"Rapture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infant rapture still survived the boy, And Lach-na-gair with Ida look'd o'er Troy, Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, And Highland ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... July the few French inhabitants at Quebec broke out into wild cries of joy as they saw Caen's ship approaching under full sail, at its peak the white flag sprinkled with golden lilies; and when they learned that the vessel brought two Jesuit fathers, their hearts swelled with inexpressible rapture. During the three years of English possession the Catholics had been without priests, and they hungered for their accustomed forms of worship. The priests now arriving were Paul Le Jeune, the new superior-general, and Anne de Noue, with a lay brother, Gilbert ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... he is very famous, that every one knows him. He arrives at S., meets an officer who shakes his hand for a long time, looking with rapture into his face. G. is glad, he too shakes hands warmly.... At last the officer: "And how is your orchestra? ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... emblem meet of the grand dream of eternity, and our spirits seem on the verge of quitting earth, in thrilling contemplations on the islands of that infinite abyss, and their immortal inhabitants! We gaze in hope, adoration, and rapture on the blue expanse, varied by delicate vapours, sailing calmly, wondrously through it; and then occur to our memories spontaneously, the exquisite lines translated from a morceau, by Gluck, (a German poet;) and our hearts respond as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... the seal of things, And where the sunshine bathed Truth's mountain-springs Quiver'd our glancing wings. Weep for the godlike life we lost afar— Weep!—thou and I its scatter'd fragments are; And still the unconquer'd yearning we retain— Sigh to restore the rapture and the reign, And grow divine again. And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee— Still, lip to lip, to cling for aye unto thee; This made thy glances to my soul the link— This made me burn thy very breath to drink— My life in thine to sink: And therefore, as before the conqueror's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... brother Angelica. But Fesole, secluding him in the shade of her mount of Olives, and Florence revealing to him the true voice of his Master, in the temple of St. Mary of the Flower, taught him his lesson of peace on earth, and permitted him his visions of rapture in heaven. And when the massacre of Cesena was found to have been in vain, and the Church was compelled to treat with the revolted cities who had united to mourn for her victories, Florence sent her a living saint, Catherine of Siena, ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... to the blessings of our society. There they stand, like the majestic statues that line the entrance to an eternal pyramid. And when I look upon one statue, and another, and another, and contemplate the colossal greatness of their proportions, as Canova gazed with rapture upon the sun-god of the Vatican, I envy not the man whose heart expands not with the sense of a new nobility, and whose eye kindles not with the heart's enthusiasm, as he thinks that he too is numbered among that glorious company,—that he too is sprung from that royal ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... child shall we again behold her, But when with rapture wild. In our embraces we again enfold her, She ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... my dream is broken by a step upon the stair, And the door is softly opened, and—my wife is standing there: Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I resign,— To greet the LIVING presence of that old sweetheart ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... were as slaves spreading carpets of glory Embroidered with names of the Djinns—a miraculous weaving— But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving. So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture— Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capture— Till he returned me to earth and the visions departed; But on him be the Peace and the Blessing: for ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... accompanied with 'the song of Jehovah,' and the joyful sound of the trumpets and 'the instruments of David.' The treasures of Christian poetry have always been inspired by the Cross, and the consequent rapture of self-surrender. Calvary is the true fountain ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sweet Their hearts and ears did greet As never was by mortal finger strook— Divinely warbled voice Answering the stringed noise, As all their souls in blissful rapture took: The air, such pleasure loath to lose, With thousand echoes still ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... almost infinite variety of scenes through which we have passed with a mixture of pleasure, astonishment and gratitude; while he contemplates the prospect before us with rapture, he can not help wishing that all the brave men (of whatever condition they may be,) who have shared in the toils and dangers of effecting this glorious revolution, of rescuing millions from the hand of oppression, and of laying the foundation of a great empire, might be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... man looks from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture; a human intellect thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Joseph Addison's. Listen to him: from your childhood you have known the verses; but who can hear their sacred music without love ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... glad welcome of those 76:1 who have gone before. The ones departing may whisper this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the 76:3 hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes open only to that wonder, forgets all else and breathes aloud his rapture. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... beautiful spirit has to tell me of night, sleep, death, and the stars. This dusky, silent hour is his; and this is the time when I can best hear the beatings of that most tender and generous heart. Such great love, such rapture of jubilant love for nature, and the good green grass, and trees, and clouds, and sunlight; such aching anguish of love for all that breathes and is sick and sorry; such passionate longing to help and ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... their immediate rapture as they carry their treasure away with loving hands; but it is necessary to note the means taken to prove, for the satisfaction only of a foolish and unbelieving world, the supernatural nature of the phenomenon. The umbrella is ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... light. His face was thin and of tanned olive. His face seemed to say to the world, challengingly, "I am here! I have arrived! Bring out your best and watch me!" There were people—women—who said he had a cruel mouth. They said this, not with censure or regret, but with a deliciously fearful rapture as though the cruel mouth (if it were cruel) were not the ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... exhaustedly await the turn that never comes. Once in a while—a very long while—one meets a brilliant person whose talk is a delight; or still more rarely a wit who manipulates every ordinary topic with the agility of a sleight-of-hand performer, to the ever increasing rapture of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... volumes! richest treasures! Objects of delicious pleasures! You my eyes rejoicing please, You my hands in rapture seize! Brilliant wits, and musing sages, Lights who beamed through many ages, Left to your conscious leaves their story, And dared to trust you with their glory; And now their hope of fame achieved, Dear ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and gave a rapturous look at the treasure that was so soon to be hers. But presently the rapture faded, and a new expression came into her face. The lady ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... that he had an extra smiling courtesy, which simple mortals do not always possess; and when you passed him as such, and puffed your cigar in his face, took off his hat with a grin of such prodigious rapture, as to lead you to suppose that the most delicious privilege of his whole life was that permission to look at the tip of your nose or of your cigar. With this most reverend prelate was his Grace's brother ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... informed the grand chasserot of the success of his undertaking, he became aware that his own burden was considerably heavier. Certainly it had been easier for him to bear uncertainty than the boisterous rapture evinced by his fortunate rival. His jealousy rose against it, and that was all. Now that he had torn from Reine the avowal of her love for Claudet, he was more than ever oppressed by his hopeless passion, and plunged into a condition ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his gracious name, And changed my mournful state, My rapture seemed a pleasing dream, Thy grace ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... make your thoughts to wander; he will tell you of many other things that need to be done that very moment; and many other things will he tell you to deprive you of the blessings of prayer. But you must resist him and go the more earnestly in prayer; and continue to pray until a rapture from the skies sweeps over your soul, making the place of prayer the dearest ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he expatiated on the delicious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and goose-like fowl which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened himself amid polar snows with the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And wrathfully did he shake his fist as ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The rapture of submission in her look was intoxicating. He reached out his hand and laid it lightly on her shoulder. Then, without another word, they went on together, and the tall, soldierly figure in brown, and the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... as the DUKE has left the apartment, advances to the KING, throws himself at his feet, and then, with great emotion). My father once again! Thanks, endless thanks, for this unwonted favor! Your hand, my father! O delightful day! The rapture of this kiss has long been strange To your poor Carlos. Wherefore have I been Shut from my father's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... rapture-bound The while her sisters sing; From voice and lute there floats around A golden confluence of sound, Spreading in fairy ring; And with a beautiful grace and glow Her head sways to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much;" and whom Baxter had once heard, in a battle, when the enemy began to flee, "with a loud voice break forth into the praises of God, with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture." But there were also in the army Sectaries of a cooler or easier order— Arminians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Anti-Scripturists, Familists, and Sceptics. Hardly a form of odd opinion mentioned in our conspectus of English ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... and hair,—a woman who moved glidingly as if she floated rather than walked, and whose beauty, half hidden as it was by the exigencies of the costume she had chosen, was so unusual and brilliant that it seemed to create an atmosphere of bewilderment and rapture around her as she came. She was preceded by a small Nubian boy in a costume of vivid scarlet, who, walking backwards humbly, fanned her slowly with a tall fan of peacock's plumes made after the quaint designs of ancient Egypt. The lustre radiating ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... retarded. To bring a lover, a lady and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harrass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered; is the business ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... her rapture, her eyes shone with pure happiness, but in the midst of all her rejoicings a sudden memory of little Dan ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... one day to me Some blessed Saint will come and say, 'All hail, beloved; but for thee My soul to death had fallen a prey'; And oh! what rapture in the thought, One soul to glory to ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... refreshed and invigorated by a most delectable lunch, eaten in the beautiful dining-room of the hotel, our travelers were ready for the last stage of the preparatory journey. Nothing remained now but the short ride to the wharf and then—the rapture of embarking on the wonderful "Mauretania," which had hitherto been but a magic name to them, breathing of romance and wonder. Then a final farewell to their friends, and before them stretched the great European continent, holding the unfathomed ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... ways of saying 'Ah!' You can put joy, amazement, rapture into it; you can also make it sound as if it were a reply to a remark on the weather. James Boyd made it sound just like that. His hair was rumpled, his brow contracted, and his manner absent. The impression ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... not hear, for she answered them in low tones,— contented, happy tones. She saw faces we couldn't see, for she looked at them with wondern' rapture in her eyes. She was away from us, fur away from us who loved her,—we who were on this earth still. Love still held her here, human love yet held her by a slight link to the human; but her sweet soul had got with its true ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... to feel like that. Miss BARBARA HOFFE'S Melisande—a difficult part, because she was the only other-worldly person in the play and the only one in desperate earnest—was very cleverly handled. In her most exalted moments of poetic rapture she was never too precious, and when called upon for a touch of corrective humour was quick ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... of worship, a little differing in form, but terminating in the same great and glorious centre. The enlightened liberality of the british clergy will unite, in paying that homage to them, which they, in my presence, have often with enthusiasm, and rapture, offered up to the purity, and sanctity of their characters. Many of them informed me, that they had received the most serviceable favours from our clergy, administered with equal delicacy, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... murmured, turning white as the sheet of paper he held. Then the letter dropped from his hand, and he stood as if stupefied for some moments; but presently rapture darted through him; a five-pound bank-note was in his hand, and it had been enclosed ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... now, the universal costume of the Singhalese was the cotton "comboy," worn only on the lower half of the body[2], their grains were sesamum and rice; their food the latter with milk and flesh-meat; and their drink coco-nut toddy, which Marco calls "wine drawn from the trees." He dwells with rapture on the gems and costly stones, and, above all, on the great ruby, a span long, for which Kubla Khan offered the value of a city. With singular truth he says, "the people are averse to a military life, abject and timid, and when they have occasion to employ soldiers, they procure them from other ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... hands with rapture, and then her lips; and in a tumult of joy ran for Peter and Martin. They came and witnessed the betrothal; a solemn ceremony in those days, and indeed for more than a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... capricious beauty accordingly returned to La Rochelle, changed in heart and depressed in spirits. "And this, then," he mused, "is the reward which the world offers to genius, taste, truth, and feeling! and this is all the value set on qualities which excite admiration, enthusiasm, rapture!—a brief season suffices to weary the most zealous and devoted—a few months, and that which was deemed wit and talent, and wisdom and grace, is looked upon as flat, tame, and unworthy attention. As long as vanity is pleased, and novelty excites new ideas, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... especially in speculation, and so is a community of goods especially when a man has no property, but when you have lived as long as I have and have tasted of the world's delight, you'll comprehend the rapture of acquisition, and learn that it is generally secured by very coarse means. Come, I have a mind that you should prosper. The public spirit is inflamed here; you are a leader of the people. Let us have another ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... then my spirit bloomed in leafy rapture— I loved; and once I looked death in the eyes: So, suddenly made wise, Spoke of such beauty ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... and said the excellent clergyman, smiling: "Tell me, what other device could have drawn this charming confession Out of the good maiden's lips, and thus have revealed her affection? Has not thy trouble been straightway transformed into gladness and rapture? Therefore speak up for thyself; what need of the ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... said little Alice, who had already been almost in the attitude of prayer, and now clasped her hands together, and steadfastly, and without fear of the lightning, eyed the sky. "One of God's Holy Angels—one of those who sing before the Lamb!" And with an inspired rapture the fair child sprung to her feet. "See ye her not—see ye her not—father—mother! Lo! she beckons to me with a palm in her hand, like one of the palms in that picture in our Bible, when our Saviour is entering ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... soul and let the glory out. When the great oak is straining in the wind, The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk Sends down a deeper root on the windward side. Only the soul that knows the mighty grief Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come To stretch out spaces in ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... over again throughout the night, was close and heavy. He threw back the window shutter, and the great rush of pure cold air into the opening made his body thrill with delight. This was a physical pleasure, but the sight outside gave him a mental rapture even greater. Nothing was falling now, but the rain had turned back to hail before it ceased, and all the earth was in glittering white. The trees in the valley, clothed in ice, were like lace work, and above them ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... hall. But Saxo waved his sword, And, laughing, shouted, 'Odin's sons, be still! Count it no sin to battle with high gods! Great-hearted they! They give the blow and take! To Odin who was ever leal as I?' As sudden as it rose the tumult fell: So ceased the storm without: but with it ceased The rapture and the madness, and the shout: The wine-cup still made circuit; but the song Froze in mid-air. Strange shadow hung o'er all: Neighbour to neighbour whispered: courtiers slid Through doors scarce open. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... sweet, Grace ran through every line; Their breasts with rapture swelled, Their looks were all divine: Delight o'er all My senses stole, And heaven's pure ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? Is this the Thing, the Lord God made and gave ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... to have drowned his recollections of London in active duty, or in diligent study; and if he found society coarse or corrupt, he should have set himself to refine and to purify it. But he seems to have been a lazy, luxurious person—his life a round of selfish rapture and selfish anguish,—in fact, ruined by his independent fortune. Had he been a poorer, he had probably been a happier man. He was not, moreover, of that self-contained cast of character, which can live on its own resources, create its own world, and say, "My mind ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... another, and then a full burst, and away went the hounds, and the field after them, and, with one final kick up of his heels, Sir Robert got into his stride. Crawley forgot anger, vexation—everything but the rapture of the moment. The life of the scene, the contagious excitement of dogs, horses, and men, the rapid motion, it was even ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... had examined this Rachel Oppenheimer, and given the legal certificates by means of which Frankl had put away Margaret; and she during two years of sanity in an atmosphere of lunacy had screamed for pity, till one morning she had shewed the stare, the unworldly rapture, and had started ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... upon his heel, his boyish face flushing in undisguised rapture. He waited till Annabel reached the sidewalk, took the pink-lined parasol from her hand with an air of proud possession, and the two ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... cannot see. It is puzzled, it wrinkles its face. But when the mother puts her face quite near, and laughs and coos, then the baby trembles with an ecstasy of love. The glamour, the wonder, the treasure beyond. The great uplift of rapture. All this surges from that first center of the breast, the sun of the breast, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... are enthusiastic in their favour! Of these how large a portion come away empty-handed and discontented! like idlers who visit the seacoast, fill their pockets with pebbles bright from the passing wave, and carry them off with rapture. After a short examination at home, every streak seems faint and dull, and the whole contexture coarse, uneven, and gritty: first one is thrown away, then another; and before the week's end the store is gone, of ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... face the expression of rapture in his eyes when he saw beautiful women sit down before his easel to have their portraits painted; his praise of the throat of one, the shoulders of another; the almost religious unction with which he examined the photographs and engravings of naked beauties, painted by other artists whom ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... than had been a greater actor. In the chill and empty playhouse, upon the narrow stage where, sitting in the September sunshine, she had asked of Haward her last favor, she now learned to speak for those sisters of her spirit, those dead women who through rapture, agony, and madness had sunk to their long rest, had given their hands to death and lain down in a common inn. To Audrey they were real; she was free of their company. The shadows were the people who lived and were happy; who night after night came to watch a soul caught in the toils, to thunder ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... passage in Thessalonians about the dead rising to meet their Lord in the air, and that cheered him a lot. Peter, I could see, had the notion that his time here wouldn't be very long, and he liked to think that when he got his release he would find once more the old rapture. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... In quiet times it is laid on the shelf. Then comes some season of political ferment: the liberty boys kick up a dust: the public voice calls for the play clamorously: the theatre fills nightly: every allusion is caught at with rapture: and, as to the actors, they may lie upon their oars; for, let them play as ill as they choose, they are sure of applause for the sake of what they utter. But, as often as ever this happens, in steps the government ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... exhausted Nature's store. Not on Eurota's bank, so beauteous shone The faithless partner of the Spartan throne; Not she who conquer'd, whom the world obey'd, On Cydnus when in pomp of charms array'd, 170 Mortals deceiv'd, in awful rapture gaz'd, And incense to the present goddess blaz'd. Scarce had she gain'd the charming dang'rous years, A pow'r too sure, when rising passion bears. Pure as heav'ns image in the crystal deep, 175 Ere clouds arise, when wanton zephyrs sleep, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... the meaning of the picturesque words that he employs). And if we look with calm, unmoved hearts; if we look without personal appropriation of that Cross and dying love to ourselves, and if we look without our hearts going out in thankfulness and laying themselves at His feet in a calm rapture of life-long devotion, then we need not wonder that four ignorant heathen men sat and looked at Him for four long hours and saw nothing, for we are as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... told Hinpoha that after school was out she was to go West and live with Aunt Grace, and then sat cynically watching the unbelieving delight which flashed into her face at this announcement. But after the first flush of rapture Hinpoha reconsidered. In her mind's eye she saw Aunt Phoebe living on alone, unloving and unloved, to a lonesome old age. Again she saw the cedar chest with its pathetic wedding garments. Again the words of the fire song came into ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... of life into the focus of the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality and such wearing iteration, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than aught else in the day's proceedings. I have known girls who have thought that their first appearance in the ball-room, when all was fresh, unstained, and perfect from the milliner's hand, was the one moment of rapture for the evening. I have sometimes felt the same of young sportsmen at a Leicestershire or Northamptonshire meet. It is not that they will not ride when the occasion comes. They are always ready enough ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... too, though these were the very first flames that had ever been in the world. They climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke, and I had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture, it was so new and strange and so wonderful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... carriage the master of the house had appeared at a lighted doorway, tall, brown, ruddy, picturesque in Spanish riding breeches and short coat; a handsome man of thirty-five, perhaps, whose face lit from surprise to rapture at sight of Pilar. Dick and I came in for a welcome too, though I could see that the Conde de Roldan was not easy in his mind about these young men who seemed on terms ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to his pate; but a rap at the street door made the wretch fly to it, and when I returned to the parlor, he introduced me, as if nothing of the kind had happened, to the gentleman who entered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most ingenious and worthy friend, of whom he had so often heard him speak with rapture. I could scarcely compose myself, and must have betrayed indignation in my mien to the stranger, who was a counselor-at-law in the neighborhood, a man of engaging aspect and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... names which generally mean something morbid or hypnotic. But in India their validity is unquestioned and they are not considered morbid. The sensual scheming life of the world is sick and ailing; the rapture of contemplation is the true and healthy life of the soul. More than that it is the type and foretaste of a higher existence compared with which this world is worthless or rather nothing at all. This ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the exposure of her arms; a simple morning-dress, again, seemed better still, as fitted to call out the childlike innocence of her face, by confining the attention to that. But all these are feelings of fond and blind affection, hanging with rapture over the object of something too like idolatry. God knows, if that be a sin, I was but too profound a sinner; yet sin it never was, sin it could not be, to adore a beauty such as thine, my Agnes. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... feelings have not obscured the old, if Time has written no "strange defeatures" on the soul, and the image treasured by memory corresponds with the reality, then the communion of heart with heart seems sweeter than it ever seemed before its interruption. And this happiness, this rapture of the soul which makes life seem angelic for a season, the two friends now experienced in full measure. For an hour they sat together, holding each other's hands, feeling a strange inexpressible pleasure ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... earth back six hundred courses and make ourselves one with the great Florentine, kneel at the same altar with him, and share his rapture and his scorn. And if we grow tired of an antique time, and desire to realise our own age in all its weariness and sin, are there not books that can make us live more in one single hour than life can ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... and fresh leaves spring And flowers are budding on the plain, When nightingales so sweetly sing And through the greenwood swells the strain, Then joy I in the song and in the flower, Joy in myself but in my lady more; All objects round my spirit turns to joy, But most from her my rapture rises high. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... she said, "are full of rapture; the recollections of earth, full of anguish and tears. It is not for myself, Juliet, I weep. It is for the living I mourn —for the friends I leave behind. For me—I have lived long enough. It is better for me to go, Juliet; I am dying; ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... well as any living person or actual situation. What he cares for is the thrill of emotional excitement and the ravishing sensation which accompanies all deep and tender feeling. Not love, but love's delights; not sympathy, but the rapture of the sympathetic mood; not helpfulness, but the sense of self-importance which comes from being around when great trials are to be met and fateful decisions are to be made; not devotion to others, but the complacency with self which intimate connection with others gives: ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... own pastoral Canaan, flowing with milk and honey. The hyperbole of Eastern thought often rests on a solid foundation of fact, and the Hebrew love-song weaves tropical Nature's lavish wealth of flower, fruit, and fragrance into a symbolic garland, flung in passionate rapture at the feet of the beloved one. The spiritual significance of the sacred lyric only transposes the mystic melody into a higher key, and heaps the thurible of the sanctuary with the frankincense of praise, to celebrate the typical bridal of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... so pleased Jones, and threw him into such immoderate excess of rapture, that he might be truly said to be drunk with joy—an intoxication which greatly forwards the effects of wine; and as he was very free too with the bottle on this occasion (for he drank many bumpers to the doctor's health, as well as to other toasts) ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... called to Massachusetts to fill a higher position; and only a few days before the beginning of the term, a young college man, Ralph Thurston, fresh from Bowdoin and needing experience, applied for and received the appointment. The thrill of rapture that ran like an electric current through the persons of the feminine students when they beheld Ralph Thurston for the first time,—dignified, scholarly, unmistakably the gentleman,—beheld him mount the platform in the assembly ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... rapture, and dwelt on thy charms, As link'd in Love's fetters we wander'd each day; And each night I have sought a new life in thy arms, And sigh'd that our union could ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... The first rapture of meeting once again had passed. The exultant joy engendered by a sense of freedom had lasted for several hours. Anthony had laughed and sung aloud and shouted for joy in the shady alleys of the garden, amid all the blissful sights and sounds of springtide. He had wandered there ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... She listened with rapture to the manly assurance of his voice; her eyes dwelt with unspeakable joy upon his strong, bronzed features, his full thick blond beard, and the vigorous proportions of his frame. Many and many a time during his absence ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... hand, and stammering his joy and gratitude arose, and hand in hand they stood and smiled into each other's eyes. He gazed on her with reverence and rapture. He said: "I pray thee, lovely maid, tell me thy name and whence and why ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... yet, men say, Tenderest for all its sadness, rang at last With hymns of men and angels. Onward sailed High o'er the long, unbreaking, azure waves A mighty moon, full-faced, as though on winds Of rapture borne. With earliest red of dawn Northward once more the winged war-ships rushed Swift as of old to that long hated shore - Not now with axe and torch. His Name they bare Who linked in ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... the earth: other tastes may prison men in narrow walls, in the depths of the earth, or between the planks of a ship; his glance has only two boundaries—the blue sky above, the firm earth below. His is almost the rapture of creation; for whatever his edict demands from organic or inorganic nature, springs up beneath his hand. Even the townsman's heart is refreshed by the green blade and the golden ear, the quietly pasturing cow and the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... in a bond with rapture crown'd. Did I not see thee, when a stripling, yearning To welcome me with tears, heartfelt ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... were I but a minstrel, deft At weaving, with the trembling strings Of my glad harp, the warp and weft Of rondels such as rapture sings,— I'd loop my lyre across my breast, Nor stay me till my knee found rest In midnight banks of bud and flower Beneath my ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... let 'em," replied Jarwin, with pathetic sincerity, and then began to sing in such a touching strain, that his master lay back on his couch and rolled his large eyes in rapture. ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... plucked the chances Last Leap Year brought of wedded rapture, (Since Flattery wins, where Beauty's glances Have failed to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... allows that any fulness of inward life can dispense with the duties of every-day life, with mercy, truth, industry, generosity, self-control. The unworthy man who is excluded from the kingdom is not the man of blunt, homely feeling, incapable of ecstatic rapture and exalted emotion, but the man who locks up for himself the gold God gave him for the general good, who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor, who entrenches his heart behind a cold inhumanity, who permits the naked to shiver unclothed, who lessens not his increasing ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... drew her to his breast, pressing passionate kisses on her brow, cheeks, and lips, his heart thrilling with rapture at the realization ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... Yonder, further away, the mountains tower up in an amphitheatre, ever bluer and mistier; and, at the edge of the horizon, stretches the silver chain of snow-clad summits, beginning with Kazbek and ending with two-peaked Elbruz... Blithe is life in such a land! A feeling akin to rapture is diffused through all my veins. The air is pure and fresh, like the kiss of a child; the sun is bright, the sky is blue—what more could one possibly wish for? What need, in such a place as ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... said, will sometimes, from the hot and hasty passions which are stirred up by the poisonous miasmata floating in the auction-room, give a sum twice or thrice beyond the real value of the books bidden for! Indeed, I am frequently amused to see the vehemence and rapture with which a dirty little volume is contended for and embraced—while a respectable bookseller, like PORTIUS, coolly observes across the table—"I have a better copy on sale at ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Park Lane, do you hear?" Miss Crawley had a good taste. She liked natural manners—a little timidity only set them off. She liked pretty faces near her; as she liked pretty pictures and nice china. She talked of Amelia with rapture half a dozen times that day. She mentioned her to Rawdon Crawley, who came dutifully to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... together. The snouted band was having supper on the floor in a corner, and many of the guests also were seated on the floor. Miss Ingate, intoxicated by the rapture of existence, and Miss Thompkins were carefully examining the frescoes on the walls. A young woman covered from head to foot with gold tinsel was throwing chocolates into Musa's mouth, or as near to it as ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... commonplace minds devoted such strict attention—thus infallibly securing prizes for "proficiency" and "good conduct"—while they were overlooked by a boy of the highest promise, who, under the hand of an almost divine imagination, gave himself up with rapture to the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... The French people appeared to retain yet for the royal family that enthusiastic devotedness which they had manifested for centuries; they fondly proclaimed to the queen, whenever she appeared, their affection, their admiration; they were not weary with the expressions of their rapture and their worship, and Marie Antoinette was not weary of listening to these jubilant manifestations with which she was received in the theatre, on the streets, in the gardens of the Tuileries, on the terraces of Versailles; she was not weary of returning thanks with a friendly nod ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... again demanded that Honey-Bee should be put in a cage, but this time so that the dwarfs need not be afraid to lose so charming a princess; Bob, mounted on his raven, filled the air with such cries of rapture that the sable bird, infected by the gaiety, gave vent to ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... even those who still crouched upon the floor ventured to raise their heads and glance at the spot where the tall figure in the white serge robe stood motionless and impressive. Then the whole concourse of devotees stirred in involuntary excitement as the red-haired man, with a cry of rapture, rushed forward and prostrated himself at ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... arms and stepped out on the stage. The prima donna had the centre of it to herself at that moment, and all the rest of the company were waiting to go on; but when they saw the little girl in Van Bibber's arms they made a rush at her, and the girls leaned over and kissed her with a great show of rapture and with ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... years. Long centuries of wrongs, and crimes, and tears,— The echo of the angel's song again, Peace and good will, good will and peace to men, A little space make silence,—that our ears, Filled with the din of toil and moil and pain May catch the jubilant rapture of the skies,— The glories of ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... Johnson's catalogue for L3), turn eagerly to its title-page, and collate it as gently as though you were handling some priceless work of art? Don't tell me! The specialist gets a thousand times more pleasure out of his hobby than ever did casual buyer. Besides, what rapture will be his whenever he chance upon some book for which he has long been searching, or upon some work on his very subject and yet unknown to him; for ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... understood every word of it. And he inclined to think that the Cantor, or minister who led the praying, also understood; he sang with such feeling and such fervid roulades. Many solos did the Cantor troll forth, to which the congregation listened in silent rapture. The only time the public prayers bored the child was on the Sabbath, when the minister read the Portion of the Week; the Five Books of Moses being read through once a year, week by week, in a strange sing-song with only occasional flights of melody. The chant was determined by curious signs ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... literature that it belongs. Having said this, however, it must be added that poetry of the second order has seldom risen to higher heights of power. The faults already admitted disfigure it here and there. We have "moon blasted Madness when he yells at midnight;" we read of "eye-starting wretches and rapture-trembling seraphim," and the really striking image of Ruin, the "old hag, unconquerable, huge, Creation's eyeless drudge," is marred by making her "nurse" an "impatient earthquake." But there is that in ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... she's all the more intoxicating when she's serious; and when she's forgotten your whole worthless existence she's ten thousand times more fascinating than and other girl when she's going right for you. There's a kind of look comes into her eyes—kind of absence, rapture, don't you know—when she's serious, that brings your heart right into your mouth. She makes you think of some of those pictures—I want to tell you what she said the other day at a picnic when we were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... always wanted to see the dreadful cupboard, and there's a picture of it here," answered Betty, clasping a gorgeous copy of "Blue-beard" to the little bosom, which still heaved with the rapture of looking at that delicious mixture of lovely Fatimas in pale azure gowns, pink Sister Annes on the turret top, crimson tyrants, and yellow brothers with forests of plumage blowing wildly from ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... as she was generally called, was a quick, clever girl, very neat-handed and fairly industrious; and it seemed to Lettice, when she decided upon going to London, that she could not do better than ask Milly to go too. The girl's great blue eyes opened with a flash of positive rapture. "Go with you to London? Oh, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... should think so," cried Clover, with a little skip of rapture. "Dear, dear Rose! Elsie, the nicest sort of things do happen out ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... that swells them out and makes them ache For Love to touch them, for the nestling lips To trouble them as a warm lifting wind Murmurs between two swelled and ripening grapes Whispering of future wines of mad delight. Ah, let me learn of this! A rapture fills My limbs, and in my womb there stirs a craving For life ... life! Oh, wonderful, the vision that glows About me in such radiance, the light, the strife Of music, hue and perfume of the rose. Oh garden of desire, where one awaits My coming ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... is the sacrament of love; He broods above The virgin silence, till She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... underneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... ever the world saw! So rapidly do new sights and sounds greet us that the night steals down almost before we are aware of its approach. The day is for joy; but, ah, the night is for subtle overmastering rapture, for pregnant gloom, for thoughts that lie too deep for tears! If a wind springs up when the last ray of the sun shoots over the shoulder of the earth, then the ship roars through an inky sea, and the mysterious blending of terror and ecstasy ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... ocean-brim, Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray, Discovering in wide landskip all the east Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains, Lowly they bowed adoring, and began Their orisons, each morning duly paid In various style; for neither various style Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse, More tuneable than needed lute or harp ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the broad staircase to meet them, almost breathless with delight, and with eyes shining with almost serious rapture. He clasped Phebe's arm, and, leaning toward her, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... of the Arab improvisatore would have seemed tame beside Manetho's nervous exaltation. Save for the tingling satire of the violin-strings, his rhapsody might easily have lapsed to madness. From this point, however, his rapture somewhat abated, and he began to descend towards prose, his ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... listened with surprise and astonishment; but, though at the joyful tidings of the Duke's consent, and at the prospect of her so soon becoming his irrevocably, he could not restrain his joy, but clasped her in rapture to his heart, yet there was a feeling of indignation, ay, and of doubt and suspicion also, in regard to Lord Byerdale's conduct, and his purposes, which ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. We think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hill where four roads meet. To the right stood the cosy homestead of Mossgiel, and to the left the whole expanse of lovely country, hill and field and wood, which had so often filled the soul of Burns with the lonely rapture of the poet's soul. Gladys never passed up that way without thinking of him, and it seemed to her sometimes that she shared with him that deep, yearning depression of soul which found ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... found that the deaf could be, and were being, educated, not only were all doubts dispelled, but the astonishment almost goes beyond bounds, and even passes into a rapture of thanksgiving. Visitors, in some cases, flocked to the places where these wonderful things were transpiring. They came to convince themselves, and stood hushed in admiration at the spectacle ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... commenced, endeavoured to dissuade her, by every argument of which he was master, to go on; but she positively refused; when, as the last resource, he determined to work on her fears, and accordingly told her, that Mr.—— had long spoken of her, in terms of impatient rapture; that he was a man, unhappily, of a most passionate temper, and that he had vowed, sooner than he would go back to London without making her his wife, he would blow out his brains, for which purpose he was provided with a brace of pistols, then in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... leaves; the freed brooks singing as they ran; the birds darting about here and there seeking materials to build their nests; the heavens benignly smiling over all; the sun glorious; the air intoxicating; mere breath joy; mere life rapture! All nature singing a Gloria in Excelsis! And now while the sisters saunter leisurely on, pausing now and then to admire some exquisite bit of scenery, or to watch some bird, or to look at some flower, taking their own ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... flashes of a double sunrise. Their hands met, but the hand of each grasped the heart of the other. Two honester purer souls never looked out of their windows with meeting gaze. Had there been no bodies to divide them, they would have mingled in a rapture of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... something filled it till it ached, tears of rapture rose from his soul.... He stretched out his hands, uttered a cry ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... waters there came also sweeter memories—the memories of voyages over calm seas, under the shadow of the hoary Alps, where they passed away those golden hours, knowing that the end must come, yet resolved to enjoy to the full the rapture of the present. These were the thoughts that sustained her. No grief could rob her of these; but in cherishing them ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... dumb with rapture and excitement, and quite unable to answer the girl's friendly words except with smiles and nods. The girl saw how it was and let her be, only patting the calico arm once and again reassuringly. "I wonder if she didn't want to come. I wonder if I've frightened her," thought Eleanor Cabell. When into ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Blunderbore listened with apparent rapture, and at length ventured to advance and discover himself; but the instant Whackinta saw him she fell on her ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... almost despaired of his acquiring, including nearly all the divine attributes except that sense of humour. The beautiful SYBIL has always possessed but little of it also, and what she had has been struck from her by Cupid's flail. Naked of the saving grace, they face each other in awful rapture.] ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... and the beauty of the animals, produced an excitement sufficient to enable one to appreciate the rapture of the Arab, as he flies over the desert on his beloved barb, enjoying, feeling, exulting in liberty, sweet, intoxicating, unbounded liberty, with the whole ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... betrothed, by love's deep rapture fascinated, Silent and sweet, though near the fate she sad awaited, No sound their dream dispelled, yet hand in hand did press, Their eyes looked ever in a visioned happiness; And so, at last, the evening fell. But one ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles |
