"Agonizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world, a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light, for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long, he would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned his face eastward, at sunrise, as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a pilgrimage ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not an iota of the bellicose spirit. Why men fight, even why boys fight—all this had been a mystery which he must take on faith, with little help from the fisticuffs and brawls of school-days, or even from the gigantic, agonizing closing-in of whole ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... was unavailing. That night was one of agonizing suspense. Next day the noon train brought Charlie with a note from Colonel Scale, saying that Lawrence would return home as soon ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... agonizing as he tried one dissolvent after another without success. Turpentine merely dissolved his skin; alcohol had no effect whatever. He imagined himself in a long room in which stood vast rows of vats bearing different labels, and in and out of these ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... which does not here and there exhibit specimens of Bunyan's picturesque imaginative power, and his command of forcible and racy language. Each will reward perusal. His work on "Prayer" is couched in the most exalted strain, and is evidently the production of one who by long and agonizing experience had learnt the true nature of prayer, as a pouring out of the soul to God, and a wrestling with Him until the blessing, delayed not denied, is granted. It is, however, unhappily deformed by much ignorant reviling of the Book of Common Prayer. He denounces it as ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... As a last resort, the mother took her boys and came a long journey to place her sons under our care. At that time they were both nearly helpless. Neither could walk but a few steps. They reeled and staggered about like drunken men, falling down upon each other and going through the most agonizing contortions in their attempts to work their way from one chair to another and thus about the room. Their heads were no longer erect, but drooped like wilted flowers. On their faces was a blank, imbecile expression, with a few traces ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... king's courtiers saw the handsome Hebrew, and extolled her beauty before him. He summoned her to the apartments of the palace, and captivated by her loveliness, determined to make her his bride. During the agonizing suspense of Abram, and the concealed anguish of Sarai in her conscious degradation, the hours wore heavily away, until the judgment of God upon the royal household brought deliverance. Pharaoh, though an idolater, knew ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... boarder for ten months. His health had broken in the previous term,—partly, it is to be feared, as the result of the indifferent food—and during the summer holidays he was attacked by a series of agonizing earaches. His mother, a feeble person, wished to keep him at home, but Herbert dissuaded her. Soon after the death of the child there arose at Dunwood House one of those waves of hostility of which no boy ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... at various phases of colonial individualism. We have had a glimpse of Cotton Mather prostrate upon the dusty floor of his study, agonizing now for himself and now for the countries of Europe; we have watched Jonathan Edwards in his solitary ecstasies in the Northampton and the Stockbridge woods; we have seen Franklin preaching his gospel of personal thrift and of getting on in the world. Down to the very verge of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... couldn't be. The preposterousness of it proved that it wasn't true. There was a mistake somewhere; a mistake his own lawyer would instantly rectify. If a hammer hadn't been drumming in his head he could have recalled the terms of the decree—but for the moment all the details of the agonizing episode were lost in ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... made known amongst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blest, indeed, the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... violently. In the high altitude he found respiration difficult, and now he almost suffocated for lack of breath. He felt a pang at his heart as he saw the white chief enter the tent. The winds wailed sibilant and agonizing messages ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... his morbid sense of honor—a perverted sense, he now admitted, but still one which bound him in fetters of steel. His life had been one of grossest inconsistency. He was utterly out of tune with the universe. His incessant clash with the world of people and events had sounded nothing but agonizing discord. And his confusion of thought had become such that, were he asked why he was in Simiti, he could scarcely have told. At length he dropped into a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... passage wall while ambulance-men brought in a line of stretchers. No sound came from most of those bundles under the blankets, but from one came a long, agonizing wail, the cry of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... you 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 ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... periods during that five years. He had undergone extensive glandular and neural operations of great delicacy, many of which had resulted in what could have been agonizing pain without the use of suppressors. As a result of those operations, he possessed a biological engine that, for sheer driving power and nicety of control, surpassed any other known to exist or to have ever existed on Earth—with ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... right that you should know, dear Hugh," went on the sad voice, gently; "that, at first, I suffered greatly. I spent long agonizing nights, kneeling before our Lady's shrine, imploring strength to conquer the love and the longing which had ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... 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 by foreign dictation, and ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... seemed worth while to revolt? Some one was buried, had been buried for years, yet could think and feel, and cry out against the doom of lying 'under this marble stone, forgotten, alone.' Doesn't it sound agonizing—desperate? It ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... leaving the house, he had met her by her door. She appeared like another woman, with an old look as though in these agonizing hours she had been suffering for fifteen years. In vain the kindly Tchernoff had tried to cheer her up, urging her to accept quietly her husband's absence so as not to harm the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... upon his foot, or hanging him for fun, 'till we arrive at the priests in the church of Rome, who burnt people for opinion; or to the painter, who begged the life of a criminal, that he might torture him to death with the severest pangs, to catch the agonizing feature, and transfer it into his favourite piece, of a dying Saviour. But did that Saviour teach such doctrine? Humanity would wish rather to have lost the piece, than have heard of the cruelty. What, if the injured ghost of the criminal ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... with possessing either fear or a heart, but now he showed that he was a moral as well as a physical coward, and was racked by most agonizing fears. ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... he was wicked in not staying in the library and continuing his duties to the party. He had to crowd into a minute all his agonizing ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... received an appointment in B—-, and set out on a journey to the south of Germany. The towers of H—— rose before me in the red vaporous glow of the evening; the nearer I came the more was I oppressed by an indescribable feeling of the most agonizing distress; it lay upon me like a heavy burden; I could not breathe; I was obliged to get out of my carriage into the open air. But my anguish continued to increase until it became actual physical pain. Soon I ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... the father of the young man, after a very rude flagellation of his son, used to proceed to scarify (as he expresses it) his whole body with a tooth of the animal called the "acouti"; and then, in order to heal the gashes thus made, he rubbed into them an infusion of pimento, which occasioned an agonizing pain to the poor patient; but it was indispensable that he should endure the whole, adds our author, without the least contortion of countenance or any ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... 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 ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... might steal away undiscovered. Divers 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 in a husky ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... leaning, and it shifted away and hit him in the back with one of its runners, he awoke and had to change his position whether he liked it or not. Straightening his legs with difficulty and shaking the snow off them he got up, and an agonizing cold immediately penetrated his whole body. On making out what was happening he called to Vasili Andreevich to leave him the drugget which the horse no longer needed, so that he might wrap himself ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... burst open, and the distressed orphan, in all his brilliant array, shot backwards into some shrubs of a prickly nature, whose sharp thorns added to his agonizing sensations. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... 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
... 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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
... listening, he soon satisfied himself that the alarm he had experienced was occasioned by one individual only. Instantly on the qui-vive, he first cocked his rifle, and, just as he descried the Indian's head above the embankment he pulled with unerring aim the fatal trigger, when with an agonizing howl, the Indian toppled backwards down the embankment, and all was silent. Poe now sprang forward, and with his knife severed the "war scalp" from the head of the savage, and after securing his knife and rifle, returned to his ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... mist was now closing in upon them from every direction, bringing with it a nameless and agonizing force that seemed to be shaking the very atoms in Blake's body asunder. Then they dropped swiftly down out of the purple mists, and the strange agony at once vanished. Blake felt their downward progress come to an end with the gentle arrival of his feet upon ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... whom. Literature was produced which uttered savage hatred against all who were not fully orthodox, and the sects practiced violence and cruelty against each other to the full extent for which they found opportunity. "Never, perhaps, was the infliction of mutilation, and prolonged and agonizing forms of death, more common" than in the seventh and eighth centuries.[539] "Great numbers were deprived of their ears and noses, tortured through several days, and at last burned alive or broken slowly on the wheel."[540] At Byzantium, in the ninth century, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... could hardly hold my head up, 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 ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... and approached 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 a slow, torturing, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... granite on which she had unwittingly placed her foot rolled from under her; unable to regain her balance she fell forwards, and was precipitated through the bushes into the ravine below, conscious only of unspeakable terror and an agonizing pain in one of her ankles which rendered her quite powerless. The noise of the stones she had dislodged in her fall, and her piteous cries, brought Louis and Hector to her side, and they bore her in their arms to the hut of boughs, and laid her down ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... dicta of society. Indeed, it is often seen that a human being, apparently of a cheerful nature, but who has failed to establish a durable relation with society, often leads a most tragic inner life. Should he find the cause in his own inclinations, and suffer agonizing reproaches therefrom, he becomes a misanthrope. If, however, he feels inwardly robust and powerful, living truly, if he crave complete assertion of a self that is being hampered by his surroundings at every step, he must inevitably ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... her life, Aline could not have kept down her agonizing blush. Tears started to her eyes. Though she had been half prepared for this blow, it fell upon her with an almost mortal shock. Ostentatiously, Somerled was keeping his eyes off her face; and that was worse than if he had stared straight into her eyes. Her terrible blush ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... afflicted mother weeping, Near the cross her station keeping Whereon hung her Son and Lord; Through whose spirit sympathizing, Sorrowing and agonizing, Also passed ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... they were all but saved or all but lost. And while the strife hung in the balance, you might hear in the Athenian army at once lamentation, shouting, cries of victory or defeat, and all the various sounds which are wrung from a great host in extremity of danger. Not less agonizing were the feelings of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... hypocrites and allies of their sweaters and oppressors. They know that the large subscriptions which help to support the Army are endowments, not of religion, but of the wicked doctrine of docility in poverty and humility under oppression; and they are rent by the most agonizing of all the doubts of the soul, the doubt whether their true salvation must not come from their most abhorrent passions, from murder, envy, greed, stubbornness, rage, and terrorism, rather than from public spirit, reasonableness, humanity, generosity, tenderness, delicacy, ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... hearts endure, That part which kings or laws[11] can cause or cure. Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity we make or find[12]; With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestick joy: The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, To men remote from power, but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... there were 13,000 individuals who had not more than twopence halfpenny per day to live on; and out of this they had to find wear and tear for looms." This report added, "Whatever be the cause of such distress, it is feared that the agonizing condition of families so circumstanced cannot long be endured. The difficulty of obtaining relief by the ordinary course, and the aggravating circumstances often attending applications for it, have a powerful tendency to drive the applicants ultimately to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to his wife and daughters, the humiliation to himself. Each bitter thought beat on his heart like the hammer on the anvil. They fought and blended with each other. He could not master one. He felt himself being beaten to the ground. He made agonizing efforts to retain control over the surging wave of anguish, rising, rising, rising from his breast to his brain. And failing to do so, he fell with the mighty cry of one who, even in the death ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with agonizing slowness. Tom felt as if his last ounce of breath were being squeezed ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... conformed to the example of our blessed Master: though we must ever recollect one important difference, that the sufferings of Christ were voluntarily borne for our benefit, and were probably far more exquisitely agonizing than any which we are called upon to undergo. Besides, it must be a solid support to us amidst all our troubles to know, that they do not happen to us by chance; that they are not even merely the punishment of sin; ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... I endure such a life for long?" the lady went on fervently, almost frantically. "That's the chief question—that's my most agonizing question. I shut my eyes and ask myself, 'Would you persevere long on that path? And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not meet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... brilliant German offensive, ended as an offensive victory for the French. And so this terrible drama is an epitome of the whole great war: a brief term of success for the Germans at the start, due to a tremendous preparation which took careless adversaries by surprise—terrible and agonizing first moments, soon offset by energy, heroism, and the spirit of sacrifice; and finally, victory for the Soldiers ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... warriors for the circumstance, who had been commissioned officers on account of their money or the length of their mustaches; covered with arms, flannel and stripes, they were talking in a high-sounding voice, discussing plans of campaign, and claiming that they alone supported on their shoulders agonizing France; as a matter of fact, these braggarts were afraid of their own men, scoundrels often brave to excess, but always ready for ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... bore the characteristics that mark the work of God in every age. There was little ecstatic joy, but rather deep searching of heart, confession of sin, and forsaking of the world. A preparation to meet the Lord was the burden of agonizing spirits. There was persevering prayer, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... till it reached the seat of my trousers. There it pinched, presumably to ascertain whether or no I were malingering, a most agonizing pinch like to that of a pair of blacksmith's tongs. So sharp was it that, although I did not stir, who was aware that the slightest movement meant death, it tore a piece out of the stout cloth of my breeches, to say nothing of a portion of the skin beneath. This seemed ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... spake, he threw to him across the table jewelled orders and diamond crosses, saying: 'Wear these in memory of me!' The Herald then drew near, and read to him from the Black Book the form of abjuration. The agonizing and swooning man mechanically repeated the words one by one after him, not even hearing the sound of his own voice. His head had fallen on the bosom of his bride, his lips still moved, but his eyes were glaring in the whiteness of death—and so he uttered all the prescribed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... agonizing moment, for Konate. But lo, instead of jumping upon him, the wolf trotted forward, and gently licked his wounds, and then lay ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... drawing an agonizing sigh at the dreadful picture which the last sentence recalled. "I believe you; though at the time of which I speak, I thought otherwise, for both my last letters were re-enclosed to me in a blank cover, directed as if by your hand, and brought ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and the 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 reality ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... I lay on my back on the floor, and felt strange short-circuited stabs of what would have been agonizing pain running through my chest and arm. I had a few minutes to rest now, before they ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... 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 a ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... next morning when I awoke, a soft, delicious air stirring the breadfruit leaves. I plunged into the river, and returning to my house was about to dress—that is, to put on my pareu—when a shriek arose from the forest. It was sudden, sharp, and agonizing. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of the man who held him in his power; it was no vain threat he had just heard; the pressure on his chest was agonizing already. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... seemed to doubt the reception of his efforts both with God and man. There was room for distrust in regard to the latter. At the conclusion of the prayer several of the little audience went out, leaving him to begin his discourse under such discouraging circumstances, added to his natural and agonizing diffidence. Knowing that my presence on these occasions increased his embarrassment, I had stationed myself in a dusky place near the door, and now stole ...
— Passages From a Relinquised Work (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so far as we can see, without hope. They were not able yet to interpret His prophecy that He would build again His temple, nor understand the spirituality of His kingdom. These facts seem to me utterly to demolish the theory of a vision called up by eager, yea, agonizing, expectation. The idea of the Resurrection justifies His prophecies as to Himself and the fact accounts, better than any theory which denies the fact, for the faith and founding of the early ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... 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 ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... escaped finally from the idealist's disgust to the idealist's exaltation. He has learned to express the beautiful mystery of life and he is no longer haunted in his nerves by the ugliness of circumstances. Not that he has shut himself up in an enchanted world: he still remains a poet of this agonizing earth. In The Stronghold he summons up a vision of "easeful death," only to turn aside from it as Christian turned aside from the temptations on ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... her life alone. On examining her heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the subject of which the season might have been supposed suggestive—the event in the hall at Boldwood's—was not agitating her at all; but instead, an agonizing conviction that everybody abjured her—for what she could not tell—and that Oak was the ringleader of the recusants. Coming out of church that day she looked round in hope that Oak, whose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead in a most unconcerned ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... anger at the man who might have saved Creech's horses. And he, like Brackton, felt sorrow for Creech, and a rider's sense of loss, of pain. These horses—these dumb brutes—faithful and sometimes devoted, had to suffer an agonizing death because ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... them with the strange, clawing lassitude and discomfort. Bart, gasping under it, heard the girl moan, saw her slump lax in her chair, half fainting. Her face was so deathly white that he began seriously to be afraid she would die of her fear. Fighting his own agonizing weakness, he pulled himself upright. He reached the girl, dug his claws cruelly ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... 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 horns clashing against ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... on 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
... behold it now a sieve Through which is drained invisibly A nectar we were saving for the soul, Then not in vain have many gone The empty ways of stealth Seeking a firmer base than honesty For building happiness upon.... And by the ancient agonizing test We have slowly guessed That a just portion of the whole Is all there is of wealth. When those who labor wake And care ... And through the tingling air A dead man's voice, by living men renewed And women, dares democracy To self-respect: "Open the lands! Let mankind share The ample livelihood ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... how eagerly everybody watched it! The poor toll-gatherer, if he had had the courage, would have run after the children, and snatched them back from their doom. Every looker-on was anxious; yet all the anxiety of the multitude could not equal the agonizing suspense in that one father's heart. He thought he knew the strength of the piers; he thought he could tell how long they would stand against the ice; but what if he had ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... beings with the passions of beasts. The noise dwindled as the mob poured through an alley, and then broke out again, loud and daunting, as it emerged. It was near at hand; now there was added to its voice the drum of its footsteps on cobble- paved streets, and suddenly, brief and agonizing, a wild outcry of shrieks as some wretched creature was found out of hiding and the bludgeons beat it out of human semblance. All round Truda there was a stir among the Jews; a child wrought beyond endurance whimpered and was gagged under ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... continues with uninterrupted earnestness. But, I say, I cannot repeat, hardly suggest his sermon. Though the differences and disputes of the formal division of the Society of Friends were even then under way, he did not allude to them at all. A pleading, tender, nearly agonizing conviction, and magnetic stream of natural eloquence, before which all minds and natures, all emotions, high or low, gentle or simple, yielded entirely without exception, was its cause, method, and effect. Many, very many were in tears. Years afterward in Boston, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the quivering masses 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 to the ground, the folds fell from about him and ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... accusing conscience which persistently demanded an accounting. With her knowledge of her own guilt and her tendency to introspective brooding, it was only natural that her sensitive nature suffered atrociously. All day and all night her conscience tortured her. Incessantly it put the agonizing question: Have you been true, true to yourself and to the man to whom you gave your word? And always came the damning answer: "No—I've been false, miserably false, both to ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... his new materialistic world view, was thrown aside, and a gaping void opened in the soul of the writer. This frame of mind is reflected in Lilienblum's self-revelation, "The Sins of Youth" (Hattot ne'urim, 1876), this agonizing cry of one of the many victims of the mental cataclysm of the sixties. The book made a tremendous impression, for the mental tortures depicted in it were typical of the whole age of transition. However, the final ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... idea was that he was in a fearful dream, his next brought a confused augury of the truth. He called, shouted, yelled at length in frenzy but no assistance came, and he was only answered by the vaulted roof of the dungeon. The agent of hell heard these agonizing screams, and deliberately reckoned them against the taunts and reproaches with which Rothsay had expressed his instinctive aversion to him. When, exhausted and hopeless, the unhappy youth remained silent, the savage resolved to present himself before the eyes ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... besides coughing violently, the fish found its way into the esophagus. Further attempts at extraction were dangerous and quite likely to fail; his symptoms were distressing, he could not hold his head erect without the most agonizing pain and he was almost prostrated from fright and asphyxia; it was thought advisable to push the fish into the stomach, and after an impaction of sixteen hours the symptoms were relieved. The fish in this instance was the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... not move, it seemed to me as if my heart ceased beating; I listened and strained my ears in agonizing suspense, but the voice did not come again, and the moon dropping suddenly behind the fig trees, cast the whole ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... Consciously, there is no relation at all. The boy never thinks of connecting his work with his growth. Work in fact is one thing and growth another, and it is so in the spiritual life. If it be asked therefore, Is the Christian wrong in these ceaseless and agonizing efforts after growth? the answer is, Yes, he is quite wrong, or at least, he is quite mistaken. When a boy takes a meal or denies himself indigestible things, he does not say, "All this will minister to my growth;" or when ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... in the wrecked sections in Terre Haute brought tears to the eyes of the rescuers, whose attention often was called to the dying, trapped in the debris of their homes, by agonizing screams for aid. Some died before they could be freed from wreckage and others who were ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... about her mother in the parish was that she had become an actress. To this Zoe made no protest in her mind. It was better than many other possibilities, and she fixed her mind on it, so saving herself from other agonizing speculations. In a fixed imagination lay safety. In her soul she knew that, no matter what happened, her mother would never return to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... eyes and stared around in wild amaze, the glare not fully faded away! Its chest heaved in great agonizing gasps as if fighting again for life! Then its arms were lifted up—then its legs began to move—now it raised itself upright and began to babble meaningless words—now the look of recognition came into its eyes, and its arms clasped ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... by an excruciating pain, a spasm so agonizing that she thought, "I am going to die! I am dying!" And her soul was filled with a furious hatred; she felt she must curse this man who was the cause of all her agony, and this child which was killing her. She strained every muscle ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... 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
... followed, a time for me of agonizing wonder and doubt, during which regret for my dead illusion was entirely swallowed up in the terrible dread of my brother's degradation. Then came the announcement of his engagement to Lady Sylvia ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... into my memory, of desperate, agonizing days in Glasgow, when Suffrage was unpopular and the funds in our exchequer were very low. How well I remember writing to Dr. Inglis at the ridiculous hour of two in the morning, that we must get some money, and that I should get certain introductions ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... see the process for yourself in every civilized country today, where millions of people toil in want and disease to heap up more wealth for our Alberics, laying up nothing for themselves, except sometimes horrible and agonizing disease and the certainty of premature death. All this part of the story is frightfully real, frightfully present, frightfully modern; and its effects on our social life are so ghastly and ruinous that we no longer know enough of happiness to be discomposed by it. It is only the poet, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... to believe any wrong of her lover. If she had short waves of doubt and agonizing moments of uncertainty and indecision, they were always dispelled by the sudden inflow of beautiful thoughts, which came like divine visions to her, as direct assurances of Mike's ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... which this simple information filled Brant startled him more than the news itself. Hope, joy, fear, distrust, and despair, alternately distracted him. He recalled Miss Faulkner's almost agonizing glance of appeal to him in the drawing-room at Susy's, and it seemed to be equally consistent with the truth of what he had just heard—or some monstrous treachery and deceit of which she might be capable. Even now ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... 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
... both for man and beast, was a long wooden shaft with a loose point attached to a long skin rope. Once five or six of these had been thrown into the body of a great white bear or some offending human he was doomed to die a death of agonizing torture; his body being literally torn to pieces by the drag upon the strong skin ropes, fastened to the steel points imbedded in ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... 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
... teach her to be famous. Leafy lifted the spoon of hot soup to her lips and immediately she drank—she who had never had enough to eat in her life. Morsel by morsel from the bountifully filled table the kindly dresser fed her. Obediently she ate, and the hot, rich food stimulated her to swifter, more agonizing thought. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... traversing these boundless plains, their presence was a sure indication that water was not far distant; if these tales were true, why then there was every probability that I might slake my burning thirst, which now had become agonizing torture, from some rivulet within the recesses of that wood; animated by this thought I limped on with renewed energy. What had seemed so near to my vision was in reality quite distant, as I found in my endeavor to reach it; for the sun had begun to decline behind the horizon when I reached ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... 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
... full now. It would sink before she saw it! That hole must be stopped until he had drifted near enough to give vent to an agonizing cry for help. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... filled up by a paviour, who, to every stroke of his rammer, adds a loud, distinct, and echoing, Haugh! The pedestrian cutler is grinding a butcher's cleaver with such earnestness and force, that it elicits sparks of fire. This, added to the agonizing howls of his unfortunate dog, must afford a perfect specimen of the ancient chromatic. The poor animal, between a man and a monkey, piping harsh discords upon a hautboy, the girl whirling her crepitaculum, or rattle, and the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... not remember my own experience of three years' agonizing battle over the great problems that were involved in these questions, afraid that I was being tempted of the devil, afraid that I was risking the salvation of my soul, afraid that I might be endangering other people whom I might influence, never free to study the Bible, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... this repeatedly before returning to her hotel. And he thought of it during all the wakeful night between agonizing attacks of nightmare. When the morning was well advanced the bugles of the bersaglieri awakened him ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bear it—help me to keep the horrible truth from the husband I love! She will not tell him. She knows he would never endure her from the hour she would make the revelation; and that thought alone restrains her. It will kill me—this agonizing fear and horror! And better so—better to die now, while he loves me, than live to be loathed when ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... had a glass, which if she showed him, he would be cured of this dreadful melancholy, and I have borne the labour and fatigue of coming this long tiresome way, that I may not breathe my last with the agonizing reflection, that all the labours of my life have been thrown away. But what shall I say to engage you to go with me? Can riches tempt, or praise ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... 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
... prayer, and in imitation of the illustrious, for the ennoblement of their own lives. No book has sold more largely than the Imitation of Christ. But was it not often a blind struggle in the dark, an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the jav'lin with her dying hands, But wedg'd within her breast the weapon stands; The wood she draws, the steely point remains; She staggers in her seat with agonizing pains: (A gath'ring mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes, And from her cheeks the rosy color flies:) Then turns to her, whom of her female train She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain: "Acca, 't is past! he swims ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... 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
... madness in the day's exultant festivities; the bells may ring, the cannon may roar, the incense of our harmless saltpetre fill the air, and the children who are to inherit the fruit of these toiling, agonizing years, go about unblamed, making day and night ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... coming this evening, in the November rain and darkness. Isabel was agitated, racked with her old restlessness and indecision. She had always suffered from this pain of doubt, just an agonizing sense of uncertainty. It had begun to pass off, in the lethargy of maternity. Now it returned, and she resented it. She struggled as usual to maintain her calm, composed, friendly bearing, a sort of mask she wore ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... Rayne's study, in sore trouble as to how he could evade the task set him, and join his rioting friends in their proposed amusement. He scratched his head and made countless agonizing grimaces; he walked the room in long strides, until his patience had reached an almost impossible limit. Then he thought better of it, and decided to hold a calm, cool and collected council with himself. It was plain to his one-sided judgment that he was called upon to act, and to act immediately. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... condemns those wrongs of which the doer induces another to partake. He may repent; he may, after agonizing struggles, regain the path of virtue; his spirit may reachieve its purity through much anguish, after many strifes; but the weaker fellow-creature whom he led astray, whom he made a sharer in his guilt, but whom he cannot make a sharer in his repentance and amendment, whose downward ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... thus have escaped the tortures prepared for her, and thwarted the gratification of his insane and hideous longings. A second thought suggested to him that she was sleeping. But this conjecture was scarcely less agonizing to him than the former. That she, the sorceress, should sleep and be at rest, whilst he, her victim, could find no sleep, no rest, no peace, body or mind, was more than his bitter spirit could bear. He shook the bars of the door with violence, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... he did. At the last moment, the Inebriate appeared, bottle in hand, agonizing and howling on the summit of a high rock, from which a slope, at an angle of forty-five degrees, went down to a mysterious craggy pit, thickly grown around with briers and shrubs, all bearing spiky thorns of the most fish-hooky and ten-penny nail description imaginable. The ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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, there were always the stories to fall back upon. A word sufficed ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... glad to see me, Dithy, and you do look uncommonly blank. Will you end my agonizing suspense on this point, Miss Darrell, by saving it now, and giving ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... upon this question. The case of Dr. Cuyler was the first that had come before a Presbytery, and that was hardly a trial of the question. "Why should I," he continued, "bring this charge? Because I have felt it to be wrong, and feeling thus, resolved to take the duty upon myself, painful and agonizing as the task may be. I deem it my duty to God to do so." Dr. See (sotto voce)—"And the Lord will bless you ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... and watching over the child timid and afraid in the dark is more real than God in his heaven as "protector." We must remember that not what we feel is of value, but what the child feels is of value is what will appeal to his interest and attention. And no exertion or agonizing on our part will create interest in the child in matters for which his own understanding and experience have not fitted him. For example, probably no child is ever interested in learning the church catechism or Bible verses which we prize so highly, but ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... Locke floated, drawing the air into his starving lungs. Then he raised himself and gazed about him. At first glance everything seemed the same except for the fact that, whereas before his own boat had been alone, there were now two. Then Locke heard an agonizing call for help—from Eva. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... peace, and gave up her friend, as later she was to give up her husband, out of weakness. Her decision gave her great pain, and it was not without a pang that she parted from the Countess Lazansky. "How agonizing this separation is!" she wrote to her father. "I really could not make a greater sacrifice for my husband, and still I do not think that this ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... in the tent till the sun had slightly warmed the air, and then attempted to prepare breakfast by the fire; but no one could eat anything, and the native from Waimea complained of severe headache, which shortly became agonizing, and he lay on the ground moaning, and completely prostrated by mountain sickness. I felt extreme lassitude, and exhaustion followed the slightest effort; but the use of snow to the head produced great relief. The water in our ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... laughed without conviction and in a more or less shamefaced fashion, for each of them was keenly alive to the absurdity of his conduct. And they had but one thought—to get out of that house where, say what you would, the atmosphere was one of agonizing anxiety. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... her out of the saddle. She was stiff and awkward, and she let herself slide. Kells handled her gently and like a gentleman, and for Joan the first agonizing moment of her ordeal was past. Her intuition had guided her correctly. Kells might have been and probably was the most depraved of outcast men; but the presence of a girl like her, however it affected him, must also have brought up associations ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey |
