"Preternatural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as constantly simple, but there were moments when her candour seemed to him preternatural. "If I thought that would be the effect, I might make an exception," she remarked, speaking as if such a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... enfeebled digestion, and disordered lungs. Every biography of the intellectual great records the dangers they have encountered, often those to which they have succumbed, in overstepping the ordinary bounds of human capacity; and while beckoning onward to the glories of their almost preternatural achievements, register, by way of warning, the fearful penalty of disease, suffering, and bodily infirmity, which Nature exacts as the price for this partial and inharmonious grandeur. It cannot be otherwise. The brain cannot take more than its share without injury ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... dreamed also what was to happen, and so, in obedience to her vision, would not eat when she was hungry, nor drink when she was thirsty. However that was, I would risk the event of the prosecution on this single circumstance, that, without the interposition of some preternatural cause, this conduct of the prisoner's must appear to exceed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... to have portended his death; and if the Roman historians are to be credited, more preternatural appearances and predictions announced this event, than its importance deserved.[30] The truth seems to be, that a belief in omens and prodigies was again become prevalent, as the people were evidently relapsing into ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... crimson drops in its blossom as "gold coats spots"—"these be rubies, fairy favours." And at the present day the cowslip is still known in Lincolnshire as the "fairy cup." Its popular German name is "key-flower;" and no flower has had in that country so extensive an association with preternatural wealth. A well-known legend relates how "Bertha" entices some favoured child by exquisite primroses to a doorway overgrown with flowers. This is the door to an enchanted castle. When the key-flower touches it, the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
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