen was forming; and when the task was done, I went to bed, unable to bear up against the double burden of intense bodily and mental anguish. ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... downstairs to the kitchen, took the bottle of brandy from the sideboard and carried it upstairs. He drank two large glasses, one after another, adding a fresh intoxication to the late one, without quieting his mental anguish. He had done a pretty stroke of work, nom ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Kroonstad to Lindley were reducing themselves from a geographical fact to a matter of physical and mental anguish. There had been no rain for days, and under the burning sun, the dusty veldt seemed dancing up and down before Weldon's tired, feverish eyes. Now he passed through a stretch of bare and burned-out sand; now he tramped over patches of tall dry grass; now he plodded ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... before you and I had ever met? Ah, how little you men understand a woman's heart! Shall I tell you what I felt when Billy told me, after the first bewildering shock was over? First: sorrow for you, my dearest; a realisation of how appalling the mental anguish must have been, at the time. Secondly: thankfulness—yes, intense overwhelming thankfulness—to know at last what had come between us; and to know it was this thing—this mere ghost out of the past—nothing tangible or real; ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... I made no effort to hide my disgrace; I did not pretend to be married or to be a widow, and the mistress of the house was not unkind to me. She liked me all the better for telling the truth. I say no word to you of my mental anguish—no words can describe it, but I loved the little one. She was only three weeks old when a letter was forwarded to me at the address I had given in London, saying that my grandmother was ill and wished me to go home at once. What was I to do with the baby? I can remember how the great drops of ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... endured by Lady Lake were exceeded by her mental anguish. While the poison raged within her veins, the desire of vengeance inflamed her breast; and her fear was lest she should expire without gratifying it. Bitterly did she now upbraid herself for having delayed her vindictive project. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... remorse. I imitated the anchorites of the Thebaid. If I did not pray as they did, I lived a life in the desert like theirs, hewing out my ideas as they were wont to hew their rocks. I could at need have girdled my waist with spikes, that physical suffering might quell mental anguish. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... devoted himself to ministering to her comfort, except once when she insisted on his fulfilling an important concert engagement. Racked with pain as she was, her greatest anxiety was as to his artistic success, fearing that his mental anguish would prevent his doing full justice to his talents. It is said that her friends informed her of the vociferous applause which greeted his playing, and a happy smile brightened her dying face. She ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... been one continued scene of affliction and sorrow, and this last blow brought her to her end. She pined away, perpetually restless and distressed. She lost all desire for food, and refused, like others who are suffering great mental anguish, to take the sustenance which her friends and attendants offered and urged upon her. At length she died. They said she starved herself to death; but it was, probably, grief and despair at being thus left, in her declining years, so hopelessly friendless and alone, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that, although high respect is due to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual gifts of the venerable ex-president of Oberlin College, such preaching worked incalculable harm to the very souls he sought to save. Fear of the judgment seized my soul. Visions of the lost haunted my dreams. Mental anguish prostrated my health. Dethronement of my reason was apprehended by friends. But he was sincere, so peace to his ashes! Returning home, I often at night roused my father from his slumbers to pray for me, lest I should be cast into the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... agony was as nothing to the mental anguish which he suffered. Death was before him if he lay there—death in a painless, insidious form, no doubt; but still, death in all its horror to one ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... neighborhood of the armies there was no hunting at all. Some pleasure he derived through conjuring mental pictures from time to time of the German he had left in the branches of the lone tree at the bottom of the high-walled gulch in which was penned the starving lion. He could imagine the man's mental anguish as he became weakened from hunger and maddened by thirst, knowing that sooner or later he must slip exhausted to the ground where waited the gaunt man-eater. Tarzan wondered if Schneider would have the courage to descend to the little rivulet for water should Numa leave the gulch and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... second occasion, "I whip'd her Severely & did at the same Time admonish her to Ask Pardon of God. Whereupon she Yell'd Aloud & did Seize the Calf of my Leg & Bite me, Causing me Great Physical Pain and Mental Anguish. How sharper than a Serpent's Tooth is ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... suffering in some form comes to each of us. It may come through broken health, or pain and weariness of body; or through mental anguish, moral distress, spiritual darkness and uncertainty. It may come through the loss of loved ones, through betrayal by trusted friends; or through deferred or ruined hopes, or base ingratitude; or perhaps in unrequited ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... and leant against the window-frame. It was about midnight, and very few people passed. Whenever a man appeared in the distance, she had a moment of hope, but only to be followed by the sickening sensation of another disappointment. The mental anguish was so great that for some time she paid no attention to physical symptoms which had now begun. By degrees, however, these became importunate, and oh the relief of it! The trouble of her mind ceased ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... experience, certain facts that lent probability to that thought, I entertained it with a sort of cynical irony, and I was almost ready to admit it, as an odious but decisive denouement. The early dawn found me struggling still in this mental anguish, calling up my recollections, examining in a childish way the most minute circumstances that might tend to confirm or to banish my suspicions. Excess of fatigue, brought on at last two hours of prostration, from which I emerged with ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... the edge of his mental anguish by physical exhaustion Catullus had walked far out from the town, through vineyards and fruit-orchards displaying their autumnal stores and clamorous with eager companies of pickers and vintagers. On coming back to the eastern gate he found himself reluctant to ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... hours. Come to me again about ten o'clock, and take a glass of wine in memory of old times." This he said laughingly; but even then a dark spasm crossed his face. Yet, thinking that this might be the mere working of mental anguish within him, I complied with his desire, and retired. Feeling, however, but little at ease, I devised an excuse for looking in upon him about one hour and a half after I had left him. I knocked gently at his door; there was no answer. I knocked louder; still ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... salvation" into a world disordered by sin, willed so to identify Himself with our experience, as to realise death, not as it might have been, but as man had made it, the very sign and symbol of man's sin, of his separation from God. That moment of extreme mental anguish wrung from His lips the Cry, not of "dereliction," but of faith triumphing even in the moment when He "tasted death" as sin's most bitter fruit, "My God, why ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... only enemy—Pamphlett. He held this tenement which Pamphlett openly coveted: but what besides had he that any one could envy? Who else could wish him worse off than he was? His broken past, his present poverty and daily mental anguish, his future sans hope—any one who wanted these might take 'em ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... she gazed into the convulsed face of the man who had squared himself before her, mattered little measured by the tick of the watch in her belt. Into the mental anguish endured a life's agony had been pressed. It could not have been more than twenty seconds, and yet it marked the birth of a new being within the soul of a woman. She had been searching only for her own happiness. The search had entangled another in the meshes of her life. ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... Jean had expended all her energies on this scene, and the warriors smoked the peace- pipe, inspected their medicines, and danced a war-dance with befitting solemnity, while the captain writhed uneasily, not so much with mental anguish as on account of the rheumatic twinges which his cramped position had set to running up and down his legs and back. Then, with a close fidelity to the old histories, an imposing throne was brought in, and Jean, as Powhatan, mounted the insecure ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... firmer, and more resolved for endurance. In a short time a slumber crept over my senses; still, however, though my senses slumbered, my soul was awake to the painful feelings of my situation, and my dreams were of mental anguish ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... thus, crying and half inert with mental anguish and pain, she could not afterwards have told. Nor did she know what it was that roused her from this torpor, and caused her suddenly to sit up in her chair, upright, wide-awake, her every sense on ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... it open to us, amid all the mental anguish and suffering which this terrible war has engendered, without profaning the sorrow of our fellow-men and women, to give to those who are in mortal fear as to the fate of some one whom they love the hope of finding, among those extrahuman phenomena which have been unjustly and falsely disparaged, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... I could see beads of sweat upon his forehead which betrayed the mental anguish he was undergoing. I knew that it was far worse than physical torture, and as there was nothing to gain by prolonging it, and nothing more ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... far worse was it with Mr. Moggridge, to whose lodgings his steps were bending. The Poet, as Sam entered, was seated as nearly as possible on the small of his back before the breakfast table. If mental anguish can be expressed by unkempt hair and a disordered cravat, that of Mr. Moggridge was extreme; and the untasted bloater, pushed aside and half concealed by the newspaper, was full of ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "rather die" than bear more children serve society by bearing still others? Can children carried through nine months of dread and unspeakable mental anguish and born into an atmosphere of fear and anger, to grow up uneducated and in want, be a benefit to the world? Here ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... hair that has grown gray in the briefest space of mental anguish. It is all a delusion and an old wife's fable. When Cecil rose the next morning there was not a silver line in her tresses. Outward signs of the mortal struggle, while it lasted, there were none, for her clasped hands veiled her face jealously; when she raised it, her ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... was the bundle to which he had clung as he blindly plunged through the storm. He had still fiercely clutched it after entering the little room, clasping it to his breast even as he sank at his mother's feet in physical exhaustion and mental anguish, to implore her forgiveness. Later the bundle was placed beside him as he lay, pale and ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... may imagine, petiots, no one, save the little children slept that night. We were in a state of mental anguish so agonizing that the hours passed away without bringing the sweet repose ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... effect he sailed from Cronstadt, a ruined and broken-hearted man. The old sailor's grief for the harm his wayward conduct had done to his wife and family was quite pathetic, and so far as kindness could appease the mental anguish he was having to endure it was ungrudgingly extended to him, and when he left Cronstadt he left behind him a host of sympathizers who regarded the ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... as he finished his story, buried his face in his hands, as though overcome by the recollection of the mental anguish he had been through, and what he ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... on the mat at the back of the tent lay Traverse Rocke, pale, haggard and sunken in the deep, deep sleep of utter exhaustion. Even in that state of perfect abandonment, prostration and insensibility, the expression of great mental anguish remained upon his deathly countenance; a mortal pallor overspread his face; his thick, black curls, matted with perspiration, clung to his hollow temples and cheeks; great drops of sweat beaded upon his corrugated brow; a quiver convulsed his mouth and chin; every circumstance ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... attempted, again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate—by some dreadful process the burthen was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an apalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable;—the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned—and if in sketching those that belong to blood-guiltiness I have been at all successful, I owe it mainly to the uninvoked ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... bad enough, but the physical symptoms are appalling beyond representation. The look on the face of the opium sufferer is indeed one of such keen mental anguish that outsiders may well be excused for supposing that is all. I shall never forget till my dying-day that awful Chinese face which actually made me rein my horse at the door of the opium hong where it appeared, after a night's debauch, at six o'clock one morning when I was riding ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Great mental anguish is accompanied by no clarity of thought and graves no connected memories on the mind. I know I suffered, but there are only fragments of recollections covering that black ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... up his head suddenly and showed a face marked with mental anguish, dry-eyed, deathly white. He got slowly to his feet and went over to the table, leaning his hand upon it as ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew |
