"Supernatural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Venetian ambassador, in his relation to the senate, says that Cromwell pretended to have been assured of the victory by a supernatural voice. Prima che venisse alla battaglia, diede cuore ai soldati con assicurargli la vittoria predettagli da Dio, con una voce, che lo aveva a mezza notte riscosso dal sonno. MS. copy ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... will steadily slide downwards? And has not the fact been so, wherever the brake and lever of revelation have not arrested the decline and effected elevation? We are told nowadays of evolution, as if the progress of humanity were upwards; but if you withdraw the influence of supernatural revelation, the evidence of power in manhood to work itself clear of limitations and lower forms is very ambiguous at the best—in reference to morals, at all events. Evil is capable of development, as well as good; and perhaps Nebuchadnezzar's colossus is a truer representation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... put on his spectacles, and looked as scientific as any body. After due examination of the specimen of the genus Zana which the bursar still held in captivity, and pronouncing an unanimous opinion, that, come from where he would, he was a bona fide frog, with nothing supernatural about him, the conclave proceeded round the quadrangle, calculating the numbers, and conjecturing the probable origin of these strange visitors. Equally curious, if not equally scientific, were the under-graduates who followed them; for, having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... about Fresleven's remains, till I got out and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest, though; but when an opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... but while it was yet vague and uncertain, giving a demoniac and supernatural cast to the group and its tropical surroundings, Esperance suddenly awoke and raised himself upon his elbow. For an instant he gazed around him in bewilderment and terror. Was he dead, and were those swarthy-visaged forms extended motionless on the grass of the oasis the forms of fiends? ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... 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
... as pleases Him. And until the Church of Christ comes to go down into the grave of humiliation, and confession, and shame; until the Church of Christ comes to lay itself in the very dust before God, and to wait upon God to do something new, and something wonderful, something supernatural, in lifting it up, it will remain feeble in all its efforts to overcome the world. Within the Church what lukewarmness, what worldliness, what disobedience, what sin! How can we ever fight this battle, or meet these difficulties? The ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... the influence of the mythological drama embodying the romantic and ideal elements of classical myth, but in form representing the tradition of the old religious plays. This led to the occasional introduction of supernatural characters, counteracted the rationalizing influence of the Roman dramatists, and supplied the pastoral with its peculiar imaginative atmosphere. Lastly, there was the 'rustic' influence, which was at no time very strong, and left no mark upon the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... you made your soul yourself, and it's yours. This young dispenser of oils, substances, and mysteries wishes only to help you scrape off the rough edges and gouge out the bad spots. He will not steal it, nor distort it with his supernatural chisels, nor make fun of it. He can take nothing away, but only cauterize and neutralize, he says, so why not let him try? Tell him the ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... look in the unmoving eyes of the spectre forbade the idea of anything supernatural; but for all that, in the brief space between his dreaming and waking life, the young man's judgment remained philosophically suspended, as Descartes advises. He was, in spite of himself, under the influence of an unaccountable hallucination, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... explosions of the rifles and their effect upon the whole body of scarlet cavalry. The entire scene, including the mounted possession of their horses by uncouthly attired strangers, previously invisible, must have appeared to these terror-stricken natives an achievement of supernatural beings. And when Mr. Huertis wheeled his obstreperously laughing party to recover his mules, he found most of the astounded men prostrated upon their faces, while others, more self-possessed, knelt upon the bended knee, and, with ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... that are thus regulated, from whence we see, that when the Scripture represents to us God's settling Things by Weight and Measure, it speaks not only elegantly, but exactly. For we do not mean by Providence any extraordinary or supernatural Interposition of almighty Power, but the constant and settled Order established by the Will of that almighty Being which we commonly ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... him his name and address in case he ever wanted advice or help and continued his walk under the trees overlooking the river. The news had come to him out of the sky, and in a way that partook almost of the supernatural. There was no doubt in his mind of the truth. The boy's Southern accent and his description of the man who ten years before had denounced Olivia ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... who for a while seemed inspired with supernatural strength, had joined in the search, and with a quaking heart looked into every brake, or stopped and listened to every shout and halloo reverberating among the hills, intent to seize upon some tone of recognition or discovery. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the bark-rippers sundry narratives of their fathers', their grandfathers', and their own adventures in these woods; of the mysterious sights they had seen—only to be accounted for by supernatural agency; of white witches and black witches; and the standard story of the spirits of the two brothers who had fought and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House till they were exorcised by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a swamp in this very wood, whence they were returning to their ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the growing, moral sense of mankind organised and developed under a supernatural ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of savage lust seemed to have rendered these men temporarily mad, and they were being egged on by Heron. The mysterious Englishman, about whom so many eerie tales were told! Well, he had supernatural powers, and twenty to one might be nothing to him if the devil was on his side. Therefore a blow on his forearm with the butt-end of a bayonet was useful for disabling his right hand, and soon the left ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... but Zephir fails to catch them, and they are dashed to pieces. Venus meanwhile had discovered the escapade of her boy and locked him up till his wound from the hot oil was healed. Her anger now vents itself on Psyche. She sets her several impossible tasks, but Psyche, with supernatural aid, accomplishes all of them safely. At last Cupid manages to escape through a window. He finds Psyche lying on the road like a corpse, wakes her and Mercury brings her to heaven, where at last she is properly married to Cupid—sic rite Psyche convenit in manum Cupidinis et ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... it is suspected. I cannot help thinking, that it is impossible for Mr. Adams to believe that the state of my mind is what it really is; that he may think I view him as an obstacle in my way. I have no supernatural power to impress truth on the mind of another, nor he any to discover that the estimate which he may form, on a just view of the human mind as generally constituted, may not be just in its application to a special constitution. This ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... tea-set were soon removed, and a fresh consultation presently began in the keeper's room. Mac Fane was again enraged, and blamed the keeper; who began to suppose there was something supernatural in my behaviour. He said I looked at him as if I knew it was poison, and it was very strange! Mac Fane swore he would dose me at supper, and would go and make me eat it himself, or blow my brains out; but he presently recollected I had not the strait ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... what had been told her about a creaking board and a light that came and went without human agency. Frightened for a minute, she stood stock-still, then she rushed down. Whatever it was, natural or supernatural, she went to see it; but the light vanished before she passed the lower stair, and only a long-drawn sigh not far from her ear warned her that the space between her and the real hall was not the solitude she was anxious to consider it. A sigh! ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... characteristics, is a state of actual hostility between master and slave, in which "a revolution of the wheel of fortune, in exchange of situation, is among possible events; and this may become probably by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take part with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... guest feel himself at home. In ancient Hebraic days, Jael was accounted a good woman for murdering a sleeping man, and Sarai stood in no danger of losing the respect of her little world when she led Hagar unto Abraham. In eighteenth-century England, supernatural stupidity and dulness of a degree that must have been difficult to attain, were held to be feminine virtues—indeed, they are so still—and authors, who are always among the most servile followers of public opinion, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... while the monks were at prayers, he was observed to rise up and run swiftly towards the Confessor of the convent, and "seizing him by the hand, he raised him from the ground by supernatural force, and with jubilant rapture drew him along, turning him round and round in a violento ballo; the Confessor moved by Joseph, and ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... shall be made known! I will go to Lord Beauvayse now, and tell him all—all! And if he loves her, he will marry her. And you who have secrets upon your soul even more perilous, if less vile and hideous"—again the terrible hand pointed, and that sense of a supernatural force that it wielded knocked his knees together and dried up his mouth—"I see the millstone round ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and the marvelous tempted Hawthorne constantly to the brink of the supernatural. But here his art is delicate. The old-fashioned ghost is too robust an apparition for modern credulity. The modern ghost is a "clot on the brain." Recall the ghosts in Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw"—just a suspicion of evil presences. The true interpretation of that story ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... dress was simple and would have been rude but for the quaintly ornamented silver girdle that bound her waist, and the massive bracelets on her arms. Like the girl she was seen for the first time; her almost supernatural appearance inspired wonder and awe. She bent over the prostrate form: "Marie said with her last breath," she muttered to herself, "that ere the oaks were green again the sweetest maidens in the island would be in her embrace, but she cannot ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... of the neighbouring town of Kahla were seized with the same spirit. These mystical ideas and phrases assumed strange forms of expression among the common people, who jumbled together in wild confusion the supernatural and the material. Carlstadt kept up also a ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... occasioned by an arrest in the development of certain frontal and nasal processes, [85] and we may receive his explanation as a sweetly simple solution of the question; but who that suffers from this leporine-labial deformity would not prefer a supernatural to a natural cause? Better far that the lip should be cleft by Shakespeare's "foul fiend Flibbertigibbet," than that an abnormal condition should be accounted for by science, or comprised within ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... utterly beyond the comprehension of poor Pepsy. Here was a miracle indeed, compared with which the prophecies and spooky adventures of Licorice Stick were as nothing. And to win two hundred and fifty dollars by such a supernatural feat was staggering to her ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... there was any God, who manifested any interest in the affairs of men, that there was any Particular Providence. Though Franklin did not accept the idea, that Jesus Christ was a divine messenger, and that the Bible was a supernatural revelation of God's will, he certainly did not, in his latter years, deny that there was a God, who superintended the affairs of this world, and whom it was proper to worship. It is generally supposed that Thomas Paine was the author of this treatise, and that it was a portion of ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... perform a certain action they will do it, even if death stares them in the face. They blindly believe that the fetish is all-powerful, and that the half naked dancing savages who administer it are endowed with supernatural powers. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... that the effect of these artistic creations on the rude Greek settler of those days was not less than that of the disinterred fresco on the Cretan workman of to-day. Everything around—the dark passages, the lifelike figures surviving from an older world, would conspire to produce a sense of the supernatural. It was haunted ground, and then, as now, "phantasms" were about. The later stories of the grisly King and his man-eating bull sprang, as it were, from the soil, and the whole site called forth a superstitious awe. It was left severely alone by the new-comers. Another Knossos ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... volcanic movement of the island, and all its attendant phenomena, are concentrated in the interior of the island; there, horizontal layers or strata of rocks, piled one upon the other, eruptions of basaltic origin, and streams of lava, have given this country a kind of supernatural reputation. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... is universally recognized, is a matter of common knowledge. That class of truth which has to do with God we call supernatural, or spiritual, truth, and that which relates to His creation we call ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... him through the waves, this Faust contains him entire. The thirst for knowledge and the martyrdom of doubt, had they not tormented his early years? Whence came to him the thought of taking refuge in a supernatural realm, of appealing to invisible powers, which plunged him, for a considerable time, into the dreams of Illuminati and made him even invent a religion? This irony of Mephistopheles, who carries on so audacious a game with the weakness ...
— Faust • Goethe
... to do 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 endeavouring ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... their belief to the side of the desires, or sets their actions above their belief. Hamlet alone presents the confused spectacle of a mind formed by the enlightenment of society in conflict with a position contrary to its laws; and he needs a supernatural apparition to determine him to act, and a fortuitous event to accomplish his project. If incessantly placed in an analogous position, the personages of a tragedy conceived at the present day according to the romantic system would offer us the same picture of indecision. Ideas ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... town. A typical farmer was Captain Barrett, thoroughly human, loving life and all there is good in it, hard-headed, practical, of sturdy common-sense, faithful to every obligation as he understands it, of a kindly nature, enjoying the doing of good in a plain, simple way, caring little for the supernatural, and yet having a very sturdy faith in the few convictions of a rational religion, without high spiritual insight, he lived his religion in a ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... intention was accomplished appears truly wonderful: Adam was put into a profound sleep, and the Lord God took out one of his ribs, from which he made a woman, and closed up the flesh. What must have been the emotions of our great progenitor, when, upon awaking from his supernatural slumber, this help meet was presented to him! He had, it seems, an intuitive perception of the kind purpose for which this female companion of his future days was made; or some immediate revelation disclosing both the manner of her formation, and the reason of his being presented with this invaluable ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... saw in the hall, lighted by the lanterns being carried back and forth so swiftly, and placed in the corner with no more care or consideration than was possible under such circumstances, the dead body of old Jordan. His body, and close beside it, as if in supernatural mockery of all things human, the doll, the Swiss maid with the machine in her stomach. Sighing and sobbing, he fell down; his forehead touched the dead ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... fatal engines, this mechanical cataclysm that pursues us through space, there is something that surpasses human strength and will, something supernatural. Joseph, standing with his hand in mine, looks over his shoulder at the storm of rending explosions. He bows his head like an imprisoned beast, distracted: "What, again! Always, then!" he growls; "after all we've done and all we've seen—and now it ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the tavern near by and found the people there greatly excited and tried to reassure them. They proved to them from the black ashes of leaves, which had settled like a scum on the rainwater standing in tubs, that the darkness was not supernatural, but probably came from the burning ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... in our war graveyards in France, no religious dogma or supernatural hope intrudes upon the little wooden crosses. On these, for the most part, you can read only the bare conventional attributes of each little handful of dust, which has passed through its quivering agony into the still sleep of decay,—its name and regiment, ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of Sultz, while the rearguard, consisting of Trevico's Neapolitan regiment, was assailed by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir Francis Vere. The effect seemed almost supernatural. The Spanish cavalry—those far-famed squadrons of Guzman and Basta—broke at the first onset and galloped off for the pass as if they had been riding a race. Most of them escaped through the hollow into the morass beyond. The musketeers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Asa(*) is comparatively novel and unusual; in days of illness many millions more still seek their gods rather than the physicians. In an upward path man has had to work out for himself a relationship with his fellows and with nature. He sought in the supernatural an explanation of the pressing phenomena of life, peopling the world with spiritual beings, deifying objects of nature, and assigning to them benign or malign influences, which might be invoked or propitiated. Primitive priest, physician and philosopher ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... pseudonym "Rita" E M Gollan wrote some seventy novels of which this is one. It is a rather penetrating book about the supernatural. It starts off with a somewhat unusual situation, at least in literature, with a group of ladies in the turkish bath of a large and luxurious hotel by the sea, in England, the sort of hotel to which people go to be cured of illnesses, on the recommendation ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... became plain to me that the danger of death had passed away; that these people no longer regarded me as a victim, but rather as some mighty being—some superior, perhaps supernatural power, who was to be almost worshipped. Hence these prostrations, these words, these cries, these looks. All these told me that the bitterness of death had passed away. At this discovery there was, for a ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... resemblance be traced between their chiefs or "grandfathers" and the thunder-smitten but still majestic "Lucifer, Son of the Morning." The demon rabble of "Popular Tales" are merely the lubber fiends of heathen mythology, beings endowed with supernatural might, but scantily provided with mental power; all of terrific manual clutch, but of weak intellectual grasp. And so the hardy mortal who measures his powers against theirs, even in those cases in which his strength ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... any of the company addressed him, it was with the deepest reverence. If the attendants offered him wine or the various delicacies of the festival, it was upon their bended knees. You would have thought, by these tokens of worship, that the monarch was a supernatural being; only he seemed to have quite as much need of those vulgar matters, food and drink, as any other person at the table. But fate had ordained that good King James should not ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attention. Genevieve's terrifying experience was too recent and real for me to scout any supernatural suggestion of ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin. For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... green pass lay sparkling without a vestige of its white coating. Her eyes full of tears, she pointed the spot out to Eberhard. He understood; but, leaning towards her, told, under his breath, of the phantom he had seen. Her eyes expanded with awe of the supernatural. "It was the Blessed Friedmund," said Eberhard. "Never hath he so greeted one of our race since the pious Freiherrinn Hildegarde. Maiden, hast thou brought us ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and imminent, not to be averted by human means, and yet hardly supernatural—here was a ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nothing at all, the son of a mere printer: it was the only example of such a piece of fortune which could then be instanced, and which, even during Fabert's life, had appeared so extraordinary, the vulgar never feared to ascribe his elevation to supernatural causes. It was said that from his youth he had busied himself with magic and sorcery, and that he had made a league with the devil. Mine host, who, to the stupidity inherent in all the natives of the province of Champagne, added the credulity of our Brittany ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... far more readily to the higher impulses of the soul. Matter itself in time responds to the action of these higher forces; and many things that we are accustomed by reason of our limited vision to call miraculous or supernatural become the normal, the natural, ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... yet higher; it blew an icy blast from behind him as he cantered home. Through the hazy atmosphere a cloud of dun, vaporish red could be seen trailing over the dim fells. It poised above the ball crown of the Eel Crags like a huge supernatural bird with ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... which the 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 power. [Rom. 1:16, ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... the possessions of our lost ones. Each well-known thing comes to us with an almost supernatural power. The book we once read with them, the old Bible, the familiar hymn; then perhaps little pet articles of fancy, made dear to them by some peculiar taste, the picture, the vase!—how costly are they now in ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... exclaimed: "Is not Napoleon the man of history, the man of all ages? May we not say that there is something supernatural in him, since it is true that God disposes of the fate of empires, and that Napoleon the Great gladly submits everything to Providence and ascribes everything to religion?" In their official enthusiasm the Tribunes, as accomplished courtiers, made one motion after another. One proposed ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... other hand, the Jesuites exerted all their abilities and industry in preaching against the Jansenists; in establishing an opinion of their superior sanctity; and inspiring a spirit of quietism among their votaries, who were transported into the delirium of possession, illumination, and supernatural converse. These arts were often used for the most infamous purposes. Female enthusiasts were wrought up to such a violence of agitation, that nature fainted under the struggle, and the pseudo saint seized this opportunity of violating the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... relaxation to speak of, except to demonstrate the truth of spiritualism. He does love to monkey with the supernatural, and he delights in getting hold of some skeptical friend and convincing him of the presence of spirits beyond a doubt. I've known him to ignore two cases of croup and one case of twins to attend a seance and help convince a doubting Thomas ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... prodigious sigh. He was absurdly pale. All 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
... 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 strides of the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... had no conception of what we mean by a god. The supernatural powers he worshipped or feared were spirits of a material nature. Every object had its zi, or "spirit," which accompanied it like a shadow, but unlike a shadow could act independently of the object to which it belonged. The forces and ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... her that something dreadful was going to happen to him on his way to the hotel. "Well, if I see anything in the papers to-morrow morning about a big man being run down by a motor-car in the fog, I'll know there's something in the supernatural," said the cool elf that dwelt in her head. But agony transfixed her like an arrow because her thought reminded her that this glorious being whose eyes blazed with serenity as other people's eyes blaze only with rage, was susceptible to pain and would ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... had an almost supernatural attention from the lad who did not deign to grant me even a nod of acquiescence. I began to tell him a few things about the technical end of writing for others to read. I encountered resistance here. Until I pressed upon them a little, the same mistakes were ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... are not equally malignant, all are more or less to be dreaded. The silent surroundings of primaeval forests in which the Dyak spends most of his time, the mountains, the gloomy caves, often looming mysteriously through cloud and mist, predispose him to identify them with supernatural influences, which in his imagination take the form of monsters and genii. With no better guide than the untutored imagination of a mind which in religious matters is a blank, who shall wonder that this is so? I have myself often felt the influences of such surroundings, when ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... not travel," said the third mouse; "I stayed in this country: that was the right way. One gains nothing by travelling—everything can be acquired here quite as easily; so I stayed at home. I have not obtained what I know from supernatural beings. I have neither swallowed it, nor learnt it from conversing with owls. I have got it all from my reflections and thoughts. Will you now set the kettle on the fire—so? Now pour the water in—quite full—up to the brim; place ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... ethics. You have read Grotius, Puffendorf, and Cumberland. For my part I never opened a volume of any one of them. I am self-taught. My science originates entirely in my unbounded penetration, and a sort of divine and supernatural afflatus. With all this your lordship knows I am a modest man. I have never presumed to entrench upon the province of others. Let the professors of ethics talk their nonsense. I will not interrupt them. I will ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... part Mammy spread us a chilling feast of horrors, varied by the supernatural. Long years after this period I read a protest in some Southern paper against this practice in the nursery, with its manifest consequences on the minds of children. It set me to wondering how it was that the consequences in my day seemed inappreciable. I do not understand it now. Some of Mammy's ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... a collar for magistrates, which had the supernatural power of pressing the neck of the wearer if his judgments deviated from strict justice, and even of causing strangulation if he persevered in wrong doing. Moran, surnamed "the Just," was the wise counsellor of Feredach, an early ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... preceptors have told me a thousand incidents, which will not permit me to doubt of it. Besides, though I were not otherwise convinced, I could not forbear giving some credit to my dreams. The old man who appeared to me had something supernatural, he was not one of those men whom nothing but age makes venerable; there appeared a divine air about his person. In short, he was such a one as our great prophet is represented; and if you will have me tell you what I think, I believe it was he, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... roofing of the plains With traffic; and the piercing through and through Of forests with the iron veins Of industry. Would I could make you see How these, laboriously, These founders of New England, every hour Faced danger, death, and misery, Conquering the wilderness; With supernatural power Changing its features; all its savage glower Of wild barbarity, fierce hate, duress, To something human, something that could bless Mankind with peace and lift its heart's elation; Something at last that stood ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... that he should enjoy more advantages than his inferior. If he meets with a success he ascribes it to the force of his individual temperament, and if he fails in anything he refers it to the workings of the supernatural. A man, however, who tries to gain advancement by plots and injuries is in the first place held to be crafty and crooked, malicious and vicious: (and this I know you would allow no one to say or think about you, even if you might rule the whole world by it): ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... and Maggie had dressed all the windows and mantlepieces and picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, wedding the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-berried ivy. There had been singing under the windows after midnight,—supernatural singing, Maggie always felt, in spite of Tom's contemptuous insistence that the singers were old Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of the church choir; she trembled with awe when their carolling broke in upon her dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was always ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... destruction of many. Godfrey was, as usual, conspicuous, and became the mark of repeated attacks,—the cross of gold which surmounted his tower especially enraging the Moslem. An incident, supposed to be supernatural, was the immediate cause of the Christians' success. Godfrey and the Count of Toulouse at the same time observed the figure of a knight on the Mount of Olives, who with his buckler signalled to the Christians that they should enter the city. The two leaders, animated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... "Unusual, I mean. Not necessarily supernatural, and not horrible. But the thing, perhaps, that more than all else draws your ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable
... loveliness, determined to make her his bride. During the agonizing suspense of Abram, and the concealed anguish of Sarai in her conscious degradation, the hours wore heavily away, until the judgment of God upon the royal household brought deliverance. Pharaoh, though an idolater, knew by this supernatural infliction, that there was guilt in the transaction, and called Abram to an account. He had nothing to say in self-acquittal, and with a strange magnanimity, was sent away quietly, with his wife and property, followed ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... small, priests and laymen, all trembled before the idea of any supernatural power. The word "magic" was as powerful as leprosy to root up feelings, break social ties, and freeze piety in the most generous soul. It suddenly struck the constable's wife that she had never, in fact, seen either ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... for his interest in schemes for the alleviation of poverty in Moscow, but also as the founder of new churches and monasteries. A terrible outbreak of plague occurred in Moscow in 1771, and the populace began to throng round an image of the Virgin to which they attributed supernatural healing power. Ambrose, perceiving that this crowding together merely enabled the contagion to spread, had the image secretly removed. The mob, suspecting that he was responsible for its removal, attacked a monastery to which he had retired, dragged him away from the sanctuary, and, having ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... receive the inpouring thereof. Ask for thyself a secret place, love to dwell alone with thyself, seek confabulation of none other ... put the readiness for God before all other things, for thou canst not both take heed to Me and delight in things transitory.... This grace is a light supernatural and a special gift of God, and a proper sign of the chosen children of God, and the earnest of everlasting health; for God lifteth up man from earthly things to love heavenly things, and of him that is fleshly maketh a spiritual ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... to be supernatural, or emanating from human authority, have often, in consequence of the poisonous effects of fear, been punctually fulfilled. The anecdote is well attested, of the licentious Lord Littleton, that he expired at the exact stroke of the clock, which in a dream or vision, he had been forewarned would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... said), He unmasked, with a kiss, the strange lady, and stood Face to face with a Thing not of flesh nor of blood. In this Mask of the Passions, call'd Life, there's no human Emotion, though mask'd, or in man or in woman, But, when faced and unmask'd, it will leave us at last Struck by some supernatural aspect aghast. For truth is appalling and eldrich, as seen By this world's artificial lamplights and we screen From our sight the strange vision that troubles our life. Alas! why is Genius forever at strife With the world, which, despite the world's self, it ennobles? ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... the gods pervades, as I may say, through all the Platonic dialogues, and in all of them conceptions of the first philosophy, venerable, clear, and supernatural, are disseminated, in some more obscurely, but in others more conspicuously;—conceptions which excite those that are in any respect able to partake of them, to the immaterial and separate essence of the gods. And as in each part of the universe and in nature itself, the demiurgus ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... of conviction, he now for a moment regards his uncertainty as involving unnatural distrust of a being in whose presence he cannot help feeling him his father. He was familiar with the lore of the supernatural, and knew the doubt he expresses to be not without support.—His companions as well had all been in suspense as to the identity of the apparition ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the members of the mystical are not all together—neither as regards their natural being, since the body of the Church is made up of the men who have been from the beginning of the world until its end—nor as regards their supernatural being, since, of those who are at any one time, some there are who are without grace, yet will afterwards obtain it, and some have it already. We must therefore consider the members of the mystical body not only as they are in act, but as they are in potentiality. Nevertheless, some ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... to supernatural terrors, and restored to the presence of mind of which she had been deprived by the danger of her situation, "it is a man—For God's sake, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the most striking characteristics of young children is the activity of their imagination. They endow their toys with life and personality; they construct the most fantastic and impossible tales; they accept without question the existence of supernatural beings. The problem for the teacher is to direct this activity of imagination into proper fields, and to present material which will give the child a large store of beautiful images—images that are not only delightful to dwell upon, but are also elevating and refining in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... it in the first century divided among clergymen, magistrates, and regular practitioners; yet, on the whole, for the time, and under the circumstances, respectable, except where it invoked supernatural agencies ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... peasants' houses, who let him do just what he pleases; he is free of his money, and often does them good turns, and can be good-humoured enough, so they don't dislike him. Then he is what they call a fairy man, a person in league with fairies and spirits, and able to work much harm by supernatural means, on which account they hold him in great awe; he is, moreover, a mighty strong and tall fellow. Bagg has ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... And, with a supernatural effort, she flung me on to the side of the boat; we both hung half overboard; her hair touched the water. The decisive moment had come. I planted my knee against the bottom of the boat, caught her by the tresses ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... with a strength both of will and action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him. The prisoner was like a ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... actress' chief successes, and a crowded house on Saturday evening was the result of the announcement of its revival. An ideal Galatea could scarcely be realized, for there should be in the triumph of the sculptor's art, endowed by the gods with life, a supernatural grace and beauty. The singular picturesqueness of Miss Anderson's poses and gestures, the consequences of careful study of the best sculpture, has been noted in all that she has done, and this quality fits her peculiarly for the part of the vivified statue. ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... perpetually blowing on Ranji with a thousand cooling zephyrs. Nowadays, Ranjitsinhji's critics are becoming more sane; but when first he burst into splendour, many of his weird strokes were attributed to some supernatural agency. Ranji's most telling stroke, as every cricketer knows, is what is technically known as the "hook" stroke. Most fine batsmen are content to stop short straight balls on a fast wicket. Ranji is more ambitious. When he sees a ball of this kind coming, he stands ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... changes all the world, Reverses all the wheels of thought behind. For Nietzsche comes, and makes him superman. He dumps the truth of Jesus over—there It lies with his youth's textual skepticism, And laughter at the supernatural. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... meant this for a promise to grapple with supernatural evil I couldn't tell. At any rate, it wasn't the kind of assistance I needed. On the other hand, I had been living on deck practically night and day so as to take advantage of every chance to get my ship a little more to the southward. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... 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
... sidhe; Gaelic ban sith, "woman of the fairies"), a supernatural being in Irish and general Celtic folklore, whose mournful screaming, or "keening," at night is held to foretell the death of some member of the household visited. In Ireland legends of the banshee belong more particularly to certain families in whose records periodic visits ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... out in an angry voice, Mr Vigors, I'll thank you to leave Gossett alone. At the sound of the voice, Vigors turned round with his colt in his hand, saw Jack's face at the window, and, impressed with the idea that the re-appearance was supernatural, uttered a wail and fell down in a fit—little Gossett also, trembling in every limb, stared with his mouth open. Jack was satisfied, and immediately disappeared. He then went aft to the cabin, pushed by the servant, who ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... because "men love darkness rather than light." All that is truly conservative, all that grows brighter and brighter with the progress of ages, all that is indestructible and of permanent beauty, must come from a power higher than that of man, whether supernatural or not—must be a revelation to man from Heaven, assisted by divine grace. It must be divine truth in conjunction with divine love. It must be a light from Him who made us, and which alone baffles ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... through the exhausting and depleting medical regime that he went through in Malines that it actually was able to dictate its will to his body, and that everything might have happened to him as it did then and afterwards without any supernatural or ultranatural agency whatever—without ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... world but suggestion. You think a Japanese crystal ought to make you feel supernatural, and so you imagine it does. But it doesn't any such nonsense. Now, I'll tell you why I like them. Only because they're so flawlessly perfect. In shape, colour, texture,—if you can call it texture,—but I mean material or substance. There isn't ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... which is exactly what he really does all through the book. The pope, from this point of view, asks for no other infallibility than that which is attributed to all sovereigns.[17] Without either vindicating or surrendering the supernatural side of the Papal claims, he only insists upon the political, social, or human side of it, as an inseparable quality of an admitted supremacy.[18] In short, from beginning to end of this speculation, from which the best kind of ultramontanism has drawn its defence, he evinces a deprecatory ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... that your people have pretty well exhausted the possibilities of the supernatural, by this time. Progress having come to an end, I don't see what you find ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... 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
... rich as those people! They pass so close to us; they see us, and we see them; but the distance between is infinity. They don't belong to the same world as we poor wretches. They see everything in a different light; they have powers which would seem supernatural if we were suddenly endowed ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... together did produce an effect, and as every effect must also be a cause, the effect produced by the collision of the atoms, must, as to something else, have been a cause. Then we have matter, force, law, order, cause and effect without a being superior to nature. Nothing is left for the supernatural but empty space. His throne is a void, and his boasted realm is without matter, without force, without law, without cause, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... table. Rangsley took hold of a piece of wainscotting, part of the frame of a panel; he pulled it towards him, and, at the same moment, a glazed show-case full of razors and brushes swung noiselessly forward with an effect of the supernatural. A small opening, just big enough to take a man's body, revealed itself. We passed through it and up a sort of tunnel. The door at the other end, which was formed of panels, had a manger and straw crib attached ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... being in the places they attacked, they in many instances saved the lives of the priests. I suspect, however, that they did so, not so much that they respected their sacred character, but because in their superstition they fancied they were possessed of supernatural powers, which might be exercised for their punishment if they ventured to injure them. There were many enlightened and patriotic men among the Indians; and from all I heard of Tupac Amaru and his family, they were worthy of a happier fate than befell them. I shall have to describe their subsequent ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... wall by mistake. As the sounds continued and the full strangeness of the event, in that lonely place, entered his waking brain, he arose with a certain trepidation akin to that which one feels at the thought of supernatural visitors, a feeling that was perhaps the result of some influence from the spirit of the man outside the door; for when he opened it, and held his candle to O'Shea's face, he saw a look there that made him know certainly that ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... 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 bell-turret, and roofs of slate, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... special occasion. He saw just where he meant to hurl himself over the line, and clutch that envied touchdown. Had a dozen followed he would have distanced them every one, such was his mettle just then. He seemed endowed with supernatural speed, many who stared and held their ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... while Madame Riennes was crushed, also very evidently frightened, for those who deal in the supernatural are afraid of the supernatural. Indeed, none of us welcome the curse even of a malignant and disappointed beggar, or of the venomous gipsy angered by this or that, and much less that of a righteous man inspired by just and holy indignation. Madame Riennes, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... vigour and life which rejoice the heart; that his narrative is never dull, never stands still, but moves with a freedom of adventure which perhaps has no parallel. He may fall short of the humour, the kindly wisdom, the genial greatness of Sir Walter at his best, and he has not that supernatural touch, that tragic grandeur, which Scott inherits from Homer and from Shakespeare. In another Homeric quality, [Greek text], as Homer himself calls it, in the "delight of battle" and the spirit of the fray, Scott and Dumas are alike masters. Their fights and the fights in the ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... men have not been egregiously deceived, the phenomena in question indicate the speedy discovery of relations not hitherto suspected to exist between matter and spirit. We do not anticipate the development of any other than natural laws. We are not credulous as to the interference of supernatural agencies; but we are fully prepared for almost any discoveries in the department of psychology, unveiling the mysterious but unquestionable relations of harmony—of action and reaction—existing between the soul of man and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... exposed surfaces. In some parts the carving is as modern in style and free in movement and composition as some tourtmente modern French sculpture. But here, as in Europe and Egypt, marvellous talent has been used in the name of religion to express imaginings of the supernatural and inhuman, instead of being humbly devoted to the study of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the patron saint of Ripon, where he was born. Legend states that at his birth a strange supernatural light shone over the house, and when he died, those who were in the death chamber claimed that they could hear the rustling of the angels' wings who had come to bear his spirit away. As we saw some figures relating to him ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... 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 retired, and the camp was still, sit alone in his tent, sometimes ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... ideas as to natural forces came to prevail. As if barbarian chiefs and robber bands were not enough, popular imagination peopled the world with demons, goblins, and dragons, and all sorts of superstitions and supernatural happenings were recorded. Intercommunication largely ceased; trade and commerce died out; the accumulated wealth of the past was destroyed; and the old knowledge of the known world became badly distorted, as is evidenced by the many crude mediaeval maps. (See Figure 46.) The only ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... 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 have in ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... Egyptian of today); the contact of religion and morality with the orgies of African Apuleius and Petronius Arbiter—at times taking away the reader's breath—and, finally, the whole dominated everywhere by that marvellous Oriental fancy, wherein the spiritual and the supernatural are as common as the material and the natural; it is this contrast, I say, which forms the chiefest charm of The Nights, which gives it the most striking originality and which makes it a perfect expositor ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... familiar with all experiments that appertain to the marvellous. I had witnessed many very extraordinary phenomena in various parts of the world,—phenomena that would be either totally disbelieved if I stated them, or ascribed to supernatural agencies. Now, my theory is that the supernatural is the impossible, and that what is called supernatural is only a something in the laws of Nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant. Therefore, if a ghost rise before me, I have not the right to say, "So, then, the ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... drowned in a land-locked place like this, unless the vessel broke up under them—and here's the vessel as steady as a church to speak for herself. Man alive, how your hand trembles! What is there to scare you in that rotten old cabin? What are you shaking and shivering about? Any company of the supernatural sort on board? Mercy preserve us! (as the old women say) do ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... deep penetrating accents of his words, carried a sting to Hugo's conscience. He felt as if Dino had a supernatural knowledge of his past life and his ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... not without some notions of religion; and, in many particulars, they are a remarkably superstitious people. During the whole course of their lives, the imagined presence of the unseen and supernatural crosses them at every step. What has been already stated respecting the "taboo" may give some idea of how submissive and habitual is their sense of the power of the Divinity, and how entirely they conceive themselves to be in his ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... revelation; not absolutely infallible, since there is no book written in any human language but must partake in a measure of the imperfections of that language. Many of this school, while admitting the Bible to contain the record of a true supernatural revelation, do not consider it to be without positive error of historical fact, not without false coloring from popular legend and tradition, but nevertheless a record as good as human hands could ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... farmstead was intensely quiet, with the ominous stillness of death. All the windows were shrouded with their check curtains. There was no clatter of Suzanne's wooden clogs about the fold or the kitchen. If it had been Sunday, this supernatural silence would have been easily accounted for; but it was Thursday. I scarcely dared go on and learn ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... in this noonday night uplifted, Three human figures that in mortal pain Gleam white against the supernatural darkness; Two thieves, that writhe in torture, and between them The Suffering Messiah, the Son of Joseph, Ay, the Messiah Triumphant, Son of David! A crown of thorns on that dishonored head! Those hands that healed the sick now pierced with nails, Those feet that wandered homeless ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... most part Greek philosophy was rather imaginative than mystic, still we encounter the genuine mystic element in such Greek sages as Empedocles and Pythagoras, both of whom assumed the priestly character and seem to have laid claim to supernatural powers. Empedocles indeed, it is said, gave himself out to be a deity exiled from heaven, and was apparently worshipped as such. According to a not very trustworthy legend he threw himself into the crater of Mount Etna—perhaps ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... simple 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 belief ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... is the great friend of the man from whom I bought this farm. Oh, auntie, wait until you see him. You will realize, as I have, his strength, his goodness. You will have no doubts when you know him. You will understand that he has no fear of any—any supernatural agencies, has no fear of any fancied fate that may be awaiting him. Auntie, he is tall, so tall, and—oh, he's wonderful. And his name, Buck—don't you like it? It is so like him. Buck—independence, courage, confidence. And, oh, auntie, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... vociferating the name of his favourite candidate, though the cry of "Judkins for ever!" did not tend greatly to elucidate matters. Suddenly, and at the very height of the confusion, the bells ceased ringing, and for a moment, as if influenced by some supernatural power, the crowd ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... tendency of his winter's mental growth, as well perhaps of the matters brutally raised and crudely sifted in Jerry Timmins's parlour, had been towards a harder and more sceptical habit of mind. For the moment the supernatural had no thrill in it for an intelligence full of contradictions. So the poor witch, if indeed she 'walked,' revisited her place of pain unobserved of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Feed My lambs, feed My sheep." (John xxi. 16, 17.) "I have prayed for thee that thy faith may not fail." (Luke xxii. 32.) This society, though it be composed of men just as civil society is, yet because of the end that it has in view, and the means by which it tends to it, is supernatural and spiritual; and, therefore, is distinguished from civil society and differs from it; and—a fact of the highest moment—is a society perfect in its kind and in its rights, possessing in and by itself, by the will and beneficence of its Founder, all ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... apparently her one object was to be stared at. She became as much of a celebrity as any woman with a character and without a position "in society" can become. If she were counterfeiting a type, enough of the original Mrs. Nevill Tyson remained to give her own supernatural naeivete to the character. Stanistreet was completely puzzled by this new freak; it looked like recklessness, it looked like vanity, it looked—it looked like an innocent parody of guilt. He had given in to her whim, as he had given In to every wish of hers, but he was ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... character of all half measures; it is satisfactory in no respect, and shares the bad points of the two other methods without yielding the advantages of either. How can the man of the nineteenth century, how can this creature so supremely intelligent, who has displayed a power well-nigh supernatural, who has employed the resources of his genius in concealing the machinery of his life, in deifying his necessary cravings in order that he might not despise them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, from Egyptian beans, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Ferris's unsophisticated eyes the achievement was all but supernatural, and it doubled his love ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... been safely deposited since 9 o'clock." This is a suggestive, as well as frank, story. Supposing for a moment that instead of Shakespeare the room had contained some of the volumes of verse and romance which, though denying alike the natural and the supernatural virtues, are to be found in many a Christian home, how easily might he have suffered a ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... likeness of that Christ transforming and glorifying them, there will be drawn to them—by natural gravitation, I was going to say, but we may more correctly say, by the gravitation which is natural in the supernatural realm—souls that have been touched by the grace of the Lord, and souls to whom that grace has been brought the nearer by looking upon them. Wherever there is inward vigour of life there will be outward growth; and the Church ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren |
