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Exorcise   Listen
verb
Exorcise  v. t.  (past & past part. exorcised; pres. part. exorcising)  
1.
To cast out, as a devil, evil spirits, etc., by conjuration or summoning by a holy name, or by certain ceremonies; to expel (a demon) or to conjure (a demon) to depart out of a person possessed by one. "He impudently excorciseth devils in the church."
2.
To deliver or purify from the influence of an evil spirit or demon. "Exorcise the beds and cross the walls." "Mr. Spectator... do all you can to exorcise crowds who are... processed as I am."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Exorcise" Quotes from Famous Books



... long series of compromises by which the irrepressible conflict was postponed until the north had waxed strong enough to confront the dreaded spectre of secession, and, summoning all its energies in one stupendous effort, exorcise it forever. From this moment down to 1865 we shall continually be made to realize how the American people had entered into the shadow of the coming Civil War before they had fairly emerged from that of the Revolution; and as we pass from scene to scene of the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... dome and steeple gives the edifice a strangely camel-backed appearance; but, however that may be, the dome adds beauty to the interior. When the Church was opened, it was found that the dome evoked disturbing echoes, and a large additional expense had to be incurred to exorcise the wandering voices. The steeple reaches a height of 166 1/2 feet, which is 27 1/2 feet higher than that of ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow

... disgraceful vanity and cowardice which special circumstances had brought within her consciousness. The Julia Bentley of the last few moments was not the Julia Bentley she was accustomed to meet and interrogate, and she asked herself how she might exorcise the meanness that had so unexpectedly appeared in her. Should she pile falsehood on falsehood? She felt it would be cruel not to do so; but Emily said, 'He wants to marry to get rid of me, and not because he loves you.' Then it was hard to deny herself the pleasure of telling the whole truth; ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... this passion that it could exorcise the evil and turn old to new, even in the case of Leonce Miranda. At least Browning, in this poem, strives to show that, being true love, though the love of an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a power at war with the sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has always the same ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... that conferred on birds. Art could not produce it, but practice and scientific culture had improved and perfected it. For three years the best teachers had instructed her, and she felt that now she was mistress of a spell which, once invoked, might easily exorcise the evil spirit which had taken possession of her guardian. She sang several of his favorite songs, then closed the melodeon and went back to the fire. Dr. Hartwell's face lay against the purple velvet lining of the chair, and the dark surface gave out the contour with ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... And here is the hopelessness, here is the root of the trouble, of the joyless American face. The worst of all demons, the demon of unrest and overwork, broods in the very sky of this land. Blue and clear and crisp and sparkling as our atmosphere is, it cannot or does not exorcise the spell. Any old man can count on the fingers of one hand the persons he has known who led lives of serene, unhurried content, made for themselves occupations and not tasks, and died at last what might ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... said Uncle Jack; "we've won the men to our side and all who know us will take our part, but there is that ugly demon to exorcise yet that they ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... To exorcise evil spirits and the accessory visitations; 2 To cure predestined sickness; 3 To ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... a council of State comprising the heads of the three Tokugawa families of Mito, Kii, and Owari. Sadanobu was in his thirtieth year, a man of boundless energy, great insight, and unflinching courage. His first step was to exorcise the spectre of famine by which the nation was obsessed. For that purpose he issued rules with regard to the storing of grain, and as fairly good harvests were reaped during the next few years, confidence ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... not look up; he only murmured in anguish of spirit the prayers by which spirits were exorcised; but he felt that the dreaded phantom came ever nearer and nearer—that he could not exorcise the Lady in White! Now she was close to him, her white garment grazed his bowed head, and the soldier shuddered and shrank within himself. It was as if he heard a door creak and turn softly on its hinges, then ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... not dead, and begged to be taken out of the tomb. The noise I made soon awoke the whole house, and as I had locked my door, no one could get in. I heard my mother and brothers uttering pious ejaculations to exorcise the evil spirit which they believed had got hold of me, while I trebled my frantic yells for deliverance. By vigorously shaking the door, they finally burst it open, and then I was surprised to see that ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... persistently. With each day that brought the crisis of Fraide's scheme nearer, his activity increased—and with it an intensifying of the nervous strain. For if he had his hours of exaltation, he also had his hours of black apprehension. It is all very well to exorcise a ghost by sheer strength of will, but one has also to eliminate the idea that gave it existence. Lillian Astrupp, with her unattested evidence and her ephemeral interest, gave him no real uneasiness; but Chilcote ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... eye of fancy, Physics will grasp imagination's wings, Plain fact exorcise fiction's necromancy, The workshop hammer where ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... goaded by responsibility for the safety of his officer, set out, straightway, by double marches for Srinagar, determined to cover the distance in ten days; while the Pathan, commanding a charpoy[1] from the headman of the village, remained to exorcise the 'fever devil' with the rude skill and ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... accessible to the Broadway philosopher, and a Turkish khan to the sybarite; one has but to mount a staircase, and find himself in the presence of authentic effigies of all the prominent men of the nation, sun-painted for the million. This pharmacist will exorcise his pain-demon; that electrician place him en rapport with kindred hundreds of miles away, or fortify his jaded nerves. Down this street he may enjoy a Russian or Turkish bath; down that, a water-cure. Here, with skill undreamed of by civilized antiquity, fine gold can be made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... individuals—perhaps as highly endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia—had contributed their all of earthly endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations. I determined to make proof if there were any spell that would exorcise her out of the part which she seemed to be acting. She should be compelled to give me a glimpse of something true; some nature, some passion, no matter whether right or wrong, provided ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... before it. Many of the people also had small family idols which they worshipped much in the same manner; but if they did not obtain what they wanted from the idol, they were very apt to send it away in disgrace. They have also a belief in the power of certain doctors or medicine men, who exorcise evil spirits, and concoct charms. In these charms they have more faith than anything else. They are generally done up in the skins of animals, and consist of bones, or feathers, or ashes, or the skins or bones of snakes. The manufacture of these charms brings a large revenue to the ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... lovers have, than to be free man and woman in the heart of plenty? And is it not a glorious level to have attained? Ah, wretched Scientific Humanist! not to be by and mark the admirable sight of these young creatures feeding. It would have been a spell to exorcise the Manichee, methinks. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... accused of having bewitched the daughters of a mason of Boston, by name Goodwin. These girls, of infantile age, suffered from convulsive fits, the ordinary symptom of 'possession.' Mather received one of them into his house for the purpose of making experiments, and, if possible, to exorcise the evil spirits. She would suddenly, in presence of a number of spectators, fall into a trance, rise up, place herself in a riding attitude as if setting out for the Sabbath, and hold conversation with invisible beings. A peculiar phase of this patient's case was that when under the influence of ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... Dragon, with a diadem and a name of blasphemy upon his brow. No wonder that he left a furrow of horror in the hearts of men, and that, ten centuries after his death, the church of Sta. Maria del Popolo had to be built by Pope Pascal II to exorcise from Christian Rome his restless and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... avenging fiends, moving in a sleepless world of devouring flames and smothering exhalations; where nothing lives but the sinner, the fiends, and the reptiles who help to make life an unending torture. It is no wonder that these images sometimes return to the enfeebled intelligence. To exorcise them, the old Church of Christendom has her mystic formulae, of which no rationalistic prescription can take the place. If Cowper had been a good Roman Catholic, instead of having his conscience handled by ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... medicine; we take it, and pay his fee. But among the lower races of men pain and illness are often attributed to the presence of evil spirits. The Medicine Man is a Priest, or rather a Sorcerer, more than a true Doctor, and his effort is to exorcise ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... thing the way men ought to face it and lay dead the bugaboo, if it is a bugaboo, or face squarely the facts, if there's really something in it to fear. Let us once and for all do away with this damnable thing. If it's a shadow let's exorcise it. If it's something else, let's find out what it is. None of us believe in ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... will never abate this side the grave," he said. "Jasper, old friend, I would have you sit with me tonight. I am like King Saul, the sport of devils. Be you my David to exorcise them. I have evil news. Tom ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... made the merry goblins disappear; And where they play'd their merry pranks before, Have sprinkled holy water on the floor: And friars, that through the wealthy regions run, Thick as the motes that twinkle in the sun, Resort to farmers rich, and bless their halls, 30 And exorcise the beds, and cross the walls: This makes the fairy quires forsake the place, When once 'tis hallow'd with the rites of grace: But in the walks where wicked elves have been, The learning of the parish now is seen, The midnight parson, posting o'er the green, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... have the only arms that can avail in a battle of the spirit. My trust is shield enough against any evil being that may roam this earth or be held by invisible bonds within the walls of the Grey Room. I will justify the ways of God to man and, through the channel of potent prayer, exorcise this presence and bring peace to your afflicted house. For any living fellow-creature would I gladly pit my faith against evil; how much more, then, in a matter where my very own life's blood has been shed? You cannot deny me ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... My dear young friend, never trifle with your lofty mission. Spotless marble should represent virtue, not vice!" And Mr. Leavenworth placidly waved his hand, as if to exorcise the spirit of levity, while his glance journeyed with leisurely benignity to another object—a marble replica of the bust of Miss Light. "An ideal head, I presume," he went on; "a fanciful representation of one of the pagan goddesses—a Diana, a Flora, a naiad or dryad? ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... not have suspected you, madam, of such weakness. Grant there were evil spell, or charm, attached to it, which, trust me, there is not—as how should there be, to a harmless piece of gold?—my benediction, and aspersion with holy lymph, will have sufficient power to exorcise and expel it. To remove your fears it shall be ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... made him stand aloof from the radiant guest, Happiness, for a brief half hour? That story of Charlotte's; it would come back to him; he wished now he had never heard it. For having heard he could not forget: he could not exorcise this grim Thing which stood side by side with Happiness in his sunny room. The fact was, his acute mind took in the true bearings of the case far more clearly than Charlotte had done. He felt sure that Mrs. Home had been wronged. He felt equally sure that, if he looked into ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... were going to get some ghosts," the agent-in-charge said. "From the Psychical Research Society, in a couple of large bundles. And they're here now. Want me to exorcise 'em for you?" ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Cheer," or, "Tommy, make room for your uncle" (tunes I cannot abide), with words, accompaniment, and all, complete, and not quite so refined an accent as I could wish; so that I have to leave off my recitation and whistle "J'ai du Bon Tabac" in quite a different key to exorcise it. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... universal. God forbid a universal Papacy! You are not a Catholic—no! You are a Roman—by which name we understand all that is most loathsome and unpleasing unto God! But I will wrestle for your soul,—yea, night and day will I bend my spiritual sinews to the task,—I will obtain the victory,—I will exorcise the fiend! Alas, alas! you are on the brink of hell—think of it!" and Mr. Dyceworthy stretched out his hand with his favorite pulpit gesture. "Think of the roasting and burning,—the scorching and withering of souls! Imagine, if you can, the hopeless, bitter, eternal damnation," and here he smacked ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... Aram, with a deep and ghastly voice; "but when you are near me, I feel as if I were with the dead; it is a spectre that I would exorcise in ridding me of your presence. Yet this is not what I now speak of. You are engaged, according to your own lips, in lawless and midnight schemes, in which you may, (and the tide of chances runs towards that bourne,) be seized ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Everett from Massachusetts. A melancholy interest attached to this assembly. It was mainly composed of old men whose political views were those of Clay and Webster, cherished leaders now dead and gone. In their platform they sought to exorcise the evil spirit of partisanship by inviting their fellow citizens to "support the Constitution of the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws." The party that campaigned on this grand sentiment only drew laughter from the Democrats and derision from the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... youngsters, we thought it the great thing to exorcise the aristocratic flunkeyism which reigned in the Royal Society—the danger now is that of the entry of seven devils worse than the first, in the shape of rich engineers, chemical traders, and "experts" (who have sold their souls for a good ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... the reputation of being haunted previous to my tenancy for three months last year; probably he does not charge me with originating such reports, as he mentions a story of the visit of a Catholic Archbishop to the house to exorcise the ghost. This must have happened some time ago, and proves that the house was then supposed to be haunted. What your correspondent does state as a fact is, that the younger members of my family played practical jokes, which have given rise to Lord ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... glee when they send malaria and night into the palaces of the great through cracks and crevices! Philip's bloated, unkingly body became full of disease and pain; lingering unrest racked him; the unseen demons he could not exorcise, danced on his bed, wrenched his members and played mad havoc with each quivering nerve. And so he died. Then comes Philip the Fourth, immortal through his forty portraits painted by Velasquez. Philip was only fourteen when his father died. He was a rareripe, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... impossible, and the wisdom of that which they had always maintained to be idiotic. The voluptuous divine melancholy of evening June descended upon the city from the sky, and even sounds were beautifully sad. The happy progress of the war could not exorcise this soft, omnipotent melancholy. Yet the progress of the war was nearly all that could be desired. Verdun was held, and if Fort Vaux had been lost there had been compensation in the fact that the enemy, through the gesture of the Crown Prince in allowing the captured commander ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... damnable infatuation can bind you to that miserable poltroon, who skulks in safety, knowing that the penalty of his evil deeds falls on you? One explanation has suggested itself: it haunts me like a fiend, and only you can exorcise it. Are you married to that brute, and is it loyalty that nerves you? For God's sake do not ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... less remarkable for many happy turns of speech than for conformity throughout to the most famous legends of Talmudic fabrication.—F.A.] pleasant as is your conversation, you must acknowledge I can't allow evil spirits about the house without getting it an ill reputation. So pardon me if I exorcise ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... I threw the inexhaustible money-bag into the abyss, and then spoke the final words. "You fiend, I exorcise you in the name of God! Be off, and never show yourself ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... his lip, frowned, said he could not say, it might possibly be an embryo one, such as had clearly entered into Dr Martin and many other persons at that time. It would certainly be safe to exorcise him, but the difficulty would be to get so obstinate a young man as Eric to submit to the operation. He would think about it, and try and devise some means by which the ceremony might be performed without the patient having the power ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston

... "I command you to come within this circle, whilst in the right of my holy office I exorcise that demon there who hath so nearly ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... of the saint still stood, like an eternal sentinel, watching over the Jucar to exorcise the curse of the rancorous Saint Vincent! To be sure the river would rise and overflow its banks every year, reaching to the very feet of San Bernardo sometimes, and coming within an ace of pulling the wily saint down from his perch. It is also true that every five or six years ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony—nor, greater than all these, The innate tortures of that deep Despair, 70 Which is Remorse without the fear of Hell, But all in all sufficient to itself Would make a hell of Heaven—can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense Of its own sins—wrongs—sufferance—and revenge Upon itself; there is no future pang Can deal that justice on the self—condemned He deals on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... detects on the horizon the two specters which, for ten years, have haunted all the governments of France, legal anarchy and unstable despotism; he has found a magic formula with which to exorcise these two phantoms; henceforth "power is to come from above and confidence from below."[2119]—Consequently, the new constitutional act withdraws from the nation the right to elect its deputies; it will simply elect candidates to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... once exorcise the demon with the fortunately all-potent spell of Bocca bacciata, and the rest! Absence and Destiny show him in the same Purgatory; and it is impossible to say that he has actually escaped in the crowning poem of the series—the crowning-point perhaps of his poetry, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... one another, clamouring about the minarets of the mosques on which the frightened doves were sheltering, shaking the fences that shut in the gazelles in their pleasaunce, tearing at the great statue of the Cardinal that faced it resolutely, holding up the double cross as if to exorcise it, battering upon the tall, white tower on whose summit Domini had first spoken with Androvsky, raging through the alleys of Count Anteoni's garden, the arcades of his villa, the window-spaces ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... by thinking about it; my mind will be occupied by other things; but on the first opportunity I shall make it pass away," Then as soon as you can conveniently do so make use of the phrase "It's going." When you have become expert in the use of this form of suggestion you will be able to exorcise the trouble by repeating the phrase mentally—at any rate if the words are outlined with the lips and tongue. But the beginner should rely for a time entirely on audible treatment. By dropping it too soon he ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... outbreak of passionate cheering, she retired from the platform. Pasquin Leroy, whose eyes had been riveted on her from the first to the last word of her oration, now started as from a dream, and rose up half-unconsciously, passing his hand across his brow, as though to exorcise some magnetic spell that had crept over his brain. His face was flushed, his pulses were throbbing quickly. His companions, Max Graub and Axel Regor, looked at him inquisitively. The audience was beginning to file out of the hall ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... can exorcise fear, we are doomed to repeat the sisyphean cycles of the past and painfully roll our programmes up the hill, only to see them dashed to the bottom, before we get to the top, by the catastrophe of war. Fear is fatal to freedom; it is fear which alone gives militarism its strength, compels nations ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... their nostrils, these two men were caught up suddenly, as it were, by the throbbing soul of the North, so that the subterranean life in them awoke and startled them. Trafford conceived that tobacco was the charm with which to exorcise the spirits of the past. Pierre let the game of sensations go on, knowing that they pay themselves out in time. His scheme was the wiser. The other found that fast riding and smoking were not sufficient. He became surrounded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... my wife's soul, and, after accomplishing his mischief, left demons in possession. I could not exorcise—only charm them. For the present,—perhaps for years,—I must be content with this. In the distant future, which had a dim horizon of hope, I expected to make some final stroke by which to expel them. What it should ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Athos's hands, "tell me this moment how you know all these details, or I will send to the convent of the Vieux Augustins for a monk to come and exorcise you." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... elected to remain in the drawing-room upstairs. A sister-in-law also begged to be excused from accompanying us, and spent the whole time occupied by our seance, in playing Moody and Sankey hymns, doubtless hoping thereby to exorcise the evil spirits ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... himself laugh at this extravagant supposition, but, while endeavoring to make light of his own cowardice, the idea still haunted and tormented him. Sometimes, in the effort to rid himself of the persistence of his own imagination, he would try to exorcise the demon who had got hold of him, and this exorcism consisted in despoiling the image of his temptress of the veil of virginal purity with which his admiration had first invested her. Who could assure him, after all, that this girl, with her independent ways, living alone ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... miss you most dreadfully, my dear," said her aunt; "it is so nice to have you flitting about the house, not to speak of your vivacious company and delicious music. Your music is really wonderful; it seems to exorcise an evil spirit that ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... I am a perfect child-tamer, and guarantee to exorcise his seven evil spirits in less than no time. Meanwhile, sit you down ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... came to the stronghold of the gentleman who followed ancient ways, and he demanded admittance in order that he might preach and prove the new God, and exorcise and terrify and banish even the memory of the old one; for to a god grown old Time is as ruthless as to a ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... dilating in a sort of horror at the notion. "Do you dare impute to me the mortal sin of choler? I am not incensed; there is no anger in me." He crossed himself, as if to exorcise the evil mood if it indeed existed, and devotedly bowing his head and folding his hands—"Libera me a malo, Domine!" he murmured audibly. Then, with a greater fierceness than before—"Now," he demanded, "will you tell me ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... for more than a friend. But how could he face her, after all he had said, after boasting as he had of his fortune? And he had refused her friendship, when she had endeavored to comfort him and to exorcise this fear-devil that pursued him. He went back to work, determined to forget it all, but that evening he drew his time. It came to ninety dollars, for seven shifts and over-time, and they offered him double to stay; but the desire ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... either from the vexation of the supernatural folk at their own self-betrayal, or from the disclosure to the human foster-parents of the true state of the facts, and their consequent determination to exorcise ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... escapades and deeds of flagrant lawlessness. He needed no assurance that the boy would not "fall down" at soldiering. He would take to it as a duck to water. And the discipline might be the making of him, prove the way to exorcise the devil. Still there were other considerations which to him seemed paramount for the time ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... Two former friends and fellow-Tuscans, Cardinal Acciajuoli and Abate Panciatichi, have come to prepare him for execution; but the one is listening awe-struck to the only kind of confession which they can obtain from him, while the other plies his beads in a desperate endeavour to exorcise the spiritual enemy, "ban" the diabolical influences, it is conjuring up. The speaker is no longer Count ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... time might be before she could again see that one beloved face or hear the dear familiar voice! The brightest hope she had in these midsummer holidays was the hope of a letter from him; and even that might be the prelude of disappointment. She wrestled with herself, and tried to exorcise those ghosts of memory which haunted her by day and wove themselves into her dreams by night; but they were not to be laid at rest. She hated her folly; but her ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... the notion that the Toltecs were the originators of Yucatan culture. I hope I have said enough in the previous chapter to exorcise permanently from ancient American history these purely imaginary beings. They have served long enough as the ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... place—the odor of skins and sandalwood, camphor and dried grasses—nearly stifled her. In the gloom she saw the savage weapons gleaming. Then the shadow of clustered tomtoms against the bedroom door made her heart stand still. As if to exorcise a ghost that she no longer dared to meet, still clutching the mass of tributary blossoms to her breast, she tore the window curtains apart. The sunset struck in like a sword blade relentlessly cleaving through the veils of time. Dust lay over everything. On the center ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... symptoms which made it believed that Mademoiselle Ranfaing was really possessed. They began to exorcise her the 2d September, 1619, in the town of Remiremont, whence she was transferred to Nancy; there she was visited and interrogated by several clever physicians, who, after having minutely examined the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... scene vanished from her vision as if the moonlight had been extinguished. It was some moments before she realised that she was running madly, as if hoping flight might help her exorcise that ironic vision. But when she did realise what she was doing, she but ran the faster; let people think what they would; she no longer cared; their esteem no more mattered, for she was finished with them one and all—yes, even ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... the blow which had fallen on her, and in her treatment of Forrester she had almost mechanically adopted the detached and chilly attitude prompted by her annoyance with him. But to-day reaction had set in, and, like many another of her sex, she sought to exorcise the pain which one man had inflicted by flirting recklessly with another. It is a method which has its risks, more especially if the second man happens to be dangerously in love, but a woman hurt ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... When you exorcise at Nottingham occasional means of transport, be honest, and admit how little is known on the subject. Remember how recently you and others thought that salt water would soon kill seeds. Reflect that there is not a coral islet in the ocean which is not pretty well clothed with plants, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... themselves. And lest the impatient should throw aside our essay with the disgust of satiety, or the persevering should by our prolixity be vexed with the very spirit which we would rather teach them to exorcise, we here take a respectful leave, with our sincerest wishes, that life may be to the reader a succession of pleasant emotions, and death a resting place neither coveted ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... the form of the Egyptian language in use in the reign of Rameses II. In fact, the legend was written in the interests of the priests of the temple of Khensu, who wished to magnify their god and his power to cast out devils and to exorcise evil spirits; it was probably composed between B.C. 650 ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge

... returned, glad to put them into words that she might exorcise them. "Ada has just reproached me with supplanting her with her boys, and it made me feel, as Americans ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... lived, alone in the little cabin that stood near the site of the academy. Even after her demise the villagers could with difficulty summon courage to enter her cot and give her burial. Her body was tumbled into a pit, hastily dug near her door, and a stake was driven through the heart to exorcise the powers of evil that possessed ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... reads his history to us. It was just the other way. It almost makes me believe that some demon has entered into him, he is so different from what he was, and abroad from what he is at home. Do you think that likely, sir? I have been at times inclined to apply to Felix to see if he could not exorcise him.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... think that by taking strong measures one can exorcise things," he said. "That if we could only write out this history of ours in our hearts' blood it would ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... he recommended a piece of sail from a wrecked vessel, worn round the arm for seven weeks.[30] For colic, he recommended the heart of a lark attached to the right thigh, and for pain in the kidneys an amulet depicting Hercules overcoming a lion. To exorcise gout, he used incantations, these being either oral or written on a thin sheet of gold during the waning of the moon. Writing a suitable inscription on an olive leaf, gathered before sunrise, was his specific for ague. Alexander appears ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... a diamond, and such a one as there isn't a monarch in Europe but would envy Tom Donahue the possession of. Up with your crowbar, and we'll soon exorcise ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... him with a laugh as he picked himself up, but it persisted in spite of his efforts to exorcise it. Something unexplained but almost tangible rode at his shoulder on the homeward way, and he caught himself more than once straining his ears for a betraying sound behind him. So acute was the sensation of surveillance that he pulled up abruptly around a sharp turn in the road and listened, but ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... seriousness of the case now stares English statesmen in the face. Up to now they have believed it possible to exorcise the danger by voluntary economies. Now they find themselves compelled to have recourse to compulsory measures. I ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... day received a letter subscribed "Fidelia," that gives me an account of an enchantment under which a young lady suffers, and desires my help to exorcise her from the power of the sorcerer. Her lover is a rake of sixty; the lady a virtuous woman of twenty-five: her relations are to the last degree afflicted, and amazed at this irregular passion: their sorrow I know not how to remove, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... are mediquillos or medicine men or women, called "manga-anito," who are called to exorcise the spirit creating the disturbance. Anyone who has cured patients or belongs to a family of mediquillos can follow the profession. There is an aversion to being a mediquillo, although it pays, because if a patient ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... thought about her came back to Cuckoo. It was assertive, and Cuckoo began to fear it. The fear of a thought is a horrible thing; sometimes it is worse than the fear of death. This one made Cuckoo think herself more cruel than any woman since the world began. Yet she could not exorcise it. On the contrary, she grew familiar with it as the day marched on, until it put on a fatal expression of duty. All that day she revolved it. Mrs. Brigg attacked her again. Food was lacking. Cuckoo's case became desperate. She turned over carefully all ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... very benevolently of Marguerite and also of, Mr. and Mrs. Haim. He had involved them all three, in his mind, in a net of peace and goodwill. He saw the family quarrel as something inevitable, touching, absurd—the work of a maleficent destiny which he might somehow undo and exorcise by the magic act of washing-up, to be followed by other acts of a more diplomatic and ingenious nature. And now the dull, distant symptoms of Mr. Haim on the stairs suddenly halted him at the very outset of his benignant machinations. He listened. If the peace of the world ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... alive. They felt that words and phrases had some talismanic power, and charmed themselves asleep by repeating "liberty," "all men equal before the law," "dictates of conscience," "free speech" and all manner of such incantation to exorcise the spirits of the night. And when they could no longer close their eyes to the dangers environing them; when they saw at last that what they had mistaken for the magic power of their form of government and its assured security was really its radical weakness and subjective peril—they found their ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... as 1740, a cow, charged with being possessed of a devil, was tried and was convicted. They used to exorcise rats, snakes and vermin; they used to go through the alleys and streets and fields and warn them to leave within a certain number of days, and if they did not leave, they threatened them with certain pains and penalties which they ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... of the altar! lie not there! Look!" he threw his hand into the air, extending the fingers suddenly. "Behold, fiend! I exorcise thee! Ha! tremblest! Look but a little ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... to many lands and cities and at length reaches Rome, and visits the Pope, on whom he and Mephisto (both being invisible) play various practical jokes, blowing in his face, snatching his food away at meals and so on, till the Supreme Pontiff orders all the bells in Rome to be rung in order to exorcise the evil spirits by whom he is haunted. At Constantinople they befool the Sultan with magic tricks. Mephisto disguises himself in the official robes of the Pope and persuades the Sultan that he is Mahomet (another cut at the Pope, as Antichrist), while Faust installs himself in ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... saw inferior men preferred. If a roving commission or an administrative post could have been found for him abroad, by preference in the East as he himself desired, hard work might have gone far to exorcise his melancholy, and we might have had from his pen contributions to the study of Eastern life that would have added lustre to a group of writers already represented in England by Curzon and Kinglake, Lane and Morier, Palgrave and Burton. With Burton's love of roving adventure, of strange tongues, ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe

... Mississippi and all its vast tributaries, the St. Francis, White river, Arkansas, Red river, and Yazoo. These are no dreams of an enthusiast, but advancing realities, if now, now we will only do our duty in crushing this rebellion, and exorcise the foul fiend of slavery, that called it into being. We may best judge of what we may do in the future, by what we have done in the past. We have constructed 4,650 miles of canals (including slackwater), ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... chained becomes fierce and furious, and thinks of nothing but imaginary foes, so that the most peaceful passer-by becomes an enemy. I have felt, since the war began, a certain poison in the air, a tendency towards suspicion and contentiousness and vague hostility. We must exorcise that evil spirit if we can; and I believe it is best laid by letting our minds go back to the old peace for a little, and resolving that the new peace which we believe is coming shall be of a larger and nobler quality; we may thus come to appreciate the happiness ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... pumpkins, and in the evening they went to the man's house and told him that they had found the medicine, and that the whole household was to come to the cross roads at the end of the village very early the next morning with the patient and they would exorcise the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... him—and, after looking once, they couldn't look away until they were thoroughly under his spell. So they were all bewitched, and began to scream and howl and roll on the ground, and turn on each other and brawl, and 'commit all manner of excesses.' Then the wise woman was able to exorcise the devil, and he sank into the ground; but his companion stayed, and the people came to their senses, and looked, and they saw that it was an angel. The angel had been there all the time that the fiend ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... centre of colonial politics for many generations. The merchants insisted that if this traffic were extinguished it would involve the ruin of the French hold upon the Indian trade. The bishop and the priests, on the other hand, were ready to fight the liquor traffic to the end and to exorcise it as the greatest blight upon the New World. Quebec soon became a cockpit where the battle of these two factions raged. Each had its ups and downs, until in the end the traffic remained, but under ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... with his eccentricities, and his strange and merry humor, Captain Bonneville fitted him out handsomely as the Nimrod of the party, who all soon became quite attached to him. One of the earliest and most signal services he performed, was to exorcise the insatiate kill-crop that hitherto oppressed the party. In fact, the doltish Nez Perce, who had seemed so perfectly insensible to rough treatment of every kind, by which the travellers had endeavored to elbow him out of their society, could not withstand the good-humored bantering, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... expense, Philip. You must show yourself: you must come and see me; you must come to dinner forthwith, or I shall have to make you a visit at your dock. I must talk to you, mon cher! I am troubled about you, and so is Mary. Come to us, and Mary shall play to you and exorcise your demons. Besides, I am bored—horribly bored. Yes, even Mary bores me sometimes, and I her, doubtless; and we want you. We will own that we are selfish, after ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... is a lonely place, where ghosts bear me company. I hope that now and then, when I ask it, and when the duties of your day are ended, you will come help me exorcise them. You shall find welcome and good wine." He spoke very courteously, and if he saw the humor of the situation his smile ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... earth—exposed to every temptation, perishing perhaps for want." That single sight of Alice had been like the apparition of the injured Dead conjured up at Heraclea—whose sight could pacify the aggressor and exorcise the spectres of remorse. He was reconciled with himself, and walked on to the Future with a bolder step and a statelier crest. Was she married to that staid and sober-looking personage whom he had beheld with her? ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... more violently, as if it were a charm that could exorcise fear and bring a man over safely. The shadows danced until his brain reeled, and King swore be would thrash the fool as soon as be could reach him. He lay belly-downward on the rock and crawled like an insect the remainder of ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... swinging blind at the mercy of the wind. He then improvised a screen from a high-backed chair and an extra blanket, and again betook himself to bed. Stepping on a tack that had been left over when the floor matting was laid provoked certain exclamations calculated to exorcise the demon—or should I say alarm the angel?—of decorative art, and he was soon wrapped in the slumber of the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... barbarous words in the Scythian language, beating on a kind of bell (a gong) and a drum, they passed over the baggage the leaves of the frankincense, crackling with the fire, and at the same time themselves becoming frantic, and violently leaping about, seemed to exorcise the evil spirits. Having thus as they thought, averted all evil, they led Zemarchus himself through the fire. Menander, in Niebuhr's Bryant. Hist. p. 381. Compare Carpini's Travels. The princes of the race of Zingis Khan condescended to receive the ambassadors ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... was customary in very early times. Complete sterility or miscarriage was thought to be occasioned by evil spirits; a woman thus possessed with a devil came to be looked on as a dangerous being whom it was necessary to exorcise. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... beetles into the room, through a crack under the door, and they ran wildly hither and thither on the pavement. The master took them for demons come to carry off his soul; he almost lost his senses in a fit, and he used half the holy water in Florence to exorcise the house. But ever afterwards he was too much frightened to get up before daylight, and Buffalmacco slept out ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... arts are being used to gild the tarnished, And exorcise old ghosts and spirits fled, And treacherous quags abound where boards are varnished And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... in a tongue unknown to me—charms, spells, undoubtedly, to exorcise the devils that had hold of him. I followed the direction of his gaze, and myself ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of Mayence, who, in the middle of the fifteenth century, was partner with Gutenberg in the new enterprise of printing. Robert Browning, in Fust and his Friends, tells us, with great vivacity, the story of the monks who tried to exorcise the magic spirits from Fust, but forgot their psalm, and so caused an awkward pause during which Fust retired and brought out a printed copy of the psalm for each of them. The only connection with magic which this Fust had, was that so long as ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... the reply. "I think for myself. Some would take the madman by the hand, and treat him as if in possession of his senses. Burke would gather all the dignitaries of Church and State, and treat him as a demoniac; attempt to exorcise the evil spirit, and if it continued intractable, solemnly excommunicate the possessed by bell, book, and candle. But, as I do not like throwing away my trouble, I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... shaken [the Gemara explains: the stem should measure three palms, as much as the myrtle branch, and, in addition, another palm for shaking, for we require that the Lulab be shaken in the way told farther on (37b): "It is shaken vertically and horizontally," so as to exorcise the evil spirits ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... embroiderers from Surat, who grudge the half-hour stolen from the daylight. At the main entrance of the mosques gather groups of men and women with sick children in their arms, waiting until the prayers are over and the worshippers file out; for the prayer-laden breath of the truly devout is powerful to exorcise the demons of disease, and the child over whom the breath of the worshipper has passed has fairer surety of recovery than can be gained from all the nostrums and charms of the Syed and Hakim. Just before and after sunset ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... and to drive everyone, whether friend or relation, who tried to make him listen to reason, and who could not understand his attacks of rage and neurosis from his bedside. He seemed to be possessed by some demon, like those women in hysterical convulsions, whom the bishops used formerly to exorcise writh much pomp. It was painful to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... man, multiplies in the heat and dirt of Lisbon. In addition to mosquitoes, the scolopendra is not uncommonly found here, and snakes sometimes intrude into the bedchamber. A small species of red ant likewise swarms over every thing sweet, and the Portuguese remedy is to send for the priest to exorcise them." The city is still subject to shocks of earthquake; the state of the police is horrible; street-robbery is common, and every thief is an assassin. The pocket-knife, which the French troops are said to have dreaded more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... value on his head than is usual with these philosophers, he proposed conditions which were eagerly accepted, and releasing the captive, led him into his own hut. Here the man of wisdom spat three times into his very ample bosom, to exorcise evil spells, and took from a hole in the corner something which he handled very carefully, and with a touch as light as possible. Following everything with his best eyes, Twemlow perceived in the hand of Tuloo a spongy-looking ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... brother's sin-burdened soul troubled him very little. He did think of Tom Halliday; for that last grasp of the honest Yorkshireman's hand, that last look in his old friend's face, were haunting memories which this sharp practitioner had found himself powerless to exorcise. If his brother, after an absence of many years in the remote regions of the East Indies, had come home to his fatherland with a colossal fortune, and the reputation of having strangled a few natives during the process of amassing that fortune, George Sheldon would have welcomed the returning wanderer, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... literature, to write on literature and fairy-lore for the magazines. The articles about fairies he has published, and a great mass of belief collected but as yet unprinted, he will gather some day into a great book. Known now in the Irish countryside as a man with a power to exorcise spirits, he will then no doubt attain a reputation that will put him well above that of the Irish-American archbishop who was his only rival in that practice in the belief of many Irish peasants. Other of his magazine writing Mr. Yeats has gathered into "The Celtic Twilight" and more of it ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... exorcise from his mind this dread of the unknown—this partly conscious and partly subconscious form of fear, "which eats the heart alway"? Nothing can throw off the grip which this acute anxiety has fixed on the brain, ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook

... of the Bible, is responsible for the lack of the reasonable reverence these sacred writings merit. This reasonable reverence can be recovered only by frankly putting away the unreasonable reverence. We must exorcise a superstition to save a faith. We must part with the unreal Bible if we would hold the real Bible. Iconoclasm is not pleasant to any but the callow youth. It may be none the less needful; and then the sober man must not shrink from shivering the ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... hockeytt speak if you be a ghost, or I'll exercise [exorcise] ye wid this butt of a musket," quoth the cowboy@an Irishman to be sure, whose round bullet head was discernible in the human mass, by his ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... "We will exorcise her," Hildebrand laughed back, and advanced towards the girl. Perpetua drew away a little, regarding Hildebrand with a steadiness that puzzled him, resolved to drive the knife into her heart before he could lay hand on her. To Robert, where he lay huddled, the spinning seconds seemed ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... He knew the deep kindness of the master's intentions, and felt that he ought to be grateful for the interest shown towards him; but it required a stronger power and a different method from his own, to exorcise from his heart the devil of self-will; and besides this, it cannot be denied that in the first bloom and novelty of sin, in the free exercise of an insolent liberty, there is a sense of pleasure for many hearts; it ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... amain and spreading all over France! After all its pretensions to wisdom, calmness, good sense, thus suddenly to go mad! Romillion would have hushed up the matter if he could. He caused one of his priests to exorcise the maidens. But the demons laughed the exorciser to scorn. He who dwelt in the fair damsel, even the noble demon Beelzebub, Spirit of Pride, never deigned to ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... I present you to our star? Surely she will exorcise your dismal thoughts. Mademoiselle," he added, addressing Jane, "one of your most ardent admirers solicits the honor ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... hollowness which so often disgust newcomers were either not seen or were turned aside from. The painter was too pure and childlike to realise the evil, he turned only to the good: for him the world shone as a land of light; from art he would exorcise the passions; the true art-life blended heaven with earth, the ideal could be attained only through the Church: her teachings were the education ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... of his armchair, listened without apparent emotion to this terrible revelation. He was quite crushed, and was searching for some means to exorcise the green spectre of the past, which had so suddenly confronted him. Mascarin never took his eyes off him. All at once the Count roused himself from his prostration, as a man awakes from a hideous dream. "This is sheer ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... (to inform) arise chastise circumcise comprise compromise demise devise disfranchise disguise emprise enfranchise enterprise exercise exorcise franchise improvise incise merchandise premise reprise revise rise supervise ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton

... passionately exclaiming: "Oh, that a man who could have entertained the gods with high conceits and philosophic parle,—could have communed with spirits of the skies, should be assailed and pestered from the pit!—Go on, woman, we will exorcise you, we will purge you, though you be fouler than the Augean stable, that had been left uncleaned for thirty years; ay, though you be as foul as is the stall that holds the grimy company of the lost, and which goes uncleaned for ever. Proceed, I charge thee!" and the fierce-eyed lawyer sat dilated ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... God's act, the priests of Polynesia blessed waters for purification, for prayer, and for public and private ceremonies, and to exorcise demons and drive away diseases, as the priests of America and Europe do. Holy water was called ka wai kapu a Kane, and from the baptizing of the new-born child to the sprinkling of the dying its sacred uses were many. To-day the older people use these pagan ablutions to ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... compromise devise divertise exercise misprise supervise advise chastise criticise disfranchise emprise exorcise premise surmise affranchise circumcise demise disguise enfranchise franchise reprise surprise apprise ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... ghost of Turl haunted me. Not with terror! No: I had prepared a charm, that could arrest or exorcise the evil spirit. Let him but fairly meet me on this ground and I would hurl ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... order freely to understand the sweep and the greatness of this perfect law of liberty, we must remember that the new life is implanted in us precisely in order that we may suppress, and, if need be, cast out and exorcise, that lower 'listing,' of which I have said that it is always ignoble and sometimes animal. For this freedom will bring with it the necessity for continual warfare against all that would limit and restrain it—namely, the passions and desires ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... exclaimed, "Bracy? Not the man Trinity is running for Senior Wrangler?" With this double reputation he might have won a host of friends, and his father and Miss Bracy would gladly have welcomed one, in hope that such companionship might exorcise the ghost: but he kept his way, liking and liked by men, yet aloof; with many acquaintances, censorious of none, influenced by none; avoiding when he disapproved, but not judging, and in no haste even to disapprove; easy to approach, and almost eager for goodwill, yet ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and that, in the disturbed condition of the country, counted for much. The task of the new viceroy was hard, even with such support, and though Bessborough laboured manfully and with admirable tact to better the social condition of the people and to exorcise the spirit of discord, the forces arrayed against him proved resistless when famine came to their aid. As the summer slipped past, crime and outrage increased, and the prospect for the approaching winter grew not merely gloomy but menacing. Peel had been turned out of office ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... all. I agree with almost all he says, except that I am conscious of not deserving nearly so much praise. When I get home, I will try to write a more genial book; but the Devil himself always seems to get into my inkstand, and I can only exorcise him by pensful ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... that I must be one of those fiends who are continually at enmity with good Christians. Some were for sprinkling me with holy water, some were for pulling me off the old woman, but durst not; others bawled out words to exorcise me. The witch howled, I tightened my grip with my teeth, the confusion increased, and my master was in despair, hearing it said that I was a fiend. A few who knew nothing of exorcisms caught up three or four sticks and began to baste me. Not liking the joke, I ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... have the sword put back and set a watch over it,' cried King Uriens, 'and we will meet here again at Candlemas, and essay the sword. And at that time, my lord archbishop, thou shalt do the proper rites to exorcise all evil powers, and then we will ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... constrained to do so, and sleeps in the vicinity of his flock, finding, if he can, the shelter of a ruined tomb or of the broken arch of an aqueduct, or even of a cave from which pozzolana has been dug, and strives to exorcise the malaria fiend by kindling a big fire and sleeping with his head in the thick smoke of it. But the buttero, well mounted, to whom it is a small matter to ride eight or ten miles to his home every night, lives ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... when a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the new incumbent has the power (pouder), as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by inviting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes, where the reputation of the curate in this respect stood higher than that of his rector, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... your admiration for the American people sometimes makes you a little weak in your logic," he answered with good-humor. He was so pleased by Selma's gratification that he was disposed to exorcise ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... often, more with a view to the benefit of science, than from any hope of rescuing him from the dominion of the power he had, like Frankenstein, created, to satisfy a diseased craving of the mind, and trembled at after it was formed, as he found himself helpless and weak in his energies to exorcise it. The continued brooding of his sick fancy over all the strange forms he had seen, produced, in a still greater degree, a weakness of the mind itself, that is, a weakness as regards the sane condition ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... dull place of late; even the open fire, which still lingers on the hearth, has failed to exorcise a certain gray and weary spirit which has somehow taken possession of the premises. As I was thinking this morning about the best way of ejecting this unwelcome inmate, it suddenly occurred to me ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... not the purpose of the dress to conceal organs the sight of which was tabooed.[1542] In Central Borneo, in order to drive off evil spirits, rough figures of human beings are cut in wood, the tabooed organs being exaggerated. Those organs are the real amulets which exorcise demons, for they are often cut on the timbers of the houses without the rest of the figure. Then, by further derivation, such representations became purely ornamental on houses, weapons, etc.[1543] The Egyptians used representations of what were later tabooed organs as hieroglyphics, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... informed not in directly discouraging such better information; (4) that the mere multiplication of "precautions" in the shape of increased armaments and a readiness for war, in the absence of a corresponding and parallel improvement of opinion, will merely increase and not exorcise the danger, and, finally, (5) that the problem of war is necessarily a problem of at least two parties, and that if we are to solve it, to understand it even, we must consider it in terms of two parties, not one; it is not ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... that can fall to the lot of mortals," and such an event makes the parents "holy." Among this Kaffir people, moreover: "Every father of twins has the right to act as substitute for the village-chief in the exercise of his priestly functions. If the chief is not present, he can, for example, exorcise a sick person. Even the twin-child himself has all priestly privileges. For a twin boy there is no forbidden flesh, no forbidden milk, and no one would ever venture to curse him. If any one should kill ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... much distressed, and exerted himself mightily (he was a professed electrician), combining will power with that ancient agent, prayer, to exorcise the evil influence. But his efforts were useless, as the vagabonds well knew, before they brought me there on exhibition. They had not spent the week in vain. I had sold myself to them as squarely as fools ever ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... swallow his canoe; in a storm he throws overboard a dog to appease the siren of the angry waves. He used to tear the hearts from his captives to gain the favor of the god of war. He provides himself with talismans to bind hostile deities. He fees[TN-17] the conjurer to exorcise the demon of disease. He loves none of them, he respects none of them; he only fears their wayward tempers. They are to him mysterious, invisible, capricious goblins. But, in his highest divinity, he recognized a Father and a Preserver, a benign Intelligence, who provided for ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... had thought him possessed of a devil; and his father had at first sought to exorcise it with a chamois-hide thong, as Munchausen flogged the black fox out of his skin. But the counter-irritant failed of its purpose. The devil clung deep, and rent poor Camille with periodic convulsions ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... time of experimenting. Some one had told me that lemon juice would exorcise freckles, and surreptitiously I tried it. How my face smarted after the heroic treatment, and how red and inflamed it looked! But then in a little while back came the freckles again and they stayed, too, until—but how they went, I ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... upbraided an idolater in the following terms, while refuting him: "The gods whom you adore we exorcise in the name of the true God, and they are compelled to leave the bodies which they possessed. Oh, if you chose to see and hear them, when suffering under the power of our words, as if they were spiritual scourges, and feeling ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe



Words linked to "Exorcise" :   chuck out, turf out, eject, faith, boot out



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