"Excruciating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... An excruciating pain shot through me. I set my teeth to keep from screaming and closed my eyes to hide the anguish ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... "repayther" on her stomach, which she used to ring on all occasions, narrating how it had been presented to her by her fawther, as she stipt into the car'ge after her mar'ge; and these ornaments, with other outward peculiarities of the Major's wife, gave excruciating agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the Major's came in contact; whereas Amelia was only amused by the honest lady's eccentricities, and not in the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... home to dinner. She had loitered about, hoping to engage the eye of Jabez, who was now the most important widower in town. Luella had elected him for her next; but he was away, and she whetted her wits on Eddie. She walked at his side, excruciating him with her glib memories of old times and the mad devotion he had cherished ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Jackson Easton, do hereby testify, that, by taking your excellent Parr's Life Pills, I have derived greater benefit than in using all the other medicines I have tried since 1841; about which time I was attacked with severe illness, accompanied with excruciating pain and trembling, with large rupture. For the last six months I have had no return of this illness, nor the least appearance of the last-mentioned symptom. Through the mercy of God, I do at present feel perfectly recovered from it. I still continue the occasional use of your excellent Pills.—I ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... unless it be that I might be slowly and painfully consumed by it? All greatness is in the actor, not in the act. He whom God has blessed with an end in life, can earnestly labor to accomplish that end. But alas for that poor mortal whose existence only serves to fill up space in the world! How excruciating to him to be ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... taught me something further, namely, that my head was liable to excruciating little throbs of pain. I raised a hand to it. My forehead was swathed in bandages, like a turbaned Turk's. Oh, to be sure, in the castle at Prezelay, as we were retreating up the staircase, Schwartzmann ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... was still in consultation with Fatima, his face wearing an expression that was horrible for all except herself to behold. Murder by excruciating torture seemed written on every ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... that she should find nothing unusual in the incident. She felt that a living stream in her bosom had dried up, leaving nothing but sand and stones in its bed. This inability to feel, this being dead to all sensations, took the form of excruciating ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Filmer had just told him. His weakened body held no firm clutch on his imagination at that time of his life—it ran riot, often giving him abnormal pleasure by its vivid touches; occasionally causing him excruciating pain as he suffered, in ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... in the heavens when she again awoke. A burning fever consumed her, and delirium had fastened on her with fearful spasmodic and excruciating pains internally. She endeavored to rise, but fainted in so doing. She shrieked wildly for assistance, but none heeded her cries. For hours she was thus, left alone, the pains increasing, and her brain in a constant whirl. Again she slept, how long she knew not. When, on awaking, she ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... paint. And yet, although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his charm to regularity of feature or to grace of movement, than to an indescribable personal fascination. One further detail Hogg pointedly insists upon. Shelley's voice "was excruciating; it was intolerably shrill, harsh and discordant." This is strongly stated; but, though the terms are certainly exaggerated, I believe that we must trust this first impression made on Shelley's friend. There is a considerable ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... least, which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, of the accused) of the crime of the person arraigned. And they complacently attributed to conscious guilt the ravings produced by an excruciating torture—that equally inhuman and irrational invention of judicial cruelty; confidently boasting that they were careful to sentence no person without previous confession ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... but I tell thee, Ludwig, that yonder Gottfried is a good fellow, and my fast friend. Why should he not be! He is my near relation, heir to my property: should I" (here the Margrave's countenance assumed its former expression of excruciating agony),—"SHOULD ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gesticulations. The last hour of the brave soldier seemed at hand. He strove to bring resolution to his aid, and to fix his thoughts on a happier state of existence beyond this earth, the contemplation of which might aid him to bear without flinching, a short period of excruciating pain. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... evenings, was privileged to strike false notes with painful iteration, even to the actual distress of auditors, without a word of criticism from the leader or the manager. Excruciating discord from the flute, on three or four nights of a season, was accepted as part payment for such playing, upon every other night, as seldom had been heard from any flute in any orchestra ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... caution to the four winds, surrendered to his rage. He struck again. The saber rang against the oak. This dexterity with the staff carried no warning to the enraged officer. He struck again and again. Then the old man struck back. The pain in the colonel's arm was excruciating. His saber rattled to the stone flooring. Before he could recover the weapon the victor had put his foot upon it. He was still smiling, as if the whole affair was a ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... Samarova is an ardent revolutionist, you know. This morning the servant at my own home on East Broadway was also stricken, and - who knows? - perhaps it will be my turn next. For to-night Saratovsky had an even more violent return of the fever, with intense shivering, excruciating pains in the limbs, and delirious headache. It is not like anything I ever saw before. Can you look into the case before it ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... where the first criminal proceedings were instituted against them, after they had long before been accused by the people of poisoning the wells; similar scenes followed in Bern and in Freiburg, in 1349. Under the influence of excruciating suffering, the tortured Jews confessed themselves guilty of the crime imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zofingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... treatment, had not even yet healed, and it made me shudder to think of the agony the poor fellow must have endured, with cold and hunger to add to his misery. But although the sufferer was a young man, now maimed for life, he never complained save when pain in the festering limbs became excruciating. Under such conditions a European would probably have succumbed in a few weeks, but Arctic Siberia must be visited to thoroughly realise the meaning of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the situation. First of all came his head. The pain of the wound was an ache, a dull ache that sharpened into shooting pains if he moved. Still, he told himself that it might be worse. There was much worse pain in the world. It could not be called unbearable or excruciating. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... The pain now was excruciating; and, realising that my left leg must be badly hurt, I made another effort before I was overcome again, getting upon my feet and reeling towards a big upright mass of granite; but before I had taken half-a-dozen limping steps the whole scene ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... I had emptied my pouch of the few fish I had put there for future use. Those that I ate made me very sick. Poisoned by the mineral in the water, had I glutted my appetite with them as I intended, I should doubtless have died in the wilderness, in excruciating torment. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... wall while a movie-man whipped out a handkerchief and tied it over my eyes. The director then took the firing squad in hand. He had but recently witnessed the execution of a spy where he had almost burst with a desire to photograph the scene. It had been excruciating torture to restrain himself. But the experience had made him feel conversant with the etiquette of shooting a spy, as it was being done amongst the very best firing-squads. He made it now stand him ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... the light reeled back again that he had been unconscious for a very long time. He awoke to excruciating pain, of which he seemed to have been vaguely aware throughout, and found himself bound hand and foot and slung across the back of a camel. He dangled helplessly face downwards, racked by cramp and a fiery torment of thirst more intolerable than ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... which was susceptible of pain. In that way he learned to use his implements of war effectually, and at the same time blunted all those fine feelings and tender sympathies that are naturally excited, by hearing or seeing, a fellow being in distress. He could inflict the most excruciating tortures upon his enemies, and prided himself upon his fortitude, in having performed the most barbarous ceremonies and tortures, without the least degree of pity or remorse. Thus qualified, when very young he was initiated into scenes of carnage, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... where their camp was located, were as impossible as angels; so his companions set his broken bones as well as they could, while Baptiste suffered excruciating torture. When they had completed their crude surgery, they improvised a litter of poles, and rigged it on a couple of pack-mules, and thus carried him around with them from camp to camp until he recovered—a ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... was over, the O. P.s became anxious for a confirmation of the intelligence, and commenced a loud call for Mr. Kemble. He had not then returned from the Crown and Anchor; but of this the pitites were not aware, and for nearly half an hour they kept up a most excruciating din. At length the great actor made his appearance, in his walking dress, with his cane in hand, as he had left the tavern. It was a long time before he could obtain silence. He. apologized in the most respectful terms for appearing before them ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... at last went out in darkness—that the world he discovered brought nothing to Spain but disappointment and Dead Sea ashes—that he dragged out a miserable old age in rotten and unseaworthy ships, lying ill in the torrid heats of the West Indies, racked with excruciating pain, and in absolute penury and want—all this but adds point to a life so full of paradox that we may almost pardon him for believing in miracles. After so much glory and so much fame, his life darkened down to its dreary and pathetic close. His ardent soul went at last where wicked ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... got—nor so near! Gladstone, a thoroughly bad judge of literature, made her reputation, and not on a post card, either! Gladstone had no sense of humour—at any rate when he ventured into literature. Nor has Mrs. Humphry Ward. If she had she would not concoct those excruciating heroines of hers. She probably does not know that her heroines are capable of rousing temperaments such as my own to ecstasies of homicidal fury. Moreover, in literature all girls named Diana are insupportable. Look at Diana Vernon, beloved of Mr. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... God avenging Robert Fitzhildebrand's perfidity, a worm grew in his vitals which, gradually gnawing its way through his intestines, fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment brought to his end" ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... most perfect players I have ever known, as well as one of the greatest grand seigneurs among violinists. His rendering of romantic works, Saint-Saens, Lalo, Bruch, was exquisite—I have never, never heard them played as beautifully. On the other hand, his Bach playing was excruciating—he played Bach sonatas as though they were virtuoso pieces. It made one think of Hans von Buelow's mot when, in speaking of a certain famous pianist, he said: 'He plays Beethoven with velocity and Czerny with expression.' ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... of two months did she receive a letter. Fear for his health, apprehension of his death during this cruel interim, caused an agony of suspense, which, by representing him to her distracted fancy in a state of suffering, made him, if possible, still dearer to her. In the excruciating anguish of uncertainty, she walked with trembling steps through all weathers (when she could steal half a day while her parents were employed in labour abroad) to the post town, at six miles' distance, to inquire ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... to Lord Anson to see the necessary arrangements taken immediately. Mr. Cleveland was sent from the Admiralty to remonstrate on the impossibility of obeying them. He found his lordship in the most excruciating pain, from one of the most severe fits of the gout he had ever experienced. "Impossible, sir," said he, "don't talk to me of impossibilities": and then, raising himself upon his legs, while the sweat stood in large drops upon his forehead, and every ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... person of eminence in the whole Empire to feel sure that he might not any day be seized and accused of a crime, or even without the form of an accusation be taken and put to death, after suffering the most excruciating tortures. To produce this result, it was enough to have failed through any cause whatever in the performance of a set task, or to have offended, even by doing him too great a service, the monarch or one of his ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... viciously out of his way, with a short, insane laugh. But his staggering host took it in good part; a man beside himself with excruciating ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his pillow a stone; his sustenance was hard coarse bread and water. At fifty years of age, he began to be grievously afflicted with the stone and nephritic colic; but bore with cheerfulness the most excruciating pains of his distemper. The emperor Leo, the Armenian, in 814, renewed the persecution against the church, and abolished the use of holy images, which had been restored under Constantine and Irene. Knowing the great reputation and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... being of Mademoiselle Zoe Pradille and deprived her of the power of walking, of kneeling, of reading and listening to reading and of eating without excruciating pain. Expert medical treatment was secured at home and a thorough test was made of health resorts, all without avail, until at last the pilgrimage was made to Ars and the novena was said, resulting in a complete cure as attested to by a physician who had known the case well for six years out of ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... beautiful arrangements of Nature for free and easy movement. It loosens what ought to be tight, it contracts the nerves, and so shortens the limbs that a tall man finds all the comeliness of his stature taken from him while he is still unmutilated. It is in truth a living death; and when the excruciating torment is gone, it leaves an almost worse legacy behind it—inability to move. Even debtors in the torture chamber have the weights sometimes removed from their feet; but this cruel malady, when it has once taken hold of a man, seems never to relinquish possession. A disease ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... not indulge in drink, after his removal from his father-in-law's, to the same extent as he had previously done, but yet he had got to be such a victim to the habit as now to become intoxicated at every favorable opportunity, which not only caused his wife excruciating pain, but was also the source of annoyance and sorrow to his parents and sister. But though Mr. Sealy was sorely troubled by his son's conduct, and was led to realize, at least to some extent, the worry and shame that is associated ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... what words I uttered in reply. A curious sense of oppression had fallen upon me, a hot, burning feeling as though my skull was filled with molten metal, while at the back of my neck was a sharp excruciating pain which caused me ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Adv. specially, especially, particularly &c adj.; in particular, in propria persona [Lat.]; ad hominem [Lat.]; for my part. each, apiece, one by one, one at a time; severally, respectively, each to each; seriatim, in detail, in great detail, in excruciating detail, in mind-numbing detail; bit by bit; pro hac vice [Lat.], pro re nata [Lat.]. namely, that is to say, for example, id est, exemplia gratia [Lat.], e.g., i.e., videlicet, viz.; to wit. Phr. le ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Houston suffered excruciating pain from the arm hanging helpless at his side, but he traveled forward without a murmur, scarcely conscious of his own suffering in his anxiety for Jack. The cut was comparatively short, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Ten minutes ago I met her. She perked her eyebrows at me!—tried to run away. "Miss Wheedle": I said. "If you please, I 'd rather not," says she. To cut it short, the sacrifice I made to her was the cause. It's all over the house. She gave the most excruciating hint. Those low-born females are so horribly indelicate. I stood confounded. Commending his new humour, Evan persuaded him to breakfast immediately, and hunger being one of Jack's solitary incitements ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his sister a look of anguish, watching for each sign of emotion. To his great astonishment, the features of Sarah remained almost impassible; she placed her hand upon her heart, and falling back in her chair, suppressed a slight cry, which appeared to have been caused by some sudden and excruciating pain, after which her face became ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... or any station of life. The younger, Mary by name, nine years of age, attracted very great attention, by the deep interest she manifested in a poor fugitive (whom she had never seen before), at the Philadelphia station, confined to the bed and suffering excruciating pain from wounds he had received whilst escaping. Hours and hours together, during the two or three days of their sojourn, she spent of her own accord, by his bed-side, manifesting almost womanly sympathy in the most devoted and tender manner. She thus, doubtless, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... made no response. They did not hear any further firing behind them. On and on they trudged. Night turned to day. Day rolled slowly on into night once more. And still they staggered on, footsore and weary. Mallory suffered excruciating agony from his wound. There were times when it seemed that it would be impossible for him to continue another yard; but then the thought that Barbara Harding was somewhere ahead of them, and that in a short time now they must be with her once ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of other kinds came. Sickness and pain entered our dwelling, and seized upon one of my family. My youngest son was taken ill. He was racked with excruciating pain. It seemed as if the agony would drive him to distraction, or cut short his days. And there I stood, watching his agony, and distracted with his cries, unable to utter a whisper about a gracious Providence, or to offer up a ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... few stunned seconds he dragged himself to a sitting posture; his head throbbed cruelly, and when he put his hand to his forehead he found that it was bleeding. He tried to stand, but when he placed his weight upon his left foot it gave him excruciating pain. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... saw, saw in impotent agony of soul. His boyish folly and pride had been great, but the excruciating anguish that made him shed tears of blood, was indeed a punishment even too ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... "Poor Browne was in excruciating pain from scurvy. Every day I expected to find him unable to stir. My men were ill from exposure, scanty food, and muddy water; my horses leg-weary and reduced to skeletons. I alone stood unscathed, but I could not bear to leave my ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... Brant traversed the blood-stained field he bent over the wounded form of Gabriel Wisner, who was a magistrate of Orange county. The fallen man, though suffering excruciating pain, was still able to speak, but the chieftain saw that he was dying. There were wolves in the forest, and these would soon visit the scene of carnage. To bear Wisner from the field would avail nothing. For a moment the War Chief debated what he should do. Then, turning ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... time, you may be sure. And here, sure enough, she found poor Harry lying in excruciating pain, and with a great white swelling on his knee, which her experienced eyes saw at once was no ordinary ...
— The Good Ship Rover • Robina F. Hardy
... A winding-sheet! I could feel it clinging to me all over. It compressed the air in my lungs, it retarded the circulation, and gave me the most excruciating cramp, and pins and needles. My sufferings were so acute that I groaned, and, on attempting to stretch my jaws, found that they were encased in tight, clammy bandages. By prodigious efforts I eventually managed to gain a certain amount of liberty for my head, and this gave ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... distributed among the party; and then, having done all that a man could do, he sat himself down, almost overcome, to wait till the morning, when he might hope to get the survivors on shore. Adair's leg gave him excruciating pain. Rogers sat on one side of him, Murray on the other, supporting him in their arms, and endeavouring, by every means they could think of, to alleviate his suffering, by gently rubbing his legs, frequently changing his ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... know. Ah! here we are!" He turned over the knave of diamonds, and laid the deck down. "Now," he said to Mitchell, "what'll you bet the next card isn't the knave of hearts?" Here he was again attacked by that excruciating cough. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... and a terrible battle ensued, in which the imperialists were completely defeated and all the fruits of their former victories torn from their hands. In the following year Tilly had his thigh shattered by a cannon-ball at the battle of the Lech, and died in excruciating agonies. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... so, and I now found severe shooting pains, more racking than the sharpest rheumatism I had ever suffered, pervading my whole body. They increased until I suffered the most excruciating agony, as if my bones had been converted into red—hot tubes of iron, and the marrow in them had been dried up with fervent heat, and I was obliged to beg that a hammock might be spread on deck, on which ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of Holland and Denmark is one of excruciating anxiety to the citizens of those countries. They know that the Allies are fighting the battle of their own political existence, but they are so hypnotized with well-founded terror of the implacable tyrant on their flank that they are not only bound to neutrality, but are afraid to express their ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... not answer a word, but fixed her wild eyes on her mistress and gasped for breath, as if tortured by some excruciating pain. Then, stiffening every muscle in her body, and stifling a cry of anguish between her clenched teeth, she slipped down on her back, and all at once, something stirred underneath her dress, which clung tightly round her legs. Jeanne heard a strange, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... mouth had slipped down and his words sounded hollow and choking in the rock-bound chamber. He tried to raise his voice in a shout, though he knew how futile his loudest shrieks would be. The effort choked him more. His suffering was becoming excruciating. Sharp pains darted like red-hot needles through his limbs, his back tortured him, and his head ached as though a knife had cleft the base of his skull. The strength of his limbs was leaving him. He no longer ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... I., forsaking his previous tolerance, ordered six fires to be lighted simultaneously in Paris. The Convention, as we know, limited itself to a single guillotine in the same city. It is probable that the sufferings of the victims were not very excruciating; the insensibility of the Christian martyrs had already been remarked. Believers are hypnotised by their faith, and we know to-day that certain forms ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... about to be carried out was the blowing of a particularly excruciating sort of foghorn at some unexpected hour of the day or night—it used to be in every watch on the Mermaid; and at the sound of this melodious instrument, which was most likely selected by the authorities in recollection of the story of Joshua and his trumpet, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... bottles, and metal galleys, and nameless fragments of metal. Everything contributed to the impression of immense ponderosity exceeding the imagination. The fancy of being pinned down by even the lightest of these constructions was excruciating. You moved about in narrow alleys among upstanding, unyielding metallic enormities, and you felt ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Charlotte did. She was a jewel, and I don't see anything what she wanted to die for, just as I had got her well trained; but that's all the thanks I ever get for my goodness. Now go quick, and tell her I've got an excruciating headache." ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... confounded tag-rag-and-bobtail of relations! Fancy your wife attached to a mother who dropped her h's, or called Maria Marire! How are you to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs. Pendennis, I will name no names, but in the very best circles of London society I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony, I have known them to be cut, to be lost utterly, from the vulgarity of their wives' connections. What did Lady Snapperton do last year at her dejeune dansant after the Bohemian Ball? She told Lord Brouncker that he might bring his daughters or send ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing (poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was the enormity that ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... different direction. At night they were placed in a cave, and on the following morning were marched off to the Boxer general's headquarters, a temple. Mr. Ogren was at once taken before the general, Mrs. Ogren sitting in the courtyard with her baby on her knee. She was suffering excruciating pain from a swollen eye, caused by the heat and glare, but her mental agony was no doubt greater, for in a few minutes her husband's fate would be decided. She heard him answering the general's questions, heard him pleading for their lives. Soon his voice was drowned ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... and tenderness. And he grew daily more conscious of a great peace and happiness—peace and happiness such as he had never known since his boyhood's days. He, who had found the ways of modern society dull to the last point of excruciating boredom, was not aware of any monotony in the daily round of the hours, which, laden with simple duties and pleasures, came and went softly and slowly like angel messengers stepping gently from one heaven to another. The world—or that which ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... peasants, what could she have ever been? Probably some one knew the truth about her, in all that great society. Such things might be known. Francesca Campodonico's delicate noble face rose faintly between her and the sky, and she realized with excruciating suddenness the distance that separated her from the woman she hated, the woman who perhaps knew that Gloria Dalrymple was the daughter of a peasant and a fit wife by her birth for Angelo ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... painful. My blood became impoverished, and I suffered from incapacity with an appalling sense of misery and general apprehension of coming evil. I passed sleepless nights and was troubled with irregular action of the heart, a constantly feverish condition, and the most excruciating tortures in my stomach, living for days on rice water and gruel, and, indeed, the digestive functions seemed to ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... and clear, but we could not sleep at all, from the pains of having eaten. We suffered the most excruciating torments, though I in particular did not eat a quarter of what would have satisfied me; it might have been from using a quantity of raw or frozen sinews of the legs of deer, which neither of us could avoid doing, so ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... sick of the hideousness of life, of the excruciating lower middle-class arrangement of this room. I don't know how I've stood it all these years. My soul must have been starved—stifled. I want to live in another atmosphere, to be surrounded by beautiful ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the wagon, leaving us alone. We lay still for about half-an-hour, when the sentries looked in from front and back to see us lying as if asleep; but as soon as they had gone we began a hard struggle to get our wrists free. In this attempt we only gave ourselves excruciating pain, and found, to our despair, that the knots of the Boers were far too well tied to be loosened. At last, with a groan, Denham gave up the attempt. I desisted then, having only waited for him to set ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... spite of his being the first-born. A towering fact this, that Abel, though dead, was living and canonized in another life more effectually and truly than those whom the pope ever canonized! The death of Abel was indeed horrible; he did not suffer death without excruciating torment nor without many tears. Yet it was a blessed death, for now he lives a more blessed life than he did before. This bodily life of ours is lived in sin, and is ever in danger of death. But that other life is eternal and perfectly ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the stairs. Admitted at length into the bureau, the old crone, spectacle on nose, proceeded very deliberately to spell over, by a feeble lamplight, the addresses of a bundle of letters taken from a shelf. The process was excruciating, anxious as we were for news from home. She could make nothing of my friend's truly Saxon name;—what foreign official can ever decipher English names? Mine was more pronounceable, and as I kept repeating both, she caught that, and, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... bankrupt, and reduced from a state of affluence, by a train of unavoidable misfortunes; then, sir, though a very industrious tradesman, I was twice burned out, and lost my little all both times. I lived upon those fires a month. I soon after was confined by a most excruciating disorder, and lost the use of my limbs. That told very well; for I had the case strongly attested, and went about to collect the subscriptions myself. I was afterwards twice tapped for a dropsy, which declined into ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... though not during his lifetime. People vowed that he carried on the old traditions, the tortures and human sacrifices, and even improved upon them in his blithe Renaissance manner. They were ready to supply circumstantial and excruciating details of how, disguised, down to the minutest details of costume, in the semblance of the Evil One, he had sought to prolong his life and invigorate his declining health with the blood of innocent children, artfully done to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... presented innumerable difficulties in the way of ascent, with an enemy lining the banks of the river. And that which was more annoying forced itself strongly upon his mind—the Canadians were both loyal and brave. His agony was most excruciating when he received a letter from Hampton to the effect that the Plattsburgh-Grand-Junction-Invading-Army was marching as expeditiously as circumstances would allow out of Canada; that, in a word it had been defeated and was in full ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the Christian Religion." Boswell writes of him: "Jenyns was possessed of lively talents, and a style eminently pure and 'easy', and could very happily play with a light subject, either in prose or verse; but when he speculated on that most difficult and excruciating question, 'The Origin of Evil,' he ventured far beyond his depth, and, accordingly, was exPosed by Johnson [in the 'Literary Magazine'), both with acute argument ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... look at this inclement weather and think how these poor creatures must suffer from the cold, it seems to me that they are the people who should apply to those who have anything to bestow in charity; not those who are the only people, as it would appear, who can take pleasure in this excruciating weather. See if your club cannot do something for these poor sufferers instead of collecting merely for your own personal amusement; contribute to their necessities, and then come and see me again. I shall ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... related to me by a person who was near committing suicide in a similar situation, to escape what he called "the excruciating torture of giddiness." ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the convent and prepared himself by receiving Holy Communion in the Sisters' chapel. Almighty God was pleased to glorify His servant by a second prodigy on this occasion, for the painter had no sooner taken his brush in hand, than he was seized with an excruciating vertigo and was compelled to desist. Nor would it have been possible for him to resume, but that he felt inspired to apply to his head a small portion of the hair of the deceased, upon doing which he was instantly ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... a service in a western city an old woman was wheeled into the church in an invalid's chair. I knew by the expression of her countenance that she was suffering. When I met her after the service and asked her about her story she said as the most excruciating pain convulsed her body, "I have not been free from pain in twenty years and have scarcely slept a night through all that time," and then, brushing the tears from her eyes, and with an expectant face, she exclaimed, "but if I could ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... occasional fits of insanity. This is by no means the case, but it must be admitted that the peculiar malady to which I referred above, and which is as yet not eradicated from his system, causes him, at times, days of the most excruciating pains all over the back and side of his head, and it is scarcely surprising that at such moments the emperor should act in a way which astonishes the uninitiated. Indeed, William II. displays extraordinary force of character in suppressing physical agony, when the duties he owes to the state ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... from circumstances connected with it, I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way. One morning I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... from its intermittent and lesser hell of suffering by the bloody wars between rival sets of capitalists, and (2) how to save it from its perpetual and greater hell of suffering by the bloodless wars between the machine owning masters and the machine operating slaves, which wars, if less excruciating, are yet more destructive of ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... almost insane brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... evidences of disaster, his face afforded no expression of his thought. Plastered with mud and drenched to the skin, he rode steadily forward, speaking no word and scarcely glancing to the right or left, and when at last the excruciating journey came to an end, he hastened to interview Thomas and hear his report, without even waiting to change his clothes or obtain ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... accident had happened, and servants were sent out in all directions. The first conscious perception Charles had was of waking to excruciating agony, and finding himself supported on men's shoulders along the road. No doubt every one believed him still insensible, or, much as he was disliked, they would not have been so cruel as to reproach him in his hour ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... free of the ground-log save his right arm, down came the ponderous drop-log with its additional weight of platform and stones. It caught him just above the elbow, crushed his arm flat, and held him a prisoner in excruciating pain. The poor wretch nearly swooned. Later, he thought of his knife. He would try to cut the log in two and thus free himself. He knew that, handicapped as he was, though he worked feverishly and incessantly, the task would demand many hours ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... dragged himself up the rough side of a ridge and looked down into a narrow strip of plain on the other side. Just as Nada had given up in weakness and despair, so now he was almost ready to quit. He had traveled miles since the owl fight, and his wounds had stiffened, and with every step gave him excruciating pain. His injured eye was entirely closed, and there was a strange, dull ache in the back of his head, where Gargantua had pounded him with his beak. The strip of valley, half hidden in its silvery mist of dawn, seemed a long distance away to Peter, and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... onwards, he flung it down before the wondering enemy, and one of the chiefs then thought it incumbent upon him to display his own prowess. He advanced, and offered to grasp hands with Rustem: they met; but the gripe of the champion was so excruciating that the sinews of his adversary cracked, and in agony he fell from his horse. Intelligence of this discomfiture was instantly conveyed to the king, who then summoned his most valiant and renowned chieftain, Kalahur, and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... place as any to emphasize, that if the bride has a very strong, tough and resistant hymen, the new husband should not use brute force in rupturing it. First, because the pain may be too excruciating and this may create in the wife an aversion to intercourse which may last for many months or years—in some cases forever. Second, a severe hemorrhage may result, which may require the aid of a physician to stop. Wherever a case of very resistant hymen is encountered, the husband ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... gripped him by the wrist, half-turning as he did so. Before Milburgh knew what was happening, he was lying on the floor, face downwards, with Ling Chu's knee in the small of his back. He felt something like a wire loop slipped about his wrists, and suffered an excruciating pain as the Chinaman tightened the connecting link of ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... our people began to fall down again with the scurvy. The effect of these nuts alone, in checking this disease, is astonishing: Many whose limbs were become as black as ink, who could not move without the assistance of two men, and who, besides total debility, suffered excruciating pain, were in a few days, by eating these nuts, although at sea, so far recovered as to do their duty, and could even go aloft as well as they did before the distemper seized them. For several days about ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of the Body," published in London in 1830, calls special attention to the case of a man aged thirty-eight, admitted to the Finsbury Dispensary, and who was in the care of Mr. Hancock. The patient was suffering from excruciating pain in different joints, the pain being so great that he was confined to his bed and unable to stand on his feet. He was unable to rest at nights, and neither rheumatic nor any other apparently suitable treatment was of any service. Rigors were soon added to his other troubles, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Williams, and his wife Winifred, in their cart put the gypsy witch-wife and her daughter to flight. The Welshman administered some oil, which, after two hours of suspense, and with the help of an opiate, saved the life of Lavengro. During this companionship Borrow found that Williams suffered excruciating spiritual terrors from the conviction that he had committed the sin against the ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... street comes a man with an accordion. He is playing "Annie Laurie." Every now and then he strikes a wrong note. Excruciating agony! Did he render it correctly it might blend with a romantic dream, but when he insists on flatting persistently, as for bonnie Annie Laurie he offers to lay him down and die, who is to bear it? And why does he not consummate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... precocious *Cor, cordis heart core, discord, courage Corpus body corpse, incorporate Credo, credituin believe creed, discreditable Cresco, cretum grow crescendo, concrete, accrue *Crux, crucis cross crucifix, excruciating Cura care curate, sinecure Curro, cursum run occur, concourse *Derigo, directum direct dirge, dirigible, address *Dexter right, right hand ambidextrous, dexterity Dico speak, say abdicate, verdict *Dies day diary, quotidian Dignus worthy, fitting dignity, condign Do, datum give condone, data *Doceo, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... demeanour. He put the rope round my neck with an air of cutting civility, and apologized for the whole proceeding. I experienced vividly the moment of being turned off. I suffered the horrors of strangulation. The noose slipped, and I was dangling in the air in excruciating agony, half-dead and half-alive. Buster rushed to the foot of the scaffold, and with Christian charity fastened himself to my legs, and hung there till I had breathed my last. Whilst he was thus suspended, he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... door was shut on Oliver, he threw himself, shaken, on the couch, hating Oliver and all his works more than ever. Go about barefoot and swab decks! It was madness. Besides being dangerous to health, it would be excruciating discomfort. And to be insulted for not grasping at such martyrdom! It was intolerable; and Doggie remained justly indignant ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... a kite, doesn't it?" I remarked cheerfully. And then, as my arm gave an excruciating throb—"Jove, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dangerous,[11] most rarely successful and most frequently failed-in of all motives—again as it is everywhere. Comedy in letters is good: but it should be fairly "genteel" comedy, such as this age excelled in—not roaring Farce. An "excruciatingly funny" letter runs the risk of being excruciating in a sadly literal sense. Now the men of good Queen Anne and the first three Georges were not given to excess, in these ways at any rate; and there are few better examples of the happy mean than the best of their letters. The person who is bored by any one of those sets ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... heads with their pointed arrows; and, at other times, binding them to a tree, and piercing the tenderest parts of their naked bodies with sharp-pointed sticks of burning wood, which last, because the most painful and excruciating method of torture, was the most ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... has shown this in the Laocoon, and every man feels it in constant experience. One of the grand themes of modern painting is the great tragedy of history, the Crucifixion. Materially it is repulsive, as the spectacle of a man in excruciating bodily torture; spiritually it is overwhelming, as the symbolized suffering of God for sin. If, now, the pictures which treat this subject were indeed only imitations of the scene, so that the spectator listened ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... the opposite of Heaven, and since we cannot, as St. Paul says, imagine the happiness of Heaven, neither can we imagine the misery of Hell. Sometimes you will find frightful descriptions of Hell in religious books that tell of the horrible sights, awful sounds, disgusting stenches, and excruciating pains the lost souls endure. Now, all these descriptions are given rather to make people think of the torments of Hell than as an accurate account of them. No matter how terrible the description may be, it is never as bad as the reality. We know ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... of my divine flatulence, please find inclosed herewith copy of complimentary verses, written by myself on hearing of Poet AUSTIN'S selection. Indulgence is kindly requested for very hasty composition, and circumstance of being greatly harrowed and impeded at time of writing by an excruciating full sized boil on back of neck, infuriated by collar of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... my bed, and one of the nurses having carefully folded back the covering as low as my waist, the Head proceeded to deftly loosen the fastenings of an enormous bandage which I now discovered enveloped my chest. This done, I was very tenderly raised to a sitting posture—an operation which gave me excruciating pain, by the way—and the endless turns of the bandage were deftly unwound, one of the nurses seating herself upon the bed and supporting me meanwhile. When at length the bandage was removed, several broad strips of dressing were disclosed, which, upon removal, revealed ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... the bill and the bugs at the inn which induced the writer hereof to speak so slightingly of the residence of Basileus. These evils are now cured and forgotten. This is written off the leaden flats and mounds which they call the Troad. It is stern justice alone which pronounces this excruciating sentence. It was a farce to make this place into a kingly capital; and I make no manner of doubt that King Otho, the very day he can get away unperceived, and get together the passage- money, will be off for ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... moat, beyond which a horse was waiting for him. He made no effort to deny his identity, but boldly avowed himself and his deed. He was brought back to the house, where he immediately underwent a preliminary examination before the city magistrates. He was afterward subjected to excruciating tortures; for the fury against the wretch who had destroyed the "father of the country" was uncontrollable, and William the Silent was no longer alive to intercede—as he had often done before—in behalf of those who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... with a bitter effrontery that we may well call diabolic, remembering how the nervous terror of punishment and exposure sinks the angel in man. Our phrase, want of moral courage, really denotes in the young an excruciating physical struggle, often so keen that the victim clutches after liberation with the spontaneous tenacity and cruelty of a creature wrecked in mastering waters. Undisciplined sensations constitute egoism in the most ruthless of its shapes, and at this epoch, owing either ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... that the sufferer's agony should increase, but it was apparent that it did remorselessly. All humanity was obliterated in an excruciating spasm over which streamed some meagre tears. Mr. Winscombe's arms raised and dropped; and, suddenly relaxed, he slipped down upon the pillows. Immediately the torment vanished from his countenance; it became peaceful, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... begin the rehearsal at four o'clock. I counted the minutes as they passed; their flight was at once too rapid and too slow: my sensations were of an excruciating kind; I could taste no food, nor apply to any task, nor enjoy a moment's repose; when the hour arrived ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... more than at any other period since the birth of Christ, the medical and surgical world have centralized their minds for the purpose of relieving locally inside, below the kidney of the male or female, excruciating pain, which appears in both sexes in ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... really excruciating around the table, in the little space inside that tent in which the cruelest of tragedies was hurling against one another a group of noble souls united by the most loyal affection. Each of them forgot his private suffering and thought only of the horror that loomed ahead. The sinister ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... no oasis. They found no wady other than stone-dry. By day they slept, by night pushed forward. Day by day they grew weaker and less rational. The increasing nerve-strain that possessed them was companioned by the excruciating torture of their bodies racked by the swaying jolt ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... was five "times made a bankrupt and reduced from a state of "affluence, by a train of unavoidable misfortunes! then "Sir, though a very industrious tradesman, I was twice "burnt out, and lost my little all both times! I lived "upon those fires a month. I soon after was confined by a "most excruciating disorder, and lost the use of my limbs! "That told very well; for I had the case strongly attested, "and went about col—called on you, a close prisoner "in the Marshalsea, for a debt benevolently contracted "to serve a friend. I was afterwards ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the former pronounce his forgiveness, or the latter vow that she would cherish his memory. To die unknown, distant from all he loved, be ignorant of their present state, and they of his miserable doom—such a combination of excruciating misfortunes required no common fortitude to support the trial, or to divest a soul (which clung to the future with greater eagerness in proportion to the fallacy of past expectations) of those strong attachments to this life which ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... painters was that they painted the extremes of emotion. Their subjects represented the ecstacy of bliss or the most excruciating agony. They did not seem to have as much middle ground or to know as much of moderate emotions as the painters of other nations. Ribalta was no exception to this rule, and some of his pictures are painful to look at. His portraits are fine, and represent the most powerful men of Valencia ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... 'flue provided him with a regular hundred patients a day. He himself had bitter personal experience of the boils. We never saw him without one for ten weeks. His own method of dealing with their excruciating tenderness was to swathe his face in cotton-wool and sticking-plaster. "Damn me, doctor, if you don't look like a loose imitation of Von Tirpitz," burst out the adjutant one day, when the doctor, with a large boil on either side of his ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... as his eyes rested upon the bloody thing grinning up at him from the floor, the face set in a death mask of excruciating horror. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precipitation, and hid himself in the lodgings of an acquaintance who lived near, where he flung himself upon the first bed that presented itself, and had every appearance of a man suffering the most excruciating torture. His friend, who had been apprised by the servant of the state he was in, and who naturally concluded that he was ill, offered him some wine. He refused, saying, "No, no, that will not help me: I have been in at Argyle, and saw him sleeping as pleasantly as ever man did, within ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... will he think of himself, or of his past actions? his mind debilitated; his strength turned into weakness; unable to stir or to move without help; not one ray of hope darting in upon his benighted soul; his conscience standing in the place of a thousand witnesses; his pains excruciating; weary of the poor remnant of life he drags, yet dreading, that, in a few short hours, his bad will be changed to worse, nay, to worst of all; and that worst of all, to last beyond time and to all eternity; O Jack! what will he then ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson |
