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Agitate   /ˈædʒətˌeɪt/   Listen
Agitate

verb
(past & past part. agitated; pres. part. agitating)
1.
Try to stir up public opinion.  Synonyms: foment, stir up.
2.
Cause to be agitated, excited, or roused.  Synonyms: charge, charge up, commove, excite, rouse, turn on.
3.
Exert oneself continuously, vigorously, or obtrusively to gain an end or engage in a crusade for a certain cause or person; be an advocate for.  Synonyms: campaign, crusade, fight, press, push.  "She is crusading for women's rights" , "The Dean is pushing for his favorite candidate"
4.
Move very slightly.  Synonyms: budge, shift, stir.
5.
Move or cause to move back and forth.  Synonym: shake.  "My hands were shaking"
6.
Change the arrangement or position of.  Synonyms: commove, disturb, raise up, shake up, stir up, vex.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Agitate" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Don't agitate yourself," Cesare Orsi begged. "Sanviano will be absolutely contented to have you in my care. I am delighted. You shall go home directly in my carriage." He conducted her, with a show of form that in any one else or at another ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Egyptian mummies are painted and written with religious subjects, but the colors were laid without regard to light and shade. The Egyptians did not seek to represent the passions and emotions which agitate the soul, but rather to authenticate events and actions; and hence their paintings, like hieroglyphics, are inscriptions. It was their great festivals and religious rites which they sought to perpetuate, not ideas of beauty or grace. Hence their paintings abound with ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... said Withers. "Their howl now is, 'Put down the rebellion! but don't tech slavery, and don't bring in the nigger!' As if, arter dogs had been killing my sheep, you should preach to me, 'Save your sheep, neighbor, but don't agitate the dog question! You mustn't tech the dogs!' I say, if the dogs begin the trouble, they must take the consequences, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... while we dragged ourselves through the softened plains which evening was darkening. At one halt I saw one of those men who used to agitate at the depot to be sent to the front. He had sunk down at the foot of the stacked rifles; exertion had made him almost unrecognizable, and he told me that he had had enough of war! And little Melusson, whom I once used to see at Viviers, lifted to me his yellowish face, sweat-soaked, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... and firmness of true courage. In short, he might be regarded as a fair representative of the numerous class we are daily meeting with in life,—men who do many good things, but more questionable ones; who undertake much, accomplish little; bustle, agitate, and thus contrive to occupy the largest space in public attention; but who, when sifted, are found, as Pope maliciously ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... was a grand way of recommending himself to his new townsfolk, as he told his wife, "and so increasing the circle of our present trade, don't ye understand?"—for another, he was as keen as the keenest that the railway should come and enhance the value of his property. "We must agitate," he cried, when Sandy Toddle murmured a doubt whether anything they could do would be of much avail. "It's not settled yet what road the line's to follow, and who knows but a trifle may turn the scale in our behalf? Local ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... Capodistrias in every tumult in Servia or the Morea: and even if there had been no fear of Russian aggression in the background, he would instinctively have condemned the Greek revolt when he saw that the light-headed professors in the German Universities were beginning to agitate in its favour, and that the recalcitrant minor Courts regarded it with some degree ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... most inflexible, stern and immovable. The passions which agitate or distract the mind, never alter its expression, nor do the highest ecstacies of which their nature is susceptible, ever relax its rigidity. With the same imperturbability of feature, they encounter death from the hand of an enemy, and receive the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... those important questions which Mr. Wilson was not, indeed, the first to agitate, but which he has awakened from their profound slumbers in the bosom of the Hon. Lewis Cass and the pages of the "North American Review." We are not to be tempted into writing another "New History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but we shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... the students of Lahore, as well as for assistance towards defraying the cost of "political missionaries." In one of these letters also Lajpat Rai, after remarking that "the people are in a sullen mood" and that "the agricultural classes have begun to agitate," adds significantly that his "only fear is that the bursting out may not be premature." Lajpat Rai's correspondent was another prominent Arya, Bhai Parmanand, who, whilst he was Professor at the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, was found in possession ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... whisky given before the sponging if the pulse be feeble, will generally prevent a chill. Patients should be gently dried after the bath and covered with dry bedclothing. The utmost care should be taken not to agitate ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... the Loyalists continued to agitate for justice. As early as 1790 the island legislature passed an act empowering the governor to give grants to those who had not yet received them from the proprietors. But this measure did not entirely redress the grievances, and after a lapse ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... top-hats; and you find there are only eight top-hats. To a simple mind it would seem not impossible to make two more hats; to find out whose business it is to make hats, and induce him to make hats; to agitate against an absurd delay in delivering hats; to punish anybody who has promised hats and failed to provide hats. The modern mind is that which says that if we only cut off the heads of two of the little boys, they will not want hats; and then the hats will exactly go round. The suggestion ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... the servant of all these base intrigues, time will show. His conduct was boyish and foolish, if it was not treacherous. The only object seemed to be to create panic, to agitate, to take possession of Rome somehow, though what to do with it, if they could get it, the French government ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... in whatever will agitate the people's ideas," wrote Caesar; "but if they start to play orators and revolutionists, and you folks come along with pedantic notions, then I for my part shall ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... nature. He did nothing violently or in a hurry; but this does not imply that he was slow or lazy. He was leisurely in disposition, and circumstances seldom required him to be otherwise. When Peterkin or I had to lift heavy weights, we were obliged to exert our utmost strength and agitate our whole frames; but Jack was so powerful that a comparatively slight effort was all that he was usually obliged to make. Again, when we two were in a hurry we walked quickly, but Jack's long limbs enabled ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... skull. It chanced then on a winter day, But warm and bright and calm as May, The Birds conceiving a design To forestall sweet Saint Valentine, In many an orchard, copse and grove, Assembled on affairs of love, And with much twitter, and much chatter, Began to agitate the matter. At length a Bullfinch, who could boast More years and wisdom than the most, Entreated, opening wide his beak, A moment's liberty to speak; And silence publicly enjoined, Delivered, briefly, thus his mind— "My friends! Be cautious how ye treat The subject upon which we meet; ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... grace of the principal character in Enid, with which the volume opens, touches, but does not too strongly agitate, the deeper springs of feeling. She is the beautiful daughter of Earl Yniol, who, by his refusal of a turbulent neighbour as a suitor, has drawn upon himself the ruin of his fortunes, and is visited in his depressed ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... Misses Schank. They gave her the name of Emily, in compliment to an elder sister whom I have not before mentioned—a great invalid, who never left her room. I had, indeed, not seen her, for she was so nervous that it was feared I might agitate her. The Little Lady was, however, once taken in to her, and she was so pleased that she insisted on seeing her every day. She was, I afterwards learned, not only an invalid, but occasionally affected in her mind, from ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... see us all het up over it, and makin' war-talks and laying for the pilgrims some dark night with our six-guns, most likely," retorted Pink, who happened to be in a bad humor because in ten minutes he was due at a line of post-holes that divided the big pasture into two unequal parts. "He can't agitate me over anybody's troubles but my own. Happy, I'll help Bud stretch wire this afternoon if you'll tamp ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... "cyanicides."—Place 100 grams of the ore with 200 c.c. of a cyanide solution of known strength (say .1 or .2 per cent.) in a bottle and agitate for a definite time, such as one or two days. Filter off some of the liquor and assay for cyanide, using say 20 c.c. Calculate how much cyanide has been destroyed in the operation. Evaporate 20 c.c. with sulphuric or nitric acid and examine ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... "We must agitate—we must act—we must do good deeds of valor and self-sacrifice for our sex," she said, in her enthusiastic way. "Every woman, whether of high or low condition, of humble powers or vigorous intellect, has a duty to perform, and she is false to the honor and rights of ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... Levee since his accession to the throne, at which nearly 1800 persons of distinction were present, who testified their attachment to his person in a manner that must have left him little to desire. It was known that his consort intended to agitate the empire from end to end, and her arrival was looked for in a few weeks; but the families of the great political party that formed and supported the Government, betrayed no uneasiness—indeed, the most influential regarded, or ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... He had had time to make his toilet a little. His face attempted to express a haughty coldness. He had been reproaching himself for having been wanting in dignity, in showing his grief before the Bertauds. "Nothing ought to agitate a man in my position," said he to himself. And, being terribly agitated, he forced himself to ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... Las Casas in Hispaniola infused new courage into the Dominicans, who had been discouraged in recent years by the difficulty and hopelessness of contending against public opinion on the subject of the Indians and had consequently ceased to preach and agitate in their favour: some members of the community had even been affected by the prevalent opinion that the Indians were really a race of a different order, servile by nature, and destined by Providence to a life of subjection to their superiors. Learned arguments were found to sustain this opinion. ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... speak enhanced. His eyes, of pale green, became suddenly lighted up with a peculiar and gentle languor, which was so tender that they seemed almost attractive. This singular magnetism had a novel effect on the invalid. But his brow soon became contracted; a violent storm seemed to agitate his heart; and the hissing ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... appears evidently to allude to this work, and notices its "Old Wives' Tales," and the filthiness of some of its matters. The truth is, that the rabbins resembled the Jesuits and Casuists; and Sanchez's work on "Matrimonio" is well known to agitate matters with such scrupulous niceties as to become the most offensive thing possible. But as among the schoolmen and casuists there have been great men, the same happened to these Gemaraists. Maimonides was a pillar of light among ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... for the mission of preparing juvenile books; but perhaps, if I study closely the characteristics of young people, I shall learn to understand them more thoroughly. So much depends on the proper training of our American youth, especially in view of the great political questions that now agitate the country, that I confess I feel some anxiety on ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... saying, when storms were brewing in the air and the sea, the uneasiness of the elements themselves seemed to take possession of his soul and agitate it,—for his very body would rock to and fro and sway in the chair when the fit was on him, and he would talk to his dog, and to men and women, too, whom no one could see save himself, and if what he said might be taken as the words of a sane man, he certainly had been rich and ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... takes care that the expedition shall comply with the acts of spiritual expiation; he prays to the Queen of Heaven to assist the enterprise and to direct its course, and before giving the order to make sail he invokes the august divine Trinity. Then, once fairly at sea, while the waters agitate themselves, while the crew murmurs, he maintains, under God's care, a calm constancy ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... returned with his colonel and comrades to Sidi-bel-Abbes after the long march and a satisfactory fight with the "Deliverer," he soon received news of the lost one. With roars of derision he refused to believe in the little "corporal's" voluntary desertion, and from the first moment began to agitate. What! punish a hero for his heroism? That, in Four Eyes' vilely profane opinion, expressed with elaborate expletives in the Legion's own choicest vernacular, was what it would amount to if St. George were branded ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... Antoine had revealed this portion of the situation; they sufficed; it was useless to persist; it was obvious that the working-class districts would not rise; we must turn to the side of the tradesmen's districts, renounce our attempt to rouse the extremities of the city, and agitate the centre. We were the Committee of Resistance, the soul of the insurrection; if we were to go to the Faubourg St. Antoine, which was occupied by a considerable force, we should give ourselves up to Louis Bonaparte. They reminded me of what I ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... spirits. This is a season, which of all others is most propitious to the attempts of an artful lover; and justifies the metaphorical maxim of fishing in troubled waters. There is an affinity and short transition betwixt all the violent passions that agitate the human mind. They are all false perspectives, which, though they magnify, yet perplex and render indistinct every object which they represent. And flattery is never so successfully administered, as to those who know they stand in need ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... The old captain's voice was husky. "Come with me at once. We will find your mother's maid or the stewardess, but you must promise to be very gentle and not to agitate her." ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave

... they should succeed in their first trials, otherwise they will be discouraged from repeating their attempts, and they will distrust their own memory in future. The fear of not remembering, will occupy, and agitate, and weaken their minds; they should, therefore, be animated by hope. If they fail, at all events let them not be reproached; the mortification they naturally feel, is sufficient: nor should they be left to dwell upon their disappointment; they should have a fresh and easier trial given to ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... those interested in founding the People's College. Horace Greeley, Lucy Stone and herself were entertained by Mrs. Stanton. The three women were determined it should be opened to girls as well as boys. Mr. Greeley begged them not to agitate the question, assuring them that he would have the constitution and by-laws so framed as to admit women on the same terms as men, and he did as he promised, making a spirited fight. Before the college was fairly started, however, it ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... to justify this fear? She had not addressed herself to the people of France, in order to obtain help and protection for her son—for the nephew of the emperor; cautiously and timidly she had concealed herself from the people, and, far from being disposed to arouse or agitate her country, she had only made herself known to the King of France in order to solicit protection and toleration at ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... was by her side, and, having restored her nerves with champagne, proceeded to agitate them again with the warmest protestations of affection. The child with the day's experience before her, only half-believed him, but the spirit of coquetry woke up, and she resolved to try and make him care for her as much ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... it? don't frighten my beloved child," cries the Campaigner, rushing towards her darling, and enveloping her in her robust arms. "What can have happened, don't agitate this darling child, sir," and she looked ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... these men inoculate the United States with all our vices, without bringing with them any of those interests which counteract their baneful influence. As inhabitants of a country where they have no civil rights, they are ready to turn all the passions which agitate the community to their own advantage; thus, within the last few months serious riots have broken out in Philadelphia and in New York. Disturbances of this kind are unknown in the rest of the country, which is nowise alarmed ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... this country now, after a lapse of many, many years, and approaching it too for the last time, for mine eyes shall see it no more, I cannot describe to you the feelings that agitate my heart. I go to visit the tombs of my ancestors; I go to my home, and my home knoweth me no more. Great and good, and brave and free are the English; and may God grant that they ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... will grant you," cried the naturalist, who rarely missed an opportunity to agitate any disputed point in his favourite studies. "That is, provided always, deference is had to the proper use of definitions, and that they are contemplated ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... pray do not agitate yourself too much," broke in another of the teachers. "This is all very painful. You had better drop ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield

... a boy either, living in constant fear of ill-usage whether he deserves it or not, will get either so stupid or so careless, as seldom to do what is required. Think a little, and you will understand this. An angry tone and hard words agitate a dog very much. Mr. Blaine, who wrote a book about their diseases and cures, says that he has often known a dog, weakened by illness, to go into convulsions on hearing another dog violently scolded. I tell you this to explain why some dogs are hard to manage: they ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth

... grasping close the rock, Up towers the mountain pine. The Winter blast May like an ocean surge be on it cast; Proud doth it stand, and stern defy the shock, Unchanged in verdure and unbroke in crest, Although wild throes may agitate its breast, And clinging closer when the storm is gone, Tired, but unbent upon its granite throne, Not always doth it wrestle with the storm! Skies smile; spring flowers make soft its iron roots; Its sturdy boughs are kissed by breezes warm; And birds gleam in and out with joyous flutes. Duty proves ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... agitate the girl with an account of Billings' drunken overtures and his own vicarious repulse of them, he did not explain to her Billings' trouble of mind; but he found trouble of his own in explaining his frequent bursts of laughter while they ate ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... blackest villain in the country, offered to the Government to accuse Fassifern of the murder. The writer of the anonymous letter to Fassifern is styled 'Blarmachfildich,' or 'Blarmackfildoch,' in the correspondence. I think he was a Mr. Millar, employed by Fassifern to agitate against Glenure. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... of America has fallen in Chili. Your tricoloured flag waves on the Pacific, secured by your sacrifices. Some internal commotions agitate Chili. It is not my business to investigate their causes, to accelerate or retard their effects; I can only wish that the result may be favourable ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... golubitsa,[48] being careful to close up well the mouth of the vessel, and to keep it in a warm place whilst the fermentation is going on, which is generally so violent as to occasion a considerable noise, and to agitate the vessel in which it is contained. After drawing off this first liquor, they pour on more hot water, and make a second in the same manner. They then pour both liquor and herbs into a copper still, and draw off the spirit after the usual method. The liquor ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... follows the steps of Freedom over the continent like a shadow, looms up like a phantom against the Rocky Mountains, and darkens the fairest waters? On the contrary, is not Freedom that old truth, that conceded premise that does not agitate? Liberty, Human Rights, Universal Brotherhood, was it not for these ideas ye fought—was it not these ye planted in the soil, and laid with the corner-stone of our institutions? My friends, I know, and you know, could ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... foundations; be the sport of the winds and waves; reel to and fro like a drunken man; move from post to pillar and from pillar to post, drive from post to pillar and from pillar to post, keep between hawk and buzzard. agitate, shake, convulse, toss, tumble, bandy, wield, brandish, flap, flourish, whisk, jerk, hitch, jolt; jog, joggle, jostle, buffet, hustle, disturb, stir, shake up, churn, jounce, wallop, whip, vellicate[obs3]. Adj. shaking &c. v.; agitated tremulous; desultory, subsultory|; saltatoric[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... burned on the sunken cheek and in the dark eye, and her lips moved themselves wildly; but no one was there to refresh with friendly hand the dry lips and the hot brow; no cooling fever-draught stood near her bed. Two new-born babes lay weeping near the mother. Uneasy phantoms seemed to agitate the unhappy one: sometimes she raised herself in the bed with wild gestures, but sunk back again powerless; whilst her pale, convulsed, and wandering lips spoke from the depths of her torn heart ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... to which it would have been entitled on the basis of numbers. But the French Canadians were content to abide by the compact, and on that score there was peace. As soon, however, as {55} the influx of settlers into Upper Canada turned the scale, the Globe began to agitate for a revision of the agreement. In the session of 1853 Brown condemned the system of equal representation, and moved that the representation of the people in parliament should be based upon population, without regard to any line of separation between ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... from thinking seriously at any time of putting an end to his own days, we must doubt if, between his abdication at the Elysee and the time wherein he felt the immediate approach of death, there occurred one day, or even one hour, in which some hope or scheme of recovering his fortunes did not agitate his mind. ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... this the fact that she was a suffragist in the days when there was only one other woman in the state who believed in citizenship for women, and that she never ceased to "agitate" for suffrage, and you receive a faint impression of this old termagant celebrity who had put Jordantown "on the map" and had given it a reputation for broadmindedness at a distance which it in ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... officers both of cavalry and infantry, were invited to assist. Three or four hours of the night had not passed away without some secret cabals; and when the election of an emperor was proposed, the spirit of faction began to agitate the assembly. Victor and Arinthaeus collected the remains of the court of Constantius; the friends of Julian attached themselves to the Gallic chiefs, Dagalaiphus and Nevitta; and the most fatal consequences might be apprehended from the discord of two factions, so opposite in their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... be remedied, however, if it is immediately washed over with the same solution that is on the plate, so that the surface shall not become cool; continue for a short time to apply the lamp under, and agitate the plate slightly, and it will soon be free from all imperfections and give ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... any news would he address it to her, care of Honoria Fraser, Queen Anne's Mansions, St. James's Park; as her own address would be quite uncertain for the present. Or it would do quite as well if he wrote to Praddy; but not to his father, which might only needlessly agitate the old clergyman down in Wales, whom Vivie by an unexpected chance had ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... been pleaded, argued, investigated, searched, gone to the bottom of, said and gainsaid, what came forth from the chaos? always the spark! What came forth from the cloud? always light! All that the tempest could do was to agitate the ray of light, and change it into lightning. There, in that tribune, has been propounded, analyzed, clarified, and almost always determined, every question of the day: questions of finance, questions of credit, questions of labour, questions ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Frauds, crimes, remembrances of the past, terrors of the future,—these are the domestic Furies that are ever present to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Turning to McArthur, he adds, rather unconcernedly: "You know somewhat of him?" The old man sits motionless beside his daughter, the changes of whose countenance discover the inward emotions that agitate her bosom. Her eyes fill with tears; she exchanges inquiring glances, first with Keepum, then with Snivel; then a thought strikes her that she received a letter from Tom, setting forth his prospects, and his intention to return in the ship above named. It was very ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear what is already known, and may be simply said. Much of the literature of the present day, though good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a tendency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too frequently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It may, indeed, become necessary for you, as ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... day. It is not easy to stir up any deep feeling about the comparative merits of the two classes of elementary schools. Most people do not care a jot whether their children go to one or the other. It is not the masses who agitate about denominational or secular teaching, but those limited classes who have some direct interest in matters ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... invasion of the foreigners, continued to supply arms and inexhaustible hopes to the enemies of the Restoration. The people resemble the ocean, motionless and almost immutable at the bottom, however violent may be the storms which agitate the surface. Nevertheless, the spirit of legality and sound political reason had made remarkable progress; even during the ferment of the elections, public feeling loudly repudiated all idea of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... and severe contest with error. Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard labor of thought, they willingly abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts. And if it happens that nobler necessities agitate their soul, they cling with a greedy faith to the formula that the state and the church hold in reserve for such cases. If these unhappy men deserve our compassion, those others deserve our just contempt, who, though set free from those necessities ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... that those short and simple rhymes, often sacred, which are repeated in schools as helps to memory, made a part of her studies; and no sooner had the sound of verse struck upon her fancy than it seemed to confuse and agitate anew all her senses. It was like the music of some breeze, to which dance and tremble all the young leaves of a wild plant. Even when at the convent she had been fond of repeating the infant rhymes with which they had ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation of gloomy wretchedness[115]. From him then his son inherited, with some other qualities, 'a vile melancholy,' which in his too strong expression of any disturbance ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... there is not one of all the various emotions which agitate the breast in maturity, that may not be discerned almost from the birth, hope, jealousy, and despair excepted, which, tho' they bear the name in common with those other more natural dispositions of the mind, I look upon rather as consequentials of the passions, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... stay," he whispered to Miss Maynard, as he felt the captain's pulse. "The captain has had another attack—very slight, I assure you— he'll rally from it, I hope, but we must allow nothing to agitate him. There, there, he understands what we say. Don't be cast down, Captain; God will take care of her, and she has many true friends. It is about you, my dear, he is thinking—I know it by the way his eyes turn ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... characteristic—not being the same for any two substances—it is easy to tell what kind of matter is concerned in producing them. We may suppose that the inconceivably minute particles which by their rapid thrilling agitate the ethereal medium so as to produce light, are free to give out their peculiar tone of vibration only when floating apart from each other in gaseous form; but when crowded together into a condensed mass, the clear ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... death. Judging so far from experience, a sound conclusion seemed to follow. When circumstances strongly excited the girl, there was a dormant vitality in her that revived. At other times when events failed to agitate her by a direct appeal to personal interests, her constitutional reserve held the rule. She could be impenetrably honest, steadily industrious, truly grateful—but the intuitive expression of feeling, on ordinary occasions, was beyond ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... another sort of clergyman—the Rev. Amos Barton, who did not come to Shepperton until long after Mr. Gilfil had departed this life—until after an interval in which Evangelicalism and the Catholic Question had begun to agitate the rustic mind with controversial debates. A Popish blacksmith had produced a strong Protestant reaction by declaring that, as soon as the Emancipation Bill was passed, he should do a great stroke of business in gridirons; and the disinclination of the Shepperton ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... not agitate our sails; nor Auster trouble our course with storms. In strength, talent, figure, virtue, honour, wealth, we are short of the foremost, but before the last." —Horace, Ep., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... might, and so did Devereux, though from what the doctor said, there could be little doubt that he was very ill. Mary did not tell him that his dear mother was very ill also, being sure that the knowledge of this would agitate him, and retard, if it did not prevent, his recovery. She entreated that she might remain night and day with her brother; but this was not allowed, and so she was obliged to take lodgings near at hand, where she remained at night when turned out of the hospital. ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... agitate, jar, quake, shiver, totter, brandish, joggle, quaver, shudder, tremble, flap, jolt, quiver, sway, vibrate, fluctuate, jounce, reel, swing, wave, flutter, oscillate, rock, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... shall tell her now," said Percy, "that I had received a letter and that I've seen you. But I shall tell her we parted the best of friends, and nothing must be done, above all things, to annoy or agitate her." ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... 14th, seven miles and a quarter on the lake, a violent wind drove us for shelter to a small island, or rather a ridge of rolled stones, thrown up by the frequent storms which agitate this lake. The weather did not moderate the whole day, and we were obliged to pass the night on this exposed spot. The delay, however, enabled us to obtain some lunar observations. The wind having subsided, we left our resting-place the following morning, crossed ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... meaning Redman. It was part of the Louisiana Purchase, and had been set aside as an Indian reservation. All the land, however, was not occupied and as some of it was exceedingly fertile the white people began to agitate to have it opened to them. So at length the Indians gave up their claim to part of this territory in return ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... was oppressively close and warm, just as when the door of an oven is opened in one's face, not a breath of wind stirring to agitate the still atmosphere; but, neither did this fact, nor did the blazing power of the glowing orb of day, which looked like a globe of fire in the centre of the heavens, affect the wild luxuriance of ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... women step out from the sanctuary of their homes, the glamour that girlhood or maternity has thrown around them cast aside, that moment will they cease to rule mankind. Women may agitate until they have obtained political recognition, but will awake from their foolish dream of power, realizing too late what they have sacrificed to obtain it, that the price has been very heavy, and the fruit of their struggles ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... he hesitated for a moment to consider whether his unexpected appearance might not injuriously agitate his old friend. "I must leave it to Kezia to tell him. I can safely do that," he thought. "She is a strong-minded woman, and glad as she will be to see me, she, at all events, will not go ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... thin exaltation shook him like a fever chill. "I am more than a lion, Nedjma, I am a man—just as the Roumi" [Romans—i.e., Christians.] "are men—men who decide—men who undertake—agitate—accomplish ... and now, for the last time, I have decided. A fate has given thy loveliness to me, and no man shall take it away from me to enjoy. I will take it away from them instead! From all the men of this Africa, conquered ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... rebellions were announced, dooms of treason discharged, and other tidings of a great and affecting import intimated to the people of Constantinople. When the trumpet had in its turn ceased, with its thrilling and doleful notes, to agitate the immense assembly, the voice of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... step, it had appeared to him, would dissolve the spell of his embarrassment; in act, he found it otherwise: he found himself no less incapable of speech or further progress; and with the lady's hand in his, sat helpless. But worse was in store. A peculiar quivering began to agitate the form of his companion; the hand that lay unresistingly in Somerset's trembled as with ague; and presently there broke forth, in the shadow of the carriage, the bubbling and musical sound of laughter, resisted but triumphant. The young man dropped his prize; had it been possible, he would ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... have been very glad to accustom themselves to more comfortable habits if only the paternal wisdom of all the Chinese governments had not always prevented it by most severely punishing all the attempts of the workers to agitate and to unite for the purpose of giving effect to their demands. Workers who united for such purposes were treated as rebels; and the wealthy classes of China—this is their folly and their fault—have ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... discussions in Congress and on the stump. The Southerners, however, would not take warning. As they saw their long ascendency in the government coming to an end, their demands rose higher. Some of them actually began to agitate for a revival of the African slave trade; and this also Douglas had to oppose. His following in the Senate was now reduced to two or three, and one of these, Broderick, of California, a brave and steadfast man, was first defeated by the Southern interest, and then slain in a duel. John ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... me by not pressing your request," he said. "It is surely enough that you know the result of the instructions. Why should you agitate yourself to no purpose by reading them? They are expressed so cruelly; they show such abominable want of feeling, that I really cannot prevail upon myself ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... butterflies of fashion, you Who wear a suit a year or two, Then agitate for something new, Look at Regina, the patrician! Her cleverness is more than gold Who so transforms from fabrics old The things a marvel to behold, And glories in ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... with you,' she said, as though the words were wrung out of her, 'I must be a woman. You agitate me, you divide my mind, and my force goes. There are both capacities in me, and one destroys the other. And ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... surprising that timorous apprehensions should agitate these poor people on the appearance of a strange vessel. Their western neighbours, the inhabitants of the island of Ralick, and of the southern islands of the groups Mediuro and Arno, which are much more ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... transitory emotion; no natural spasm of sudden fear for the catastrophe of the morrow; no intense and working passions, struggling into calm; no sign of internal hurricanes, rising as it were from the hidden depths, agitate the surface, or betray the secrets of the unfathomable world within. The mute lip; the rigid brow; the downcast eye; a heavy and dread stillness, brooding over every feature,—these are all ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... are simply, with regard to the rivers, that the winter floods break down the drifts in the banks and agitate the auriferous detritus, thus acting as natural sluices, and cause the metal to accumulate in favourable spots; whilst on the New Zealand coast the heavy seas breaking on the shingly beach, carry off the lighter particles, leaving behind the gold, which is so much ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... but Pelle had learned something, none the less! The victory was to the strong, and their organization was not as yet sufficient. They must talk and agitate, and hold meetings! The tendency to embrace the new ideas certainly inclined the men to organize themselves, but their sense of honor was as yet undeveloped. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... pride desire better for you, than the establishment which will one day be mine? Come then, Alice, and since you condemn me to banishment—since you deny me a share in those stirring achievements which are about to agitate England—come! do you—for you only can—do you reconcile me to exile and inaction, and give happiness to one, who, for your sake, is ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... There was a good deal of noise, too, round the two officers. "They crowded upon us. There was a circle round that dead man (autour de ce mort)," he described. "One had to attend to the most pressing. These people were beginning to agitate themselves—Parbleu! A mob like that—don't you see?" he interjected with philosophic indulgence. As to the bulkhead, he had advised his commander that the safest thing was to leave it alone, it was so villainous to look at. They got two hawsers on board promptly ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... it might not be Tommy, but herself, who was so unlike other people; that it was not he who was unable to love, but she who could not be loved. This idea did not agitate her as a terrible thing; she could almost welcome it. But she did not go to him with it. While it might be but a fancy, that was no way to help a man who was overfull of them. It was the bare truth only that she wanted him to see, and so she made elaborate inquiries ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... her spiritual welfare. She constantly deplored her lukewarmness, and regarded herself as standing on the edge of a precipice from which she had no power to withdraw. The subject of slavery began now also to agitate her mind. After her residence in Philadelphia, where doubtless she had to listen to some sharp reflections on the Southern institution, it seemed more than ever abhorrent to her, but it does not appear that she gave utterance to her feelings on more than one or ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... and prize goose,—The feelings which now agitate my sensorium on this Michaelmasian occasion stimulate the vibratetiuncles of the heartiean hypothesis, so as to paralyse the oracular and articulative apparatus of my loquacious confirmation, overwhelming my soul-fraught imagination, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... keys— Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood Of sun-shine where there is no breeze. So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood, Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite— Wind cannot dim or agitate the light. From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair, Eyes, lips and hands and voice, As if the stored up thought From the earth sphere Had given down the being of your choice Conjured by ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... merely assured Hilda that he was still in an encouraging condition, and told her that she herself must keep calm, so that her recovery might be more rapid. For several days he forbade a renewal of the subject of conversation, with the intention, as he said, of sparing her every thing which might agitate her. Whether his precautions were wise or not may be doubted. Hilda sometimes troubled herself with fancies that the doctor might, perhaps, suspect all the truth; and though she succeeded in dismissing the idea as absurd, yet ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... reign of James the Fourth, I think, for he needed timber for his fleet. The law was then that if a crow built for three successive years in a tree, the tree became the property of the Crown. This has not been rescinded, so Field please note and agitate in your country and save your beloved partridges and the eggs of our grouse. Now two green parroquets have gone shrieking joyfully past. I suppose I must believe they are wild, but it takes faith to believe ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... ready to join her father in the next room, she felt a tremor seize her, that made it almost impossible to appear before him. No other circumstance now impending to agitate her heart, she felt more forcibly its embarrassment at meeting on terms of easy intercourse, him, of whom she had never been used to think, but with that distant reverence and fear, which his severity had excited; and she knew not how she should dare to speak to, or look on ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... I ought to have taken better care of you, my dear child. Nay, never mind because you gave way a little," she said seeing the burning blushes that rose one after the other in Olive's face. "It was quite natural. The most trifling thing must agitate one who has been so very, very ill. Come, will you read your letter, or shall I put it by ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... generations; maybe their grandfather migrated, perhaps his grandfather, and Ireland is remembered by old tales treasured among them. Now Tim Flanagan will not be remembered in a year's time when he has the job for which he has got us to agitate, and the jobberies that stir us move ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany

... said, when Anne Catherick took her friend's arm to go away. Innocent as I had been of any intention to terrify and agitate her, my heart smote me as I looked at ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... "Don't agitate yourself," said Jack. "It's all serene. He is thoroughly enjoying himself. Where are you two off to? Going to sit out in the dark? Shall I ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... of her own well-preserved looks; she did not like looking at herself any more. Something had given her a shock both inwardly and outwardly. What that had been nobody guessed. Her husband knew it certainly, but he did not speak of it to his wife. Why agitate her again? Why tear ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... arising from the Divine Presence within him, that nothing was wanting but perseverance to his final perfection. The various elements in his nature were not, as now, at war with one another. His body did not blind the eye of his soul, and agitate it with the storms of concupiscence; nor did the soul employ the body as its instrument of rebellion against God. Though not yet admitted to that glorious vision of the Eternal which was to be the reward of his obedience, yet he lived in direct ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... Use a bronze paint and mix with it five times its volume of spirit of turpentine, and to this mixture add dried slaked lime, about 40 grains to the pint. Agitate well ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... the demand for their admission into professions and occupations hitherto closed against them, becomes every year more urgent. Though there are not in this country, as there are in the United States, periodical Conventions and an organized party to agitate for the Rights of Women, there is a numerous and active Society organized and managed by women, for the more limited object of obtaining the political franchise. Nor is it only in our own country and in America that women are beginning to protest, more or less collectively, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... in his hours of relaxation, when he is engaged in the pursuit of mere pleasure, is less national than when he is under the influence of any of the more violent feelings which agitate everyday life. The reason of this may at first appear somewhat obscure, but it will become evident, on a little reflection. Aristotle's definition of pleasure, perhaps the best ever given, is "an agitation, and settling of the spirit into its own proper nature;" similar, by the by, to the giving ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... one of the laziest birds in the creation, it might easily reach, in a few days' flight, the dry heaths, the hills, and elevated regions, which it loves; but woodcocks abhor all violent exercise, always preferring the use of their feet to that of their wings, which latter they never agitate, except when necessity requires. Well, they have now set out, and after marching all night by slow and easy stages, when morning comes our woodcocks make a halt wherever they happen to be, breakfast as best they may, and then ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... effects? Or only negatively and indirectly, by lessening and suspending that continuous texture of organic sensation, which, by drawing outward the attention of the soul, sheaths her from her own state and its corresponding activities?—A fearful question, which I too often agitate, and which agitates me even in my dreams, when most commonly I am in one of Swedenborg's hells, doubtful whether I am once more to be awaked, and thinking our dreams to be the true state of the soul disembodied when not united with Christ. On awaking from such dreams, I never fail to find some ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge



Words linked to "Agitate" :   provoke, psych up, rouse, pother, quake, poke, palpitate, press, concuss, toss, thrash, wiggle, jactitate, roil, thrash about, charge up, thresh, beat, budge, stimulate, fan, sparge, agitative, rumpus, agitator, promote, calm, slash, hype up, tremble, excite, advertize, crusade, rattle, convulse, campaign, electrify, displace, shift, fluff up, rile, tremor, plump up, thresh about, joggle, succuss, move, jiggle, bother, scramble, trouble, upset, advertise



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