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Agony   Listen
noun
Agony  n.  (pl. agonies)  
1.
Violent contest or striving. "The world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations."
2.
Pain so extreme as to cause writhing or contortions of the body, similar to those made in the athletic contests in Greece; and hence, extreme pain of mind or body; anguish; paroxysm of grief; specifically, the sufferings of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. "Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly."
3.
Paroxysm of joy; keen emotion. "With cries and agonies of wild delight."
4.
The last struggle of life; death struggle.
Synonyms: Anguish; torment; throe; distress; pangs; suffering. Agony, Anguish, Pang. These words agree in expressing extreme pain of body or mind. Agony denotes acute and permanent pain, usually of the whole system., and often producing contortions. Anguish denotes severe pressure, and, considered as bodily suffering, is more commonly local (as anguish of a wound), thus differing from agony. A pang is a paroxysm of excruciating pain. It is severe and transient. The agonies or pangs of remorse; the anguish of a wounded conscience. "Oh, sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride!"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Agony" Quotes from Famous Books



... Roldan gave a hoarse cry of surprise, and as for Adan, he fell into vocabulary: one serpent had darted straight down the throat of the other. For a moment there was a fearful lashing. The choking serpent, with protruding eyes, like small green coals, and jaws distended in agony, strove to dislodge his suffocating enemy, and the other humped his back and leapt backward in frantic efforts to reach the air again. But suddenly their struggles ceased; they flattened to the ground, only the tails moving automatically. What was left looked like ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... "Sure." He nodded, and immediately remembered that he shouldn't have. He closed his eyes until the pain had softened to agony, and then opened them again. "I was getting pretty tired of sitting around waiting for something to break on this case," he said, "and I couldn't sleep, so I went out for a walk. I ended up in Greenwich Village—which is no place for a ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett

... human world shut out,— As some detected changeling elf, Doomed, with strange agony and doubt, To enter on his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... is the ground of scandal, madam,' said Otto, firmly enough - 'of a scandal that is agony to me, and would be crushing to your ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said Miss Porter, in a voice husky with emotion, "I have not wept in eight long years, but the sight of you, so innocent, so happy, wrings the tears from my stony heart, as agony will sometimes force out the drops of perspiration when the body is shivering with cold. I was young like you once, and my bridal was fixed—" She paused, and stealing an arm around her waist, Rosamond said pleadingly, "Tell me about it, Miss Porter, I always ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes

... short time, the fallen one is fed like the silk-worm upon the fragrant mulberry leaf, and when she has spun her yellow web of silken attraction, sinks into decay, a common chrysalis, shakes her trembling and emaciated wings in hopeless agony, and then flutters and droops, till death steps in and relieves her from an accumulation of miseries, ere yet the transient summer of youth has passed over her ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... the way to America after the wedding and a severe cure at Aix and an aftercure in Switzerland. She had come for the finishing touches of rejuvenation—to get her hair redone and to go through her biennial agony of having Auguste, beauty specialist to the royalty, nobility and fashion, and demimonde, of three continents, burn off her outer skin that nature might replace it with one new and fresh and unwrinkled. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... rapidity, that De Valette fancied her hand already within his grasp, when the giddy whirl and heavy plunge struck upon his senses, and the flutter of her garments caught his eye, as the waves parted and closed over her. Eustace was an indifferent swimmer; but, in the agony of his terror, every thing was forgotten but Lucie's danger; without hesitation he threw himself into the stream, and exerted all his skill to reach her, when she soon again appeared, floating on with a swiftness ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... dangerous characteristics of the plant are due. The unhappy wanderer in these wilds, who allows any part of his body to come in contact with those beautiful, inviting tongues of green, soon finds them veritable tongues of fire, and it will be weeks, perhaps months, ere the scorching agony occasioned by their ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... judge upon the life and death of his own children, impelled by justice to condemn, and by nature to spare them. 8. The young men pleaded nothing for themselves; but, with conscious guilt, awaited their sentence in silence and agony. 9. The other judges who were present felt all the pangs of nature; Collati'nus wept, and Vale'rius could not repress his sentiments of pity. Brutus, alone, seemed to have lost all the softness of humanity; and, with a stern countenance and a tone of voice that marked his gloomy resolution, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... was in his own room, the agony began again. At the thought of losing her he was obliged to bury his face in the pillow to stifle his cries. He pictured her to himself in the arms of another, and all the tortures of jealousy racked his soul. Never could he find the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... now so far in shadow as to lie in impenetrable darkness. Hardly daring to breathe, she crept and felt her way over it with her hands, discovering nothing until she had almost reached de Spain's retreat at the farther side. Then her heart stopped in an agony of fear—underneath the overhanging ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... with women and children, and even many men lying prostrate, looked as if just swept by the shots of an enemy. Such countenances, too, of terror, agony, and despair as were exhibited, it is difficult to describe. Many had fainted, and some had actually died through fear, and lay quiet enough. Others rushed about the decks like madmen, impeding the exertions of the officers and crew, and crying out that the ship should be steered ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... recess and you see an amount of suffering unendurable except under heavenly strengthening; "And, being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him." Betrayed by a disciple, He is apprehended by the "multitude ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... fury of the storm, the howling of the wind, the straining of the timber, there rose an awful shriek; and though the tragedy was hidden from my sight, I knew it to be the cry of an unhappy sailor in his death-agony. A huge wave, leaping like some ravenous animal to the deck, had caught him and was gone; while the spirit of the wind laughed in demoniacal glee as he was tossed from crest to crest, the sport of the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... situation, the more convinced did he become that mischief was brewing. Did not periods of seraphic calm always precede a tornado? In the impending social explosion, a few hard missiles would most certainly come his way, and in a sudden agony of apprehension and shame because he had told The Laird a half-truth, he sprang to his feet, resolved to seek old Hector, inform him that Mrs. McKaye had compromised the family, and thus enable him to meet the issue like a gentleman. But this ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... four horses rattling their link chains, and a lad sideways on the shaft dangling his legs, twiddling the rope reins and whistling. Inside the waggon, under a little window with its bit of muslin curtain, a man lay in the agony of a bullet-wound in his side, and an old Boer and a woman stood beside him. He was lying hard on the place of his pain ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... approach; I was near the dying woman and held her hand; it was trembling. She perceived Monsieur. He was about to rush toward her. 'Come no nearer,' said the Abbe, in a firm voice. Monsieur did not venture to cross the threshold. The agitation redoubled; the agony increased. She raised her hands to ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... happier he was when as a boy he joined in the merry supper; when the clear, bright, sparkling wine represented the free spirits of those who drank it; when maidens, with gay hearts and light golden hair, sought his love. "Give me back these joys," he exclaimed in agony; "give me that youth which graced the pursuits of love, and which dignified every enjoyment: take from me that ambition, which only leads to misery in its failure and to disappointment ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... After 1807, when the blundering panic of the British plunged Denmark and Norway into war on the side of Napoleon, there were sterner things to think of. It was a sufficiently difficult matter to get daily bread. But in 1818, when the country had, as yet, scarcely begun to recover from the agony of the Napoleonic wars, the second Norwegian translation from ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... Harmatius, who, in the midst of Asiatic luxury, affected the dress, the demeanor, and the surname of Achilles. [8] By the conspiracy of the malecontents, Zeno was recalled from exile; the armies, the capital, the person, of Basiliscus, were betrayed; and his whole family was condemned to the long agony of cold and hunger by the inhuman conqueror, who wanted courage to encounter or to forgive his enemies. [811] The haughty spirit of Verina was still incapable of submission or repose. She provoked the enmity of a favorite general, embraced his cause as soon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... woman the serious consideration due from every man born of woman's agony, and you build her up in love, endow her with respect, encourage her to cultivate her mind, and to develop the graces of her nature. The mightiest influence which exists upon earth is concealed in ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... mortal pain, If, lost to hope and chilled in every vein, A sudden pardon comes to set him free. Thus thy unwonted kindness shown to me Amid the gloom where only sad thoughts reign, With too much rapture bringing light again, Threatens my life more than that agony. Good news and bad may bear the self-same knife; And death may follow both upon their flight; For hearts that shrink or swell, alike will break. Let then thy beauty, to preserve my life, Temper the source of this supreme delight, Lest joy so poignant ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... do right because it means to do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out; and then, when the consequences of its wrong come upon it, or upon others connected with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in any wise of its causing or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony of desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doing with ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... climes; of the extended commerce and the brilliant genius of the people—the birthplace of the epic and the lyric muse, the first home of history, of philosophy, of art;—soon, from our survey of the rise and splendour of the Asiatic Ionians, we turn to the agony of their struggles—the catastrophe of their fall. Those wonderful children of Greece had something kindred with the precocious intellect that is often the hectic symptom of premature decline. Originating, advancing nearly all which the imagination ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... agony; but the winds could not have been more deaf to me, than those to whom I pleaded! and therefore the footman, urged by the repeated threats of Madame Duval, and perhaps recollecting the name himself, actually went to the palace with ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... Tzaritza's barks testified to her joy. Then back Shelby fled for the faithful creature, but just as he reached the roof a sheet of flame darted out of the window and enveloped her. In a second the exquisite silky coat was a-blaze, and poor Tzaritza's joyous barks became cries of agony. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... it was. Scarcely had I recovered from the fright than I sent out, procured a pint of rum, and drank it all in less than an hour. And now came upon me many terrible sensations. Cramps attacked me in my limbs, which raked me with agony, and my temples throbbed as if they would burst. So ill was I that I became seriously alarmed, and begged the people of the house to send for a physician. They did so, but I immediately repented having summoned him, and endeavored, but ineffectually, to get out of his way ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... into the room where the dying man was struggling against the first attack of the agony which had seized him. As for the Franciscan, whether owing to the effect of the elixir, or whether the appearance of Aramis had restored his strength, he made a movement, and his eyes glaring, his mouth ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... across the mole, but a frightful tragedy was enacted before their eyes as they ran. The galley by the mole was none too large; as the frightened men piled into her, the shifting and increasing weight threw her on an uneven keel; and then came the horror. A cry of mortal agony burst from hundreds of throats as the ship capsized. Drusus, as he ran, saw, but for a twinkling, her deck black with writhing men, then her curving sides and keel, ere all vanished behind the embankment of the mole. The three ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... Beorminster—to you, under the name of Jentham! Hold up, man! don't give way,' for the bishop, with a heavy sigh, had fallen forward on his desk, and, with his grey head buried in his arms, lay there silent and broken down in an agony of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... statements in his open letter and for his broken pledge at Fort Bridger. They cursed him also for his misrepresentation of the distance across this cruel desert, traversing which had wrought such suffering and loss. Mothers in tearless agony clasped their children to their bosoms, with the old, old cry, "Father, Thy will, not mine, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... when he had bidden him row more slowly, Gavrilo had again been overcome by that intense agony of expectation. He craned forward into the darkness, and he felt as though he were growing bigger; his bones and sinews were strained with a dull ache, his head, filled with a single idea, ached, the skin on his back ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... agony of mind. There was I, helpless. My injured leg made it impossible for me to pursue the snake and administer one where it would do most good. And meanwhile the unequal race was already drawing to its inevitable close. Egbert, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... were reasons for his being sensitive and watchful—was the first to find this out. I will not tell you what misery he underwent, what agony of soul he knew, how great his mental struggle was. He had been a sickly child. His brother, patient and considerate in the midst of his own high health and strength, had many and many a day denied himself the sports he loved, to sit beside ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... and situations they state, and whether or not they express actual feelings and emotions—must be answered by each from a careful reading of the Sonnets themselves. To me, however, their message of sadness, loneliness, and implied appeal seems as clear and certain as the portrayal of agony in the ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... haggard, his eye yet tranquil and commanding, and then waving his broad-brimmed hat for silence, he exclaimed, "What would you, my friends? Why do you murmur that we do not break our vows and surrender our city to the Spaniards, a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures? I tell you I have made a vow to hold the city, and may God give me strength to keep it. I can die but once, whether by your hands, by the enemy's, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me, not so that of the city entrusted to our care. I know that ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston

... carry this conflict on," said he, "until you bring about a war that will shake this country as with the throes of an earthquake; a war that will cause the whole civilized world to witness our dreadful shock and fill nature with agony in all her parts, with which the one we have passed through is not at ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... not confound remorse with repentance 'The sorrow of the world worketh death.' Saul grovelled in agony that day, but tomorrow he was raging again with more than the old frenzy of hate. Many a man says, 'I have played the fool,' and yet goes on playing it again when the paroxysm of remorse has stormed itself out. David's answer was by no means effusive, for he had learned how little ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... life-blood is trickling slowly from a little wound? The crowd looked anxious; the hero came on, but more slowly, with his dim eyes straining for the old coach; and Melchior stood with his arms held out in silent agony. But just when he was beginning to hope, and the brothers seemed about to meet, a figure passed between—a ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... a few weeks after his return to Columbia. The circumstances of his death were most pathetic. Though sustained by Christian hopes, he still longed to live a season with the dear ones about him. When, after a period of intense agony that preceded his dissolution, his sister murmured to him, "You will soon be at rest now," he replied, with touching pathos, "Yes, my sister, but love is sweeter than rest." He died October 7, 1867, and was laid to rest in Trinity churchyard, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... Her Jefferson, with his omnivorous culture, his love of music and the arts, his proficiency at the same time in sports and bodily exercises, suggests something of the graceful versatility of men like Essex and Raleigh, and we shall see her in her last agony produce a soldier about whose high chivalry and heroic and adventurous failure there clings a light of romance that does not seem to belong ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... not only murdered the son, but for five years has kept the father in an agony of sorrow and apprehension, bleeding him of money all the time, which was the least of his crimes. Tomorrow I shall tell my master that his son has been dead these five years, and heavy as that blow must prove, it will be mitigated by the fact that his son died an honest and honourable man. ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... The fire sank low, and finally went out, and still Isabel sat thinking of the miserable prospect the future presented. At last she rose with a shudder, and rang for the tea-things to be removed, then retiring to her own room, she threw herself upon the bed in an agony of grief. ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings

... much rubbing with his fellow-men, that he begins by glimpses to see himself from without and his fellows from within: to know his own for one among the thousand undenoted countenances of the city street, and to divine in others the throb of human agony and hope. In the meantime he will avoid the hospital doors, the pale faces, the cripple, the sweet whiff of chloroform - for there, on the most thoughtless, the pains of others are burned home; but he will continue to walk, in a divine self-pity, the aisles ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... she wiped them away, said, "These are not like the tears you shed that sorrowful day in the chalet, that day when you must have first made up your mind to leave us. Do you remember how you wept then? Those were tears of agony! You have never wept such tears ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... was singing, there was a railroad bridge of some strategic importance. And now a shell hit that bridge—not a whizz bang, but a real, big shell. It exploded with a hideous screech, as if the bridge were some human thing being struck, and screaming out its agony. The soldiers looked at me, and I saw some of them winking. They seemed to be mighty interested in the way I was taking all this. I looked back at them, and then at a Highland colonel who was listening to my singing as quietly and as carefully as if he had been at a stall ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... the duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... taken up and laid in rows on the floor of the neighboring meeting-house. "Some lay quiet, unable to move or speak. Some talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with their heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like a live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over for hours at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and benches, and then plunged, shouting ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that was in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was so ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... long ago; it would be of no use.' Laura's eyes lit up for a moment. 'But if she asks to see me I'll go.' At these words Mrs. Forest's eyes softened, and he began to ask himself how much truth there was in Laura's resolve to go and attend upon his wife in what was no doubt a last agony. Seeing and hearing her put into his head remembrances of an actress, he could not remember which. Her demeanour was as lofty as any and her speech almost rose into blank verse at times; and he began to think that she had missed her vocation in life. It might have been that she was destined ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... that goal today, or tomorrow. We may not reach it in our own lifetime. But the quest is the greatest adventure of our century. We sometimes chafe at the burden of our obligations, the complexity of our decisions, the agony of our choices. But there is no comfort or security for us in evasion, no solution in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy

... ingenuity on the fabrication of mechanical devices whose principle answered to the pulling of the drying rawhide. And always along the adobe fence could be seen a long row of potatoes bound in skin, some of them fresh and smooth and round; some sweating in the agony of squeezing; some wrinkled and dry and little, the last drops of life tortured out of them. Senor Johnson laughed good-humouredly at these toys, puzzled to explain their ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... When the basin is filled, and she turns to empty it in the tar-black river that flows through that home of horrors, the terrible venom falls upon his unprotected face, and Loki writhes and shrieks in fearful agony, until the earth around him shakes and trembles, and the mountains spit forth fire, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... running down the hill, she arrived at the cottage out of breath, and with tears in her eyes asked assistance for her old father. The farmer and his wife were kind-hearted people, and were deeply touched at the sight of Mary's agony. ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid

... the branches of the forest stirred, and sent forth sounds like an incantation. Soon might be distinguished the various voices of the mighty trees, as they expressed their terror or their agony. The oak roared, the beech shrieked, the elm sent forth its deep and long-drawn groan; while ever and anon, amid a momentary pause, the passion of the ash was heard in ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... buy my peace, that she might be gone without making any noise, or else protested that she would make all the world know of it. So with most perfect confusion of face and heart, and sorrow and shame, in the greatest agony in the world I did pass this afternoon, fearing that it will never have an end; but at last I did call for W. Hewer, who I was forced to make privy now to all, and the poor fellow did cry like a child, [and] obtained what I could not, that she would be pacified upon condition that I would give it ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... makes of it a high moral virtue, for to him it consists not so much in aggressive self-assertion as in absolute self-control. The truly brave man, we contend, yields neither to fear nor anger, desire nor agony; he is at all times master of himself; his courage rises to the heights of chivalry, patriotism, and ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... orders to obey executed them with a savage cruelty that was absolutely horrible. In one instance they buried women to the waist, and then set dogs upon them, to tear their naked flesh until they died in agony. It would be best, in narrating history, to suppress such horrid details as these, were it not that in a land like this, where so much depends upon the influence of every individual in determining whether the questions ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... with wine and good cordials, and kept him some days till he knew where he was; she then restored him his chest, and told him he might now provide for his departure."(6) Of course the little chest that Landolfo had clutched by chance in his agony of drowning eventually turned out to be filled with precious stones, which by a miracle—and miracles were common enough in the days of the Decameron—not only floated of itself but also supported the weight of Master Landolfo. In any case, the rescued ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... had met with no casualties; but after the fall of the seven Indians, the whole body of the assailants, with a shout of rage, poured in a rattling volley, and two of the defenders fell mortally wounded. One, shot through the loins, suffered great agony, and was removed to the still-house, where he was laid on a large pile of grain, as being the softest bed that ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... on by the want of common necessaries, was beyond cure. Her poor little limbs were already cold and stiff. Morel, his gray hair almost standing on end with despair and fright, remained motionless, holding his dead child in his arms, whom he contemplated with fixed, tearless eyes, bloodshot with agony. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... of horror it would have borne, had he, in truth, been gazing at the scene he described. The acting was excellent. At length he gave a languishing look to his supporters on each side, as if to express his feeble state, and then sat down, and wiped the drops of agony from his brow. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... little heed to this. Applications were common after hours, and my rules on this point were stringent. But suddenly my attention was arrested by the sound of a woman's voice. It affected me strangely, Chetwynde. The tones were sweet and low, and there was an agony of supplication in them which lent ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... with his awful agony Till almost dark; and then, at last—then, with The very latest lingering group of his Companions, he moved turgidly toward home— Nay, rather oozed that way, so slow he went,— With lothful, hesitating, loitering, Reluctant, late-election-returns ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

... The big drops of anguish had washed the rouge from off those painted cheeks, the waxed mustache had lost its stiffness and drooped over the mouth, and in that ashen face, in those dim eyes, was the stupor of one in his last agony. One of the officers alighted in front of the hotel and proceeded to give some friends, who were collected there, an account of their route, from la Moncelle to Givonne, up the entire length of the little valley among the soldiers of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... named Kerr, who had refused to quit their dwelling, were the objects of great anxiety. Their son, Alexander Kerr, had been watching all night, and in the morning was still gazing towards the spot in an agony of mind, and weeping for the apparently inevitable destruction of his parents. His master tried to comfort him; but even whilst he spoke, the whole gable of Kerr's dwelling, which was the uppermost of three houses composing the row, gave way, and ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... scarcely open lips, came the sing-song words: "Why bring Laughing Water here? Laughing Water frightened. Laughing Water want to go away. Laughing Water hates this house. Please, Miss Bubbles, let Laughing Water go away!" And Bubbles—if it was Bubbles—twisted and turned and groaned, as if in agony. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... and as he wiped his dripping forehead with the silk handkerchief, which had come untied in the agony of his dream, he made an ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... were rubbed into the eyes. Chronic inflammation, swelling of the eyelids, dimness of sight, and even total blindness are the frequent consequences of the surumpe. In the Cordillera, Indians are often seen sitting by the road-side shrieking in agony, and unable to proceed on their way. They are more liable to the disease than the Creoles, who, when travelling in the mountains, protect their eyes ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... ago, I first began to realize that I was the victim of nasal catarrh; I tried every known remedy, but gradually grew worse. My ears would gather and break; nights of restlessness would succeed days of agony. The disease finally attacked my left lung, and I despaired of obtaining relief. About six years since I began the use of Dr. Sage's Catarrh Remedy, in connection with the "Golden Medical Discovery," and by the persistent use of the above remedies ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... thrashed, and you are in pain, your only thought is to bawl out girls! Is it perchance that you expect us young ladies to go and intercede for you? How is that you have no sense of shame?' To their taunts he gave a most plausible explanation. 'Once,' he replied, 'when in the agony of pain, I gave vent to shouting girls, in the hope, perchance, I did not then know, of its being able to alleviate the soreness. After I had, with this purpose, given one cry, I really felt the pain considerably better; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... good luck. He, safe, unharmed; but his enemy, how about him? Where was he at that moment? Ought he to go down and search among the tamarisks for him, to taunt him in his agony? Suddenly the shout was repeated, the savage howl, far, very far away, somewhere near the farmhouse; a howl triumphant, mocking, which Jaime interpreted as an ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... sack, and put in her stead a dog. The next day the sexton came for his bag, and putting it on his shoulder, started for the sea-shore, intending to throw the young girl in the sea. When he reached the shore, he opened the bag, and the furious dog flew out and bit his nose. The sexton was in great agony, and cried out, while the blood ran down his face in torrents: "Dog, dog, give me a hair to put in my nose, and heal the bite."[N] The dog answered: "Do you want a hair? give me some bread." The sexton ran to a bakery, and said to the baker: "Baker, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... supposed to cruise along the coast. But it assuredly had been the Bramble, and her men had not seen the signals against the gloomy background of scrub and hills. They knew nothing of Kennedy's death, nor of Carron's plight. The agony of this disappointment must have been more bitter than death. Mitchell was the next to die, and the survivors were too weak to give him burial. Then Niblett and Wall departed, but on the last day of the year relief came ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... Personal liberty was his slightest loss. The sneers of his enemies, the pity of his personal, and the desertion of his political, friends poisoned[A] the very air of the miserable cell to which he was consigned, and what completed his agony was a notion that he had been abandoned by ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... that have a home beyond the world, Ye that have eyes for all man's agony, Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen, — Look with a just regard, And with an even grace, Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king, Here on a suffering world where men grow old And wander like sad shadows till, at last, Out of the flare of life, ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... point indeed, my dearest Madam, when I answer your card on the rack of my present agony. Your friendship, Madam! By heavens, I was never proud before. Your lines, I maintain it, are poetry, and good poetry; mine were indeed partly fiction and partly a friendship, which, had I been so blest ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... in degree from a mere sense of discomfort to acute agony. The pain associated with a boil in the external meatus is usually aggravated by movements of the jaw, by pulling the auricle, and by pressure upon the tragus. The pain of acute middle-ear inflammation is deep-seated, intermittent ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... physician within a hundred miles; husband or son hovering between life and death as the result of injury by a falling tree, a wild beast, a venomous snake, an accidental gun-shot, or the tomahawk of a prowling Indian. Who shall describe the anxiety, the agony, which in some measure must have been the lot of every frontier family? The prosaic illnesses of the flesh were troublesome enough. On account of defective protection for the feet in wet weather, almost everybody had rheumatism; most settlers in the bottom-lands fell victims to ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... shake the belief of anybody in another life. What I am endeavoring to do is to put out the fires of hell. If we cannot have heaven without hell, I am in favor of abolishing heaven. I do not want to go to heaven if one soul is doomed to agony. I ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... were lying over the side, the rigging cut or broken, the upper works all shot in pieces, and the ship herself, unable to move, was settling slowly in the sea; the vast fleet of Spaniards lying round her in a ring like dogs round a dying lion, and wary of approaching him in his last agony. Sir Richard seeing that it was past hope, having fought for fifteen hours, and "having by estimation eight hundred shot of great artillery through him," "commanded the master gunner, whom he knew ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... frantic to see even a dumb animal suffer. He wrote a violent pamphlet against vivisection, and one day missed an important train because he stopped to scold a peasant woman who was taking to the market a basket of live fish in the agony of suffocation. I hardly know of a great composer who, in his heart of hearts, was not gentle and generous. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Weber, Liszt, and ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... Voice spoke I was torn with agony, and strength went out of me, and there, by him I loved, stood the woman of my dream crowned with every glory and adorned with the Star. And we were three. And between him and me, yet enfolding him and me, writhed that Thing thou wottest of. And he whom I ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... one. Its hideous head is reared above the mass. The man gives a little scream, and the audience unite in a thunderous burst of applause, but it freezes upon their lips. The trainer's scream was a wail of death agony. Those cold, slimy folds had embraced him for the last time. They crushed the life out of him, and the horror-stricken audience heard bone after bone crack as those powerful folds tightened upon him. Man's playful ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... James. He felt himself in an agony of helplessness. He simply did not know what to do. He had sunk into a chair and his head fairly rung. It seemed to him incredible that the girl had disappeared a second time. A queer sense of unreality ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... parallel with that of her Master; understood in a small degree only by the few who faintly see and accept the truth, she stood during her earthly mission and now stands on the mount of spiritual illumination toward whose heights no feet but those of the blessed Master have so directly toiled, first in agony and finally, like Jesus Christ the masculine representative of the Fatherhood of God, she as the feminine representative of the motherhood of God, will appear in triumphant demonstration of divine power and glory as the combined ideal man ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... courtesy he had simulated, and which was essentially foreign to his vehement and haughty character, fell from him like a mask. For with the words of Antagoras, jealousy passed within him, and for the moment its agony was such that the Chian was avenged. But he was too habituated to the stateliness of self control, to give vent to the rage that seized him. He only said with a whitened and writhing lip, "Thou art right; all animosities may yield, save those ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... its death-throe—male and female, we said, the female coming to the male. She circled round him bellowing, and laid her neck across the curve of his great turtle-back, and he disappeared under water for an instant, but flung up again, grunting in agony while the blood ran. Once the entire head and neck shot clear of the water and stiffened, and I heard Keller saying, as though he was watching a street accident, 'Give him air. For God's sake, give him air.' Then the death-struggle began, with crampings and twistings and jerkings of the white ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... interest in this case to acquaint ourselves with them. As he lies out there with his men, where are his thoughts? Are they of his home, his parents, wife, or children? Will he ever see their dear faces again? No—! all that agony has been fought out over and over again long ago, during the previous fortnight or so, since he has been detailed for this particular job. Then, what does he think about? If the truth be told, he is rapidly running over in his mind all the little things which may perhaps, at the last moment, have ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... hard, my dear husband; but only think of the happiness it would bring to us all—of the ruin from which it will save our little boys—the agony from which it will save your poor wife. O, Robert, if you have one spark of love remaining in your ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... returned from his last voyage to the East, and the unfortunate merchant, reduced to penury and driven to despair, is said to have destroyed himself." As Anselm uttered these words the captain became convulsed with agony; his face was livid, his eyes rolled, his teeth were clenched. "Wretch that I am!" cried he; "who am the cause of all! I wrote to my dear master and told him of my intention to attempt a new discovery ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... would close at last in the same fiery trial; beset by informers, imprisoned, racked, and scourged; worst of all, haunted by their own infirmities, the flesh shrinking before the dread of a death of agony,—thus it was that they struggled on; earning for themselves martyrdom,—for us, the free England in which we live and breathe. Among the great, until Cromwell came to power, they had but one friend, and he but a doubtful one, who long believed the truest kindness ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... picture of them in imagination. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands were done to death in hellish ways by the orders of men and of women. Eyes were gouged out, ears hacked off, arms and legs torn from the body in presence of the victims' children or wives, whose agony was thus begun before their own turn came. Men and women and infants were burned alive. Chinese executioners were specially hired to inflict the awful torture of the "thousand slices."[281] Officers had their limbs broken and were left for hours in agonies. Many victims are credibly reported to ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... suffering, feel its consequences. When a great war spreads devastation all over the world, can it be said that any useful purpose is served by the sufferings of millions who are not in the slightest degree aware of the cause of their agony? When a shady financial operation brings an innocent man to ruin, and effects all the consequences which Canon Green imagines resulting from the defaulting parent, how can it be said that the catastrophe admits of ethical justification? In many cases the thought of the injury experienced acts itself ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... there really existed that sort of God, what would be the use of forgiving what He does? He'd only do it again. That is His record!" she added fiercely, "—indifference to human agony, utter silence amid lamentations, stone deaf, stone dumb, motionless. It is not in me to fawn and lick the feet of such an image. No! It is not in me to believe it alive, either. And I do not! But I know that love lives: and if there be any ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... "In the effort to get rhyme, 'the rack of finest | | wits,'" says a pseudonymous newspaper writer, "and in the | | struggle, writhing, and agony of trying to get the wrong | | words to say the right thing, one sometimes achieves the | | impossible, or, rather, from the flame of frantic friction | | (of 'Rhyming Dictionary' leaves) rises, phoenix-like, | | another ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony, are thine. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... less. My good God! If there's any special hell for criminal fools, I ought to go to it for bringing you to this," he burst out in agony. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the speaker's companion was concerned, my injunction was supererogatory. Even as I spoke, with a scream of agony the latter emerged from the car. Holding him fast by the wrist, Berry had almost broken his arm across the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... this made a stronger impression on me than the most eloquent and convincing pessimistic bocks and speeches, of which I had read a good many and which I still read to this day. And this, you see, was because the agony of a dying person is much more natural and violent than the most minute and picturesque ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... so in agony she listened for the response. It came; but Arthur Miles could not distinguish the word, nor tell if Tilda had heard better. She had caught his hand, and they were running together as fast as their small legs could ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... tidings, I longed, with some terror, for later news. And all the United Kingdom was now watching with tender interest the dismemberment, as it almost appeared, of the other mighty Union. Not with malice, or snug satisfaction, as the men of the North in their agony said, but certainly without any proper anguish yet, and rather as a genial and sprightly spectator, whose love of fair play perhaps kindles his applause of the spirit and skill of the weaker side. "'Tis a good fight—let them fight it out!" ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... esta el padre?" No one answered; there wasn't a priest of any denomination; I don't know whether the omission was purposed. The man's face grew convulsed with agony, his eyeballs stared out very white and vivid, as he struggled with the two men. He began to curse us epileptically for compassing his damnation. A hoarse patter of Spanish imprecations came from the crowd immediately round me. The man with the voice ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... speedily brought a number of Indians from neighboring wigwams. When they found poor Mary lying there in agony, with the ax still imbedded in the bones of her back, their indignation ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... the rush, turning his head, and just received the arm on his shoulder; and coming near and slipping his knee past the king's, with a rush he struck him above the ear, and broke the bones inside, and the king in agony fell upon his knees; and the Minyan heroes shouted for joy; and his life was poured forth all ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... and anguish from his wound. The sword had pierced to the bone, and the inflammation which had supervened was of the worst character. After some days, the acuteness of the agony which he at first endured passed gradually away, though the extent of the injury resulting from the wound was growing every day greater and more hopeless. The sufferer lay, pale, emaciated, and wretched, on his couch, his mind, in every interval of bodily agony, filling up the ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Waste, ruin, conflict, rot, are about us everywhere. . . . We need as little think this earth all beauty as think it all horror. It is made up of loveliness and ghastliness; of harmony and chaos; of agony, joy, life, death. The nature-worshippers are blind and deaf to the waste and the shrieks which meet the seeker after truth. . . . The poets indeed are the true authors of the beauty and order of nature; for they see it by the eye of genius. And they alone see it. Coldly, literally examined, beauty ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... still continued, if anything, redoubled, for now the element of fear had gripped the hearts of every man on board both boats as they felt that terrible, unseen agency stabbing at their eyes and making the stoutest writhe with agony and alarm, ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... rocking herself to and fro, her fingers pressed against her eyes. It was thirteen years ago, and yet even now in these placid days in Old Chester, to think of that time brought the breathless smother of agony back again—the dying child, the foolish brute who had done him to death.... If the baby had lived he would be nearly fourteen years old now; a big boy! She wondered whether his hair would still have been curly? She knew ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland



Words linked to "Agony" :   passion, torment, agonal, excruciation, agony column, pain, throe, agonist, hurting, torture, agonise, hurt, agonize, agony aunt, Passion of Christ



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