"Ecstasy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be misunderstood. If I can create out of my own brain something that is pure and beautiful, that gives happiness, that draws coarse natures away from their coarseness, to feelings more elevated, that can bring to some an ecstasy of delight, to others a sweet calm. If I follow a pursuit which injures no human being, no living creature, why am I to endure displeasure? Is it more manly, more noble to hunt the poor, panting deer till it falls gasping on the ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... Plymouth so speedily with her second prize, and he heard of my being wounded, he posted down from town, determined to see Captain Brisac for himself, and ascertain by actual word of mouth how I had behaved. My kind skipper was so lavish with his praises that Sir Peregrine was in an ecstasy of delight; and from that time he became a different man; in consequence, I presume, of his having stumbled upon an object which excited within him a genuine interest. During the week of my stay with him in town he went everywhere with ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... and far below, the noise of cowhorns blown by the street boys gathered at the foot of the tower and beyond the bridge. Close beside him a small urchin of a chorister was singing away with the face of an ecstatic seraph; whence that ecstasy arose the urchin would have been puzzled to tell. There flashed into Taffy's brain the vision of the whole earth lauding and adoring— sun-worshippers and Christians, priests and small children; nation after nation prostrating itself and arising to join the chant— "the differing world's agreeing ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rose in dazzling spirals overhead, Whence, to wild sweetness wed, Poured marvellous melodies, silvery trill on trill: The very leaves grew still On the charmed trees to hearken; while for me, Heart-thrilled to ecstasy, I followed—followed the bright shape that flew, Still circling up the blue, Till as a fountain that has reached its height Falls back, in sprays of light Slowly dissolved, so that enrapturing lay Divinely melts away Through tremulous spaces ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... moonbeam on a sleeping rose was no more gentle than was Diana's touch, yet it was sufficient to wake Endymion. And as, while one's body sleeps on, one's half-waking mind, now and again in a lifetime seems to realise an ecstasy of happiness so perfect that one dares not wake lest, by waking, the wings of one's realised ideal should slip between grasping fingers and so escape forever, so did Endymion realise the kiss of the goddess. But before his sleepy eyes could be his senses' witnesses, Diana had hastened ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... quietly took up one corner of her mantilla, and with a little movement, apparently all innocence, flashed a message back to the entranced Enrique. I was aware of the flirtation, but before I had made more of it Enrique sprang down from the abutment of the well, dragged me from my horse, and in an ecstasy of joy, crouching behind the abutments, cried: Had I seen the sign? Had I not noticed her token? Was my brain then so befuddled? Did I not understand the ways of the senoritas among his people?—that they always answered ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... ingenious, and sailors were so expert! He then talked to me of the arrangements he intended to make for her reception, of the new house he would build for her, and of the pleasures and surprises which he would contrive for her every day, when she was his wife. His wife! The idea filled him with ecstasy. "At least, my dear father," said he, "you shall then do no more work than you please. As Virginia will be rich, we shall have plenty of negroes, and they shall work for you. You shall always live with us, and have no other care than to amuse yourself and be ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Her heart was beating in full, thick throbs against his, which kept time to it. Her closed eyes were against his throat, and she would not move so much as an eyelash. She gave herself up utterly to this ecstasy of content. ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... down and wrote another letter—another in such an ecstasy of eagerness to remove the evil impressions which she had made, that she wrote it almost with the natural ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... voice I thought I knew; and, sure enough, I found the dear old Dominie Sampson close at my elbow—his large, gray eyes rolling in ecstasy—his mouth open, and grasping in his hands a huge folio, while Davie Gellatly, with cap and bells, stood mincing and grimacing behind him—now rolling up the whites of his eyes—now pulling the skirts of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... paused and listened, as if in an ecstasy, to a sound which seemed to me no better than a tiny chirping from an innumerable ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... back to emphasize his speech with an out-flung arm, Jeb lost his balance, and the stool being treacherous on its three legs, promptly turned over and sent both lovers from ecstasy down to earth. As Sary and Jeb managed to get upon their feet, they thought they heard sounds of smothered laughter and scampering feet over the brick walk, but when they got from behind the lilac bushes to reconnoiter, everything between the kitchen and the Shrubbery Walk ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... heart at one time. Now it weeps not for fear and through torment, but by virtue of constraining grace and mercy, and is at this very time, so far off of disquietness of heart, by reason of the sight of its wickedness, that it is driven into an ecstasy, by reason of the love and mercy that is mingled with the sense of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Max Dalahaide, to meet his eyes, tragic no longer, but bright with passionate gratitude; to know that he was out of danger, that he would live, and owe his life to her and hers; to hear the thanks, spoken stammeringly, but straight from his heart, filled her with an ecstasy such as she had never known. It was akin to pain, and yet it was worth dying for, just to have felt ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... the sea intoxicates—its sparkle, its mobility, its translucence excite the fancy, as wine does the blood—it combines those elements which produce at once awe and ecstasy in the soul—the unknown, the resistless, the beautiful. One may be melancholy by the sea, but never morbid or supine. Between it and the land there are no gradations; you do not come imperceptibly under its influence, as, in ascending ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... receptivity towards all sublime chances. The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had sincerely tried many of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly original had resulted from these measures; and the effects of the opium had convinced him that there was an entire dissimilarity ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... grace of Heaven that restoreth thee, dear Mother," quoth the angel. "Presently thou shalt be filled with the new life, and thou shalt be young again; and thou shalt sing with rapture, and thy soul shall know the endless ecstasy of Heaven." ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... altogether contemporary would suddenly give it wings that it could wave in the blue. Her consciousness was so mixed that she scarcely knew where the different parts of it would lead her, and she went about in a repressed ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often in the things she looked at a great deal more than was there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Ralph said, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... toil has ceased; now the gloom has disappeared; now the firmament is bounded only by the horizon; and what a vast expanse of constellations can be seen! The river rolls by us in silent majesty; the quiet of the camp is sweet; our joy is almost ecstasy. We sit till long after midnight talking of the Grand Canon, talking of home, but chiefly talking of the three men who left us. Are they wandering in those depths, unable to find a way out? are they searching over the desert-lands above ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... I went home to my lodgings in a state of perfect ecstasy. The vague half presentiment, half suspicion, which had been arising within me, had vanished. The sudden constraint in Liza's manner towards me I ascribed to maidenly bashfulness, timidity.... Hadn't I read a thousand times over ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... warning causing us to think. The touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin is nowhere more manifest than in sex; that absorption of the male by the female to which life owes its continuation, its ecstasy, and its pain. It has seemed to me it is here in the primitive relations of the sexes that we may find the clue to many of those wrongs which women have suffered at the hands of men. Man, acting instinctively, has rebelled, not so much, I think, against woman as against this driving hunger ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... listen; he had excavated a passage direct from one ear to the other for such remarks. And now he drank up the conversation of Mr. Oxford, and perceived that he had long been thirsty. And he spoke his mind. He grew warmer, more enthusiastic, more impassioned. And Mr. Oxford listened with ecstasy. Mr. Oxford had apparently a natural discretion. He simply accepted Priam, as he stood, for a great painter. No reference to the enigma why a great painter should be painting in an attic in Werter Road, Putney! No inconvenient queries about the great painter's previous history and productions. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... steeped in the marvellous ecstasy which all high summits develop in the mind; and now without giddiness, for I was beginning to be accustomed to these sublime aspects of nature. My dazzled eyes were bathed in the bright flood of the solar rays. I was forgetting where ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... something of the nature of these people within her. She had a certain turn of mind that was peasant-like, her slowness to take things in, her dislike of speech when thinking, her thoughts taking the form of "a series of reveries which gave her a sort of tranquil ecstasy, whether awake or asleep."(47) It does not seem as though there has ever been such an ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... that to behave as she might have behaved before would be to act, for Amerigo and Charlotte, with the highest hypocrisy. She saw in these days that a journey abroad with her father would, more than anything else, have amounted, on his part and her own, to a last expression of an ecstasy of confidence, and that the charm of the idea, in fact, had been in some such sublimity. Day after day she put off the moment of "speaking," as she inwardly and very comprehensively, called it—speaking, that is, to her father; and all the more that she was ridden by a strange suspense as to ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... ready hands soon managed to get rid of all obstacles, and to expose in a state of nature all the beauties which are generally veiled by troublesome wearing apparel. Two whole hours were devoted to the most delightful, loving ecstasies. At last we exclaimed together in mutual ecstasy, "O ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... never in his life before, lifted Billy to his shoulder and trotted up and down the room. "Nice little boy!" he laughed, Billy's damp fists hitting at him in ecstasy. "I'll just take him to the sitting-room while you finish your dinner." He did his best to pretend that the situation was not unusual, to act as if, in his own home, a man could be nothing but at home. All these confounded hirelings, acting as if they owned the place, had the cheek to be amazed ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... unconscious ecstasy at this vision, so amazing that it seemed to have strayed into his existence from beyond the limits of the conceivable. It was impossible to guess her thoughts, to know her feelings, to understand her grief or her joy. But she knew all that was at the bottom ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... about that; when Kitty's head is on my shoulder, I am not capable of any consecutive train of thought. When she puts it there I see stars, then myriads of stars, then, oh! I can't begin to enumerate the steps by which ecstasy mounts to delirium; but at all events, any operation which demands exclusive use of the intellect is beyond me at these times. Still I gathered my stray wits ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... putting it presently in tune, played and sung with such an air, as charmed the very soul of the caliph. Afterwards she played upon the lute without singing, but with so much strength and softness, as to transport him into an ecstasy. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... soft ecstasy and boundless relief of the moment, "how I have learned to love you during the fears and agonies ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... fields took on the aspect of a triumphal procession, while His popularity waxed with familiarity and the increasing years. Indeed, full oft the rapture men felt toward Him amounted to an intoxication and an ecstasy of devotion. True it is that men now look upon Him through a blaze of light, and, remembering His achievements for art, liberty and learning, have stained His name through and through with lustrous colors. As at eventide we look out upon the sun through white ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... but she did not speak. Trevor had taken her hand, and she did not withdraw it. She was stunned for a moment. The next instant there came over her, sweeping round her, entering her heart, filling her whole being, a delicious and marvellous ecstasy. The pain and the trouble vanished. The treachery, the deceit, and the fall she had undergone were forgotten. She only knew that, if Trevor loved her, she loved him. She was about to speak when her eyes fell for a moment on a page of the manuscript she had just ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... then it had rolled all the wild clamour away into a sustained magnificence of prayerful chords which seemed to plead for all things grand, all things true, all things beautiful,—and to list the soul of man in panting, labouring ecstasy up to the very threshold of Heaven! And she—the 'goblin' who evoked all this phantasmagoria of life set in harmony—she too changed as it seemed, in nature and aspect,—her small meagre face was as the face of a pictured angel, with the dark ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... ecstasy of exultation. The doctor had been sent by Philip. It was Philip who was trying to stop the marriage. He would never be able to bear it; he would claim her soon. It might be to-day, it might be to-morrow, it might be the next day. The odds were with her. Fate was being worsted. Thus she clung to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... found yourself, at the age of eighteen, a prisoner in your own bedroom you will be able to feel with Betty. Not otherwise. Even your highly strung imagination will be impotent to present to you the ecstasy of rage, terror, resentment that fills the soul when locked door and barred windows say, quite quietly, but beyond appeal: "Here you are, and here, my good ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... was making him shake from head to foot like a leaf, and that tears were streaming down his cheeks. The swaying crowd hid Marco from him, and he began to fight his way towards him because his excitement increased with fear. The ecstasy-frenzied crowd of men seemed for the moment to have almost ceased to be sane. Marco was only a boy. They did not know how fiercely they were pressing upon him and keeping away ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... supposed in itself to have. "We move to multiplicity," says Mr. Robert Buchanan. "If there is one quality which seems God's, and his exclusively, it seems that divine philoprogenitiveness, [239] that passionate love of distribution and expansion into living forms. Every animal added seems a new ecstasy to the Maker; every life added, a new embodiment of his love. He would swarm the earth with beings. There are never enough. Life, life, life,—faces gleaming, hearts beating, must fill every cranny. Not a corner is suffered to remain empty. The ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... that stentorian clearing of the throat which served for a warning that he was about to speak, and also a notification that he had spoken and would permit no difference of opinion. In the midst of her religio-dramatic ecstasy, Sissy heard that sound behind her, and jumped to her feet as though brought painfully back to a ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... though I had done something wrong; and where I, descending on my snow-shoes into some valley, would pause as though bewitched by a loveliness, by a longing, which I had not the power to explain, but which was so great that above the highest ecstasy of joy I would feel the deepest apprehension and distress—here in the parsonage of Naesset ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with thorns and brambles (Cic. Tusc. Quest lib. v. cap 23.) But if they had cause to be delighted, much more surely had Philip the apostle reason to be so when addressing Nathanael, he cried out in ecstasy—We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... she said, and stood dumb with parted lips. She looked and felt as if she had been standing there in silent ecstasy from the beginning. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... instrument that God has created. It is capable of a cultivation beyond the dreams of those who have given it no thought. It maybe made to express every emotion in the gamut of human sensation, from abject misery to boundless ecstasy. It marks the man without his consent; it makes the man if ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... excited—her father and she were together. It might be an hour, or it might be two hours, that they were to spend together, but the time was only beginning now. They were together, and she felt all the warm glow of love, all the ecstasy of perfect ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... gain on gain! In sooth, for mortals, the tongue's utterance Bewrays unerringly a foolish pride! Hither stalks Capaneus, with vaunt and threat Defying god-like powers, equipt to act, And, mortal though he be, he strains his tongue In folly's ecstasy, and casts aloft High swelling words against the ears of Zeus. Right well I trust—if justice grants the word— That, by the might of Zeus, a bolt of flame In more than semblance shall descend on him. Against his vaunts, though reckless, I have set, To make assurance sure, a warrior stern— Strong ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... grass to grow over the graves of the dead; the dew forming upon the mounded turf is less like tears than like glistening jewels to deck the earth in the joyous time of her bridehood in the spring; the flight of birds over it and their little bursts of melody are eloquent of an ecstasy which does not remember. How little time then must pass to wipe out the memory of the passing of a David Drennen from the busy ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... from Clara's room, it so happened that Prince Ernest opened his door, just as she came up to it, to let out the smoke, and then began to walk up and down, playing softly on his lute. Sidonia stood still for a few minutes with her eyes thrown up in ecstasy, and then passed on; but the Prince stepped to the door, and asked her did ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric state until the moon was full. Then, returning to the tribe quite emaciated, he excited himself, as others do who pretend to the prophetic AFFLATUS, until he was in a state of ecstasy. These pretended prophets commence their operations by violent action of the voluntary muscles. Stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or beating the ground with a club, they induce a kind of fit, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... for some time in this state of religious ecstasy as he improvised prayers and repeated again and yet again, "Lord, have mercy upon me!" Each time that he said, "Pardon me, Lord, and teach me to do what Thou wouldst have done," he pronounced the words with added earnestness and emphasis, as though he expected ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... entirely ceased. One of their number now called aloud, in words that were far from appalling, tho not more intelligible to those for whose ears they were intended than their expressive yells. It would be difficult to convey a suitable idea of the savage ecstasy with which the news thus imparted was received. The whole encampment in a moment became a scene of the most violent bustle and commotion. The warriors drew their knives, and flourishing them, they arranged themselves in two lines, forming ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... to me with open arms. "Come to my arms!" he cried, and embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheek. "David," said he, "I love you like a brother. And O, man," he cried in a kind of ecstasy, "am I no ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Bloomfield pike. She found he was from Bloomfield and trilled away in a high, shrill cackle that she loved every stick and stone in that adorable country. And when she found that he was the nephew of Mrs. Mosby, or, rather, Loraine Fawcette, that was, her ecstasy knew no bounds. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... sitting-room, where lamps had been lighted, they found the lady of the house in an ecstasy of admiration, gesticulating with her tiny brown hands, as she gloated over a length of rose and silver brocade. Standing beside her was the proud owner of this magnificence; a slim, graceful girl, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... strangers obtruded, these had been the just apprehensions of the afflicted family, they knew where to find consolation; and she who held the babe in her arms, and pressed it to her bosom, was no doubt prepared to adopt a similar strain with that by which Simeon afterward proclaimed his ecstasy—"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." But fear not, Mary! It is no ruffian band that approaches thee! These are no idle strangers, impelled by a vague curiosity; but they are the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... twenty-six, which was a long time ago, and that I took train to a place called my home, whose whereabouts I see not in my waking hours, and when I alighted at the station a dear lost love was waiting for me, and we went away together. She met me in no ecstasy of emotion, nor was I surprised to find her there; it was as if we had been married for years and parted for a day. I like to think that I gave her some of the ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... of strong waters rippled at his feet, freely to be partaken of did he choose, it is true that his face showed lines of restraint, a serene restraint, like unto that which the great old painters limned so beautifully upon the face of the martyr. But the martyrs of old in their ecstasy were not more resolute than Potts. It is probable that he looked forward to a period of post-election refreshment; but pending the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, his determination was such that it stamped his face with something ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... said, as if he returned to his original idea; "it does not matter, you are a delightful little monk; but that you visit hostelries is certain, and what hostelries too! Those where beautiful ladies are to be found, and you stop outside in a state of ecstasy before the window, where you can see their shadow. Oh! little one, little one, I shall tell Dom ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... there was a life of perfect love and purity for the soul; in which there would be no uneasy hunger after pleasure, no tormenting questions, no fear of suffering. Before I knew the history of the saints, I had a foreshadowing of their ecstasy. For the same truth had penetrated even into pagan philosophy: that it is a bliss within the reach of man to die to mortal needs, and live in the life of God as the Unseen Perfectness. But to attain that I must forsake the world: ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... visible reality. The reader of Plutarch at the age of ten actually conceived himself a Greek or a Roman, and became the personage whose strokes of constancy and intrepidity transported him with sympathetic ecstasy, made his eyes sparkle, and raised his voice to heroic pitch. Listeners were even alarmed one day as he told the tale of Scaevola at table, to see him imitatively thrust forth his arm over a ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... colors—diamonds, sapphires, pearls, rubies, opals, topazes, all as large as the fruits they were intended to represent and of such brilliancy that Rosalie was completely dazzled by them. But scarcely had she seen this rare and unparalleled tree, when a noise louder than the first drew her from her ecstasy. She felt herself lifted up and transported to a vast plain, from which she saw the palace of the king falling in ruins and heard the most frightful cries of terror and suffering issue from its walls. Soon Rosalie saw the prince himself creep from the ruins bleeding and his clothing ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... the people wild with delight. Even on the dry pages of Niles's "Weekly Register" occurs the triumphant paragraph: "Who would not be an American? Long live the Republic! All hail! last asylum (p. 097) of oppressed humanity! Peace is signed in the arms of victory!" It was natural that most of the ecstasy should be manifested concerning the military triumph, and that the mass of the people should find more pleasure in glorifying General Jackson than in exalting the Commissioners. The value of their work, however, was well proved by the voice of Great Britain. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... pinnacles of the church, and felt his heart beating, and knew, without being told by any one, whither he had at length arrived—well, then the feeling which had been growing within his soul burst forth, and he cried in ecstasy: ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of those old days? There's the pit that has swallowed them all! I remember it all now. Forty-five years of my life lie buried there, and what a life, Nikitushka! I can see it as clearly as I see your face: the ecstasy of youth, faith, passion, the love ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... unconscious of, or indifferent to, the close proximity of the velvet curtains. A thrifty housewife, could she have seen the smoke rise and curl and lose itself in the folds above, would have experienced the ecstasy of anxiety and perturbation. But there was no thrifty housewife at the Red Chateau, nothing but dreams of conquest ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... him to say of the one, 'I am not this,' and of the other, 'that, I am.' Wonderful encounter of thoughts across the distance of ages and the distance of races! The meditation of this young French soldier, in face of the enemy who is to attack on the morrow, resumes the strange ecstasy in which was rapt the warrior of the Bhagavad Gita between two armies coming to the grapple. He, too, sees the turbulence of mankind as a dream that seems to veil the higher order and the Divine unity. He, too, puts his faith in that 'which knows neither birth nor death,' ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... goods!" gasped Keogh, in ecstasy. "Talk about coals to Newcastle! Why didn't he take a ship-load of palm-leaf fans to Spitzbergen while he was about it? Saw the old codger on the beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his specs and squinted at the five hundred or ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... bent down over the Child are the ox and the ass—for those good animals helped with their breath through that cold night to keep him warm. In the foreground are the two ravi—a man and a woman in awed ecstasy, with upraised arms—and the adoring shepherds. To these are added on Epiphany the figures of the Magi—the Kings, as they are called always in French and in Provencal—with their train of attendants, and the camels on which they have ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... ecstasy, Within her depths where revels never tire, The olden Beauty shines; each thought of me Is veined through with ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... and massively like a violoncello, and America—played more lightly, is full of the sweeps and the lulls, the ecstasy, the overriding ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... arches. Then the organ intoned the massive Gregorian, and the chant of the mass moved amid the opulence of gold vestments; the Latin responses filled the ear; and at the end of long abstinences the holy oil came like a bliss that never dies. In the ecstasy of ordination it seemed to him that the very savour and spirit of God ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... alive!" I cried, a-clasping my hands in a sweet ecstasy of gratitude. "Did he attempt ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... below, making polite laughter, warned him that already some of the bidden party had arrived, and, as he completed the fastening of his third consecutive collar, an ecstasy of sound reached him through the open window—and then, Oh then! his breath behaved in an abnormal manner and he began to tremble. It was the voice of Miss Pratt, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts and rash embrac'd despair, And shuddering fear, and green-ey'd jealousy. O love, be moderate; allay thy ecstasy. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... know not what I am, nor where I am; My soul's transported to an ecstasy, For hope and joy confound ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... suddenly perceiving the little animal which was clinging close to their brother, in alarm at the tumult of voices, shouted in ecstasy: ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tricks of friend or foe; or the things he could never utter before, he finds words for now; the secrets of life are on his lips. It is in this loosening of the lips and heart, strictly, that Dionysus is the Deliverer, Eleutherios; and of such enthusiasm, or ecstasy, is, in a certain sense, an older patron than Apollo himself. Even at Delphi, the centre of Greek inspiration and of the religion of Apollo, his claim always maintained itself; and signs are not wanting that ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... long absent from Fanny; it is time to return to her. The delight she experienced when Philip made her understand all the benefits, the blessings, that her courage, nay, her intellect, had bestowed upon him, the blushing ecstasy with which she heard (as they returned to H——, the eventful morning of her deliverance, side by side, her hand clasped in his, and often pressed to his grateful lips) his praises, his thanks, his fear for her ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The ecstasy of the monk's terror could be endured no longer; his head grew dizzy, and, after staggering a few steps onward and running himself against a wall, he sunk down in a state ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... at equal speed in the opposite direction. The younger boy asked if he might have a ride in the aeroplane; the girl begged Smith to write his name in her album. The governess sat with clasped hands, gazing at him with the adoring ecstasy that she might have bestowed on a godlike visitant from another sphere. ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... child in ecstasy as she hurried up the hill. "That's the first time a lady ever kissed me, except Mrs. Carson. It is so nice to have friends! And Mrs. Vane is right, it does feel good when you've told folks you are sorry. I wonder—there's Dad—I sassed him and stole his watermelon. But he's hated ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... willing too often to expose his faculty to the mercy of chance. For, in fact, the orations which were spoken by him had much more of boldness and confidence in them than those that he wrote. Eratosthenes says that often in his speaking he would be transported into a kind of ecstasy, and Demetrius, that he uttered the famous metrical adjuration ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... carried on in the girl's absence, the high-strung Edith Harnham lived in the ecstasy of fancy; the vicarious intimacy engendered such a flow of passionateness as was never exceeded. For conscience' sake Edith at first sent on each of his letters to Anna, and even rough copies of her replies; but later on these ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... an aim that we are at liberty to seek directly and without periphrasis. Provided men do not lose their balance by immersing themselves in their pleasures, they are right, according to Emerson, in pursuing them. But joy is no neighbour to artificial ecstasy. What Emerson counsels the poet, he intended in its own way and degree for all men. The poet's habit of living, he says beautifully, should be set on a key so low that the commonest influences should delight him. 'That spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... would she have been any happier? Marriage was not the poetic dream of perfect union that a girl imagines it; she herself had found that out. It was a state of trial, of probation; it was an ordeal, not an ecstasy. If she and Basil had broken each other's hearts and parted, would not the fragments of their lives have been on a much finer, much higher plane? Had not the commonplace, every-day experiences of marriage vulgarized them both? ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the good soul in an ecstasy of giggles, and crossed to Lady Hannah. She welcomed him with a glitter of eyes and teeth and discovered the reserve-chair that had been covered by her somewhat fatigued and wilted draperies of maize Liberty-silk, veiled with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... consuming a cutlet and a pint of Moselle in the plain downright fashion of a man so democratic that he is practically a revolutionary socialist, and doesn't mind saying so; and the young rector of St. Asaph's was sitting opposite to him in a religious ecstasy over a salmi ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... first act, asserting itself whenever rage, irony, tenderness, or other emotion call for expression; omnipotent in the great love-duet, culminating in the nocturne, and once more soaring in highest ecstasy in Isolde's dissolution, with endless gradations in the portions between. Hearers who are not accustomed to the dramatic expression of music attend only to those moments of intense lyric expression, just as in the opera they attend only to the arias; all ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... account,—privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment,—who have filled their pockets with Lucifer matches, and have a sublime contempt for their neighbour's barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I should throw myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... future generations. Year after year the language of the art grows richer and more complex, and work after work sinks into ever-deepening oblivion, until music that once thrilled men with delirious ecstasy becomes a dead thing, which here and there a student looks back upon in a mood of scarcely tolerant antiquarianism. In the temple of the art a hundred statues of the gods are overthrown; and a hundred others stand with ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... all the others. At this distance you cannot say if any softer color steals into that placid face; you cannot tell if his survey lingers longer upon her than upon the rest. Yet she was Gretchen once, and he was Faust. There is no moonlight romance, no garden ecstasy, poorly feigned upon the stage, that is not burned with eternal fire into their memories. Night after night they come. They do not especially like this music. They are not infatuated with these singers. They have seats for the season; she with her husband, he in the orchestra ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... admired, for often those who are so loud about a thing are not the ones who know the most upon a subject. Yet it is all very important, and many things should be done; and, when they are done, we are all embowered in ecstasy." ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... pucker that could sometimes alight between her eyes. Scarcely a shadow, rather the shadow of a shadow. A lute, played in a western breeze? Once a note of music, not from a lute however, but played on a cheap harmonica, had caught Marylin's heart in a little ecstasy of palpitations, but that doesn't necessarily signify. Zephyr with Aurora playing? Laughter holding both ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... leave the parlor, a woman's voice near the grating breathed the word "Casanova." Nothing but his name, in a tone that seemed to him quite unfamiliar. From whom came this breach of a sacred vow? Was it a woman he had once loved, or a woman he had never seen before? Did the syllables convey the ecstasy of an unexpected reencounter, or the pain of something irrecoverably lost; or did it convey the lamentation that an ardent wish of earlier days had been so late and so fruitlessly fulfilled? Casanova could not tell. All that he knew was that his name, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... growing celebrity, did not enter into his speculations. He was a man's man. If he was ever to be interested in a woman it would be in the practical way of making her his wife. He could be a husband, never a lover. His genius, though fed by passion and virility, entertained no visions of romantic ecstasy. His instinct was for ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... bow across the strings, and lo! forthwith there arose such harmonies as Eloise had never heard before. Gently, persuasively, they stole upon her senses and filled her soul with an ecstasy ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... scolded during his little choleric outbursts or untempered enthusiasms, and yet, somehow, after a talk with his father he had so often found himself feeling much calmer or really happier. Anger in some way or other came to seem a foolish thing; and even if he had come in from an ecstasy of play, it was certainly pleasant to have the beating throbs in his head die away and to feel his cheeks grow cool again. In looking back, Horace knew that no philosophy had ever so deeply influenced him to self-control and to mental temperance as had the common, kindly, shrewd ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... the ashes from his pipe, pocketed it, and prepared for action. As the buggy came nearer he recognized his ancient enemy in the person of the man who sat at Hannibal's side, and stepping nimbly into the road seized the horses by their bits. At sight of him Hannibal shrieked his name in an ecstasy of delight. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... topic for a chapter on this subject, in the present day, would be the history of the Seeress of Prevorst, the best observed subject of magnetism in our present times, and who, like her ancestresses of Delphos, was roused to ecstasy or phrensy by ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Youth! Why must we spend these lonely nights? The poets hardly speak the truth,— Despite their praiseful litany, His season is not all delights Nor every night an ecstasy! ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... did not consciously seek the mountains to find there the release of imprisoned powers of utterance. The mountains sought her by their beauty and called forth the true mystic's ecstasy of communion. Mystics of all times and all religions have found inspiration and strength of spirit on the hilltops; they have forsaken the haunts of men for the silence of the heights, preparing themselves by meditation and self-purification to receive the Beatific Vision. They have gone ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... altar of the transept is to be seen a group carved in marble, representing the ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Caesar gazed at it absorbed. The saint is an attractive young girl, falling backward in a sensual spasm; her eyes are closed, her mouth open, and her jaw a bit dislocated. In front of the swooning saint is a little angel ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... Shomu's Empress, and whose name had been changed to Komyo (Refulgence) in token of her illustrious piety. The daughter inherited all the mother's romance, but in her case it often degenerated into a passion more elementary than religious ecstasy. Shomu, having no son, made his daughter heir to the throne. Japanese history furnished no precedent for such a step. The custom had always been that a reign ceased on the death of a sovereign unless the Crown Prince had not yet reached ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of the will, she sang in a voice of bell-like purity the canticle to the Virgin attributed to Stradella,—sang it so devoutly, so ethereally, that the dying man, "artist and lover of the beautiful to the very last," whispered in ecstasy, "How exquisite! ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... fellow, who held his arms to heaven, and sang in a great throaty voice the wild dirge I had been listening to. He held a book in one hand, from which he would pluck leaves and cast them on the fire, and at every burnt-offering a wail of ecstasy would go up from the hooded women and kneeling men. Then with a final howl he hurled what remained of his book into the flames, and with upraised hands began some ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... standing on the window-ledge, peering down—to the best of our ability—into the square and into the area depths below. Like a snow-flake in summer, we saw our paper-twist lying on the pavement; but our delight rose to ecstasy when a portly passer-by stooped and picked up the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Listen: A sunbeam lingered under a leaf in the forest at sunset, loath to leave so fair a spot, until the moon suddenly rose. Enraptured with the shimmering beauty of a moonbeam, he stood entranced and trembling and could not go. In ecstasy they met, embraced and kissed. The sun sank and left him in her arms. The opal is the child of their love. In its fair face is forever mingled the silver of the rising moon and the golden ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... special character of the mysticism of the East? It is the calmness of faith, love feeding on itself, ecstasy without ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... distended dugs or golden fleeces. The wings of thy night involve thee not in the horror of darkness, but have still some white feather; and thy day is (that for which we esteem life) the longest." But this ecstasy of Pliny, as is observed by Bertius, seems to allude as well to Marpesia and Panopea, now provinces of this ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... in dazzling ecstasy, From far away, with joy, to the beloved shore; And I with breast aflame, beneath thy charm once more, Shall haste to bring my liberty ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... Peter, is a giant, a huge, delightful baby in a mob-cap, turns out his elbows, strives eagerly after something. My wife falls into an ecstasy of agitation and emotion when she holds him in her arms; but I am completely at a loss to understand. I know that he has a great store of physical energy, but whether there is any purpose for which the store is wanted I do not know. That is why I do not care for children under two ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... in this pleasing ecstasy, I join my trembling lips to thine, And back receive that life from thee Which ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... Thus, an injudicious poet, who aims at loftiness, runs easily into the swelling puffy style, because it looks like greatness. I remember, when I was a boy, I thought inimitable Spencer a mean poet, in comparison of Sylvester's "Dubartas," and was wrapt into an ecstasy when ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... thought of the joy of bathing them in the tank, and that made the wounds sweet to me.... My Father, I have heard of the temptations which in times past assailed the holy Solitaries of the desert, flattering the reluctant flesh beyond resistance; but none, I think, could have surpassed in ecstasy that first touch of the water on my limbs. To prolong the joy I let myself slip in slowly, resting my hands on the edge of the tank, and smiling to see my body, as I lowered it, break up the shining black surface and shatter the starbeams into splinters. And the water, my Father, seemed ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... it. She was crazy with delight over her little friend's good fortune, so she took several steps forward and cried in an ecstasy, 'O ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... interruption, without relief, without repose. It sometimes happened that a young man, incapable of sustaining these consuming vigils, reeled and fainted; they removed the apparently lifeless body without suspending the discussion. M. Caseaux was in an ecstasy for an hour, and began to prophesy. Another day, M. Olinde Rodrigues was struck as if by apoplexy; because, asking each of the members in turn whether it was not true that the Holy Spirit was in him, (M. Olinde Rodrigues,) one of the persons interrogated had the temerity to answer by certain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... its value in my eyes on the cause that produced it. There was but one source whence it could flow. A nameless ecstasy thrilled through my frame when any new proof occurred that the ambiguousness of my ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... language I could understand; I felt my frame pervaded by a glow That seemed to thaw my marble into flesh; Its cold, hard substance throbbed with active life, My limbs grew supple, and I moved—I lived! Lived in the ecstasy of a new-born life! Lived in the love of him that fashioned me! Lived in a thousand ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... professor, in ecstasy, "it's just as I told you. Dissimulation is second nature to the tribe. No he is too big for them. The old lady says she and the other rogue are your children. Doctor, there's a notion for you!—an old bachelor like you, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... feel uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered. She recalled faintly an ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little new life to which she had given being, added to the great unnumbered multitude of souls that come ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... served to him in solitude in a little panelled parlour off the Hall; and in the fresh April morning, with the sunlight lying on the lawn and lighting up the old worn detail of the carved cornices, he recovered for a time the boyish sense of ecstasy of the first morning at home after the return from school. While he was breakfasting, a scribbled note from Jack was ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... herself into Mrs. Patterson's arms in an ecstasy of delight. "I'm so glad that it hurts," she exclaimed. "I'd forgot what good times there are in ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... would act without ceremony; but Caper and Roejean were on a high horse, and they fairly pumped the spring of Italian compliments so dry, that Bagswell could only make a squeaking noise when he tried the handle. This verbifuge of our three artists put their host into an ecstasy of delight, and he circulated all round, rubbing his hands and telling his six friends that his three friends were milordi, in very audible whispers, milordi of the most genial, courtly, polite, complimentary, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... and son laughed, and said "Good night" to each other. But as Henrik conveyed the hand of his mother towards his lips, he fell into a sort of ecstasy over it. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... employing them, stirred the North to unbounded enthusiasm, and made the rebel army feel that the Negro was the equal of the Confederate soldier under all circumstances. Secretary Stanton was in a state of ecstasy over the behavior of the Colored troops at Petersburg, an unusual thing for him. In his despatch ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... road quite hid Frances Kane from the little girl's view she clasped her hands with a mixture of ecstasy and alarm. ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... supper. They talked about the people who had been there that day. Edward, full of love and ecstasy, spoke well of every one—always sparing, often approving. Charlotte, who was not altogether of his opinion, remarked this temper in him, and jested with him about it—he who had always the sharpest thing to say on departed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... she felt that strange suffering which is always the other side of intense love—the reverse of the medal of the ecstasy of passion—and she thought she would tell him nothing about it. Why should he be hurt, annoyed, and humiliated? It would spoil all the pleasure of her coming back so early—the unexpected delightful time they might have. ... In this Bertha committed ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... effected; but there are a set of emotions about which a man had best be shy of talking lightly,—and the feelings excited by contemplating this vast, magnificent, harmonious Nature are among these. The view of it inspires a delight and ecstasy which is not only hard to describe, but which has something secret in it that a man should not utter loudly. Hope, memory, humility, tender yearnings towards dear friends, and inexpressible love ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lifelong blindness and lifelong disappointment will scarce even be required in this last formality of laying down his arms. Give him a march with his old bones; there, out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of the day and the dust and the ecstasy—there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instant the man also sprang. He caught her in arms that almost expected to clasp emptiness, arms that crushed in a savage ecstasy of possession at the actual contact with a creature of flesh and blood. In the same moment the lamp in the room behind him ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... jumping up and down and clapping their hands. "Mother," shouted Shenton, "they're coming!" Little Natalie clambered in stumbling haste up the steps and clutched Mrs. Leighton's skirts. "Muvver," she cried, in an agony of ecstasy, "they're coming!" ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... Mithradates had once come forward as the liberator of the Hellenes, if he had introduced his rule with the recognition of civic independence and with remission of taxes, they had after this brief ecstasy been but too rapidly and too bitterly undeceived. He had very soon emerged in his true character, and had begun to exercise a despotism far surpassing the tyranny of the Roman governors—a despotism which drove ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... I ask. But no one will tell me. Across the balcony a girl is hugging her fellow in a maudlin and hysterical manner. Another girl is hanging with her arms around the neck of one of the creatures I described some time ago. She is pressing her lips to his as if in ecstasy. He takes it all as a matter of course, like an indifferent young husband after the honeymoon is over. His companion joins him—the moon-faced fellow—and they come around to our box and ogle us. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... probable, very probable. For habits like those must set themselves deep in the very core of the system, don't you think, Colonel? If this woman, now, was descended from a whole line of ancestresses, who had all been trained for their work into a sort of ecstatic fervour, the ecstasy and all that went with it must have got ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... vigour? What god, envious of my mighty joy, rendered me a shameful object of his raillery? Snatched my (till then) never failing power, and left me dying on thy charming bosom. Heavens, how I lay! Silent with wonder, rage and ecstasy of love, unable to complain, or rail, or storm, or seek for ease, but with my sighs alone, which made up all my breath; my mad desires remained, but all inactive, as age or death itself, as cold ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... supper table was being cleared away preparatory to the dance, Captain Jack rushed upstairs to the party in the gallery. Patricia flung herself at him in an ecstasy of rapture. ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... in the nameless shades of this man's soul and then hear with an endless excitement about the nameless shades of the souls of all his aunts and uncles. A moment before he had been dying alone. Now he was living in the same world with a man; an inexhaustible ecstasy. In the gallery below the ball Father Michael had found that man who is the noblest and most divine and most lovable of all men, better than all the saints, greater than all the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of the temple, who were identified with the Sauades and nymphs of the heavenly host. Men heard them passing in the night, heralded by the piercing notes of the flute provoking to frenzy, and by the clash of brazen cymbals, accompanied by the din of uproarious ecstasy: these sounds were broken at intervals by the bellowing of bulls and the roll of drums, like the rambling of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... it was that Kate discovered the motor attachment of the new machine and was divided between ecstasy and economic qualms. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... an echo in a living breast. Man is nothing but the desire to feel himself in another." "When I dare look up to thee from my childish pursuits, I think I see a bride whose priestly robes do not betray, nor her face express, whether she is sad or joyous in her ecstasy." "Thou lookest deeper into my breast, knowest more of my spiritual fate, than I, because I need only read in thy soul to find myself." "I would possess every thing, wealth and power of beautiful ideas, art and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... incongruous years of middle age. There is never a man, gifted to any degree with imagination, but eternally searches for an ultimate loveliness not disappearing in the circle of his embrace—the instinctively Platonic gesture toward the only immortality conceivable in terms of ecstasy. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... simply as though lifted by the hands that held her own. Their vitality thrilled through her like a strong current of electricity. She felt that whichever way they turned, wherever they led her, she must be safe. And there was a quivering ecstasy in that dazzling, rapid rush that filled ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... thickened, straightening Laura's auburn ringlets, and hanging in dew-drops on Philip's rough coat, but little recked they; it was such an hour as they had never enjoyed before. Philip had never so laid himself open, or assured her so earnestly of the force of his affection; and her thrills of ecstasy overcame the desolate expectation of his departure, and made her sensible of strength to bear seven, ten, twenty years of loneliness and apparent neglect. She knew him, and he ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feature of all those distressing examples seemed to indicate that, while theoretically the man was in an ideal state of blissful ecstasy, he was, practically, in a condition bordering on madness. At the very moment he was supposed to be happy, he was about half the time most miserable. Even at its best, it did not make for comfort. Poor Chic ran the gamut every week from hell to heaven. It was with a sigh of ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... time that still seems brighter than this—when he could exult in the fairy splendour and comic humour of Aladdin and weep over the sorrows of The Drunkard, when he was thrilled and frightened by J.B. Booth in The Apostate, and could find an ecstasy of pleasure in the loves of Alonzo and Cora and the sublime self-sacrifice of Rolla. Thoughts of such actors as Henry Wallack, George Jordan, John Brougham, John E. Owens, Mary Carr, Mrs. Barrow, and Charlotte Thompson, together in the same theatre, are ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Mrs. Green?" But there was no need for her to answer that question. There was a sudden scurry of feet, and a wire-haired fox-terrier was jumping all over him in ecstasy. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... a sigh of ecstasy she sprang into the air as a slave might do from whom the fetters have ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... against the balustrade, and gazed at the handsome windows through which the rich, warm light streamed out into the wintry air. As he sat there, strains of exquisite music, and the sounds of dancing, floated out into the night. The little fellow clasped his hands in ecstasy and listened. He had never heard such melody, and it made his heart ache to think how poor and mean was his own minstrelsy compared with that with which his ears were now ravished. The wind blew fierce and keen down the grand street, whirling the snow about ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... The Huron Indians pray to the souls of the fish they catch; well, why should they not? a fish has a soul if Modern Society has one; one could conceive a fish going softly through shining waters for ever and for ever in the ecstasy of motion; but who could conceive ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the circulator of the circulation of the blood, used to fling away Virgil in his ecstasy of admiration, and say 'the book had a devil.' Now, such a character as I am copying would probably fling it away also, but rather wish that the devil had the book; not from a dislike to the poet, but a well-founded ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... can depict mockery, every stage of anxiety or pain, astonishment, ecstasy, terror, suffering, fury and admiration, besides all ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... of the world with regard to the North Pole had at this date reached a pitch which can only be described as fevered, though that word hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which prevailed: for the abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for knowledge, had always felt in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a thousand and a thousand times intensified by a new, concrete interest—a tremendous ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... Linda's heart. And it was understood that every one in the house was supposed to be living under some special cloud of God's anger till Linda's consent should have been given. Madame Staubach had declared during the ecstasy of her devotion, that not only she herself, but even Tetchen also, would become the prey of Satan if Linda did not relent. Linda had almost acknowledged to herself that she was in the act of bringing eternal destruction on all those around ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... find ecstasy in vertigo when thought, turning on itself, exhausted by the stress of introspection, tired of vain effort, recoils in fright; thus it would seem that man must be a void and that by dint of delving within himself, he reaches the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... fallen upon her knees in blessing and thankfulness, forgetful of all her tribe of sorrows, conscious only that she was a woman crowned and throned. By degrees she forgot that she was starving, forgot everything in an ecstasy of pure passion and pride, an ecstasy that brought food, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... father's position, 6; Torquato's birth, 7; the death of his mother, 9, 15; what Tasso inherited from his father, 11; Bernardo's treatment of his son, ib.; Tasso's precocity as a child, 12; his early teachers, ib.; pious ecstasy in his ninth year, 13; with his father in Rome, 14; his first extant letter, 15; his education, 16; with his father at the Court of Urbino, 17; mode of life here, 18; acquires familiarity with Virgil, 19; studies and annotates the Divina Commedia, ib.; metaphysical studies and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... to the shining of the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills. It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the sixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more picturesque then, crowning the rocky ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... divine ecstasy in her expression as she looked down into the little face; it never seemed ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson |
