"Agony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sick of all smallness, is roused to fury by the obvious irritations of Pavel Petrovitch. Savagely announcing the creed of nihilism and the end of romance, he has only to feel the calm, aristocratic smile of Madame Odintsov fixed on him and he suffers all the agony of first love. Determining to live and create, he has only to play with death for a moment, and he is caught. But though he is the most positive of all Turgenev's male portraits, there are others linking ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... not from a mortal in the agony of impending death but from the smiling red lips of Viola Gwyn. The grewsome "death-rattle" was the result of the means she took to suppress a shriek of laughter by frantically clapping both hands to ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... that they should drink of his cup, and declared that even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. The fourth gospel, whose representation omits the agony of Gethsemane and only reports its victory, tells how Jesus rebuked the violent impulse of Peter with the word, "The cup which my Father hath given me to drink shall I not drink it?" (John xviii. 11^b); and all the gospels exhibit the marvellous quietness of spirit and ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... groaning and doubled in the filthy half-inch of water into which he had fallen. About him was darkness, but overhead a glimmer of light showed a jagged and cruel hole in the planking of the stable floor. Very slowly, for his agony was unspeakable, he came to a realization of what had happened. He called for help, and his voice was thick and unresonant, like the voice of a drunken man. His horse heard him and neighed. Now and again he lapsed into semi-unconsciousness, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... stewardship." Then think what we owe God for our redemption, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. For each of us Jesus suffered hunger and thirst, the temptation in the wilderness, the agony in the Garden, the cruel torture of the Cross. Do we think lightly of our sins? They were heavy enough to drive those piercing nails through the Hands and Feet of Jesus. Do we speak lightly of our sins? They were heavy enough to force that bitter cry from Jesus, "My God, My God, why hast Thou ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... Tarzan suddenly spin the man about and placing a knee in the middle of his back and an arm about his neck bend his shoulders slowly backward. The German's knees gave and he sank upon them, but still that irresistible force bent him further and further. He screamed in agony for a moment-then something snapped and Tarzan cast him aside, a limp and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quoted in a ringing voice: "A man's a man for a' that!" Afterward they sat in silence that grew more tense as the minutes passed, but it seemed that Henshaw, with demoniac cunning, had decided to prolong the agony by delaying his written order and the consequent decision of the engineer. And Harrigan, watching the suffused face of Campbell, knew that the time had come when his will would not suffice to make him follow the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... was the only portion from which he derived any support—a support that was suddenly and painfully experienced after each jump. He could see, very far off, the pink coat of "Owld Sta'" following a line which seemed each moment to be turning more directly for Madore, and in his agony he gave the pony an imprudent dig of the spur that sent her on and off a boggy fence in two goat-like bounds, and gave the sunlight opportunity to play intermittently upon the hollow seat of the saddle. She had never carried him so ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... freeness, the simplicity, the security, the sufficiency of the great method of justification. How astonished and impressed we all were! He was at the full thunder of his power; the whole man was in an agony of earnestness. The drover was weeping like a child, the tears running down his ruddy, coarse cheeks—his face opened out and smoothed like an infant's; his whole body stirred with emotion. We all had insensibly been drawn out ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... too scant! Slave of four masters, and the best a churl! Thy Gospel they will trample under foot, And rend thee! Late to them Palladius preached: They drave him as a leper from their shores." I stood in agony of staggering mind And warring wills. Then, lo! at dead of night I heard a mystic voice, till then unheard, I knew not if within me or close by That swelled in passionate pleading; nor the words Grasped ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... was dying, that I had all but passed across the invisible line between, and in a moment there would be for evermore nothing and nothing. Then followed again an empty space as it seemed. And now I am dead and gone, I said, and shall wander no more. And with that came the agony of hell, for, lo, still I THOUGHT! And I said to myself, Alas! O God! for, notwithstanding I no more see or hear or taste or smell or touch, and my body hath dropped from me, still am I Ahasuerus, the Wanderer, and must go on and on and on, blind and deaf, through the unutterable wastes that ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... The Judge, straining in agony of mind and body, was aware of sudden relief from the pain of his wound. The bandage had slipped, and blood was cooling the torturing fire. A deathly faintness was upon him, and through it he spoke ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... a malevolent, gloating second. Then six strong arms flashed down, again and again, mercilessly. Pain and blood, screaming agony, punctuated by the awful thudding of solid clubs hitting fragile flesh and bone, over and ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... angry with and struck my mother as she lay on the ground, and for this reason I am condemned to wear this fiery iron wheel around my head.' At this time Maitri, self-accused, began to cry out and lament; he was filled with remorse on recollection of his own conduct, and exclaimed in agony: 'Now am I caught like a deer in the snare.' Then a certain Yaksha, who kept guard over that city, whose name was Viruka, suddenly came to the spot, and removing the fiery wheel from off the head of ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... an agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became as it were great drops of blood ...
— His Last Week - The Story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus • William E. Barton
... frighten me into compliance. I was so worn out, that I could have almost received the blow with thankfulness, but I remembered you, my dear uncle and aunt, and others, and resolved for your sakes to make one more effort. I did so; I ran and walked for an hour more in perfect agony; at last nature could support the pain no longer, and ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... do you remember what we once read in a book of history at school? It told of the death of a tortured man, in the old time, who was broken on the wheel. He lived through it long enough to say that the agony, after the first stroke of the club, dulled his capacity for feeling pain when the next blows fell. I fancy pain of the mind must follow the same rule. Nothing you can say will hurt ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... Mike left the side lines to aid. Mike was waved away by Bill. 'It's nothing but a scratch, Mike, let me get back in the game.' Play was resumed. Following a scrimmage, Mike saw Bill rolling on the ground in agony. 'His ankle is gone,' quoth Mike, as he ran out to the field. Leaning over Bill, Mike said: 'Is it your ankle, or knee, Bill?' Bill, ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... may hardly be described. Torn by pincers, and broken alive; her breasts torn out; her skin slowly singed, as in the case of the wizard bishop of Cahors; her body burned limb by limb on a small fire of red-hot coal, she was like to endure an eternity of agony. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... a little city made rich by vast potteries. If the dull, heavy clay on the potter's wheel and in the fiery oven could think and speak, it would doubtless cry out against the fierce agony; but if it could foresee the purpose of the potter, and the thing of use and beauty he meant to make it, it would nestle low under his hand ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... vodka-and-ginger from his eyes. He blocked Forrester's advance toward the shaggy man. Forrester smiled gently and put a hard fist into Herb's solar plexus. The tall man doubled up in completely silent agony. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... countenance Looked through the casement. Loud beat the mother's heart, Sick with amazement, And at the vision which Came to surprise her, Shrieked in an agony— ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... multitude through seven miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of triumph. "Look your last on the scarlet letter and its wearer!"—the people's victim and life-long bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to them. "Yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! A few hours longer, and the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a catalogue of discontented ready to fill the whole civil list. My Lord Chancellor was terrified the other day with a vision of such a revolution; he saw Lord Bath kiss hands, and had like to have dropped the seals with the agony of not knowing what it was for—it was only for his going to Spa. However, as this is an event which the Chancellor has never thought an impossible one, he is daily making Christian preparation against it. He has just married his other daughter to Sir John Heathcote's son;(66) a Prince little ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the bucket chain began to take up the grain; but it was too late. When the bodies of the men were reached they were contorted in the agony of death. Suffocation had come as ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... of the Conciergerie are lost in those which were attached to it by the great Revolution. The cell in which Marie Antoinette suffered her seventy-five days' agony—from August 2 till October 15, when she was condemned—was turned into a chapel of expiation in 1816. The lamp still exists which lighted the august prisoner and enabled her guards to watch her through the night. The door still exists, tho changed in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... had lived through years of agony since he got out of bed, the actual passage of time, as he stood frozen to the door-handle, was but the duration of a few brief seconds, and then making a tremendous call on his courage he felt his way to his fireplace, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... mysteriously difficult situation by rising again and departing, of course with due dignity. But no! She could not! She wished to do so, but she could not command her limbs. She just sat there, in horridest torture, like a stoical fly on a pin—one of those flies that pretend that nothing hurts. The agony might have been prolonged to centuries had not an extremely startling and dramatic thing happened—the most startling and dramatic thing that ever happened either to James Ollerenshaw or to the young woman. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... suffering the most dreadful agony, my hand and arm were so terribly swollen that they had almost lost all semblance to any portion of the human anatomy, while the two punctures made by the poison fangs were puffed up, almost to bursting, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... cue from Tempest that morning, and any inclination to rebel or mutiny was suppressed. We contented ourselves with glaring at our tormentor, and denying him the excuse he probably desired of prolonging the agony. My impression is that Mr Jarman was never so happy as when he realised that he was absolute master of the situation. The Roman emperors were not in it ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... bands. He goes through life, tearing, like a man possessed with a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was! what a lonely rage and long agony—what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant! It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings can ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... that those who repented, with whom the pastor prayed and upon whom he laid his hands, would be healed. "One morning a mother rushed to his house, saying that she had by an accident scalded her child with boiling soup. The infant was found screaming with agony. He took the child in his arms, prayed over it, and it grew quiet. It had no further pain, and the effects of the scalding were quickly gone. Another child was nearly blind with disease. A neighboring pastor, when ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... wake up suddenly and find that our life has been wrecked by our own folly, mistake, or sin, or that it has been done for us either directly by the hand of Providence, or indirectly through some innocent—nay, possibly not innocent, but intentional—hand? In both cases the agony is equally sharp—the sharper ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and gigantic forest trees, when suddenly he opened upon them such a shower of poisoned arrows as the Spaniards had never encountered before. The touch of one of these arrows, breaking the skin, caused immediate and intense agony, and almost certain death. The sinewy arms of the Indians could throw these sharp-pointed weapons with almost the precision and force of a bullet, and with far greater rapidity than the Spaniards could load ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... face twitched with nervous agony. He could not with his high sense of honor as President tell this man that he loved him and found no fault with him. To make his acceptance of the situation easier, his only course was ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... and so is the subtle conception of Goethe's Mephistophiles. Marlowe's handling of the supernatural is materialistic and downright, as befitted an age which believed in witchcraft. The {106} greatest part of the English Faustus is the last scene, in which the agony and terror of suspense with which the magician awaits the stroke of the clock that signals his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... been slain by a foul treason, and he collected together all his strength. And he lifted up his sword and smote Pedrarias upon the helmet, so that he cut through it, and through the hood of the mail also, and made a wound in the head. And Pedrarias with the agony of death, and with the blood which ran over his eyes, bowed down to the neck of the horse; yet with all this he neither lost his stirrups, nor let go his sword. And Don Diego Ordoez seeing him thus, thought that he was dead, and would not strike him ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... had been stricken sightless. He yelled. Tony yelled. Then upon the startled night there burst a duet of squeals and curses, a hideous medley of mingled pain and fright, at once terrifying and unnatural. Both bandits appeared to be in paroxysms of agony; from Tony issued sounds that might have issued from the throat of a woman in deadly fear and excruciating torment; Mallow's face had been partially protected, hence he was the lesser sufferer; nevertheless, his eyes were boiling in their sockets, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of the physical agony; and after two days the feeling of prostration passed away, and only the memory of ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... snowshoe rabbit, a third grown, hopped out into the open close to the cabin door, and as it nibbled at the green grass, a gray catapult of claw and feathers shot out of the air, and Peter heard the crying agony of the rabbit as the owl bore it off into the thick spruce tops. Even then—unafraid—Peter wanted to go out into ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... of agony and suspense. Evening came, but no mercy. N N. lit the charcoal. But, to compose his nerves, he closed his door and first walked mildly up and down Montgomery Street. When he returned, he found the faithful Mongolian on ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... these ceaseless tortures be ever in front of your heart's eyes. Let the careful remembrance of these evils teach you how great is the self loss which is laid upon those who rule other men for a little time, and, ruling themselves ill, are subjects to demon spirits in endless agony. These things, while one can avoid them, one is wise to fear ever, lest when one cannot avoid them, one should afterwards happen ceaselessly to endure them." He then pointed out that this Day of the Lord was put in the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... mean time, the guards having led the thief all round the city, took him outside the gates, and made him stand near the cross. Then the messengers of death arrived from the palace, and the executioners began to nail his limbs. He bore the agony with the fortitude of the brave; but when he heard what had been done by the old householder's daughter, he raised his voice and wept bitterly, as though his heart had been bursting, and almost with ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the image of that great mass of man stricken down in varying attitudes and with varying wounds; fallen prone, fallen supine, fallen on his side; or clinging to a doorpost with the changing face and the relaxing fingers of the death-agony. He heard the click of the trigger, the thud of the ball, the cry of the victim; he saw the blood flow. And this building up of circumstance was like a consecration of the man, till he seemed to walk in sacrificial fillets. Next he considered Davis, with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Already in an agony of embarrassment, this speech reduced Phil to still more desperate straits. He could look at his father only in a kind of dumb appeal, and that individual, seeing his son ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... it had got to be, it had got to be, she supposed—the marriage. But they might at least be decent about it. As for keeping that poor blind boy harrowed up all the time and prolonging the agony —well, at least she could do something about THAT, thank goodness! ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... really a very strong chap,' said Toffy. He had been delicate ever since he was a little boy. School games had often been an agony to him. He had ridden races and had lain awake all night afterwards, unable, through sheer exhaustion, to sleep; he had played polo under burning suns, and had concealed the fact (as though it had been a crime) that he had fainted in the pavilion afterwards. He very seldom had a good night's ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... prejudice, such as harass us in our native Virginia, and our brethren in other parts of the country. To such, I put the question: "By courage can we not lessen misfortune? Yes! A thousand times yes! Courage turns ignoble agony into beautiful martyrdom. Its alchemy is universal. Is the stake a misfortune to the martyr? It is his dearest fortune. Is oppression, prejudice, or ignorance, a misfortune to the reformer? It is the very condition of his reform. Is misunderstanding, injustice, suspicion, or contempt ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the change in his fate was not imparted to him until the very moment when he was about to ascend the ladder from which he was to be plunged into eternity. He had appeared since his conviction as if devoid of feeling; but on receiving this information, he fell on his knees in an agony of joy and gratitude. The solemn scene appeared likewise to make a forcible impression on all his fellow ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... unimpassioned, insignificant piece of cramped and cautious argument, and to the little scrap about "Mandeville", which expressed my feelings indeed, but cost scarcely two minutes' thought to express, as specimens of my powers more favourable than that which grew as it were from "the agony and bloody sweat" of intellectual travail; surely I must feel that, in some manner, either I am mistaken in believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the selection of the specimens of it. Yet, after all, ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... Another agony for mammy ensued, nor could Aurelia leave the child till sleep had hushed the wailings. Then only could she take her little writing-case to begin her letter to Betty. It would be an expensive luxury to her family, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down came the water again, and the young man nearly swooned in his agony, while a deathly sensation of ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... Olympian deities could not be conceived of as able or willing to exist in such a hideous chaos. No creature of the Greek imagination would have been a suitable inhabitant for it except Prometheus alone. Here his eternal agony and boundless despair might not have ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... screen between her crimsoning face and his pitiless old eyes. She writhed inwardly to think that all the idle fancies in which she had been indulging during the afternoon had been poured into her grandfather's angry ears. And it was positive agony to her shy nature to know that her shadowy friend was no longer ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... immediately, and was so excited that it quite filled my mouth. I rose on my legs, and bringing my prick against her cunt, made an entrance as far as over the nut, but was myself so excited with all I was doing, and all I had previously seen, that I went off in an agony of delight and with a suppressed cry, which must have been heard by you and mamma if you had not been so busily engaged. Ellen had been so excited and so intent on the to her new scene enacting before her eyes, that she had never ceased gazing on it, and left me to do ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... it is clear, has taken her vows too hastily, kneeling before the oratory in her cell. But her heart is not in her devotions; for the lover whom she abandoned has made his way into the apartment, and sits on her bed singing to his lute. Her hands are clasped, not in prayer, but in an agony of love and apprehension. She turns from the crucifix to gaze at him; and we see how the interview will end: for an aged female attendant, in coif and scapulary, leans over to extinguish the candles. We see, too, what its consequence will be; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... soul-trying suspense, during which the flying-machine shivered from stem to stern, almost like a human creature in its death-agony, creaking and groaning, with shrill sounds coming from those expanded, curved wings, ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... of agony, Edna lay on the bed where her grandfather's body had been placed, holding one of the stiffened hands folded in both hers, and pressed against her lips. She neither wept nor moaned, the shock was too terrible to admit of noisy ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the exact condition of a boil belonging to one of the party. But the heart of the nation beat high with hope, until the appalling intelligence was flashed across the wires that they were defeated. It was a cruel blow. Strong men looked at one another in mute agony, or spoke as if there was a corpse in the next room. The Press sent up a wail that resounded through the land. An eminent divine pronounced it a "National misfortune," and the pictorials containing wood-cuts of the lamented heroes were put away, as we put away the playthings of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... made off. The swift stream swirled me along towards the spot where, in the boat, Michelot awaited my return all unconscious of what was taking place. He had heard the splash, and had suddenly stood up, on the point of going ashore, when my body rose within a few feet of him. He spoke of the agony of mind wherewith he had suddenly stretched forth and clutched me by my doublet, fearing that I was indeed dead. He had lifted me into the boat to find that my heart still beat and that the blood flowed from my wounds. These ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... Gluttons. The travellers passed over them, as if they had been ground to walk upon. But one of them sat up, and addressed the Florentine as his acquaintance. Dante did not know him, for the agony in his countenance. He was a man nicknamed Hog (Ciacco), and by no other name does the poet, or any one else, mention him. His countryman addressed him by it, though declaring at the same time that he wept to see him. Hog prophesied evil to his discordant native city, adding that there were ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... come prayers for all occasions: "Prayer before Battle"; "Prayer for a Happy Death"; "Prayer in Temptation"; "Prayer before and after Meals"; "Prayer when on Guard"; "Prayer before a long March"; "Prayer of Resignation to Death"; "Prayer for Those in their Agony"—I cannot bear to read them, hardly to list them. I remember standing in a cathedral "somewhere in France" during the celebration of some special Big Magic. There was brilliant white light, and a suffocating strange odor, and the thunder of a huge organ, and a clamor of voices, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... realities of guilt. His is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal agony. Her speech:— ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... were true, how infinitely deeper would have been his impression if he could have seen the beautiful girl, now smiling into his eyes, bowed in agony at that sick-bed, while she acknowledged with stifled sobs that the dying girl was better off—far happier than she who had to face almost the certainty of lifelong disappointment. Poor Madge had not told Graydon all her ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... palest heliotrope of the loggias. Fans waved here and there over the house, fluttering, flashing like myriads of butterfly wings. The stage was filled with the black and white of the orchestra and the musicians sat waiting, the conductor gnawing his long mustache in an agony of doubt ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... curtain had revealed Laodice. At her feet Hannah knelt, as if she had flung herself in her daughter's path, her arms clasping the young figure close to her and an agony of appeal stamped on her upraised face. The last of the rich color had died out of the girl's face and with pitiful eyes and quivering lips she was stroking the desperate hands that meant to keep her ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... dozen. Then there are AKE's Electric Tooth-brushes, and CRAX's Stained-glass Solid Mahogany Brass-mounted Elizabethan Mantel-boards. Then, of course, I must not forget BOLTER's Washhandstands and BOUNDER's Anti-agony Aromatic Pills." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It was at his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory, what part my son took in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious passion with which he attached himself to all my connections, with what prodigality we both squandered ourselves ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... She must play for those two lives with all her woman's wit; must match the outlaw's sinister cunning and fool him into delay. She knew he would come if she sent for him. But how long could she keep him? As long as he was amused at her agony, as long as his pleasure in tormenting her was greater than his impatience to be at his ruffianly work. Oh, if she ever needed all her power ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... south. Enemies at Baltimore had cut off telegraphic communication between Washington and the North. Reports came that re-enforcements were on the way, but day followed day without witnessing their arrival. The President and all Unionists were in an agony of suspense. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and bid the ghostly phantoms begone! Oh, it was terrible to witness his soul-disordered agony, and hear the awful words that ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... the verge of the gallows. I know it all, Effie. Open your eyes, dear soul, and smile once more upon me. Nay, I have known it for years, during which remorse has scourged me through the world. Look up, dear Effie, while I tell you I could bear the agony no longer; and now opportunity favours the wretched penitent, for my father is dead, and I am not only my own master, but master of Kelton, of which you once heard me speak. Will you not look up yet, dear Effie? I come to make amends to you, not by wealth merely, but to offer you again that love ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... the litany for the dying rolled solemnly along, with its intense burning words of supplication, its deep agony of prayer, its loving earnestness of intercession. But upon the dying sinner's ears it fell as an echo of the long, long past; of that day when the litany arose before his coronation at Kingston, and the prophetic ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... of the, discouraged and divided (July, 1652); the fight at the Faubourg St. Antoine an act of despair, 7; the defeat of Conde destroys the Fronde, 11; approaching its last agony, it treats with Mazarin for an amnesty, 13; contrasted with the Great Rebellion in England, 29; the revolt of the Fronde belonged ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... There was a distinct difference, however, in the duration of this professed fidelity. Masculine voices pleaded for the immediate justification of undying constancy, while those of a feminine quality preferred a prolongation of the exquisite agony of suspense. In short, the brides-elect were obdurate. They insisted on waiting, even to the end of time, for the realization of their fondest, dearest hopes. Several heartbroken gentlemen, preferring anything to procrastination, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... God!" some one cried hoarsely and wildly. They looked about. It was Tsiganok, writhing in agony at the thought of death. "They ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... must be harmful to him. She had hoped to conceal the child's death, but the effort was too much for her overstrung nerves. And indeed it was only possible for her to remain an hour or two by this sick-bed, for she was exhausted by her night of watching, and the sudden agony with which it had concluded. Shortly after Amy's departure, a professional nurse came to attend upon what the doctor had privately characterised ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the ladies' knight, the gallant "Rawleigh" see, "Sir Creveceux's" plume waves by his side, and "Durward's" fleur-de-lis; There "Janet" leans on "Foster's" arm—e'en "Varney's" treacherous eye Is moistened with a tear that speaks remorse's agony. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... the man thinks that he is wholly in the right. He says I am very troublesome, and he sets a trap every night to catch me. One night I was caught by the paw, and held for hours in an agony of fright and pain. I have been lame ever since. He would have been kinder if he had killed ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... could get upon my feet and recover my gun, which seemed to have been struck from my hands, I heard Morgan crying out as if in mortal agony, and mingling with his cries were such hoarse, savage sounds as one hears from fighting dogs. Inexpressibly terrified, I struggled to my feet and looked in the direction of Morgan's retreat; and may Heaven in mercy spare me ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... countenance with an eager look as if he revelled in his agony. Not a hard drawn breath, not a single expression escaped his notice. He saw the eyes of the Solitary flash, then settle into a dreamy gaze as if looking into a dim, unfathomable distance, then shut, as if he tried to exclude ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... doubly crushing. His young, newborn happiness was as little strong to bear the blow as were his exhausted body and his shattered nerve. Like a wild beast wounded to the death, he had crept silently away, to go through his agony, unseen. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... wretches who had died without owning the name of their Saviour, were withering in the torments of hell-fire; awful indeed was the appearance of these figures; they were larger than human, and twisted into every variety of contortion which it was conceived possible that agony could assume. Their eyes were made to protrude from their faces, their fiery tongues were hanging from their scorched lips; the hairs of each demon stood on end and looked like agonized snakes; they were of various ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... I admit, but not utterly so. You must remember that after the cataclysm of 1917, Russia has been born again in travail and agony. No hand was outstretched to help her, save that of Germany alone, for her own sake ultimately, perhaps, but nevertheless with invaluable results to Russia. We had vast resources which Germany exploited, magnificent human material which Germany has educated ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... breakfast. I was not feeling quite so fit now, and I did not make much of my provisions, beyond eating a biscuit and some chocolate. I felt very thirsty and longed for hot tea. In an icy pool I washed and with infinite agony shaved my beard. That razor was the worst of its species, and my eyes were running all the time with the pain of the operation. Then I took off the postman's coat and cap, and buried them below some bushes. I was now a clean-shaven ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... she was about to shoot from the knight, when, kneeling at her feet in bitter agony, he ventured to lay his hand upon her robe ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... not soften the Marchioness's heart. She discloses the fact that she is in reality Marie's mother, and adjures her by her filial respect to give up the thought of her low-born lover. Marie consents in an agony of grief. The lovers part with many tears, and at the psychological moment the Marchioness relents, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... few, an honorable few, who, late in life, with Roman severity of resolution, learn the long-neglected lesson of economy. But how small is the number, compared with the whole mass of the population! And with what bitter agony, with what biting humiliation, is the hard lesson often learned! How easily might it have been engrafted on early habits, and naturally and gracefully 'grown with their growth, and strengthened with ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... all the foreigners who brought in every infection of the Orient. Furthermore, the weariness of a long journey in summer had worn out this woman, old before her time. She had to go to bed. Soon she got worse, and then lost consciousness. They believed she was in the agony. They all came round her bed—Augustin, his brother Navigius, Evodius, the two cousins from Thagaste, Rusticus, and Lastidianus. But suddenly she shuddered, raised herself, and asked in a ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Janet quietly dropped downstairs with the key she had taken from her father's table on her way to the consulting-room. She intended to prevent any search, by herself producing the will from among his papers, for she was in an agony lest her uncle should discover the clue to the magnum bonum, of which ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... longer bear his agony. He cried out gently—it was as though something had been shattered to pieces: "I shall be frank. I am syphilitic"—Some tears rolled down his cheeks. He was startled by how insincere he was. The student held her hands in front of her face. As ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... father's knee, and say our prayers; and then listen in awe-struck silence to his earnest blessing, which grew more like a prayer for us as his life waned away, I would do anything for Edward rather than that wrestling agony of supplication should have been in vain. I think of him as the little innocent boy, whose arm was round me as if to support me in the Awful Presence, whose true name of Love we had not learned. Minnie! he has had no proper training—no training, I mean, to enable him to resist temptation—and ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... shot was fired, and the cow fell. Leaving some of the natives to look after the dead cattle, the rest of us hurried on after the bull; his dreadful bellowing guiding us to the spot where he lay. Wounded in the shoulder, in his fright and agony he had bounded into the wood; but when we came up to him, he had sunk to the earth in a green hollow, thrusting his black muzzle into a pool of his own blood, and tossing it over his ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... years ago you were in a state of mourning and hope to-day, the agony is as full of hope as then. It is at a different age that these new trials occur, but a whole life of submission prepares the ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... in a voice husky with emotion, "I have not wept in eight long years, but the sight of you, so innocent, so happy, wrings the tears from my stony heart, as agony will sometimes force out the drops of perspiration when the body is shivering with cold. I was young like you once, and my bridal was fixed—" She paused, and stealing an arm around her waist, Rosamond said pleadingly, ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... says Dr. Antommarchi, "and following the progress of that painful agony in the deepest distress, when Napoleon, suddenly collecting his strength, jumped on the floor, and would absolutely go down into the garden to take a walk. I ran to receive him in my arms, but his legs bent under ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... are cut in the skin of their breast, ropes passed through and secured by wooden skewers, and then the men swing and surge until the skin gives way and tears out. This is very painful, and some fairly shriek with agony as they do it, but they never give up, for they believe that if they should fail to fulfil their vow, they would ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... rude and discordant as they are to our ears; perhaps no more extraordinary instance of the force of habit and diversity of taste than this could be advanced. A native sings joyously the most barbarous and savage sounds, which rend asunder the refined ears of the European, who turns away in agony from the discordant noise while the surrounding natives loudly applaud as soon as the singer has concluded. But should the astounded European endeavour to charm these wild men by one of his refined ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... invisible Companion in an agony of entreaty for her mother. Presently Mrs. Gray's voice again ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... curving bays, Whose amorous light enfolds thee in warm rays That fill with fruit each dark-leaved orange- tree,— What hidden hatred hath the Earth for thee? Behold, again, in these dark, dreadful days, She trembles with her wrath, and swiftly lays Thy beauty waste in wreck and agony! ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... Pratt in freckles and overalls sat in a high chair, and had his dinner with the family. Later it was discovered that Betty had poisoned his bread and milk, and he died in Nancy's arms in dreadful agony, swearing in a beautiful Irish brogue that in all his life he had never looked at another woman,—which even in her dream seemed to ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... cried, "Three cheers for Benny!" and the feelings of the crowd, held in check for so many minutes, at length found expression in three times three, and with the cheers ringing in his ears and with a smile upon his drawn face, poor Ben, forgetting his agony for the time, was borne away on his ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... or into the little garden in front, where they huddle together in their cotton frocks and big cotton sun-bonnets, while our men set fire to the house. Sometimes they entreat that it may be spared, and once or twice in an agony of rage they have invoked curses on our heads. But this is quite the exception. As a rule they make no sign, and simply look on and say nothing. One young woman in a farm yesterday, which I think she had not started life long in, went into a fit of hysterics when ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... mistake in manners to ask for meals in a strange house—let alone to howl for them—and they mewed, and they mewed, and they mewed, and they mewed, till the children poked their fingers into their ears and waited in silent agony, wondering why the whole of Camden Town did not come knocking at the door to ask what was the matter, and only hoping that the food for the cats would come before the neighbours did—and before all the secret of ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... previous had merrily flashed upon the tin pan of the disconsolate Down Easter, was now setting over the dreary waters, veiling itself in vapours. The wind blew hoarsely in the cordage; the seas broke heavily against the bows; and the frigate, staggering under whole top-sails, strained as in agony on ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... downstairs. Inspired by curiosity I entered the elevator a moment later, and switched on the light. I was almost overcome by the sight of M. Spencer, and turned out the light to shut away the view. I rushed to my room; but I could not rest. I was in agony for you, mademoiselle; that very afternoon I had warned you against Monsieur Spencer, and I feared—Oh, forgive me! that you had killed him because he had injured your father. After a long interval ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... it said malignantly. "You have an agony of terror to go through before that. When I see your eyes close I shall know that the time has come, and I shall strike my fangs into that white throat of yours, and you will recover just sense enough to feel what pain ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... father, who shared his dismay so much as almost to wish to come with him to Northwold; but Louis felt he could deal better alone with James. His fears took the direction of the Italian travellers, knowing that any misfortune to them must recoil on James with double agony after such ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them she went to the stake, and if there was a moment of wavering on the day of her doom, her belief in the objective reality of the phenomena remained firm, and she recovered her faith in the agony of ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... as on that night after he left her, she had taken love. No sign betrayed to the house her disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk which had boiled over, revealed nothing. After all, she was but one of a thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night, year in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from knowledge of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lay exhausted on the white bed of the ward, eyes glazed, pupils contracted, pulse now quick, now almost evanescent, face drawn, breathing difficult, moaning now and then in physical and mental agony. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... was sifted by the Gospel, as its hearers always are, some accepting and some rejecting. These double effects ever follow it, and to one or other of these two classes we each belong. The same fire melts wax and hardens clay; the same light is joy to sound eyes and agony to diseased ones; the same word is a savour of life unto life and a savour of death unto death; the same Christ is set for the fall and for the rising of men, and is to some the sure foundation on which they build ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... great. One which in a moment of rage killed its keeper a few years ago, adopted his son as its carnac or driver, and would allow no one else to assume his place. The wife of the unfortunate man was witness to the dreadful scene, and, in the frenzy of her mental agony, took her two children, and threw them at the feet of the elephant, saying, 'As you have slain my husband, take my life also, as well as that of my children!' The elephant became calm, seemed to relent, and as if stung with remorse, took up the eldest boy with its trunk, ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... realized that he was never again to stand in the familiar room. The future, that seemed so near an hour ago, was gone from him forever; the cup that he had lifted to his lips lay in fragments at his feet. He saw it all in that swift instant. On his face there were the lines of agony, but over them there played the smile of resolve. He put one hand to his forehead, and then said in a voice so low as to be no ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... demand 3 or L400 of me to buy my peace, that she might be gone without making any noise, or else protested that she would make all the world know of it. So with most perfect confusion of face and heart, and sorrow and shame, in the greatest agony in the world I did pass this afternoon, fearing that it will never have an end; but at last I did call for W. Hewer, who I was forced to make privy now to all, and the poor fellow did cry like a child, [and] obtained what ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... here, on the instant. That eternal life is no future gift to be bestowed upon mortal men when they have passed through the agony of death, but it is a gift which comes to us here, and may come to any man on the instant of his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... say no more, for his face was working, and, at last, in shame and agony of spirit, he covered his face with his hands, and let himself drop in a heap on ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... boys?" cried the distracted Jean. They lingered in an agony of suspense, not daring to leave until they saw that Jock and Alan were safe, and then from a little distance up the shore came the pewit call. Sandy rose to the emergency and, pulling frantically ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
