"Demonic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accusers. But apart from verbal parallels or coincidences, there is a genuine affinity between Byron's Lucifer and Milton's Satan. Lucifer, like Satan, is "not less than Archangel ruined," a repulsed but "unvanquished Titan," marred by a demonic sorrow, a confessor though a rival of Omnipotence. He is a majestic and, as a rule, a serious and solemn spirit, who compels the admiration and possibly the sympathy of the reader. There is, however, another strain in his ghostly attributes, which betrays a more recent consanguinity: now ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre, we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war on them out of natural hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the demons who dwell in the air and with lightning and tempest assail and vex mankind—whereupon he fills a long chapter with anecdotes of such demonic warfare on mortals. In like manner his fellow-Dominican, the inquisitor Nider, in his book The Ant Hill, teaches us that the ants in Ethiopia, which are said to have horns and to grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of atrocious heretics, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... these communicate the thrills of curiosity and the earliest intellectual stirrings. Tempests and conflagrations, pestilences and earthquakes, reveal supramundane powers, and instigate religious terror rather than philosophy. Nature, more demonic than divine, is above all things multifarious. So many creatures that feed or threaten, that help or crush, so many beings to hate or love, to understand or start at—which is on top and which subordinate? Who can tell? They ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... chiaroscuro,and faunlike loveliness of form into a harmony so perfect in its sensuous charm. Bewitched by the strains of the siren, we pardon affectations of expression, emptiness of meaning, feebleness of composition, exaggerated and melodramatic attitudes. There is what Goethe called a demonic influence in the art of Correggio: 'In poetry,' said Goethe to Eckermann, 'especially in that which is unconscious, before which reason and understanding fall short, and which therefore produces effects so far surpassing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... within bounds. German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted together, so impossible to break into except through the recognized channels, that few men have the optimistic elasticity of mind and spirits, the demonic confidence in themselves, that ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... day-time he never thought of his father at all. But in his sleep one nightmare returned repeatedly. It never varied; it was definite and horrible. In it his father, grown to demonic proportions, towered over Christine's huddled body, his eyes terrible, his fists clenched and raised to strike. Then in that moment, at the very height of his awful fear and helpless hatred, the wonderful truth burst upon Robert, and he danced gleefully, full of ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... knell of hope. Swirling strings bring us to a new scene of the world of shades. In the furious, frenetic pace of yore (Tempo primo, Allegro, alla breve) there is a new sullen note, a dull martial trip of drums with demonic growls (in the lowest wood). The sigh is there, but perverted in humor. A chorus of blasphemous mockery is stressed by strident accents of lower ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... harmony with the name of her abode, signifies the concealer—and that is what has happened to Ulysses, his light is hidden. She is the daughter of Atlas, who has two mental traits assigned to him; he is evil-minded and he knows all the depths of the sea. A demonic being endowed with his dark knowledge of things out of sight; he has a third trait also, "he upholds of himself the long pillars which keep Heaven and Earth apart" (Book I. 53). Naturally under such a burden he is not in good ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... spirit, shade, shadow, vision; hobglobin, goblin, orc; wraith, spook, boggart^, banshee, loup-garou [Fr.], lemures^; evil eye. merman, mermaid, merfolk^; siren; satyr, faun; manito^, manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c 503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... broods over us in our cradles, that mingles with the lullaby of the nurse and the winter-evening legends of the chimney-corner, that brightens day with the possibility of divine encounters, and darkens night with intimations of demonic ambushes, is of other substance than one which we take down from our bookcase, sapless as the shelf it stood on, and remote from all present sympathy with man or nature as a town history. It is something like the difference between live metaphor ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... his career as a man of letters anew. But his progress was slow and uncertain. In 1887 he published in Conrad's Gesellschaft an episodic story, Bahnwaerter Thiel, weak in narrative technique and obviously inspired by Zola. Even the sudden expansion of human characters into demonic symbols of their ruling passions is imitated. The medium clearly irked him and gave him no opportunity for personal expression. For many months his activity was tentative and fruitless. Early in 1889, however, Arno Holz, known until then only by a volume of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... blows.[277] They are too near akin to be trusted, and they are believed to be able and willing to do harm.[278] At the other extreme of life, when the child comes into the world, mother and child must be guarded against hostile demonic influences.[279] When a demon is known to have entered into a human being, producing sickness or madness, exorcism must be resorted to; magicians, prophets, and saints are able by ceremonies or by prayer to expel the intruder and restore the afflicted to health. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... have a natural history, as well as an individual? At first sight, this might appear like a reversion to the old, crude theory of disease as a demonic obsession, or invasion by an evil spirit, of which traces still remain in such expressions as, "She was seized with a convulsion," "He was strong enough to throw off the illness," "He was attacked by a fever," ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... names—behind their backs. And she is sly and two-faced. Una doesn't mind, of course. She is willing to do anything that comes to hand and never minds whether she has an office or not. She is just a perfect angel, while I am only angelic in spots and demonic in other spots. I wish Walter would take a fancy to her, but he never seems to think about her in that way, although I heard him say once she was like a tea rose. She is too. And she gets imposed upon, just because she is so sweet and ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
