Literary notes about Rapture (AI summary)
Literary authors have long used “rapture” to signify an overwhelming state of mind and heart—a moment where emotion, whether of love, wonder, or even terror, transcends the mundane. In some works, rapture marks the pinnacle of spiritual or romantic devotion, capturing feelings so intense they transform ordinary encounters into epiphanies of joy or ecstasy [1][2][3]. Meanwhile, in other instances it conveys a physical and almost divine sensation, as a character reverberates with delight or is gripped by an almost painful exaltation [4][5][6]. The term also appears in philosophical and reflective narratives to denote transformative experience and heightened anticipation, suggesting that moments of rapture offer a glimpse into a realm where human passion verges on the sublime [7][8].
- She talked of Amelia with rapture half a dozen times that day.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - “That will be the very thing, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” exclaimed Charlotta the Fourth in rapture.
— from Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery - “Oh, yes, yes; make haste, please,” answered Levin, with difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - so dark,—I was in a rapture all the way.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott - It was so deliriously tight and hot that I lay in the exquisite rapture of complete insertion for some minutes.
— from The Romance of Lust: A classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous - He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - He is not lost in rapture at the great works of Phidias, the Parthenon, the Propylea, the statues of Zeus or Athene.
— from The Republic by Plato - Perhaps necessity kept his spirit excited: the next four years are one prolonged rapture or ecstasy of invention.
— from The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater
