"Witchcraft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decorous; but can we imagine Virgil praying, or anybody praying, to the gods of the Aeneid? The supernatural machinery of Camoens and Tasso is frankly absurd; they are not only careless of credibility, but of sanity. Lucan tried to do without gods; but his witchcraft engages belief even more faintly than the mingled Paganism and Christianity of Camoens, and merely shows how strongly the most rationalistic of epic poets felt the value of some imaginary relaxation in the limits of human existence. Is it, then, only as such a relaxation that ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... that our friend Sampson, although a profound scholar and mathematician, had not travelled so far in philosophy as to doubt the reality of witchcraft or apparitions. Born indeed at a time when a doubt in the existence of witches was interpreted as equivalent to a justification of their infernal practices, a belief of such legends had been impressed upon the Dominie as an article indivisible from his religious ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of Balmerino began. It was prefaced by addresses from Sir Richard Loyd, king's counsel, and from Mr. Serjeant Skinner, who made, what was justly considered by H. Walpole, "the most absurd speech imaginable," calling "Rebellion, surely the sin of witchcraft," and applying to the Duke of Cumberland the unfortunate appellation of "Scipio."[363] The Attorney General followed, and witnesses were afterwards examined, who fully proved, though accused by Balmerino of some inconsistencies, his acts of adherence to the Chevalier; his being present in towns ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... "Liberty under the Law." Liberty under the law is what the government-ridden peasants of Russia enjoy. Liberty under the law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty which every tyrant has ever advanced. As ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... magic, was concerned with the evocation of demons and devils—spirits supposed to be superior to man in certain powers, but utterly depraved. Sorcery may be distinguished from witchcraft, inasmuch as the sorcerer attempted to command evil spirits by the aid of charms, etc., whereas the witch or wizard was supposed to have made a pact with the Evil One; though both terms have been rather loosely used, "sorcery" being sometimes ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
|
