"Supernatural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... content ourselves with those already existing; "the restlessness of man" is such that he cannot do without them; in default of those already made he would fashion others, haphazard, and still more strange. The positive religions keep man from going astray; it is these which render the supernatural definite and precise;[5110] "he had better catch it there than pick it up at Mademoiselle Lenormand's, or with some fortune-teller or a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... has, of course, a history. In October of the year 1513, a noble lady of Bologna, named Elena Duglioli dall Olio, imagined that she heard supernatural voices bidding her to dedicate a chapel to St. Cecilia in the Church of S. Giovanni in Monte. Upon telling this to a relative, Antonio Pucci of Florence, he offered to fit up the chapel at his own expense, and induced his uncle, Lorenzo Pucci, then newly created a cardinal, to commission ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... Matthew Arnold used to call it, was so admitted to be the three-fourths of life he claimed for it, as it was between the Restoration and the French Revolution. It was conduct, not faith, ethics not religion, the "whole duty of man" in this life, not his supernatural destiny in another, that mainly occupied the minds of serious people {28} in that unecclesiastical age. And Johnson, definite Christian, definite Churchman as he was, full even of ecclesiastical prejudices, was just the man to appeal to a generation ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... character, though they seem to have had less power to produce any serious impression upon his mind than in the case of Cassius. The most extraordinary warning which Brutus received, according to the story of his ancient historians, was by a supernatural apparition which he saw, some time before, while he was in Asia Minor. He was encamped near the city of Sardis at that time. He was always accustomed to sleep very little, and would often, it was said, when all his officers had ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... since she assumes many forms she becomes in practice many deities or rather she is many deities combined in one or sometimes a sovereign attended by a retinue of similar female spirits. Among such forms we find the ten Mahavidyas, or personifications of her supernatural knowledge; the Mahamatris, Matrikas or the Great Mothers, allied to the aboriginal goddesses already mentioned; the Nayakas or mistresses; the Yoginis or sorceresses, and fiends called Dakinis. But the most popular of her manifestations are ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Champtoce could not rest. Gold was necessary for his pleasures; and unless by supernatural aid, he had no means of procuring any further supplies. The physician was hardly twenty leagues on his journey, before Gilles resolved to make another effort to force the devil to divulge the art of gold-making. He went out alone for that purpose; but all his conjurations were of no ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... foes, and the weapon with which the victory had been achieved had vanished. You had risen from the dead, had assailed one of the surviving enemies, had employed bullet and dagger in his destruction, with both of which you could only be supplied by supernatural means, and had disappeared. If any inhabitant of Chetasco had done this, we should ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... Martyrdom at Rouen. 1431.—The English had no difficulty in finding an ecclesiastical court to judge their prisoner. Even the French clergy detested the Maid as having appealed to supernatural voices which had not been recognised by the Church; and in spite of an intelligent and noble defence she was condemned to be burnt. At the stake she behaved with heroic simplicity. When the flames curled round her she called upon the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... made a saintly priest in parentagearlier times. He accepted the angel theory, swallowed it whole, tried to force it on us—with varying effect. He so worshipped Celis, and not only Celis, but what she represented; he had become so deeply convinced of the almost supernatural advantages of this country and people, that he took his medicine like a—I cannot say "like a man," but more as ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... smoking-room decided unanimously that the celebrated physician must be a second 'Rip-van-Winkle,' and that he had just awakened from a supernatural sleep of twenty years. It was all very well to say that he was devoted to his profession, and that he had neither time nor inclination to pick up fragments of gossip at dinner-parties and balls. A man who did not know that the Countess Narona had borrowed ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... that you and I are forgiven for a purpose; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something in advance of the means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we should be filled with all the strength and righteousness and supernatural life granted to us by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... order is what men of science term a natural law. Whether such a law is to be regarded as an expression of the mode of operation of natural forces, or whether it is simply a statement of the manner in which a supernatural power has thought fit to act, is a secondary question, so long as the existence of the law and the possibility of its discovery by the human intellect are granted. But he must be a half-hearted philosopher who, believing in that possibility, and having watched the gigantic ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... had, in all probability, confided to her his situation. The countess must therefore love him; she had doubtless come to obtain from her sister the sum due to old Gigonnet. Madame du Tillet, unaware, of course, of the reasons for her husband's apparently supernatural penetration, had shown such stupefaction when he told her the sum wanted, that du Tillet's suspicions became certainties. He was sure now that he held the thread ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... most powerful nations of Europe, a host of brave, warlike men, trained and equipped for battle, fled without a blow, before the defenders of a small and hitherto feeble nation. Here was a manifestation of divine power. The invaders were smitten with a supernatural terror. He who overthrew the hosts of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, who put to flight the armies of Midian before Gideon and his three hundred, who in one night laid low the forces of the proud Assyrian, had again stretched out His hand to ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... hosts who led the conversation, which then, especially as they became at ease with us, always drifted more or less into the supernatural. Nor was this surprising, as the tales, legends, old manners and customs amongst the Tyrolese are thoroughly interwoven with threads of heathen mythology and with the occult ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... round the table, as with supernatural energy, and seizing the Laird's right hand, she drew it close to her unstable eyes, and then perceiving the emerald ring chased in blood, she threw up her arms with a jerk, opened her skinny jaws with a fearful gape, and uttering a shriek that made all the house yell, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... had been rescued by the interposition of some supernatural agency, and solemnly declared his fixed determination never again to approach a gaming table, and throughout the voyage adhered to his resolution, spite of every influence Ward could bring to bear upon ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery; What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then, The bull and the bug never worshipp'd half enough, Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream'd, The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious; By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator, Putting myself here and now to the ambush'd ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... hereupon waved his stick over his head, pronounced some awful magical words, and twisted him round three times; at the third twist, the men in company seemed struck with astonishment and envy, the ladies clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his. Everybody declared his beauty to be supernatural. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... penance of making a pilgrimage to Rome, wearing on his leg a heavy chain; this he fastened by a padlock and threw the key into the Dee at a place now known as "The Pool of the Key." He is said to have bought a fish for food in Rome and to have found the key in its stomach; this he took for a supernatural intimation to discontinue his ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... coolness passed over all my nerves, and my brain got clear again, the ring of fire loosing, melting away. It was a happy, diverting influence, which gave the mind rest for a moment, till the better spirit, the wiser feeling, had a chance to reassert itself; but then it seemed to me almost supernatural. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dared not move hand or foot. It was clear that the whole establishment was roused. He made up his mind to remain where he was, until the alarm had subsided; and then by a supernatural effort, to get over the wall, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... position, which allowed him for a moment to keep them at bay, and gave him breathing time. Suddenly he made a desperate charge, clove the head of the leader of the band in two, and beat them back several yards; then swiftly returning to his former position, he summoned all his supernatural strength, and stamping on the mighty, but mouldering keystone, he forced it from its form, and broke the masonry of a thousand years. Amid a loud and awful shriek, horses and horsemen, and the dissolving fragments of the scene for a moment ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... don't talk like that. I can't bear to hear any one talk against imagination. There are countless openings for imagination,—for the mysterious, for the supernatural, for all the things you are trying to do, and which, I hope, you will succeed in doing. I'm not OBJECTING to imagination; on the contrary, I'd advise you to cultivate it, to accent it. Write a really good ghost story and we'd take it at once. Or"—he suggested it as an alternative to ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... logical conduct of an absurd proposition, in his fantastic handling of the supernatural, in his brisk dialogue and effective characterisation, Mr. Anstey has once more shown himself to be an artist and a humourist of ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the poem do we find that the allusions to the supernatural are classic and pagan? in what part, Christian? What corresponding difference is there in the tone of ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... get a full knowledge of the origin of such a sentiment. The idea seems to have existed that woman was semi-divine, because she was the mother, the creator of man. And we know that she was credited among the Norsemen with supernatural powers. But upon this Northern foundation there was built up a highly complex fabric of romantic and artistic sentiment. The Christian worship of the Virgin Mary harmonized with the Northern belief. The sentiment ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... above the bank of foul air, that ever rests on that coast, there was seen an object, that looked like ribs of bright light, as if a thousand stars had quitted their usual berths in the heaven, to warn us off the land, by a supernatural beacon. The sight was in itself altogether out of nature and surprising. As the night thickened, it grew brighter and more glowing, as if 'twere meant in earnest to warn us from the coast. But when the word was passed to send the glasses aloft, there was seen a glittering ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... do the medicine-men dispute among themselves, but their followers engage even more vehemently in bitter strife. For instance, there is a national belief that the juby-juby nut, which grows in the forests in profusion, possesses some supernatural virtue that will make a man who chews it impervious to the weapons of his enemies. That this virtue exists is generally accepted; but when it comes to a discussion of how, when and where to chew the nut, much wrangling goes on; and such men as survive in battle claim that their ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the same, clenching his fists, and softly pounding the table with them, he muttered exultantly, between his teeth, "What luck! What incredible luck! It's she—it's she, as I 'm a heathen. Oh, what supernatural luck!" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... down at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we can understand—or at least explain—these things as being scientific. And so they have not the terror of the supernatural." ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... keenly. He fancied that all this was some supernatural temptation, and, unwilling to look at the markets any longer, turned towards Saint Eustache, a side view of which he obtained from the spot where he now stood. With its roses, and broad arched windows, its ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... she looked round her helplessly, and, bending down quite close to her, she saw through the mist, which seemed to gather round her, a pair of keen, malicious eyes, which appeared to her excited brain to have a weird, supernatural green light in them. She lay in the shadow of a great boulder; Chauvelin could not see her features, but he passed his thin, white fingers ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... only after this is the spiritual man so far grown, so far disentangled from the psychical bandages and veils which have confined and blinded him, that he can use his proper powers and faculties. For this is the secret of all spiritual powers: they are in no sense an abnormal or supernatural overgrowth upon the material man, but are rather the powers and faculties inherent in the spiritual man, entirely natural to him, and coming naturally into activity, as the spiritual man is disentangled and liberated from psychical bondage, through keeping ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... charmed at the saneness of this revived art and yet, here and there, he is surprised to discover, amid descriptions of nature that are full of humanity, disquieting flights towards the supernatural, distressing conjurations, veiled at first, of the most commonplace, the most vertiginous shuddering fits of fear, as old as the world and as eternal as the unknown. But, instead of being alarmed, he thinks that the author must be gifted with infallible intuition to follow out thus the taints ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... BOLDOVER, I do believe you were going to cut me! (Mr. B. protests and apologises.) Well, I forgive you. I've been wanting to have another talk with you for ever so long. I've been thinking so much of what you said that evening about BROWNING'S relation to Science and the Supernatural. Suppose you take me downstairs for an ice or something, and we can have it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... colony had been exhausted, I amused the coachman with anecdotes of the supernatural—stories of ghosts, wraiths, apparitions, and second sight; but he professed himself a disbeliever, and I thought I had failed to make any impression on him, till at last he started at the crackling of a twig, and the gleaming whiteness of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... both praised and blamed as a religion which acknowledges neither God nor the soul[88] and its acceptance in its later phases of the supernatural has been regarded as proving the human mind's natural need of theism. But it is rather an illustration of that craving for personal though superhuman help which makes Roman Catholics supplement theism ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... thereto be stronger, Contentment flows from out my breast no longer. Why must the stream so soon run dry and fail us, And burning thirst again assail us? Therein I've borne so much probation! And yet, this want may be supplied us; We call the Supernatural to guide us; We pine and thirst for Revelation, Which nowhere worthier is, more nobly sent, Than here, in our New Testament. I feel impelled, its meaning to determine,— With honest purpose, once for all, The hallowed Original To ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... 1637 the Emperor T'ai Mou succeeded. His reign was marked by the supernatural appearance in the palace of two mulberry-trees, which in a single night grew to such a size that they could hardly be spanned by two hands. The Emperor was terrified; whereupon a Minister said, "No prodigy is a match ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... utterly impossible to go beyond our conception, without the aid of experience—which presents to the mind nothing but phenomena, or to attain by the help of mere conceptions to a conviction of the existence of new kinds of objects or supernatural beings. ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Before he had regained control of the animal the minister was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along. He looked back and saw the figure again, at the same place and in the same attitude as when he had first observed it. Then for the first time he was conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home as rapidly as his ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... injunction not to open the box on their way homeward, but only when they should reach their country; and that this box contained something that would do them great good, and their people! The foolish people believed really there was something in the box supernatural, that would do them great good. Accordingly, after they reached home they opened the box; but behold there was another tin box inside, smaller. They took it cut and opened the second box, and behold, still there was another ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... the heart all kinds of information about the objects through which it may find satisfaction, but after all the end itself has to be determined solely by feeling and desire. In Comte's language the intellect is a "slave," when theology makes it acknowledge the existence of supernatural beings who are agreeable to our desires, but who have no reality as objects of experience; it is a "master," when it pursues its inquiries into the phenomena of the objective world, at the bidding of an errant ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... as peculiarly its own; and just as psychology and pathology were found to hold the key to an understanding of such a phenomenon as witchcraft, so we may yet realise that a true explanation of religious phenomena is to be found, not in some supernatural world, but in the workings of ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... time for vedette duty. I relieve Butler. Not long till dawn, I think. Far to my left I hear sounds, as if an army is stirring. My time will be short on post. Where was I? Yes; the supernatural power of the Doctor. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... and whether they had anything but water to drink—in huge disdain, inquiring of Gangler whether he supposed that the Allfather would invite kings and jarls and other great men, and give them nothing to drink but water. How do things divine and supernatural, when conceived of by man and cast in an earthly, finite mould, necessarily assume human attributes and characteristics! Strong drinks, the passion of the Northern races in all ages, are of course found in their old mythic heaven, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... grottoes in which they had lived, and themselves moved into others. They periodically revisited the sepulchres to bring offerings to the dead. In time the deceased ancestor became invested by the imagination of his descendants with supernatural powers, and ascended from stage to stage till he was exalted into a deity. Thenceforth his cave became a temple. Ferguson, writing of the Chaldaean temples, and indicating their resemblance to tombs says, "The most ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation, tormented by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet seeing objections to every thing, should submit themselves absolutely to teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural commission. Thus we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends to infallibility, and, after questioning the existence ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beard, was undiscernible; but his cheeks and forehead were like cold marble. His dark brows were compressed so tightly that they seemed knotted, and beneath them his eyes glittered with an intensity that seemed to me supernatural. Not a muscle moved; his gaze was fixed; and it was not difficult to fancy that he was actually, instead of ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... heavenly mandate for Royal honours was sufficient to gain a small body of adherents, provided only that he was prepared to accept the certain punishment of detection and failure. If Hung's audacity was shown by nothing else, it was demonstrated by the lengths to which he carried the supernatural agency that urged him to quit the ignominious life of a Kwantung peasant for the career of a pretender to Imperial honours. The course of training to which he subjected himself, the ascetic deprivations, the loud ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... pleasure and live long and find power to execute his designs. He often tried, but failed for years to write at least a meager account of these experiences. He felt himself immortal just as he felt beauty. He was in eternity already; the supernatural is only the natural misnamed. As he lay face down on the grass, seizing it with both hands, he longed for death, to be burned on a pyre of pine wood on a high hill, to have his ashes scattered wide and broadcast, to be thrown into the space he longed for while living, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... shouted to him to desist; the sound of the bell jarred on his nerves. It sounded like a summons, and a summons on that deserted craft was quite out of place. Who knew what mightn't answer it in the way of the supernatural? ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... morning of the 6th of October, (I pray you to attend) or all that day, I thought that I should either see or hear something supernatural. I had a secret impulse on my mind of something that was to take place, which drove me continually for that time to a throne of grace. It pleased God to enable me to wrestle with him, as Jacob did: I prayed that if sudden death were ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... effect is accentuated by curtains draped back on either side of the upper part of the composition. In the Madonna of San Giorgio Maggiore, at Verona, we have a much more attractive picture. The "gloria" encompassing the vision is clearly defined, giving so strong an effect of the supernatural that we cease to judge the composition by ordinary standards of natural law. The Virgin's white veil flutters from her head as if caught by some heavenly breeze. Her cloak floats about her by the same mysterious force, held ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... as sharply defined are frequent and throw in shadowed blackening on shadow. The author defends the use of a meteorological phenomenon translated in the spirit of the time as supernatural by quoting Dante as recognizing it, but the authority of Dante was not necessary to justify the dramatist in introducing the "Crimson Cross." It was a part of the pyrotechnics of the church propaganda. Though the advance of ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... by the learned it was merely a story devised to account for the fact that the house was not occupied. The imagination of man, confronted by so strange a problem as money running to waste, took refuge in the supernatural. Much more truly haunted than the house in "Buckley Square" are the streets of London which are tenanted by the ghosts that genius created. These, having never been born, can never die, and still we may meet them in the roads ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... which stands] a hermitage known as the hermitage of Metronhena. Make for it with a pure intent and do your utmost endeavour to come into the hermitage, for therein is a true believer from Jerusalem, by name Abdallah, one of the holiest of men, whom God hath blessed with supernatural powers, such as dispel doubts and obscurity. Him certain of the monks seized by fraud and shut in an underground dungeon, where he has lain many a year. So, if ye desire to gain the favour of the Lord of the Faithful, ye cannot accomplish a more acceptable work than ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... nymph who skipt up and down stairs with the kettle grew sleepy at last; and Mrs. Irons rebelled in her bed, and refused peremptorily to get up again, to furnish the musical topers with rum and lemons, and Puddock, having studied his watch—I'm bound to say with a slight hiccough and supernatural solemnity—for about five minutes, satisfied himself it was nearly one o'clock, and took an affecting, though soldier-like leave of his comrade, who, however, lent him his arm down the stairs, which were rather steep; and having with difficulty dissuaded ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... bringing misfortunes upon their devotees, which can only be averted by the intercession of a priest. Gods and demons haunt every hill and grove and gorge and dark corner. Their names are usually unknown, but they go on multiplying as events or incidents occur to which the priests can give a supernatural interpretation. These gods are extremely sensitive to disrespect or neglect, and unless they are constantly propitiated they will bring all sorts of disasters. The Brahmin is the only man who knows how to make them good-natured. He can handle them exactly as he likes, and they ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... calls the fishes; the enchanted bullet finds its own game and needs only to be shot off; the tanner even lays a spell upon the water in his vat and makes it run up hill through a tube bent in a charm. But back of all this enchantment intelligence is working and assumes her mythical, supernatural garb when the poet ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... instantly all attention. Genevieve's terrifying experience was too recent and real for me to scout any supernatural suggestion of my colleague. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... paused for a moment on the wooden floating bridge and looked at the great river. All who cross that bridge, or the railway bridge higher up the stream, must do the same. They pause and draw a deep breath, as if in the presence of something supernatural. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Church, as an agency of the Holy Spirit, is to do its work are the Word of God and the Sacraments. They are sufficient for the purpose for which they are intended, because the Holy Spirit works through them and endows them with supernatural ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... a strong man, not accustomed to distrust his senses, and his reason opposed itself instantly to the suggestion of the supernatural. He had many times, on entering a new city, felt himself suddenly elated by the irresistible belief that his search was at an end, and that within a few hours he must inevitably find her whom he had sought so long. Often as he passed through the gates of some vast burying-place, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... She could not bear to look upon his picture; and after his death she never crossed the threshold of the Guest's Room in which he died, or the Green Room in which he was embalmed. There was something supernatural in her dread of these things, and something that she could not explain. Tad's nature was the opposite of Willie's, and he was always regarded as his father's favorite child. His black ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Barret, and a still severer shake, roused the boy so far as to make him sit up and stare about him with almost supernatural solemnity. Then he yawned, rubbed ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Church wishing to back out of the supernatural and anxious to explain it away where possible, we would keep our disbelief in the supernatural in the background, as far as we could, and would explain away our rejection of the miracles, as far as was decent; furthermore we would approximate our language ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... sheer amazement. Down in his mean little heart there always had been a dark fear of this rather imposing man; in his mind there was a no uncertain estimate of the Colonel's almost supernatural power to read ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... of educated Englishmen have any suspicion of the depth and solidity of the Catholic dogma, its wide and various adaptation to wants ineffaceable from the human heart, its wonderful fusion of the supernatural into the natural life, its vast resources for a powerful hold upon the conscience. We doubt whether any single reformed church can present a theory of religion comparable with it in comprehensiveness, in logical coherence, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... regard to Aristotle's rules, The Vade Mecum of the true sublime, Which makes so many poets, and some fools: Prose poets like blank-verse, I 'm fond of rhyme, Good workmen never quarrel with their tools; I 've got new mythological machinery, And very handsome supernatural scenery. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... by my side was a reality or a spectre. I had caught a glimpse of something white as the light disappeared, and I believe that a pistol at my head would have caused me less alarm than this horrible idea of the supernatural. I began to feel that I could endure it no longer, that I should stifle, should die, when Annie's voice spoke in the darkness quite near, and I found it was she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... some surprise, but it must be remembered that superstition dies hard and that many of the things which are here condemned are still advertised in the columns of the newspapers, and the belief in the supernatural seems to have taken a new lease of life as the result of certain modern investigations. Superstition has ever gone hand in hand with civilization, in spite of the repeated efforts of the latter to ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... reports of the "Devas" and other advanced Beings. So the Yogi accepts these reports of the various mystics, saints and inspired ones, and accounts for them all by laws perfectly natural to the students of the Yogi Philosophy, but which appear as supernatural to those who have not studied ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... great man, because he so completely believed in his own genius, and because advertising is the romance, the faith, the mystery of business. Mr. Pemberton, though he knew well enough that soap-making was a perfectly natural phenomenon, could never get over marveling at the supernatural manner in which advertising seemed to create something out of nothing. It took a cherry fountain syrup which was merely a chemical imitation that under an old name was familiar to everybody; it gave the syrup a new name, and made twenty million ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... be confounded with the multitude of human events, to be buried and lost in the endless annals? To what, O great God! if not to the persistence of Thy immutable decrees, can we attribute, on this earth, always so changing and mobile, the supernatural ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... spirits; there they dwell, the same as in the flesh, when by meditation most cleansed and purified—yet with some holy change it seems—a change not in them but in us, who are stilled by the stillness, and attribute something supernatural to the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... of the ever-questioning soul depicted in the drama and the literature of the day as it seeks enlightenment on the potentiality of the future life. The stage presents plays based on spiritualistic manifestations or upon supernatural healing or miraculous intervention. Many recent novels have either psychical phenomena for their central interest or plots evolved out of the miraculous in religion. As exponents of psychical research, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W.T. Stead and ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... we heard a loud scream coming from ahead, apparently directly from under the bows. The darkness, and complete stillness of the night, and the solitude of the ocean, gave to the sound a dreadful and almost supernatural effect. I stood perfectly still, and my heart beat quick. The sound woke up the rest of the watch, who stood looking at one another. "What, in the name of God, is that?'' said the second mate, coming slowly forward. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... published a novel. He absolutely roars when people mention immortality. And then Howa—well, another man I've known well, lately, who was Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard says that no intelligent person can believe in Supernatural Christianity. He says Christ was a great socialist, though. Am I ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... hobgoblins, &c., told as natural occurrences; (2) hero-tales, stories of adventure told of national or mythical heroes; (3) folk-tales proper, describing marvellous adventures of otherwise unknown heroes, in which there is a defined plot and supernatural characters (speaking animals, giants, dwarfs, &c.); and finally (4) drolls, comic anecdotes of feats of stupidity ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... the officer. One of the sailors sprang on deck, while the two newcomers assisted us in keeping down the infuriated pirate. He was, I fully believed, from the almost supernatural ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... door of the rooms which were the scene of Mr. Cobb's recent supernatural experience and of Miss Timpson's "warning" they found Thankful and John standing, listening. Thankful looked rather frightened. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Sandwich, then Lord of the British Admiralty, is said to be the most isolated group of inhabited islands in the world. It is possible that the real discoverer of the islands was not Jas. Cook, but a Spanish seaman named Juan Gaetano, who sighted them in 1555. Cook and his men were treated as supernatural beings and worshiped by the superstitious natives as gods, until the death of one of the sailors showed that they were mere mortals; and in 1779, by their overbearing conduct, the Englishmen came into conflict with ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... then, as they still are, firm believers in supernatural influence working visibly among men, they do not appear to have ever been slaves to the terrible delusion of witchcraft. Among the Anglo-Irish we find the first instance of that mania which appears in our history, and we believe the only one, if we except the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural—a strange spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth. This was borne in upon Patsy's consciousness, and it set her Celtic blood tingling and her ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... supernatural power, listened to our talk, or had she really been visited by some dream, that she looked so changed? There was a feverish light in her eye, and something like the shadow of a smile on her lips. Mrs. Poindexter ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... call for her at "four o'clock" and tiptoed out of the schoolroom. The master, who felt that everything would depend upon his repressing the children's exuberant curiosity and maintaining the discipline of the school for the next few minutes, with supernatural gravity addressed the young girl in Spanish and placed before her a few slight elementary tasks. Perhaps the strangeness of the language, perhaps the unwonted seriousness of the master, perhaps also the impassibility of the young stranger herself, all contributed ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... human life. We are safe in our own little corner of the universe, comfortably sheltered in our vestments of clay. And what we cannot understand, though it is all perfectly natural, we call religion, the supernatural, God." ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... processes of the theatre were exploded. The audience would only be deceived upon certain terms. Mr. Boaden, adapting Ann Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest" to the stage of Covent Garden Theatre, records the anxiety he felt about the proper presentment of its supernatural incidents. The contrivance he hit upon has since become one of the commonplaces of theatrical illusion. It was arranged that the spectre should be seen through a bluish-gray gauze, so as to remove the too corporeal effect of a live actor, and convert ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Quiocto. Mrs. Behn probably meant to spell this word 'Quiyoughcto', the sound being identical. There is in Virginia a river which in the seventeenth century was called the 'Quiyough'. The inhabitants of the banks of this river had mysterious or supernatural properties ascribed to them. In the Voyages & Discoveries of Capt. John Smith (1606), we have: 'They thinke that their Werowanees and Priests, which they also esteeme Quiyoughcosughes, when they are dead, doe goe beyond the mountaines towards the setting of the sun.' No doubt Mrs. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... presage that one day, when again you shall have room for their exploits, there will spring to life the heroes of old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and reverberates through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and flashes in my eyes with an almost supernatural radiance! Yes, a strange, brilliant, unearthly vista indeed do you disclose, O Russia, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... extraordinary; and, when it comes, it moves us much less than did the expectation. It is as though a sort of higher instinct, which knows everything and is not ignorant of the miracles that hang over our heads, were reassuring us in advance and helping us to make an easy entrance into the regions of the supernatural. There is nothing to which we grow accustomed more readily than to the marvellous; and it is only afterwards, upon reflection, that our intelligence, which knows hardly anything, appreciates the magnitude ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... following them even though they changed position. A veritable miracle. It seemed impossible that that good gentleman who came up every morning in the summer to hear mass in the village, had painted that supernatural work. An Englishman had tried to buy it for its weight in gold. No one had seen the Englishman, but every one smiled sarcastically when they commented on the offer. Yes, indeed, they were likely to let the picture go! Let the heretics rage with all their ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sometimes a stout arm was muffled trader a dusky cloak; thus the fault of nature was retrieved by valour, and deficiency in race requited by nobleness of spirit. He therefore feared the might of no supernatural prowess, save of the god Thor only, to the greatness of whose force nothing human or divine could fitly be compared. The hearts of men ought not to be terrified at phantoms, which were only awful from their ghastly foulness, and whose semblances, marked by counterfeit ghostliness, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... is, what do we consider supernatural? When, not a living man but a piece of stone attracted a nail to itself, how did the phenomena strike the first observers? ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... elements of air, fire, and water were originally the objects of religious adoration, and the principal deities were personifications of the powers of nature. The transition was easy from a personification of the elements to the notion of supernatural beings presiding over and governing the different objects of nature. The Greeks, whose imagination was lively, peopled all nature with invisible beings, and supposed that every object, from the sun and sea to the smallest fountain and rivulet, was ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... his heart. But as the days went on they wearied of him, and, life becoming a burden, he went into the woods and slew himself. And the evil spirit of the night-air even Bumole, [Footnote: For an account of Bumole, or Pamola, see the chapter on Supernatural Beings. Bumole seems to have been the personification of the night-hawk.] or Pamola, from whom came the gift, swooped down from the clouds and bore him away to 'Lahmkekqu', the dwelling place of darkness, and he was no ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... place alleged we have been) beguiled or misled by the translation, while we should be searching the true sense of the Scripture, which cannot be attained in a natural way (and a commonwealth is not to presume upon that which is supernatural) but by the knowledge of the original and of antiquity, acquired by our own studies, or those of some others, for even faith comes by hearing. Wherefore a commonwealth not making provision of men from time to time, knowing in the original languages wherein ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... appearing so often when I did not invite it. Once I caught myself on the verge of crying out, "Can't you wait? I will come presently!" and my uncle looked up as if I had spoken. Perhaps he had as good as heard the words; he possessed what almost seemed a supernatural faculty of divining the thought of another—not, I was sure, by any effort to perceive it, but by involuntary intuition. He uttered no inquiring word, but a light sigh escaped him, which all but made me ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... about gardens, and fit it to what Ruskin has said, is a gracious act. You speak of that night in the garden. Do you remember that you wore a scarlet wrap of thin silk? I could think of nothing as you came toward me, but of some glorious flower of almost supernatural bloom. All about you the garden was dying. But you were Life—Life as it springs up afresh from a ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... before dark, through all the natural—as opposed to supernatural—miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander (which ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... said Thomasin, smiling from one to the other. "I couldn't believe that he had got white of his own accord! It seemed supernatural." ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... over the pool of Anger in the 'Inferno,' the clogging stench which rises from Caina, and the fog of the circle of Anger in the 'Purgatorio' resemble, indeed, the cloud of the Plague-wind very closely,—but are conceived only as supernatural. The reader will no doubt observe, throughout the following lecture, my own habit of speaking of beautiful things as 'natural,' and of ugly ones as 'unnatural.' In the conception of recent philosophy, the world is one Kosmos in which ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Vaidic hymns. Then having purified himself and restrained his senses, that son of Dharma, the intelligent Yudhishthira of exceeding energy, accompanied by his brothers, approached those sages. And all the great sages endued with supernatural knowledge, knowing Yudhishthira arrived, received him joyfully. And those sages engaged in the recitation of the Vedas, and like unto fire itself, after having conferred blessings on Yudhishthira, cheerfully accorded him fitting reception. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he also raises his right hand to God. Dumb he is; but sometimes the dumb serve God acceptably. Yet still it occurs to you, that perhaps on this high festival of the Christian Church, he may be overruled by supernatural influence into confession of his homage, having so often been made to bow and bend his knee at murderous rites. In a service of religion he may be timid. Let us try him, therefore, with an earthly passion, where he will have no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... as they are any more supernatural than the telegraph and telefone and electric light, and many other seemin'ly supernatural works. And who knows but there may still be some hidden powers in nature that is the source of what you ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... came the gentle ringing of a bell, and I knew then that the type-writing machine was in action; but this was by no means a reassuring discovery. Who or what could it be that was engaged upon the type-writer at that unholy hour, 3 A.M.? If a mortal being, why was my coming no interruption? If a supernatural being, what infernal complication might not the immediate future ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... amazement. At length she could contain herself no longer, woke her husband, and asked him what he heard. "I hear several persons singing hymns," said he. "Yes," she returned, "but listen again! Do you not hear something supernatural?" His attention thus directed, he was aware of a strange buzzing voice—and yet he declared it was beautiful—which justly accompanied the singers. The next day he made inquiries. "It is a spirit," said the prophet, with entire simplicity, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worshipped. Although badly restored by Louis XVIII, the nave remains intact, and the pavement is just as it was when the bare feet of Jeanne trod its stones, in ecstatic humility, during the long trance of devotion when she felt that supernatural beings were about her and unmistakable voices were bidding her to do what maid had never dreamed of doing before. In a little chapel, beside the main edifice, is the stone fount where the infant Jeanne was baptized. Fastened to the wall there hangs a remnant of the iron balustrade, that Jeanne's ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... articles of his Christian belief. It is a tractate on Christian doctrine: no one now doubts its genuineness; and it proves him to have been a Unitarian, or High Arian, by his own confession. This was somewhat startling to the great orthodox world, who had taken many of their conceptions of supernatural things from Milton's Paradise Lost; and yet a careful study of that poem will disclose similar tendencies in the poet's mind. He was a Puritan whose theology was progressive until it issued in complete isolation: ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... many mythologies, and, generally speaking, it originated in the animistic belief that every part of nature has its indwelling spirits. Hence the spirits or gods of the waters were thought of as dwelling below the waters. Tales of supernatural beings appearing out of the waters, the custom of throwing offerings therein, the belief that human beings were carried below the surface or could live in the region beneath the waves, are all connected with this animistic idea. Among the Celts this water-world assumed many ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... you be so hard-hearted, Quatermain? After the supernatural terror which, as I told you, I experienced in that very place, I wouldn't condemn a kicking mule to go through it in this darkness. Let the poor devils stay; ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... them came Adrien and Lady Constance. The latter had chosen to represent "Miranda," and her loveliness seemed almost supernatural. The pale gold of her hair and the perfect shell-pink of her complexion were set off to advantage by her gown, which, simple as it was, yet showed by that very simplicity the hand of the master by whom ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... The supernatural or spiritual part of creation had ever a fascinating influence upon the Bard of Avon, and all the outward manifestations of nature were infallible hints to him of the inward sources of the Divine, and an absolute belief in the immortality of the soul! His own mind was ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... All the Africans we have met with are as firmly persuaded of their future existence as of their present life. And we have found none in whom the belief in the Supreme Being was not rooted. He is so invariably referred to as the Author of everything supernatural, that, unless one is ignorant of their language, he cannot fail to notice this prominent feature of their faith. When they pass into the unseen world, they do not seem to be possessed with the fear of punishment. The utensils placed upon the grave ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... the rest of those present disbelieved in the existence of the condemned Dutchman. The state of the atmosphere, the strange, wild, awful look of the ocean, prepared our minds for the appearance of anything supernatural. The captain told me that I looked ill and tired from having been on deck so many hours, and insisted on my turning in, which I ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... She was not bothered by fears of the supernatural, no matter what the old house was, or had been. Now, a good-sized rat might have made her shriek ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... be confessed that, before getting to sleep again, Mark thought of what Aunt Chloe had said about the "ghoses"; but having been taught to disbelieve in such things, and always to seek for some natural explanation of whatever appeared supernatural or unreal, he made up his mind to wait and make the attempt to unravel this mystery by himself before saying ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... were from an article by one of my contributors; but I ask any reasonable man whether it is not ludicrous to prate about religious freedom in a country where writers run the risk of imprisonment for a sentence like that? As Mr. Maloney ended the quotation his voice sank to a supernatural whisper, he dropped the paper on the desk before him, and regarded his lordship with a look of pathetic horror, which the worthy magistrate fully reciprocated. As I contemplated these two voluntary augurs of our national faith, and at the same time remembered ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... justice to her heart, did not wish to beguile Dorriforth into the snares of love: could any supernatural power have endowed her with the means, and at the same time have shewn to her the ills that must arise from such an effect of her charms, she had assuredly virtue enough to have declined the conquest; but without enquiring what she proposed, she never saw him, without previously ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good Genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley opening at the farther end and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... responsible. "I don't know," she whispered. The sound that vibrated through the room was such as might be produced if a finger-nail were drawn across the window screen. The thought entered Ruth's mind, that perhaps some one was trying to enter the room by the window, and supernatural ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... grew, till it became too important for our first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds; and we began to think of a volume, which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge has told the world, of poems chiefly on supernatural subjects, taken from common life, but looked at, as much as might ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Inspired with supernatural power He plays a melody, Forgetting all the terrors of His mortal malady; And, as of yore, his soul once more Is with the gay ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... she genuine convictions, capable of supporting her in hours of weakness and unsatisfied longing. Several times of late she had all but brought herself to speak plainly with Eleanor, and ask on what foundation was built that calm life which seemed independent of supernatural belief; but shame always restrained her. It would be the same as confessing that she had not really the liberty to which she pretended. There was, however, an indirect way of approaching the subject, by which ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... beneath her fingers. The "fingers of a fairy" my cousin Maurice used to call them, and, there certainly is magic in those dainty, rapidly-moving hands of hers. They have an art, a skill, a facility that partakes of the supernatural. Madeleine is a dependent upon your bounty, but her magic fingers make her a very valuable one; and, if you would not think it very impertinent, I would say that we are all her debtors, rather than ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... not all," continued Lord Redin, with a calm that seemed supernatural. "She was your kinswoman. She was Maria Braccio, whom every one believed was burned to death ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... original conception, out of which the divinity had arisen—a veil that might be stripped off without special damage. Pallas Athene might be indignant, when she found herself suddenly transmuted into the conception of memory: Minerva had hitherto been in reality not much more. The supernatural Stoic, and the allegoric Roman, theology coincided on the whole in their result. But, even if the philosopher was obliged to designate individual propositions of the priestly lore as doubtful or as erroneous—as when the Stoics, for example, rejecting the doctrine of apotheosis, saw ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... this strange story prevailed on him to return, at last, to his waggon and horses; he did so with manifest reluctance. To his indescribable relief, his infernal companion hail vanished in the person of the Ventriloquist, and Jolt still believes in the supernatural visitation! ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to obey the mysterious mandate—by some dreadful process the burthen was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an apalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable;—the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned—and if in sketching those that belong to blood-guiltiness I have been at all successful, I owe it mainly to the uninvoked ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... sat lost in the conversation of his new acquaintance. It was a most wonderful experience to him—an almost supernatural experience. It was like encountering an inhabitant of the fourth dimension of space, a being who was free from all one's own limitations. For four years, now, Jurgis had been wondering and blundering in the depths of a wilderness; and here, suddenly, a hand reached down ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair |
