Careful Words

ecstasy (n.)

This is the very coinage of your brain:

This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.

This is the very ecstasy of love.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,

Can touch him further.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 12.

Elegant as simplicity, and warm

As ecstasy.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Table Talk. Line 588.