"Superman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... properly a play for a State performance? Take the best modern plays. Who among you would dare to suggest for a State performance Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman," John Galsworthy's "Justice," or Granville Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance"? Nobody! These plays are unthinkable for a State performance, because their distinction is utterly beyond the average comprehension of the ruling classes—and State performances are for the ruling ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... be quiet! I'm an American girl, not a German Fraeulein. I say that you've got to cut out all this superman stuff and tell Roger where ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... not, however, beyond the scope of Vincent Jopp, the superman. Vincent Jopp, was, I am inclined to think, the only golfer who ever approached the game in a spirit of Pure Reason. I have read of men who, never having swum in their lives, studied a text-book on their ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... was not contributed. True, the Cymro-Franks proved themselves strong enough in arms to maintain their foothold; if that physical test is enough to establish their racial superiority then let us salute Mr Jack Johnson as Zarathustra, the superman. But in their one special and characteristic task they failed lamentably. Instead of conquest and consolidation they gave us mere invasion and disturbance. The disastrous role played by them has been unfolded by many interpreters of history, by none with a more vivid ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... and beauty, and it is told with an easy confidence. As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of sardonic humor, cold nerves, and hot temper. Both the story and the man are masterpieces. A great figure, a ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... sententiously explained, the summary of his self-manifestation to the world. He read the description of his two main characteristics, his grasp upon words and facts; "words, the daughters of earth, were wedded in this man to facts, the sons of heaven, and Superman was their offspring." His minor characteristics, too, were noticed, his appetite for literature, his astonishing memory, his linguistic powers. He possessed, it appeared, both the telescopic and the microscopic eye—he discerned world-wide tendencies ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... adapted to motherhood; she will only be fitted for it when she has trained herself for motherhood and man is trained for fatherhood. Then man and woman can begin together to bring up the new generation out of which some day society will be formed. In it the completed man—the superman—will be bathed in that sunshine whose distant rays but colour ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... time that she hated to take such a definite step. Meanwhile, their secret engagement had got so long that it seemed as if any day it might break off of its own weight. A little man named Warburton, who knew it all, persuaded Perry to superman her, to get a marriage license and go up to the Medill house and tell her she'd have to marry him at once or call it off forever. This is some stunt—but Perry tried it on December the twenty-ninth. He presented self, heart, license, and ultimatum, and within five minutes they were in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Turcos, charge! The fateful hour has come. Let all the guns of Britain roar or be forever dumb. The Superman has burst his bonds. With Kultur-flag unfurled And prayer on lip he runs amuck, imperilling ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... divinity generally took pains to exalt his humanity. Of the nineteenth-century revolutionists it is really an understatement to say that they exalted him as a man; for indeed they rather exalted him as a superman. That is to say, many of them represented him as a man preaching a decisively superior and ever strange morality, not only in advance of his age but practically in advance of our age. They made of his mystical counsels of perfection ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... unread in philosophy, Daylight preempted for himself the position and vocation of a twentieth-century superman. He found, with rare and mythical exceptions, that there was no noblesse oblige among the business and financial supermen. As a clever traveler had announced in an after-dinner speech at the Alta-Pacific, "There was honor amongst thieves, and this was what distinguished thieves from honest ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... himself an "immoralist." He despises man as he is, and hails the "Superman," a creature inspired by the "will to have power" and free from all moral prejudices, including that of sympathy with ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... County Council regulations; moving portraits of deceased, and living dramatic critics can be thrown without risk of ignition on the curtain by magic lantern. The point of this travesty will be entirely lost to those who have not read 'Man and Superman.' It is the first masterpiece in the English literature of the twentieth century. It is also necessary to have read the dramatic criticisms in the daily press, and to have some acquaintance with the Court management, the Stage Society, and certain unlicensed plays; and to know that Mr. Ricketts ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... lay in her power. She had deliberately selected her life partner and she would keep her part of the contract. He filled his to the letter, or as far as in him lay. If he were not the masterful superman of her dreams, at least he was quite obstinate enough to have his own way in many things, in spite of his unswerving devotion to her charming self. He was whitely angry when she received Bob Cheever one afternoon when she was ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... jolted out of his consciousness; for she was there escorted by a man she had often described, and whom Ross recognized from the description—a tall, dark, "captainish"-looking fellow, with a large mustache; but who, far from being a captain or other kind of superman, was merely a photographer—yet a wealthy and successful photographer, whose work was unusual ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... varied; the man at the head of it capable, exacting and impartial. His sole aim was to produce and to export munitions at a price high enough to attract industry and low enough to prevent profiteering. For three years he was the superman of Canada's industrial fabric. The C.M.A. and the Department of Trade became mere annexes to munitions, at a time when Davies' bacon clamoured for ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a reflexion of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven where he looked for a superman, will no longer be willing to find only the semblance of himself, only the sub-human, where he seeks and ought to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... them. It is unfair that they who passed them should be popular for damaging the State while a statesman who proposes a measure which would benefit us all should be rewarded with public hatred. Before you have set this matter right you cannot expect to find among you a superman who will violate these laws with impunity or a fool who will run his ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... I have found a hint as to the right answer in two of these stories. One is called "The Story of a Book," the other "The Biography of a Superman." Each is rather an essay than a tale, though the form of each is narrative. The first relates the sad bewilderment of a successful novelist who feels that, after all, his great work was something less ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... I've done; I feel uncomfortable cast as a superman. We five pedestrians faced some heavy traffic on a surface road. You four tried nobly to cross—deaf and blindfolded. You were all casualties. I was not; and it wasn't because I am stronger or wiser than you, but only because ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... say that! Well, what is it that he does that I don't do? Just say the word,—teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut, theosophist, superman. I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only give me an idea what ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to gain by misrepresentation? A thousand images of the past flitted through Brent's brain. Then slowly a look of terror came over Brent's face. Suppose it were indeed true—this Frankenstein, this conscienceless inhuman superman? Brent gripped himself and composed his ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... almost infinitely slow progress of development, and that there has been no arbitrary or high-handed exercise of creative power. The universe is not run on principles of modern business efficiency, and man is at the head of living forms, not by the fiat of some omnipotent power, some superman, but as the result of the operation of forces that balk at no delay, or waste, or failure, and that are dependent upon the infinitely slow ripening and amelioration of both ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... a rich expanse of fat cheek and a small, but dimpled, chin. He was saved by his fierce moustache, which, upturned in the imperial fashion, gave him the ferocious air required by his military profession and his sentiments of a superman of the latest ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... consoled herself, after a time of strain, it was like riding a restive horse. There was danger which she loved: there was need of skill and a light hand, of sympathy and tact, and she never regretted the superman who was to have ruled her with a fatiguing rod of iron. Here there was give and take; she had to let him have his head and pull him up at the right moment and reward docility with kindness; she even found ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... it came to me that what I really wanted second of all was to possess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman.... ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... has failed completely, at least in those later days, To show appreciation of my Prefaces and Plays; It wouldn't be therefore worthy of a genuine superman To show undue compassion for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... objective. The German is no longer sympathising with the boy against the goblin, but rather with the goblin against the boy. There goes with it, as always goes with idolatry, a dehumanised seriousness; the men of the forest are already building upon a mountain the empty throne of the Superman. Now it is just at this point that I for one, and most men who love truth as well as tales, begin to lose interest. I am all for "going out into the world to seek my fortune," but I do not want to find it—and ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... husky chap, thirty-four years old, with the constitution of an ox, the mind of a superman, the simplicity of a child: that was John Fulton Edestone. He insisted that his discovery was an accident that might have befallen anyone, and counted as nothing the years of endless experiments and ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... express the inexpressible in ourselves; it gives us entrance into a supernatural world of feeling. Except at the rare high moments of our lives, its joys and despairs are too exalted for us; they are not ours; they belong to gods and heroes. In music the superman is born into our feelings. Music does for the emotions what mythology and poetry do for the imagination and philosophy for the intellect—it brings us into touch with a more magnificent life, for which we have perhaps the potency, but not the opportunity here. And in doing ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... man, the ideal progeny of a new and higher philosophy. Understanding the structure of the body, the laws of its being and the operation of the life elements within it, the superman retains perfect poise and confidence under the most trying circumstances. Animated by an abounding faith in the supremacy of the healing forces within him and sustained by the power of his sovereign will, he governs his body as ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... said—although it is safe to assert that these moulders of American institutions knew little about that terrible philosopher who had raised his voice against the "slave morals of Christianity." It was their first experience with the superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, when a lull arrived in the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cent, of all the women in Germany under 60. Then we may leave Germany her fleet and her money, and say "Much good may they do you." Why not, if you are really going in to be what you, never having read "this Neech they talk of," call a Nietzschean Superman? War is not an affair of sentiment. Some of our newspapers complain that the Germans kill the wounded and fire on field hospitals and Red Cross Ambulances. These same newspapers fill their columns with exultant ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... any open mind, entirely convincing that something had occurred out of the normal, which is what Percy and the twins never will believe. When I say 'try' to Percy, he only answers, 'I should fail, my dear. I may, as I have been called, be a superman, but I am not a superwoman, and cannot call up spirits.' And the children are hopeless about it, too. Frank says we are not intended to 'lift the curtain' (that is what he calls it). He is such a thorough clergyman, and never had my imagination; he calls my explorations ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... systematic pagan, and he is an uncompromising aristocrat. As a pagan, he is a consistent enemy of Christianity. As an aristocrat, he is a bitter opponent of democracy. He proclaims that Anti-Christ has appeared in his own person. He hails the advent of the Superman. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... threshold of the great humanitarian outburst of the eighteenth century. It is impossible to believe that this growth of human feeling in dealing with other men is unconnected with that new gospel of human power which Bacon and Descartes had just proclaimed. Except for the occasional superman, the greater the powers a man possesses and the higher he rates human capacity at its best, the more careful he is to cherish and develop the germs of humanity in ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... manoeuvres, we paid another visit to our monkey house. The poor, misguided brute had died of starvation. It had become so vain, so egotistical, so superior, that it refused food and wasted away in a corner, gazing at itself, a hairy Narcissus, or rather the perfect type of your modern Superman, who contemplates his ego until his brain sickens and he dies ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... supernatural prophecy. But relatively to nearly all the other prophecies that are being made around me to-day, I should say my prediction stood an exceptionally good chance. In short, I think the grocer with the stick is a figure we are far more likely to see than the Superman or the Samurai, or the True Model Employer, or the Perfect Fabian Official, or the citizen of the Collectivist State. And it is best for us to see the full ugliness of the transformation which is passing over our Society in some such abrupt and even grotesque image ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... placing a single figure at the head of a column, though the Romans often did it. But if a group had to be used it could have been made much clearer. Now in that design MacNeil celebrated the Adventurous Archer in a way that was distinctly old-fashioned. He made the archer a superman, pushing his way forward by force, and by the dominance of personality. And see how comparatively insignificant he made the supporting figures. The relation of those three people implies an acceptation of the old ideals of the social organization. MacNeil had a chance here to express the new ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... which life implied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has, doubtless, kept something, but of which he has kept only very little. It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we will, man or superman, had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... attainment, esteemed the foremost connoisseur d'art in all Europe. Suddenly, at the zenith of his career, he disappeared. Subsequently it became known that he had been identical with that great Parisian criminal, the Lone Wolf, a superman of thieves who had plundered all Europe with unvarying ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... went on in his chant—"that the living God, is the marriage of Force and matter, of Head and Hand. And we believe that the product of this co-ordination is in our Great Superman, the God of the Universe, Apleon, our Superior-God, and Him we worship ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... make a Jesus, a Buddha, an Aeschylus, a Vinci, a Newton, or a Beethoven; but without these men, what would the people have been? Or humanity itself? We do not hold with the egotist ideal of the Superman. A man who is great is great for all his fellows; his individuality expresses and often guides millions of others; it is the incarnation of their secret forces, of their highest desires; it concentrates and realises them. The sole fact that a man ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... words or actions. And certainly this natural bias is intensified and made into a binding law by the teachings of Christ. But there is the other point of view set forward in the philosophy of Nietzsche—if indeed such writings are worthy of the name philosophy. "The world is for the superman. Dominancy within the human kind must be secured at all costs. As for the old values, they are all wrong. Christian humility is a slavish virtue; so is Christian charity. Such values have become 'denaturalised.' They are the by-product of certain primitive activities, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... soil. [Footnote: Materials used in Beowulf are very old, and may have been brought to England during the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Parts of the material, such as the dragon-fights, are purely mythical. They relate to Beowa, a superman, of whom many legends were told by Scandinavian minstrels. The Grendel legend, for example, appears in the Icelandic saga of Gretti, who slays the dragon Glam. Other parts of Beowulf are old battle songs; and still others, relating to King Hygelac and his nephew, have some historical foundation. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... curves, its super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of certitude"—here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies, and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche's superman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not, to evoke with needle, acid, paper, and ink the dualism of such a brain and temperament as ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Adjutant, the Colonel—the Oath on the Bible before that dread Superman.... How well he remembered his brief exordium—"Obey your Superiors blindly; serve your Queen, Country, and Regiment to the best of your ability; keep clean, don't drink, fear God, and—most important ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren |
