"Rapturous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with light and heat into the resplendent haze that earth exhales in her day of prime, till he who sees the picture hears the cricket's chirping in its moveless grasses, and scents the rich aromatic breath of its summer-passion and its rapturous noon,—do you dream, when at last the perfect work repeats your thought, and you rest in the tropie atmosphere you have created, that in very truth the picture itself is full of inward heat and breathless languor? For you have poured out the colors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... expense of her audience. The latter, nevertheless, bravely did their duty. Neither "Le Cid," nor "Polyeucte," nor "Andromaque," nor "Athalie"—Corneille and Racine's masterpieces—ever produced such rapturous enthusiasm. Monsieur Mery dashed off extemporaneously, in Marseillais accent, admiring paradoxes which lacked nothing but splendid rhyme. Monsieur Theophile Gautier, who looked like an obese Turk habited in European clothes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... It contained the precise programme of the convention as arranged by Bassett. Morton Bassett was on a train bound for the pastoral shades of Waupegan a hundred miles away, but the permanent chairman had in his vest pocket a copy of Bassett's scheme of exercises; even Thatcher's rapturous greeting had been ordered by Bassett. There had already been one slight slip; the eagerness of the delegates to proceed to the selection of the state ticket had sent matters forward for a moment beyond the chairman's control. A delegate with a weak voice had gained recognition ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... were sent by their patrons that they might perfect themselves in courtly behavior. The open encouragement which was accorded to the few men of letters of the time made Naples a favorite resort for the wandering troubadours, and there they sang, to rapturous applause, their songs of love and chivalry. Here in this corner of Italy, where the dominant influences were those which came from France, and where, in reality, French knights were the lords in control, the order of chivalry existed as in the other parts ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Bride. We were married in the right-hand closet in the corner of the dancing-school where first we met, with a ring (a green one) from Wilkingwater's toy-shop. I owed for it out of my pocket-money. When the rapturous ceremony was over, we all four went up the lane and let off a cannon (brought loaded in Bob Redforth's waistcoat-pocket) to announce our nuptials. It flew right up when it went off, and turned over. Next day, Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Redforth was ...
— The Trial of William Tinkling - Written by Himself at the Age of 8 Years • Charles Dickens
... through the air, the fresh breeze rushing by, the distancing of humbler wayfarers, all gave him a strange sense of exhilaration. Years afterward, when flesh and blood were all too slow for him and he was one of the best motorists in England, if not in Europe, he used to recall the rapturous pleasure of that first drive of his, that first introduction to the mad, tense joy of speed that ever after held him ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... name of God and of the country. By the light of those solid and actual qualities which ensure to her no ignoble place on the noble roll of Italian women who have deserved well of Italy, the record of her visions and ecstasies may be read without contemptuous intolerance of hysterical disease. The rapturous visionary and passionate ascetic was in plain matters of this earth as pure and practical a heroine ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the young man forgot his neighbour and wondered what new pain was in store for his already taut nerves. The shops emptied, children stopped their games, and the Quarter suspended its affairs to welcome the music. Ferval heard rapturous and mocking remarks. "Baki, Baki, the human orchestra!" cried one gossip to another. And the reverberating music swelled, multifarious and amazing as if a military band from piccolo to drum were about to descend the highway. A clatter and bang, a sweet droning and shrill scraping, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Madeleine forms a half-circle, and is very richly ornamented. The great altar is splendidly sculptured. The principal group represents the Magdalene in a rapturous posture, borne to heaven on the wings of angels. A tunic is wrapped around her body, and the long hair with which she wiped her Savior's feet. This group of sculpture alone cost one hundred ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... not know where she was until he had laid her on a sofa, and, giving her a rapturous ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... Mary's rapturous gesture to clasp Him by the feet, when the certainty that it was in very deed He flooded her soul with dazzling light, reveals her first emotion, which no doubt was also the first with them all, 'Then we shall have Him with us again, and all the old joy of companionship ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Joanna's supernatural detection of the Dauphin (Charles VII.) amongst three hundred lords and knights. I am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? But I admire not stage artifices, which not La Pucelle, but the Court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself a dupe to a conjuror's leger-de-main, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... sombre as anything I had ever experienced. Much to my distaste, I found myself sympathizing with the vague terror and unrest around me. I can hear it still, the voice that then rose, singing, through the sullen gloom of the school-room, a strangely sweet and rapturous voice—Madeline's. I learned to know it well afterwards. I listened with rapt surprise to the pathos with which it thrilled the simple words of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... compensations which the vulgar mind can appreciate. The approbation of the world, the routine sweetness of custom, a feeble, tranquil, and sensible devotion that is not bent on rapturous exaltation, or money, that is to say baubles, dress, luxury—in short, a thousand little things which make one forget that ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... all gifted with more than ordinary powers of expression. The subject-matter was one which they all had deeply at heart, and upon which they could speak with never-failing freshness and vigour. The audiences were sometimes moved to rapturous demonstrations of applause. Even in communities where the popular sentiment was less enthusiastic the recommendations embodied in the Declaration were generally assented to, and local vigilance committees were formed. Delegates to the proposed Toronto convention were appointed, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... A long, rapturous sigh was the only answer. It lasted while the queen got down on her knees—just like an every-day, ordinary person—and pulled from under the throne a great carved chest. She threw open the lid wide; and there, heaped to the top ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... strong man praising God at the top of his voice for hearing his prayer and pardoning his sins. It was the mason. He had been under deep concern for three days; had not slept at all the night before, but after a day's agony, he had found Jesus; and such tumultuous, rapturous joy I think I never witnessed. Again and again, during the evening, he broke out with a voice that drowned all others, and rose above our songs of praise ascribing glory to Jesus for what He had done for his soul. There were many other cases of almost equal interest. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... welfare of his family. There were but two things for which he cared to have money—to give them comforts and to start a magazine of his own. He never spent any money on himself. Everything was intrusted to Mrs. Clemm, who managed all his household affairs. His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes. "I have seen him," says Mr. Graham, "hovering around her when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender anxiety of a mother for her first-born—her slightest cough causing him a shudder, a heart chill, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... then only, did he cast aside all his formal Arabic, Eastern stateliness and assume a rapturous expression, seizing one of the reins, examining it closely, raising the scarlet-dyed, drooping plume, touching the bit and broad band with its silver ornamentation, and uttering exclamations of ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Emperor!" were repeated. Along a line of two leagues blazed thousands of fires and flames. The Russians wondered what was the cause of this unusual brilliancy, and thought the French were retreating. Napoleon was at first annoyed by this rapturous demonstration, but at last he was touched by it, and passing through a number of bivouacs, all brightly lit, he expressed his gratitude to his soldiers, saying it was the happiest evening of his life. Then he went to his tent, snatched a little sleep, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... "I he-ear my lo-ove calling." A rapturous smile swept into his face. "It must be clo-osing time." He changed his tone to one of indicative solicitude. "More to the left, sweet chuck. No. That's the water-trough. I've got ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... State and the consequent iniquity of rebellion. His is the ideal of the Hive, in which the virgin workers devote their whole lives without complaint to the service of the Queen and her State-supported grubs, while the drones are mercilessly slaughtered as soon as one of them has fulfilled his rapturous but suicidal functions for the future swarm. This ideal found its highest human example in the Spartan State, which trained its men to have no private existence at all, and even to visit their own wives by stealth. But we find the ideal ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... you do such a thing?" she demanded. But the tone of her voice and the expression in her eyes caused Douglas to laugh with rapturous joy. ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... I told the rosary of Aspiro's charms. Hour by hour I wearied not of her perfections. With burning vows and rapturous words I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... time and another during the day. Each charming but inexperienced vendor had insisted on pinning my purchase wherever there happened to be an unoccupied space on my manly (thanks to my tailor) bosom. I remembered being conscious of a prickly sensation on each occasion, but I attributed it to rapturous thrills running about the region of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... has 'heavenly eyes,' 'distracting legs,' and 'a melting voice?'" asked Christie maliciously, quoting Lucy's own rapturous speeches when the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... (full of beauties) there are two passages of preeminent merit. The first is where the lover, after a flight of rapturous commendation, expresses his wonder why all men that are about his mistress, even to her very servants, do not view her with the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Even so, the rapturous reception accorded to a North American pales to a dim and flickery puniness alongside the perfect riot and whirlwind of enthusiasm which marks the entry into an all-night place of a South American. Time was when, to the French understanding, exuberant prodigality and the United States were terms ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... former was drank with huzzas, three-times-three, [p 15] Which echo repeated with rapturous glee. Now mirth and good humour pervaded the throng, And each was requested to furnish a song, Which many comply'd with; but such as deny'd, Some whimsical laughable story supply'd. The Lion, "Britannia Rule," sung mighty well: ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... Hermione out upon the dingy landing; but as he climbed the stair, there went with him the memory of a little face, very thin and pale, but radiant and all aglow with rapturous hope. Silently as they had come they mounted the stairs, until, reaching the topmost landing, they paused as ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... like gigantic bouquets. Under one of these trees they sat down upon a rustic seat and looked upon the myriads of blossoms above and around them. The mystic scene—radiant sunshine, smiling landscape, balmy, odorous air, humming of bees, and pyramids of apple blossoms—increased the preacher's rapturous love of nature, God's revelation of his glory, and by a reasonable transition his heart beat with a warm, tender, and holy affection for the beautiful girl at his side. Her mind also was open to ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... therefore largely fed upon the embraces and kisses of rapturous women, even as was the young Mozart's, the difference being that it became a habit in Liszt's case. Even then he used to throw money among the gamins, as later he scattered it in how many directions, with what liberality, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... imagination wallowing in its former abominations, than penitence shrinking, with horror, from its recollected transgressions. But when Monthault proceeded to talk of his present sinless rectitude, certainty of acceptance, rapturous exercises, and experiences of future beatification, (the common cant of those times,) the sound divine saw the once audacious sinner covering his adhesive wickedness with the Pharisee's cloak, exchanging libertinism for spiritual pride, and the excesses of debauchery for ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the events alluded to in the last chapter a brilliant dinner was given in Paris at the "Hotel de Lille et d'Albion." On the arrival of the Senator and Buttons at Paris they had found Mr. Figgs and the Doctor without any trouble. The meeting was a rapturous one. The Dodge Club was again an entity, although an important member was not there. On this occasion the one who gave the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... pure and simple. He himself has brought a Royal Letter, authorising and commanding the freest 'circulation of grains.' Which Royal Letter Menadism with its whole heart applauds. Conformably to which the Assembly forthwith passes a Decree; also received with rapturous Menadic plaudits:—Only could not an august Assembly contrive further to "fix the price of bread at eight sous the half-quartern; butchers'-meat at six sous the pound;" which seem fair rates? Such motion do 'a multitude of men and women,' irrepressible ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was that of rapturous joy at her husband's return—her second was connected with a fear which had sometimes intruded itself, that he might not altogether approve the peculiar distinction with which she had treated her orphan ward. In this fear there was implied a consciousness, that the favour she had shown ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the banks among the trees, or towering on the heights, owned by the wealthy and titled people that own the land round the lakes. A cottage built for Her Majesty was pointed out to us, and we heard of a royal deer hunt held here. We heard rapturous accounts of stags hunted to the verge of death, and saved alive to repeat the ennobling sport. And we censure without measure the Spanish bull fight where the animals are killed once! How many deaths do these timid deer suffer? I am afraid we are not as noble and merciful ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... strength; there was in her eyes a light which I have never seen under our uncertain skies. The breath of the apple blossoms filled the room, and a bobolink, poised on a branch outside the window, suddenly poured a rapturous song into the silence of the sweet spring day. I laid down my pen, pushed my scattered sheets into the portfolio, covered the inkstand, and laid my hand in hers. "Not to-morrow," I said, "not to-morrow. Let us ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... flying and stopping, flying and stopping, till at last we were in the plain once more and stowed for Calcutta in the regular train. That was the most enjoyable day I have spent in the earth. For rousing, tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no holiday trip that approaches the bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no fault, no blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty-five miles of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... add, that all her songs were encored with rapturous applause. The second song she sang was the popular one, "Erin, my country!" and it created quite a furore among the audience, many of whom were natives of the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... intercourse with superior minds. He can recollect every body that ever visited the cave, and all the terms of geology and mineralogy are at his tongue's end. He is extremely attentive, and peculiarly polite to ladies. Like most of his race, he is fond of grandiloquent language, and his rapturous expressions, as he lights up some fine point of view, are at times fine specimens of glorification. His knowledge of the place is ample and accurate, and he is altogether an extremely ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... parts of experience, which discourse reaches only through symbols, are recovered and recomposed in something like their native colours and experienced relations. This region, called imagination, has pleasures more airy and luminous than those of sense, more massive and rapturous than those of intelligence. The values inherent in imagination, in instant intuition, in sense endowed with form, are called aesthetic values; they are found mainly in nature and living beings, but often also in man's artificial works, in images evoked by language, and in the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... to make the best of it, and recommenced his visits to his wife's room. Everything happened as the priest had predicted, and Jeanne found she would a second time become a mother. Then, in a transport of joy, she took a vow of eternal chastity as a token of her rapturous gratitude to the distant divinity she adored, and thenceforth closed her door to ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... clear-eyed, self-poised Western qualities so diversely personified in Lance and this compelling girl. Yet emphatically he did not love her. He knew the great reality too well to delude himself on that score. Were these the authentic signs of falling 'in love'? If so—in spite of rapturous moments—it was a confoundedly uncomfortable ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... rapturous joy—all his ease of manner towards his friend returned instantly, his affection and confidence flowed in full tide. Proud of himself, and happy in the sense of the imminent danger from which he had escaped, he now described the late conflicts his heart had endured ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... is so to be. Now I will read you one of his poems, that you may see how one can love, and that love is a silent benediction which the lover lays upon the head of the beloved, and then goes on his way in rapturous sorrow.' Then I read to him Wordsworth's 'Highland Girl;' and now, my friend, place the lamp nearer, and read the poem to me, for it refreshes me every time I hear it. A spirit breathes through it like the silent, everlasting evening-red, which stretches its arms ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... diminish this interest. At first, relieved from famine and the grave, watched over by Raymond with the tenderest assiduity, with that feeling of repose peculiar to convalescence, Evadne gave herself up to rapturous gratitude and love. But reflection returned with health. She questioned him with regard to the motives which had occasioned his critical absence. She framed her enquiries with Greek subtlety; she formed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... swallow it up in a huge overpowering embrace, fraternal in the eyes of almost all the spectators, but not by any means so to those of Mary, especially after the name she had heard. Diccon's greeting was the next, and was not quite so visibly rapturous on the part of the elder brother, who explained that he had arrived at Sheffield yesterday, and finding no one to welcome him but little Edward, had set forth for Buxton almost with daylight, and having found himself obliged to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... come from?" asked Katherine, with a rapturous sigh for the sheer loveliness of it. "There isn't a cloud in the sky to throw a shadow." To Katherine's eyes, accustomed to unending stretches of prairie, browning under a scorching sun, this blue, cool lake was like a ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... of barks from Bobby Burns broke in on her recital. The collie had caught sight of Simon Cameron mincing along the lawn, and he gave rapturous and rackety chase. Claire ran after them crying out to the dog to desist. And Gavin took advantage of the brief instant when her back was turned ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... vermin. Prayer, howsoever perfect in itself it may be, must always be directed in upon the performance of good works. We must not content ourselves with the gift of prayer, or with liberty and consolation and gust in prayer. We must come out from prayer the most rapturous and sweet only to do harder and ever harder works for God and our neighbour. Otherwise the prayer is not good, and the gusts are not from God. The growth and maturity and fruitfulness of the soul do not stand in liberty ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... narrative, breathing hard, as if the memory of the incident described had stirred strong and thrilling feeling in him. Stillwell's smile was rapturous. Madeline leaned toward Danny with ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... died. The director of the hospital hastened to inform the authorities of this event, and on the same day Simon was appointed his successor. The same official who had brought the sick prince the playthings, came again to inform Simon, of his release, and was delighted at the stormy outbreak of rapturous joy with which ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... paintable? Would a man grow weary of such a look turned on him, of such arms held out? Alas! Too late! On that point no lover shall ever be able to pass judgment. That look is for one man alone. He only will ever bring it to that loving face. And he cannot pronounce upon its beauty in voice of rapturous content. He cannot judge. He cannot ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... who were boys when I was a boy, and who come and sit with me, will be expected after supper to set out the chessmen as instinctively as they fill their pipes. And then for an hour, or it may be two, we shall enter into that rapturous realm where the knight prances and the bishop lurks with his shining sword and the rooks come crashing through in double file. The fire will sink and we shall not stir it, the clock will strike and we shall not hear it, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... rapturous shout, and Cal Grinders, passing Rodrigo, tumbled over the earth-heap and joined his colonel against five hundred. Behind swarmed others into the newly awakened hell, coatless men of Saxon necks tanned a dark ruby, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... should have done this was as inevitable as it was gloriously true. We could no more have continued to stroll side by side through our Oasis, commenting on the seasons, sometimes rapturous over a sunset or the call of a bird, than we could have rubbed a lamp and brought the Whim sailing to us over the sea of grass. Static existences only prevail with static people, and there was too much surgingly dynamic about this twenty year ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... came, the weather was fine, and the attendant crowd rapturous. The King and his Knights, in nodding plumes and robes of thorn-stamped velvet, made the show of their lives; organ music rolled from within, bands played without, and massed choirs sang like angels from the parapets ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... little golden bird of happy song! A cage cannot restrain the rapturous joy Which thou dost shed abroad. Thou dost employ Thy bondage for high uses. Grievous wrong Is thine; yet in thy heart glows full and strong The tropic sun, though far beyond thy flight, And though thou flutterest there by day and night Above the clamor ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... bottom with 60 and 70 fathoms. We passed some distance from the western end of Samow Island in the morning; but the high peaks of Timor were not seen till near noon. The eager eyes of the native whom we had brought with us from Swan River were the first to descry them; and he exclaimed in tones of rapturous astonishment, "Land! big fella! all the same cloud!" I shall not easily forget the amazement of this savage, accustomed as he was to behold the level plains of his native land, when he saw, towering in alpine grandeur to the sky, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... the most pathetic expression of longing and misery in her face, and dropping down on her knees, should beg me to give her one flower? But instead, like a true child that knows the father love, she would fly to take the beautiful gift and say, 'Oh, thank you, papa!' as she gives me a rapturous kiss, then runs for a ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... clasp their hands and look in rapturous silence for a minute; then they went down on their knees and revelled in the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... heard his little prayer, For in the morn, with rapturous face, He toddled to the chimney-place, And found ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... after rapturous desires on the part of Agatha, and assurances from General Mohun that Dolores had it in her by inheritance and by training to meddle with the lightning as safely as human being might; and Lady Merrifield owned with a sigh that she must accept as a fact that ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Herrschaften!" "Bier! meine Herrschaften!" roused them from their lethargy. Ices and beer and cherries and peaches successively filled up the weary hours until "the tocsin of the soul, the dinner bell," carried joy to their hearts. I can never forget the rapturous look of anticipation and satisfaction which those stolid middle-class Teutonic countenances wore when "Mittagsessen" was announced. They shook off their normal and habitual torpidity, and cheerfully elbowed their neighbours, ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... loose and careless way, which every one knew the secretary would, as a matter of course, afterwards state much better and more correctly than himself. But the mayor was a respected, well-meaning man, and, although his speech was listened to with manifest impatience, his sitting down was hailed with rapturous applause. ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... disposition; they were pert, they were neat, they were acrobatic, they were at times really amusing, and some of them were pretty. But this is not the artist's field; there is the whole width of heaven between such capering and ogling, and the strange rhythmic gestures, and strange, rapturous, frenzied faces with which the best of the male dancers held us spellbound through ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first to hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the belt round his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders outside the accoutrement to retard its immediate descent ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... rapturous cry broke out. What incompetent noodles appeared their masters in juxtaposition ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... it was almost dusk, and he came back to the present world with a start. His first thought was of Ruth and the rapturous prospect of seeing her on the morrow; a swift doubt followed as to whether a white tie or a black one was proper; then a sudden fear that he had forgotten how to dance. He jumped to his feet, took a couple of steps—when ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... magistrates was declared, a general murmur of applause and involuntary transport burst forth from every one present. It was at first low, and gradually became louder. As it was the expression of rapturous delight, and an emotion disinterested and divine, so there was an indescribable something in the very sound, that carried it home to the heart, and convinced every spectator that there was no merely personal pleasure which ever existed, that would ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... evidently the speaker, being a sagacious lawyer, knew it would be when he chose to put his declaration into this cynical shape, as an appeal to mob feeling, rather than in the form of a statement concerning the rights of the case, whatever the rights may be. Yet not one of those rapturous applauders would for a moment have tolerated that doctrine if it had been proposed to apply it to his own possessions. As a mob they applaud what as individuals they would disclaim with such moral energy as they ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... of Paris was not so impressive as this. In the one case, a famous Bishop, robed in priceless lace and cloth of gold, with a troop of acolytes at the altar, while the most famous singers of the Opera filled the vast structure with rapturous melody; in the other, a large plain wooden building with glaring windows of untinted glass; the priest in vestments of coarse Nottingham lace and yellow damask,—but with spiritual, benignant countenance,—and a choir of untrained voices. A company ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... suddenly confronted by this new personality and the immediate need of entertaining it, gave way before the enthusiasm of the little girl over his pets, his favorite haunts, the works of his hands—everything in which he had a share. Clinging to his hand in a rapturous panic as they visited the animals, she expatiated on the privileges of those happy beings who lived always ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... would choose one of them. She was pausing to select one, and inadvertently said, to close the phrase, "you don't." She had not meant to use the expression, which she would not have thought sufficiently imposing,—it dropped out unconsciously,—but it was received as a close with rapturous applause. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... offered to take him home in her carriage, and he had declined almost brusquely. To have exchanged that homeward walk over the glistening earth, and under the clear rose and violet lights of the winter sunset, with that sudden rapturous discovery of the slender crescent of the new moon, for a ride with Mrs. Edes in her closed carriage with her silvery voice in his ear instead of the keen silence of the winter air, would have been torture. Von Rosen wondered at himself for disliking Mrs. Edes in particular, whereas he disliked most ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous, almost frightened, eyes as ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... poet's plinth The amorous colocynth Yearns for the aloe, faint with rapturous thrills, How can he hymn their throes Knowing, as well he knows, That they are only ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... fearless temperament, and a natural turn of mind so poetic and imaginative, should have been charmed beyond expression by a realm whose attractions he had so fully experienced. That the glowing descriptions of Boone and Finley were not exaggerated, is manifest from the equally rapturous account of others who now began to explore this favored land. Imlay writes of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... and the discernment of excellence, and what is approved; and of these two things let the love of his hoards of the yellow-skinned treasure go first, and after that attachment to the silver-skinned of creation, the fair, the rapturous; even to them! So by this see ye not Boolp will yearn in his soul for another spouse? Now, O ye well-matched pair! what a chance were this, knew ye but a damsel of the mountains, exquisite in symmetry, a moon to enrapture the imagination of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... where you can see nothing? How! Are you not overcome with delight? Only think that Elfgiva will be a queen and we shall all go to London!" As the only adequate means of expression, she threw her arms around her friend in a rapturous embrace. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... upon that beauteous image, but it resembled rather the placid feeling of a holy friendship, than the impetuous throbbing of a young and passionate love. 'Hubert is right!' said the youth; 'I will follow his direction. Auriola, lovely and rapturous being, angelic, spiritual, and human, will rejoice with the Accursed, when he carries to his desolate home the mistress of his castle—the wife ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... known the Virgin solemnly carried down to the water's edge, that she might command it to rise or fall, as suited the convenience of the people. While she exercised her power the natives knelt around her on the shingly beach in rapturous devotion. At such times the "Mother of Heaven" is clothed in her best, and the jewels in her costume ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Far and wide swept the burning barrens of the desert. But close about corral and pumping plant crowded the unbelievable verdure of alfalfa with the fringed green lines of cottonwoods on its borders silhouetted against the sullen yellow sand. And wild bees, drunk with rapturous surprise, buzzed thick in the heavy blossoms. Whence they came no one could guess. Dick was willing to wager that there was nothing else within a hundred miles on which a ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... and thou art in my love.' And I was ravished with the sense of the love of God." Brother Lawrence wrote, "You must know that the benevolent and caressing light of God's countenance kindles insensibly within the soul, which ardently embraces it, a divine and consuming flame of love, so rapturous that one puts curbs upon ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... the nature of this topic, when he said, as we are told, to one of his military companions, who called his attention to the rapturous approbation with which they were received by the crowd on their return from a successful expedition, "Ah, my friend, they would accompany us with equal demonstrations of delight, if, upon no distant occasion, they were to see us ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... veil that has divided two faithful friends is suddenly dashed aside, and they rush one to the other, calling themselves every imaginable bad name in the dictionary, insisting to the verge of quarrelling that it was all their fault, and no fault at all of the other, far too rapturous to talk ordinary common sense, and far too forgetful of everything to remember that they are saying the same thing over and over again every ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... A swaying, quietly rapturous mood came over him. He had of course been a little depressed because they had wanted to arrest him at home as a swindler—although to a certain extent he had found it quite proper. But then after going aboard he had watched, as he and his father had sometimes ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... more touched his lips, then without a word passed slowly out. As she went Death entered and found on its victim's face a changeless, rapturous smile. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... exulting suddenly at a turn of the war. All this and more was the harp to Camorak's men; for not only would it cheer his warriors on, but many a time would Arleon of the Harp strike wild amazement into opposing hosts by some rapturous prophecy suddenly shouted out while his hand swept over the roaring strings. Moreover, no war was ever declared till Camorak and his men had listened long to the harp, and were elate with the music and mad against peace. Once Arleon, for the sake of a rhyme, had made war upon Estabonn; ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... studded full With rarest gems and shining pearls. Our eyes, though sometimes dimmed with tears, In purer lustre sparkle forth Whene'er they fall agaze on thee! Our ears attuned to thy sweet lay Catch every flowing, cadent note And bear it ever safe within Our rapturous hearts, which gladly leap Whene'er thy name is called! Deep in our souls the quenchless fire Of love full brightly burns upon The sacred altar, set apart For sprite commune and sacrifice; Whose high-priest tends with loving care, And unto thee sweet incense burns. Our tongues most gladly ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... that the stern realities of life had not withered up all the romance of their natures, and under its fascinations they became boys again. Even Horace Greeley, that most practical and unimaginative of men, became rapturous over it. It was a great success, and established the poet's fame beyond all question, and since then its popularity has ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... O rapturous promise of the Spring! O June fulfilling after! If Autumns sigh, when Summers die, 'Tis drowned in Winter's laughter. O maiden dawns, O wifely noons, O siren sweet, sweet nights, I'd want no heaven could earth be given Again with its delights (If ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... before she sailed. The interview was a brief and hurried one, and no record of it remains, except some letters and a few impassioned lyrics which about that time he addressed to her. The first letter is stiff and formal, as if to break the ice of long estrangement. The others are in the last strain of rapturous devotion—language (p. 141) which, if feigned, is the height of folly; if real, is worse. The lyrics are some of them strained and artificial. One, however, stands out from all the rest, as one ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... steady eyes, and sound sympathies, and beating hearts which an actor confronts, with the confidence of friendship and co-operation, as he steps upon the stage to work out in action his long-pent comprehension of a noble master-piece! How rapturous the satisfaction of abandoning himself, in such a presence and with such sympathizers, to his author's grandest flights of thought and noblest bursts of emotional inspiration! And how perpetually sustaining the knowledge that whatever may be the vicissitudes and even the degradations ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... ray of sun-light in winter, thou art not more welcome to the bosom of the parched earth in sadness, than this first flame of affection to the awakened heart of the tender girl! Happy—overwhelmed—she forgets herself, and, by degrees, gives up all her being to the new, rapturous delight of loving! ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... himself is there waiting for you: yet you stand with indifference," &c. (Hom. 3, in Ephes. p. 23.) The virtues of St. Paul furnish the main subject of his sixth and seventh homilies; in the eighth he speaks of that apostle's sufferings for Christ, and declares, in a kind of rapturous exclamation, that he prefers his chains to gold and diadems, and his company in prison to heaven itself. He wishes he could make a pilgrimage to Rome, to see and kiss those chains at which the devils tremble, and which the angels reverence, while they venerate the hands which were bound with them. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the man was more than he could bear. The cumulative force of the reproach of the woman he loved, the confidence of the Viceroy, the rapturous happiness of his best friend, was not to be endured longer. Pleading indisposition, he early begged leave to withdraw from the festivities which succeeded the completion of the betrothal ceremony and the retirement ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... were roses, her eyes shone with a misty light, and the verse so rapturous to herself that she struck her little hands ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... arch, lengthening it to an almond shape, leaping from the earth, uplifting roofs, heightening naves, breaking out into a thousand sculptured forms all round the choir, and flinging heavenward, like prayers, their rapturous piles of stones! They symbolized the loving tenderness of orisons; they became more trusting, more playful, more daring in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... to make themselves most amiable to Mrs. Follingsbee; and, with this intent. Miss Letitia started the subject of her Parisian experiences, as being probably one where she would feel herself especially at home. Mrs. Follingsbee of course expanded in rapturous description, and was quite ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The Hindus interpret in a religious spirit this legendary sport of Krishna with the milkmaids. It symbolises the soul's wooing of God. And so these boys interpreted it. Their passion, though it included the flesh, was not of the flesh. The mood was rapturous, but not abandoned; ecstatic, but not orgiastic. There were moments of a hushed suspense when hardly a muscle moved; only the arms undulated and the feet and hands vibrated. Then a break into swift whirling, on the toes or on the knees, into leaping and stamping, swift ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... so languid, and indifferent, and careless about the favours bestowed upon him, how came it that Laura should have such a love and rapturous regard for him, that a mere inadequate expression of it should have kept the girl talking all the way from Fairoaks to London, as she and Helen travelled in the post-chaise? As soon as Helen had finished one story about the dear fellow, and narrated, with a hundred sobs and ejaculations, and looks ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her curiosity, which would brook no denial. I therefore began to tell her that the most beautiful creature in the world, whom I loved to distraction, paid me a visit in my sleep. I then drew her own portrait, with a rapturous description of all her beauties; adding, that this goddess, who came to visit me with the most favourable intentions, did not counteract them by any unreasonable cruelty. This was not sufficient to satisfy Miss Stewart's curiosity: I was obliged to relate every particular circumstance of the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... intended visit to her; and it was not until he got to Lyons that he determined to take the Bourbonnais road. His reason for doing so will presently be seen. All along the road, at Aix, at Lyons, in every town and village, he was received, as at Frejus, with the most rapturous demonstrations of joy. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and affectation, and confess she is not a great favorite of his—a confession quite worthy of him, who avers his predilection for servant-maids, and his preference of the Fannys and the Pamelas over the Clementinas and Clarissas.[7] Schlegel, who has given several pages to a rapturous eulogy on the Merchant of Venice, simply designates Portia as a "rich, beautiful, clever heiress:"—whether the fault lie in the writer or translator, I do protest against the word clever.[8] Portia clever! what an epithet to apply to this heavenly compound of talent, feeling, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... as much of the "famae sacra fames" as of the "auri;" of the hungering after distinction, as well as of the appetite of gain. Enamored of his vocation, Turpin delighted to hear himself designated as the Flying Highwayman; and it was with rapturous triumph that he found his single-handed feats attributed to a band of marauders. But this state of things could not long endure; his secret was blown; the vigilance of the police was aroused; he was tracked to his haunts; and, after a number of hairbreadth 'scapes, which he only effected ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... temples; the little dimples all over her hands; her voice, her little ways. And while I loved her like that, before the first year of my happiness had passed she was dead. I hope you will never know what that means. That she had left me a child was nothing to me: I was only a rapturous lover, and had not begun to long for baby voices and upturned children's faces. When, finally, I did turn to Helen, it was as you see now: to part her from her grandfather would be to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... presented it in mental vision to his persecuted and almost desponding brethren as one instantaneous, transporting and triumphant event, in which the world was to be judged, the living changed, the dead raised immortal and incorruptible, and the rapturous song of final victory was to be sung over death, its sting and ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play has been staged with magnificent ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... called in by a rapturous mother for the free treat of a look at this radiance, insisted that Alice was a vision. "Purely and simply a vision!" she said, meaning that no other definition whatever would satisfy her. "I never saw anybody look a vision if she don't ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... with vigil, faint and reeling, Find at last my comfort, and are blest, Not with rapturous light of life's ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... desires nothing more than the primary and sudden electric feeling of an overpowering and rapturous surprise, the cascade of Montmorency would certainly be preferable, but to the visitor, whose understanding and sensibilities are animated by an infusion of antiquated romance, the Falls of the Chaudiere ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... at having attained this position may have lent a roseate tint to his view of the felicity of the Royal couple, which he paints in rapturous terms, saying that nothing was so great as their love—except the British National Debt. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the union of Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happy exceptions to the general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic end plunged a nation ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... little sprite In a billowy flood of lace, Which flutters in its flight In the galop's tripping grace. And, oh, the broken hearts Which follow the rapturous whirl! Oh, the Redfern gown, and the arts Of ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... all the same," cried Roger triumphantly, and diving into his coat pocket he produced "my tutor's letter." Daphne sat immovable, and he had to read it aloud himself. It contained the rapturous account of Herbert French's engagement to Miss Maddison, a happy event which had taken place in England during the Eton holidays, about a ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drew a small packet of letters and untied the tape that circled them. They were written in a careless sprawling hand, with lots of ink and little thought. They were very full of 'darlings' and 'dearests' and 'how much do you love me's.' They were very, very rapturous—they were very, very silly. They had made him very happy when first he read them because silliness and sincerity are often partners, but now he knew better—now they made him laugh. Not a very cheerful laugh perhaps—a little cynical maybe but on ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... still more than herself in her presence, I paid her as her first subject my homage, with a most profound respect, and the hint of the Count became to all the guests a command which every one with emulous joy hastened to obey. Majesty, innocence, and grace presided in alliance with beauty over a rapturous feast. Mina's happy parents believed their child thus exalted only in honor of them. I myself was in an indescribable intoxication. I caused all the jewels which yet remained of those which I had formerly purchased, in order to get rid of burthensome ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... must he, too, his old delights disown, Who scorns a false, utilitarian lure 'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown? Baffle the threat, bright scene, from Orrest-head, Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance! Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance Of nature; and if human hearts be dead, Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong And constant voice, protest ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... she had no time to evade it but she took good care to do so the next night. Lilian had never been an effusive girl. She had almost broken her mother's heart in her little more than babyhood, when after a rapturous caress she had half pulled from the enclosing arms and said in a willful fashion—"Don't kiss me so hard, I don't liked to be kissed!" And later on when her mother had always called her Lily, she had said emphatically—"Why don't you call me Lilian! I'm too big a girl to be called by such ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... heart, after its dreadful languors, its excruciating agonies, know once more a rapturous emotion? So lately sunk into despondency; so lately pondering on obstacles that rose before me like Alps and menaced eternal opposition to my darling projects; so lately the prey of the deepest anguish: what spell diffuses through my ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown |
