"Agonising" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mouth was smaller, the lips less full, and the dimple less exaggerated. It was a fairer face to look upon,—fairer, perhaps, than her mother's had ever been; but it was less expressive, and in it there was infinitely less capability for anger, and perhaps less capability for the agonising extremes of tenderness. But Kate was taller than her mother, and seemed by her mother's side to be slender. Nevertheless she was strong and healthy; and though she did not willingly join in those longer walks, or expose herself to the weather as did her mother, there was nothing ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... she not going away with Owen to Paris on Thursday night? The agonising question continued at every moment to present itself. Whatever she was doing or saying, she was always conscious of it, and as the time drew near, with every hour, it seemed to approach and menace her. She seemed to feel it beating like a neuralgic pain behind her eyes; ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... round the sandy spit before we could head towards the rock, and nearly got on shore in trying to make too close a shave. We could hear the crack of the pilot's carbine every few minutes, borne down to us by the freshening breeze, and the agonising "coo-ehs" of poor Wordsworth, whose ankles were already hidden by the advancing waters; added to this, we had only two oars, and the wind, now pretty strong, was dead in our teeth. I was steering, and Jim ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... suddenly, came the final warning of all: the occurrence, without notice, of an almost agonising home-sickness. The party travelled by land, as speedily as they could, to the Channel, a last attack of apoplectic paralysis taking place at Nimeguen; and after crossing it and reaching London, Sir Walter was taken by sea to the Forth, and thence home. The actual end was delayed ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... to be brought near such an enormity, let alone to have it brought home to herself in a horrible accusation; and the effect of it was a shock to her nervous system—one of those stunning blows which are scarcely felt at first, but are agonising in their after effects. When the reaction set in, Beth's disgust was so great it took a physical form, and ended by making her violently sick. It was days before she quite recovered, and in one sense of the word she was never the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... tragical than her discovery in herself of a capacity for love which could never be satisfied within that prison? And when that capacity began to vindicate itself in strange forms of disease, seemingly to her supernatural, often agonising, often degrading, and at the same time (strange contradiction) mixed itself up with her noblest thoughts, to ennoble them still more, and inspire her not only with a desire of physical self-torture, which would seem holy both ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... helped to it by an agonising thirst, almost, of curiosity to see his face once more, there can be no doubt. But could she have said, during that moment, whether she most desired that he should have utterly forgotten her, or ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of a disturbance in the auditorium. The noise increased, and then I heard the agonising words: 'Fire! Fire!' Panic followed, and cries of terror ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... ill-fated afternoon, and then all, save for the songs of the birds and the rippling of the deep waters of the lake, was wrapped in silence. Then followed the report—whispered through the party assembled to do honour to the future bride and bridegroom—that "Bill" was missing. Then came the agonising suspense and the eight hours' search throughout ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... with unendurable fierceness from July to October. In England he was full of strength and vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn-tennis player. In China he is always ill, anaemic, wasted, and dyspeptic, constantly subject to low forms of fever, and destitute of appetite. But more agonising than his bad health is the horrible reality of the unavailing sacrifice he is making—no converts but "outcasts subsidised to forsake their family altars;" no reward but the ultimate one which his noble self-devotion is laying up for himself ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... now many hundred years their priceless value to the little Book of Psalms ascribed to the shepherd outlaw of the Judean hills, which have sent the sound of his name into all lands throughout all the world. Every form of human sorrow, doubt, struggle, error, sin—the nun agonising in the cloister; the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper shivering over the embers in his hovel and waiting for kind death; the man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... victory frightened him. Now there must be an end of all this, now he would go home. He had not had the slightest prickings of conscience, the slightest longings, until now; all at once they were uncontrollable. SHE stood upon the hilltop, pure and noble. It became agonising. He must go at once, or it would drive him mad. This anxiety was made less acute by the sight of his mother's sincere pleasure. She came up to him when she heard that he had shut himself into his room. They had a really comfortable talk together—finally about the state of their finances. ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the prayers for those in their last agony.' He did as requested, and she answered the Litany in a firm voice. After some little time, the bell for the agonising was heard, and a person came in to ask Anne Catherine's prayers for his sister, who was just dead. Anne Catherine asked for details concerning her illness and death, as if deeply interested in the subject, and the friend above-mentioned heard the account given by the ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... quiet talk with him. But the Germany that had watched those rushes with a slightly doubting pride had her eyes now full of tears and blood. She had believed, she had obeyed, and no real victory had come. Still she fought on, bleeding, agonising, wasting her substance and the substance of the whole world, to no conceivable end but exhaustion, so capable she was, so devoted, so proud and utterly foolish. And the mind of Germany, whatever it was before the war, would now be something residual, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Rajah. There was no need even to question him, for on his knees, with piteous lamentation, he confessed that in the spiced sauce accompanying the curry a quantity of very finely powdered glass had been mingled, which would ensure an agonising death to any one who partook of it. This had been done at the instigation of the disgraced Dwarika Nath, whose bribe for the purpose would be found hidden in the thatch of the cook-house. Gerrard retained only a vague recollection of the issue of certain orders, of the informers ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of another life besides your own, accidentally cast upon your protection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might seem ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... experience with him, that your sister would not now blame me for indulging in gloomy visions either of this world or of another. I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the pride and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood. I have suffered such sorrow since I last saw you at Haworth, that I do not now care if I were fighting ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... hole in the road? who knows? In a moment they were all down, horse and riders flung in a heap together. The horse struggled to his knees, then fell again. He screamed, an agonising sound, that in Rita's excited mind seemed to mingle with the smoke and the dust in a cloud of horror. Every moment she expected to feel the iron hoofs crashing into her, as the frenzied creature struggled ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... anguish I feel at the death of our sweet Annie. To know that I shall never see her again on earth, that her place in our circle, which I always hoped one day to enjoy, is forever vacant, is agonising in the extreme. But God in this, as in all things, has mingled mercy with the blow, in selecting that one best prepared to leave us. May you be able to join me in saying 'His will be done!' ...I know how much you will ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... still standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and blistering ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... for them at the door—heard the landlady's cousin wailing, "Lil! Lil!"—and again plunged under, arms wide and eyes staring, and heart bursting with despair. Everything in him seemed bursting—an agonising sensation—as his overstrained lungs collapsed, and the power of his strong limbs failed him; then everything seemed to break away and let in the floods of Lethe with a rush—confusion and forgetfulness and a whirl of dreams, settling to a strange peace, an irresistible sleep, as if ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... agonising grief of Sir John Oaklands, on receiving from my lips the account of his son's danger, was most painful to witness, and I was obliged to yield to his desire to return with me to the cottage, although Ellis had strictly forbidden his ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Terror, agonising, soul-shaking terror such as she had never imagined, took hold of her. The flaming light of desire burning in his eyes turned her sick and faint. Her body throbbed with the consciousness of a knowledge that appalled her. She understood his purpose with a horror that ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... involuntarily caused him to accept one thing and to reject another; his intuitive sense regarding good or bad; that all this was merely as a faint mist, in which his personality alone was shrouded. By the world in its huge, vast entirety all his profoundest and most agonising experiences were as utterly and completely ignored as the death-agony of this little frog. In imagining that his sufferings and his emotions were of interest to others, he had expressly and senselessly woven a complicated net between ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... bright dreams that he had entertained, the visions of gay things which he had suffered the enchanter Imagination to call forth from the former obscurity of his fate, were all dispelled by the words that he had just heard spoken; and everything dark, and painful and agonising, was spread out around him in its stead. He was as one who, having fallen asleep in a desert, has dreamt sweet dreams, and then suddenly wakes with the rising sun, to find nothing ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the barren wastes renders it all the more inhospitable. No one, no living thing, no object is visible save the ash. Suddenly it moves its livid trunk, sways violently, unnaturally, backwards and forwards—once, twice, thrice; and there comes from it a cry, a most piercing, agonising cry, half human, half animal, that dies away in a wail and imparts to the atmosphere a sensation of ice. I can hear the cry as I sit here writing; my memory rehearses it; it was one of the most frightful, blood-curdling, hellish sounds I ever endured; and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... You must not! You cannot!" Terror had sprung upon her, and her heart was being torn in two in her breast. That was surely what it seemed like—this agonising ache of fear. Now from hour to hour she would be waiting and listening to each sound borne on the air. Her thought would be a possession she could not escape. When she spoke or was spoken to, she would be ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the poor devils need something—is it that, then? Is it a real thing? Do people fight for it like that? For this imperious Voice is agonising for something and the drum is ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... little waves Whispered each to each. Dove-coloured was that stony beach, And white birds hungering hovered over The shining waves; And men had kindled there A great fierce heap of golden flame— Spoiled grasses with dead buttercups and pale clover. The agonising flame Yearned in its vitals towards the quiet air And died in a little smoke. And on the coloured beach the ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... hanging, by burning, at the hands of robbers, and at the teeth of animals, is said to be an inglorious one.[1555] Those men that are righteous never incur such or similar deaths even if they be afflicted with mental and physical diseases of the most agonising kind. The lives of the righteous, O king, piercing through the Sun, ascend into the regions of Brahma. The lives of those that are both righteous and sinful rove in the middle regions. The lives of those that are sinful sink into the lowest depths. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roof that ring, Shrieks of an agonising king! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heaven! What terrors round him wait! Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the light of her nature. As she lay there, she longed to die, as she had never longed for anything while she lived, and she would have had small hesitation in killing the heart that beat with such agonising pain in her breast—saving that one thought prevented her. She cared not for revenge any more. What was the life of that cold, cruel thing, the queen, worth, that by taking it, she could gain comfort? But she felt and knew that, before she died, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... words, "your adoring slave," and all that speech of Hyacinth's which the child had repeated, haunted Angela with an agonising iteration. She had not an instant's doubt as to the scene being faithfully reported. She knew how preternaturally acute Henriette's intellect had become in the rarified atmosphere of her mother's drawing-room, how accurate her memory, how sharp her ears, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... absolute greatness, as fine as anything she has ever done: but there are other moments when she seems to carry repression too far. Her pathos, as in the final scene, and at the end of the scene of the reception, where she repeats the one word "Armando" over and over again, in an amazed and agonising reproachfulness, is of the finest order of pathos. She appeals to us by a kind of goodness, much deeper than the sentimental goodness intended by Dumas. It is love itself that she gives us, love utterly unconscious of anything ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... prevent them again becoming adherent. When this is difficult, a portion may be resected from each of the nerve-trunks at a higher level; and if this fails to give relief, a fresh amputation may be performed. When there is agonising pain dependent upon an ascending neuritis, it may be necessary to resect the corresponding posterior nerve roots within ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... there was not any soporific in adopting was not agonising. There had not come to be division. There was that article. They saw that away. It was not a comfort. They had that to keep the place away. They were not blameworthy. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... remember that early walk in Jerusalem! The being whom he loved best was leaning upon him, too much exhausted to decline his aid; there was thrilling happiness in being so near her; but the uppermost feelings in the mind of Lycidas were agonising fear upon Zarah's account, and intense impatience to reach some place of safety. Fearfully slow to Lycidas appeared the progress of the heavily-laden mule, terribly long the way that was traversed. The muleteer purposely avoided that which would have been most direct; ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the chief of what Bart himself saw. That unquenchable instinct in a man's heart that if he had only tried a little harder he would certainly have attained to righteousness gave the lie to his sense of agonising struggle, with its desperate, rallies of courage and sinkings of discouragement, gleams of self-confidence, and foul suspicion of self, suspicion even as to the reality of his own effort. All this was in the region of unseen spirit, almost as much ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... alternately objurgating and pleading with the spirits, who, she said, were vexing her child which had convulsions. "Observe," said the Doctor in his impressive way, "these were distinctly prayers, appeals for mercy, agonising protests, but there was no praise, no love, no thanks, no confession of sin." I said, considering the underlying idea, I did not see how that could be, thinking of the thing as they did, and the Doctor and I had one of our little disagreements. I shall always feel grateful to him for ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... his uniform was agonising, and he berated the fate that pried him loose from tunic and puttees. So disgusted was he that, although the Government allowed three months longer before discarding uniforms, he shed ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... been able to see a day into the future, we might have spared ourselves this agonising, for all our doubts and fears were suddenly dispersed in an entirely unexpected manner. Happily these interior problems are not infrequently resolved ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... long beloved and long deplored! When blooming youth, nor gentlest wisdom's arts, Nor Hymen's honours gather'd for thy brow, Nor all thy lover's, all thy father's tears Avail'd to snatch thee from the cruel grave; Thy agonising looks, thy last farewell 200 Struck to the inmost feeling of my soul As with the hand of Death. At once the shade More horrid nodded o'er me, and the winds With hoarser murmuring shook the branches. Dark As midnight storms, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... terror, admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls upon the heavens to avenge his cause, "for they are old like him," there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime identification of his age with theirs; for there is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... tortur'd by their agonising pleasure, Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun ... Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... time devoted to the manipulation of a plot can be known only to those who have written plays and novels; I may say also, how very little time the brain is able to devote to such wearing work. There are usually some hours of agonising doubt, almost of despair,—so at least it has been with me,—or perhaps some days. And then, with nothing settled in my brain as to the final development of events, with no capability of settling anything, but with a most distinct conception of some character or characters, I have rushed ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... of these poor beasts pierced me to the heart. Jacques questioned me with his eyes; he would have liked to try and deliver them. Their agonising moans soon became lamentable, and a great cracking sound was heard. The oxen had just broken down the stable doors. We saw them pass before us, borne away by the flood, rolled over and over in the current. And they disappeared amid ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... and his own life looked to Joseph when he woke! Hesitations and agonising doubts of his betrothed's purity had vanished with the night, and, instead of the dread that her child would be the offspring of shame, had come a divinely given certainty that it was 'a holy thing.' In the rush of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... romance, but simple fact—whether you are to be suited for inextinguishable sorrow, or for mere passing grief; and if you are at all in doubt upon the subject, he can solve the problem for you, if you lend him your confidence for the occasion. He knows from long and melancholy experience the agonising intensity of wo expressed by bombazine, crape, and Paramatta; can tell to a sigh the precise amount of regret that resides in a black bonnet; and can match any degree of internal anguish with its corresponding shade of colour, from the utter desolation and inconsolable wretchedness ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... Queen. And I stopped for a while, for my heart was beating so furiously that I was afraid it would break. And I said to myself, with a sigh of ineffable relief: Ah! now, then, I am actually here, once more. And O now, very soon, comes the agonising rapture of seeing her again. And I wonder where she is, and how I shall find her to-night. And now I must begin to hunt for a very sweet quarry. And suddenly I started almost running, paying absolutely no attention to ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... of agonising suspense, and then the revolving figures reach the base of the mountain, and commence simultaneously to roll up ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... another word. Now we should never awaken the phantasy of this malevolent thing. The perfect government of woman is a task to rend a man's heart, and we are compelled to remain in perfect submission to them; that is, I imagine, the best manner in which to solve the most agonising enigma ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... rigid hands to heaven. The gentlemen were not at home when the rumour arrived, but they came in an hour or two afterwards, each from his hunt for news. The Scotch tutor did not dare to meet the widow's agonising looks. Harry Warrington was as pale as his mother. It might not be true about the manner of the General's death—but he was dead. The army had been surprised by Indians, and had fled, and been killed without seeing the enemy. An express had ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... delicious, an amiable desire that the palate of her spoiled child should be gratified, some reasonable maternal anxiety that after so long and fatiguing a drive he in fact needed some refreshment, and the agonising consciousness that all her own physical pleasure at the moment was destroyed by the mental sufferings she endured at having quarrelled with her son, and that he was depriving himself of what was so agreeable only ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... should struggle after. It comes, if it is there. There is a revengeful consolation for the pain we suffer from design about us writhing to be up-to-date, in the thought that its contortions tell what pain it cost to do. The birth of beauty is a less agonising travail; and the thing to seek is beauty, not novelty. Whoever planned the lines of the border in Illustration 91, or treated the leafage in Illustration 92, was not trying to be original, but determined to do his ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... fuss over a little pain!" What many would say to a suffering friend when sound and well themselves. What Richmond Chartley was ready to say to herself as she paced the room, with one hand pressed to her face, where the agonising pain seemed to start as a centre, and then ramify in jerks ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... that he must go to Luard and tell him that the story was an invention. Though he dreaded humiliation more than anything in the world, he hugged himself for two or three days at the thought of the agonising joy of humiliating himself to the Glory of God. But he never got any further. He satisfied his conscience by the more comfortable method of expressing his repentance only to the Almighty. But he could not understand why ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... as I write the air is balmy and the skies are blue, it is agonising to feel that our own spring rhubarb is growing crimson only to be toyed with by alien lips, and that the thrush on our pear-tree bough——But no, I am wrong; the pear-tree bough is in the garden of No. 9; it is only the trunk that stands in the garden of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... his ball for some time in agonising indecision before he finally drove off. A cloud of sand rose; the ball was nowhere to be seen, and, taught by experience, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of Felton must not, however, be conceived from this agonising scene of contrition. Of melancholy and retired habits, and one of those thousand officers who had incurred disappointments, both in promotion and in arrears of pay, from the careless duke, he felt, perhaps, although he denied it, a degree of personal ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... particular poisons; that other poisons are used for suicidal purposes; that the photographer takes cyanide of potassium, the medical man and chemist prussic acid or morphia, the poor man vermin-killer or oxalic acid, or carbolic acid, or some such agonising destroyer of life. And thus, though all poisons lead to the same end—stoppage of the breathing and blood circulation—yet each has its own particular way of sending the soul to eternity. He can therefore often tell the analyst detective how to take ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... guards dispatch'd the Persian lord; Or like a man that feels a strong disease His shivering members in a moment seize— Such direful throes convulsed the despot's frame. His hands, that veil'd his eyes, confess'd his shame, And mental pangs, more agonising far, In his sick bosom bred a civil war; And hate and anguish, with insatiate ire, Flash'd in his eyes with momentary fire.— Not raging Ocean, when its billows boil; Nor Typhon, when he lifts the trembling soil Of Arima, his tortured limbs to ease; Nor Etna, thundering ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... down the street, looking at the numbers of the houses. She stopped here. Intuition told me she was Miss Goodwin. While she was ringing the bell I did all I could to increase the shabby squalor of your room. She was shown in here, and I introduced myself as your friend. We chatted. I drew an agonising picture of your struggle for existence. You were brave, talented, and unsuccessful. Though you went often hungry, you had a plucky smile upon your lips. It was a meritorious bit of work. Miss Goodwin cried a good deal. She is charming. I was so sorry for her that I laid it on all ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... but he could distinguish nothing outside, the lamp, which was close to the window, blinding him. At times he caught the clink of a bottle, and fancied that the men were supping; but he knew nothing for certain, and by-and-by the light was put out. A brief—and agonising—period of silence followed, during which he thought that he caught the distant tramp of horses; but he had heard the same sound before, it might be the beating of his heart, and before he could decide, oaths ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... as she had told her husband—the taking of her own life, in a great despair with the world. Seriously she had thought of it; it was an escape perfectly in accord with her morality. The useless and agonising were put out of the world by common consent; the Euthanasia houses witnessed to it. Then why not she?... For she could not bear it!... Then Oliver had come, she had fought her way back to sanity and confidence; and the phantom had ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... He called her back from the very shoal of time to listen to him. With heart-broken sobs he begged her forgiveness, and she answered him with a smile that had caught the glory of heaven. At that hour he cared not who heard the cry of his agonising love and remorse. Sophy was the whole of his world, and his anguish, so imperative, brought perforce the response of the dying woman who loved him yet so entirely. A few tears—the last she was ever to ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... was nowise party to thy crime, And bade him say what wretch had set him on To bring the robe. The herald knowing naught, Said as thou badst him, that it was thy gift. Whereupon Heracles, his heartstrings grasped By agonising pains that pierced him through, Seized Lichas by the ankle, hurled him down From the cliff's edge upon a wave-washed rock That jutted from the sea, shattered his skull, So that his brains streamed mingled with his blood. At the two sights, of frenzy ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... agonising situation a horseman was seen approaching from the opposite side of the road. Only with the utmost difficulty could he force his way through the densely packed mob. Indeed, they would not have stirred a stump had he not kept on waving in ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Denis managed to go to sleep that night. Vague but agonising miseries possessed his mind. It was not only Anne who made him miserable; he was wretched about himself, the future, life in general, the universe. "This adolescence business," he repeated to himself every now and then, "is horribly ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the sun rose bright and joyous over this scene of anxiety and pain. On came the vessel flying before the gale, while the seas chased her as if they would fain overwhelm her. It was fearful to see her scud—agonising to know that ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... vengeance; you appeal in vain to me. Did I wish to spare you I could not; an oath, a fearful oath, binds me, taken to one from whom I derived life, one whose death was far more agonising and lingering than ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... is the sound as of the tuning up of a thousand fiddles! I hear the agonising scrape of strings, the squeal of the bows! I have heard it all before at many a concert, but this time it is intensified a thousandfold and penetrates even into my dreams. I imagine I am in a concert ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Seer, to you This Song Wreath of our Race is due, Since high o'er hatred and division, You have scaled the Peak and seen the Vision Of Freedom, breaking into birth From out an agonising Earth. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... imaginary. Public ridicule would have ended my scientific career in such an event. I know of no better way to end Professor Bottomly's scientific career and capability for mischief than to start her out after something which doesn't exist, inform the newspapers, and let her suffer the agonising consequences." ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... The motif of evil enchantment is woven through the whole of this scene. In a hard masterful voice he speaks at length: "Bruennhilde! A suitor is come whom your fire does not alarm! I seek you for my wife; follow me unresistingly." It is all so strange, so like the agonising impossibilities of a dream,—Bruennhilde falls to trembling. "Who are you, dreadful one? Are you a mortal? Do you come from Hella's army of the night?" Still watching her, motionless on his point of vantage, he replies: ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... in passing, one peculiarity in regard to all the final resolutions taken by him in the matter; they had one strange characteristic: the more final they were, the more hideous and the more absurd they at once became in his eyes. In spite of all his agonising inward struggle, he never for a single instant all that time could believe in the carrying out ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... both levity and misery. But a sense of something wrong connected with him, sickened and oppressed them. They began to lose all hope in his future career. He was no longer the family pride; an indistinct dread, caused partly by his own conduct, partly by expressions of agonising suspicion in Anne's letters home, was creeping over their minds that he might turn out their deep disgrace. But, I believe, they shrank from any attempt to define their fears, and spoke of him to each other ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... brightest dreams of the morrow, had left him, not only mentally worn out, but even physically sick. He felt as though the scene which would mark the culminating triumph of his academic career, the end of his youth and the beginning of his manhood, was really an ordeal too great, too agonising, to ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... sharp enough to be dismayed by what stares him in the face. Charles Dickens had lucid intervals in which he was vaguely conscious of the abuses around him; but his spasmodic efforts to expose these brought him into contact with realities so agonising to his highstrung literary nerves that he invariably sank back into debauches of unsocial optimism. Even the Swan of Avon had his glimpses of the havoc of displacement wrought by Elizabethan romanticism in the social machine which had been working with tolerable ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... very small, and written in pencil. There was a strange faintness at my heart, and my fingers trembled as I opened them. Fear, fear was clutching me, compressing me in an agonising grip. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... poor, half-petrified pink-face with the twisted tail. Seeing that its comrades were gone in earnest, it became desperate, flung itself frantically into the air with an agonising squeak, missed its mark, went crashing through the slender branches and fell to ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... against her will? The thought maddened her, but she could not move. The passionate love in her heart anchored those weary feet. She flung up her arms towards a window through which a light shone dimly—the window of his room, and an agonising cry of farewell broke from her. It was his name that fled from her lips like a burning arrow, and reached her husband in the gloomy stillness of ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... the agonising old nations fail to regenerate themselves, what can befall? What, when even Imperialism has been tried and failed, as fail it must? What but that lower depth within ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the house, found the pious clergyman reading prayers with great fervency, while Don Diego stood with his right hand upon his breast, looking steadfastly upon the agonising Fathom, and the young woman kneeled, with her streaming eyes lifted up to heaven, in an ecstasy of grief and devotion. The physician had run to an apothecary's shop in the neighbourhood, from whence he soon returned with an assistant, who applied a large blister to the back of the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... ugly, violent thoughts, overflowed all her young senses. She was a child on a holiday. The nightmare of the Raid—of those groups of fighting, dishevelled women, ignominiously overpowered, of the grinning crowd, the agonising pain of her arm, and the policeman's rough grip upon it—began to vanish ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... agonising suspense went by. The fair Leah had ceased to move. Undoubtedly she was engaged in disentangling the wool from the leg of the chair. That was my opportunity. More stealthy than any cat, I tiptoed toward the chair—and, indeed, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... lower, as the feelings grow stronger. This physiological deduction we also find to be in harmony with familiar facts. The habitual sufferer utters his complaints in a voice raised considerably above the natural key; and agonising pain vents itself in either shrieks or groans—in very high or very low notes. Beginning at his talking pitch, the cry of the disappointed urchin grows more shrill as it grows louder. The "Oh!" of astonishment or delight, begins several notes below the middle voice, and descends ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... avenging angel, and hid his face with his hands. I poured some milk down his parched throat. 'Oh, mother!' he exclaimed, 'I am a wretch unworthy of compassion; the cause of innumerable sufferings; a murderer! a parricide!' My blood curdled to hear a stripling utter such dreadful words, and behold such agonising sighs swell in so young a bosom; for I marked the sting of conscience urging him to disclose what I am ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... that other tomb; she knelt; And o'er it went her wandering palms, as though Some stone-blind mother o'er an infant's face Should spread an agonising hand, intent To choose betwixt her own and counterfeit; She found that cross deep-grav'n, and further sign Close by, to her well known. One piercing shriek - Another moment, and her body lay Along that grave with kisses, and wild hands As when some ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... find pleasure in evil and destruction, think with pity and compassion on her end. She fled from her native place, and a feeling of shame forced her to conceal the state in which she found herself, and to which thou hadst reduced her. Alone, in solitude, and without help, amid agonising throes and deadly pains, she became a mother. The child died as soon as it saw the light of day. She, the wretched victim of thy momentary pleasure, was cast into prison, and publicly executed as an infanticide. Thou shouldst have ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... the chair, his arms folded on the table beside him, his face buried in them. He was sobbing as she had sometimes heard men sob after agonising operations, borne without a sound until the worst was over. And Garth's sob of agony was this: ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... other men. I have given to his own emotion the puniest name I could find for it; I have no nobler name for his intellect. But other men had thoughts, other men had passions; political, sexual, natural, noble, vile, ideal, gross, rebellious, agonising, imperial, republican, cruel, compassionate; and with these he fed his verses. Upon these and their life he sustained, he fattened, he enriched his poetry. Mazzini in Italy, Gautier and Baudelaire in France, Shelley ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... and unexpected horrors, that the safety of our lives is due, and, when we peeped occasionally at our steersman as we flew over the great rapid, where for over an hour every nerve, every fibre of his body was strung to agonising pitch, we looked and wondered. His eyes were fixed steadfastly before him, and as he flung all the weight of his body on to his pole, the whole boat trembled, but in a second obeyed his bidding and twisted whither he wished. Second, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... I certainly know what God wants of me?" is sure to become the earnest and, oftentimes, the agonising cry of every humble and devoutly zealous young Christian. "How may I know the guidance of the Holy Spirit?" is asked ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... December day—that her mother had come back again to consciousness. She opened her eyes wearily, coming back, as Marjorie had herself that morning, from that strange realm of heavy and deathly sleep, to the pale phantom world called "life"; and agonising pain about the heart ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... of brain-exhaustion has a very peculiar interest for the public as well as for the professional penman; half the slovenly prose which ordinary men use in their correspondence is due to the bad models set by written-out men, and the agonising exhibitions made by some thousands of public speakers in this devoted and long-suffering land are also due to the purblind weakness of the exhausted man. The wrought-out writer is not permitted to cease from work; he goes on droning out his fixed ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... his fallen commander. Maybe the angry scarlet of Dirk's complexion provoked Barraclough's attack and before the poor man had recovered from his surprise a heavy lobster pot came smashing down over his face with agonising force, the splintering basket-work playing havoc with his features. Then he, too, experienced the unique sensation of gliding downward through space, a delight somewhat marred by the rudeness ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... with joy: [See the splendid description in Livy, lib. xxvii. sec. 50, 51.] so agonising had been the suspense with which the battle's verdict on that great issue of a nation's life and death had been awaited; so overpowering was the sudden reaction to the consciousness of security, and to the full glow of glory and success. From the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Laubardemont; "but the mode of your death is in our hands: it rests with us to make it slow or quick, painless or agonising; so ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... happened, and I realised, at last, that if I was to escape an agonising cramp in the leg, I must get down. I put my feet on the ladder, and then paused for a last look about the grounds. My eye was caught by a flutter of white among the trees. Someone was walking along one of the paths; in a moment, straining forward, ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... unshakable; therein lay the pure, upright life which he was absolutely certain of living. What mattered the rest if he alone suffered, if nobody in the world suspected that his heart was reduced to ashes, that nothing remained of his faith, that he was agonising amidst fearful falsehood? His rectitude would prove a firm prop; he would follow his priestly calling like an honest man, without breaking any of the vows he had taken; he would, in due accordance with the rites, discharge his duties as a minister of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Edward's race: Give ample room and verge enough The characters of Hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death through Berkley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonising king![5] She-wolf of France,[6] with unrelenting fangs That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee[7] be born who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heaven. What terrors round him wait! Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, And Sorrow's ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... going to.—One o' their ugly bits o' hiron," muttered the lad as he stopped the effusion of blood in a rough-and-ready way which must have been agonising to the sufferer, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... last he had thought he would get hold of something, and—nothing! Not a trace, not a sign of anybody. He had raised his weapon as the door flew open, but now his arm fell. "Fire! Defend yourself," the girl outside cried in an agonising voice. She, being in the dark and with her arm thrust in to the shoulder through the small hole, couldn't see what was going on, and she dared not withdraw the torch now to run round. "There's nobody here!" yelled Jim contemptuously, but his impulse to burst into a resentful ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... just as wise as we were at the beginning. It was doubtless some philosophical wild-goose chase of the kind that made the old poet Macrobius rail in such a passion at curiosity, which he anathematises most heartily as "an irksome, agonising care, a superstitious industry about unprofitable things, an itching humor to see what is not to be seen, and to be doing what signifies nothing when it is done." But ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... was at hand, now, after all those months of agonising fear, just when she deluded herself with the sweet thought that it might never come at all. Greifenstein came home in the dusk one afternoon, and found a letter upon his desk in his own room. He broke the seal and read it while his teeth ground upon each other, and his ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... to the cottage which attracted all my attention. The figure nearest to me was my sister Eva. A savage held her by her long hair, and with his sword lifted above her head, seemed but to wait the issue of the combat with the old chief to sever it from the body. I flew forward. My agonising fear was, that when he saw me coming he would complete his barbarous intention before he attempted to defend himself. I dared not shriek out; indeed my voice refused my feelings utterance. He was still gazing on the old warrior's ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... unluckily the Heavens themselves, in their rich pharmacopoeia, contain none such. There will no 'thing' be done that will cure you. There will a radical universal alteration of your regimen and way of life take place; there will a most agonising divorce between you and your chimeras, luxuries and falsities, take place; a most toilsome, all-but 'impossible' return to Nature, and her veracities and her integrities, take place: that so the inner fountains of life may again begin, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... way, resembled Grandmother Starr; the lady looked like Rosemary, except that she was beautiful. "Father!" cried Rosemary, in an agonising whisper. "Mother!" Face to face at last with those of her own ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... not come to her rescue. The ministers of her religion were scattered to the four corners of besieged, agonising France. She had no one to help her, no one to comfort her. That very peaceful, contemplative life she had led in the convent, only served to enhance her feeling of the solemnity of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... She had not the courage to tell her father of those shapeless terrors that haunted her by day, and those agonising dreams that visited her by night, which she fancied might be driven away by movement and change of scene; she waited, and went on suffering, until at last that supreme egotist, Marmaduke Lovel, was awakened to the fact, that his daughter was looking no better than when he first ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... only force which can be spared to protect South Natal. Is he, therefore, justified in running the greatest risks? On the other hand, how can we let Ladysmith and all its gallant defenders fall into the hands of the enemy? It is agonising to contemplate such a conclusion to all the efforts and sacrifices that have been made. I believe and trust we shall try again. As long as there is fighting one does not reflect on this horrible ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... brute has so far saved himself, he should be entitled to the benefit of his cunning; but I will not now discuss the propriety or impropriety of that practice in venery. I can never, however, watch the doing of that work without thinking much of the agonising struggles of the poor beast whose last refuge is being torn from over his head. There he lies within a few yards of his arch enemy, the huntsman. The thick breath of the hounds make hot the air within his hole. The sound of their voices is close upon his ears. His breast is nearly bursting ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... body (continued the renegade, mournfully), where I remained for many hours. At last I rose in a frenzy quite indifferent as to life or death. I went on deck, where I found my crew much in the same condition, from their agonising thirst; but I mocked them, and laughed at the smooth expanse of water, which, far as the eye could reach, was not rippled by the slightest breeze, and turned my eyes up in derision to the sun, who poured down his vertical streams of light and heat, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... settled melancholy took possession of him, and all that had formerly delighted him now gave him pain, inasmuch as it brought to his mind a host of recollections of the most agonising character. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... "Life" will recall the dismal passage in the account given by Dickens to his friend, and his agonising experience when he was employed at the blacking factory. Many at the time thought that this painful episode might have been spared the reader, but the uncompromising biographer would not sacrifice it. On the whole, he was right, as the trial had an important influence on the writer's ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... an authentic statement, in which he vouches, with every appearance of truth, that "Lord Melbourne dined at home on Wednesday last." The neighbourhood is in an agonising state ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... hand. The master of the strange craft, though well stocked, was not disposed to be generous, until tempted by the sight of a lovely yellow pearl, about the size of a small marble and of satiny lustre—sweet to look upon, sweeter still to possess. Aware of the other man's agonising needs, he drove a hard bargain, and the gem became his at the cost of a box of tobacco. He hugged himself for joy, and after a decent lapse, during which he acted the part of the virtuous who had relieved another's necessities out ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... to the hill, and lay all night wrestling and agonising to be sure whether there was a God. You know he 's just a small farmer, and it seems to me splendid that such a man should give himself to the big problems of the universe. Do you know," and Carmichael turned to the General, who was smoking in great peace, "I believe that is the reason the Highlanders ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... blows hitherto? Faith then, I will strike in good earnest this time.' So saying, the mason brought a thick wooden rule that he was carrying down on the outstretched hand before him, with a savage blow that might have felled an ox. After the first shock of agonising pain George Fox lost all feeling from his finger-tips right up to his shoulder. When he tried to draw the wounded hand back to his side he could not do it. The paralysed nerves refused to carry the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... "I shall never regret having kept my promise! Indeed, I never felt tempted to break it, except one day, when, in the old church, I met your father face to face. Never shall I forget the agonising longing I felt to throw myself at his feet and tell him all, and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... father's arms! As silently he bent over it, tears—tears, how human!—fell from his eyes like rain! And the little one smiled through the tears that bathed its cheeks! Ah, with what happy tears we welcome the stranger into our sorrowing world! With what agonising tears we dismiss the stranger back to the angels! Unselfish joy; but how ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... war dealt equal woe and counterchange of death; in even balance conquerors and conquered slew and fell; nor one nor other knows of retreat. The gods in Jove's house pity the vain rage of either and all the agonising of mortals. From one side Venus, from one opposite Juno, daughter of Saturn, looks on; pale Tisiphone rages among the many thousand men. But now, brandishing his huge spear, Mezentius strides glooming over the plain, vast ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... her story flaunt through Europe. She recalled the scandal she had so royally braved; and, alas! she had now no courage to confront it with. To be thought the mistress of that man: perhaps for that.... She closed her eyes on agonising vistas. Swift as thought she had snatched a bright dagger from the weapons that shone along the wall. Ay, she would escape. From that world-wide theatre of nodding heads and buzzing whisperers, in which she now beheld herself unpitiably ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sail and leapt overboard in the hope of finding him. Unsuccessful, I looked around in agonising suspense, and saw close to me a fishing-boat with a peculiar drag-net furnished with hooks, which I ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... avoided asking Betty about George. Betty's twin had been away at the time of Radmore's break with Old Place—away in a sense which in our civilised days can only be brought about by one thing, an infectious illness. At the time the agonising debate was going on at Beechfield, he had been in a fever hospital close on a month, and they were none of them to see him for three more weeks. It had been at once a pain and a relief that he should not be there—yet what good could a boy ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... in her bedroom at the other side of the house, and though the agonising pain of the first few days was mercifully a thing of the past, the doctor did not disguise the fact that a long and weary convalescence lay ahead before anything like walking could be possible. In a week or two she might be able to be lifted ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... all her energies, restrain all her faculties, impair and frustrate all her higher and broader aims, make impossible all that better and purer fulness of life for which she yearns. Then follows the long and painful struggle,—a struggle so agonising to such a nature, that only one nearly akin to her own can adequately conceive or picture it. For it is a struggle not primarily to forego any certain or fancied mere personal good. On one side is ranged tenderest pitifulness over her husband's ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... the ambulance station, while somewhere, far away, a woman with longing in her heart is dreaming beside an empty bed. All those are sick who fail to hear the moaning, the gnashing of teeth, the howling, the crashing and bursting, the wailing and cursing and agonising in death, because their ears are filled with the murmur of everyday affairs. These blind and deaf ones are sick, not I. Sick are those dumb beings whose soul can give voice neither to compassion nor to anger...." ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... him pick up the needle. Now ... what was happening? Was he examining it? ... An agonising pain in her upper arm reassured her. She was prepared for it to hurt worse than an ordinary injection, plain water did. She bore the torture without a quiver, holding her breath until she heard ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell |
