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Rapture   /rˈæptʃər/   Listen
Rapture

noun
1.
A state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion.  Synonyms: ecstasy, exaltation, raptus, transport.
2.
A state of elated bliss.  Synonym: ecstasy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rapture" Quotes from Famous Books



... Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... her first visit to a famous modiste in Mrs. Halstead's company, and returned exhausted but impressed. The latent feminine instinct for adornment had taken possession of her and through the long evening she dreamed in a hazy rapture. The motive which had so far actuated her on her course was temporarily laid aside and in its stead came vague scenes of the future, when she should have learned how to carry those marvelous creations with the trained ease and elegance of Angelica, and was wholly ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... cried Annabel, reveling in the crystal, filigree, coral, and mosaic trinkets spread before her while Rose completed her rapture by adding sundry ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... song of holy rapture, Hear it break from yonder strand, Where our friends for us are waiting, In the golden, summer land. They have reached the port of glory, O'er the Jordan they have passed, And with millions they are shouting, Home at last, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... are the first to wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the track through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason to call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... and were on the brow of the 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 a voice in ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all his might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if only to express his rapture fully. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... and so firm his hand, that the heart of the savage was cloven by the spear. The youth rose to his feet, dizzy from the shock, and, springing nimbly upon the grim body of his prostrate victim, his fine form swelling with the rapture of his recent triumph, brought his horn to his lips, and again its notes went ringing merrily through ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... Hildegarde, in tones of hushed rapture, "it is a chicken-pie, and it is all for us. Hold your plate, favored one of the gods! A river, a boat-house, and chicken-pie! Cousin Wealthy, I am so glad you asked ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... of the most favored which a poor author ever had, Rousseau, ever craving some outlet for his passionate sentiments, created an ideal object of love. He wrote imaginary letters, dwelling with equal rapture on those he wrote and those he fancied he received in return, and which he read to his lady friends, after his rambles in the forests and parks, during their reunions at the supper-table. Thus was born the "Nouvelle Heloise,"—a novel ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... were received in the most friendly manner by the good King of Root-Valley. The Princess was in a sea of rapture at the brilliant appearance of the bright, varnished, wooden Prince, who in a formal and well-turned speech declared his love for her, together with his other wishes, in a pleasing and appropriate manner. ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick

... Lucia, raising her voice for the first time, so that it could be heard by any others than her nearest neighbor; "right well can I comprehend it; were I a man myself, I feel that I should pant for the battle. The triumph would be more than rapture; and strife, for its own sake, maddening bliss! Heavens! to see the gladiators wheel and charge; to see their swords flash in the sun; and the red blood gush out unheeded; and the grim faces flushed and furious; and the eyes greedily devouring the wounds of the foeman, but all unconscious ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... however friendly. She had seen little of him of late, but in one sense that had been a relief, though she would have done anything to make that feeling impossible. His rather precise courtesy and consideration, when he was with her, emphasised the distance between "the first fine careless rapture" and this grey quiet. And, strange to say, though in the first five years after the Cairo days and deeds, Egypt seemed an infinite space away, and David a distant, almost legendary figure, now Egypt seemed but beyond the door—as though, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... who first came into notice by dint of naming a book of essays, "Is Life worth Living?" gave us not long ago a very sweet description of an English country town; and he worked himself up to quite a moving pitch of rapture as he described the admirable social arrangements which may be perceived on a market-day. This enthusiast tells us how the members of the great county families drive in to do their shopping. The stately ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... loveliness. It grew in a very pretty china vase, as if more precious than the other flowers. Several blossoms were fully expanded, and many tiny buds were showing their crimson tips. As I stood lost in rapture over this little miracle of beauty, a humming-bird, the smallest of its fairy tribe, darted into sight, and hung for an instant, its ruby crest and green and golden plumage flashing in the sun, over my new-found treasure. Were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... stood spellbound, regarding with ineffable rapture this inspiring spectacle. "How manifold are thy blessings, O Bibliomania," thought I, "and how graciously they are distributed in this joyous circle, wherein it is permitted to see not only the maturer members, but, alas, the youth and even the babes and sucklings drinking freely and gratefully ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... Hollywood, where Judge Hildreth had business with Mr. Hawthorne, Evadne was in an ecstasy of silent rapture. She had never dreamed what a New England farm might be. Its varied beauty, clad in the dazzling robes of early summer, came upon her with the suddenness of a revelation. She begged to be allowed to wait for her uncle out of doors, and wandered slowly on past the great barns to where ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... late, but in spite of Heriot's kindly suggestion that the rapture he anticipated from her conversation should be postponed till she had recovered from the fatigues of her journey, his fiancee unselfishly preferred to recompense him immediately for his prolonged deprivation of her society. He acceded at once to her wishes, with ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... from Paradise kissed the limbs of the girl who gathered twigs, and her youth ached with a sudden rapture of beauty, and her thoughts hummed like the bees ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... body was under-sized and weakly, and his mind and speech, backward of development, smacked of his father. He was absolutely dominated by his sister, and followed her lead in everything with adoring rapture. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... to see what it could be; and he had no sooner viewed it closer, than he threw up his hands with rapture. "It is a seraph," he whispered, "a lovely seraph. Heaven hath witnessed my bitter trial, and approves my cruelty; and this flower of the skies is sent to cheer me, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... appearance; the eager curiosity and keen discussion which it awakened; the criticism which it called forth; and, above all, the animated delight with which it was received by all who were young or not critical. Distinctly, too, can we recall the breathless rapture with which we hung over its pages, in those happy days when the mind's appetite for books was as ravenous as the body's for bread-and-butter, and a novel, with plenty of fighting in it, was all we asked at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... that of Jesus, that Mary could hardly recall the one without the other. And, besides, Elisabeth, as the angel said, was her kinswoman—perhaps her cousin—to whom she naturally turned in the hour of her maidenly astonishment and rapture. Though much younger, Mary was united to her relative by a close and tender tie, and it was only natural that what had happened to Elisabeth should have impressed her almost as deeply as her own memorable experiences. So it is possible ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... particular point of psychology does not arise at all in the modern cases of mere public discomfort or inconvenience. The causes of Miss Pankhurst's cheerfulness require no mystical explanations. If she were being burned alive as a witch, if she then looked up in unmixed rapture and saw a ballot-box descending out of heaven, then I should say that the incident, though not conclusive, was frightfully impressive. It would not prove logically that she ought to have the vote, or that anybody ought ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... leaned back, lifted her eyes with an expression of sentimental rapture, and was executing ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... prince," said Charles, throwing himself into his arms with rapture, and kissing him in the Italian fashion, which Dick did not half like, "you are, indeed, worthy of your reputation; and these are the celebrated Seven-league Boots? Harry," he cried to his brother, "come ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... of meeting her, he had waited about curious to see how Raeburn would get on with the mob; it was with a strange pang of rapture and dismay that he had seen his fair little ideal. That she should be in the midst of that hooting mob made his heart throb with indignation, yet there was something so sweet in her grave, steadfast face that he was, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... each other's waists, contemplated the actresses' dresses. And standing against the porch on their aching feet, a couple of tramps, accustomed to living under the open sky, whether mild or sullen, slowly shifted their dejected gaze, while a college lad gazed with rapture at the fiery tresses which coiled like flames on the nape ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... path which Schiller's genius was to take in life. The Duke had prohibited all German classics at his Academy; the boys, nevertheless, succeeded in forming a secret library, and Schiller read the works of Klopstock, Klinger, Lessing, Goethe, and Wieland's translations of Shakespeare with rapture, no doubt somewhat increased by the dangers he braved in gaining access to these treasures. In 1780, the same year in which he passed his examination and received the appointment of regimental surgeon, Schiller ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... not to be reduced to the conventional dead level of his fellow townsmen; it would be a waste of rare material. Rather, as the phrase is, he should be featured. And Olive proceeded to feature him accordingly, to the solid satisfaction of her father and to the no small rapture of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... with what joy, with what rapture, would the changelings (or changeables, if thou like that word better) number the weeks, the days, the hours, as the annual obligation approached to its ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... party on the tenth. And on the fifteenth, unless it chanced upon a Sunday, my grandfather never failed to embark in his pinnace at the Annapolis dock for the Hall. Once seated in the stern between Mr. Carvel's knees, what rapture when at last we shot out into the blue waters of the bay and I thought of the long summer of joy before me. Scipio was generalissimo of these arrangements, and was always at the dock punctually at ten to hand my grandfather ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... far-between the hours In which the Master of Angelic powers Lightens the dusk within The holy of holies, be it thine to win Rare vistas of white light, Half parted lips through which the Infinite Murmurs her ancient story, Harkening to whom the wandering planets hoary Waken primeval fires, With deeper rapture in celestial choirs Breathe, and with fleeter motion Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean. So hearken thou like these, Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees, Until thy song's elation Echoes her ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell

... deeper truth than they understood, put upon His brow the crown of thorns, and forced into His hand the sceptre of reed, was taught here—the lesson that meekness conquers, and that His kingdom is founded in suffering, and wielded in gentleness. The lesson of the ancient psalm, which in rapture of prophetic vision beheld the coming of the Bridegroom, and said with strange blending of images of war and of peace: 'Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies; in Thy majesty ride ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... This great house was all so different from anything she (and many others in the city) had ever seen. And she stood gazing into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in a rapture which her aunt and cousins were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the beneficiaire forward, amidst bursts of enthusiasm—and she looked so handsome and radiant, with her hair still over her shoulders, that Pen hardly could contain himself for rapture: and he leaned over his mother's chair, and shouted, and hurrayed, and waved his hat. It was all he could do to keep his secret from Helen, and not say, "Look! That's the woman! Isn't she peerless? I tell you I love her." But he disguised these feelings ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the vast church aisles, or stopped before some glittering shrine. What then? Who would question the reality of a miracle, or doubt that sublime revelations might be made to any holy monk as he wrestled in prayer with a rapture of the soul, and found himself lifted to the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... of our editor, or interrupts his flow of rapture over the fanaticism of these times, especially when expressed in the letters of Cromwell. Over the theological effusions which the general of the Puritan army addresses, from his camp, to the Edinburgh clergy, Mr Carlyle thus expatiates:—"Dryasdust, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... which the young sailor through life cannot resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker starts without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal ambition. No young man of any character can think, without a thrill of rapture, on the glory of having his name—now obscure—written in capitals on the page of his country's history. A true patriot cares nothing for fame; a really great man is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... the wood, and recounting stories of bears which had devoured lost naughty children in the forest. I remember how we all knelt down at last and recited our prayers until suddenly we heard the bugle-call of Aeolus sounding close by us. The poor old man, wild with rapture at having found us, kissed and shook us so violently that we almost wished ourselves lost in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... day-time, those of the valentina at all times diffuse a very powerful odour, so as even to scent a small greenhouse; we have often been amused with hearing the different opinions entertained of this smell, some speaking of it in terms of rapture, others ready to faint when they approach it: the flowers of the valentina are more disposed to produce seed-vessels than those of the glauca, the seeds of which usually ripen well, and afford the means of increasing the plant most readily. To have a succession of small handsome bushy ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... reacxeti. Rant paroli sensence. Ranunculus ranunkolo. Rap frapeti. Rap frapo, frapeto. Rapacious rabema. Rapacity rabemeco. Rape forrabo. Rapid rapida. Rapidity rapideco. Rapidly rapide. Rapier rapiro. Rapine rabo. Rapt rava, entuziasma. Rapture ravo, entuziasmo. Rare (seldom) malofta. Rare (curious) kurioza. Rare antikva. Rarely malofte. Rareness malofteco. Rarity malofteco. Rarity (dainty) frandajxo. Rascal kanajlo. Rase disjxeti. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... almost choking with delight, flinging himself first on one then on the other, darting back a step or two as if to see them more distinctly and make sure he was not mistaken, then rolling himself upon them again all quivering and shaking with rapture. And the cry of ecstasy that broke from the twins would have gone to the heart of ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... been placed beside him on the carriage seat. He was inwardly shuddering with a rapture of exultation which was almost anguish. The people were looking at him—shouting at him—surely it seemed like it when he looked at the faces nearest in the ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... days of their acquaintance, when Anna had thought no pleasure could compare to a ramble in the country with Delia. Fresh from the rattle and noise of London, its stony pavements, and the stiff brilliancy of the flowers in the parks, it had been a sort of rapture to her to wander freely over the fields and through the woods. Aunt Sarah's garden was beautiful, but this was better still. All the flowers found here might be gathered, and Delia knew exactly where they all grew in their different seasons, and the best way of getting to them. Anna had begun, under ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton

... him Came trooping the household band, Joyous, loving and eager To reach him a helping hand, To watch him with silent rapture, To cheer him with happy noise, My one little fair-faced daughter And four brown ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... him! What music like that voice! It made him live through his agonies again, which by contrast heightened the rapture of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... stood His arrows fitting: when, his brazen casque Relinquish'd, all his features shone display'd, As purple-rob'd his snow-white steed he press'd, In painted housings gay, and curb'd his jaws White foaming,—then the lost Nisean maid, Scarcely herself, in frantic rapture spoke:— Blest call'd the javelin, that his hands it touch'd; Blest call'd the reins he curb'd. Arduous she burns, (Could she) through hostile ranks her virgin steps To bend: arduous she burns, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... With arms each laced round other's waist, Through the orchard paths they tread With gliding pace, face mixed with face, Yet never a word they said: Oh! soared the song the birds among, And seemed with a rapture sped, On a Whit-sunday morn in the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... recitation of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. It was strange to see this little dark-complexioned, dark-eyed girl, the merest handful of flesh and bone, divest herself at will of her personality, and assume the tragic horror of Lady Macbeth, or the passionate rapture of Juliet detaining her husband-lover on the balcony of her chamber. Hubert watched in wonderment this girl, so weak and languid in her own nature, awaking only to life when she assumed the personality ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... playing cards on the living room table under the hanging lamp, mulling over the work of the day, and begging Tharon to sing to them, sometimes with the instrument, sometimes sitting in the deep east window, when the moon shone, and then they turned out the light and listened in adoring rapture. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... that was her due—to the study of a pattern in the carpet or of her own skirt, she stood there on the spot which had struck her as the most modest (and from which, as she very well knew, a cry of rapture from Mme. de Saint-Euverte would extricate her as soon as her presence there was noticed), next to Mme. de Cambremer, whom, however, she did not know. She observed the dumb-show by which her neighbour was expressing her passion for music, but she refrained from copying it. This was not ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... an irresistible desire to bathe in the pool. Slipping off his clothes he plunged in. It was as if he bathed in a cloud of sunset. A celestial rapture flowed through him. The waves of the stream were like a bevy of nymphs taking shape around him, clinging to him with tender breasts, as he floated onward, lost in delight, yet keenly sensitive to every impression. Swiftly the current ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... accustomed to cynicism and the half-mocking homage of jaded experience. But this was new, this was wonderful—a force that burned and dazzled her, yet which attracted her irresistibly none the less, thrilling her with a rapture that had never before entered her life. Whatever the risk, whatever the penalty, she was bound to ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... might sit together under the shade of the sail for an hour at a stretch, he holding her hand in his and neither saying a single word, though at times the transports of poor Barnaby's emotions would go far to suffocate him with their rapture. As for her face at such moments, it appeared sometimes to assume a transparency as though of a light shining from ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... Grecian Urn' does not perhaps quite reach this divine thrill: but its second and third stanzas have a rapture that comes very near to it (I will speak anon of the fourth stanza): and I should not quarrel with one who preferred these two stanzas even to the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... art thou changed, since the light breath of morning Dispersed the soft dewdrops in showers from the tree! Like a beautiful bud my lone dwelling adorning, Thy smiles call'd up feelings of rapture in me: I thought not the sunbeams all gaily that shone On thy waking, at ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly; that too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which broke from the man who had not seen ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, "I'll have it out of you!" and if anybody made an admission, he said, "Now I have got you!" The magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger. Thieves and thief-takers hung in dread rapture on his words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which side he was on I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I stole out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was making ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... his quizzing glass, nodded, backed away in feigned rapture, and presently sat down by the window, stretching his ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... rapture burst from all lips; all shouted exultingly, "War! war! We shall at length bid defiance to the arrogance of the French emperor! We shall have war with France; we shall avenge the wrongs which we have suffered so long, and set bounds to the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... thought of Thee With rapture fills my breast; But sweeter far Thy Face to see, And ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous

... his head cleared now through the rapture of battle, minded him of his promise to Field, and lied like a hero. "Sure, how should I know him, sorr? They're all of the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... poured into the prince's mouth; he was gently slapped all over and wrapped in hot towels, and he came to life with a little cry. Napoleon, wild with joy, kissed him. The thought that he had a son filled him with rapture such as none of his triumphs had given him. "Well, gentlemen," he said, when he went back to his own room, "we have got a fine, healthy boy. We had to urge him a little, to persuade him to come, but there he is at last!" And then he added, with deep emotion: ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... Katie, chased her with crickets in their fingers, and "jollied" her with an irreverent freedom that turned Tansey's heart into cold lead in his bosom. The signs of his adoration were few—a tremulous "Good morning," stealthy glances at her during meals, and occasionally (Oh, rapture!) a blushing, delirious game of cribbage with her in the parlour on some rare evening when a miraculous lack of engagement kept her at home. Kiss him in the hall! Aye, he feared it, but it was an ecstatic fear such as Elijah must have ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... suddenly she felt that she was starving. She looked round the room; there was nothing upon the table. Mrs. Brigg, an hour after her "Te Deum," had been seized in the claws of reaction, and had repented of her generosity. Suspicions and doubts obscured the previous rapture of her mind. She bethought herself that Cuckoo might chance to return alone, still penniless; she remembered the rent still owing. Her impulse to kill fatted calves suddenly struck her as the act of a mad ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... of the capricious taste of the day—much admired, and much abused. It is much more in the Macaulay than in the Croker line, and the former is evidently in the ascendant. Some passages will startle the rigidly orthodox; the phrenologists will be in rapture. I tell you all this, that you may judge for yourself. One thing insist upon, if you publish it-that the title be changed. The whole beauty, of the latter part especially, is its truth. It is a rapid volume of travels, a "Childe Harold" in ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... youngster's a prodigy!" cried M. Espinassous in rapture; "if you will stay here with me I'll make you a great musician. In the mornings you shall learn to shave my customers and the rest of the day you shall study music. Don't think, because I'm a barber, I don't know music. One ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot

... a blessed host comes one Who held a warring nation in his heart; Who knew love's agony, but had no part In love's delight; whose mighty task was done Through blood and tears that we might walk in joy, And this day's rapture own no sad alloy. Around him heirs of bliss, whose bright brows wear Palm leaves amid their laurels ever fair. Gaily they come, as though the drum Beat out the call their glad hearts knew so well; Brothers ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... the girlish charm would fade; She knew the rapture would abate; That years would follow when the maid, Merged in the matron, and sedate With change, ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... proceeded to try them as impious impostors, who represented the Almighty as a trifling, weak, capricious being, and pretended to make, unmake, and reproduce him at pleasure; they were, therefore, convicted of blasphemy and sedition, and condemned to the stale, where they died singing Salve regina, in a rapture of joy, for the crown of martyrdom ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... him with invitations. And that was not the only boon that came with Snelling's presence, for with three workers in the shop Robert Morton found not infrequent chances to steal into the kitchen, where Delight was busy with household tasks, and enjoy the rapture of a word ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... one night, and longer twain; But how for three endure my pain? A month of rapture sooner flies Than half ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... venerable. Nothing could equal the angelic radiance of his smile as he inquired after the unfortunate reporter, (whom, as a piece of private scandal, I should tell you that he was himself supposed to have murdered, in a rapture of creative art:) the answer was, with roars of laughter, from the under-sheriff of our county—"Non est inventus." Toad-in-the-hole laughed outrageously at this: in fact, we all thought he was choking; and, at the earnest request of the company, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... thoughts, at length reached Bussorah, where his subjects made extraordinary rejoicings for his return. He went directly to give an account of his journey to his mother, who was in a rapture to hear that he had obtained the ninth statue. "Let us go, my son," said she, "let us go and see it, for it is certainly in the subterraneous chamber, since the sultan of the genii told you you should find it there." The young sultan and his mother, being both ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... was that there was no more of the old exultation about his heart that had formed so large a part of his former courtship; there were no extravagances, no quickened pulses—rapture's warmth had yielded to the mildest of after-glows; but there was no reason that it should not prove as satisfactory in the long run. It is an open question whether the doctor, popular though he undoubtedly was, would have been considered an eligible suitor from the maternal ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris

... Grace with conviction. "Oh, this is a nougat!" she exclaimed in rapture, as her white teeth bit ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope

... is it not?" He lowered the baby to his breast as he spoke, while his wife fell upon our necks in hospitable greeting. "He has no manners, this young man," added the father, sadly, when Katrina had thus expressed her rapture in our arrival. "He would yell if I put him down, and he has lungs—ach, but he ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... any likeness for thy vision? O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom? What of despair, of rapture, of derision, What of life is there, what of ill or good? Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood? Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, The faint fields quicken any terrene root, In low lands where the sun and moon are mute And all the stars keep silence? Are there ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... individual, whose name must always stand by itself, and which, in an assembly such as this, or in any other assembly of Scotsmen, can never be received, not, he would say, with ordinary feelings of pleasure or of delight, but with those of rapture and enthusiasm. In doing so he felt that he stood in a somewhat new situation. Whoever had been called upon to propose the health of his Hon. Friend to whom he alluded, some time ago, would have found himself enabled, from the mystery in which certain matters ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... jolly old early Christian duffer," cried Rupert, in a sort of rapture, "I don't wonder you couldn't be a judge. You think every one as good as yourself. Isn't the thing plain enough now? A doubtful acquaintance; rowdy stories, a most suspicious conversation, mean streets, a concealed knife, a man nearly killed, and, finally, a false ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds' wings and breasts that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... This rapture, however, long postdated her first adventure into the shipyard. That grim period of eight hours was an alternation of shame, awkwardness, stupidity, failure, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... vineyards on the principles inculcated by the celerer of St. Peter's—first introduced the sparkling wine bearing his name. The flower-wreathed bottles, which, at a given signal, a dozen of blooming young damsels scantily draped in the guise of Bacchanals placed upon the table, were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling wine was an indispensable adjunct at all the petits soupers of the period. In the highest circles the popping of champagne-corks seemed to ring the knell of sadness, and the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... one," cried Georg. "To the dear ones at home—to the joys and sorrows of the heart, to the fair woman we love! War is rapture, love is life! Let the wounds bleed, let the heart break into a thousand pieces. Laurels grow green on the battle-field, love twines garlands of roses-roses with thorns, yet beautiful roses! Go, beaker! No other lips shall ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and mortifications, and only then for the first time since he had brooded on the great mystery of love did he feel within him a warm movement like that of some newly born life or virtue of the soul itself. The attitude of rapture in sacred art, the raised and parted hands, the parted lips and eyes as of one about to swoon, became for him an image of the soul in prayer, humiliated and faint before ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... the best valley of all! I knew it as soon as I saw it from the pass!" and the rapture of the scene was sounding in every syllable like chimes out of the distance. She knew that he was far away from the garden, and delaying, still delaying. If she spoke she felt that he would not hear what she said. If she went on it seemed certain that she would ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... first Sunday of the month. As he bathed and dressed, Ralph found himself wondering whether the churches and chapels would be filled, whether the awe and fear that had fallen upon so many Christian professors during the first hours after the "Rapture," would drive them ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... the 4th of June 1819, reduced her to a 'kind of despair'. Whatever it could be to her husband, Italy no longer was for her a 'paradise of exiles'. The flush and excitement of the early months, the 'first fine careless rapture', were for ever gone. 'I shall never recover that blow,' Mary wrote on the 27th of June 1819; 'the thought never leaves me for a single moment; everything on earth has lost its interest for me,' This ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... Calvary had been first enacted in her own soul. The organ was but giving voice to them. There was a plaintive touch in the minor chords, as if pleading for days that were gone. It climbed to a closing rapture, as if two who had parted here had, for the moment, hailed each other ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... squeezed them with incredible rapture. But, suddenly becoming alarmed again, she turned away ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... to back us—remember a single line in his poetry that can be called sublime, or, which is the same thing, that gives us a thrilling shudder, as if a god or a ghost were passing by. Pleasure, high excitement,—rapture even, he often produces; but such a feeling as is created ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... to his breast that is panting and streaming. The Sylvan,—hard-pressed by the wind, the Pan-footed air,— On the violent backs of the hills,— Like a flame that tosses and thrills From peak to peak when the world of spirits is out,— Is borne, as her rapture wills, With glittering gesture and shout: Now here in the darkness, now there, From the rain-like sweep of her hair,— Bewilderingly volleyed o'er eyes and o'er lips,— To the lambent swell of her limbs, her breasts and her hips, She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glare Of ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... peculiar keenness; it appeared to feed upon itself. It urged her to do something; but it suggested no particularly profitable line of action. If she could have done something at the moment, on the spot, she would have stepped upon a European steamer and turned her back, with a kind of rapture, upon that profoundly mortifying failure, her visit to her American relations. It is not exactly apparent why she should have termed this enterprise a failure, inasmuch as she had been treated with the highest ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... lid of the meal-chest. The Doctor's man had a story to tell, and he meant to get all the enjoyment out of it. So he told it with every luxury of circumstance. Mr. Veneer's man heard it all with open mouth. No listener in the gardens of Stamboul could have found more rapture in a tale heard amidst the perfume of roses and the voices of birds and tinkling of fountains than Elbridge in following Abel's narrative, as they sat there in the aromatic ammoniacal atmosphere of the stable, the grinding of the horses' ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the boat's bows for a long minute or more, and never shall I forget the look of exquisite rapture that gradually grew in his glassy eyes as he stared. Then suddenly down he dropped again into the bottom of the boat and covered his poor emaciated face with his hands, as he gave vent to a storm ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... uttered the words, there was a great rumour of joy through all the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and rose again; and swelled at last into rapture, when the tall negro, who had stepped an instant into the chapel, reappeared before the door, carrying in his arms the body of the slave-girl, Cora. I know not if I saw what followed. When next my mind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rapture in her face, and an occasional glance into that of her Lord, unmindful of the presence of all others, while He looked kindly upon her. It was then that I discovered that "the house was filled with the odor of the ointment." But, alas, not so with the perfume of ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... against its body and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this time. A catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Paradise! O Paradise! Who doth not crave for rest? Who would not seek the happy land, Where they that loved are blest; Where loyal hearts and true Stand ever in the light, All rapture through and through, In ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... sound; it burst forth on his violin as if the instrument had been a complete organ, and as if all the elves of a midsummer night were dancing across the strings. In its sounds were heard the piping of the thrush and the full clear note of the human voice; therefore the sound brought rapture to every heart, and carried his name triumphant through the land. That was a great ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of a hill—the topmost of an ascending range of hills—and to some minds that alone is rapture. To inhale the fresh night air was to drink deeply of an ethereal beverage. I had never experienced so delicious a sensation since I had stood on the grassy battlements of the Chateau d'Arques, with the orchards and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... land, and it has not passed over me senseless. I am not one of those who can go through misfortune untouched, as a drop of oil can rise through water. I have taken it all in, felt it all, to the last sting there was in it; and yet now, when I call to mind the night after he was crowned, and its rapture of an hour—the strength and the eagerness of his love: the strength, the eagerness, and the pride of mine—I say it is good that I have lived. The next morning I saw him with his valiant men—the men whose heart God had touched; how he set them in order, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... his castle, and dainty his fare, And all the world crowds just to see him lie there. Whole volumes of rapture around him are heard, But he keeps his counsel and says not ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... that the mill-wheel ground anything. No; it went round merely for the sake of its music. For all St. Piran's business was the study of objects that presented themselves to his notice, or, as he called it, the "Rapture av Contemplation"; and as for his livelihood, he earned it in the simplest way. The waters of the Lough below possessed a peculiar virtue. You had only to sink a log or stick therein, and in fifty ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... glorious a day had, been followed by sullen mists, and the blue sky had disappeared behind heavy, leaden-gray clouds, through which no comforting ray of sunshine pierced. Where was all the glowing enthusiasm, the rapture of hope and joy that, in the first years after the great war, had flushed every German cheek and lit up every eye? Throughout the length and breath of the land the opposing factions confronted one another like armed antagonists ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... he clung; The murmurs grew about him like a cloud— He breathed an atmosphere of spirit-voices, Most sighing sad, but with a sound between, As of one born to hope that still rejoices, In a sweet foreign tongue, That seemed exulting, starting from its shroud, To a new rapture for the first time seen! This better voice, as with a crowning spell, On the chief's spirit fell; Up starting from the earth, he cried aloud: "Ah! thou art there, and well! I thank thee, thou sweet life, that unto me Art life no longer—thou ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... were instantly filled with tears, but tears of the most delicious delight; to find myself in the arms of that beauteous youth, was a rapture that my little hear swam in; past or future were equally out of the question with me; the present was as much as all my powers of life were sufficient to bear the transport of, without fainting. Nor were the most tender embraces, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... in love with her, got close to her in the Exhibition buildings, which he could do all the more easily, since the little woman's husband had taken to flight, foreseeing mischief, as soon as she went up to the show-case of a Russian fur dealer, before which she remained standing in rapture. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... not going to dissert on Hood's humor; I am not a fair judge. Have I not said elsewhere that there are one or two wonderfully old gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips when I was a boy? I can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of that sovereign, that rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my young days happy. Those old sovereign-contributors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall laugh; they may commit murder, and I shall believe it was justifiable ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Walking fast exhausted him, and he had to rest. How dead his legs felt! In fact he felt queer all over. The old burn and gnaw in his breast had expanded to a heavy, full, suffocating sensation. Yet his blood seemed to race. Suddenly an overwhelming emotion of rapture flooded over him. Home at last! He did not think of any one. He was walking across the railroad yards where as a boy he had been wont to steal rides on freight trains. Soon he reached the bridge. In the gathering twilight he halted to clutch at the railing and look out across where the waters ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... there are those who know what fed the root, What long, dull tedium as of wintry hours, What rapture as of spring-light after showers, Went to the ripening of this strange, frail fruit. Defeat and hope, disaster, joy and pain, Grief, pleasure and despair—the same old train That follows every soul. No grafted seed, No alien harvest this, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... startlingly familiar and fresh of lineament; even the moments of rapture, whose memory is soonest to fade, and the fitful solace she had found, in those last days, imagining what might ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... Oxford in the light Of a spring-coloured afternoon; Some clouds were grey and some were white, And all were blown to such a tune Of quiet rapture in the sky, I laughed to ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... pre-Christian anticipations of a future state, we read: 'Thou wilt guide me by Thy counsel, and afterwards take me' (again the same word) 'to glory.' Here, again, the Psalmist looks back to the unique and exceptional instance, and in the rapture and ecstasy of the faith that has grasped the living God as his portion, says to himself: 'Though the externals of Enoch's end and of mine may differ, their substance will be the same, and I, too, shall cease to be seen of men, because God takes me into the secret of His pavilion, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... the sacrament of love; He broods above The virgin silence, till She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... sentiments, when, after a night spent in struggles between a rigid and a more accommodating patriotism, he looks out of his chamber, as the sun is rising in its calm beauty, and gilding the waves and mountains, and all the innumerable palaces and domes and spires of Genoa, and exclaims with rapture: "This majestic city—mine! To flame over it like the kingly Day; to brood over it with a monarch's power; all these sleepless longings, all these never satiated wishes to be drowned in that unfathomable ocean!" We admire Fiesco, we disapprove ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... or any organ for that capacious vision and meditative range which his subjects demanded. He vas essentially thoughtless, betrays everywhere a most effeminate quality of sensibility, and is the sport of that pseudo-enthusiasm and baseless rapture which we see so often allied with the excitement of strong liquors. In taste, or the sense of proportions and congruencies, or the harmonious adaptations, he is perhaps the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... reads in the face of earth, and the listening ear hears it in the song of the morning stars. The will finds it as answer to its loyal endeavor. The heart wins it through rapture and through anguish. It is our dearest inheritance, it is our most arduous achievement. It is the sword with which each man must conquer his destiny. It is the smile with which Beatrice ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... in verse 51. He was parted from them,—that is, withdrew some little distance on the mountain, that all might see, and none might hinder, His departure; and 'was carried up into heaven' by a slow upward movement, as the word implies. Contrast this with Elijah's rapture. There was no need of fiery chariot or whirlwind to lift Jesus to the heavens. He went up where He was before, returning to the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. The end matches the beginning. The supernatural birth ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... blood Of one bitten by spiders. And it is Spirit, Spirit enjoying woman, that hath sent A beating poison in the blood of man, The poison which is lust. Spirit was given To use life as a sense for ecstasy; Life mixt with Spirit must exult beyond Sex-madden'd men and sex-serving women, Into some rapture where sweet fleshly love Is as the air wherein a music rings. But blood hath captured Spirit; Spirit hath given The strength of its desire of joy to make What ecstasy it may of woman's beauty, And of this only, doing no more than train The joys of blood to ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... The young Doctor went to her for counsel in the case of a hysteric girl possessed with the idea that she was a born poetess, and covering whole pages of foolscap with senseless outbursts, which she wrote in paroxysms of wild excitement, and read with a rapture of self-admiration which there was nothing in her verses to justify or account for. How sweetly Number Five dealt with that poor deluded sister in her talk with the Doctor! "Yes," she said to him, "nothing can be fuller of vanity, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... morning. For it was a dog's real lazy day,—a day when merely to lie on the grass was sufficient satisfaction for the canine mind. And Nebbie, yawning extensively, and stretching himself a little more, closed his eyes in a rapture of peace, and stirred his tail slightly with one, two, three mild taps on the soft grass, when a sudden clear whistle caused him to spring up with every hair bristling on end, fore-paws well forward and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... place, and you will be able, I have no doubt, to imagine all we could possibly have found to chat about, much better, probably, than I can describe it. I will merely say for your guidance, without entering into details, that it was happiness, rapture to me, to be only beside her—will that enlighten you ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... was beating upon the glass panes. Moire-like shadows darted along the walls, all the paintings became dim, the spectators themselves were blended in obscurity until the cloud was carried away, whereupon the painter saw the heads again emerge from the twilight, ever agape with idiotic rapture. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... to the Nightingale her shady wood; A privacy of glorious light is thine; Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with rapture more divine; Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... salutes his youngest son; no sign, Of all those ages, which their births disjoin. How empty learning, and how vain is art, But as it mends the life, and guides the heart! What volumes have been swell'd, what time been spent, To fix a hero's birth-day, or descent! What joy must it now yield, what rapture raise, To see the glorious race of ancient days! To greet those worthies who perhaps have stood Illustrious on record before the flood! Alas! a nearer care your soul demands, Caesar unnoted in your presence stands. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... that there are four kinds of Emotional Expression: The Egotistic which is self and in the interest of self as in joy, rapture and grief; the Aesthetic which has its expression in Nature and Art; the Ethical which has its expression in the moral law; the Religious which expression is in the ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... kind: out-births at once of rapture and of charity. Written in the popular Hindi, not in the literary tongue, they were deliberately addressed—like the vernacular poetry of Jacopone da Tod and Richard Rolle—to the people rather than to the professionally religious class; and all ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... he had remotely heard was rare on Bylow Hill since the town had come in below, and one of the errands which oftenest brought the hill's dwellers to this nook in solitary pairs was to hearken for that voice of unearthly rapture,—a rapture above all melancholy and beyond all mirth,—the call of the ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... over in his mind and dwelt upon through the desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drew her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. "My life!" she said. "Toda mi vida! All my life!" Through the open door the air of the canon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Marquis de Ferrieres, "filled my eyes... . In a state of sweet rapture I beheld France supported by Religion" exhorting us all to concord. "The sacred ceremonies, the music, the incense, the priests in their sacrificial robes, that dais, that orb radiant with precious stones. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... greater happiness ahead for me,—when I have a lover, you said; when I have a husband; when I have a child. I suppose you know, my wise, beloved mother; but the delight of work, of doing the work well that one is best fitted for, will be very hard to beat. It is an exultation, a rapture, that manifest progress to better and better results through one's own effort. After all, being obliged on Sundays to do nothing isn't so bad, because then I have time to think, to step back a ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... By-and-by he would go into the town and procure food, and, returning, keep guard until nightfall. After dark, if the day passed without event, he would find his way into the house by force or fraud. In a rapture of anticipation he pictured his entrance, her reluctant joy, her tears and smiles, and fond reproaches. As he loved her, as he must love her the more for the trick she had played him, she must love him the more ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... certain. Pain—it seemed a kind of bliss, as the guarantee of my flesh and blood existence—came to me and in my paroxysms the torn skin of my body bled. I looked at the red stains with exultation. I felt the aches of physical concussion, with a real rapture. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... Beersheba were straining at the end of their chains. When they heard footsteps they began to bark vociferously, but the moment they saw Betty their barking ceased; they whined and strained harder than ever in their wild rapture. Betty instantly flung herself on her knees by Dan's side and kissed him on the forehead. The dog licked her little hand, and was almost beside himself with delight. As to poor Beersheba, he very nearly went mad with jealousy over the attention ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... distance which divides me from my country, whose advantages and blessings this four months' absence has taught me to appreciate more clearly and to prize more deeply than before. With a glow of unwonted rapture I see our stately vessel's prow turned toward the setting sun, and strive to realize that only some ten days separate me from those I know and love best on earth. Hark! the last gun announces that the mail-boat has left us, and that we are fairly afloat on our ocean journey: the shores of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... flags the train And I, poor dots, cry, "Rapture, it is her!" Yet guess again - my hope is all in vain And Pansy girl refuses to occur. If this keeps up I think I'll finish swell Among the jabbers ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin

... 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

... in a word, has found out that the splendors of the palace are not to her taste, and the thought of being a young shepherd's darling is pleasanter to her than that of being an old king's concubine. The polygamous rapture with which Solomon addresses her: "There are three-score queens and four-score concubines, and maidens without number," does not appeal to her rural taste. She has no desire to be the hundred and forty-first piece of mosaic inlaid in Solomon's ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... her name and I carved mine, Oh, June, like the mountains I'm blue, Like the pine, I am lonesome for you, In the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, On the trail of the lonesome pine. I can hear the tinkling water-fall far among the hills, Bluebirds sing each so merrily, to his mate rapture thrills, They seem to say, Your June is lonesome too. Longing fills her eyes, She is waiting for you patiently, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... Dr. Chilton, how glad I am to see YOU!" cried Pollyanna. And at the joyous rapture of the voice, more than one pair of eyes in the room brimmed hot with sudden tears. "But, of course, if ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... have something of the scent and perfection of wild flowers, and that mystic rapture which is not to be found in Goethe's more worldly Faust. We may, if we like, call the Auto da Alma (as also the witch-scene in the Auto das Fadas) a 16th century Faust, but really no parallel can be drawn between the two plays. The ethereal beauty of Vicente's lyrical auto, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... well as of "inspiration"; its technique is of exquisite refinement and appalling difficulty; it appeals to the intellect as well as to the emotion. And yet the intellectual element is but tributary, and if the consciousness willfully shuts its gates against the tide of rapture rushing to flood the sense and the emotion, then in reality music is not, for its spirit is dead. What shall be done with an agency so fierce and absorbing as this? Can it be tamed and fettered by the old conceptions of mental discipline and scholastic routine? Only ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... on to them, crushing their flowers and ribbons, and crying—"You two want to talk secrets, I know. I can hear what you say. I'm going to listen, I am. And I shall tell, too;" when perhaps a knock at the door announced the Nurse to take Miss Amelia to bed, and spread a general rapture of relief. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Pythian of old. "That precept descended from Heaven." Know thyself! Is that maxim wise? If so, know thy soul. But never yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul but what he acknowledged the sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, in my rapture, all my thoughts seemed enlarged and illumed and exalted. I prayed—all my soul seemed one prayer. All my past, with its pride and presumption and folly, grew distinct as the form of a penitent, kneeling ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... rapture of feeling I would part from for days devoted to higher discipline. But when Nature beams with such excess of beauty, when the heart thrills with hope in its Author,—feels it is related to Him more than by any ties of creation,—it ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... carried thither at stated periods. The king forgot not a single day to visit the mountain that contained his beloved treasure, and to be satisfied of his safety with his own eyes. With what delight did he behold the growing beauties of his son! With what pleasure and rapture did he listen to his sprightly saillies of wit, his smart repartees, and those pretty nothings which a father, in particular, is fond to recollect and to repeat; at which the most rigid gravity may smile, and which are worth all the understanding of riper years. He was perpetually counting ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... he!" cried Polly, clasping her hands in rapture; "mammy, can't I take off this horrid ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... did I delay," cried the baron, with feeling. "Your appearance bewildered me, because it pleased me so much. I have not seen your highness for three years. You were then hardly fifteen years old, a noble, promising boy, and now I behold you with rapture and delight, seeing that all our expectations have been fulfilled, and that out of the boy has grown a strong, noble, and serious young man. Yes, Prince, I read it in your countenance, your unhappy fatherland, your unhappy, much-to-be-pitied Brandenburgers, may look with trust ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... her face lifted until she found herself gazing into the man's dark eyes which, in the darkness, were shining with a great love light. Her lids drooped before such passionate intensity. And her heart thrilled with rapture as she listened to his ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... its modes of dealing with Asiatics), the instantaneous success of 'sharp practice' and resolute appeals to fear on the part of Sir John Davis. By midnight of the same day on which the British remonstrance had been lodged an answer is received; and this answer, in a perfect rapture of panic, concedes everything demanded; and by sunrise the next morning the whole affair has been finished. Two centuries, on our old East Indian system of negotiating with China, would not have ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... me by rash words, and with me an offence is ineffaceable; and the revenge of a personal offence would obstruct the road that leads me to the Russians. Why, then, provoke a quarrel with a brave people—and destroy the idol of glory on which they are wont to gaze with rapture? Never does man appear so mean as in weakness, when every one can measure his strength with him fearlessly: besides, you need a skilful leech, and nowhere will you find a better than at my house. To-morrow we shall be at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... its stead, one of white and gold, inscribed with the name, ALTA ITALIA; and instantly the news followed, that Milan, Venice, Modena, and Parma, were driving out their tyrants. These news were received in Rome with indescribable rapture. Men danced, and women wept with joy along the street. The youths rushed to enrol themselves in regiments to go to the frontier. In the Colosseum, their ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... his companion screw the hose to the faucet, and turn the water on. There was a hissing, gurgling sound and a stream of water shot out, much to the rapture of the ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... neighbouring tree some botanical curiosity, resembling a small pickled cabbage, and offered it to the maiden, who at first wouldn't have it, but on the savage shedding tears relented. Then the savage jumped for joy; then the maiden jumped for rapture at the sweet smell of the pickled cabbage. Then the savage and the maiden danced violently together, and, finally, the savage dropped down on one knee, and the maiden stood on one leg upon his other knee; thus concluding the ballet, and leaving the spectators in a state of pleasing uncertainty, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... all Rapture, cannot speak it out; My Senses have carous'd too much of Joy; And like young Drunkards, proud of their new try'd Strength, Have made my Pleasure less by ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... Loman did come to himself he did not burst out into a rapture of delight and gratitude. On the contrary, he suddenly felt himself growing to such a pitch of misery and low spirits as even in the worst of his troubles he had never experienced. He repented bitterly of ever bringing himself to come and ask such a favour of his worst enemy, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... all," drawled the young man, in an embarrassed rapture, as he entered. "I was gettin' my horse shod over thar at Tim Mallory's, an' I thought to myself that I'd jest drop over an' say 'howdy' ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... fell, for she had forgotten that, and the Lancers was to her the crowning rapture of the night. She paused a moment, and Aunt Pen brightened; but Debby made her little sacrifice to principle as heroically as many a greater one had been made, and, with a wistful look down the long room, answered steadily, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... Girl! comes with kind arms extended To welcome me!... limbs numb'd with age fain would move. My cheek feels the offspring of rapture warm blended, With answering drops:... this the ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... in antiquity, the historicity of which it is in some cases difficult to establish; with a cosmology which has been definitely disproved; and with a philosophy which they cannot make their own. It allows us what George Meredith calls 'the rapture of the forward view.' It brings home to us the meaning of the promise made by the Johannine Christ that there are many things as yet hid from humanity which will in the future be revealed by the Spirit of Truth. It encourages us to hope ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... A guide; two drab-colored and tired men; a group of women, of various ages, equipped with red-covered little volumes, and severally expressive of great earnestness, wide-eyed rapture, and giggles. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... permit. His present object was, at all events, to cross the Jore Mountains, said to be the highest land in the Cherokee country. These he soon afterwards began to ascend; and, at length, he accomplished one part of his arduous task. From the most elevated peak of these mountains, he beheld, with rapture and astonishment, a sublimely awful scene of magnificence, a world of mountains piled ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... to describe the rapture with which Mr Harding was received by his daughter. She wept with grief and with joy; with grief that her father should, in his old age, still be without that rank and worldly position, which, according to her ideas, he had so well earned; and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... together, thought together, until my own senses reeled under the strain of it, and I knew that Zara was more than half unconscious of all things save her present contact with me. Ah, heaven, the greatness of it! The magnificence of that moment! The rapture of her caress, and the great joy ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... glidest on, to all who for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way thou may'st have bejuggled and destroyed before. And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant his whole marbleized body formed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville



Words linked to "Rapture" :   rapturous, bliss, spirit, blissfulness, ecstasy, walking on air, seventh heaven, cloud nine, raptus, emotional state, transport, exaltation



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