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More "Agonizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the last escape they had almost forgotten the fact that their situation was still almost hopeless, and that perhaps the speedy end would have been preferable to one more agonizing, more slow, to come. They got to their feet at last and hobbled forward, the big man resting half his weight on his friend's shoulder and making slow progress. Again they were centered on the faint hope that ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... seldom without consequences, and there followed in this case a short but sharp attack of illness. It came on with the old "unspeakable and agonizing pain in the side," for which Bob Fagin had prepared and applied the hot bottles in the old warehouse time; and it yielded quickly to powerful remedies. But for a few days he had to content himself with the minor sights of Albaro. He sat daily in the shade of the ruined chapel on the seashore. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... intervals, as we near the last pages of the large and closely-written book containing the first volume of his diary, do we meet with those agonizing complaints of dryness, the distress of doubt, the weary burden of insoluble difficulties, so common heretofore. He seems, indeed, no longer battling; be victory is won; but it remains to know what are ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... serious results. I have only given the above as an instance of the impossibility of deciding upon the outward and superficial expression of Chinese mirth. Of its inner and deeper existence I have some private doubts. An audience that will view with a serious aspect the hero, after a frightful and agonizing death, get up and quietly walk off the stage, can not be said to have ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... "The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, To men remote from pow'r but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... toils from year to year to secure it a fair patrimony, a finished education, and an honorable position in life. How unremittingly these parents watch over the sick-bed of their children and of each other; and oh, what burning tears gush forth as the utterance of their agonizing hearts, when death threatens to blight a single bud, or lay his cold hand upon a ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... could find some excuse for them and, though the length of his service entitled him to more consideration than most of those who cried out bitterly for "vengeance," could write in his book ("These From the Land of Sinim"), "In the heat of the conflict, and under the agonizing strain of anxiety for imperilled loved ones, many hard things have been said and written about the officials who allied themselves with the Boxers. But these men were eminent in their own country for their learning and services, were animated by patriotism, were enraged ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... think that the true friend of Pompeii should make it a matter of conscience, on entering the enchanted city, to cast out of his knowledge all the rubbish that has fallen into it from novels and travels, and to keep merely the facts of the town's luxurious life and agonizing death, with such incidents of the eruption as he can remember from the description of Pliny. These are the spells to which the sorcery yields, and with these in your thought you can rehabilitate the city until Ventisei seems to be a valet de ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the passage. She advanced, and listened. When she came to the second, she heard a voice, apparently in complaint, within, to which she continued to listen, afraid to open the door, and unwilling to leave it. Convulsive sobs followed, and then the piercing accents of an agonizing spirit burst forth. Emily stood appalled, and looked through the gloom, that surrounded her, in fearful expectation. The lamentations continued. Pity now began to subdue terror; it was possible she might administer comfort to the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... And the boulder continued to exist for centuries still later as a nameless stone, on which the tall gray heron rested moveless and ghost-like in the evenings, and the seal at mid-day basked lazily in the sun. And then there came a night of fierce tempest, in which the agonizing cry of drowning men was heard along the shore. When the morning broke, there lay strewed around a few bloated corpses, and the fragments of a broken wreck; and amid wild execrations and loud sorrow the boulder ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... testimonies, preparatory to the reunion of this husband and wife, a delicate spectator feels a certain shudder when the catastrophe takes place,—but there is another spectator more delicate still, who never conceives, that from an agonizing, though an affectionate embrace, (the only proof of reconciliation given, for the play ends here), any farther endearments will ensue, than those of participated sadness, mutual care of their joint offspring, and to smooth each other's passage to ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... climbed the stairs to bed, it was understood that the hour of retribution had arrived. Dorothy wept softly while undressing, and uttered agonizing shrieks as she underwent her chastisement. Down-stairs the girls looked at one another aghast, and Hobo whined uneasily, as if asking permission to interfere. Then the uproar ended abruptly, and Dorothy climbing upon Peggy's knee, pledged herself solemnly never again to ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... thought!—how it made his very heart leap, and the blood course swiftly through his heated veins!—and then, when some sound was heard more near, how his heart sickened at the fear he might again be captured, and forced to a lingering, agonizing death!—how he shuddered as he thought, until his flesh felt chill and clammy, and cold drops of perspiration, wrung forth by mental agony, stood upon his pale features! Even death, before his escape, possessed not half ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... are ever vivid within us, and are two of the great vital arteries of all true art. This burning human thirst for the fulness of eternity in opposition to our fragmentary time manifests itself in our agonizing efforts to bring back the past, to which sad efforts we have given the melancholy name of memory; shows itself in our restless longing for the future, which we call hope; and frequently reveals itself ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seemed to recall her. The agonizing agitation passed from her and a great quiet fell upon her soul. The struggle was done. She had made the ancient sacrifice demanded of women since ever the first man went forth to war. It remained only to complete with fitting ritual this ancient sacrifice. She rose from her ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... that such acquaintance had also its risks, the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... agonizing cry, Joan flung herself upon her father's breast, sobbing so softly that even Kazan's sharp ears heard no sound. She remained there in her grief until every vital energy of womanhood and motherhood in her girlish body was roused to action by the wailing cry of baby Joan. Then she sprang ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... character. He fails, too, to show any true sense of the political greatness of Rome. The genius of Rome and the genius of Carthage are never confronted or contrasted; the greatness of Rome in defeat, the scenes of Rome agonizing in the grip of unexpected disaster, are never brought home to the reader with the least degree of vividness. The great battles are described at tedious length[619] and rendered ridiculous by the lavish introduction of Homeric single combats. If Silius is rarely bombastic or rendered absurd ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... says—"Forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive those who trespass against us." If we use this prayer without forgiving those who injure us, then, in so using it, we are really asking God not to forgive us. And Jesus practised what he preached. As he hung bleeding and agonizing on the cross, while his enemies were cruelly mocking his misery, he looked up to heaven, and uttered that wonderful prayer—"Father forgive them; for they know not what they do." Here we have the best illustration of forgiveness that ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... thoughtful, but by no means unhappy. The news of George's agonizing death was balm to him, he only regretted that he had not been there—somewhere well out of the way of the dog, up a tree, for ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... life where there is security in all things, barring a very remote insurrection and the possibility of hearing the roar of Japanese guns some fine morning. And through and through a grateful system I felt the lifting of the tremendous pressure, the agonizing strain, competition, and tumult of American life. Thank Heaven! there is still a manana country—a fair, sunny land, where rapid transportation and sky-scrapers do ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... exhausted the entire half hour that she had allowed it, the train started with a puff and a wheeze, and ambled on toward its destination, with frequent brief pauses to get its breath or to accommodate the connections that were "all out of whack," and a final long and agonizing wait in the yards. That was the last straw—to be so near the goal and yet helplessly stranded just out of reach. Wishing to verify her own calculations, Betty leaned forward and asked a friendly-looking, gray-haired woman in the seat ahead if she knew just how ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... water's edge, stretching his arms out towards the receding steamer, and with an agonizing cry of "Claudia! Claudia!" fell forward upon his ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... seething vats of evil and corruption, its sordid discontent and petulance, its ways of pain and darkness, seemed far removed from that place of peace and calm solitude. Phoebe could not bear to think that across the seas men were lying in the filth of water-soaked trenches, agonizing and bleeding on the battlefields and suffering nameless tortures in hospitals that a peace like unto the peace of her quiet haven might brood undisturbed over the world in future generations. She dismissed the harrowing ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... a melting Eye, Beheld her dreadful Anguish from the Sky; And bade fair Iris from the starry Pole, Fly, and enlarge her agonizing Soul. ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... the reason for Jean's high head and burning cheeks, and in spite of his sense of agonizing humiliation, he was glad to think of ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... The Afternoon begins with the visit which the hero and his lady pay to one of her friends. He has already thought with which of the husband's horses they shall drive out; he has suggested which dress his lady shall wear and which fan she shall carry; he has witnessed the agonizing scene of her parting with her lap-dog,—her children are at nurse and never intrude,—and they have arrived in the palace of the lady on ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... search of those who could face this woman and answer her story. He went first to send word to Zillah, summoning her down. Zillah had been feebly reclining on her couch, distracted by thoughts at once perplexing and agonizing, filled with despair at the dark calamity which had suddenly descended, with a black future arising before her, when she and "Windham" were to be sundered forever. He hated her. That was her chief thought; and Windham's love had gone down in ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... ground, arose a truly monstrous tumult. Every one of the creatures below raised its voice in a horrible, bleating cry. The volume of sound was numbing—was agonizing in sheer impact. There were stirrings and clickings as of ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... his arm, begging to take me to my carriage. The gendarmes threw open doors, and we retraced our steps through all the different rooms until we reached the one where I had left Mademoiselle W——, whom I expected to find waiting for me in agonizing anxiety. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... terrible device for producing an agonizing death and shuddered. The precautions taken to prevent anyone entering the place were the most elaborate and ingenious I had ever seen. Even if any person learnt the secret of draining the lake, the shaft leading to the mysterious subterranean place was unapproachable by reason ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... up with this feeling of agonizing uncertainty, he began at length, more composedly, to recollect the little chance there was that the Princess would, even for her own sake, resentful as she was in the highest degree of her husband's ill behaviour, join her resources to his, to the destruction ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... is in connection with this feature of slavery that we at the North are most easily and most painfully affected. Some of the most agonizing scenes are enacted at these auctions. They are a part of slavery; so is the domestic slave-trade, which is the necessary removal of the slaves from places where they cannot have employment, to regions where their labor ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... was a just man and his sense of humor allowed him to distinguish between the vicious and the playful imagination. After long, agonizing moments for Skippy waiting at the window, he took ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... priest, and faint and low, Like the sighing of an evening breeze, Comes through these painted lattices The ceaseless sound of human woe, Here, while her bosom aches and throbs With deep and agonizing sobs, That half are passion, half contrition, The luckless daughter of perdition Slowly confesses her secret shame! The time, the place, the lover's name! Here the grim murderer, with a groan, From his bruised conscience rolls the stone, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to their utmost endurance, whole nations work day and night, fitting ourselves for the quick and extensive killing of men. This preparation for war. Armies meet on the field of battle; shot and shell rend the air; men fall to the ground like leaves in autumnal storms, bleeding, agonizing, dying; the earth is reddened by human blood; the more gory the earth beneath the tread of one army the louder the revel of victory in the ranks of the other. This, the actual conflict of war. From north to south, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... fruit remained. If, in the palmy days of Athenian greatness, any field of human inquiry had been successfully explored; if human reason had achieved any conquests; if any thing true and good had been obtained, that must endure as an heir-loom for all coming time; and if those centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat remained for the instruction of future generations. Either the problems they sought to ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... knew them to be. Never didst thou see terror so strong, nor affection so pathetic, as this excellent young woman, his wife, discovered. Excellent I am certain she is. She wrung her hands, she fell on her knees, she held up her babe; and, finding these were ineffectual, she screamed agonizing prayers to save her Harry. The idea she had conceived of the loss of liberty, and the miseries of a prison, must have been dreadful. But tears and prayers and cries were vain; she was pleading to the deaf, or at least to ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of the dust-brown expanse and the edge of the trampled grassy plain, stretched a sort of canal, perhaps ten paces wide, of brown-black, glistening pitch, beaten up with thrashing antlers, and tossing heads that whistled despairingly through wide nostrils, and heaving, agonizing bulks that went down slowly to their doom. After several ranks of the herd had been engulfed those next behind turned about in terror and fought madly to force their way back from the fatal brink. But the inexorable masses behind them rolled them on ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the faces of the occupants of the canoe was agonizing to watch. Once Frank saw the old man arise as if to cast himself into the water rather than face what lay ahead, but Lathrop instantly drew ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... pressed her hands together, and gasped and struggled fearfully for breath. The joy and effort for self-command were more than the enfeebled frame could support, and there was a terrible and prolonged renewal of those agonizing paroxysms, driving away every thought from the other two except of the immediate needs. At last, when the violence of the attack had subsided, and left what was either fainting or stupor, they judged it best to carry her to her bed, and trust ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to endure here seemed almost interminable to him. As he paced to and fro the long platform waiting for the London express, he wondered how he had borne all the previous delay, how he had been able to live through that dismal agonizing time. His own patience was a mystery to him now that the ordeal ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... swirled, grew gray and indistinct. Then I had a view of Mercer's face, so terribly distorted it was barely recognizable. Then a kaleidoscopic maze of inchoate scenes, shot through with flashes of vivid, agonizing colors. The girl was thinking of her suffering, taken out of her native element. In trying to save her, Mercer had almost killed her. That, no doubt, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... certainly loves me, and will be as true as the needle to the pole, and her mother will give way when she is convinced that if she does not she will be sacrificing her daughter's happiness." But when he left, this calm assurance had been succeeded by positive fear; his joy by agonizing doubt; and dread and disgust, jealousy and fierce hatred, reigned ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... many stout Whigs doubtless bled at the thought of what Fenwick must have suffered, the agonizing struggle, in a mind not of the firmest temper, between the fear of shame and the fear of death, the parting from a tender wife, and all the gloomy solemnity of the last morning. But whose heart was to bleed at the thought that Charles Duncombe, who was born to carry parcels and to sweep down ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eye-contrio which is so necessary to the full enjoyment of scenery, you will see nothing but the water. You will certainly hear nothing else; and the sound, I beg you to remember, is not an ear-cracking, agonizing crash and clang of noises, but is melodious and soft withal, though loud as thunder. It fills your ears, and, as it were, envelops them, but at the same time you can speak to your neighbor without an effort. But at this place, and in these moments, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... should get no answer at all. Yet on looking at him I almost believed that my question had caused him something in the nature of positive anguish. I detected it mainly in the clasping of his hands, in which he put a great force stealthily. Once, however, he had overcome that sort of agonizing hesitation sufficiently to tell me that he had no such intention, he became rather communicative—at least relatively to the former off-hand curtness of his speeches. The tone, too, was more amiable. He informed me that he intended to study and also to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Next day came agonizing pain which made every movement a death. But the Edinburgh doctor who came brought relief for the pain, and, talking with Dr. Angus, the Carlossie doctor, mentioned, among other technicalities, the name of a drug—"digitalis." That afternoon Marcella went ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... seems to have been convinced that a very few days' sailing to the west of Madeira would bring him to the shores of India. It was this error in calculation that undoubtedly was responsible for many long and agonizing hours spent on ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... where the little roofed shelter lay out in the ocean, bathed in moonlight, fairylike, unreal. The ocean was a thing of molten silver. The sound of the wailing voices in song came to her on the breeze, agonizing in its beauty. There, beyond, lay Pearl Harbour. From the other side, faintly, you heard the music and laughter from the ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness, came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced. The siren blew and blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility. There were those who would dare to defy it. She, for one, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... talked over the poor king's situation, and Sir Lucas was very open and comforting. How many sad meetings have I had with him heretofore ; first in the alarming attacks of poor Mr. Thrale, and next in the agonizing fluctuations of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... socket, though my leg is still weak with the sprain. But there is more to tell you. My efforts to reduce the dislocation were so great that my body broke out into a profuse sweat and I caught a severe chill. This was followed by agonizing pain in my bowels, which only subsided when its violence was on the point of killing me. A moment more and like Philemon I should have gone to the grave, not to my recital, should have finished not my speech but my destiny, should have brought not my tale but my life to a close. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Now it's a perfectly damnable thing for you to hope that your liver theory is true, because it amounts to hoping that Craven will die an agonizing death. (This strikes Paramore as paradoxical; but it startles him.) But it's amiable and human to hope that your theory about Julia is right, because it amounts to hoping that she ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... that the painful reflection that twenty-four hours' further perseverance would have made him the rescuer of the explorers, and gained for himself the praise and approbation of all, must be of itself an agonizing thought, without the addition of censure he ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... to say that the revelations which she made had, in any way, diminished my esteem and my respect for her. It was just the contrary. Her tears and her sobs, at my feet; her agonizing expressions of shame and regret; her noble words of protest against the disgusting and polluting interrogations of the confessors, had raised her very high in my mind. My sincere hope was that she would have a place in the kingdom of Christ with the Samaritan woman, Mary ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... leisurely rodentation;—he fills her pocket with coral beans for her children. Having, at last, exhausted every polite attention, and vainly offered gin, rum, and coffee, as a parting demonstration, Hulia and her partner escape, bearing with them many strange flavors, and an agonizing headache, the combined result of sun and acids. Really, if there exist anywhere on earth a society for the promotion and encouragement of good manners, it should send a diploma to Don Juan, admonishing him only to omit the vinegar-fruit in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... patient, wistful little creature making the best shift she could with those pitiable playthings, something came up from that man's breast into his throat. He had not supposed he had any of it left in his soul—it was tender, agonizing, heartrending pity. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... Wordsworth, as to many other English patriots, there came, on a great scale, that form of sorrow which in private life is one of the most agonizing of all—when two beloved beings, each of them erring greatly, become involved in bitter hate. The new-born Republic flung down to Europe as her battle-gage the head of a king. England, in an hour of horror that was almost panic, accepted ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... deem'd a post. The Doctor saw; and, filled with wild amaze, He fix'd on P——t[32] his quick convulsive gaze. Thus shrunk the trembling thief, when first he saw, Hung high in air, the waving Abershaw.[33] Thus the pale bawd, with agonizing heart, Shrieks when she hears the beadle's rumbling cart. "And oh! what noise," he cries, "what sounds unblest, Presume to break a senior's holy rest?[34] Full well you know, who thus my anger dare, To horse-whips what antipathy I bear. Shall I, in vain, immersed in logic lore, O'er Saunderson ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the cold and careless world Requite the toil divine of genius-souls, Their wasting cares and agonizing throes! I had a friend, a sweet and precious friend, One passing rich in all the strange and rare, And fearful gifts of song. On one great work, A poem in twelve cantos, she had toiled From early girlhood, e'en till she became An olden maid. Worn with intensest ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the world's surface, open, or capable of being opened; or even if incapable of being opened, not positively detrimental to you as long as you are on the right side. But that feeling of a prison under the open air is very terrible, and is rendered almost agonizing by the prisoner's consciousness that his position is the result of his own imprudent temerity, of an audacity which falls short of any efficacious purpose. When hounds are running, the hunting man should always, at any rate, be able to ride on, to ride in some direction, ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... emotions fought for the possession of him. He was in the meeting of many waters, each capable of whirling him where it chose, but two only imperious: the one the fierce joy of being loved; the other an agonizing remorse. He would fain have stolen away to think this tremendous thing over, but it tossed him forward. "Grizel," he said ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... And agonizing thus, with lips all ashen, He prayed—till back, with ghastlier rage and roar, The demon rout rushed, strung to fiercer passion, And ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... bent on killing him. Squalls of wind, sweeping into the Gap and sucked upward on the huge expanse of rock below, tossed his hair and ballooned his coat as he buttoned it. Another bullet, deliberately aimed, chipped the rock above him. Nan, agonizing in her suspense, cried out she must join him and go with him if he went. He steadied her apprehension and with a few words reminded her, as a riflewoman, what a gamble every shot at a height such as they occupied, and with such a wind, must be. He reminded ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... yielded up her better reason to his rash innovations in morals, his examples of suicidal heroes, and even moralists, among the ancients; and in the wild height, alone, among the clouds, she almost wrought up her fond agonizing soul to a terrible part—the accomplishing her father's preservation, on her wedding-day, through the influence she might naturally expect to obtain in such a season, and that done, make her peace with God; and, before night—black ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... dressing, he went into Esther's room, and was horrified by the sight which met his gaze. There, upon the bed, lay the poor, unhappy girl swollen to an enormous size, her body moving about the bed as if Beelzebub himself were in her, while between her gasps for breath she exclaimed in agonizing sobs: "Oh, my God, I wish I were dead! ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... knowledge that Abdul Ali had had to do the trip feet-upward, with his head in a bag. When they let go too fast it was rather like the half-way stage of taking chloroform. When they slowed up, there was the agonizing dread of pursuit. And through it all there burned the torturing suggestion that the ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... dream, I too soon awoke to an agonizing consciousness of my own insignificance. A Counsellor Sabine, who had been conversing with my uncle during the greater part of the evening, beckoned me over to a distant part of the room, and I reluctantly obeyed the summons. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... What an agonizing, heart-rending, utterly unnecessary experience I had endured, now that I thought of it! I had jumped to conclusions with the agility of a kangaroo. He had kissed her; she had allowed it. Did that prove ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Neither did it avail him that, before sentence was finally passed, Sister Claire, broken in body and mind, sobbingly affirmed his innocence, protesting that she did not know what she was saying when she accused him; nor that the mother superior, after two hours of agonizing torture self-imposed, fell on her knees before Laubardemont, made a similar admission, and, passing into the convent orchard, tried to hang herself. The commissioner and his colleagues remained obdurate, averring that these confessions were ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... specks of crimson, and drove curls of thick yellow smoke into the room through the chinks of the now burning logs. The house was doomed, and we who were caught there in the meshes of death, fated to perish by agonizing torture, looked at one another with white faces and eyes dilated by horror, with limbs that trembled and lips that could not speak. Outside, across the inclosure, the hordes of savages shrieked and yelled with the voices of malicious demons. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... forced trip that day, and the last five miles were agonizing. In vain we sat sideways on our horses, threw a leg over the pommel, got off, and walked and led them. Bowman Lake, our objective point, seemed ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... which we now repose, in the triumph in which we are now indulging, it is difficult to carry back our minds to the state of agonizing suspense in which we were at the critical time at which this conspiracy took place. At that time the empire of him for whom Europe itself appeared too small, was not confined within the narrow limits of the Isle of Elba; he had been driven back, it is true, from the extremity ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... element of our population is this cry of distress and need more agonizing than from the poor black man of the South? He is sinking in a quicksand of ignorance, poverty, and vice. There is nothing beneath to support his feet. He must go down unless he can get help from above. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... a spur. Because I know—I say it in all humility, Agostino, I hope, and thanking God for the exceptional grace He vouchsafed me to support me—that for one priest without vocation who can quench temptation by such agonizing means, a hundred perish, which is bad; and by the scandal of their example they drive many from the Church and set a weapon in the hands of her enemies, which is a still heavier ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... sickness, such sickness as he had never yet known, and would have believed impossible. The sounds of his bodily anguish reached her from the room above. They stirred her emotion to a passion of helpless, agonizing pity. If she could only go up to him and put her hand on his forehead, and do things for him! But she couldn't; and she felt poignantly that if she did Ranny somehow wouldn't like it. So, as there was nothing she could ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzing of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... could do to keep himself from screaming out, for an agonizing pain shot through his forearm. He nearly fainted at the sudden shock of it; but he bit his lip and clenched his hands to hide ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... fangs entering on each side of a metacarpal bone, and the poison lodging apparently in the palm of the hand. The patient, when seen, exhibited the characteristic terror and depression, weak, rapid heart action, and agonizing local pain. I made two small incisions in the region of the wound upon the dorsum of the hand, and injected permanganate of potassium freely. This patient ultimately recovered, but only after sloughing and prolonged ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... stars that fell At the wind's spoken spell, Swept with sharp strokes of agonizing light From the clear gulf of night, Between the fixed and fallen glories one Against my vision shone, More fair and fearful and divine than they That measure night and day, And worthier worship; and within mine eyes The formless folded skies Took shape ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... young, the innocent, who fondly lov'd us, Nay, more, that very love their cause of ruin! O burning hell! in all thy store of torments, There's not a keener lash! Lives there a man so firm, who, while his heart Feels all the bitter horrors of his crime, Can reason down its agonizing throbs; And, after proper purpose of amendment, Can firmly force his jarring thoughts to peace? O, happy! happy! enviable man! O glorious magnanimity ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was to have to discuss Bessy's condition with Wyant. To the young physician Bessy was no longer a suffering, agonizing creature: she was a case—a beautiful case. As the problem developed new intricacies, becoming more and more of a challenge to his faculties of observation and inference, Justine saw the abstract scientific passion supersede his personal feeling ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... I was so ill, and I lay in a corner of the chaise in a sort of dream, kept from sleeping from intense pain in the forehead and temples. It was about nine o'clock at night, when we were in a dreadful jolting road, the shocks proceeding from which gave me agonizing pain, that the chaise was stopped by two men, who dragged me out on the grass. One stood over me, while the other rifled the chaise. The post-boy, who appeared a party to the transaction, remained quietly on his horse, and as soon as they had taken my effects, turned round and drove off. They ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... of bigness, of nobility, he of all men, when, after his outburst in the little drawing-room that night, he had stood back to wait until Joan had grown up. He had waited for six weeks, going through tortures of Joan-sickness that were agonizing. He had asked her to do what she could for him in the way of a little kindness, but had not received one single line. He was prepared to continue to wait because he knew his love to be so great that it must eventually catch hold ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of battle it had been impossible to obtain food for the wounded, so that for days these men had gone hungry, and one heard the agonizing sound of dying men crying piteously for bread. The French attendants themselves went hungry in order to give their charges such small pittances of food as were obtainable. We watched an orderly who entered the church with a single loaf of ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... dozen or more Panamanian officials, and—he stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell upon a huge, white-crowned figure that came to meet him. His heart leaped wildly, a great drumming set up in his ears, something gripped his throat with agonizing pressure and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... a shake of the head, With the hand, as it were, of a master, This agonizing old gentleman said: "'Twas a truly ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... females, treated them with even less humanity than characterized their conduct towards the others. The screams of the helpless females were heard in the hold by those who were unable to render them assistance, and agonizing, indeed, must those screams have been to their incarcerated hearers! How far the brutality of the pirates was carried in this stage of the horrid proceeding, we can only surmise; fortunately, their lives were spared, although, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... to end, no one could help feeling that his love for his own country, and passionate absorption of every thought in the strife upon which its existence as a nation depended, were his very life during all this agonizing period. He can think and talk of nothing else, or, if he turns for a moment to other subjects, he reverts to the one great central interest of "American politics," of which he says in one of the letters from which I have quoted, "There is nothing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... near the cross while that awful voice of desolation rends the heavens. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" In that agonizing cry I am led to the real heart of the atonement. My Saviour was standing where His believers will never stand. That was the real death, the death of an inconceivable abandonment. And "He died for me!" He so died in order that I may never taste death. "He that ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... hand of violence; whether her gentle spirit peacefully winged its way to the bosom of its God, or was hastily driven forth upon the dagger's point, whether some kind friend closed her eyes in death, and decently robed her cold limbs for the grave, or whether torn upon the agonizing rack, whether she is left to moulder away in some dungeon's gloom, or thrown into the quickly consuming fire, we could never know. These, and many other questions that might have been asked, will never be answered until the last great day, when the ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... returned, been with him again. Her fear in Africa that they would perhaps never be together again in their Sicilian home had been groundless. She remembered how it had often tormented her, especially at night in the dark. She had passed agonizing hours, for no reason. Her imagination had persecuted her. Now it was trying to persecute her more cruelly. Suddenly she resolved not to let it have its way. Why was she so frightened at a delay that might be explained ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that of the really dead—these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth—we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... from preferring the former; for as things have turned out, it would have saved me from the disgrace of appearing before you as I do at this day—it would have spared the sharp conflicts of my own mind ever since, and the agonizing tears of a tender ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... the pallid victims lay, Of racking pain and scorching thirst the prey; In anguish rolled upon the bloody ground, And wider still they tore each gaping wound; In concert joined their agonizing cries, Gnashed with their teeth and rolled their blood-shot eyes; With feeble groans they drew each painful breath, And racked with torments called aloud for death! Far o'er the field in wild confusion ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... rise and the billows to swell before the surging storm. Scarce six months have passed since that stream swept by in giant fury, and poor Willie was buried in its angry bosom. O, Charles, do you know I cannot look upon that river without hearing again his last agonizing shriek, and seeing again his pale fearful gaze as he looked death in the face, for well must the dear boy have known that his doom was sealed; and oh, what agony must have filled his breast as he cast his last gaze upon us, imploring our ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... public opinion quelled the boyish love of victory which tempted not only the steamboatmen but their passengers too. These joined with the captain in forcing the boat to the top of its speed, at the risk of a swift or agonizing death to all on board; and it was no doubt with their full approval that the master of the beautiful new steamer Moselle took the chance that resulted in the loss of more than two hundred lives on the 26th of April, 1838. She had just left her moorings at Cincinnati for her trip to Louisville, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... common origin, speaking the same language, of the same creed, intent on mutual destruction, rejoicing with fiendish pleasure at their address in perpetrating murder by wholesale, shouting for joy as disasters propagated by the chances of war hurled death and agonizing wounds into the ranks of their opponents! And yet the very same men, when chance gave them the opportunity, would readily exchange, in their own peculiar way, all the amenities of social life, extending to one another a ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... "The idea was agonizing, and I made up my mind to do all I could to save him; that is why I appealed to you to get me all the intimate details. Then he was arrested; the body had been examined by the coroner, but no word was said of my jewels. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... citizens of Havana are brought for punishment. Within are a series of whipping-posts, to which these poor creatures are bound before applying the lash to their bare bodies. The sight of this fiendish procedure is cut off from the public, but more than one person has told us of having heard the agonizing cries of the victims. And yet there are people who will tell us these poor creatures are far better off than when in their native country. One slave-owner said it was necessary to make an example of some member ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... onrush of hostile men,—and you have the nucleus, the constituent atom, of a battle. Multiply it by hundreds or thousands; give to each sufferer the background of waiting parents, wife, children, at home; give to a part death, swift or agonizing; to another part lifelong infirmity or irritation,—and you begin to get the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... upon the gold-rimmed ramparts of the distant wall in the west. Plain it was how she loved that wild upland. And there seemed to be some haunting memory of the past in her gaze—some happy part of life, agonizing ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... in the mean while, kept up the most agonizing cry,—at times fluttering furiously about their pursuer, and actually laying hold of his tail with their beaks and claws. On being thus attacked, the snake would suddenly double upon himself and follow his won body back, thus executing a strategic movement that at first seemed almost to paralyze ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the feet of those who had given it to him, and in the madness of despair he hangs himself. So far from Judas being callous to Christ's fate, his suicide was a proof that his penitence was far more agonizing than ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... more exquisitely constituted to suffer from circumstances so agonizing than he. But his mind was of a lofty stamp; he had not sunk under his sufferings. He had timely considered the reality of these things. He had learned to connect—really, truly, faithfully—the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... its monstrous assemblage of horror. There was something in that jagged black hill against the moonshine and the gigantic basin of darkness out of which it rose that seemed to gather all these gaunt and grisly effects into one appalling heap of agonizing futility. That rock rose up and crouched like ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... course that phase of life was suspended in Europe during the war. All the women I knew or heard of worked as hard as I did. Whether that terrible interregnum left its indelible seal on them, or whether they have rebounded to the old life, where conditions are less agonizing than in ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Man of Galilee walking beside the lake, healing the sick, comforting the sorrowful, cheering the lonely and despondent; the well-beloved Son of God transfigured in the sunset glow of snowy Hermon, weeping by the sepulchre in Bethany, agonizing in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane, giving His life for those who did not understand Him, though they loved Him, and for those who did not love Him because they did not understand Him, and rising at last triumphant over death,—such a Saviour as all men need and as no ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... insulting suspicions, or the clumsy and infamous calumnies of fools. I shall instantly let the worthy lady who contrived this somewhat original device, understand fully my opinion upon the matter—good morning"; and with these words he left me again in doubt, and involved in all horrors of the most agonizing suspense. I had reason to think that Lord Glenfallen wreaked his vengeance upon the author of the strange story which I had heard, with a violence which was not satisfied with mere words, for old Martha, with whom I was a great favourite, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... want to express to you my appreciation of the high character of citizenship displayed by the people of Centralia in their agonizing calamity. We are all shocked by the manifestation of barbarity on the part of the outlaws, and are depressed by the loss of lives of brave men, but at the same time are proud of the calm control and loyalty to American ideals demonstrated ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... return to London in "the season," when that city is an adequate representative of the state of things in England, I am glad I did not at first see all that pomp and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast with the misery, squalid, agonizing, ruffianly, which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces more ominous a note than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Robinette in a maternal tone she sometimes affected,—a tone fairly agonizing to Mark Lavendar; "we should never belittle the stuff that's been put into us! My equipment isn't particularly large, but I am going to squeeze every ounce of power from it before ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dear Mrs. Lefanu, you will excuse my dwelling on this most agonizing scene. I have a melancholy pleasure in so doing, and fancy it will not be disagreeable to you to hear all the particulars of an event so interesting, so afflicting, to all who knew the beloved creature! For my part, I never beheld such ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... woof, The winding sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death, thro' Berkeley's roof that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing king! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heaven. What Terrors round him wait! Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, And Sorrow's faded ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... self-reproach swept over me. Was it possible that I, like Mr. Trevor, had been deprived of all the morals I had ever possessed? Could it be that the district attorney was looking calmly on while Mr. Cooke wilfully corrupted the Far Harbor chief-of-police? As agonizing a minute as I ever had in my life was that which it took McCann to survey those cigars. His broad features became broader still, as a huge, red hand was reached out. I saw it close lingeringly over the box, and then Mr. Cooke had struck a match. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... anything beyond two or three startled cries. The next shell burst right ahead of us, sending a shower of bullets and steel fragments around. A man about twenty yards to the right of my company, but not of my platoon, leaped into the air with an agonizing cry and fell in a heap, mortally wounded. As we were advancing very swiftly, I only saw it as in a dream, while running by. Then came in rapid succession four or five terrific explosions right over our heads, and I felt a sudden gust of cold wind strike my cheek as a big shell ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... watching, curled himself farther and farther into his quilt, and feebly groaned. He was seeing, seeing, seeing, and what he saw was agonizing. "Oh, Mister Perkins'll be licked!" he faltered. "Oh, I wish I could've went along. But I'm weak! Oh, Father Pat, the next time I git licked, I'll keep it ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... a minute or two of agonizing suspense, while the shore batteries kept up a galling fire and the merchantman steamed out to ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... It was an agonizing time for Dal. Even Fuzzy didn't seem to be much comfort. The patient was clearly not doing well, even with the low body temperatures Dal had induced. His blood pressure was sagging, and at one time Tiger sat up sharply, staring at his anaesthesia dials ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... me," replied Mr. Leyton, "that he had a son whose fate tormented him more than his punishment. Indeed his mind was so distracted respecting the youth, that he was scarcely able to understand my exhortations. He entreated me with agonizing energy to save his son from such a life as he had led, and gave me the address of a woman in whose house he lodged. I was, however, unable to find the boy in spite ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... lashing, which he administered to a perfectly innocent tree with such brutality and ferocity that the bark flew in all directions. All the while he gave vent to his pain by fierce shrieks, and then there came one long agonizing cry, which nearly rent Don Quixote's heart, and Sancho exclaimed piteously: "Here dies Sancho, and all with him!" Don Quixote hastened to his squire's side, and insisted for the sake of his unsupported wife ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of muscle about him, would have fallen but for their dread support. His consciousness fast deserting him, fascinated, he watched the monstrous leer as the head drew farther back, poised. He felt the agonizing pressure as the great muscles steeled for the blow, and in the moment before his senses departed, heard two crashing shots that sounded from behind him. With the smashing reports the poised head thudded ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... its excitements, its moments of agonizing suspense, and its triumphs, went on. The second class is up. It spells in two, even in three, syllables. Toutou is in it. He gets tremendously wrought up; cannot keep two feet on the ground at once; spells fast when the word is his; smiles ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... charm that never fails When friends accost me in the street And utter agonizing wails About the price of butcher's meat. "Cheer up," I tell them, "creels on creels Are hastening to your relief; Cheer up, my friends, one pound of eels Is better than a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... breach was first made I stifled, however, my cries, and bore him with the passive fortitude of an heroine; soon his thrusts, more and more furious, cheeks flushed with a deeper scarlet, his eyes turned up in the fervent fit, some dying sighs, and an agonizing shudder, announced the approaches of that extatic pleasure, I was yet in too much pain to come ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... the bow with which he greeted her words was lower than ordinary, and the smile with which he met her earnest look both deprecatory and reassuring. His glance did not embrace her cousin, though her eyes were fixed upon his face with an inquiry in their depths more agonizing than the utterance of any cry would have been. Knowing Mr. Gryce as I did, I felt that nothing could promise worse, or be more significant, than this transparent disregard of one who seemed to fill the room with her terror. And, struck with pity, I forgot that Mary ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... complaint; and the attacks, when they come, are so agonizing that to endure them I ought to get rid of all outside anxieties, folk say. Now—do you ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... uncourted and unknown,—a heart that had secretly nursed, in the favoring solitudes of these wild lakes, and brooded over, a passion more deep and intense than words could well be found to describe. There was such a heart; and that heart was now wildly beating, in the agonizing uncertainties of a hoped reciprocation, in the bosom of that peerless child of the forest, the beautiful Fluella; and all the more intense were its workings, because confined to its own deep recesses, where the hidden flame was laboring constantly for an outlet to its pride-walled prison, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... the gas did a much more valuable thing for the German troops than causing the agonizing death of many hundreds and sending thousands in headlong flight. It made a four-mile-wide opening in the front of the Allies. And the Germans were quick to take advantage of that opening. They followed the gas, and were aided in their advance by artillery fire. The French were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... very intense and agonizing apprehensions concerning his son; for Nature had asserted her rights, in spite of the patriotic stoicism which laboured to disown her. But no sooner was he informed that Ivanhoe was in careful, and probably in friendly hands, than the paternal anxiety which had been excited by ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... paused. The face seemed to turn to the drear, blank sky—was it in appealing, or a desperate daring? an impotent resistance, or a wild, agonizing prayer? The hands were thrown up: he had come gradually nearer, and could see them, ghostly white in the long feeble ray of the distant lamp. What was she deciding or asking? A shiver ran over him as the thought of suicide entered his brain. At all events, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... and feeble-minded soul,' and elsewhere calls him 'some pedantic writer of the last generation.' To add even one word toward a solution of the knotty point here indicated transcends, I confess, my utmost competence. It is painful to picture to one's self the agonizing emotions with which certain philologists would contemplate an authentic effigy of the Attila of speech who, by his is being built or is being done, first offered violence to the whole circle of the proprieties. So far as I have observed, the first ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... little later two disconsolate-looking girls took the first afternoon train out to Warwick Hall, and stole up to Lloyd's room. As Betty was with Miss Chilton, no one knew of their arrival, and they spent several uncomfortable hours agonizing over the question of what they should say when they were called to account. They decided at last that they would give no more information about Maud than that a distant relative had called ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he was holding in his strong sailor's grip, he swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst from the bed, an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around like a thresher in a barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was broken to pieces, but he still held one leg and beat ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... but still she kept up that dreary promenade, struggling bravely with herself, and trying to restrain the agonizing thoughts which threatened to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... any higher consideration. Here is the fact. At a Medico-Legal Congress, held in the summer of 1895, Dr. Bach, one of its leading lights, openly maintained it as his opinion that "Physicians have the moral right to end life when the disease is incurable, painful, and agonizing." ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... natural stages to a complete revealing of the fix in which he was. In five minutes he would have confided to her the principal details, and she would have understood, and then he could describe his agonizing and humiliating half-hour in the Abbey, and she would pour her magic oil on that dreadful abrasion of his sensitiveness. And he would be healed of his hurts, and they would settle between them what he ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... excited disgust and suspicion in the royal mind. [390] The day of retribution had arrived. Sunderland was in the same situation in which his rival Rochester had been some months before. Each of the two statesmen in turn experienced the misery of clutching, with an agonizing grasp, power which was perceptibly slipping away. Each in turn saw his suggestions scornfully rejected. Both endured the pain of reading displeasure and distrust in the countenance and demeanour of their master; yet both were by their country ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the prickly-pears through which they must wend their way were assuming the staggering attitude characteristic of them as the sap dried and they died of their wounds. Sometimes, one side of a bush would shrivel first, causing it to double up like a creature agonizing. Some crouched like strange beasts watching to spring. Others thrust themselves ominously forward with projected arms, as if ready to grapple. Some brandished their flat leaves as the painter Wiertz, in his famous picture of Napoleon in Hell, made wives and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crushingly to the ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... exclaimed Robinette in a maternal tone she sometimes affected,—a tone fairly agonizing to Mark Lavendar; "we should never belittle the stuff that's been put into us! My equipment isn't particularly large, but I am going to squeeze every ounce of power from ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... raised from the sitting posture to her full height of extended arms, until by effort her toes could just reach the ground. In this painful position the slightest twist to relieve the strain on the wrists caused agonizing pains through the whole body. "Still obstinate—strike!" shouted the wife. O'Kin raised the bow and delivered the blow with full force across the buttocks. A red streak appeared. O'Iwa by a natural contortion raised her legs. The blows descended ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... no more. The din, the smoke, the crash, the cry for quarter, mingled with the shout of victory, the flying enemy, the agonizing shrieks of the wounded,—all are commingled in my mind, but leave no trace of clearness or connection between them; and it was only when the column wheeled to reform behind the advancing squadrons, that I awoke from my ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... intent on escape that he had gone some distance down stream before realizing he was no longer pursued. Suddenly an agonizing cry was borne on ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... we have hitherto accepted so gayly—you might reflect, too late, that life would have been to you a better thing had you now conformed to the laws of the world. If you were a man to express that thought, it would be to me the sentence of an agonizing death; if you did not express it, I should watch suspiciously every ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... late union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a fool of a woman who has lost her true feelings among the accidents of life. All the wonder was how the gentleman, with his lack of worldly wisdom and agonizing consciousness of ridicule, could have been induced to take a measure at once so prudent and so laughable. But while people talked the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be solemnized according to the Episcopalian forms and in open church, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... blowing up every few minutes. For nearly an hour the sub hovered round, a good distance off, and ended by rising astern to shell this obstinate Q ship to death. But even then the dauntless Q men still aboard never gave a sign of life. The wounded lay in their agonizing pain without making a sound, and stiff as soldiers at Attention! The rest stood by their guns and torpedoes, ready for anything. In the meantime another dangerous fire was blazing, more ammunition was blowing up, and the engulfing sea was creeping ever near ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... brightest a strange darkness came over all the scene, the sun's light being obscured or failing wholly. And for three hours this strange, weird spectacle continues. Then the hushed silence is broken by an agonizing cry from the lips of Jesus, "My God—My God—why—didst—Thou—forsake—Me?" One of the bewildered bystanders thinks He is calling for Elijah, and another wonders if something startling will ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... ridiculous," observed Sir Hugh, with a frown; "Fay, do you think Dr. Martin would approve of all this excitement;" but even he was obliged to check a smile at Erle's agonizing attempts to ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Bushie all this time? Bound hand and foot to a tree hard by, with scarcely freedom sufficient to draw his breath or wink his eyes, his face all blanched with the despair of a captive awaiting, in agonizing suspense, the hour of final and terrible doom—all as dismal apprehension had been picturing it for the last eighteen hours to the distressingly ingenious fancy of Burlman Reynolds? O by no means! True it was, our little master was there, and a captive. True, that ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... She had long, black, glossy hair, straight, regular features, a rich olive complexion, and large, dark lustrous eyes, which, as she sat opposite the open door, were fixed on the thick, gloomy woods with an earnest, almost agonizing gaze, as if they were reading in its tangled depths the dark, uncertain future that lay before her. Never shall I forget the expression of her face. Never have I seen its look of keen, intense agony, and its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said Mrs. Temple, "how must she be altered, else surely she would have relieved our agonizing minds by one line to say she lived—to say she had not quite forgot the parents who almost ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... preceding national struggle, raging and blazing everywhere, while the forces marshaled against each other were more evenly balanced than in any contest since the year 1800. The race was so close that the result hung in agonizing doubt and suspense up to the evening following the election. Party feeling rose to a frenzy, and the consuming desire of the Whigs to crown their great Chief with the laurels of victory was only equaled by that of the Democrats for the triumph of the unknown Tennessean ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... was great—so great that the skill of man could not avail to save him; and after a long, agonizing illness, he expired at Arnhem in the arms of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... homewards, thoughtful, but by no means unhappy. The news of George's agonizing death was balm to him, he only regretted that he had not been there—somewhere well out of the way of the dog, up a tree, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... an awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... But if they could be read from beginning to end, no one could help feeling that his love for his own country, and passionate absorption of every thought in the strife upon which its existence as a nation depended, were his very life during all this agonizing period. He can think and talk of nothing else, or, if he turns for a moment to other subjects, he reverts to the one great central interest of "American politics," of which he says in one of the letters from which I ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... would come to that," the near-sighted one replied. "Every time I look at him I see a bleedin' bullet-hole in his abominable regions, about here." He laid a finger upon his stomach, and Glass felt a darting pain at precisely the same spot. It was as agonizing as if Willie's spectacles were huge burning-glasses focussing the rays of a tropic sun upon his bare flesh. He folded protecting hands over the threatened region and backed toward the prayer-rug, mumbling "Allah! Allah!" No matter whither he shifted, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... She advanced, and listened. When she came to the second, she heard a voice, apparently in complaint, within, to which she continued to listen, afraid to open the door, and unwilling to leave it. Convulsive sobs followed, and then the piercing accents of an agonizing spirit burst forth. Emily stood appalled, and looked through the gloom, that surrounded her, in fearful expectation. The lamentations continued. Pity now began to subdue terror; it was possible she might administer comfort to the sufferer, at least, by expressing sympathy, and she laid her hand ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... innocent slumber party gives way to agonizing tragedy for the family of Polly Klaas. An ordinary train ride on Long Island ends in a hail of nine millimeter rounds. A tourist in Florida is nearly burned alive by bigots simply because he is black. Right here in our nation's capital, a brave ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... them. They headed into the northwest, riding slowly, talking over the affair, while Stephen explained in part his interest in the black horse. Night found them near a water-hole, and here they went into camp, Stephen weak and distressed, his whole body aching, his arm and shoulder throbbing in agonizing pain. The men proved attentive and considerate; but he lay down exhausted and courted sleep, hardly hearing what they said. Sleep came to him only fitfully, and he was glad when break of day brought a change. They rode on through the second ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... instrument. Suddenly the music stopped, although the conductor was still industriously turning the lever. Then were heard mysterious voices and sounds as if of muffled exclamations. Everybody looked at the music-box, which began to quake and tremble as if a ghost were within. Then arose fierce yells and agonizing cries, mixed with loud curses. Before anybody could realize what had happened, three angry musicians leaped from the music instrument, the steaming punch dropping from ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of a damp rag. But these precautions only half reassured him, for he knew that he could not see properly and that certain stains had very likely escaped him. He stood irresolute in the middle of the room, a prey to a somber, agonizing thought, the thought that he was going mad, that at that moment he was not in a fit state to come to a determination and to watch over his security, that his way of going to work was probably not the one the circumstances ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... bound and bandaged bodies, the intensity of physical anguish suggested by sheer force of multiplication, by the diminishing perspective of the beds, by the clear light and nakedness of the great hall that sets these repeated units of torture in a world apart, a world of insufferable space and agonizing time, ruled by some inhuman mathematics and given over to pure transcendent pain. A sufficiently large ward full of wounded really does leave an impression very like that. But the one true thing about this impression is its ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... hereafter must be purchased here With loss of all that mortals hold so dear, Then welcome infamy and public shame, And, last, a long farewell to worldly fame. 'Tis said with ease, but, oh, how hardly tried By haughty souls to human honour tied! O sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride! Down then, thou rebel, never more to rise, And what thou didst, and dost, so dearly prize, That fame, that darling fame, make that thy sacrifice. 290 'Tis nothing thou hast given, then add thy tears For a ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of the bottle for some time longer, and then having ordered down the females, treated them with even less humanity than characterized their conduct towards the others. The screams of the helpless females were heard in the hold by those who were unable to render them assistance, and agonizing, indeed, must those screams have been to their incarcerated hearers! How far the brutality of the pirates was carried in this stage of the horrid proceeding, we can only surmise; fortunately, their lives were spared, although, as it afterwards appeared, the orders of Soto were to ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... receiving injuries instead of benefits at our hands,—whence were we to learn this but from their language and from our own hearts? They had spoken of unrelenting and inhuman wrongs; of patience wearied out; of the agonizing yoke cast off; of the blessed service of freedom chosen; of heroic aspirations; of constancy, and fortitude, and perseverance; of resolution even to the death; of gladness in the embrace of death; of weeping over the graves of the slain, by those ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... came back as in daylight, but little softened in the dry, cold, dewless air of a California summer night. I was wondering how late it was, and thinking that if the horses of the night traveled as slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have been spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden spasm of activity attacked my driver. A succession of whip-snappings, like a pack of Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage leaped forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long white building had in some mysterious ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... nearest approach to that condition of bliss, which many expect in one of the Heavens, that had ever been attained on earth. As long as no physical danger threatened, this bliss-state surrounded me. Its opposite, that condition of violent, agonizing, uncontrollable fear that suddenly surged over one on the approach of bodily danger, was something which passed as swiftly as it came, and left scarcely a trace behind it. But of that I shall have more to say, ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... breathe on thee! Cursed the sleep that shall refresh thee! Cursed every human step that shall come to sooth thy misery! Down, into the lowest vault beneath my house! There whine, and cry aloud! (pausing with inward horror.) Be thy life painful as the tortures of the writhing worm— agonizing as the stubborn conflict between existence and annihilation. This curse lie on thee till Gianettino shall have heaved forth his dying breath. If he escape his punishment, then mayest thou drag thy load of misery throughout ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... so inured That thou hast neither sentiment of grief Nor sense of pity for terrestrial ills? Can agonizing and heart-rending scenes Relax thy obdurate and placid face To semblance of emotion? Can man's woes Excite thy tranquil immobility To the pathetic look of tenderness, Or touch thy bosom's calm indifference With profuse throbs of sympathetic ruth? Can'st ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... no answer was possible, and Kate could only bite her lips, and pretend not to understand. But it was difficult not to turn pale and tremble sometimes, so agonizing were the anecdotes that the active brain of Dolly conjured up concerning the atrocities that pursuing husbands had perpetrated with knife and pistol on the betrayers of their happiness. And when these scarecrows failed, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... an agonizing moment, for Konate. But lo, instead of jumping upon him, the wolf trotted forward, and gently licked his wounds, and then lay quietly ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... seemed an altar, and such it still seemed. But on its marble-top lay the dust plainly of an infant—sight sad as fearful, and full of agonizing suggestion! They turned away, nor either looked at the other. The awful silence of the place seemed settling on them like a weight. Donal made haste, nor did Arctura seem ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... After dressing, he went into Esther's room, and was horrified by the sight which met his gaze. There, upon the bed, lay the poor, unhappy girl swollen to an enormous size, her body moving about the bed as if Beelzebub himself were in her, while between her gasps for breath she exclaimed in agonizing sobs: "Oh, my God, I wish I were dead! I wish I ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... came regularly from him, and he was happy and prosperous. Then they ceased, and after two years of agonizing suspense, we heard that he had died of yellow fever in New Orleans. To us, this was dreadful, irreparable, and was wholly due to that iron-bedstead piety which permits no natural growth, but sets down all human loves and longings ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... field of human inquiry had been successfully explored; if human reason had achieved any conquests; if any thing true and good had been obtained, that must endure as an heir-loom for all coming time; and if those centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat remained for the instruction of future generations. Either ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... great discouragements, until to-day he can stand on any platform with interest to those who hear and with honor to himself. His manly presence is the illustration of the wonderful possibilities of these mountaineers; and his story is their agonizing cry for the light and opportunities which only an intelligent gospel and educational privileges such as the American Missionary Association ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
... absolution for one who so earnestly loved mankind at large, and especially the poor and the oppressed; who in his old age and misery was found by their sick-bed; who willed to be with them in his death and burial. And yet we feel something of that agonizing uncertainty which forced from the aged Abbe Jean the bitter ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... teeth. The part which he had to act is one very difficult to any actor. The carrying an external look of indifference when the heart is sinking within,—or has sunk almost to the very ground,—is more than difficult; it is an agonizing task. In all mental suffering the sufferer longs for solitude,—for permission to cast himself loose along the ground, so that every limb and every feature of his person may faint in sympathy with his heart. A grandly urbane deportment over a crushed spirit and ruined hopes is beyond the physical ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... back found his advantage, for he held a course nearer the center of the field. It was a pretty race, but agonizing to the friends of Yale and Princeton alike. At the ten-yard line the flying Yale man was a yard to the good; at the five-yard line the Princeton. player had him by the thighs and was dragging like a ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... "Highest nature wills the capture; 'Light to light!' the instinct cries; And in agonizing rapture falls the moth, and bravely dies. Think not what thou art, Believer; think but what thou mayst become For the World is thy deceiver, and the Light thy only ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "a message sent without wires; it came by one of those underground currents that convulse an unconscious world, sometimes agonizing mountains, at others perplexing a simple maid like yourself. You see, Joan, all things conspire to draw ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... ever admitted on the English stage; but it furnishes occasion for the display of consummate art in the imitation of the most terrible and overpowering emotions; and it is difficult to conceive a more powerful representation than they exhibited of the gloomy forebodings of suspicion, of the agonizing suspence of unsatisfied doubt, and the "sickening pang of hope deferred"—heightened, rather than diminished, by the consciousness of innocent intention, and the feeling of undeserved affliction, and giving way only to the certainty of irretrievable ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... this speech he still was under the strong influence of Anna's wondrous eyes, else he would never have been able to articulate with such unruffled calm. His charge was doing agonizing things to his official shins, and even pinching him just over the short ribs on his left side with a forefinger and a thumb which showed amazing ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... seemed to turn to the drear, blank sky—was it in appealing, or a desperate daring? an impotent resistance, or a wild, agonizing prayer? The hands were thrown up: he had come gradually nearer, and could see them, ghostly white in the long feeble ray of the distant lamp. What was she deciding or asking? A shiver ran over him as the thought of suicide entered his brain. At all events, he ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... deeper than word-spoken, Something breathing of a tie Near his soul as bounding heart-blood: It is hers, that patient wife— And again that parting seemeth Like the taking leave of life: And her last kiss he remembers, And the agonizing thrill, And the "Must you go?" and answer, "I ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... invoked a spirit we could not lay. They hung to the horses's tails, clung to their manes and the stirrups, closed in on every aide in scorn of dangerous hoofs—and out of their infidel throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most infernal chorus: "Howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh!" I never was in a storm ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on the rock, dizzy and faint, holding his throbbing head and lifting his foot to ease, if possible, the agonizing pain. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... should have hugged the delusion that while thrones were being hurled to the ground, and an epoch was passing away in violent convulsions, a few alterations in the electoral law would restore order and bring back normal conditions to the agonizing nations, is an instructive illustration of the blurred vision which characterizes contemporary statesmen. The Anglo-Saxon delegates at the Conference were under a similar delusion when they undertook to regenerate the world by a series of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... was pressing close upon them; the walls of the room were at their elbow. The Very Young Man crooked his arm through the little square orifice window that he found at his side, and, with a signal to his companions, all three in unison heaved upwards with all their strength. There came one agonizing instant of resistance; then with a wrenching of wood, the clatter of falling stones and a sudden crash, they burst through and straightened upright into ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... resounded from the opposite side; and the indiscreet clamor of the blues admonished and stimulated the cruelty of the tyrant. The ministers of death were despatched to Chalcedon: they dragged the emperor from his sanctuary; and the five sons of Maurice were successively murdered before the eyes of their agonizing parent. At each stroke, which he felt in his heart, he found strength to rehearse a pious ejaculation: "Thou art just, O Lord! and thy judgments are righteous." And such, in the last moments, was his rigid attachment to truth and justice, that he revealed to the soldiers the pious falsehood ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that she was by her very presence helping to Americanize these particular bits of flotsam and jetsam—she trusted so. She was quite confident that so much personal agonizing on her part ought to be doing something to the wild beings. But there was ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... were kept barred, the telephones disconnected. Within, there was a bustle of feverish—if odorous—activity. For the three researchers, the olfactory acuity had reached agonizing proportions. Even the small gas masks Phillip had devised could no longer shield them from the constant barrage ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... screams; upon which the assassin, fearful of detection, ran away, and escaped from the house. The cauzee's wife awaking in a fright, alarmed her unhappy hosts, who, striking a light, came to her assistance; but how can we describe their agonizing affliction when they beheld their beloved child expiring, and their unfortunate guest, who had swooned away, bathed in the infant's blood. From such a scene we turn away, as the pen is incapable of description. The unhappy ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... in the countenances of her trembling companions as if for help, but no human help could avail her. She spake not, but uttering one long, agonizing scream, fell senseless upon the bosom of Heloise de Lotbiniere, who, herself nigh fainting, bore Amelie with the assistance of her friends to a couch, where she lay unconscious of the tears and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... beauty gained through the loved one, and by losing sight of its other embodiments fail to aspire to more complete vision. So Shelley says of this period, "I was laid asleep, spirit and limb." By a great effort, however, the next step was taken,—the agonizing one of breaking away from the bondage of this individual, in order that beauty in all its forms may ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... measure the mass of suffering which was here inflicted, and to number the individuals that fell, considering each who suffered as our fellow-man, we are overwhelmed with the agonizing calculation, and retire from the field which has been the scene of our reflections, with the simple, concentrated feeling—these armies once lived, breathed, and felt like us, and the time is at hand when we shall be ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... The agonizing suspense in which Helen had been living for the last few days had laid a heavy hand upon her. Her cheeks were thin, and had been woefully pale until the sudden excitement of this visit had called up a faint hectic flush which had no kindred with the color of health. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... themselves; but with many the suffering is too great for self-deception, and they come home to look back upon those long halls, filled with the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, as mere torture-chambers, whence nothing is brought away but backache, headache, weary feet and an agonizing confusion of ideas. Some of them avenge themselves by making fun of the whole matter: they tell you that there is a great deal of humbug about your great pictures and statues; that Raphael is nearly as much overrated as Shakespeare; that it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... a few steps, when the three occupants of the room were startled by a series of sudden and agonizing cries. From the rear of the apartment came a succession of screams so piercing in their intensity, so filled with horror, that they found themselves for a moment unable to stir. Then Mrs. Morton gave a ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... This magnificent creature, this independent, experienced, strong-minded, superior, dazzling creature was crying—was, indeed, sobbing. And cabs are so small, and she was so close. Pleasure may be so keen as to be agonizing: Henry discovered this profound truth in that moment. In that moment he learnt more about women than he had learnt during the whole of his previous life. He knew that her sobbing had some connection with A Question of Cubits, but he could not ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... lifted up his soul in prayer. Marcellus felt as though his own soul was being lifted up to the courts of heaven, to the presence of the Saviour, by the power of that, fervent and agonizing prayer. The words seemed to find an echo in his own soul. In his deep abasement he rested his wants upon his companion so that he might present them ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... was all over; an interval of agonizing doubt—of days passed in miserable journeys to gain tidings, of hopes that took firmer root even as they were more baseless—was changed to the certainty of the death that eclipsed all happiness for the survivors ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... office immediately, and went direct to Maxwell's shop. As we entered, we heard most agonizing cries, mingled with hoarse angry imprecations from the shoemaker and the sound of his strap. He was whipping some one most severely. My heart misgave me that it was poor little Bill. We hurried into the shop. It was true. Maxwell ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... awful descent, find ourselves panting, and at last, suddenly, "b-e-a-t, beat!" After the old dame has given him the old rug and bidden him sleep off his weariness, comes the fever with the ringing of the church bells and the persistent, agonizing thought, "I must be clean, I must be clean." It is this that drives him out to the "clear, clear limestone water, with every pebble at the bottom bright and clean" the cool, cool, cool water for his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Uncle Francis, in quite a new character!—helping Lady Ethelrida to lay the table, as happily as a boy. Would she herself ever be happy, she wondered, ever have a time free from some agonizing strain or care? And then, from sorrow her expression changed to one of ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... precious compact with herself, that loyal little Bep had recaptured from the enemy. She lay there, lulled by its presence; and slowly, slowly she was dropping off into real slumber when a sharply agonizing thought, an inescapable mental pin-prick, roused her. It was Number 9. She had not touched the piano during the whole of ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... you have the nucleus, the constituent atom, of a battle. Multiply it by hundreds or thousands; give to each sufferer the background of waiting parents, wife, children, at home; give to a part death, swift or agonizing; to another part lifelong infirmity or irritation,—and you begin to get the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... tears in his mild blue eyes struggled for freedom now, and one or two flowed slowly down his wrinkled cheek. Marguerite, though heartsore and full of agonizing sorrow herself, felt her whole noble soul go out to this kind old man, so pathetic, so high and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... might and main to beat these ruffians, he had been made the victim of an infernal instrument but seldom seen in these days, and one of the most agonizing and diabolical devices ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... the air, and she fell fainting on the frozen corpse. Her friends gathered round her, all that love and tenderness could do was done for the wretched wife, but nothing could erase from her mind one agonizing sorrow, it was the memory of her fatal triumph over his good resolution years ago at her mother's silver wedding. Carelessly she had sowed the seeds of transgression whose fearful yield was a harvest of bitter misery. Mrs. Clifford came to her in her hour of trial, and tried ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... go into details—to relate the minutiae—is too agonizing! I can not do it! Imagination can supply these. The necessary mutilation of the bodies of those who had been my friends, rendered the ghastliness of my situation more frightful. When I could crawl about and my lame foot was partially recovered, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... Mazzini had his moments of agonizing doubt. And others beside him, men of lesser intellect as well as greater, were soon to raise, or had already raised, voices, stern or fretful, of protest and criticism. It became clear at last that this joyous confidence ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... scattered about writing pilot's letters she made him join her in an impassioned epistle of farewell, which once more left none of the nothings unsaid that they had many times reiterated. She would not let him put the stamp on, for fear it would not stick, and she had an agonizing moment of doubt whether it ought not to be a German stamp; she was not pacified till the steward in charge ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... passionate grief and anger tortured him until midnight. Then he had a high fever and a distracting headache, and, the physical torment being the most insistent and distressing, he gave way before it. With such agonizing tears as spring from despairing wounded love he threw himself upon his bed, and his craving, suffering heart at length found rest in sleep from the ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... complain. He professed to her that it was only in the discharge of an ordinary duty he was leaving England: others had suffered more for less reason; it was nothing; why should she blame herself? But all the same, through this long, restless, agonizing night she accused herself of having driven him from his country and his friends, of having made an exile of him. And again and again she put before herself the case she had submitted to Madame Potecki; and again and again she asked ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... capable of being opened; or even if incapable of being opened, not positively detrimental to you as long as you are on the right side. But that feeling of a prison under the open air is very terrible, and is rendered almost agonizing by the prisoner's consciousness that his position is the result of his own imprudent temerity, of an audacity which falls short of any efficacious purpose. When hounds are running, the hunting man should always, ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... children, in that dark hour, to have seen your dear mother, kneeling at the head of her precious father, in the deepest woe, alternating between glimmerings of hope, and agonizing fear. ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... wagon like this, the platform well filled up with women and children, and a pack of dogs following along behind, slowly rolling over the country, and this is the way they traveled when they went visiting friends who lived a few miles in the country. Sometimes the wheels gave perfectly agonizing shrieks as they revolved, and when they made so much noise that their strong Spanish nerves could stand it no longer, if there was any green grass to be found the drivers would crowd in a quantity around the axle, and there was generally ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... A late 'horrible and agonizing execution' of two murderers in cultivated and Christian England was witnessed by one hundred thousand people!—according to the London Times. In the first-class English journals a large space is always devoted to police reports, in which the vilest and most vulgar criminal cases are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... His tide of wrongs he could not stem, His brothers filch'd his diadem. There sleeps the king who aim'd to spurn The daring Scots, at Bannockburn, But turn'd him back, with humbled fame, And Berkley's "shrieks"[B] declare his name. [Footnote B: "Shrieks of an agonizing king."] ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... He was a just man and his sense of humor allowed him to distinguish between the vicious and the playful imagination. After long, agonizing moments for Skippy waiting at the window, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... what you will do. You will have the pleasure of dying along with him—of BEING ROASTED, madam: an agonizing death, from which your father cannot save you, to which he will be the first man to condemn and conduct you. Ha! I see we understand each other, and you will give me over the cash-box and jewels." And so saying I threw myself back with the calmest air imaginable, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... murderers, perhaps,—but of what? Of their own helpless, tender, loving, trusting little ones. The wretched children of our time,—alone in wretchedness,—alone in the universe of nature,—who found, where nature promised them a mother's love, the knife, or the more cruel agonizing drug of death. Was there any cause in nature for it? Yes. They did it for the 'burial fee,' perhaps, or for some other cause as good. They had a reason for it. Let our naturalists throw their learning 'to the dogs,' and come this way, and tell us what this means. Nay, let them bring their books with ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... The night that Dennis filled with agonizing prayer and thought was to her a blank. While he in his strong Christian love brought heaven nearer to her, while he resolved on that which would give her a chance for life, happy life, here and hereafter, she was utterly unconscious. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... slave to his appetite as the opium eater or the votary of cocaine. In its effect it is much the most injurious of all such practices, for in the course of time it destroys the coating of the stomach, and dooms its victim to a slow and agonizing death. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... she still cherished too tender an interest in the companion of her childhood; perhaps under this coldness of expression there lurked the burning anguish of jealousy. And, oh, Leonard so well understood, and could so nobly compassionate even in his prosperous rival, that torture of the most agonizing of human passions, in which all our reasonings follow the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... republic, our bulwark in war, our guide in peace, is no more. Oh that this were but questionable! Hope, the comforter of the wretched, would pour into our agonizing hearts its balmy dew; but, alas! there is no hope for us. Our Washington is removed forever. Possessing the stoutest frame and purest mind, he had passed nearly to his sixty-eighth year in the enjoyment of high health, when, habituated by his care of us to neglect himself, a slight ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... fire-and-fagot memory; and Philip gladly would have placed Mary's sister Elizabeth in his half-vacant bed. The marriage of Philip and Mary was barren, and poor Mary's belief that a "blessed baby" was coming has been matter for laughter for more than three hundred years. Had her agonizing prayers for offspring been heard, what a change would have been wrought in human destinies, even had the child lived to be no older than Edward VI.! The second son of Philip the Fair and Juana was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... nothing in comparison with Johannesburg. There the work is agonizing. Between wounds and enteric, the place is crammed, and we can't get the nurses we absolutely need. My mother thought I was growing too tired, and she sent Syb up here to take care of me. Instead, I have pressed her into the service ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... security in which we now repose, in the triumph in which we are now indulging, it is difficult to carry back our minds to the state of agonizing suspense in which we were at the critical time at which this conspiracy took place. At that time the empire of him for whom Europe itself appeared too small, was not confined within the narrow limits of ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... There are three main varieties:—(1) the reflex, (2) the vaso-motor, (3) the toxic. The reflex is by far the most common, and is generally due to irritation from one of the abdominal organs. An attack of pseudo-angina may be agonizing, the pain radiating through the chest and into the left arm, but the patient does not usually assume the motionless attitude of true angina, and the duration of the seizure is usually much longer. The treatment is that of the underlying neurosis and the prognosis is a good one, sudden ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... or Scioppius, who wrote a letter on the subject to his friend Rittershausen. Kepler, eight years afterwards, informed his correspondent Breugger that Bruno had been really burned: 'he bore his agonizing death with fortitude, abiding by the asseveration that all religions are vain, and that God identifies himself with the world, circumference and center.' Kepler, it may be observed, conceived a high opinion of Bruno's speculations, and pointed him out to Galileo as the man who had divined the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... garrison resided. By this time I was getting quite accustomed to the ceremony gone through when one met troops on parade or in barracks. You called out, "Starova bradzye?" which being interpreted apparently means "How are you, brothers?" There followed an agonizing little pause during which you had time to think that you had got the thing wrong, had made an ass of yourself, and were disgraced for evermore. Then they all sang out in unison, "Wow wow wow-wow wow"—that, at all events, is what it sounded like. Goodness knows what it meant. One had too ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... enters the world screaming with pain. The first sensations of living are agonizing. It is the same with the birth of souls, for a soul is not really born until that day when it is offered choice between life and death and chooses life. In Mildred Gower's case this birth was an agony. She awoke the following morning with a dull headache, a fainting heart, and a throat ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... torturing me with apprehensions, and prevented me from preferring the former; for as things have turned out, it would have saved me from the disgrace of appearing before you as I do at this day—it would have spared the sharp conflicts of my own mind ever since, and the agonizing tears of a tender ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... "what a little beast I am, to make you feel like that, when you're journalizing and agonizing day and night, and when it's your own savings that you flung. It was, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... dreadful judgement by sudden or awful death. He has other and even keener pangs than those of death, but they come rather from the hand of mercy than of justice. They are the pangs of remorse, which tear the heart of their victims with agonizing stings that are known only in the deep secrets of the soul. A dark and secret hour of retribution is at hand for Charles; the heavy but merciful hand of God will touch her, although she will still follow the mad career of her hypocrisy and the wild dreams ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... that an honourable man can be called on to bear. Oh, my dear cousin, let me say once more, whilst we are still here, how, ever since that miserable time, I have felt that you suffered for my poor father's fault—how agonizing that conviction was—how thankful I am that tardy justice was done you. May God return you fourfold for your generous though misplaced confidence in him, and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... severe tortures on Williamson, and forcing him to carry a heavy weight of the plunder, which they had taken from him, they went to a neighboring house, occupied by Jacob Snyder, his wife, five children and a servant. The piercing cries, and [77] agonizing shrieks of these poor creatures, made no impression on the savages. The father, mother, and children were tomahawked and scalped, and their bodies consumed by fire together with the house. The servant ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... that he merely pulled the door to, and that he walked up and down in the adjoining room, stood still, poured something into a glass, and then walked up and down again. She listened attentively to the soft, restless creaking of those steps, listening with that agonizing wakefulness with which we follow something that threatens us, that is about to attack us. For this sound grew strangely expressive. Billy thought she could hear in it quick, angry words, a voice that discontentedly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... his lady pay to one of her friends. He has already thought with which of the husband's horses they shall drive out; he has suggested which dress his lady shall wear and which fan she shall carry; he has witnessed the agonizing scene of her parting with her lap-dog,—her children are at nurse and never intrude,—and they have arrived in the palace of the lady on whom ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... after that agonizing scene, she did not sleep; the feverish activity of her mind rendered that impossible, and unerring instinct told her that David was awake also—that they two, amid the silence of a sleeping city, wrestled in the darkness with the same terrible ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... raising her right hand to her throbbing brow. "It may be so; perhaps it has all been a dream—a wild and fearful dream!—and I am awakened from it now; and yet—yet how can it be; how came my arm thus if it had not been reality—horrible, agonizing reality!" And as she spoke she removed the covering from her left arm. Painfully Isabella started: the beautiful limb hung powerless from wrist to shoulder, a dry ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... and with the nemesis that comes after it. "Oh! gentlemen! hear me with patience and tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart pant and quiver to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years; oh! I would I had never seen Wittemburg, never read book!" And after the agonizing struggle in which Faustus's soul is torn from him to hell, learning comes ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Melac, whose face was ghastly pale, and whose eyes were overflowing with tears. "Now," said he, "know why I have delivered you unto a cruel and agonizing death. For months I have tracked your path, with power to have stricken you every hour of the day. But sudden death was too merciful for such a brute as you! The Hyena of Esslingen shall have the horror and apprehension of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Warham, who could take faithful and brave charge of his flock in the uncivilized wilds of Connecticut among ferocious savages, was tortured by doubts and "blasphemous suggestions," and overwhelmed by unbelief, enduring specially agonizing scruples about administering and partaking of the Lord's Supper, and was thus perplexed and buffeted until the hour of his sad death. The ministers went through various stages of uncertainty and gloom, from the physical ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... debility, paralysis, and other things. Sulphuric acid is strongly corrosive,—a powerful caustic, attacking the teeth, even when very dilute; eating up flesh and bones alike when strong enough; and, if taken in a large enough dose, an awfully tearing and agonizing fatal poison. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... fainting companions. She spoke of the power and goodness of their heavenly Father, and besought them to unite with her in earnest petitions to the throne of grace for timely succor, or for a preparation for a speedy exit from life. Some heard with attention, and united with agonizing earnestness in the petition, which, as it ascended from her lips, sounded like a seraph's pleading, and surely reached the ear of the Lord God of Sabaoth. Others listened with stolid indifference, or sullen despair. Throughout ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... I turn to La Douloureuse for an instance of an admirable act-ending of the quiet modern type. The third act—the terrible peripety in the love of Philippe and Helene—has run its agonizing course, and worked itself out. The old dramaturgy would certainly have ended the scene with a bang, so to speak—a swoon or a scream, a tableau of desolation, or, at the very least, a piece of tearful rhetoric. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... next moment Jurand remained alone in the darkness and silence. In the snow before him the penitential robe and rope showed black while he stood long, feeling something in his soul dissolving, breaking, agonizing, dying, and that shortly he would be a knight no more, Jurand of Spychow no more, but a beggar, a slave without a name, without fame, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
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