"Agonizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Atlantic round Cape Horn, it would arrive in the Philippines too late to be of assistance to Dewey. The two monitors on the Pacific coast, the Monterey and the Monadnock, had already been ordered across the Pacific, a voyage perilous for vessels of their structure and agonizing to their crews; but it was doubtful whether they or Camara would arrive first in ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... the arrangement was yet more difficult. It required the exercise of authority to sever the ties that bound the son to the father. But it was done—Victor resigned his task to a little dog that was procured by the merchant, and after an agonizing farewell was whirled away in ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... gambolled on the pliant surface. Multitudes of birds of strange appearance, with their elongated shapes so lean that they looked like metamorphosed ghosts, clothed in plumage, screamed in the air, as if they were scared of one another. There was something agonizing in their shrieks that was in harmony with the desolation of the place. On every side of the vessel, monsters of the deep and huge alligators heaved themselves up heavily from their native or favorite element, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... up by a paviour, who, to every stroke of his rammer, adds a loud, distinct, and echoing, Haugh! The pedestrian cutler is grinding a butcher's cleaver with such earnestness and force, that it elicits sparks of fire. This, added to the agonizing howls of his unfortunate dog, must afford a perfect specimen of the ancient chromatic. The poor animal, between a man and a monkey, piping harsh discords upon a hautboy, the girl whirling her crepitaculum, or rattle, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... without knowing it, driven by the secret agonies within, and all the time conscious that he could not escape from them. Then that befell which put a term to these agonizing imaginings. As he walked he came suddenly on the ashes of a camp fire. For a moment he stared at it uncomprehendingly. Then his interest quickened, as the state of the ashes showed some one had camped at this place quite recently. He began to look ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... any field of human inquiry had been successfully explored; if human reason had achieved any conquests; if any thing true and good had been obtained, that must endure as an heir-loom for all coming time; and if those centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat remained for the instruction of future generations. Either the problems they sought to solve were ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and last, the lesson of their efforts was, that the chase was futile; the jaded nerves would not thrill. The most conspicuous fact about Society was its unutterable and agonizing boredom; of its great solemn functions the shop-girl would read with greedy envy, but the women who attended them would be half asleep behind their jewelled fans. It was typified to Montague by Mrs. Billy Alden's yachting party on the Nile; yawning in ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... of being glad to get off so easily from a terrible affair that would cost her many a year behind grim prison walls, this girl's agonizing cry was that she should remain there and prove her innocence ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... to an operation years ago?" Anstice asked him gently as he sat, impotent to help, by his friend's side in the light of the dying day. "It might have been successful"—he dare not say more—"and you would have been spared years of agonizing suffering." ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... none of her aunt's observations; she lay in a stupifying agony, insensible to all that passed. When supper was ready, her aunt endeavoured to arouse her. She started up, stared around her with a wild agonizing countenance, but spoke not a word. Her aunt became alarmed. She applied stimulants to her temples and forehead, and persuaded her to take some cordials. She remained seemingly insensible through the night: just at morning, she fell into a slumber, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... all her Yukon years the major's wife had but one more heartache. That agonizing winter had taught her many things, but the bitterest knowledge to come to her was the fact that her boy must be sent "to the front." To be sure, he was growing up the pet of all the police; he was becoming manlier, sturdier, more self-reliant ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... to comfort her. A little later two disconsolate-looking girls took the first afternoon train out to Warwick Hall, and stole up to Lloyd's room. As Betty was with Miss Chilton, no one knew of their arrival, and they spent several uncomfortable hours agonizing over the question of what they should say when they were called to account. They decided at last that they would give no more information about Maud than that a distant relative ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is not the last agonizing moment; it is the wearing, daily steadfastness. Men who can make up their minds to hold out against the torture of an hour have sunk under the weariness and the harass of small prolonged vexations. And ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... came agonizing pain which made every movement a death. But the Edinburgh doctor who came brought relief for the pain, and, talking with Dr. Angus, the Carlossie doctor, mentioned, among other technicalities, the name of a drug—"digitalis." That afternoon Marcella went back in the doctor's trap ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... work at Madge's air-pump must have taken place not more than three minutes afterward, but they were horrible, agonizing moments. Madge hardly knew how they passed. Captain Jules suffered the regret of a lifetime. How could he have been so unwise as to entrust the safety of this girl, whose life was so dear to him, to the perils of ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... passionate grief and anger tortured him until midnight. Then he had a high fever and a distracting headache, and, the physical torment being the most insistent and distressing, he gave way before it. With such agonizing tears as spring from despairing wounded love he threw himself upon his bed, and his craving, suffering heart at length found rest in sleep from the terrible egotism of ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... message sent without wires; it came by one of those underground currents that convulse an unconscious world, sometimes agonizing mountains, at others perplexing a simple maid like yourself. You see, Joan, all things conspire ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... him that, before sentence was finally passed, Sister Claire, broken in body and mind, sobbingly affirmed his innocence, protesting that she did not know what she was saying when she accused him; nor that the mother superior, after two hours of agonizing torture self-imposed, fell on her knees before Laubardemont, made a similar admission, and, passing into the convent orchard, tried to hang herself. The commissioner and his colleagues remained obdurate, averring that these confessions were in themselves ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... kings or laws[11] can cause or cure. Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity we make or find[12]; With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestick joy: The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, To men remote from power, but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... escape that he had gone some distance down stream before realizing he was no longer pursued. Suddenly an agonizing cry was borne on ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... crowd of persons slain by one blow; there a promiscuous heap of corpses piled in various ways—some were buried beneath the roofs of falling houses, which leant over so as to protect them from any actual blows, but reserved them for an agonizing death by starvation. Among whom was Aristaenetus, who, with the authority of deputy, governed Bithynia, which had been recently erected into a province; and to which Constantius had given the name ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... great discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame Vulpes, set me on a new track. What if this spiritualism should be really a great fact? What if, through communication with more subtile organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal, which perhaps a life of agonizing mental toil would ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... pocket with coral beans for her children. Having, at last, exhausted every polite attention, and vainly offered gin, rum, and coffee, as a parting demonstration, Hulia and her partner escape, bearing with them many strange flavors, and an agonizing headache, the combined result of sun and acids. Really, if there exist anywhere on earth a society for the promotion and encouragement of good manners, it should send a diploma to Don Juan, admonishing him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... camera—the Indian thinks that to have his picture taken means that he will shrivel up and blow away in a month. And Stanley relates that a watch with its constant ticking sent the bravest of Congo chiefs into a cold sweat of agonizing fear; on discovering which, the explorer had but to draw his Waterbury and threaten to turn the whole bunch into crocodiles, and at once they got busy and did his bidding. Stanley exhibited the true Northfield-revival ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... License, mingling in unblessed union, engendered that mighty Revolution in which the lineaments of both parents were strangely blended. The long gestation was accomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hopes and terror, that agonizing travail and that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pass over the agonizing scenes, the months of wretchedness which succeeded this separation, this sudden dissolution of the most sacred and endearing ties. All attempts to discover De Courcy's retreat were unavailing, though it was long before your mother could relinquish ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... Philadelphia, and at the close of the service a black woman, in the midst of the audience, began to sing that hymn, and all the audience joined in, and we were floated some three or four miles nearer heaven than I have ever been since. I saw with my own eyes that "fountain filled with blood"—red, agonizing, sacrificial, redemptive—and I heard the crimson plash of the wave as we all went down ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that friend in those chords of the human mind which—which need not be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion—your friend is ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... was ever more exquisitely constituted to suffer from circumstances so agonizing than he. But his mind was of a lofty stamp; he had not sunk under his sufferings. He had timely considered the reality of these things. He had learned to connect—really, truly, faithfully—the trials and sorrows of this world with the retributions of another. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... In no malady does a horse suffer more than in phrenitis, or inflammation of the brain. Possibly in severe cases of colic, probably in rabies in its fiercest form, the pain is equally intense. These three are the most agonizing of all the diseases to which the noblest of animals is exposed. Had my pistols been with me, I should then and there, with whatever strength Heaven granted, have taken my companion's life, that she might be spared the suffering which was so soon to rack and wring her sensitive frame. A ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... there is not an organ of your internal structure which is in its right place, at present, or which could perform any particular service, if it were there. In the extensive library of medical almanacs and circulars which I find daily deposited by travelling agents at my front door, among all the agonizing vignettes of diseases which adorn their covers, and which Irish Bridget daily studies with inexperienced enjoyment in the front entry, there is no case which seems to afford a parallel to yours. I found it stated in one of these works, the other day, that there is iron enough in the blood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... spare me a moment?" he continued, smilingly, to win her advance. "I will not detain you long. I know you are agonizing to have your talk out, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... The agonizing suspense in which our nation had been kept for weeks, was now at an end, and we learned the worst. The news fell like a thunderbolt upon our country! Within forty-eight hours of the time when Gordon would have heard the ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... Melac, whose face was ghastly pale, and whose eyes were overflowing with tears. "Now," said he, "know why I have delivered you unto a cruel and agonizing death. For months I have tracked your path, with power to have stricken you every hour of the day. But sudden death was too merciful for such a brute as you! The Hyena of Esslingen shall have the horror and ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... be present at—an actual witness, too—of this bitterness of death; to float, undecisively, in an incomprehensible mystery, between resemblance and reality; to hear everything, to see everything, without interfering with a single detail of agonizing suffering, was—so the king thought within himself—a torture far more terrible, since it might last forever. "Is this what is termed eternity—hell?" he murmured, at the moment the door closed upon him, which Baisemeaux ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... it had been impossible to obtain food for the wounded, so that for days these men had gone hungry, and one heard the agonizing sound of dying men crying piteously for bread. The French attendants themselves went hungry in order to give their charges such small pittances of food as were obtainable. We watched an orderly who entered the church with a single loaf of bread which ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... no hint of the tumult in his breast, though some malign spirit seemed to whisper the agonizing question: "Will you permit her to fall into the hands of ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... warlike fire Of Mice, high theme of the Meonian lyre; When bold to battle marched the accoutered Frogs, And the deep tumult thundered through the bogs. Pierced by the javelin-bulrush on the shore, Here, agonizing, rolled the mouse in gore; And there the frog (a scene full sad to see!) Shorn of one leg, slow sprawled along on three: He vaults no more with vigorous hops on high, But mourns in hoarsest croaks his destiny. And now the day of woe drew on apace, A day ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... exclaimed Robinette in a maternal tone she sometimes affected,—a tone fairly agonizing to Mark Lavendar; "we should never belittle the stuff that's been put into us! My equipment isn't particularly large, but I am going to squeeze every ounce of power from it before ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Stratton, but no knights templars, or barons as old as Edward I.; yet are there three beds on which there may have been as frisky doings three centuries ago, as there probably have been within these ten ears. The room shown for the murder of Edward II., and the shrieks of an agonizing king, I verily believe to be genuine. It is a dismal chamber, almost at top of the house, quite detached, and to be approached only by a kind of foot-bridge, and from that 'descends' a large flight of steps that terminate on strong gates; exactly the situation for a corps de garde. In that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... hand, and squeezed his pharynx with his left, besides coughing violently, the fish found its way into the esophagus. Further attempts at extraction were dangerous and quite likely to fail; his symptoms were distressing, he could not hold his head erect without the most agonizing pain and he was almost prostrated from fright and asphyxia; it was thought advisable to push the fish into the stomach, and after an impaction of sixteen hours the symptoms were relieved. The fish in this instance was the Anabas scandens or "walking perch" of Ceylon, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... without one morsel of food, one cent of money, one foot of land. Naked and unarmed he was pushed forward into a dark cavern and told to beard the lion in his den. In childlike simplicity he undertook the task. Soon the air was filled with his agonizing cries; for the claws and teeth of the lion were ripping open every vein and crushing every bone. In this hour of dire distress the negro lifted up his voice in loud, long piteous wails calling upon those for help at whose instance ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... Turks—whilst the young Scot was so enchanted by the great Sir Sydney's condescension, that he wanted to fetch the pipers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who had never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this the party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander off, lest he should find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame and vexation. One may readily conceive Sydney Smith's enjoying this joke, for his spirits were those of a boy: his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... borne all our South-Atlantic tossings with perfect equanimity; and it is with real joy that I hear the lifeboat is alongside, and that the kind-hearted captain of the Florence (how kind sailors are!) offers to take babies, nurse and me on shore, so as to escape a long day of this agonizing rolling. In happy unconsciousness of what landing at East London, even in a lifeboat, meant when a bar had to be crossed, we were all tumbled and bundled, more or less unceremoniously, into the great, roomy boat, and were immediately taken in hand by the busy little tug. For half a mile or more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... with uninterrupted earnestness. But, I say, I cannot repeat, hardly suggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal division of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he did not allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing conviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which all minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, I heard Father ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... comes after it. "Oh! gentlemen! hear me with patience and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years; oh! I would I had never seen Wittemburg, never read book!" And after the agonizing struggle in which Faustus's soul is torn from him to hell, learning comes ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... to human anguish so inured That thou hast neither sentiment of grief Nor sense of pity for terrestrial ills? Can agonizing and heart-rending scenes Relax thy obdurate and placid face To semblance of emotion? Can man's woes Excite thy tranquil immobility To the pathetic look of tenderness, Or touch thy bosom's calm indifference With profuse throbs of sympathetic ruth? Can'st thou unmoved behold the widow's tears, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... The agonizing suspense in which Helen had been living for the last few days had laid a heavy hand upon her. Her cheeks were thin, and had been woefully pale until the sudden excitement of this visit had called up a faint hectic flush which had no kindred ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tears of joy with them. But there was a damp to her gladness. Next message was that Lord St. Erme bad fainted—they could not tell whether he lived—he could not hold out any longer! Then it was that she gave way, and indeed it was too agonizing, but the old woman seemed better able to calm her than we could. Terrible moments indeed! and in the midst there was sent up a folded paper that had been handed out at the small aperture on the point of a tool, when the poor things had first been able to see the lights ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... son such exquisite delight, The parent filled with agonizing fright. To answer, howsoe'er he'd no excuse, So told the youth—a bird ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... thief—the haunter of the ivy bush—the chick of the oak, a blinking eyed witch, greedy of mice, with a visage like the bald forehead of a big ram, or the dirty face of an old abbess, which bears no little resemblance to the chine of an ape. Of its cry he says that it is as great a torment as an agonizing recollection, a cold shrill laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the rattling of sea-pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well to observe, is a dry sheepskin containing a number of pebbles, and is ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... "Perhaps I'm deficient in sensibilities, but I find that the most ... agonizing ... thing of all is not ever to be able to know what these people were like. It's almost as if some part of us had been lopped off, isn't it? What did the people of Miracastle think about? What was their philosophy of life? What ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... into details—to relate the minutiae—is too agonizing! I can not do it! Imagination can supply these. The necessary mutilation of the bodies of those who had been my friends, rendered the ghastliness of my situation more frightful. When I could crawl about and my lame foot was partially recovered, I was chopping ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... favorably, at the end of five, seven, or ten days the temperature, breathing, and pulse become normal suddenly, and the patient rapidly emerges from a state of danger and distress to one of comfort and safety. The sudden onset of pneumonia with chill, agonizing pain in side, rapid breathing, and often delirium with later bloody or rusty-colored, gelatinous expectoration, will then usually serve to distinguish it ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... that would not be put off. Sure in their great love and their little knowledge that no case could be like theirs, they beseeched God with bitter weeping for their lovers' lives, because, forsooth, they could not bear it if hurt came to them. The answers to many thousands of these agonizing appeals of maid and wife and mother were already in ...
— An Echo Of Antietam - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... confusion of Mr. Cymon Tuggs, when he was put right end uppermost, by two waiters; considerable was the alarm of Mrs. Tuggs in behalf of her son; agonizing were the apprehensions of Mrs. Captain Waters on his account. It was speedily discovered, however, that he had not sustained much more injury than the donkey—he was grazed, and the animal was grazing—and then it was a delightful party to be sure! ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... few moments she rushed about the streets, gazing at the houses. A slight but keen wind was blowing, and she was walking in slippers through the light snow that had fallen during the evening. Ever before her was her daughter, with the agonizing thought that she was killing her by not finding a doctor at once. Then, as she retraced her steps along the Rue Vineuse, she rang the bell of another house. She would inquire, at all events; some one would perhaps ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... was sinking with weariness. The fearful hardships that he had undergone had worked havoc with him. Now that the agonizing nerve-strain was lifted he was going to pieces. He stood wavering for a minute, then he slowly sat down in ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the chair, which he was holding in his strong sailor's grip, he swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst from the bed, an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around like a thresher in a barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was broken to pieces, but he still held one leg and beat away ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... administered to a perfectly innocent tree with such brutality and ferocity that the bark flew in all directions. All the while he gave vent to his pain by fierce shrieks, and then there came one long agonizing cry, which nearly rent Don Quixote's heart, and Sancho exclaimed piteously: "Here dies Sancho, and all with him!" Don Quixote hastened to his squire's side, and insisted for the sake of his unsupported wife and children that he go no further, but to wait until some ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... heart-struck as I was, I could not but pity the unfortunate being whose very apprehensions were thus agonizing. I dared not answer her—I dared not summon assistance, lest she should betray herself to others as she had done to her husband; for she had lost all self-command. I attempted to pacify her by an indefinite reply to her inquiries, but in vain. 'Do not deceive me,' said she, 'Greville, you ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Latrodectus bite are much more common, in the records, than deaths. Dr. Corson, of Savannah, Georgia, reports six cases, characterized by agonizing pains, spasmodic contractions like those of tetanus, and grave general symptoms. All recovered. From Anaheim, California, a fatal case is reported by Dr. Bickford, death occurring twenty hours after the bite. William A. Ball, of San Bernardino, California, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... made to the captain of the Regulus, but it produced no increase of the scanty allowance; and had the common sailors possessed no more humanity than their officers, we might all have perished with hunger. You who never felt the agonizing torture of hunger can have no idea of our misery. The study of my profession had acquainted me, that when the stomach is empty and contracted to a certain degree, that it, in a measure, acts upon itself, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the hotel, toward morning, Paul was again stretched out on the bed, hands under his head, his eyes unseeingly staring at the ceiling as he went through his agonizing reappraisal. ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to that condition of bliss, which many expect in one of the Heavens, that had ever been attained on earth. As long as no physical danger threatened, this bliss-state surrounded me. Its opposite, that condition of violent, agonizing, uncontrollable fear that suddenly surged over one on the approach of bodily danger, was something which passed as swiftly as it came, and left scarcely a trace behind it. But of that I shall have ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... surely triumphs here. It is true that there may be a possible distinction between the "breath," or vital principle of each; but this uncertainty only adds to the mystery, and increases a thousand fold the agonizing need for light. God be thanked that He has given it. The darkest problem that has faced mankind all through the weary ages, has been triumphantly solved; and the sweetest songs of faith ever resound about the empty tomb of the Lord Jesus—nay ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure; 430 Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find: With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy. The lifted ax, the agonizing wheel, 435 Luke's iron crown,[52] and Damiens' bed of steel,[53] To men remote from power but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... that is a strong, deep heart. You may never know it; but should you, you will remember that I told you there was but one Alice. In all her feelings she is intense; her love is a flame—her hate a thorn; the fragrance of the one is an incense—the piercing of the other is deep and agonizing. Shan't we go in, sir; I see the damp of the dew is on your boot-toe, and you have been ill. The absence of the sun is the hour for pestilence to ride the breeze in our climate, and you cannot ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... leaven hid in three measures of meal, were drawn from her employments, and were probably suggested by her presence. To the cry of the poor Syro-Phenician woman, no less than to that of the centurion or nobleman, did he give his attention and sympathy, and with equal speed did he answer the agonizing prayer. Rising far above the trammels of Jewish prejudice, while he sat weary at the mouth of Jacob's well, he taught the beauty of spiritual worship to the astonished woman of Samaria. She became his first missionary to the people of her city, to whom ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... glow of Allan's face Was turn'd at once to ghastly hue; The drops of death each other chase Adown in agonizing dew. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... until all the boxes and parcels must have arrived in the Condamine, that an agonizing thought struck Hugh. What if Evie should be offended with him for buying her things to wear? What if she should imagine him capable of thinking that the things she already had were not good enough when she was ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... slipped into something sticky that splashed over his forearm. He screamed in pain and leaped back, trying frantically to wipe the clinging, burning blackness off his arm. Patches of black scraped off onto branches and vines, but the rest spread slowly over his arm as agonizing as hot acid, or as flesh being ripped ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... his agonizing enterprise by hope, which never abandoned him. When, on fine autumn mornings, he found the countess sitting peacefully on a bench, beneath a poplar now yellowing, the poor lover would sit at her feet, looking into her eyes as long as she would let him, hoping ever that ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... the Peasant from that little cot, Where PEACE and LOVE have blest his humble life? In vain his agonizing wife With tears bedews her husband's face, And clasps him in a long and last embrace; In vain his children round his bosom creep, And weep to see their mother weep, Fettering their father with their little arms; What are to him the wars alarms? What are to him the distant ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... the imperturbable official like a sea, is beyond the power of words. The overwhelming surprise and joy of a man who in that evil den had almost forgotten home and the possibility of hearing from it, and his agonizing uncertainty, could be fathomed only by the poor wretches suffering like him, who anxiously pressed on the Rebel officer, and clutched at the letters, and fell back sick with impatience and suspense at his formal delay. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... sat still as mice, and Susie cried quarts, I know she did. I didn't envy her then, for I felt that millions of carnelian rings wouldn't have made me happy after that. I never, never should have got over such a agonizing mortification." And Amy went on with her work, in the proud consciousness of virtue and the successful utterance of two long words in ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... in which a large garrison resided. By this time I was getting quite accustomed to the ceremony gone through when one met troops on parade or in barracks. You called out, "Starova bradzye?" which being interpreted apparently means "How are you, brothers?" There followed an agonizing little pause during which you had time to think that you had got the thing wrong, had made an ass of yourself, and were disgraced for evermore. Then they all sang out in unison, "Wow wow wow-wow wow"—that, at all events, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Sometimes, as in the Eighth Sonata, Scriabine is like a gorgeous tropical bird preening himself in the quivering river light. Sometimes he is a seraphic creature outspreading his mighty pinions to greet some tremendous spirit sunrise. And in those last, bleeding, agonizing preludes, there is still the breath of flight. But this time it is another motion. Is it "the wind of death's imperishable wing"? Is it the blind hovering of the spirit that has quit its earthly habitation in the moment of dissolution? ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of so dear a son, poor Mrs. M'Coy fell on her knees to colonel Brown, and with all the widowed mother agonizing in her looks, plead for his life. But in vain. With the dark features of a soul horribly triumphant over the cries of mercy, he repulsed her suit, and ordered the executioner to do his office! He hung up the young man ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... can stand on any platform with interest to those who hear and with honor to himself. His manly presence is the illustration of the wonderful possibilities of these mountaineers; and his story is their agonizing cry for the light and opportunities which only an intelligent gospel and educational privileges such as the American Missionary ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
... anything beyond two or three startled cries. The next shell burst right ahead of us, sending a shower of bullets and steel fragments around. A man about twenty yards to the right of my company, but not of my platoon, leaped into the air with an agonizing cry and fell in a heap, mortally wounded. As we were advancing very swiftly, I only saw it as in a dream, while running by. Then came in rapid succession four or five terrific explosions right over our heads, and I felt a sudden gust of ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... minute; But in the same small minute, every sin Contrived to get itself comprised within it. The very cannon, deafened by the din, Grew dumb, for you might almost hear a linnet, As soon as thunder, 'midst the general noise Of Human Nature's agonizing voice! ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... with the voice of one born to be obeyed commanded silence and began his prayer. The dance was immediately suspended, and a solemnity and horror, as if the presage of approaching doom, fell upon the startled assemblage. Above the agonizing sobs of the lately impenitent revellers was heard, as was that of the ancient prophet above the din of the worshippers of Baal, the voice of the man of God in earnest appeals to the throne of grace for mercy to these ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... to his father,—but not an agonizing trouble, as are some sons. His faults were not of a nature to rob his father's cup of all its sweetness and to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Old Wharton had never had to ask himself whether he should now, at length, let his son fall into the lowest abysses, or whether ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... refused to believe it. Through hours of agonizing prayer the new plan, based squarely on the vision that sent him to Pottawattomie, began to fix itself in ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... still be young enough to begin a new life in a new sphere, would no longer want her mother to help her. As regarded herself, the Countess was aware that the life she had led so long, and the condition of agonizing struggling to which she had been brought, had unfitted her for smiling, happy, prosperous, aristocratic luxury. There was but one joy left for her, and that was to be the joy of success. When that cup should ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... appeared now to Andras as an almost fantastic dream. Since then he had erected a mausoleum of marble on the very spot where Prince Sandor fell; and of all the moments of that romantic, picturesque war, the agonizing moment, the wild scene of the burial of his father, was most vivid in his memory—the picture of the warrior stretched in the snow, his hand on the handle of his sword, remained before his eyes, imperishable in ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... the knowledge that his secret was discovered, Jaune entered upon the last day of his martyrdom. It was the most agonizing day of all. The benevolent persons, the reporters, the detectives, the crowd surging about him, drove him almost to madness. He walked as one dazed. And above and over all he was possessed by a frenzy of jealousy that came of the offensively friendly smiles which Rose bestowed upon him as she ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... pressed her hands together, and gasped and struggled fearfully for breath. The joy and effort for self-command were more than the enfeebled frame could support, and there was a terrible and prolonged renewal of those agonizing paroxysms, driving away every thought from the other two except of the immediate needs. At last, when the violence of the attack had subsided, and left what was either fainting or stupor, they judged it best ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pathetic at all times, out-tragedies almost any other in the history of letters. She was seized with hydrophobia from the bite of her dog, on a railroad train; and made a long journey home in the paroxysms of that agonizing disease, which ended in her death after she reached New York. But this was after her reign had ended, and no such black shadow was cast forward upon Pfaff's, whose name often figured in the verse and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this hunt, as he had tired of many other hunts in the past. Hunting the savage khada, he thought resentfully, might be an amusing sport for the nobles. But to a serf, it was hard, lung-bursting work at best. At worst, it meant agonizing death beneath ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... upon himself with greed for his own life, for his own blood, and back of that was the ravening thirst for release from the world and the flesh and the miseries which appertained to them, as one suffocating might thirst for air. He realized suddenly himself, stifling and agonizing, behind a window which he had no need to wait for an overruling Providence to open, which was not too heavy for his own mortal strength, which he could open himself. He realized that whatever lay outside was outside; it was air outside this air, misery outside this particular ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the hand, the fangs entering on each side of a metacarpal bone, and the poison lodging apparently in the palm of the hand. The patient, when seen, exhibited the characteristic terror and depression, weak, rapid heart action, and agonizing local pain. I made two small incisions in the region of the wound upon the dorsum of the hand, and injected permanganate of potassium freely. This patient ultimately recovered, but only after sloughing and prolonged suppuration. I believe that had I incised freely and at once from the palmar ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... with the fearful disease, using vigorously all the external remedies within our reach, cupping the dear child with inexperienced hands, but prayerful hearts, leaning entirely upon God, who, when we cried unto Him in our distress, heard and mercifully regarded our cries. The acute and agonizing symptoms of the attack were subdued, but lung fever supervened, and for four weeks our dear boy lay very near death. His form wasted, his hands, through extreme attenuation, became almost translucent, and we could only watch and pray, and use all the means in ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... the snow fields is most agonizing, and can only be likened to the thirst of the desert. The snow around you is tantalizing, for to eat it does not quench the thirst in the slightest; it aggravates it. If I ever longed for water it ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks, the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... only at long intervals, fearing even to receive it then lest it announce the death of the loved ones. No telegraph, no railroad, no postal service, no newspaper might offer relief, only the letter brought by some friend, or the bit of news told by some passing traveller. It was a time of agonizing anxiety. There were months when the wife heard nothing; we have seen from the letters of Mrs. Adams that three months sometimes intervened between the letters from her husband. In 1774, when John Adams was at Philadelphia, such a short distance ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... yielded up her better reason to his rash innovations in morals, his examples of suicidal heroes, and even moralists, among the ancients; and in the wild height, alone, among the clouds, she almost wrought up her fond agonizing soul to a terrible part—the accomplishing her father's preservation, on her wedding-day, through the influence she might naturally expect to obtain in such a season, and that done, make her peace with God; and, before night—black ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... was completed with one of the most piercing and agonizing screams that ever issued from the throat of a fair young woman. At the same instant she disappeared ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... protecting and watching over the child timid and afraid in the dark is more real than God in his heaven as "protector." We must remember that not what we feel is of value, but what the child feels is of value is what will appeal to his interest and attention. And no exertion or agonizing on our part will create interest in the child in matters for which his own understanding and experience have not fitted him. For example, probably no child is ever interested in learning the church catechism or Bible verses which we prize so highly, but which he ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... unseemly jest ... and this disguise, this flight hither into the desert, is again a most unseemly piece of mummery. Acknowledge thyself to me at length, at length, beloved, beautiful Crescentia. Thou knowest it well, my heart only lives within thy bosom. To what end these agonizing trials? Are thy parents perchance in the next room there, and listening to all we are saying? Let them come in now at last, at last; let us have done with this cruel probation, which will soon ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... ferocity is positively gross, Martin," Mr. Jones said disdainfully. "You don't even understand my purpose. I mean to have some sport out of him. Just try to imagine the atmosphere of the game—the fellow handling the cards—the agonizing mockery of it! Oh, I shall appreciate this greatly. Yes, let him lose his money instead of being forced to hand it over. You, of course, would shoot him at once, but I shall enjoy the refinement and the jest of it. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... want to express to you my appreciation of the high character of citizenship displayed by the people of Centralia in their agonizing calamity. We are all shocked by the manifestation of barbarity on the part of the outlaws, and are depressed by the loss of lives of brave men, but at the same time are proud of the calm control and loyalty to American ideals demonstrated by the returned soldiers ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... been a boarder for ten months. His health had broken in the previous term,—partly, it is to be feared, as the result of the indifferent food—and during the summer holidays he was attacked by a series of agonizing earaches. His mother, a feeble person, wished to keep him at home, but Herbert dissuaded her. Soon after the death of the child there arose at Dunwood House one of those waves of hostility of which no boy knows the origin nor any master can calculate the course. Varden had never been ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... arrows whizzing through the air, and each arrow struck a different ox. Mr. Eddy caught him in the act; and as he turned to flee, the white man's rifle ball struck him between the shoulders and pierced his body. With a spring into the air and an agonizing shriek, he dropped lifeless into the bushes below. Strange, but true, not ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... is agonizing. Perhaps he was captured by the Indians, and may be at this very moment suffering the most barbarous treatment from them; or the dear boy may have been devoured by a wild beast, or he may be starving in the wilderness. This suspense concerning him is too much to bear;" and she looked anxiously ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... throes and convulsions of the ancient world; during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking, through blood and slaughter, his long-lost liberty; it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some, and less ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Ernest Becker is about to enlighten the benighted inhabitants of this country, by giving a course of lectures on optics. The agonizing doubts that have hitherto enveloped astronomical science, particularly as regards the interiors of the moon and the stars, have arisen from the absurd practice of looking at them during the night. These doubts are about to be removed for ever by the aforesaid ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... fragmentary glimpse of beauty gained through the loved one, and by losing sight of its other embodiments fail to aspire to more complete vision. So Shelley says of this period, "I was laid asleep, spirit and limb." By a great effort, however, the next step was taken,—the agonizing one of breaking away from the bondage of this individual, in order that beauty in all its forms may appeal ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... officials, and—he stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell upon a huge, white-crowned figure that came to meet him. His heart leaped wildly, a great drumming set up in his ears, something gripped his throat with agonizing pressure and robbed ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... his diadem. There sleeps the king who aim'd to spurn The daring Scots, at Bannockburn, But turn'd him back, with humbled fame, And Berkley's "shrieks"[B] declare his name. [Footnote B: "Shrieks of an agonizing king."] ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... silent all this time. She was sighing and groaning in a spasmodic devotion. She was "seeking strength from above to do her whole duty," she would have told you. She was "agonizing" in prayer for her daughter, and she contrived that her stage-whisper praying should now and then reach the ears of its devoted object. Humphreys remained seated, pretending to read the copy of "Josephus," but watching the coming storm with the interest of a connoisseur. And while he remained Jonas ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... my phone bell rang, and my state of mind became agonizing. It was maddening to think that someone, a friend, was virtually within reach of me, yet actually as far removed as if an ocean divided us! I tasted the hellish torments of Tantalus. I cursed fate, heaven, everything; I prayed; I sank into ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... pursued his task in quite a fury. Carefinotu, tortured as he was, showed no lack of zeal. What he suffered, even to get his feet into the first position can be imagined! And when he passed to the second and then to the third, it was still more agonizing. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... my leg is still weak with the sprain. But there is more to tell you. My efforts to reduce the dislocation were so great that my body broke out into a profuse sweat and I caught a severe chill. This was followed by agonizing pain in my bowels, which only subsided when its violence was on the point of killing me. A moment more and like Philemon I should have gone to the grave, not to my recital, should have finished not my speech but my destiny, should have brought not my tale but my life to a close. Well then, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... impulses, so much genius, appreciation, and effective power, should, by the influence of historical events quite beyond the control of the masses, so often have been thrown into a false position before the world, and been subjected to such a series of agonizing revulsions ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... strongest, a plague that issues from the cradle—the Black Plague of mothers! All about Germinie, at all hours, especially at night, women were dying such deaths as the milk-fever causes, deaths that seemed to violate all nature's laws, agonizing deaths, accompanied by wild shrieks and troubled by hallucinations and delirium, death agonies that compelled the application of the strait-waistcoat, death agonies that caused the victims to leap suddenly from their beds, carrying the clothes with them, and ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... poor solace to the pitiable old philosopher, thus ruthlessly haled up and down, questioned and threatened, threatened and questioned, receiving agonizing letters from his daughter week by week, and trying to keep up a little spirit to reply as happily ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... an agonizing scene in which Elspeth wept while Tommy told her sternly about Reddy. It had become his custom to tell the tale of Reddy when ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie |
