"Demoniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the plural of "Inkoosi", is the salute given to Zulu wizards, because they are not one but many, since in them (as in the possessed demoniac in the Bible) dwell ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... approving of RUDOLPH'S virtuous resolve, they descend to—well, they descend below the Erie Building, to drink to his success. Scene changes to ULRIC'S home. Enter ULRIC and family, including Aged Mother, Virtuous Heroine, Hated Rival, and Demoniac Servant. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... named Stanton, who had travelled in Spain in the seventeenth 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
... clung tormentingly to the searcher. It was the demoniac face of Motoza, the Sioux, when Fred Greenwood compelled him to return the Winchester of Jack. There could be but one interpretation of that expression, and it boded the worst for ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... irrecoverably dried up. The Missouri river will turn and flow backward towards its source before this revenue, which is the price of blood, like the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas sold his Master, will ever come back again. After Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of the demoniac that dwelt among the tombs, this man was far more impressible with regard to motives addressed to his better nature than while he was possessed by these demons; so we may charitably hope that now, after ten thousand evil demons have been cast out ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... uncle; "he 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. If he gives point, he may kill his man indeed, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the back; it was about ten feet high, and you started it at the side by a handle in its midriff. But I loved it. It still went, if treated kindly. Barbara loathed it and insulted it, so that with her as passenger, it sulked and refused to go. But Susan's adoration surpassed even mine. Its demoniac groans and rattles and convulsive quakings appealed to ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... lives in South America. The light it gives is so bright that you can read a book by it. The natives 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, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in Dr. Nevius's book, this evidence rests almost entirely on the written reports of native Christian teachers, for the Chinese were strictly reticent when questioned by Europeans. 'My heathen brother, you have a sister who is a demoniac?' asks the intelligent European. The reply of the heathen brother is best left in the obscurity of a remarkably difficult and copious Oriental language. We are thus obliged to fall back on the reports of Mr. Leng and ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... forest were made up of thin, spindly stemmed trees of great height, and among these stretches I always noticed the ruins of some forest giant, whose death by lightning or by his superior height having given the demoniac tornado wind an extra grip on him, had allowed sunlight to penetrate the lower regions of the forest; and then evidently the seedlings and saplings, who had for years been living a half-starved life for light, shot up. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... him!" shrieked the crank, eying Mark with a demoniac hatred. "But for him I should ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... It is possible that the puppets made of rushes, which in the month of May the pontiffs and Vestal Virgins annually threw into the Tiber from the old Sublician bridge at Rome, had originally the same significance; that is, they may have been designed to purge the city from demoniac influence by diverting the attention of the demons from human beings to the puppets and then toppling the whole uncanny crew, neck and crop, into the river, which would soon sweep them far out to sea. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... reached the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing down canyons and gorges like a demoniac corkscrew. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... sound of a scurrying rat, 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
... 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 the field of Marengo many a young ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... he knew she laughed at him. Yes, laughed at him, for she had more than human intelligence. There was something demoniac in her cleverness, her immunity from harm, her prodigious energy, her malevolent mischief, her raillery. Actually, he had grown morbid about the beast; he had a superstitious feeling that in the end she would bring him bad luck. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... text "Rkiba-h," the technical term for demoniac insiliation or possession: the idea survives in our "succubi" and "incubi." I look upon these visions often as the effects of pollutio nocturne. A modest woman for instance dreams of being possessed by some man other than her husband; she loves the latter and is faithful to him, and consequently ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... leprosy was 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 ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... 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
... were menaces of war, insane and demoniac, to fill the world with tears and woe. As we read the record of these horrid outrages which through all the centuries have desolated this globe, it would seem that there must be a vein of insanity as well as of depravity, in the heart ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... very devil within him. His cries drowned the prayers. He frightened his conductress by the redness of his face. He ruined the red cross with ejected matter. You would have taken him for an infant demoniac. Mother Suspiciosa, though annoyed, was encouraged. She looked upon this as an evident testimony to little Ginx's value. The devil and St. Michael were contending for his body. At length he was baptized, and carried out. Credat Judaeus. He instantly sank into a deep sleep. It was a miracle: ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... doubloons for an extraordinarily inexhaustible long time. And innumerable asses can collect themselves nice little heaps of golden carrot-slices, and then lift up their heads and brag over them with fairly pan-demoniac yells of gratification. Of course I don't see any green in your eye, dear Libertas, unless it is the smallest glint from the carrot-tips. The gleam in your eye ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... 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
... And the cross-roads where our screeches, Furrowing the startled air, Our demoniac yelling, hooting, Make the hardened unbeliever Cross himself and ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... a sitting posture, he threw his arms above his head, and shrieked with a demoniac fury. Presently he became a trifle calmer. Reverting to his recumbent position, resting his head upon his hand, he eyed me steadily; then asked me a question which struck me as being, under the circumstances, more than ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Devrient was equally great in comedy and tragedy. Falstaff, Franz Moor, Shylock, King Lear and Richard II. were among his best parts. Karl von Holtei in his Reminiscences has given a graphic picture of him and the "demoniac fascination" of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... shelter and swing them through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail again. But with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his encouraging refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion dynamically bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without the straying of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing, shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a fierce charge upon the laggards hustling the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Middleton's Women beware Women (circa 1612: 4to, 1657), no contrivance can legitimize the incestuous loves of Hippolito and Isabella, and death is the only solution. In Massinger's The Unnatural Combat (1621: 4to, 1639), the demoniac Malefort pursues his daughter Theocrine with the same baleful fires as Francesco Cenci looked on Beatrice, but the height of horror, harrowing the soul with pity and anguish, culminates in Ford's terrible scenes ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... He 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 in ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... one between Romola and Tito, when he finally discovers that she knows him fully, and can be deceived by him no more. Some such hour always must come for strong decided natures irrevocably pledged—one to the service of good, and the other to the slavery of evil. The demoniac cried out, 'What have I to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to torment me before the time?' The presence of all-pitying purity and love was a torture to the soul possessed by the demon ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... exercise excepting once in a while to knock on wood. I abhorred the thought of ritualistic bedroom calisthenics such as were recommended by divers health experts. Climbing out of a warm bed and standing out in the middle of a cold room and giving an imitation of a demoniac semaphore had never appealed to me as a fascinating divertisement for a grown man. As I think I may have remarked once before, lying at full length on one's back on the floor immediately upon awakening of a morning and raising the legs to full length twenty times struck me as a performance ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... to that of the apparition, by implying the lesser miracle in the greater. In subordinating the cure to the vision, he obtained sublimity; in placing the crowd and patient on the foreground, he gained room for the full exertion of his dramatic powers. It was not necessary that the demoniac should be represented in the moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other means. It is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt, by the glorious apparition above; it is made nearly intuitive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... philosopher alone dominates the world. To him are only two entities that matter—himself and the Eternal; or, if another, it is his fellow-man, whom serving he serves the ultimate of being. But he is master of the outer world. The mind, indeed, in its first blank outlook on life is terrified by the demoniac force of nature and the swarming misery of man; by the vast totality of things, the cold remoteness of the starry heavens, and the threat of the devouring seas. It is puny in ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... about Hogarth and his art, despising both, no doubt, and agreeing with Fuseli in deeming him a caricaturist merely, and his works 'the chronicle of scandal and the history book of the vulgar.' It was so much nobler to portray wild-contortions from Ossian, demoniac nightmares and lower region revelations, than to paint simply the life around they had but to stretch out a hand to grasp. Yet with all their talk, in the humbler merits of colour, expression, and handling, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... that after the fort had been invested two days, and two of the Indians had been killed, the garrison agreed to surrender on condition of their lives being spared, which, was solemnly promised. That when the gate was opened, the Indians rushed in with demoniac yells, the whites fled, but were retaken, except one person; the massacre then took place, and ten were carried off ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... through which she had just fled stood a fearsome apparition. It was her uncle, that man so given to carnage among the beasts and birds of the field, that unerring, that unfailing marksman. He was in his shirt sleeves, his arms bared to his elbows. Upon his face was a fixed grin of demoniac determination—the look of one who smiles even as he slays his prey. And in his hands—ah, dreadful final detail of this dreadful picture—he held outstretched, extended and presented in my general direction, a double-barrelled fowling piece, enormous in size ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... itself in successive phases of the world-revolution, springs from fear. So by their very hatred the powers of darkness proclaim the existence of the powers of light and their own impotence. In the cry of the demoniac: "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God," do we not hear the unwilling tribute of the vanquished to the victor in the mighty conflict ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... ("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 ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... tank, which could only gasp out a cindery drop or two of ice-water. The wind buffeted faintly at the windows; when the door was opened, the clatter of the rails struck through and through the car like a demoniac yell. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their pleasure. The two men used all their strength to detach the gondola from the shore. At last they succeeded. The most robust then took one of the oars and pushed the boat from the bank. Just as they were about to put off, a burst of demoniac laughter rung in their ears. A very demon, a breathing spirit of evil, had witnessed all their preparations, and had learned, from its shape, the contents of the box; the idea of what they meditated caused him to utter this shout of laughter. This demon was Scorpione. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the Count is near. But at the instant I saw that the cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over my chin. I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half round to look for some sticking plaster. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... 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 ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... forced their horses in, but in turn became scared, and gave it up amidst chaff and laughter. At last a line of men, armed with stones, drove the whole herd of seventy-five animals into the water with demoniac howls and a shower of missiles. Once in, they took it calmly enough, and, the brave little foal leading, soon reached the farther bank. One old war-horse of recalcitrant views turned back, and had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Matt. x. 29 we have the cure of Bartimaeus on the departure from Jericho, in Luke xviii. 35, xix. 1 at the entrance of the city. In Matt. viii. 28 there are two demoniacs, while in Mark v. 2 and Luke viii. 27, which seem to narrate the same event, only one demoniac is mentioned. All the Synoptic Gospels give slightly different accounts of the inscription on the cross, and the words spoken by the centurion at the death of Jesus vary in Luke from the ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... 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, in the call ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... the relics of St. Maurus were translated thence to the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, where they are preserved in a rich shrine.[4] An arm of this saint was with great devotion translated to mount Cassino, in the eleventh century,[5] and by its touch a demoniac was afterwards delivered, as is related by Desiderius at that time abbot of mount Cassino,[6] who was afterwards pope, under the name of Victor III. See Mabill. Annal. Bened. t. 1, l. 3 and 4; and the genuine history of the translation of the body of St. Maurus to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... The nymphs were fascinated, and soon began to peep out between the branches, and one by one deserting the shady covert, drew near under the irresistible attraction of the music. Then the goat-men rushed upon them with a demoniac fury. Folded in the arms of their ruthless assailants, the nymphs strove to keep up a while longer their raillery and loud laughter, but the mirth died on their lips. With heads thrown back and eyes swooning with joy and terror, they could only call upon their mother, or scream a shrill "You ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... knife and bent over Jake's body. A yell greeted this. Dogs and men moved confusedly around the thing on the ground, in a sort of demoniac circle upon which the hissing, flaring pitch-pine torches danced with infernal effect. Peter Champneys watched it, his soul revolting. He had no sympathy for Jake; he felt for him nothing but hatred. He couldn't think of that ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... man had taken him into his arms, and having touched his coat three times had gone away glorying as if he had touched a relic of the greatest saint in the world. On the other hand, Luther looked round about him, with his demoniac eyes, and said, "God will ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... in the dark for a fool and a madman; he cursed the infatuation which rose like a demoniac possession from his early life. When that failed he tried to kill it by remembering the passage of time, the loathing she must have nursed all these years. He summoned the image of Elizabeth to his aid, to find it eclipsed by something ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 littered ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... informs us that Solomon discovered a plant efficacious in the cure of epilepsy, and that he employed the aid of a charm, for the purposes of assisting its virtues. The root of the herb was concealed in a ring, which was applied to the nostrils of the demoniac; and Josephus remarks that he saw himself a Jewish priest practise the art of Solomon with complete success in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian, his sons and the tribunes of the Roman army. From this art of Solomon, exhibited through the medium of a ring ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... five chandeliers hanging by sliding bronze chains from the ceiling—one in each corner, and in the centre one—enormous pyramids of lighted lamps, illuminating even the demoniac faces of the Atlantes and the complex tracery of the cornice. About the tables, seated or standing, or moving restlessly from one to another, there are probably a hundred persons, whom we must study at least ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... undistinguishable at the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered with a dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was distinguishable,—nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror, that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a thousand-fold, when, after ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... at the 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 False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... it is. But our great 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 ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... moustache. When you smile, it gives you a demoniac expression, which drives me out of all patience. Miss Lothrop, would he not look a great deal better if he would cut off those Hungarian twists, and wear his ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Leath, who was picturing herself to herself in that way? She recoiled from her thoughts as if with a sense of demoniac possession, and there flashed through her the longing to return to her old state of fearless ignorance. If at that moment she could have kept Darrow from following her to Givre she would ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... alone sometimes in your room, at midnight, in the month of November, how, after a lull in the blast, the bleak wind will all at once seem to clutch at the windows, with a demoniac howl that makes the house rock? Do you remember the half-whistles and half-groans through the key-holes and crevices,—the cries and shrieks that rise and fall,—the roaring in the chimney,—the slamming of distant doors and shutters? Well, all this seemed to be suggested in the ringing of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the ruffian, with a demoniac leer. "The father is my affair, and he has come very near making it an ugly one for me. Look at this!" he continues, indicating the left arm which hangs loose by his side. "And at that!" he adds, glancing up to ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... fox with abject terror; his craft and cunning are celebrated in legendary ballads; and a condition of mental disorder, known as 'possession by the fox,' is a common belief, bringing crowds of devotees to Inari's temples, either to pray for the exorcism of the demoniac influence, or to avert the danger of falling under the dreadful spell." (Macmillan's ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... had fired his fatal shot the Indians were so infuriated, that, setting up their demoniac yells, they plunged down the banks of the stream, determined to revenge their ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... forced them, by pure physical superiority, into working. We furnished a joyous and comic spectacle to every town and village through which we passed. The whole community, men and children, came out to assist at our departure; and all alike were diverted, but not the less irritated, by the demoniac obstinacy of the brutes, who seemed under the immediate inspiration of the fiend. Everybody was anxious to share in the scourging which was administered to them right and left; and once propelled into a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... sparrows—Jack wanders out—the breath of the morning stirs his memories—he thinks of other days. Then comes in Jack's song, which neither Calabressa nor any one else present could say was meant to be comic, or pathetic, or a demoniac mixture of both. The accompaniment which the handsome young English fellow played was at once rhythmical, and low and sad, like ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... conditions, dens of iniquity, and the nunneries were no better. The nunnery of Saint Fara in the eleventh century, according to a contemporary description, was no longer the residence of holy virgins, but a brothel of demoniac females who gave themselves up to all sorts of shameless conduct; and there are many other accounts of the same general tenor. Pope Gregory VII. tried again to do something for the cause of public morality, in 1074, when he issued edicts against both concubinage and simony—or ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... yet another 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 (saving the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the cold indifference with which many generals, many men in power, the rhetors and the politicians, speak of what is more than a sacrifice in a sacred cause, is an unholy and demoniac waste of human life. But some one—some avenging angel, will call them all to a ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... once 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 ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... men joined these barbarians, merry in their pleasant sports. Such are the joys of peace, so different from the miseries of demoniac war. At length the festivities were closed, and all began to prepare to ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... a crash. There was the sudden apparition of the demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The man who ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... shows that in this he had not been at all too sanguine. Justice has never yet been done to the conduct of Pilate. That man has little comprehended the style and manner of the New Testament who does not perceive the demoniac earnestness of Pilate to effect the liberation of Christ, or who fails to read the anxiety of the several evangelists to put on record his profound sympathy with the prisoner. The falsest word that ever yet was uttered upon any part of the New Testament, is that ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... 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! ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... and fiercest—one alone excepted!—which Albyn can send down from her mountains, all athirst for each other's blood, while a king and his nobles, and shouting thousands besides, attend, as at a theatre, to encourage their demoniac fury! Blows clang and blood flows, thicker, faster, redder; they rush on each other like madmen, they tear each other like wild beasts; the wounded are trodden to death amid the feet of their companions! Blood ebbs, arms ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... One of God," whereupon Jesus spoke a few authoritative words and cured him of his malady, by methods that will describe the nature of the man's psychic disturbance to any advanced student of occultism. Demoniac possession is not believed in by orthodox Christians of today, but Jesus evidently shared the belief in obsession held by students of Psychism and similar subjects, judging from the words He used in relieving this ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... hold upon the artist's arm And grasped it with demoniac power, The while he cried: "Go forth, I say, go forth And tell my history to the tempted youth. I looked upon the wine when it was red, I heeded not my mother's piteous prayers, I heeded not the warnings of my ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... see that it was his wife who stood before them, with the mad demoniac look in her eyes ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 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 ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... person transformed into a wolf, or a being with a literally wolfish appetite, under the presumed influence of a charm or some demoniac possession. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... excellent fooling, intended to dispel the brooding horror which had suddenly descended upon Forbes since it was borne in on him that the demoniac wrath wreaked on Mrs. Lester was now directed with equal ferocity against his ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... will have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers and launch it in your presence. "Let me see," he will say. "Give me a moment. I SHOULD have some theory for that." A blither spectacle than the vigour with which he sets about the task, it were hard to fancy. He is possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the elements for his life, and bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horse-shoe, with a visible and lively effort. He has, in theorising, a compass, an art; what I would call the synthetic ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... demoniac glee the wind entered into and took possession of the room. A cloud of snow swept across the floor like a veil. The door battered against the wall as if trying to break it down. A pile of newspapers was swept from the table ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... was the Scotsman, 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
... locked and the windows barred, when suddenly the sound of demoniac cries roused the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... of the bailer's cold metal had given him a momentary sense of oneness with his own world. Now this inrush of hideous, demoniac figures beneath the flare of green flames was like a fevered vision of the infernal regions come ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... to his 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 ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... 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 ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... writers have abundantly proven, Ill Fortune has an ugly habit of coming around a corner with a sudden demoniac swish when least expected and she certainly did this time. Steve was out in his garden drinking in the mellow stillness of an Indian summer twilight, and feeling not really happy perhaps—a man who has a home only in name ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... governs his fury, also, with an Attila discretion in many cases; but not here. Imagine this Hun coming down, sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light troops, levying chout upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the dove-cot of the Sylphs. Pope's 'duty it was,' says this demoniac, to 'scourge the follies of good society,' and also 'to break with the aristocracy.' No, surely? something short of a total rupture would have satisfied the claims of duty? Possibly; but it would not have satisfied Schlosser. And Pope's guilt ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... being very uproarious, suddenly ceased altogether, and the arch-fiend seemed pacified, if not utterly routed, until at the close of the service, a bell was rung as appointed in the office. The sound of this bell had the effect of increasing the demoniac uproar to such a degree that the padre officiating was fain to hurry through the rest of the service as best he could and beat a precipitate retreat, with the acolytes, bells and all, to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... some hours after nightfall. A night bombardment is a stirring scene. The passionate and spiteful glare of the cannon-flashes; the unceasing roar of the explosions; the demoniac shriek of the shells in the air, followed by their explosion with a lightning flash, and crash like thunder; the volumes of gray smoke rising upon the dark air,—make up a ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... up from out the waves' abyss— A monstrous little man with a black hide, Scarce four feet high, yet he was not remiss, But dash'd the waves about—and then he cried, With a demoniac laugh, or rather hiss, "Die, mortal, die!" and John sank down and died, The which, when Jeannie saw, she only sigh'd, "I come, my John, I come, to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... on the ground, he asked his father how long it was ago since this had come unto him and the father replied that it was since he was & child. And Jesus said unto him: "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth" (ver. 23). And then the father of the epileptic or demoniac uttered these pregnant and immortal words: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"—Pisteyo, kyrie, boethei te hapistia mou ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... 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 play the "Walpurgis Nacht," when he appeared at the Amphitheatre ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... the sides of the road. The artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a solid shot. Instantly a wide lane opened through our ranks; the man with the lanyard drew the fatal cord, fire burst from the primer and the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and recoiled, and there seemed to be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as the heavy ball left the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of the struggling ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... loup-garou[Fr], lemures[obs3]; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk[obs3]; siren; satyr, faun; manito[obs3], manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c.503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin[obs3], elfish, elflike[obs3]; haunted; pokerish [obs3][U.S.]. possessed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... demoniac savagery followed on the cutting down of the martyr's body. The head was severed from the trunk, and the blood was greedily drunk even by some of the friends of the victim. The Taranaki leader, Kereopa, forced out the eyes and swallowed them. Part of the flesh was taken far inland, where ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... over what I 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 and unusual gifts, his fine athletic record, his strange way of dressing ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... asked myself with almost superstitious awe, if he were not indeed a demoniac being, escaped ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... due 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 ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... lips. He paid no heed to this, however, for there was murder in his heart, and already his plans of revenge were being formed—plans which fiends incarnate might well shrink from, and from the execution of which even demoniac natures would have recoiled ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... begins to mount on wind-weaving pinions. We have reached the last study of op. 10, the magnificent one in C minor. Four pages suffice for a background upon which the composer has flung with overwhelming fury the darkest, the most demoniac expressions of his nature. Here is no veiled surmise, no smothered rage, but all sweeps along in tornadic passion. Karasowski's story may be true regarding the genesis of this work, but true or not, it is one of the greatest dramatic outbursts in piano literature. Great in outline, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... dramatic writing, in its succession of striking situations, and its cumulative interest. From beginning to end, however, Mr. Heavysege makes no attempt to produce a dramatic effect. It is true that he has availed himself of the phrase "an evil spirit from the Lord," to introduce a demoniac element, but, singularly enough, the demons seem to appear and to act unwillingly, and manifest great relief when they are allowed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... 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
... with horror, when he looked at the designs of the vermilion inlay, in the white, gleaming crystal. Weird forms. Shapes of creatures somewhat like gigantic spiders, and more unlike them. Demoniac things, wickedly fanged, jaws slavering. Executed with masterly skill, that made them seem ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... made from various colored shells, for a similar purpose. Color played its part in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It speaks to the eye sooner than form. A black flag hoisted upon the battle field proclaims louder than words the demoniac cruelty that reigns, while a white signifies that submission has been decided upon. Joseph's coat of many colors proclaimed the father's favoritism to his brothers, and worked a mighty change in the history of the race to which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... understanding that it must hide even more. It was never half lighted, and there was a passage in which fear dwelt—wild were the gallopades from attic to cellar in the early nightfall, when every young Murchison tore after every other, possessed, like cats, by a demoniac ecstasy of the gloaming. And the garden, with the autumn moon coming over the apple trees and the neglected asparagus thick for ambush, and a casual untrimmed boy or two with the delicious recommendation of being utterly without credentials, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... ringing voice: "A man's a man for a' that!" Afterward they sat in silence that grew more tense as the minutes passed, but it seemed that Henshaw, with demoniac cunning, had decided to prolong the agony by delaying his written order and the consequent decision of the engineer. And Harrigan, watching the suffused face of Campbell, knew that the time had come when his will would ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... 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, clove ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the answer of the demoniac that the devils which possessed him were Legion.—St. Mark, v, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... deny that he has represented in Lady Macbeth a woman "naturally cruel,"[116] "invariably savage,"[117] or endued with "pure demoniac firmness."[118] If ever there could have existed a woman to whom such phrases could apply—a woman without touch of modesty, pity or fear,—Shakspeare knew that a thing so monstrous was unfit for all the purposes ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... 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
... the distracted mother, rushing toward Villefort; "I kill my son? Ha, ha, ha!" and a frightful, demoniac laugh finished the sentence, which was lost in a hoarse rattle. Madame de Villefort fell at her husband's feet. He approached her. "Think of it, madame," he said; "if, on my return, justice his not been satisfied, I will denounce you with my own mouth, and arrest you with my ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this demoniac stratagem gave one simultaneous shout of indignation. Those nearest the wagons strove to clutch at them with their hands. Some held on even to the wheels, some mounted the horses, some snatched the reins. But sharp swords were near; and, at the word of command, every outstretched ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... some affinity between the demoniac and the animal nature, and though it is easy to ridicule, it is impossible to disprove, the suggestion. We know too little about either to do that, and what we cannot disprove it is somewhat venturesome hardily to deny. There are depths in the one nature, which we cannot fathom though its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... attention; all was a sightless blank. How was a mind, active and indefatigable like mine, to endure this misery? I could not sink it in lethargy; I could nor forget my woes: they haunted me with unintermitted and demoniac malice. Cruel, inexorable policy of human affairs, that condemns a man to torture like this; that sanctions it, and knows not what is done under its sanction; that is too supine and unfeeling to enquire into ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... earliest dawn, and anxiously invoking its approach.] The same, or similar facts, might be brought forward on behalf of Nero. And thus these unfortunate princes, who have so long (and with so little investigation of their cases) passed for monsters or for demoniac counterfeits of men, would at length be brought back within the fold of humanity, as objects rather of pity than of abhorrence, would be reconciled to our indulgent feelings, and, at the same time, made intelligible ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the loss of friends, or excited by the sanguinary scenes around her, seemed possessed by a demoniac ferocity. She seized a stable-fork and assaulted one miserable victim, who lay groaning and writhing in the agony of his wounds, aggravated by the scorching beams of the sun. With a delicacy of feeling scarcely to have ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... there was 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 soldiers, he made for ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... off its hinges. But before the wounded man was placed upon it, Lebrun appeared at the door into Milligan's. He was never a very cheery fellow in appearance, and now he looked like a demoniac. He went straight to Joe Rix and the skeleton form of the Pedlar. He raised one finger ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... the Pi Utahs; the fearful cries of the demoniac Indians; the shrieks of the females and children; the rapid and effective fire of the rifles; the stampede of the oxen; their recovery and the final repulse, the Pi Utahs being routed after a loss of thirty-six killed and wounded, while the Pikes lose but one scalp (from an old fellow ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... him there was the contrast of hate and panting and passions in ferment—had Driscoll seemed so distant a thing from flesh and the human sphere. In grime, in dust, in smoke, among faces changing demoniac wrath for the sharp, self-wondering agony of mortality, his face was cool, serene, with just the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. His own men would try to look another way, try uneasily to break the fascination of this strange ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... enough; there was no need for her to say another word. With consummate skill she had gradually wrought her audience up to a pitch of demoniac fury; she had pictured her—and their—beloved young mistress in the power of the wretch who crouched with smarting, lacerated back yonder in the shed—insulted, ill-treated, and finally driven to madness and death by him: ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... with a demoniac light; his thin lips were tightly drawn over his sharp teeth; he was evidently expecting some proposition to murder, and ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... 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 ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance |
