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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



... She almost swooned of agony, and clung to Davidge for support, mixing astonishing profanity with her smothered groans. The cub showered apologies on her, and reviled "Regulations" which compelled him to wear spurs with his boots, though he ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... occupied a dim corner of the saloon, and began to play with that delicate, subtle touch, which, though it does not always mark the brilliant pianist, distinguishes the true lover of music, to whose ears a rough thump on the instrument, or a false note would be most exquisite agony. Lorimer had no pretense to musical talent; asked, he confessed he could "strum a little," and he seemed to see the evident wonder and admiration he awakened in the minds of many to whom such "strumming" as his was infinitely more delightful than more practiced, finished playing. Just ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... German song. Carlen was stupefied with wonder. Who was this new man in the body of Wilhelm? Where had disappeared the man of slow-moving figure, bent head, downcast eyes, gloom-stricken face, whom until that hour she had known? Carlen clasped her hands in an agony of bewilderment. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... like dogs in the river Yssel. A few stragglers who had contrived to elude pursuit at first, were afterwards taken from their hiding places and hung upon the gallows by the feet, some of which victims suffered four days and nights of agony before death came to their relief. It is superfluous to add that the outrages upon women were no less universal in Zutphen than they had been in every city captured or occupied by the Spanish troops. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... That's it. That is the awful knowledge of awful guilt with which Rosalie sits there and freezes in guilty agony at every pause in the conversation and could scream to notice how the pauses grow longer and longer, more frequent and more frequent yet. There's a frightful constraint, a chilly, creepy dreadfulness ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode with precautionary information for his daughters and servants, and accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the room even with food and drink. But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts—lest Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door. How could he hinder her, how betray his terror by opening the door ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... everything that concerned our escape, and here I must have dwelt largely upon the satisfaction which I took in rescuing the Dean, for the little fellow said: 'Well, I suppose I ought to thank you very much for saving me; but the truth is, all the agony of death being over with me when you pulled me out, the chief benefit falls on you, as you seem so much rejoiced about it; but I'll be grateful as I can, and show it by not troubling you any more. See, I'm almost well. I feel better and better ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... mentioned, was a very early recollection of seeing a colored man, Henry, bound with ropes and carried off to slavery. Grace Anna, not more than four or five years old at the time, declared that the man's face of agony is before her now; nor is it likely that her sisters were impressed less deeply. Of natures keenly sensitive, they hated slavery, from that hour, as only children of such natures can; and—as yet too young and immature for that charity to have been developed in them, which can ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... she had not come; her presence was not necessary. She might have invented a pretext for staying away; she might even invent a pretext now for going. But Edna did not go. With an inward agony, with a flaming, outspoken revolt against the ways of Nature, she witnessed the scene ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... their rendezvous! I set out. I said to myself, 'If I announce my arrival to my wife they will find it out, they will escape me.' I intended to surprise them. I wanted—Do I know what I wanted? I wanted to suffer no longer the agony of uncertainty. I took the train. I stopped neither day nor night. I left my valet yesterday in Florence, and this ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... stayed there I would have been stark mad or dead within five minutes. I felt as if I were being vibrated asunder—as if my whole body were resolving into its component parts. I lay on the floor with my head in both hands, and I daresay yelled with agony, but I don't ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... whispered the little elf. He could not any longer endure to witness all this agony of grief, he therefore flew away to his own rose in the garden. But the rose was faded; only a few dry leaves still clung to the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... there was a passionate defiance in his acknowledgment. "She knows all that I have hidden from her, as well as much that has been hidden from me. Her blind eyes are open, and she sees at last my failure and my sin, and the agony that I have known. For years I have shielded her, but she cannot shield me now, for all her wider vision. She can avert my fate no more than I could hold her back from hers. We are each alone—she, and I, and Maria, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... and after threatening Vittoria, who never flinches, he proposes they should end their lives by suicide. She humours him, but manages to get the first shot. Flamineo falls, wounded apparently to death. Then Vittoria turns and tramples on him with her feet and tongue, taunting him in his death agony with the enumeration of his crimes. Her malice and her energy are equally infernal. Soon, however, it appears that the whole device was but a trick of Flamineo's to test his sister. The pistol was not loaded. He now produces a pair which ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... a good deal at this account, for he had much the same sympathy for ordinary cases of sea-sickness, as a kitten feels in the agony of the first mouse it has caught, and which it is its sovereign pleasure to play with, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... my sickness, and, as he apprehended, approaching death, contributed its part to the treachery of Mr. Spurrel. He predicted to his own mind the time when I should no longer be able to work. He recollected with agony the expense that attended his son's illness and death. He determined to afford me no assistance of a similar kind. He feared however the reproach of deserting me. He feared the tenderness of his nature. He felt, that I was growing upon his affections, and that in a short time he could not have ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... celebrations of spring, In every kind of weather and every kind of day, In coffee houses, mothers, dancers— I did not find you in bars, motion pictures, Music-cafes, excursions into the summer mist... Who knows the agony, when I, in the night on the streets, Cried out for ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... of the animal disposition to be seen, and only too many people conspire to show that human nature is much the same as it was in the days when Job called in his agony for comfort and found none. Wonderful and disquieting it is to see how the noblest of minds have been driven in all ages to mourn over the disposition of men to strike at the unfortunate! The Book of Job is the finest piece of literary work known ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... the mother saw the face of her Moxy who died in the dark, she threw herself in a passion of tears and cries upon her dead. But the man knelt upon his knees, and when Hester turned in pain from the agony of the mother, she saw him with lifted hands of supplication at her feet. A torrent of divine love and passionate pity filled her heart, breaking from its deepest God-haunted caves. She stooped and kissed the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... she became terrified. There was a coldness of deviltry in him, she knew. And he had the whip-hand. She was certain he knew about the watch, and her impertinence masked an agony of fear. Suppose he went to her father? Why, if he knew, didn't he go ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... privet blossom is in June. There as the quivering flutes left off their tune, In trembling arms the weeping, haggard King Caught Psyche, who, like some half-lifeless thing, Took all his kisses, and no word could say, Until at last perforce he turned away; Because the longest agony has end, And homeward through the twilight ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris

... helped in the kitchen; or if she did not feel better when they had got the hams and bacon out of hand, she would take some herb-tea and nurse up a bit. But Death could not wait till the hams and bacon were cured: he came on with rapid strides, and shooting arrows of portentous agony. Susan had never seen illness—never knew how much she loved her mother till now, when she felt a dreadful, instinctive certainty that she was losing her. Her mind was thronged with recollections of the many times she had slighted her mother's wishes; her heart was full ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... heard one voice; but, determined to proceed, she passed straight through the garden-gate, and rushed hastily on to the open shed where the players were assembled. There, stripped of his coat and waistcoat, in all the agony of an intoxicated gambler, stood Edward Forester, in the act of staking his gold-laced hat upon the next cast He threw and lost; and casting from him with a furious oath the massive wooden ball, struck, in his blind frenzy, the lovely creature ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... thumb-screw. The thumbs are put into two rounds holes at the top; by turning a key a bar rises from C to D by means of a screw; and the pressure becomes very painful. By turning it further, the blood is made to start; and by taking away the key, as at E, the tortured person is left in agony, without the means of helping himself, or being helped by others. This is applied in case of obstinacy, at the discretion of the captain. I, F, is a speculum oris. The dotted lines represent it when ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... refuge in rum? Yes, so 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, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... couldst spare All that I loved, to peace or Heaven. To them be joy or rest—on me Thy future ills shall press in vain; I nothing owe but years to thee, A debt already paid in pain. Yet even that pain was some relief; It felt, but still forgot thy power:[bs] The active agony of grief Retards, but never counts the hour.[bt] In joy I've sighed to think thy flight Would soon subside from swift to slow; Thy cloud could overcast the light, But could not add a night to Woe; For then, however ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... have gone below than she could have flown. She walked aft, and stood at the taffrail with tightly-clasped hands and starting eyes, looking eagerly astern, her whole body quivering with an agony of impatience at what seemed to her the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... this, and Nancy sprang up, holding lightly to one of the low hanging boughs. Before they spoke, and to her wild dismay, he kissed her; and, as much to her dismay, she yielded, clinging to him in a strange, sweet agony. For if two hearts are hungry, if two natures have been strangled, there is a time when the touch of lips to lips lets loose a sweep of human passion before which the hosts of heaven and the laws of ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... behind her he slid from his chair and bowed his head upon it, crying out in a voice of tearful agony, "Thank God! thank God!" again and again, while his unfinished form shook with hysteric sobs. "And she said I was not wise!" he half laughed, as the tears ran down his face and he resumed his invocation of thankfulness. Thus Nimbus found him and carried him home with his ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... ruled by Englishmen is to me the chief agony of existence. They are a nation without faith, truth or conscience enveloped in a panoplied pharisaism and an incurable hypocrisy. Their moral appetite is fed on falsehood. They profess Christianity and believe only in Mammon. They talk of liberty while ruling India and Ireland against ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... with a bitter cry, she dropped on to the floor, her arms flung out across the wide, luxurious bed. It was not true! It was not true! It could not be—this awful thing that had happened to her—not to her, Diana Mayo! It was a dream, a ghastly dream that would pass and free her from this agony. Shuddering, she raised her head. The strange room swam before her eyes. Oh, God! It was not a dream. It was real, it was an actual fact from which there was no escape. She was trapped, powerless, defenceless, and behind the heavy curtains near her was the man waiting to claim what he ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... almost angered at this little silly child being in such an agony of sorrow—she, who could never have known how to love him. And after all this persistent grief was willfully thrown away. For Diane spoke in perfect sincerity when she taxed Veronique with an injurious, barbarous mistake. She knew ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to Channing that he had lived through many years; that the strain of the spectacle would leave its mark upon his nerves forever. He had been buffeted and beaten by a storm of all the great emotions; pride of race and country, pity for the dead, agony for the dying, who clung to blistering armor-plates, or sank to suffocation in the sea; the lust of the hunter, when the hunted thing is a fellow-man; the joys of danger and of excitement, when the shells lashed the waves about him, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... terrible malady, all the horrors of which I was to realize. My palate was completely skinned, part of the bone came away, my teeth seemed ready to fall out of the gums, my sufferings were terrible. I feared that my brain might be affected by the agony of pain in my head. I was more than a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... from a common archetype,' and therefore represent one and the same ancient and, I may add, corrupt copy? The same Critics are reminded that in the same four Codexes [commonly called the Ferrar Group] 'the agony and bloody sweat' (St. Luke xxii. 43, 44) is found thrust into St. Matthew's Gospel between ch. xxvi. 39 and 40. Such licentiousness on the part of a solitary exemplar of the Gospels no more affects the proper place of these or of those verses than the superfluous digits ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... by some stupendous unseen force. A great pain gripped him from head to foot, his brain seemed to be on fire. In vain he strove to release his hand on the door knob; it seemed welded to the metal. From head to foot the shooting agony went on. With his teeth ripping his lower lip till the blood came, Berrington tried to fight down the yell of pain that filled his throat, but the effort was beyond human power. A long piteous wail ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... the instrument of torture, nerve himself for a blow, and with fearful force the rawhide descended upon the quivering flesh. It cut the skin, raised great welts, and the warm blood trickled down my back. Oh God! I can feel the torture now—the terrible, excruciating agony of those moments. I did not scream; I was too proud to let my tormentor know what I was suffering. I closed my lips firmly, that not even a groan might escape from them, and I stood like a statue while the keen lash cut deep into my flesh. As soon as I was ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... several of them, one after another, with ball. He returned to the palace; but had not been home more than three hours, when he and his favourite wife, the Kooduseea Begum,** had a fierce quarrel, in which both became insane; she was so enraged that she took poison forthwith, and, in her agony, actually spit up her liver, which had been torn to pieces by the force of the poison! The King could not stand the horrible sight, and ran off and hid himself in the race-stand, near which you fell and broke your thigh-bone in April last; there he remained shut up till she died. He had had warning, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... of delight. "Why, it's my own waterfall! I've been wandering in a big circle all this while, and here I am not far from my boulder where—-ouch!" The sentence ended in a loud wail of agony, for, taking a step forward, the young wayfarer's foot had slipped on a loose stone. His ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... Brewster, Mr. Wing, another one of the Winnebagos, that the Twins don't know—yet—Sahwah insisted that you were a lawyer and I insisted you were a professor, and now Sahwah was right after all. You are a lawyer, aren't you? I believe Agony said you were." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... of torture keep him wakeful? Could the man bear the disgrace, the derision, shouting, agony? Was there nothing in this thought, that as a witness of Jesus Christ he was to appear next day, that should soothe him even unto slumber? Upon the silence of his guarded chamber let none but ministering angels break. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... the mother or daughter were scarcely for a moment off the boat—difficult as it was to keep her in view. Often they gasped for breath, and their hearts sank within them, when she was concealed by the foaming waves; and more than once they could with difficulty refrain from crying out with agony of spirit as she remained longer than before hidden from view. Still, there she was; but as yet she had encountered only a portion of the dangers she had to go through; the greatest was in getting alongside the ship, and next to that was the return through ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston

... with him. His compensation lay in the fact that his theories had been proved true. More- over, there were, he knew, other inventions ahead, and more important discoveries to be made. If money were necessary, these new inventions would supply it. Such indifference to practical questions was an agony to one of her temperament, burdened as she was by the thought of their increasing daily expenses, the magnitude of which ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... Griffenbottom was carried up on the hustings. This carrying did him good in the borough; but it should be acknowledged on his behalf that he did his best to walk. In the extreme agony of his attack he had to make his speech, and he made it. The hustings stood in the market-square, and straight in front of the wooden erection, standing at right angles to it, was a stout rail dividing the space for the distance of fifty or sixty yards, so that ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... pan of the disconsolate Down Easter, was now setting over the dreary waters, veiling itself in vapours. The wind blew hoarsely in the cordage; the seas broke heavily against the bows; and the frigate, staggering under whole top-sails, strained as in agony on her way. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... night in the space between the beds, whilst the others slept; and when the approaches of death nailed these unfortunate people to their place, did they not energetically curse that help, which in such a situation could only prolong their painful agony. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... the long, cool, wet leaf softly across the young man's eyes. An icicle of pain darted through them; every nerve in his body was drawn together there in a knot of agony. ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke

... left Bourke, and then there began the long, long agony of scrub and wire fence, with here and there a natural clearing, which seemed even more dismal than the funereal "timber" itself. The only thing which might seem in keeping with one of these soddened flats would be the ghost of a funeral—a city funeral with plain ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... seen that though she herself could enjoy the boundless love which her lover tendered to her, telling herself that though it was only for a while, it was very sweet to have it so, yet for him these meetings were full of agony. But in addition to this there was, I think, a jealousy on the part of Zachary Fay as to his daughter. When there was still a question whether the young lord should be his son-in-law, he had been willing to give way and to subordinate ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... dwindling away; of his daughter disregarding his commands and disobeying him. In his innermost soul he felt convinced that she would never marry his nephew. He cast his eyes in the direction of the latter. What! he was sleeping while he was enduring all the agony of a king who is being dethroned; of a general, whose army is in open mutiny against him; of a millionaire who sees his whole fortune disappear through some ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... down with my back against a thorn bush; the thorns entered my flesh, and when I felt them, I pressed harder against the bush; I thought the pain of the flesh might in some degree counteract the mental agony; presently I felt them no longer; the power of the mental horror was so great that it was impossible, with that upon me, to feel any pain from the thorns. I continued in this posture a long time, undergoing what I cannot describe, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... Palace Hotel on his pension. He worshipped Aunt Martha's children and her children's children, but he never saw her except when they met in some casual way. She was married when he came back from the war, and if he ever knew her agony he never spoke of it. Whenever he talked of the events before the war, his face wore a troubled, baffled look, and he did not seem to remember things clearly. He was a simple old man with a boyish face ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... oil over the parapet. Shrieks and yells from below at once testified to its effect, but it was only just where the cauldrons were placed that the besiegers were prevented by this means from mounting the ladders, and even here many, in spite of the agony of their ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... it to her. Girls are always delighted when this is done. They usually clasp their hands together as though in pain, roll their eyes in an ecstasy, and shout, 'How perfectly perfect!' Then the poet will grip both her hands very tightly and say he loves her but will not marry her, and, in an agony of inspiration, he will tear himself away and stand drinks to himself until he is put out. This is, of course, only one way of being a poet. If he perseveres he will ultimately write lyrics for the music halls and make ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... fortitude of a great man. 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 ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... culture and refinement belonging to a high development of aesthetic civilisation, the presentation of a great terror immediately suggested the concomitant horror; and suggested it so vividly that the visible definition of the result—the bloodshed, the agony, and the death-rattle—would have produced an impression too dreadful to be associated with any pleasure to the beholder There was no curiosity to behold violent death among a people accustomed to see it often enough in the course ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... do you remember what we once read in a book of history at school? It told of the death of a tortured man, in the old time, who was broken on the wheel. He lived through it long enough to say that the agony, after the first stroke of the club, dulled his capacity for feeling pain when the next blows fell. I fancy pain of the mind must follow the same rule. Nothing you can ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... nurse his ailments, he would not think of it while his work remained unfinished. To turn back to those dreary sponges, sleep in those flooded plains, encounter anew that terrible pneumonia which was "worse than ten fevers," or that distressing haemorrhage which added extreme weakness to extreme agony—might have turned any heart; Livingstone never flinched from it. What a reception awaited him if he had gone home to England! What welcome from friends and children, what triumphal cheers from all the great Societies and savants, what ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... The agony of the thing was drawing to a close. I was longing for the time when I could go home and get some cold potatoes out of mother's cupboard. I ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... bent over the half-frozen form in which a flicker still lingered they shook their heads. Death waged a stern battle even for this last relic, but life triumphed, and when the agony of returning animation had ceased the sole survivor told the cruiser's mess how Trawler No. 1 had lost ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... expatiate on the heinous guilt of misprisions or mistakes in men in high places. The humiliation was not complete without the trial, but it was for humiliation and not fair investigation that the trial was wanted. Bacon knew that the trial would only prolong his agony, and give a further ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... connection, fraught with poignant remorse and fascinating delight, were very agitating to the count. Amalia went occasionally to the Grange. At the social gathering in the evening she would give an account of her visit in a high-pitched voice; and he was in an agony of confusion, anxiety, and distress, whilst she with perfect sang froid told all that she could tell; spoke of the garden, scolded him for its state of neglect; and she amused herself with bringing home some plants every time ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... They become part of a new sanctuary, in which God is to be worshipped, where the Gospel will be preached, where penitent sinners will find the Christ-Saviour, where sorrowing ones will be comforted. Surely it was better that these stones should be torn out, even amid agony, and built into the wall of the church, than that they should have lain ages more, undisturbed in the dark quarry. They were saved from uselessness by ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... forenoon wore on, Skag was in tightening tension. He hated himself for this, but the fact stubbornly remained that all he cared for in the world was the meeting again. It seemed greater than he—this agony of separation. It brought all fears and self-diminishing. It told him that Carlin would run from him, if she knew he wanted her presence so. He knew her kind of woman loves self-conquest—the man who can powerfully wait and not be victimised by his ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... Hesper-Phosphor, far away Shining, the first, the last white star, Hear'st thou the strange, the ghostly cry, That moan of an ancient agony From purple forest to golden sky Shivering over the breathless bay? It is not the wind that wakes with the day; For see, the gulls that wheel and call, Beyond the tumbling white-topped bar, Catching ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... followed to realize the full bitterness of the bereavement. Once out of the still, solemn chamber, which seemed to hush all violent emotion, there were associations at every step, in every room, of him whose place should know him no more, to call forth the uncontrollable agony of tears that had for a time been repressed. And when the still form had been carried to its last resting-place, and the heavy consciousness made itself felt that he was gone, never in any possible event to return to them, it seemed to Lucy as if it would have been too terrible ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... incautiously exposed themselves were the first to suffer. A poor fellow was standing at the window next to me. A bullet struck him on the breast. It was fired from a tree, I suspect. Down he fell, crying out piteously, and writhing in his agony. It was very dreadful. Then the blood rushed out of his mouth in torrents, and he was quiet. I sprang forward, intending to help him. The pale light of the lantern fell on his countenance. He looked perfectly calm. I thought he ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... detail, of his visit to Sharpman's office on Sunday evening, of what he had heard there, of his subsequent journey through the streets of the city, of his night of agony, of his morning of shame, of his final ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... actions betray the most savage rage of jealousy; he rushes to seize the PRINCESS, but, recollecting that her attendants are by, he goes out in an agony, by his gestures menacing revenge. The PRINCESS exit on the ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... of June he lay in a great agony, insomuch that the sweat followed drop after drop, which he bore with wonderful courage and patience (as indeed he did all his sickness) without complaint; and about three o'clock the next morning, he died, without any shew of trouble or pangs. Immediately before his breath ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... him. The improvement lasted but a few minutes. In the course of the day he was given some English powders, which lent him a feverish strength, so that at six in the evening he asked for some cards and pictures to play with, but the fever only gave way to his death agony. Towards ten in the evening the child drew ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... soon as he had received that letter, and did not return until past midnight. Netta awaited him in an agony of terror lest ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... following day, when he went to see Kunaishoyu, he carried with him poisoned drugs. Half the draught he drank himself,[18] and thus put the Prince off his guard, so that he swallowed the remainder fearlessly. Tsusen, seeing this, hurried away, and as he was carried home in his litter the death-agony seized him, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... but she suppressed her disappointment, begged him to take advantage of the bench, and herself retired into the orchard while he read his epistle. There, as she stood apparently amusing herself by the pond, wiping away a tear or two which would have way, she little imagined what agony her husband was enduring from this letter, which she was supposing must make his heart overflow with pleasure. The letter was half full of reply to Edward's account of Margaret, in his epistle of last June—of raillery about her, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... to show how unwillingly her kind spirit despised him. The reason for the act—she would ask for that! Rose would not be so philosophic as her mother. She would grasp at every chance to excuse the deed. He cried out against his scheming sister in an agony, and while he did so, encountered Miss Carrington and Miss. Bonner in deep converse. Juliana pinched her arm, whereupon Miss Carrington said: 'You look merry this morning, Mr. Harrington': for he was unawares smiling at the image ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... took care to wash out all traces of it, but the magic power remained, and as soon as the garment became warm on the body of Hercules the poison penetrated into all his limbs and caused him the most intense agony. In his frenzy he seized Lichas, who had brought him the fatal robe, and hurled him into the sea. He wrenched off the garment, but it stuck to his flesh, and with it he tore away whole pieces of his body. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... to their possessor last of all. The pale-eyed school-girl, who never played along with the other children, never ran and laughed and shouted with the rest, little knew what days and hours and years of dulness, of pain and agony, she was laying up for the future, what a premature grave she was digging for herself. Peace be with her, her toil is over; it is now three years since Heaven received in Charlotte ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop

... founded upon an absolute unwavering belief in her innocence, even amongst those who were most loud and positive as partisans in affirming it,—and then remember that all this hideous scenical display and notoriety settled upon one whose very nature, constitutionally timid, recoiled with the triple agony of womanly shame—of matronly dignity—of insulted innocence, from every mode and shape of public display. Combine all these circumstances and elements of the case, and you may faintly enter into the situation of my poor Agnes. Perhaps the best way to express it at once is by recurring to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... garrison at the spot, and the women began to scream and run wildly about. Pyrrhus had made his way through all obstacles and was about to attack the nearest of those who disputed his passage, when his horse, struck in the body by a Cretan javelin, reared in the death-agony, and threw Pyrrhus to the ground. He fell on a steep bank, and his fall caused such consternation among his followers that a timely charge of the Spartans drove them back. Upon this he gave orders to put a stop to the assault, for he imagined that the Lacedaemonians would soon ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... Christ, that hears A mortal mother's lullabies; That feels our agony and tears, Whose bosom trembles with our sighs, Give us pure hearts and undefiled, Make us like thee, O Christ, ...
— Christmas Sunshine • Various

... boat, Michelot awaited my return all unconscious of what was taking place. He had heard the splash, and had suddenly stood up, on the point of going ashore, when my body rose within a few feet of him. He spoke of the agony of mind wherewith he had suddenly stretched forth and clutched me by my doublet, fearing that I was indeed dead. He had lifted me into the boat to find that my heart still beat and that the blood flowed from my wounds. These he had there and then bound up in the only rude fashion he was master of, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... eyes moved from Phyllis, standing there obviously quite taken by surprise, to Joy, clinging to her burning-cheeked, in what was quite as obviously an agony of terror. He caught his breath for a moment, moved forward and opened his lips to speak, then shut them again firmly and stood still where he was, with the afternoon sunlight glinting over his fair head, and little Angela's more golden one, pressed ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... performed, one of a very simple nature, but sufficient to give instant relief; while the Hakim's instructions that the lad was to remain lying down for a month were not hard for one who had not stood up, save in acute agony, for ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... agony was on Miles's face. It was almost worse than finding no father at all, to find such a one ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... without a certain enjoyment. The slowness of the tempo made it possible for Keith to keep in tune by leaning very close to the boy sitting next to him. Even the reading of the gospels and other recurring features of the service could be borne. But when the sermon began, Keith fell into sheer agony. The other boys seemed capable of letting the words of the preacher drop off them as water drops off the oily feathers of a water-fowl. But one of Keith's characteristics was that he had to listen to anything ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... Barnwell, I would not go through the agony of such a dream again for Alexander's crown. You are an educated, well-read man. Tell me, do you believe there is such an awful place?" he asked, and he seemed to have forgotten all his ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold

... its mournful tender eyes told little of the fierce agony that seemed consuming her, as she gazed into the beloved countenance for the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... thee. I do not take the part of her misdeeds; They say 'twas she who planned her husband's murder: 'Tis true that she espoused his murderer. A grievous crime, no doubt; but then it happened In darksome days of trouble and dismay, In the stern agony of civil war, When she, a woman, helpless and hemmed in By a rude crowd of rebel vassals, sought Protection in a powerful chieftain's arms. God knows what arts were used to overcome her! For woman is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... world heard of Maya, the Child of the Kingdom, and from land to land men carried the stinging arrows of her wit, or signalled the beacon-fires of her scorn, while seas and shores unknown echoed her mad and rapt music, or answered the veiled agony that derided itself with choruses of laughter, from every mystic whisper of the wave, or roar of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature? What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her? Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... passage he experienced the most fearful storms: the darkness at night often prevented the execution of naval manoeuvres, and the vessel was drenched with water. The condition of the crew was terrible; "cries of agony made the air ring:" four only, including the officers of the watch, were able to keep the decks. After beating about Port Jackson for several days, a boat appeared which had been dispatched by the governor, who saw the French were unable to manage the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... 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 sting ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... Astorre, under the spell of this marvellous night, lay on their stomachs alert for alarms. A heavy-wheeling white owl had come by with a swish, and Biagio had called aloud to Madonna in his agony. Astorre had crossed himself over and over again: this was the Angel of Death cruising abroad on the hunt for goats or goat-herds; but "No, no!" cried Luca, eldest of the three, "the wings are too short, friends. That is a fluffy ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... her expiring strength at the last moment of existence. The unhappy lady struggled beneath her coverings; the agony she suffered had given her a convulsive energy, and inarticulate sounds proceeded from her mouth. Derues approached and held her on the bed. She sank back on the pillow, shuddering convulsively, her hands plucking and twisting ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... since Ignacio had been made prisoner, hours that to him appeared centuries. Exhausted by the violence of his exertions, and still more by the mental agony he had endured, his head fell forward on his breast, a cold sweat stood upon his forehead, and had it not been for the cords that held him up, he would have fallen to the ground. He was roused from this state of exhaustion and despair by the noise of approaching ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... with the deep blue of the sky—when the hum of the bee is heard amid the heath, and the lark high overhead. But it must have been a gloomy and miserable solitude on that night when the husband of Annie lay tossing in mortal agony, and no neighbour near to counsel or assist, her weeping children around her, and with neither lamp nor candle in the cottage. It was only by the 'light of a burning coal taken from the fire, and exchanged for another as the flame waxed ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... one fact that they are 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 ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... list with your red raw agony column made him most suspicious, and I believe he knows to a hair exactly how big ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... his grandfather, but had degenerated from the uprightness and the courage by which his grandfather had been distinguished. It appears that the prisoner was, with cruel cunning, long kept in an agony of suspense, in order that his family might be induced to pay largely for mercy. His spirit sank under the terrors of death. When brought to the bar of the Old Bailey he not only pleaded guilty, but disgraced the illustrious name which he bore by abject submissions and entreaties. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... for the Spartans all was lost; but the tide of victory was soon suddenly turned by a very unexpected incident. An arrow pierced the breast of the horse on which Pyrrhus was riding, and gave the animal a fatal wound. The horse plunged and reared in his agony and terror, and then fell, throwing Pyrrhus to the ground. This occurrence, of course, arrested the whole troop in their progress. The horsemen wheeled suddenly about, and gathered around Pyrrhus to rescue him from his danger. This gave the Spartans time to rally, and ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... apprentice, with his struggles for existence and his ultimate final failure owing to the irresistible indulgence of a passionate physical instinct." At first this too seemed to be a failure. To use the words of Arne Garborg, a Norwegian author and critic, Lie "had spoken—cried out in the passion or agony of his soul, and people stood there quite calm and as if they had heard nothing;" there seemed to be a total lack of sympathetic comprehension on the part of the public. In the end, however, the book found its way to the hearts of its readers, and, to quote Mr. Gosse's words on ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... agony having to leave the house, downright agony. Oh my God, how I do hate to go! But I have my reasons. The director of our ward gave notice he was going to make us a present of two shillings a man; and the minute I let ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius



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



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