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Agony   Listen
noun
Agony  n.  (pl. agonies)  
1.
Violent contest or striving. "The world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations."
2.
Pain so extreme as to cause writhing or contortions of the body, similar to those made in the athletic contests in Greece; and hence, extreme pain of mind or body; anguish; paroxysm of grief; specifically, the sufferings of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. "Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly."
3.
Paroxysm of joy; keen emotion. "With cries and agonies of wild delight."
4.
The last struggle of life; death struggle.
Synonyms: Anguish; torment; throe; distress; pangs; suffering. Agony, Anguish, Pang. These words agree in expressing extreme pain of body or mind. Agony denotes acute and permanent pain, usually of the whole system., and often producing contortions. Anguish denotes severe pressure, and, considered as bodily suffering, is more commonly local (as anguish of a wound), thus differing from agony. A pang is a paroxysm of excruciating pain. It is severe and transient. The agonies or pangs of remorse; the anguish of a wounded conscience. "Oh, sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride!"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Agony" Quotes from Famous Books



... John her last smile, and was not, for God took her. The bud had opened to set free the rose—the breathing miracle into silence passed. Weeping passionately, his tears washed her face. He was in an agony of piteous feeling in which there was quite unconsciously a strain ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... point of which has been anointed with a subtle poison, made of the dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while the other flings his skin cloak over his head. The beast bolts away incontinently, but soon dies, howling and biting the ground in agony. In the dark, or at all hours when breeding, the lion is an ugly enough customer; but if a man will stay at home by night, and does not go out of his way to attack him, he runs less risk in Africa of being devoured by a lion than he does in our cities of being run over by an ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... the voyage, I found that one of the crew was from my native town. I eagerly inquired after my parents and my little sister Nellie, whom you so often heard me mention. Judge of my feelings when told that they were all dead. In the agony of the moment, I attempted to throw myself overboard, but was prevented. From that time all desire to return was gone, and when at last we stopped at one of the ports in England, I left the vessel to try my fortune in the ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... paced up and down it for a long time, wringing her hands as she went and moaning loudly: "My God! my God!" Then she flung herself down on her couch, writhing like one in mortal agony. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... pleasure trip had been ruined, he had failed to consummate important business arrangements, and now he saw his home broken up and his happiness ruined. During the voyage he scarcely left his stateroom, but lay there prostrated with agony. In this black despondency the one thing that sustained him was the thought of meeting his partner, Jack Evelyth, the friend of his boyhood, the sharer of his success, the bravest, most loyal fellow in the world. In the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... alarum that was sounding, and there were only two to hear; miles away beneath the mute stars English men and women lay asleep, with the hour thundering at their gates, and there was none to cry, "Awake!" When would the dawn come, when should we be gone? I could have cried out in that agony of waiting, with the leagues on leagues to be traveled, and the time so short! If we never reached those sleepers—I saw the dark warriors gathering, tribe on tribe, war party on war party, thick crowding ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... awful spectacle. Before the front innumerable wounded, crying out for help, where no help was possible, were writhing in agony, for the retreat of the English artillery had had to be executed without thought of those left behind; wounded horses, wildly kicking to free themselves from their harness, increased the horror of the terrible scene, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... in which these degenerations manifest themselves are pains, mental agony and derangement, temporary cessation of functions, cramps, involuntary movements ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... no response. They did not hear any further firing behind them. On and on they trudged. Night turned to day. Day rolled slowly on into night once more. And still they staggered on, footsore and weary. Mallory suffered excruciating agony from his wound. There were times when it seemed that it would be impossible for him to continue another yard; but then the thought that Barbara Harding was somewhere ahead of them, and that in a short time now they ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... ceaseless wails, I view the path my race hath trod, And at the sight my spirit quails, And cries in agony to God! ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... betrayed daughter seeks revenge; it is here your forlorn, outcast sufferer first feels the world her enemy, has no sympathizing sister to stretch out the hand of encouragement, and sinks hopeless in the agony of her meditations. It is here, alas! too often necessity forces its hapless victims, and from whence a relentless world—without hope of regaining the lost jewel-hurls them down a short life, into a premature grave. Your church is near by, but it never steps in here to make an inquiry; and ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... Patsy waited in an agony of dread, hope, prayer—waited for the answer she, the girl he loved, would make. It came at last, slowly, deliberately, as if spoken, impersonally, by the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... She was lost to the world for ever! In the midst of the agony of this doom she could yet be stung by the thought that this was the cause of Lord Lovat's complaisance in sending her the newspapers; that here was the reason of the only indulgence which had ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... complain of, but there was little relaxing of the tension between the two. Every step she took on her injured foot was torture, made keener by the uncertain footing. More than once, even despite the dangers of her situation, she thought she must cry out or faint in agony. The twenty steps along the steep face of the canyon, pelted by rain, were like two hundred. Kate made them without a whimper. Thence she followed him slowly between rocky walls guarding the nearly level floor of the widening ledge, till they reached ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... hundreds, of thousands were done to death in hellish ways by the orders of men and of women. Eyes were gouged out, ears hacked off, arms and legs torn from the body in presence of the victims' children or wives, whose agony was thus begun before their own turn came. Men and women and infants were burned alive. Chinese executioners were specially hired to inflict the awful torture of the "thousand slices."[281] Officers had their limbs broken ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... improvises the adagio of the sonata in C sharp minor. The biographers of Mendelssohn relate analogous instances of transposition under musical form. During a storm that almost engulfed George Sand, Chopin, alone in the house, under the influence of his agony, and half unconsciously, composed one of his Preludes. The case of Schumann is perhaps the most curious of all: "From the age of eight, he would amuse himself with sketching what might be called musical portraits, drawing by means of various turns of song and varied rhythms the shades of character, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... judge was convulsed with agony. He raised not his head, but in a smothered voice ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... of June he lay in a great agony, insomuch that the sweat followed drop after drop, which he bore with wonderful courage and patience (as indeed he did all his sickness) without complaint; and about three o'clock the next morning, he died, without any shew ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... wound on the temple had caused a torrent of blood, which remained glued over the whole cheek. The retracted lips of this poor suffering creature, gave a dreadful grin to the aged countenance, expressing the strong agony she must have endured, no doubt from the filling up of the breast with those three pints of blood found there by the surgeons. The details of this savage murder have been too fully given in all the papers to need ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... the first cause which makes it a solemn thing to die, is the instinctive cleaving of every thing that lives to its own existence. That unutterable thing which we call our being—the idea of parting with it is agony. It is the first and the intensest desire of living things, to be. Enjoyment, blessedness, everything we long for, is wrapped up in being. Darkness and all that the spirit recoils from, is contained ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Post devoted the first column of its front page to important announcements and small advertisements—like "Lost and Found," the death and marriage notices, and "personals." Agnes called it the "Agony Column," for the "personals" always ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... a moment he was back in time, feeling for the water bulbs he should be carrying. Then the incautious movement of his questing fingers brought a sudden stab of raw, red agony and he moaned. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... Vernon. He saw her engaged with a man rich, powerful, and handsome. He saw that she listened to her partner with evident interest—that he addressed her with evident admiration. His heart sank within him; he felt faint and sick; then came anger—mortification; then agony and despair. All his former resolutions—all his prudence, his worldliness, his caution, vanished at once; he felt only that he loved, that he was supplanted, that he was undone. The dark and fierce passions of his youth, of a nature in reality wild and vehement, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mean that," explained Drew. "But you tried to persuade me not to enter the cave in the first place, and if I'd only had sense enough to listen to you; we'd both of us be out in the sunlight at this minute. Headstrong fool that I was!" he ended in an agony of self condemnation. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... One was sent for a smelling-bottle, another for some water, and Mrs. Wilkinson soon made her appearance with a fan, and other apparatus for restoring a fainting person. But it was long before there were any signs of returning life. It was a terrible time for Reginald. It was agony to look on the motionless form, and blood-streaked countenance before him—to watch the cloud of anxiety that seemed to deepen on his master's face as each new restorative failed its accustomed virtue,—to listen to the subdued murmurs and fearful whispers, and to note the blanched ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... this frightful week changed everything. Oh! why, why, why did you ever come?' She threw back her pale face, biting her lip, and even in that deepening gloom her small pearly teeth glimmered white; and then she burst into sobs and an agony of tears. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... element in social history. If I loved a woman of rank above my own she would make me a renegade; for her sake I should deny my faith. I should write for the St. James's Gazette, and at last poison myself in an agony ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... sought refuge in rum? Yes, so it was. Scarcely had I recovered from the fright than I sent out, procured a pint of rum, and drank it all in less than an hour. And now came upon me many terrible sensations. Cramps attacked me in my limbs, which raked me with agony, and my temples throbbed as if they would burst. So ill was I that I became seriously alarmed, and begged the people of the house to send for a physician. They did so, but I immediately repented having summoned him, and endeavored, but ineffectually, to get out of his way when he arrived. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... Nothing surpassed such a plunge after a broken night. But of late he had had to be wary of indulging: a bath of this kind, taken when he was over-tired, was apt to set the accursed tic a-going; and then he could pace the floor in agony. And yet... Good God, how hot it was! His head ached distractedly; an iron band of pain seemed to encircle it. With a sudden start of alarm he noticed that he had ceased to perspire—now he came to think of it, not even the wild gallop had induced perspiration. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... she obeyed, and moved forward a step that she might behold him. A face, deathly pale, she saw, which in the sunshine glistened with the sweat of agony that bedewed it; but the lips were tightly closed and the countenance grimly expressionless. Even as she looked she heard her father command the man to lay on anew. Then, as before, his eyes met hers; but this time no smile did ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... reminiscences of his youthful campaigning. In his cheerful mood his presentation of them was in harmony with the sunny afternoon. The bright sides of his experiences were toward his auditors, but what dark shadows of wounds, agony, and death were on the further side! And of these he could never be quite unconscious, even while awakening laughter at ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... deadly horror in her face, and then sank again all in a heap in the bottom of the boat. Olly gave a fiendish laugh, but before any one else could move to the rescue, Gerald, with one fierce, unutterable look at her brother, and no thought but how soonest to end Miss Delano's speechless agony, quick as a flash, caught hold of an overhanging bough and swung herself on to a rock quite far out in the water, and thence, with a light, bold spring, landed safely in the middle of the boat as ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... as they heard the sound of the drums, the shouts of the natives, and once or twice caught the scream of agony of their comrades, were terrible. This was the fate that they, too, were to undergo; and men who had, a hundred times, looked death in battle in the face, shuddered and ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... that it was very doubtful if he should find me again on the vast plain, with nothing to guide him, and in the midnight darkness. Whenever we came to a little creek which we were obliged to jump, Helen's safe arrival on the opposite bank was announced by a loud yell from me, caused by agony hardly to be described. The cold appeared to get into the broken joint, and make ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... sark. We are told of one young girl who, after fulfilling this rite, looked out of bed and saw a coffin behind the sark; it remained visible for some time and then disappeared. The girl rose up in agony and told her family what had occurred, and the next morning she ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... her expiring strength at the last moment of existence. The unhappy lady struggled beneath her coverings; the agony she suffered had given her a convulsive energy, and inarticulate sounds proceeded from her mouth. Derues approached and held her on the bed. She sank back on the pillow, shuddering convulsively, her hands plucking ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... I cried in an agony to the Lord not to let Gracie suffer; but, if it was indeed his will to take the child, then to do so without her suffering. As I prayed a wonderful peace came over me, and the promise came so clearly it was ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth

... with agony and pain she was left alone again, With a purpose nought could move And the zeal of woman's love, Down she knelt in agony To ask the ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson

... and hewed the knees of the Dalesmen, and a tall man came tottering down; but what men or wood-wights could endure the push of spears of those mighty husbandmen? The Dusky Ones shrunk back yelling, or turned their backs and rushed at their own folk with such fierce agony that they entered into the throng, till the terror of the spear reached to the midmost of it and swayed them back on the hindermost; for neither was there outgate for the felons on the flanks of the spearmen, since there the feathered death beset them, and the bowmen (and the Bride amongst ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... and moaned piteously at frequent intervals. Every half-hour he cleared his throat with a rasping noise and, when he had secured Morris' attention, ostentatiously swallowed a large gelatine capsule and rolled his eyes upward in what he conceived to be an expression of acute agony. At length Morris ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... a few hundred yards of our camp. It was as ear-splitting as any whistle of a railway-engine; but whereas the whistle is a clear, mechanical, sharp-edged sound, this was far deeper in volume and vibrant with the uttermost strain of agony and horror. We clapped our hands to our ears to shut out that nerve-shaking appeal. A cold sweat broke out over my body, and my heart turned sick at the misery of it. All the woes of tortured life, all its stupendous ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... who had put many thousands into the "Horn of Plenty," and had lacked the "sand" to sell, would have wondered greatly that a fellow-creature should be suffering agony on account of a few hundred dollars. Yet he, in his keenest pang of disappointment, knew nothing whatever of the awful word "ruin"; while Marietta, staring up into the darkness, was getting ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... Saviour, were withering in the torments of hell-fire; awful indeed was the appearance of these figures; they were larger than human, and twisted into every variety of contortion which it was conceived possible that agony could assume. Their eyes were made to protrude from their faces, their fiery tongues were hanging from their scorched lips; the hairs of each demon stood on end and looked like agonized snakes; they were of various hideous colours; one ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... Lila more lovable and winning week by week. She was philosopher enough to recognize the fact that every one has the "defects of his qualities." The very quality that sent Lila hurrying up-stairs in an agony of mortification because a senior had forgotten to bow to her, was the one that inclined her to enter into Bea's varying moods with exquisite responsiveness. It was delightful to have a friend who was ever ready to answer gayety with gayety and sober thoughts with sympathy. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... lived through years of agony since he got out of bed, the actual passage of time, as he stood frozen to the door-handle, was but the duration of a few brief seconds, and then making a tremendous call on his courage he felt his way to his fireplace, and picked up the poker. The tongs and shovel rattled ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... that there could be no joy without a sorrow coming close upon it. Tom was dejected by the thought that his exemplary effort must always be baffled by the wrong-doing of others; Maggie was living through, over and over again, the agony of the moment in which she had rushed to throw herself on her father's arm, with a vague, shuddering foreboding of wretched scenes to come. Not one of the three felt any particular alarm about Mr. Tulliver's health; the symptoms did not recall ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... dinner with him. It appeared that she never went out to dinner with any one, but spent her evenings with her mother who was very, very ill. Her unworthy admirer persisted. Then the telephone on the manager's desk called her. Her mother was getting worse. The beautiful face was now suffused with agony, but this did not deter the man from his loathsome advances. There was another telephone call. She must come at once if she were to see her mother alive. The man seized her. They struggled. All seemed lost, even the choice gown she still wore; but she broke away ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... bad as the heart of a big sinner,' cried poor Katie in an agony of fear. 'I have been as bad inside, if not in my outward ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff

... like thick darkness, gathers round, And all life's flowers are fading in the dust, Faith lifts our drooping vision from the ground,— Says, that the hand that smites us yet is just; That human agony hath ever found The mighty God a ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen

... nearly suffocated by the gas, he poured a stream of lead into the advancing enemy and checked their attack. He was carried to his dug-out, but, hearing another attack was imminent, he tried to get back to his gun. Twenty-four hours later he died in great agony from the effects ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... rosy-tinted neck; Ah! and all the while I thrill With jealous pangs I cannot, cannot check. See, my colour comes and goes, My poor heart flutters, Lydia, and the dew, Down my cheek soft stealing, shows What lingering torments rack me through and through. Oh, 'tis agony to see Those snowwhite shoulders scarr'd in drunken fray, Or those ruby lips, where he Has left strange marks, that show how rough his play! Never, never look to find A faithful heart in him whose rage can harm Sweetest lips, which Venus kind Has tinctured with ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... few, an honorable few, who, late in life, with Roman severity of resolution, learn the long-neglected lesson of economy. But how small is the number, compared with the whole mass of the population! And with what bitter agony, with what biting humiliation, is the hard lesson often learned! How easily might it have been engrafted on early habits, and naturally and gracefully 'grown with their growth, and strengthened with ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... with emotion. She raised her wet eyes yearningly to his; but she still spoke the simple truth, unvarnished, the great agony that ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Oh, the poplars! the poplars! How they must suffer! And how their leaves would drop, black and shrivelled, a black harvest to strew the lawn. She thought she heard the shouting of the Pinderwells, but she knew their agony would be short, and already they were silent. The poplars were still in pain, and she ran to the front of the house that she might ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... pain until Hence would have to give in. But Mayhall was not built to endure. He roared like a bull as soon as the teeth met in his flesh, his fingers relaxed, and to the disgusted surprise of everybody he began to roar with great distinctness and agony: ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... the wretched man, "where or how she died? Oh, my Laurence, was there no one to hear your last agony and save you? What has become of ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... stood up. Her face was terribly hard as she turned to her husband, who stood against the wall, swaying to and fro. "Peter!" she cried in agony, "Peter! Don't you know what you have done? 'Forgive me, mother,' it says here, and she has taken four ore of the thirteen to buy sugar-candy. Look here, her hand is still quite sticky." She opened the clenched hand, which was closed upon a scrap of sticky paper. "Ah, the poor persecuted child! ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... German, French, Belgian, Austrian, Russian, and British men in the prime of life have been miserably slain and lie in obscure graves of which the enemy now is the guardian, while others writhe in the agony of lingering wounds or sullenly brood over their fate in the dull routine of military prisons. In every part of the warring countries mothers weep over the sons they shall see no more, and wives ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... liable to be beheaded, to be stoned to death, to be suffocated with ashes, to have their tongues torn out by the roots, to be buried alive, to be shot in mere wantonness, to be flayed and then crucified, to be buried all but the head, and to perish by the lingering agony of "the boat." If they escaped these modes of execution, they might be secretly poisoned, or they might be exiled, or transported for life. Their wives and daughters might be seized and horribly mutilated, or buried ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... in His passions the torments which men inflict upon Him; but in His agony He suffers the torments which He inflicts on Himself; turbare semetipsum.[202] This is a suffering from no human, but an almighty hand, for He must be ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... bequeathing this awful inheritance to our descendants. It should end with us, we are the last; none of us should marry; none dare think of it but Bella, and she knows nothing. She must be told, she must be kept from the sin of deceiving her lover, the agony of seeing her children become what I am, and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... The gun-shot agony of a wounded rabbit was in the cry, the last gurgling gasp of strangulation under a murderer's reeking fingers,—catastrophe ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... guess the rest. Of what he hears, no phrase could be written without blanks few readers could fill in, and for the meaning of which no equivalent can even be hinted. The actual substance of the occurrence, that filters through the cries of panic and of some woman or child, or both, in agony, the brutal bellowings and threats of a predominant drunken lout, presumably Mr. Salter, the incessant appeals to God and Christ by terrified women, and the rhetorical use of the names of both by the men, with the frequent suggestion that some one else should go ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... despair of ever obtaining the permission he sought. "Only those," he writes, {178d} "who have been in the habit of dealing with Spaniards, by whom the most solemn promises are habitually broken, can form a correct idea of my reiterated disappointments, and of the toil of body and agony of spirit which I have been subjected to. One day I have been told, at the Ministry, that I had only to wait a few moments and all I wished would be acceded to; and then my hopes have been blasted with the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... people so that they suffered terrible agony all their lives; now you too can suffer for one night, it ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various

... came to him—the same Something which had so often restrained Catharine. It smote him as the light from heaven smote Saul of Tarsus journeying to Damascus. His eyes were opened; he crept into an outhouse in the fields, and there alone in an agony he prayed. It was almost dark when he reached his own gate, and he went up to his wife's bedroom, where she lay ill. He sat down by the bed: some of her flowers were on a ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... an obstinate match, he did not hear the sigh that accompanied her words or see the look of agony ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... shelf, all exactly as one would expect to find it in a captain's room. And there in the middle of it was the man himself, his face twisted like a lost soul in torment, and his great brindled beard stuck upwards in his agony. Right through his broad breast a steel harpoon had been driven, and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind him. He was pinned like a beetle on a card. Of course, he was quite dead, and had been so from the instant that he had uttered ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... afraid of ... that he's hunting me in the dark, in the night ... tracking me, and I hide somewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in a degrading way, and the worst of it is, he always knows where I am, but he pretends not to know where I am on purpose, to prolong my agony, to enjoy my terror.... That's just what you're doing ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... son, if you confined yourselves to mere resistance; but how often have you inflicted, within sight of this very door, the injuries of which you complain? Could you see what I see—the orphan's piteous face, the widowed mother's tear of agony—blighted hopes and unavailing regrets—you might pause in ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... the brutal burdens, the scarifying lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, the curses, and the exhaustion which are the only wages with which the Flemings repay the most patient and laborious of all their four-footed victims. One day, after two years of this long and deadly agony, Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It was full midsummer, and very warm. His cart was very heavy, piled high with goods in metal and in earthenware. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... his tone. It is not one of driving tyranny, but of urgent agony, and it goes right home ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... hope, and no doubt with the promise, seldom performed, that a respite from punishment would be eventually granted. In other instances, there is as little doubt, that they were the final results of irritation, agony, and despair.[61] The confessions are generally composed of "such stuff as dreams are made of," and what they report to have occurred, might either proceed, when there was no intention to fabricate, from intertwining the fantastic ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... fought to save them. But he had no imaginative ideas of death. And his keen perception of the truth was consequently sensitively alive only to that grotesqueness of aspect which too often the hapless victims of violence are apt to assume. He saw no agony in the vacant eyes of the two men lying on their backs in apparently the complacent abandonment of drunkenness, which was further simulated by their tumbled and disordered hair matted by coagulated blood, which, however, had lost its sanguine color. He thought only of the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... to be so very sorrowful that He wanted to be quite alone with God. So He told Peter and James and John to stay behind and to watch. But they went to sleep. And then Jesus went a little way off, and fell down on His knees and prayed. And now His mind was in such pain that He suffered agony, and the sweat rolled down His face in drops of blood. Then Jesus came to Peter and James and John, and found them fast asleep. Twice Jesus went away and prayed the same prayer, and twice He came back to ...
— The Good Shepherd - A Life of Christ for Children • Anonymous

... Mrs. Temple. "Oh my dear Charlotte!" and clasping her hands in an agony of distress, fell into ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... credible, you will say. "If the husband felt he could not face the agony of death by cancer, why didn't he leave a note saying so, and every one would have understood and been quite 'nice' about it?" I really can't say. Perhaps he wished to leave trouble for her behind him; perhaps he divined the reason why she thought a day nurse unnecessary, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... threw it on the road right in front of me, but the horse cleared it with a jump. I passed a dressing station and the sight was unspeakably sad; laid in rows as thickly as they could be placed, the wounded men in all stages of agony were patiently waiting their turn,—ah, God! how patient those men were,—and scattered here and there on both sides of the road were groups of men who had just begun their last sleep, and at sight of them the horse would shy and balk ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... little Willie. Mrs Van First-Family forgets to invite mother to her freak-dinner. What happens? Mother takes it out of William. They love him, maybe, but they are too used to him. They do not realize all he is to them. And then, one afternoon, he disappears. The agony! The remorse! "How could I ever have told our lost angel to stop his darned noise!" moans father. "I struck him!" sobs mother. "With this jewelled hand I spanked our vanished darling!" "We were not worthy to have ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... enhanced, no doubt, by the malignant pleasure which his evil disposition took in the pain and distress of his fellow creatures. The knight just turned his eye on the ghastly spectacle, and uttered, under the pressure of bodily pain or mental agony, a groan which he would ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... family quarrels or to the troubles of children, but in this new neighborhood it was different. A dear old couple by the name of Hahn, living very close, soon became greatly interested in the child Edwin. Many times they listened with deepest sympathy to his cries of agony and terror, knowing that his cries were caused by cruel blows or kicks. Then when the little fellow, all bleeding and bruised, would be discovered hobbling about and endeavoring to comprehend what was expected ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum

... repeated blows on the head, with the hammer-side of the instrument called a tomahawk: but sometimes they save themselves the trouble, and sometimes the blows prove ineffectual; so that the miserable patient is found alive, groaning in the utmost agony of torture. The Indian strings the scalps he has procured, to be produced as a testimony of his prowess, and receives a premium for each from the nation under whose banners he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... thirst-provoking quality of salted foods makes them an important auxiliary to the acquirement of a love of intoxicating drinks. We feel very sure that, as a prominent temperance writer says, "It very often happens that women who send out their loved ones with an agony of prayer that they may be kept from drink for the day, also send them with a breakfast that will make them almost frantic with thirst before they get to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... beyond measure with the accident. "What shall I do?" I exclaimed in agony. "What will become of me?" I considered there was no time to lose, and it being then moon-light, I ordered my servants to take up one of the large pieces of marble, with which the court of my house was paved, dig a hole, and there inter the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... that was surprising. He settled back against the tree and slept standing up. But his neglected duty troubled his subconscious mind. He was uneasy. In his dreams he was troubled by nameless dread. He awoke at last seemingly with a scream of human agony in his ears. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... proud and lofty, they were thus degraded in their death. Sisera was spared the knowledge of his fate by being taken off when asleep; but Abimelech saw the stone coming and knew that it was from the hand of a woman, an added pang to his death agony. He had no thoughts of his wicked life nor his eternal welfare, but with his dying breath implored his armor-bearer to thrust him through with his sword, that it might not be said that he was slain by ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... struggle which it calls upon her to endure, silently and alone;—from the agony of a change of existence which must be wrought without any eye perceiving it. Depend upon it, Margaret, there is nothing in death to compare with this change; and there can be nothing in entrance upon another state which can transcend the experience I speak of. Our powers can but be taxed ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... agony of mind and spirit that he left the house. He was certain now; and he was not only haunted by his loss, but he was horrified at his entire lack of self-control and restraint. His thoughts came in, like great waves striking on a rocky reef, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... gathered his family around him. But his domestic comfort was constantly disturbed by fear of men-stealers. While at his work in the day-time, he sometimes started at the mere rustling of a leaf; and in the night time, he often woke up in agony from terrifying dreams. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... it is advisable to say a word. It will be remembered that the last of the Deinosaurs and the Ammonites also exhibited some remarkable developments in their last days. These facts have suggested to some writers the idea that expiring races pass through a death-agony, and seem to die a natural death of old age like individuals. The Trilobites are quoted as another instance; and some ingenious writers add the supposed eccentricities of the Roman Empire in its senile decay and a number of ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... The greatest development of character is seen in Guido, who starts with a defiant spirit of certain victory, but gradually becomes more subdued and abject, when he finds that he is to be killed, and finally shrieks in agony for the help of his victim, Pompilia. In Caponsacchi there is the inward questioning of the right and the wrong. He is a strongly-drawn character, full of passion and noble desires. Pompilia, who has an intuitive knowledge of the right, is one of Browning's sweetest and purest women. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... patient dies after violent general convulsions that last for hours. Exceptionally only the paralytic symptoms increase gradually and cause death without any agony or struggle, simply a discontinuance of the functions ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum

... and I broke from his arms. I flung myself in an agony of grief on the ground. Those words, "Mamma is living," seemed to me only little less terrible than those I had dreaded ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... it was, or had been. It was picturesque, made so in great measure by a stricken look it had, and a strange still whiteness. It was one of those haunting faces that will not let themselves be forgotten—a face that solemnized, because it indexed the mortal agony of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... to consult Lady Cantrip? He could not do so without a pang that would be very bitter to him,—but any agony would be better than that arising from a fear that he had been unjust to one who had deserved well of him. No doubt Lady Cantrip would see it in the same light as he had done. And then he would be ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... turning his head, and just received the arm on his shoulder; and coming near and slipping his knee past the king's, with a rush he struck him above the ear, and broke the bones inside, and the king in agony fell upon his knees; and the Minyan heroes shouted for joy; and his life was poured forth ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... the Afghans, who have not European nerves. They were waiting for the mad riot to die down, and were firing quietly into the heart of the smoke. A private of the Fore and Aft spun up his company shrieking with agony, another was kicking the earth and gasping, and a third, ripped through the lower intestines by a jagged bullet, was calling aloud on his comrades to put him out of his pain. These were the casualties, and they were not soothing to hear or ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... and while it gave me joy to give her one minute's pleasure, yet it was agony to think that the promise of my absence should be the cause of it. So great indeed was the pain that I could not bear it, and stumbled blindly out. In spite of the fact that when I got into the hall I thought I heard her calling "Roger" I rushed away to the cliffs, whither I always fled ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... the recesses of the pines. There, in a little open place, clustered together upon the ground, were the bodies of our dogs. All were dead, and the soft forms were frozen into the snow, which the poor creatures had licked in their agony, so that their open jaws were ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... board the train, leaving the fee unpaid, the porter trotted beside him with outstretched palm, asking civilly enough for his wage. The white man swung around, kicked him viciously, and sprang on the train, leaving his victim squirming in agony ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... whole swarm flew out, and alighting upon him stung him in a hundred different places. He uttered the most piercing cries, and rolled upon the ground in the excess of his agony. His father immediately ran to him, but could not put the bees to flight until they had stung him so severely that he was confined several days to ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... dismay for what had happened, I could not believe that Moira had been taken from me, and as I remembered my ingratitude to her and thought of how surly I had become, absorbed in my own trouble, I threw myself down upon the rocks in an agony of remorse. Alas, poor Moira! Faithful friend! True heart, and loyal to death! A thousand times I reproached myself with my neglect of her, but my regrets were unavailing, and ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... time. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution. Nothing could be compared with them except the Declaration of Independence. Always before they had been music in Stuffy's ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman's face with tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little and turned his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... space, the Colonel went on: "I've been trying to put the memory of her behind me, as a sane man should. But some women leave an arrow sticking in your flesh that you can never pull out. You can only jar against it, and cringe under the agony of the reminder all your life long.... Bah! Go out, Boy, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... He thought of his own pride, not of her. Little he knew the long, silent agony she must bear—the doubt of being loved causing shame for loving. Little he saw of the daily struggle: the poor heart frozen sometimes into dull endurance, and then wakened into miserable throbbing life by the shining of some hope, which passes and leaves ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... anticipation, my heart beating, and my clasped hands folded on my breast in an agony of restraint. She was talking, talking to herself in the low musical voice of the Martians. The wind had ceased, a dark shadow from a crossing cloud moved toward us from the river over the blue sprinkled ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... Despite the agony, his gaze did not waver from the video set across the room. In the screen, Earth was a rapidly diminishing orb, charred and mottled with glowing ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith

... at any cost," she told herself; yet she could not—oh, she could not!—marry him. "I must think of some way out of this," thought Dorothy, in the wildest agony. "I must save myself, and ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... ill, and therefore let that be my excuse. Plead for me with your mother, Emmeline; tell her she knows not how I struggle to conceal every pang from the watchful eyes of that mother who has hung over my couch, with an agony that has told me plainer than words I am indeed her only joy on earth. My spirit has been so tortured the three months of my stern father's residence at home, that I feel as if I would—oh! how gladly—flee away and be at rest: but for her sake, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... Dennison, who had ensconced herself in said pantry as the safest place in which to wait the issue of the assault. So soon as this object of terror caught her eye, she set up a hysteric scream, flew to the adjacent kitchen, and, in the desperate agony of fear, seized on a pot of kailbrose which she herself had hung on the fire before the combat began, having promised to Tam Halliday to prepare his breakfast for him. Thus burdened, she returned to the window of the pantry, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... of agony, I heard her broken sigh, I saw the colour leave her cheek, The lustre leave her eye; I saw the radiant ray of hope Her sadden'd soul forsaking; And, by these tokens, well I knew The maiden's heart ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... way, and heaved like a tree falling under the axe. She sank slowly to her knees, and low moans of agony broke from her at ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... extraordinary noise from the French singer, who seemed suddenly to have gone mad. The Push had watched in ominous silence the approach of the Frenchman. But, as he passed them and finished a verse, a blood-curdling cry rose from the group. It was a perfect imitation of a dog baying the moon in agony. The singer stopped and scowled at the group, but the Push seemed to be unaware of his existence. He moved on, and began another verse. As he stopped to take breath the cry went up again, the agonized wail of a cur whose feelings are harrowed by music. The singer stopped, choking with rage, bewildered ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... years before, the mosquito-plague had infected the great, busy, joyous metropolis of the south. Ignorant of the real processes of the infection, New Orleans had fought it blindly, frantically, in an agony of panic, and when at last the frost put an end to the helpless city's plight, she lay spent and prostrate. The yellow fever of 1905 came with a more formidable and unexpected suddenness than that of 1897. It ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... regarding her death, but none with much certainty. The executioner is said to have come later on that day to Isambard in an agony of grief. He confessed himself, and told Isambard that he felt Heaven would never pardon him for the part he had taken in killing a saint. The poor fellow's responsibility for her death was really not greater than that of the fagots and the flames which had destroyed ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... sharply. All his soul is in his voice. So keenly it rings, that involuntarily she turns to him. Great agony must make itself felt, and to Dysart, seeing her on the point of leaving him forever, it seems as though his life is being torn from him. In truth she is his life, the entire happiness of it—if she goes through ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... from a sort of stone shed (called a sheep smearing-house) Edward heard a voice which, as if in agony, tried to repeat snatches of the Lord's Prayer. He stopped. It seemed as if he ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett



Words linked to "Agony" :   agonist, torment, agonal, agony aunt, hurt, agonise, excruciation, throe, torture, Passion of Christ, suffering, pain, passion, agonize



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