"Demoniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter; they often denote it by some mark only, as these others, Andria, Eunuchus; or these, Sylla, Cicero, Toyquatus. I love a poetic progress, by leaps and skips; 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble, demoniac. There are pieces in Plutarch where he forgets his theme; where the proposition of his argument is only found by incidence, stuffed and half stifled in foreign matter. Observe his footsteps in the Daemon of Socrates. O God! how beautiful are these frolicsome sallies, those ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the darkness deepened, a medley of doleful noises pervaded the horrible wilderness. An unearthly gabble of strange water-fowl broke out suddenly, was kept up for a few seconds only, and then ceased. Only once in the night did Arlington hear that demoniac gabble; but he lay awake for hours expecting and dreading to hear it again. The owls were not so sparing of their vocal performances, scores of them joining in concert to serenade the lost man. Sometimes their prolonged notes sounded like the wail of a deserted babe, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... eyes belong to the women. The ungloved feminine hands have a claw-like aspect as they scrape the glittering pieces of silver over the green cloth; the feminine throats look weird and scraggy as they crane themselves over masculine shoulders; the feminine eyes have something demoniac in their steely glare as they keep watch upon the rapid progress ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... restless night. She had lain long awake, dwelling on the insistent thoughts that the day's happenings had given rise to. The sleep which finally came to her was troubled by dreams—demoniac—grotesque. Hosmer was in a danger from which she was striving with physical effort to rescue him, and when she dragged him painfully from the peril that menaced him, she turned to see that it was Fanny whom she had saved—laughing ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... pines and funereal hemlocks on all sides. The wind sang weirdly in the turrets and moaned through the long-drawn avenues of the park. As I approached the house I saw several mysterious figures flit before the windows, and a yell of demoniac laughter answered my summons at the bell. While I strove to repress my gloomy forebodings, the housekeeper, a timid, scared-looking old woman, showed me into ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... appropinquas, bonum cum augmento operare"—"As you draw near to your latter end, redouble your efforts to do good." And this redoubled effort was in his case all of a piece with what had gone before. In 1863 he wrote to a friend: "In trying to heal the British demoniac, true doctrine is not enough; one must convey the true doctrine with studied moderation; for, if one commits the least extravagance, the poor madman seizes hold of this, tears and rends it, and quite fails to perceive that you have said ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... has its chivalry and its pageantry, it has also revolting hideousness and demoniac woe. The young, the noble, the sanguine were writhing there in agony. Bullets respect not beauty. They tear out the eye, and shatter the jaw, and rend the cheek, and transform the human face divine into an aspect upon which one can not gaze but with horror. From ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... hours before I was awakened from this stupor, for the moon was riding high in the heavens. Over me was bending the demoniac face of a Hindu priest, a worshipper of Siva as I knew from the caste marks ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... Matthew and Mark agree. Thus, for instance, in the account of the healings in Peter's house and of the paralytic, in the relation of the parables of Mark iv. 1-34 to the storm at sea which follows, of the healing of Jairus' daughter to that of the Gadarene demoniac and to the mission of the Twelve in the place of Herod's reflections (Mark vi. 14-16), in the warning against the Scribes and the widow's mite (Mark xii. 38-44), the second and third Synoptics are allied against the first. On the other hand, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... one was on his lips, was interrupted by a violent cursing. The train was well under way, and the baggage-man had sat down to a small table with his back toward them. He had leaped to his feet now, his face furious, and with another demoniac curse he gave the coal skuttle a kick that sent it with a bang to the far end of the car. The table was ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... Scots though he was, who had to yield. Cowed by something demoniac in the will-power pitted against his, he found himself retreating in the direction indicated ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... carefully, and these in themselves constitute a strong presumption. M. Huysman is exhaustive in fiction and reticent in essay-writing, yet he gives us to understand explicitly that the infamous Canon Docre of La Bas is actually living in Belgium, that he is the leader of a "demoniac clan," and, like the Count de St Germain, is in frequent terror of the possibilities of the life to come. An interviewer has represented M. Huysman as stating that his information was derived from ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... and wild cattle, now trembled at the mere idea of facing an inoffensive animal, which was only a relation of the peccaries, with a snout terminated by a non-prehensile proboscis, yet to which his imagination attributed certain demoniac qualities. He that night utterly refused to go to rest; at the least rustling of the leaves he expected to see the ghost appear. Instead of directly opposing his error—which I knew would be of no use—I endeavored to convince him that my ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... Waterloo was in Palestine. There came a day when all hell rode up, led by Apollyon, and the Captain of our salvation confronted them alone. The Rider on the white horse of the Apocalypse going out against the black horse cavalry of death, and the battalions of the demoniac, and the myrmidons of darkness. From twelve o'clock at noon to three o'clock in the afternoon the greatest battle of the universe went on. Eternal destinies were being decided. All the arrows of hell pierced our Chieftain, and the battle-axes struck Him, until brow and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... turns a somersault and alights on his feet. The European is as far behind the Asiatic in horsemanship as in everything else which is manly and not demoniac. The use of the sword, for example. The dragoon has a straight weapon, with which he is taught to cut or thrust. If he does the former, and the blow is not parried, he may knock his opponent down, but he seldom inflicts a dangerous wound. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... difficulty and peril of such a feat startled me; I reasoned against the feeling, and strove more strenuously than I had ever done before; I even made a solemn vow not to give way to the temptation, but I believe nothing less than chains, and those strong ones, could have restrained me. The demoniac influence, for I can call it nothing else, at length prevailed; it compelled me to rise, to dress myself, to descend the stairs, to unbolt the door, and to go forth; it drove me to the foot of the tree, and it compelled me to climb the trunk; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fired his fatal shot the Indians were so infuriated, that, setting up their demoniac yells, they plunged down the banks of the stream, determined ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... features convulsed into a wild paroxysm of insanity. When she saw herself discovered, she gibbered, made mouths, and pointed at them with her bloody fingers, with the frantic gestures of an exulting demoniac. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... for a hold on the other's collar. With a sinuous movement, the visitor swerved aside and struck the other man, flat-handed, across the face. There was an answering howl of demoniac fury. Then a strange thing happened. The assailant turned and fled, not to the ready egress of the front door, but down the dark stairway to the basement. The judge thundered after, in maddened, unthinking ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... about the size of an orange; it had a pair of wicked-looking eyes that fairly blazed with fury as, catching sight of me, it suddenly halted, glaring at me, emitting a low, angry, hissing sound, and clashing its formidable jaws together in what looked like an access of perfectly demoniac ferocity. Struck motionless for the moment, in sheer amazement, I quickly recovered myself and, believing that the thing was about to spring at my face and inflict a possibly fatal bite, I raised my cutlass and, with a slashing blow, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... 'joy in the Lord,' will manifest itself by efflorescing into all holiness and all loftiness and largeness of obedience. You may try to frighten men into righteousness, you will never succeed. You may try to coerce their wills, and your strongest bands will be broken as the iron chains were by the demoniac. But put upon them the silken leash of love, and you may lead them where you will. You cannot grow grapes on an iceberg, and you cannot get works of righteousness out of a man that has a dread of God at ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... semi-legendary animals,—griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes,—till at length the whole vision of fighting images crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered heraldically with unutterable horrors of monstrous and demoniac natures, whilst over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the fore-finger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven, and having power (which, without experience, I never could have believed) to awaken the pathos that kills in the very bosom of the horrors ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... darted on his antagonist, and commenced an assault with all the courage and address of a practised swordsman. Thrust succeeded thrust with mortal rapidity, but the active eye of Gomez Arias foiled their deadly aim with consummate skill and dexterity. A demoniac spirit seemed to agitate Don Rodrigo, and he continued for some minutes wasting his strength in the fruitless attack, and impairing his own means of resistance. The combat was too fierce to be of long duration, and a few moments would have brought it to a mortal issue (for Don Lope was now in ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... that she might meet her approaching fate, as dreadful as it was, with calmness and resignation. But the terrific noise of her maddened assailants, as they leaped up, snapping, snarling, and howling, in demoniac chorus, and made nearer and nearer approaches every moment to her person, once more aroused her natural instinct for self-preservation; and she arose, and, standing upon her feet, involuntarily bent over one end of her support ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... ever beyond the power of the Lord to cleanse. No blindness was ever too dark for him to remove. No palsy was ever too dead for him to quicken into healthy life. No fever was ever too burning for him to cool. No demoniac was ever so insane or epileptic, under the power and in the possession of even a legion of devils, but that he could have them all cast out and the possessed one sit calmly, be clothed and in his right mind. Nothing is impossible with ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... here," I began, and was just about to tell him that Freedham was an unwholesome creature who had mysterious fits like a demoniac, when I remembered my promise of silence: so I went on lamely: "You will tell me one day, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... motherhood exists without any qualification. Her intense love for her own brood is softened by no social requirements. If a poor lost waif from another coop strays into her realm, no pity, no sympathy springing from the memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. She has a self-abnegation great as that of human mothers. Her voracity and timidity disappear. She goes almost without food herself, that her chicks may eat. She scatters the dough about with her own bill, that it may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... declaring, as a friend of mine said of his own playing—although eminent in his profession—"that they were only fiddlers." Paganini's playing was most unearthly and inhuman. I never heard anything like the tones he produced from his violin—the sounds now crashing as if a demoniac was tearing and straining at the strings, now melting away with the softest and tenderest harmonies. He kept his hearers enthralled by his magical music, and astonished by his wonderful execution. I shall never forget hearing him ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this: He put a ring that had a Foot of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazar would persuade ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... have written, but I can see that I give you no real insight into the demoniac cleverness of Cullingworth. His views upon medicine were most revolutionary, but I daresay that if things fulfil their promise I may have a good deal to say about them in the sequel. With his brilliant ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... intelligibility, it forfeits sympathy, it becomes more and more an object of simple curiosity, and removes into the region of the unknown. Even if the type passes into the supernatural, into fairyland or the angelic or demoniac world, it must not leave humanity behind. These spheres are in fact fragments of humanity itself, projections of its sense of wonder, its goodness, and its evil, in extreme abstraction though concretely felt. Fairy, angel, and ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... poor; Loads the lorn hours with misery and care, And lives a beggar to enrich his heir. 100 Unthinking crowds thy forms, Imposture, gull, A Saint in sackcloth, or a Wolf in wool. While mad with foolish fame, or drunk with power, Ambition slays his thousands in an hour; Demoniac Envy scowls with haggard mien, And blights the bloom of other's joys, unseen; Or wrathful Jealousy invades the grove, And turns to night ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... remained: for more and more the earth over-grows me, wooes me, assimilates me; so that I ask myself this question: 'Must I not, in time, cease to be a man, and become a small earth, precisely her copy, extravagantly weird and fierce, half-demoniac, half-ferine, wholly mystic—morose and turbulent—fitful, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... rush of hoofs fell away. They were cornering the stranger, no doubt, and Vic struggled to lift himself to his feet and watch until a faint sound from the dog made him look down. Bart lay with his haunches drawn up under him, his forepaws digging into the soft loam, his eyes demoniac. Instinctively Vic reached for his absent gun, and then, despairing, relaxed to his former position. The wolf-dog lowered his head to his paws and there remained with the eyes following each intake of Gregg's breath. A rattle of gunshots flung ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... of thunder, like the bursting of a world, whereupon all that restless sea of shadows, and their bright abode, vanished suddenly; and there ensued a flood of darkness, peopled with shoaling fears, and I heard the approach of hurrying sounds, with demoniac laughter, and shouts coming as for me, nearer and louder, saying, 'Cast out! Cast out!' and it rushed up to me like an unseen army, and I fled for life before it, until I came to the extreme edge of that spiritual world, where, as ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... front was seen Wife Gougeon brandishing her pistol. The Admiral and Hache were at her side haranguing the leaders. Surging along, the demoniac screams of drunken women and the babel of shouting men, as they approached each new neighbourhood, seemed to stir it to its depths and to add to the rear ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... you know, who comes every day to dance on the church square, in spite of the official's prohibition! She hath a demoniac goat with horns of the devil, which reads, which writes, which knows mathematics like Picatrix, and which would suffice to hang all Bohemia. The prosecution is all ready; 'twill soon be finished, I assure you! A pretty creature, on my soul, that dancer! The handsomest ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... by some demoniac possession, a desire that had been only intermittently present in Mrs Quantock's consciousness took full possession of her, a red revolutionary insurgence hoisted its banner. Why with this stupendous novelty ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... everywhere a hand-to-hand battle there was no time to load and fire; swords flashed and fell, bayonets stabbed, the royals and the Camisards took each other by the throat and hair. For an hour this demoniac fight lasted, during which Cavalier lost five hundred men and slew a thousand of the enemy. At last he won through, followed by about two hundred of his troops, and drew a long breath; but finding himself in the centre of a large circle of ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... trails of hungry and weary travelers, trooping down the companionway, met files of still more uneasy diners emerging from the saloon. The grinding jar of the vessel, the heavy smell of food, and the pound of ragtime combined to produce an effect as of some sordid and demoniac orgy—an effect derided by the smug ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... The demoniac interest excited by this scene withdrew the attention of those who were enjoying it from me, and gave me the opportunity of escaping unperceived, merely with the loss of my bandbox. Of that the infuriated mob made themselves ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sailors, and after about a quarter of an hour's wait, during which time the vessel rose and fell with the swell, the craft that had hailed us loomed up slowly in the darkness, amid the excited jabber of her demoniac-looking crew. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... asked Mr. Thornton, coolly, and coming close to the window to discover the man in whom Margaret took such an interest. As soon as they saw Mr. Thornton, they set up a yell,—to call it not human is nothing,—it was as the demoniac desire of some terrible wild beast for the food that is withheld from his ravening. Even he drew hack for a moment, dismayed at the intensity ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... again. A wild beast could hardly have growled more savagely than did this insane man as he caught her up from the bed of snow into which she had fallen and shook her with fierce passion. A large, strong man, with an influx of demoniac, strength in every muscle, his wife was little more than a child in his hands. He could have crushed the life out of ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... thought the room was empty. Then, from behind the table in the centre, a demoniac, blood-stained figure rose into view, holding in its arms a white-robed woman. With a sort of nervous shock, I saw that the man was Swain, and the woman Marjorie Vaughan. A thrill of fear ran through me as I saw ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... Girty, set about the work of preparation to meet the next American force which might be sent against them. In a body, these savages, led by Little Turtle, LeGris and Blue Jacket, proceeded to Detroit, where they "paraded the streets, uttering their demoniac scalp yelps while bearing long poles strung with the scalps of ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... upon the body left lying face downward in the cold, damp woods. Men of no compassion, unreached by ordinary sympathies, they felt the furtive skulking back, step by step, along ways commonplace enough in the daytime, but begirt with terrors now and full of demoniac suggestion. ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... prey to enchantment and demoniac art all your life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly satisfied; nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly hideous ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... these wars, Cathedrals, as well as towns and their inhabitants, were scarred and wounded. Hardly had these dissensions ended in 1494, when the Wars of Religion commenced under Charles IX, and Gascony was again one of the most terrible fields of battle. Here the demoniac enthusiasm of both sides exceeded even the terrible exhibitions of Languedoc. The royal family of Navarre was openly Protestant and contributed more than any others to the military organisations of their Faith. Jeanne d'Albret, in 1566, wishing to repay intolerance with intolerance, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... no longer on his guard, and the outlaw, profiting by the darkness, had already detached his carbine from the saddle. In another moment, beyond doubt, he would have carried into execution his demoniac purpose, had it not been for the appearance of a horseman, who was coming at full gallop along the road. Besides the horse which he rode, the horseman led behind him another, saddled and bridled. He was evidently a messenger ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... employ them in place of candles to illuminate their rooms while performing their domestic work. We have seen one exhibited in a room where eight gas-burners were in full blaze, and yet its two great demoniac-looking eyes (or what appeared to be eyes) shone more brightly than the most brilliant of precious stones—with an intensity, it will be no exaggeration to say, equal to the electric light. The effect was perfectly startling, and ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... these priceless mementoes, there remained only the marble, life-size, bust of the son, which Mr. Gibbons had providentially removed to a place of safety, and a few minor objects. And all this ruin, and irreparable loss, had been visited upon this charitable and patriotic family, by a furious, demoniac mob, because they loved ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... were published in 1748, and the last in 1773. The subject is the last days of Jesus, His crucifixion and resurrection. Bk. i. Jesus ascends the Mount of Olives, to spend the night in prayer. Bk. ii. John the Beloved, failing to exorcise a demoniac, Jesus goes to his assistance; and Satan, rebuked, returns to hell, where he tells the fallen angels his version of the birth and ministry of Christ, whose death he resolves on. Bk. iii. Messiah sleeps for the last time on the Mount of Olives; the tutelar angels ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... they do but change their clothes and follow the fashion in externals. They laugh as of old. How they laugh! No mortal can laugh so heartily. No mortal has such good cause. Theirs is not the serene mirth of Olympian spheres; it sounds demoniac, from the midway region. What are they laughing at, these cheerful monsters? At the greatest jest in ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Providence, they may think it philosophical enlightenment to hold that Christianity and Christendom are adequately accounted for by the idle dreams of a noble self-deceiver and the passionate hallucinations of a recovered demoniac. We persecute them not, we denounce them not, we judge them not; but we say that, unless all life be a hollow, there could have been no such miserable origin to the sole religion of the world which holds the perfect balance between philosophy and popularity, between religion and morals, between ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... upon Burrell's really handsome features, contracted and withered by the pestilence of a demoniac spirit, and loathed him from ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... is, as her name might have informed you; and as for her eyes, I consider them, or used to do so, of course—for her injured nation have been long expelled from Alexandria by your fanatic tribe—as altogether divine and demoniac, let the base imagination of monks call them ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Nature, especially in the monastery garden of the Carlovingian time, contrasts strikingly with the tone of these very mundane vagantes clerici, for whom Nature had not only long been absorbed and freed from all demoniac influence, but peopled by the charming forms of the old mythic poems, and made for the joy and profit of men, in the widest and naivest ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... midnight air, and found their way through the crowd to the eating-room of the station. The little girl cried with broken sleep and the strangeness, and Olive tried to quiet her. Marcia clung to Halleck's arm, and shivered convulsively. Squire Gaylord stalked beside them with a demoniac vigor. "A few more hours, a few more hours, sir!" he said. He made a hearty supper, while the rest scalded their mouths with hot tea, which they forced ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... career of this half-mad girl is sinister and tragic; she is half-sister in her temperamental traits to Paulina in the same master's admirable story The Gambler. Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov is another woman of the demoniac type to which Nastasia belongs. Then there are high-spirited, hysterical girls such as Katarina in Karamazov, Aglaia Epanchin in The Idiot, or Liza in The Possessed (Besi). The border-land of puberty is a favourite theme ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... whistling spheres of light He flashes and he flames; He turns not to the left nor right, He asks them not their names; One spurn from his demoniac heel,— Away, away they fly, Where darkness might be bottled up And sold for ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had painted Lilith passing, with her face buried in a bunch of sweet peas. But when he came to the picture, he found, to his astonishment and terror, that the face of one of the group was now turned towards that of the victim, regarding his revival with demoniac satisfaction, and taking pains to prevent the others from discovering it. The face of this prince of torturers was that of Teufelsbuerst himself. Lilith had altogether vanished, and in her place stood the dim vampire reiteration of the body that lay ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... never have been told; for Anna Goddard, upon learning that she had been the means of calling back to earth the woman whose existence had shorn her of every future hope, looked—with her wild eyes and demoniac face—as if she could be capable of any act that would utterly annihilate the unsuspicious companion of the man whom her untamed soul worshiped as only such a fierce and selfish nature ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the ascription of magical superiority to women—whether from their supposed greater susceptibility to demoniac influence, or for some other reason—are not clear. In the lowest tribes sorcerers are commonly men[1567]—the profession is an influential and honored one, and naturally falls into the hands of leading men; the magician is often the most ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... very narratives to which the authority of the Founder of Christianity is pledged, and upon the accuracy of which "the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ" is staked, just as others have staked it upon the truth of the histories of demoniac possession ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... could not acknowledge culpability for the acts and words of others at a distance of three thousand miles—others whom I had never seen, of whom I had never heard, and with whom I never had had communication. I could not admit that the demoniac atrocities, described as Fenian principles by the constabulary-spy Talbot, ever had my sanction or approval or the sanction or approval of any ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... before him the speedy accomplishment of his fiendish purpose—the gratification of his inveterate hate and long sought revenge, by the commission of the most damnable act known this side of the "bottomless pit" of darkness; and his sin-polluted heart actually swelled with venomous delight, and demoniac exultation. One of the fairest flowers of earth is to be plucked by his rude hand, and soiled by his touch and embrace! Will he ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... that they were all of common stature and costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. Each man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth glance, which was not normal, and which ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal—these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to fill a book, for it would be a record of continuous adventure and hairbreadth escapes from avalanches that were constantly threatening to overwhelm them; of treacherous snow-bridges that crumbled away beneath their feet; of furious, icy winds that, seeming to be imbued with demoniac intelligence and malignity, always assailed them in some especially perilous situation, and sought to buffet them from their precarious hold; and of long hours of intolerable suffering when, during the hours of darkness, they ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... trying to keep the car straight by feeling rather than sight. When I had accomplished these feats, and had not brought the car to grief (even though we passed several vehicles, and I was drawn by a demoniac influence to swerve towards each one as if it had been the loadstone to my magnet, or the candle to my moth), Jack finally consented to grant my request. He told me clearly what to do, and I did it, or some inward servant of myself did, whenever the master was within an ace of losing ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... door-post, to which she had clung for support. Her husband's words rang in her ears—"One by one shall your children be taken from you to serve my purposes!" Through the dense fog she fancied that he glared upon her in bitter hatred—his deep-set eyes flashing with demoniac fire, and his smile, now extending, now contracting, into all the varied expressions of triumphant malignity! She pressed her hand on her eyes to shut out the horrid vision, and, a prayer, a simple prayer, rose to her lips. Like oil upon the troubled waters, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... forty-three avoirdupois pounds forcibly upon my lungs. He repeated this operation several times before I fully recovered from the shock conveyed by his combined impudence and weight; but pain finally brought my senses back, and with a wild plunge I unseated my demoniac riders and gained a clear space in the middle of ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... and very different side to Stevenson which struck others more than it struck myself, namely, that of the freakish or elvish, irresponsible madcap or jester which sometimes appeared in him. It is true that his demoniac quickness of wit and intelligence suggested occasionally a "spirit of air and fire" rather than one of earth; that he was abundantly given to all kinds of quirk and laughter; and that there was no jest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she answered, mournfully, "appearances are deceitful sometimes. Do you remember the story of the poor demoniac whose name was Legion, and how he sat clothed and saved and in his right mind: to me it is one of the most touching and beautiful instances of the Redeemer's power. He was so galled by his chains, he was so torn and wasted by those evil spirits among the Galilean tombs. Fern," ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... names applied to the would-be and baffled conqueror at this time are curiously similar to the epithets hurled at Napoleon a few centuries later. He was compared to Anti-Christ himself, with demoniac attributes added, when Alexander was felt to be too mild a comparison. There was still a terrible fear of the duke's ambition, even though, in the face of all Europe, the Swiss had repulsed his men, and Neuss obstinately refused to open her gates, while the world wondered ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... one should be discouraged by that. Little acts of badness performed over a lifetime accumulated into a sinful whole most pleasing to The Black One. No one should forget that some of the greatest sinners, even the demoniac saints themselves, often had humble beginnings. Did not Thrastus start as a humble shopkeeper, cheating his customers of a portion of rice? Who would have expected that simple man to develop into the Red Slayer of Thorndyke Lane? And who could have imagined that Dr. Louen, son of a dockhand, would ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... of remorse. Even in those collisions into which she had come with him she had risen in his estimation. At Chetwynde she had shown some weakness, but in her attitude to him he had discovered and had adored her demoniac beauty. At Lausanne she had been even grander, for then she had defied his worst menaces, and driven him utterly discomfited from her presence. Such was the Hilda of his thoughts. He found her now changed from this, her lofty calm transformed to feverish impatience, her domineering ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... century. On one night of storm, Stanton had seen carried past him the bodies of two lovers who had been killed by lightning. As he watched, a man had stepped forward, had looked calmly at the bodies, and had burst into a horrible demoniac laugh. Stanton saw the man several times, always in circumstances of horror; he learnt that his name was Melmoth. This being exercised a kind of fascination over Stanton, who searched for him far and wide. Ultimately, Stanton was confined ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... decked with a hundred moons, as they fell everywhere over the field, O king, looked beautiful. And as the two armies, O king, were engaged in battle with each other, they looked resplendent like the celestial and the demoniac hosts battling with each other. All around they rushed against one another in battle. Foremost of royal car-warriors, impetuously dashing against car-warriors in that dreadful battle, fought on, with the yokes of their cars ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... flew In wild demoniac rage the structure through, Tearing down rafters, hurling to the ground, Props, pillars ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... Deluge superakvego. Delusion trompo. Demagogue demagogo. Demand postulo. Demean humili. Demeanour konduto. Demesne bieno—ajxo. Demise morto. Democrat demokrato. Democracy demokrataro. Demolish detruegi. Demon demono. Demoniac demoniako. Demonstrate pruvi. Demonstrative montra. Demoralized, to become malkuragxigxi. Demur sxanceligxi. Demure modesta. Den (animals, etc.) nestego. Denial neo. Deniable neigebla. Denote montri. Denounce denunci. Dense densa. Density ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... better at emulating than at criticising Falconer's 'chef-d'oeuvre'. We have already once or twice alluded to 'his' Shipwreck—surely the grandest and most characteristic effort of his genius, in its demoniac force, and demoniac spirit. As we have elsewhere said, "he describes the horrors of a shipwreck, like a fiend who had, invisible, sat amid the shrouds, choked with laughter—with immeasurable glee had heard the wild farewell rising from ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... and another sound which made the lady gasp and tremble, and caused me to grind my teeth with rage. It was a long, drawn-out sigh, the moan of a man in agony of flesh or spirit. It was Newman's voice. Mingling with it, and following it, came the low, demoniac chuckle of ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... was over. A second, and the revel was on. The earth was not silent now. There was no warning trill of prairie owl. As dropped the figures from above there broke forth the Sioux war-cry: long drawn out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth. Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they swarmed ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... was not the end of the great blaze. Blocked in the valley, the fire, as if animated by some deadly purpose, crept into the mouth of a brushy canyon and ran uphill with demoniac energy until it was burning fiercely over a benchland to the ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Chehonaai thought it would be wise to give birth to demoniac monsters and let them devour the evil ones, but First Man objected, and finally the council agreed that the Winds should perform the task by bringing forth a devastating storm. The faithful were warned and given time to seek ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... people earth, air, and water with beings of its own creation. The rivers had their Undines, the ocean its Nixes, the caverns their Gnomes, and the woods their Sprites. Christianity did not deny the existence of these supernatural races, but it invested them with a demoniac character. They were not regarded as immortal, although permitted to attain an age far beyond that granted to mankind, and they were denied the hope of salvation, unless purchased by a union with creatures of an ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the other horses. A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him; his love for his place, his house, his children, seemed to turn against him, and to tear him and leave him bleeding, like the evil spirit in the demoniac among the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing for his children, that he thought it must show in his face; and he made a feint of having to rise and arrange his overcoat so that he could catch sight of himself ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... their hearts loved as one who has suffered and overcome. Blessing on the God-born human heart! Let the hounds of God, not of Satan, loose upon sin;—God only can rule the dogs of the devil;—let them hunt it to the earth; let them drag forth the demoniac to the feet of the Man who loved the people while he let the devil take their swine; and do not talk about disgrace from a thing being known when the disgrace is that the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... before his eyes in lurid lights and grotesque shapes, with grinning faces, flying, whirling, in a wild, demoniac waltz. The room was full. The procession he had watched to-night winding out from the mill, stopped and jeered, and pointed skinny fingers at him. Then he was at the bank, and they came in troops, wringing their hands, and cursing him. Strange ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... has been charged to both the great political parties, it is probably nearer to truth to say that it originated spontaneously with that demoniac mob soon to rule France, and which from this time carried all political organizations with it. The Girondists, however, still retained enough of their constitutional conservatism to be the only hope which royalty could have for its preservation. The king again threw ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... in a Sick Bed—yet Praising God Terribly in Earnest That is the Price of my Soul "That is Your Fault" The Arrows of Conviction The Artist and the Beggar The Bible The Blind Beggar The Blood The Cross and Crown The Cruel Mother—Hypothetical The Czar and the Soldier The Demoniac The Drunken Father and his Praying Child The Dying Boy The Dying Child The Eleventh Commandment The Faithful Aged Woman The Faithful London Lady The Faithful Missionary The Family that Hooted at Moody The ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... opinions. For Apelles, one of their herd, priding himself on his manner of life and his age, acknowledged one principle [i.e., source of existence], but says that the prophecies were from an opposing spirit. And he was persuaded of the truth of this by the responses of a demoniac maiden named Philumene. But others hold to two principles, as does the mariner Marcion himself, among these are Potitus and Basiliscus. These, following the wolf of Pontus and, like him, unable to discover the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... scornfully driven from the font—the dead body of a dissenter has been refused Christian burial—the cries of poverty and distress have been disregarded—from bitter sectarianism. The genial influence of Christianity is fast driving these demoniac feelings to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I asked myself with almost superstitious awe, if he were not indeed a demoniac being, escaped from some ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... mind, that fools are not always merely imbecile and obstructive; they are at times ferocious, dangerous, mad. There is in human nature what Goethe used to call a demoniac element, defying all law, and all induction; and we can, I fear, from that one cause, as easily calculate the progress of the human race, as we can calculate that of the vines upon the slopes of AEtna, with the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... dictated by personal hostility toward me"; but he was deceived when he added that it all conduced to his benefit. Every mind that was both just and well-informed warmed toward the object of such pitiless and demoniac wrath; but in what land are minds just and well-informed ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... threw himself upon him, rushed him with what seemed demoniac strength to the open door and flung him away out on his back into the muddy ditch that served as a street. For a moment there was a hush of expectation, then Bent was seen to gather himself up painfully and move out of the square of light ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... Revolution, that it is difficult to separate the two. We shall therefore, give in this chapter a short account of the bloody butchery of the inhabitants of that beautiful little colony at Wyoming, and what Col. Bigelow thought of that demoniac cruelty, the bare remembrance of which makes us shudder. Wilkesbarre is the shire town of Luzerne county, Pa. It is situated in the Wyoming valley, one hundred and fourteen miles northeast from Harrisburg, and ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... stumbled upon one another, the flying overtaking and trampling upon the flying. Again and again the imperial guards endeavored to place themselves in line of battle; they were at once overpowered by the Prussian cavalry, who, intoxicated with victory, threw themselves upon them with demoniac strength. Yes, intoxicated—mad with victory, were these Prussians. With perfect indifference they saw their friends, their comrades, fall beside them; they did not mourn over them, but revenged their death tenfold upon the enemy. Those even who ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... ("Halte-Hulda") (1858) was a partial fulfilment of this pledge. If it is not high tragedy, in the ancient sense, it is of the stuff that tragedy is made of. Hulda is an impressive stage figure in her demoniac passion and tiger-like tenderness. Though I doubt if Bjoernson has, in this type, caught the soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to catching it than any of his predecessors. If Gudrun Osvif's ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the one most in advance dismounted to open it; the mule, eager, perhaps, to get to a crib, or, what is more likely, to evade a brutal kick or blow, trotted through; this did not please its owner, who bellowed loudly to it to stop. The mule, however, still kept on, when the ruffian, in demoniac anger, drew from his belt a long bowie knife, and darting after the animal, hurled it at him with all his force. The blade of the weapon, which was six or seven inches long, entered and stuck fast ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... against the pavilion, were now beside themselves with demoniac fury. They broke plates and dashed them upon the floor. The attendants had served them with a ragout composed of the flesh of the wild ass, an unclean animal, and their anger knew no bounds. Aulus rallied them jeeringly ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... Azhi Dahaka, Three-jawed monster, triple-headed, With six eyes and myriad senses, Fiend demoniac, full of power, Evil to the world, and wicked. This fiend full of power, the Devil Anra Mainyu had created, Fatal to the world material, Deadly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... all been mad!" returned Miss Brewer, passionately. "The blind, besotted dupes of your demoniac ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in a dream, like some vast wheeling chimera of fever—that plangent sea before, those terrors fleeing, and behind, a maiden left with her duenna in a castle demoniac. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... oppressor the nobleman, he believed he could trace a substratum of simple- minded brotherly love, and that instinct which leads animals to hate the men who hunt them. In support of this idea he cited the childish, almost demoniac delight of the Russian people in fire, a quality on which Rostopschin calculated in his strategic burning of Moscow. He argued that all that was necessary to set in motion a world-wide movement was to convince the Russian peasant, in whom the natural goodness of oppressed human nature ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Titans upon him, and of their tasting of his slain body, and of their several punishments and fulminations afterwards, are but a representation of the regeneration. For what in us is unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine but demoniac, the ancients termed Titans, that is, TORMENTED and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... a reason which quells my wrath. The silly fanatic repeats to me, after others, that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them? do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to speak ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Frederick; Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal: these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... for a suburban garden-party is purely ludicrous. Miss Corelli has seized the Theosophic thought, which in itself is far nobler and more poetic than the Miltonic, but she has not been strong enough to use it. She has fallen under the weight of her chosen theme, and the result is that her demoniac hero is at one time presented as a majestic and suffering spirit, and at another as ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... thing—the dampness which mildewed his shoes and rusted out his nettings; the day heat which kept him bathed in clamminess; the pestiferous insects; the forest with its voices like sobbings and hammerings and demoniac chatterings; the food he had to eat; the company he had to keep; the chiefs who bored him; the girls who derided him; the beachcombers who nauseated him; the white sands, the blue waters, the smells, the sounds, the routine of existence with one day precisely like another—the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... gentler, enkindle and set ablaze, all the baser, emotions; of his nature, inciting him to acts lustful and bestial; and, with direful transforming power, to make the man the fiend, to leave him, in short, the mere sport of demoniac passion. It may be thought that this is an overdrawn picture, and that, even if it were true, which I aver that it is, to have withheld a part of its terribleness would be the wiser course. I wish, however, in exposing all its frightful features, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... in these etchings, beginning with Le Stryge, and its demoniac leer, "insatiable vampire, l'eternelle luxure." That gallery of Notre Dame, with Wotan's ravens flying through the slim pillars from a dream city bathed in sinister light, is not the only striking conception of the poet-etcher. The grip of reality is shown in such plates ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of nothing more than weakness; my poor, frail sense of ethics collapsed completely at the sight of the bribe he offered me to become a party to the dark conspiracy that sprang from the depths of his own demoniac mind. Ah, well; none of us is ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a dozen paces away. In fact, she stumbled over his prostrate body. With an amazon's strength, she gathered him into her arms, then staggered with him back to his couch, and as she strained him to herself she loudly called his name. Amid that demoniac din, amid the shrieking of those million devils, freed from the black chasms of the rock, her voice was as feeble as the wail ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... feverishly addicted to early rising. Men with gardens are like those hard drinkers whose susceptibilities are hopelessly blunted. Who but a man diverted from the paths of honest feeling and natural enjoyment, possessed of a demoniac mania, lost to the peace and serenity of the virtuous and the blessed, could find pleasure amid the damps, and dews, and chills, and raw-edgedness of a garden in the early morning, absolutely find pleasure in ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted! I gasped for breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors—oh! most unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... It is a strange world, and man, a strange animal, guided, it is true, usually by most common-place motives; but, for that reason, ready and glad at times to escape from them and their dulness and baseness; to give vent, if but for a moment, in wild freedom, to that demoniac element, which, as Goethe says, underlies his nature and all nature; and to prefer for an hour, to the normal and respectable ditch- water, a bottle of champagne or even a carouse on fire-water, let the consequences be what ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... north-eastwards, leaping from roof to roof. And so in a few minutes it came to more open spaces, and then to the desolate lands, where market gardens grow, which are neither town nor country. Till at last the good black trees came into view, with their demoniac shapes in the night, and the grass was cold and wet, and the night-mist floated over it. And a great white owl came by, going up and down in the dark. And at all these things the little ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... not indeed probable, mistake of the Administration. In the creed of his own statesmanship, there was no article that comprehended revenge as a just motive for action. No man had suffered more of personal obloquy from the South than he, no one living had received deeper personal injury from the demoniac spirit, the wicked inspiration of the rebellion. But he did not for one moment permit those causes which would have powerfully influenced lower natures to control his action, or even to extort a single word of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and drawing my pistol, stepped out in full view of the startled party. The Band-lu did not run away as had some of the lower orders of Caspakians at the sound of the rifle. Instead, the moment they saw me, they let out a series of demoniac war-cries, and raising their spears above their ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... essential matter pertaining to national welfare, however keen his grievance, fancied or real, his regard for the honor of the government and the maintenance of its power, induces him to throw his head-gear in air, out-yell the lustiest lung in the crowd and attest his enthusiasm by demoniac courage on the field ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... swam yet further than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sentence, a gun barked outside, there was a howl of demoniac pain and rage, and then a scream that would tingle in the ear of Doctor Randall Byrne ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... creatures; of which in the day-time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various animals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods: they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of fire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac powers ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... lust for power, insane with illusions of personal aggrandizement. You don't believe? Listen to me, then, appreciate to what demoniac lengths he was prepared to go to flatter ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Eugenists no more than by Calvinists, since front-doors are respected by Eugenists no more than by house-breakers, and since the Habeas Corpus is about as sacred to Eugenists as it would be to King John, why do not they bring light and peace into so many human homes by removing a demoniac from each of them? Why do not the promoters of the Feeble-Minded Bill call at the many grand houses in town or country where such nightmares notoriously are? Why do they not knock at the door and take the bad squire away? Why do they not ring the bell and remove the dipsomaniac ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... demoniacs been discovered prowling about the inhabited portions of the isle; and at day-break, an attendant of the holy Morai once came upon a frightful figure, doubled with age, helping itself to the offerings in the image of Doleema. The demoniac was slain; and from his ineffaceable tatooing, it was proved that this was no other than Foni, the false prophet; the splendid form he had carried into the rebel fight, now ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... The Reformation, he told the people, had ruined everything. But fine times were coming. The Catholics would soon be uppermost. The heretics should pay for all. Raving and blaspheming incessantly, like a demoniac, he came to the court. [52] As soon as he was there, he allied himself closely with Castelmaine, Dover, and Albeville. These men called with one voice for war on the constitution of the Church and the State. They told their master that he owed it to his religion and to the dignity ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like a roll call, and at each name a head was jerked up in answer, and two glittering eyes flashed at Andrew—flashed, sparkled, and then became dull. The moonlight had made his pale skin a deadly white, and it was a demoniac face they saw. The ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... beautiful moonlight night in the latter end of October. Disguising himself in a demoniac mask, a pair of huge wings, and a forked tail, he seated himself on a stile in the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... half rose once or twice and listened; all was silent—when, after the pause of a minute or two, a sudden fit of desperation seemed to seize upon him. He rushed to the window, and hurriedly surveying the grates, wrenched at them with a strength demoniac and superhuman, till the iron bars shook ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... the scene, or a sample of it, ten minutes after. Among the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant of regulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragg'd out on the ground on their backs, and were now surrounded by the guerillas, a demoniac crowd, each member of which was stabbing them in different parts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinn'd firmly to the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... COMPLETE POSSESSION; not in common madness, which may be mere disease, but as a savage and a raging maniac, such as, thank God, are rare in Christian countries, though they were common among our own forefathers before they were converted to Christianity,—men like the demoniac of whom the text speaks, tormented by devils, given up to blind rage and malice against himself and all around, to lust and blasphemy, to confusion of mind and misery of body, God's image gone, and the image of the devil, the destroyer and the corrupter, ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... with meek, seraph glances over the mighty metropolis along whose thousand thoroughfares lay the white carpet of the snow-king; and Boreas, loosed from his ice caverns on the frozen floor of the Arctic, was holding mad revels, and howling with demoniac glee along the streets, wrapped in the pall ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... saint's direful prediction to my father had somehow got abroad, enlarging as it ran. Many simple villagers believed that an evil spirit, cursed by the gods, had reincarnated as a tiger which took various demoniac forms at night, but remained a striped animal during the day. This demon-tiger was supposed to be the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... delight at the judge's words, she became terribly enraged; made use of the most fearful threats, and would have wreaked summary vengeance on her late chattel had not the clumsy soldiery interfered. Then, with demoniac refinement of cruelty, she bethought herself of the girl's baby at New Orleans still in her power, and threatened most horrible torture to the child if its mother dared to accept the ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... scaffold, and by the aid of the terrors of the mob, now enlisted on their side, resistlessly to carry all their measures. A hint from the Jacobin leaders surrounded the Assembly with the hideous howlings of a haggard concourse of beings just as merciless and demoniac as lost spirits. They exhibited these allies to the Girondists as a ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... cries, Gibbering, yipping, with hollow-skull clacks, Riding white bronchos with skeleton backs, Scalp-hunters, beaded and spangled and bad, Naked and lustful and foaming and mad, Flashing primeval demoniac scorn, Blood-thirst and pomp amid darkness reborn, Power and glory that sleep in the grass While the winds and the snows and the great rains pass. They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast, They ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... feelings thrust up their heads like beasts of prey which have long lain bound. She felt strange and homeless in her glittering life, and thought with a sort of demoniac longing of the horrible places from ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... answered Menteith, astonished alike at his sudden appearance, and at the unutterable fury of his demeanour. His cheeks were livid—his eyes started from their sockets—his lips were covered with foam, and his gestures were those of a demoniac. ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... hundreds of men, women, and children,—their friends and their acquaintances,—were perishing by the all-consuming element. They could not exclude from fancy, the agonized and dying shrieks of those dear to them, and the demoniac light shone on countenances, expressing emotions of pity, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... asked I. 'Knowing as much as I do, I may surely know more—know all. Tell me, I entreat you, madam, all that you can conjecture respecting this demoniac persecution ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to testify, and her evident, but inexplicable, access of misery induced the sympathetic maid to tender those caressing words that were all Mrs. Berry wanted to go off into the self-caressing fit without delay; and she had already given the preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when the maid called heaven to witness that the gentleman would hear her; upon which Mrs. Berry violently controlled her bosom, and ordered that he should be shown upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wonder at the zeal which caused the artistic Italian nature to love to celebrate the passing away of an era of unnatural vice and demoniac cruelty by visible images of the purity, the tenderness, the universal benevolence which Jesus had brought into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... a further step in the same direction, it is curious that in the lives of the Saints, those who spent their whole earthly existence in abstinence, works of the severest penance, and mortifications of the flesh, the tendency of demoniac influence was never in the direction of Sabbath breaking, profanity, idolatry, robbery, murder and covetousness, but always exerted itself to the fullest extent of its power in attacks upon chastity. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... being emphatic; I confess my blood boils when I read the closing sentence of this libel—this taunting us with the torch of the negro at our threshold, and his knife at our throats—this fiendish allusion to the beauty and chivalry of the South; it displays cool and demoniac malignity! Mr. K. then alluded to the pictures, saying that they could be meant only for the illiterate, and tended only to insurrection and violence. Mr. K. animadverted upon the speeches and opinions of eminent Southern men, quoted ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... the impression of souls which had nothing in common with his own, he had at last chosen after much useless vagabondage; he had become the intimate friend of a certain Doctor des Hermies, a physician, who devoted much attention to demoniac possession and to mysticism, and of a Breton, named Carhaix, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... more, that little wisp of humanity that was but a few days old held now aloft, naked, in his criminal hands. His muttering, slobbering voice pronouncing the words of that demoniac consecration reached the ears of the petrified ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... this bird's-eye view from the Citadel (of course, I had to trot them up again for the sunset), my charges let themselves be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a demoniac desire to get their money's worth of Egypt, were unable to enjoy any sight, in their nervous dread of missing some other spectacle, which people at home might ask them about. These strained their wearied intelligences to see more ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson |
