The original story, whatever it was, was told to those who forgot some details and substituted others. The original is long lost in the restorations. They have had the composer accompanied by a gifted sister, who, the inflexible record shows, died years before the song was written. They have seated him at the prim old spindle-legged mahogany desk in the hall at Federal Hill and had him dash it off in the frenzy of inspiration. Or they have followed him to the rocks of the old spring house, whither they have sent him, pencil in hand, and counted the frowns of agony with which he laboriously set down now a strain of melody and again a phrase of words. They have heard him trying it out with the deep booming bass voice of him who had never more than a weak but sweet light baritone. Every writer of it has himself for the hero and has described it as he would himself have acted it before the grand audience of posterity. These various stories cling about Federal Hill, the outgrowth of the human desire for contact with the vague figures of the past.

|
On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

|
There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

|
But only agony, and that has ending; And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

|
How much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony, than that brought about by the...

|
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

|
I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do so. I do not know, but I feel it, and am in agony.

|
What is it but deliberate massacre when tens of thousands of tame, hand-reared creatures are every year literally driven into the jaws of death and mown down in a peculiarly brutal manner? A perfect roar of guns fills the air; louder tap and yell the beaters, while above the din can be heard the heart-rending cries of wounded hares and rabbits, some of which can be seen dragging themselves away, with legs broken, or turning round and round in their agony before they die! And the pheasants! They are on every side, some rising, some dropping; some lying dead, but the great majority fluttering on the ground wounded; some with both wings broken and a leg; others merely winged, running to hide; others mortally wounded, gasping out their last breath amidst the hellish uproar which surrounds them. And this is called 'sport!'

|
Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?

|
A woman in agony of spirit might turn her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built.

|
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

|
'One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life ...'

|
Everything is changeable, everything appears and disappears there is no blissful peace until one passes beyond the agony of life and death.

|
People who sin say this: They had to, to survive. People who sin say this: It's too late now to stop. The shadow called Sin dogs them steadily from behind, without a word. Remorse and Agony are repeated, to finally end up at Despair. But sinners don't know that if they turn around, there is a light... a light which keeps shining on them ever so warmly. A light that will never fade

|
Acting is happy agony.

|
In a few generations more, there will probably be no room at all allowed for animals on the earth no need of them, no toleration of them. An immense agony will have then ceased, but with it there will also have passed away the last smile of the world's youth.

|
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

|
The end will come quickly, my love. There is a pain beyond pain, an agony so intense it shocks the mind into instant oblivion. We'll find immo...

|
How exquisite that gaze of yours would be if you were being whipped to death, in the last agony.

|
Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

|
No flower of art ever fully blossomed save it was nourished by tears of agony.

|
Animals cannot speak, but can you and I not speak for them and represent them? Let us all feel their cry of agony and let us all help that cry to be heard in the world.

|
Acts 2:24:
But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.
(NIV)
[But] God raised Him up, liberating Him from the pangs of death, seeing that it was not possible for Him to continue to be controlled or retained by it.
(AMP)
Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
(KJV)

|
Have the wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has man to inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow creature, simply because that creature does not speak his language?

|
Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

|
One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.

|
"One thought in agony of strife The bravest would have by for friend, The memory that he chose the life ..."

|