"Agonize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sits up o'nights to agonize because a few naked niggers in equatorial Africa never heard Eve's snake story, how Job scratched himself with a broken pie- plate or the hog happened to be so full of the spirit of hades; that robs childhood of its pennies ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... part of Nature as the brutality itself," he said, and he insisted that the supreme business of man, was to evolve a scheme of life on a higher plane, wherein the weak shall not be forced to agonize for the strong, so far as mankind can intervene to prevent it. Let man follow the dictates of pity and generosity in his own soul. They would never lead him astray. While Miss Du Prel laid the whole blame upon natural law, the Professor impeached humanity. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... discord extends to manners. Public conveyances and public places produce so many girls who are not gentle, retiring, shady, attractive. They are flingy and sharp and saucy, without being piquant. They take on airs without having the beauty or the brilliancy which alone makes airs delightful. They agonize to make an impression, and they make it, but not always in the line of their intent. Setting out to be picturesque, they become uncouth. They are ridiculous when they mean to be interesting, and silly when they try to be playful. If they would only leave off attitudinizing, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... friend,—be a man! be the Christian you wish to be thought: consider that this fellow-man of ours has a dearly-loved family. If you have that card which the seconds gave you twelve years ago, don't agonize or terrify him any more; write to him that "the account is settled," and give over to him that horrible deed of contract. I shall honor you till my death for it. I know that in any case you will do it one day before it is too late. You will ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Thurstane and Clara were overwhelmed by such a mass of water that they thought themselves at the bottom of the sea. Two men who had not mounted the rigging, but tried to cling to the boat davits, were hurled adrift and sent to agonize in the undertow. The brig trembled as if it were on the point of breaking up and dissolving in the horrible, furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on shore the moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description. The vessel and the people on board disappeared for a time ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... I ought to go back to first principles: get down on my knees and agonize over it? Sometimes I wish I could be a boy long enough to do just that thing, Ardea. But I can't. The mill won't grind with the water that ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... —Then shrieks of captured towns, and widows' tears, Pale lovers stretch'd upon their blood-stain'd biers, 65 The headlong precipice that thwarts her flight, The trackless desert, the cold starless night, And stern-eye'd Murder with his knife behind, In dread succession agonize her mind. O'er her fair limbs convulsive tremors fleet, 70 Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet; In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries, And strains in palsy'd lids her tremulous eyes; In vain she wills to run, fly, swim, walk, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... began to kindle. "Every woman ought to have something! Men have. It should be with women as with men—love a thing apart in their lives, not their whole existence! Then they wouldn't agonize and wear on each other so! I believe there's a chapter in that, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... such unhappiness as weighed her down this morning would not matter. She continued in the ineffectual track which the snow-plough had made, with a certain pleasure in the exertion. All Maria's heights of life, her mountain-summits which she would agonize to reach, were spiritual. Labor in itself could never daunt her. Always her spirit, the finer essence of her, would soar ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... prescribed amount of agony. Perhaps it was because I had heard Mr. Beecher question the correctness of the prescription. When a man travelling in the road found out, he said, that he had gone wrong, he did not usually roll in the dust and agonize over his mistake; he just turned around and went the other way. It struck me so, but none the less with deep conviction. In fact, with the heat of the convert, I decided on the spot to throw up my editorial work and ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis |
