"Evil spirit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have ever sailed, yet God has mingled in your nature a fearful mixture of fierce passions, which, roused, are more like the southern waters when troubled with the tornado. It is difficult for me to say how far this evil spirit may lead a man, who has been goaded by fancied wrongs to forget his country and home, and who is suddenly clothed with ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... consideration. They might be balanced; and they have been often more than balanced. Great as these things are, they are not what make the faction formidable. It is the faction that makes them truly dreadful. That faction is the evil spirit that possesses the body of France; that informs it as a soul; that stamps upon its ambition, and upon all its pursuits, a characteristic mark, which strongly distinguishes them from the same general passions, and the same general views, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... about restlessly, sinful souls refused entrance to Heaven until they have sought and secured adequate prayers for their pardon and relief. To cross a cemetery at night might attract the fatal vengeance of the dead thus disturbed. The grumbling mendicant at the door may really be an evil spirit bent on mischief. With a few, magic and the gift of the evil eye are still dreaded forces and it is well to know some charm by which evil may be averted. Since night is the time of danger, if abroad then be watchful; ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... but much the stronger, for combating both together. A victory over real corruptions would enable us to baffle the spurious and pretended reformations. I would not wish to excite, or even to tolerate, that kind of evil spirit which invokes the powers of hell to rectify the disorders of the earth. No! I would add my voice with better, and I trust, more potent charms, to draw down justice and wisdom and fortitude from heaven, for the correction of human vice, and the recalling of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... fortune none have shared with them. To show that with all these qualifications they have been pre-eminent in energy and dignity, let us instance the 'Air Demons' of Orcagna, where there is a woman borne through the air by an Evil Spirit. Her expression is the most terrible imaginable; she grasps her bearer with desperation, looking out around her into space, agonized with terror. There are other figures in the same picture of men who have been cast down, and are falling through the air: one descends with his hands tied, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... which he laboured gradually wore away; he acknowledged that his mind had been in darkness, the consequence and punishment of spiritual pride; and declared that, inasmuch as he had given advantage to the evil spirit, he took shame to himself. By "the rump parliament" he was afterwards discharged; and the society of Friends, by whom he had been disowned, admitted him again on proof of his repentance. But his sufferings had injured his health. In 1660 he was found in a dying state in a field ...
— 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
... a sort soon overtook Robert Bruce the younger; for the evil spirit in him, derived from no such remote ancestor as the king, would not allow him a long respite from evil-doing, even in school. He knew Annie better than his father, that she was not likely to complain of anything, and that the only danger lay in the chance of being discovered ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... surely not the less mine? If I've six horses in my span, Is it not mine, their every power? I fly along as an undoubted man, On four and twenty legs the road I scour. Cheer up, then! let all thinking be, And out into the world with me! I tell thee, friend, a speculating churl Is like a beast, some evil spirit chases Along a barren heath in one perpetual whirl, While round about ...
— Faust • Goethe
... solemn, the more significant, because the excited multitude was no longer, as in the Revolutionary day, inspired by one unanimous and overwhelming purpose to assert and maintain liberty of speech as the bulwark of all other liberty. It was an unwonted and foreboding scene. An evil spirit was in the air. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... wherever I went in the whole Archipelago—near the capital, or 500 miles from it—I found mothers teaching their offspring to regard the European as a demoniacal being, an evil spirit, or, at least, as an enemy to be feared! If a child cried, it was hushed by the exclamation, "Castila!" (European). If a white man approached a poor hut or a fine native residence, the cry of caution, the watchword ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... instrument of mere human curiosity, it is criminal, since it seeks to subject Him to the beck and call of a creature. In case such practices succeed, there is the grave danger of being mislead and deceived by the evil spirit, who is often permitted, as the instrument of God, to punish guilty men. When resorted to, as a means of relieving fools of their earnings, it is sacrilegious; and those who support such impious humbugs can be excused from deadly sin only on the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... legend found in Bechstein's Deutsches Sagenbuch (pointed out by Dr. Sykes), in which "Falkenberg, for murder of his brother, is condemned to sail a spectral bark, attended only by his good and his evil spirit, who play dice for ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... The evil spirit sometimes lives in the best heart, returned John, but my brother speaks the truth; his hand has never taken life, when awake; no! not even when the children of the great English Father were making the waters red with the blood of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... overcome by anger. He was, however, naturally of a quick, sensitive temper, and had to keep a jealous watch upon himself, in order to hold this tendency in subjection; the consequence was that it seldom gained the mastery over him after his conversion. Grace turned the lion into a lamb, and subdued the evil spirit within him, and as he grew in grace, the marks of the old Adam became less distinct. Still it was always an occasion for prayer and watchfulness with him; he would not allow himself to be tempted from this side of his ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... more freed from his enemy, the gout; this evil spirit had been exorcised by honest labor, and its victim could hope ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... setting forth that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering, by which means they are ensured protection against their enemies, that otherwise misfortune would befall them from the evil spirit. This done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate and throws the tobacco into the midst of the cauldron (the chasm of foaming water), whereupon they all together raise a loud cry. These poor people are so superstitious, that they would not believe it possible ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the eternal happiness which women without seeing enjoy in paradise, and how transitory was life here below, and certain the goodness of God, who for first certain bitter pleasures lost, kept for us a love without end. Is spite of this wise maternal advice the evil spirit has persisted in the said sister; and always would she gaze upon the leaves of the trees and grass of the meadows through the windows of the church during the offices and times of prayer; and persisted in becoming as white as linen in order that she might ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Remember, that to forsake vice is the beginning of virtue; and virtue certainly is most conducive to content of mind and a cheerful spirit. He (the virtuous man) rejoiceth with a friend in the good things he enjoys; fears not the reproaches of any; no evil spirit can approach to hurt him here, or accuse him in the great day of the Lord, when every soul shall be judged according as they have done good or evil. Oh, blessed state! fit for life, fit for death! In this good state I wish and pray for all mankind; but most particularly, and with all the ardour ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... hatred, the root of every evil. To injure another because he has injured us, even with the aim of overcoming evil, is doubling the harm for him and for oneself; it is begetting, or at least setting free and inciting, that evil spirit which we should wish to drive out. Satan can never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and evil cannot be ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... how it is that my fancy alone is free, that my heart alone is untouched, that the storms of life pass high over my head, and dare not lower." "I will humble Philip, and convince him..." But, no; it would not do. The abode was too lowly and too pure for the evil spirit of defiance: the demon did not wait to be cast out; but as Margaret sat down in her chamber, alone with her lot, to face it as she might, the strange inmate escaped, and left her ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... anything more. The light went on burning until its final struggle with the darkness began, when it died with many a flickering throb. Unable at last to endure the suspense, now growing to fear, any longer, they stole across the street, opened the door, and went in. Over the kitchen fire, like an evil spirit of the squabby order, crouched Mrs Catanach, waiting for Jean; no one else ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... into it with as much indifference as they would into any other speculation, and when one companion dies they take another. In the book of Tobit we have an account of Sara, the daughter of Raguel, who had been favored with seven husbands, whom "Asmodeus the evil spirit had killed." Love must be exceedingly pliable, it must be love to man, and not to a man, that would suffer a woman to transfer her affections seven times. It would be a ludicrous occurrence, if, upon any particular occasion, a man's three or four wives, or a woman's three or four ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... that the city was really free from rats they were ungrateful enough to say that the piper had used magic, which was believed to be the practice of the evil spirit, and refused to carry out their part of the contract. The stranger went off in a great rage and threatened to come back again and take payment in his own way. On St. John's Day, which was a time of great festivity, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... world bad mutilated and neglected them, - but the beautiful figure of Jesus, which as a work of art might have been immortal and beneficent, embellished with Pauline metaphysics and mixed in the Byzantine sorcerer's pot with Egyptian and Chaldean hodgepodge, has become an evil spirit for ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... instruction he was then making. He only called to him some of those young Christians, and gave them a cross which he wore upon his breast; after which he sent them to Manapar with orders to drive away the evil spirit. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... they have right notions of him as a Devil or evil Spirit, because the best reason, and in some places the only reason they give for worshiping him is, that he may do them no hurt; having no notions at all of his having any power, much less any inclination to do them good; so that indeed they make a meer Devil of him, at the same ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... the vision is 'the Satan,' standing in the plaintiff's place at the Judge's right hand, to accuse Joshua. The Old Testament teaching as to the evil spirit who 'accuses' good men is not so developed as that of the New, which is quite natural, inasmuch as the shadow of bright light is deeper than that of faint rays. It is most full in the latest books, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... that was a sign of evil. You refused the breast, and drank only of the milk of wild cattle. In baptism you flung your hand before your face that the water might not touch, nor the priest's finger make a cross upon the water. And they said it were better if you had been born an idiot than with an evil spirit; and that your hand would be against the loins that bore you. But Pierre, ah Pierre, you love your mother, do you not?'" . . . And he standing now, his eye closed with the gate-chink in front of Fort o' God, said quietly: "She was of the race that hated ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hiding his face and hardly breathing, is the same individual who lately tore around the wards, happy, dancing, singing and boasting of his greatness of power. Indeed, is he the same individual? No wonder the ancients regarded such insanity as a possession by an evil spirit. We of a later day who deal with this disease on the whole are inclined to the belief that some internal factor of a physical kind is responsible, some neuronic shift, or some strange, visceral ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... bear it by myself. It's too, too awful. It's not Me; it's something that takes my place. I saw it once. It's an evil spirit. O God, what have I done that such a thing should happen to me! I've always tried to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... followed suit, also the watering-pan, into which latter Dumps went head foremost as it fell, and from its interior another yell issued with such resonant power that the first yell was a mere chirp by contrast. The Slogger fled from the scene like an evil spirit, while John Waters sprang up and grasped the ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... to 'em all.] Ye look like Citizens, that evil Spirit is entered in unto you, oh Men of London! that ye have changed your Note, like Birds of evil Omen; that you go astray after new Lights, or rather no Lights, and commit Whoredom with your Fathers Idols, even in the midst of the Holy City, which the Saints have prepared ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Iroquois grandmother tells, how once, when the fruit first came to earth, the Evil Spirit, Hahgwehdaetgah, stole the strawberry plant, and carried it to his gloomy cave, where he hid it away. And there it lay until a tiny sunbeam pierced the damp mould, and finding the little vine carried it back to its sunny fields. And ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... pro-Austrian. While Ziliotto was receiving high Austrian decorations, he was an object of persecution, and was obliged to go away and live for two and a half years in Rome. Ziliotto, he said, was Zadar's evil spirit, seeing that he had thoroughly deceived and betrayed Italy—so many of those who now called themselves good Italians had been very good Austrians, and would as readily have turned into good Americans or Frenchmen. So petty and local was ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... keenest men with finely disciplined powers may be found among non-christian men. But he should remember two facts, first, that a like truth holds good in the opposite camp. There are undoubtedly men whose genius is brilliant because inspired by an evil spirit. There are cultured scholarly men, and keen shrewd business men who have yielded their powers to another than God and are greatly assisted by evil spirits, though it is quite likely that they are not conscious that this is the true analysis of ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... read of in Second Kings, strutting about from side to side with his bare legs and big buckles, and bit Macgregor tartan jacket—his cheeks blown up with wind like a smith's bellows—the feathers dirling with conceit in his bonnet—and the drone, below his oxter, squeeling and skirling like an evil spirit tied up in a green bag. Keep us all! what gleys he gied about him to observe that the folk were looking at him! He put me in mind of the song that old Barny used to sing about ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... impressed on the waking mind. The case of a little girl came lately under our notice, who exhibited the most alarming symptoms during sleep; sobbing and imploring help, under the imagination that she was being pursued by an evil spirit; in consequence of a foolish, fanatical person having frightened her with threats of this description, while the child, before going to bed, was saying her prayers. Very much convulsed inwardly, she was with difficulty awakened, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... calamities. The great Medecines declared that the country would soon be drowned in the blood of their nation. They prayed in vain, and offered, without any success, two hundred of their fairest virgins in sacrifice on the altars of Takwantona. The evil spirit laughed, and answered to them with his destructive thunders. The earth was shaken and rent asunder; the waters ceased to flow in the rivers, and large streams of fire and burning sulphur rolled down from the mountains, bringing with them terror ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... great distance. These were his weapons—rough spears, throwing-sticks, and clubs called nullahs, or waddys. (I am not sure that these latter are original native words. The blacks had a way of picking up white men's slang and adding it to their very limited vocabulary; thus the evil spirit is known among them as the "debbil-debbil.") Another weapon the aboriginal had, the boomerang, a curiously curved missile stick which, if it missed the object at which it was aimed, would curve back in the air and return to the feet of the thrower; thus the black did ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... infancy, perhaps the under-thought that she might soon rejoin her in another state of being,—all came upon her with a sudden overflow of feeling which broke through all the barriers between her heart and her eyes, and Elsie wept. It seemed to her father as if the malign influence—evil spirit it might almost be called—which had pervaded her being, had at last been driven forth or exorcised, and that these tears were at once the sign and the pledge of her redeemed nature. But now she was to be soothed, and not ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... comes from that day forward upon the young lad (1 Samuel xvi. 12). How king Saul meanwhile fell into dark and bad humours. How the Spirit of the Lord—of goodness and peace of mind—goes from him, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubles him. Then how young David is sent for to play to him on his harp (1 Samuel xvi.), and soothe his distempered mind. Already we hear of David as a remarkable person; we hear of his extraordinary beauty, his skill in music; we hear, too, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... "She is what we call in Japan 'evil spirit,' or 'black spirit.' She will not remain because there are so many good ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... so beloved hen of Wun Sing, that he had brought from far away California, along with some garden seeds and roots, the hen had been entered by an evil spirit and the days of Wun Sing were numbered. Already he felt the dread sickness stealing over him, as it had already stolen upon his old neighbor of San Diego—the so afflicted Mateo. He had been praying and offering gifts to his ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... Mount Sinai to the trumpets of the Judgment; the mysterious and intimate connection with the unseen world established by music, as it were the unknown language of another state. Its quasi-sacramental efficacy, e.g., in driving away the evil spirit in Saul and in bringing upon Eliseus the spirit of prophecy; the grand pre-eminence of the organ in that it gave the nearest representation of the voice of God, while the sound of strings might be taken as more fitted to express the varying ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... Huon, said, in a sweet voice, and in Huon's own language, "Duke of Guienne, why do you shun me? I conjure you, in Heaven's name, speak to me." Huon, hearing himself addressed in this serious manner, and knowing that no evil spirit would dare to use the holy name in aid of his schemes, replied, "Sir, whoever you are, I am ready to hear and answer you." "Huon, my friend," continued the dwarf, "I always loved your race, and you have been dear to me ever since your birth. The gracious state of conscience in which you ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Melody,—in after-times, when we were much together,—how my poor father, at sight of my mother Marie, was struck with love as by a lightning-flash. It was a possession, she would say, only by an angel instead of an evil spirit; at the first look, she filled his life, and while she lived he wanted nothing else, nor indeed after she died. It was not so with me. And perhaps it might seem strange to some, my dear child, that I write this story of my heart ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... us. We started up, fearing that some death by accident had taken place: the occasion proved, on the contrary, to be one of ushering into life. The women were assembled in a ring round the mother, and each howled with all the might of her lungs, either to keep off some evil spirit or to drown the sufferer's cries. In some parts of Africa, the Gold Coast for instance, it is considered infamous for a woman thus to betray her pain, but here we ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... represents Babylon or the Babylonian king triumphing over the country's enemies. The Arabs regard the figure as an evil spirit, and it is pitted with the marks of bullets shot at it. They also smear it with filth when they can do so unobserved; in the photograph some newly smeared filth may be seen adhering to the side ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... in any of the houses. Everybody had gone to the wedding, and the place was like a deserted village. Anderson felt unutterably lonely. He felt outside of all the happy doors and windows of life. Discontent was not his failing, but all at once the evil spirit swept over him. He seemed to realize that instead of moving in the broad highway trod by humanity he was on his own little side-path to the tomb, and injury and anger seized him. He thought of the man who was being married ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... has lost his last real, and has often, I know, to go supperless to bed. When the Indians know by his looks and his staying at home that he is in poverty, they will send him fowls and eggs, and bread and provisions of all sorts. One day he had just received his yearly stipend, when the evil spirit came upon him, and he went away to the nearest town and lost it all. He came home very miserable, and could scarcely attend to his duties. Fortunately for him, an Indian, whose sick child he had attended, had compassion on his grief, and told him to be comforted. The next day, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... white settlers came forced changes in their old customs and manner of living, and a new variety of epidemic and other diseases. When a doctor failed to cure these diseases, and several deaths occurred in quick succession in a camp, they believed the doctor was under the control of some evil spirit, and killed him. ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... this news; he engaged horses; he took his seat in the carriage. "Stop!" he cried suddenly. "Why, there's not a shadow of doubt," he murmured to himself, "that as soon as Angela sets eyes upon me again the evil spirit will recover his power and once more take possession of her. And since I have already thrown her out of the window, what could I do if a similar case were to occur again? What would there be left for me to do?" He got out of the carriage, and wrote an affectionate letter to his wife, making ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... to my mother about my knowing Miss Leonard," he said, the last thing at parting; and I nodded and said, No, not unless he bade me; and I tried not to wonder, and went back to the house satisfied. And I was very merry all the evening; but at night, in my bed, I listened for his return. An evil spirit reminded me of Rachel's face when John said "I will go," and her quickness in arranging that I should not accompany him. I said, "Margery, I am ashamed of you; curiosity and jealousy are hateful; have nothing to do with them." And I turned on my pillow and prayed for John; and ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... evil spirit cannot dwell Where companions are singing well; Here strife, wrath, envy, hate, are not; Every heartache must leave the spot: Greed, care, all things that hard oppress ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... why?—except that we have brought among them the skill and industry which they possessed not; and because wealth, which they would never else have seen in Britain, was the reward of our art and our toil. Roschen, this evil spirit is spreading wider daily. Here we are more safe than elsewhere, because we form a colony of some numbers and strength. But I confide not in our neighbours; and hadst not thou, Rose, been in security, I would long ere this have given up all, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... he continued, "likens the black shadow to an evil spirit, which comes and goes round pure spirits (you do not understand the connection, but there is a connection), eager to enter into them, to dwell in them, he, with others worse than himself. Then—and here I have ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... Eblis, or Degial, the evil spirit, who, according to the Koran, betrayed Adam to transgression, and yet seeks to inflict injury on ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... Escombe with conviction; "I am. What evil spirit would instruct the Peruvians to worship and adore the Great Pachacamac Himself instead of one of the works of His hands? The very import of the message ought to be convincing testimony of the source from which ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... inexplicable, almost unintelligible phenomenon; and I am convinced that not only science cannot explain it, but that even in fairy tales and legends nothing like it is to be met with. What was Alice, after all? An apparition, a restless soul, an evil spirit, a sylphide, a vampire, or what? Sometimes it struck me again that Alice was a woman I had known at some time or other, and I made tremendous efforts to recall where I had seen her.... Yes, yes, I thought sometimes, directly, this minute, I shall remember.... In a flash ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... her is neither to be imagined nor divined in God's fair world, neither may it be told in tales. Now this Tsarivna one day went down to the river to bathe, and plunged into the water without first crossing herself, whereupon the Evil Spirit took possession of her. The Tsarivna got out of the water, and straightway fell ill of so terrible a disease that it may not be told of. Do what they would—and the wise men and the wise women did their utmost—it was of no avail. In a few days she grew worse ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... sheet would resist all our attempts to break it; sometimes we would push big floes with comparative ease and sometimes a small floe would bar our passage with such obstinacy that one would almost believe it possessed of an evil spirit; sometimes we passed through acres of sludgy sodden ice which hissed as it swept along the side, and sometimes the hissing ceased seemingly without rhyme or reason, and we found our screw churning the sea without ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... suspicions, and so we grew mutually distrustful. He tired of me, and he showed it. I loved him. Oh! I loved him better, and better, as I saw him drifting away. He neglected me, spent his leisure where he met the woman he had once intended to marry. I was so maddened with jealous heart-ache, some evil spirit prompted me to try and punish him with the same pangs. That was my first sin of deception; I pretended an attachment I never felt, hoping to rekindle my husband's affection. Like many another heart-sick wife, I was caught in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... heads are full of bogies. Soon as they hear a noise, and can't tell what it is, they say it's an evil spirit or a goblin or ghost. Babies they are. Why, if I was to go near a lot of natives in the dark, hide myself, and let go with Scotch bagpipes, they'd run for miles and never come nigh that ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... "authorities" as he unfolded the Scriptures. Suddenly the service was interrupted by the cries of a man who was possessed by an unclean spirit. Jesus rebuked the demon and compelled him to come out of the man. There can be little doubt that the evil spirit which Jesus thus controlled was an actual malign being who controlled the poor sufferer whom Jesus graciously relieved; yet such an "unclean spirit" is a type of the demoniac power of envy and of lust and of anger, and ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... uninterrupted happiness. In this place was "neither overbearing nor mean-spiritedness, neither stupidity nor violence, neither poverty nor deceit, neither puniness nor deformity, neither huge teeth nor bodies beyond the usual meassure." The inhabitants suffered no defilement from the evil spirit. They dwelt amid odoriferous trees and golden pillars; their cattle were the largest, best, and most beautiful on the earth; they were themselves a tall and beautiful race; their food was ambrosial, and never failed them. No wonder that time sped ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... turned it round so fast, that if old Treffy had been within hearing, he would certainly have died from fright about his dear old organ long before the month was over. Several people in the opposite houses came to their windows to look out; they thought the organ must be possessed with some evil spirit, so slowly did it go one minute, ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... conceived, and my fame was spread abroad among men. The troubles of others also have I lightened with this prayer,—even a woman possessed by a Jinn, under whose face I burned the prayer, so that the evil spirit fled." He asks from two to four annas for the prayer sheet and finds many a purchaser in the crowd; and now and again he rolls the sheet into a thin tube and ties it round the neck of a sick child or round the arm of a sick woman, whom faith in Allah urges into the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... spectre-like malignity. Then he thought of the fair girl whom he had seen in the garden shedding tears on roses, and strove to weave a chaplet of verse which should be more unfading than flowers. What a strange destiny was his! The victim of untoward accidents, persecuted by some evil spirit, and leading an aimless, desultory life, which he yet feared would lead on to lunacy. What should he do in the present instance? Be patient? Yes, he would be calm, forgiving, philosophical as ever. Footsteps are approaching; the door of his cell opens; perhaps it ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... Prince tore up the bond there was a great commotion, and some said, "Surely the Prince Bulleboye is drunken with wine;" and others, "He is possessed of an evil spirit;" and his friends expostulated with him, saying, "What thou hast done is not the custom of the bazaars,—behold, it is not Biz!" But to all the prince answered gravely, "It is right; on my own head ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... haunted cave far below, and thought further, that at that very moment the mysterious being with the cloven foot might be traversing its silent floor, I felt my blood run cold, and at once leaped to the conclusion that, save for the disgrace, a cave with an evil spirit in it could be not a great deal better than a prison. Of the prison, however, we heard no more; though I never forgot the grim but precious lesson read me by the factor's threat; and from that time till the present—save now and then, by inadvertently admitting into my newspaper a paragraph ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... still the enemy of beauty, save in the Vatican, and the ignorant priest of the remote village where the spade of the peasant had revealed the sleeping marble was certain to declare the beautiful image an evil spirit, and have it broken up forthwith and ground for mortar, unless some influential scholar, or powerful lord touched with "the new learning," chanced to be on hand to save it from destruction. Yes! even ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... resembled a very small man with long hair and a white beard. It was about a foot high. It had on a red shirt, a pair of green trousers, a golden cap, and a pair of black shoes. At last Mabait answered in a trembling voice, "I don't want to be a friend of an evil spirit." ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... people, who were singing, and shouting, and shrieking, and dancing, with all their might; some beating tom-toms and drums; others blowing horns and shaking rattles, all uniting in a hideous chorus. The object of this, Aboh told us, was to drive out the evil spirit which was making ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... dissensions, and, ascribing the bishop's gloom to the absence of his family, visited him frequently in order to cheer him up. But the dark hour was on Bishop Pendle, and notwithstanding the harping of this David, the evil spirit would not depart. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... of temper—irritated pride; 'Twas nothing more. I cannot give up Butler. I know a spell that will soon dispossess The evil spirit in him. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... naivete—with good faith in the possibility of his being able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords of others, at any rate by his own. We perceive without difficulty that this faith was fallacious, and that no one takes an evil spirit into his service without becoming himself enslaved to it; but the greatest men are not those who err the least. If we still after so many centuries bow in reverence before what Caesar willed and did, it is not because he desired and gained a crown ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sir," said the clergyman; "you had a perfect right to resent my questions, and I enjoy meeting young men of spirit; but not when it's an evil spirit, such as, I fear, possesses your friend! I do assure you, sir, that the best thing I have heard of him for years is the very little that you have told me. As a rule, to hear of him at all in this part of the world, is to wish that we had not heard. I see him coming, however, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Here some of the strolling Jews "took upon them to name over them that had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, I adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth." When two of the sons of Sceva undertook to do this, the man possessed of the evil spirit "leaped on them and mastered both of them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded." There were stirring times in Ephesus in those days. Fear fell upon the people, "and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified." Many of the believers ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... traveller will make all his journeys without carrying a handful of coin, and yet when he arrives at a city will rain down showers of gold. The theory is, that the English traveller has committed some sin against God and his conscience, and that for this the evil spirit has hold of him, and drives him from his home like a victim of the old Grecian furies, and forces him to travel over countries far and strange, and most chiefly over deserts and desolate places, and to stand upon the sites of cities that once were and are now no ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... stamped vellum, parchment, and paper; and by an act empowering his majesty to borrow six hundred thousand pounds of the sinking fund. In this session the parliament repealed the old statutes of England and Scotland against conjuration, witchcraft, and dealing with evil spirit's. The commons likewise prepared a bill to restrain the disposition of lands in mortmain, whereby they became unalienable. Against this measure petitions were presented by the two universities, the colleges of Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, and divers hospitals that subsisted by charitable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... replied the priest, "and, indeed, you look more like an evil spirit than a man, Anthony. This language is disgraceful and unchristian, and such as no human being should utter. How can you think of death with such principles ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... there of this Mrs. John Fletcher which interested and helped me much. This saintly gifted woman told of a dream which came to her with such vividness as to seem to her mature mind more than a common passing vagary of sleep. In her dream she was engaged in an intense struggle with an evil spirit. She was ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... flashes of sunshine, lay against the green. Under a leaning birch he found a patch of purple asters, and a little apart from them, by a mossy stone, a lonely fringed gentian. Its deep color brought to him the dark blue eyes that haunted him, and once again, like one possessed of an evil spirit, he ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... as his lips pressed hers, all the anguish of doubt that had come upon her was gone like an evil spirit from her soul. She knew only that they stood alone together in a vast space that was filled to the brim with the noonday sunshine. All her heart was flooded with rejoicing. The gates had opened wide for her, and she ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Mount Gut into the Chertov Valley... There's a romantic designation for you! Already you have a vision of the evil spirit's nest amid the inaccessible cliffs—but you are out of your reckoning there. The name "Chertov" is derived from the word cherta (boundary-line) and not from chort (devil), because, at one time, the valley marked the boundary of Georgia. We found it choked with snow-drifts, ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... think the animal is?" I asked with a laugh, "an evil spirit"? For it had passed into the next room and so out through the open window, and its strangely still green eyes no longer drawing mine towards them, I felt my common sense returning ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... who stood before her, or rather—as she afterwards thought, in recalling the interview—the body of Richard Hilton, possessed by an evil spirit. His cheeks burned with a more than hectic red, his eyes were wild and bloodshot, and though the recognition had suddenly sobered him, an impatient, reckless devil seemed to lurk under the set mask of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... voice to a superstitious whisper. "It's a mystery to the Indians," he declared, "and they avoid the sound like it were an evil spirit. Even the chief could not tell me what it was, although all his life he had heard its tolling. He wasn't so much afraid of it as are the other Indians an' he built this wigwam here so as to be within sound of it." The captain's voice dropped still lower as he added ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... that carried Jason and his companions. Ar' te nis, twin sister of Apollo; goddess of the woods. Ar' thur, a heroic legendary king of Britain. As' as (aes az), the gods of the North. As' gaerd, in Norse mythology, the home of the gods or Asas. Ash' ta roth, an evil spirit. At a lan' ta, an Arcadian princess and swift-footed huntress. A the' na, the goddess of knowledge, arts, and sciences. At' ro pos, one of the three Fates. Au' lis, a town on the east coast of Greece. Au tol' y cus, a famous Greek chieftain, grandfather of Odysseus. Av' ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... peerless Chaoukeun peeped out of the litter, and beheld the great khan as he caroused; and when she beheld his hairy form, his gleaming eyes, his pug-nose, and his tremendously wide mouth—when she perceived that he had the form and features of a ghoul, or evil spirit, she wrung her hands, and wept bitterly, and all her love returned for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... well acquainted with the faces of the magistrates, who were themselves touched and astonished at being thus introduced to a state of decorum so new within these walls, and could not help acknowledging how admirably this mode of treatment was adapted to overcome the evil spirit which had so long triumphed there. The usual silence ensued after the reading, then the women withdrew. We could not help feeling particularly glad that the gentlemen were present at the reading. The prisoners crowded around ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... could sin, his nature was imperfect. Why did God suffer him to sin, and his nature to be corrupted? Why did God permit him to be seduced, well knowing that he was too feeble to resist temptation? Why did God create satan, an evil spirit, a tempter? Why did not God, who wishes so much good to the human race, annihilate once for all so many evil genii, who are naturally enemies of our happiness; or rather, why did God create evil spirits, whose victories and fatal influence over mankind, he ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... I knew as well as he did that now there was no life anywhere for me where he was not? But—had it come to this? Yes, truly!—it had come to this! Then was it a real love that I felt, or merely a blind obedience to some hypnotic influence? The doubt suggested itself like a whisper from some evil spirit, and I strove not to listen. Presently he took my hand in his as before, and guided me carefully over the slippery boulders and stones, wet with the overflowing of the mountain torrent and the underlying morass which warned ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... father of a family, whom the infection had not reached, to call his household around him, represent the terrible sufferings and fate that awaited them, which he believed was owing to the influence of an evil spirit who desired to extirpate the race, and incited them to baffle death with all its horrors by at once killing themselves—at the same time offering to perform the deed of mercy with his own hand if their hearts ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the jail, when he is going to the bar for his arraignment, yet he is not out of prison, or out of his irons for that; his fetters are still making a noise on his heels,9 and the thoughts of what he is to hear by and by from the judge, is still frighting and afflicting his heart; death, like some evil spirit or ghost, doth continually haunt him, and playeth the butcher continually in his soul and conscience, with frights and fears about the thoughts of the sudden, and insupportable after-clap, by and by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... neck which seizes the man, the burning spirit of the neck which seizes the man, the spirit of the neck which works evil, the creation of an evil spirit. Spirit of heaven remember, spirit ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... pockets, and sacrifice all to their convictions. They are not afraid to speak out their convictions, even if under the penalty to lose—subscribers; and that is all the risk run by an American newspaper. The Herald, the World, the Express, all organs of the evil spirit, through thick and thin, stand to their fetish, that McClellan; the Republican papers neither pitilessly attack the enemies, nor boldly and manfully support the friends, of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... hoped, you will forgive me, that I have picked so little out of my companion at our first interview. In the next, it is possible he may tell me more pleasing incidents; for though he is a familiar, he is not an evil spirit. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... with red marks upon the rim, and within the bowl, hanging from a fine thread, was a piece of iron no thicker than that grass stem, and as long, maybe, as my spur, but straight. In this iron, said Witta, abode an Evil Spirit which Kitai, the Yellow Man, had brought by Art Magic out of his own country that lay three years' journey southward. The Evil Spirit strove day and night to return to his country, and therefore, look you, the iron needle pointed continually to ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... I have brought inside our house a large, flat rock, on which we pound the corn, and one of us is kept busy picking up the grains that fly here and there as if possessed of an evil spirit. Newsamp is the name which the savages give to ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... rapidly. Committees of examination were appointed and courts of trial convened. The most improbable stories were credited. To express a doubt of witchcraft was to indicate one's own alliance with the evil spirit. Persons of the highest respectability, clergymen, magistrates, and even the governor's wife were implicated. At last, after fifty-five persons had been tortured and twenty hung, the people ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... to eat of, under penalty of death; and thereon intends to found his temptation, by seducing them to transgress: then leaves them a while to know further of thir state by some other means. Mean while Uriel descending on a Sunbeam warns Gabriel, who had in charge the Gate of Paradise, that some evil spirit had escap'd the Deep, and past at Noon by his Sphere in the shape of a good Angel down to Paradise, discovered after by his furious gestures in the Mount. Gabriel promises to find him out ere morning. Night ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 'it is indeed dreadful. It is in the shape of a beautiful girl, but it is really an evil spirit. Last evening it came to visit me, and when I looked upon it its beauty faded into hideousness, its teeth became horrible fangs, its eyes glared like coals of fire, great claws sprang from its slender fingers, and were I not what I am it ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... I have grown up I have laughed at all the old stories about the dragons in the mountains, and the strange elves, gnomes, and kobolds said to live down in the deep mines; but what can one say to this? Is there an evil spirit to this crystal mine who is angry because we have come, and who seeks to punish us ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... had not lately been excessively hot, Mr. Tietkens said 96 to 98 degrees had been the average, but to-day it was only 90 degrees. This afternoon it was very cloudy, and threatened to rain. I was now, however, in hopes that none would fall. That evil spirit of this scene—Mount Destruction—frowned upon us, and now that Gibson was dead, exploration was ended; we had but to try to find his remains, and any little trifling shower that fell would make it ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... spirit. If young men are so blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness, if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself of right, are anything more than a name. Let the young men who mean to make time minister to life scorn and scotch and kill this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in the Adirondacks, bore the names of Otneyarheh, Stony Giants; Ganosgwah, Giants Clothed in Stone; and Dayohjegago, Place Where the Storm Clouds Fight the Great Serpent. Giants and serpents were held to be harmful inventions of the Evil Spirit, and the Lightning god, catching up clouds as he stood on the crags, broke them open, tore their lightnings out and hurled them against the monsters. These cannibals had almost exterminated the Iroquois, for they were of immense size and had made themselves almost invincible by rolling ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... odour, and when those in the boat told him that they had fish and brine on board, and that it was they which smelt, he said that it was a different smell; and while he was yet speaking, a youth, who had an evil spirit, had gone before them and hidden in the boat, suddenly cried out. But the daemon, being rebuked in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, went out of him, and the man became whole, and all knew that the smell ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... you, I can't spare you. You are all I have. Forgive me and let me try again. It is an evil spirit that made me talk that way. And, oh, Laura, dear, I want you to like me better than you like ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... of coffee, the, bit of bread, and the egg or two which were to serve her for breakfast, and now and then she would sing to herself, but so gently that I never could hear the words of her song, nor scarcely the air. An evil spirit put gimlets into my head, but I shook them out like so much powder, and resolved to be honorable, if I was an artist. I found, however, that my curiosity was an abominable nuisance, that my morning walks were almost entirely neglected, and that I could not bear to leave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... part of Australia the evil spirit of the natives is called Bunjup, a monster which is believed to dwell in the lakes. It has of late been supposed that this is a mammal of considerable size that has not yet been discovered . . . is described as a monster with countless eyes and ears. . . . He has sharp claws, and can ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Charles the First such spurious documents exist in the forms of speeches which were never spoken; of letters never written by the names subscribed; printed declarations never declared; battles never fought, and victories never obtained! Such is the language of Rushworth, who complains of this evil spirit of party forgeries, while he is himself suspected of having rescinded or suppressed whatever was not agreeable to his patron Cromwell. A curious, and perhaps a necessary list might be drawn up of political forgeries of our own, which have been sometimes referred to as genuine, but which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... their grief in mushla, the women giving vent to their sorrow by dashing themselves on the ground until covered with blood, and inflicting other tortures, occasionally even committing suicide. As it is supposed that the evil spirit seeks to obtain possession of the body, musicians are called in to lull it to sleep while preparations are made for its removal. All at once four naked men, who have disguised themselves with paint so as not to be recognized and punished by Wulasha, rush out from a neighboring hut, and, seizing ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... out her hands appealingly to him; but he thrust her off in terror, as though she were an evil spirit from another ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... evil spirit comes among good spirits the quarters are usually so confused that the good scarcely know where their east is. This I have sometimes seen take place, and have also heard about it from spirits ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... why, the hussy knew him—must have known him, in a town like Albany, where the fellow has a character that identifies him with all sorts of fun and roguery. Jack, and Moses, too! Do you think the inspiration of even an evil spirit, or of forty thousand devils, would lead a fortune-teller to name any horse Moses? Jack might do, perhaps; but Moses would never enter the head of even an imp! Remember, lad, Moses was the great law-giver ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Pauline, by pride Angels have fallen ere thy time: by pride That sole alloy of thy most lovely mould The evil spirit of a bitter love, And a revengeful heart, had power upon thee. From my first years my soul was fill'd with thee: I saw thee midst the flow'rs the lowly boy Tended, unmark'd by thee—a spirit of bloom, And joy, and freshness, as if Spring itself Were made a living thing, and wore ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Iroquois were not only mystified but much alarmed. Who was this thing that struck in the night and left no trail? An evil spirit had come among them—roosted perhaps in ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... also a kind of doctors, and make plaisters for a variety of purposes, some to draw out the disease to the part applied, some as charms against the evil spirit, and others which they pretend to be aphrodisiac; all of which, and the last in particular, are in great demand among the wealthy. In this respect the Chinese agree with most nations of antiquity, whose priests were generally employed as physicians. The ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... The disastrous consequences of an attempt, on the part of the sons of a Jewish priest, to heal the afflicted by using the name of the Lord Jesus as a charm, alarmed the entire tribe of exorcists and magicians. "The man, in whom the evil spirit was, leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus, and fear ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... national prosperity, was a land of music and melody." And finally, the therapeutic value of music and its power to stimulate the creative faculties were recognized. The prophets composed their songs and uttered their prophecies to the sound of musical instruments, and David drove out the evil spirit from Saul, as we read in the Bible: "And it came to pass when the spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his hands. So Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... because while you stayed at home I saw many evidences of it, aye, I used to delight in its manifestation. Toward the end of your stay at home I grew to hate you. But it was because of that woman. If ever there was an evil spirit in the guise of a human being, it was she. She—well, you will learn ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... The evil spirit has a twofold weapon with which he assails and combats God's Church; namely, the godless rulers of the world and heresy. Through the godless authorities of the world Satan has endeavored since the beginning ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... sir," said the venerable selectman, "let not an evil spirit enter into your words. We will strive against the oppressor with prayer and fasting, as our forefathers would have done. Like them, moreover, we will submit to whatever lot a wise Providence may send us—always after our own best exertions to ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its inhabitants, but the seeds of life were not dead. Near by were the tents of the gipsies—an Eastern race, whose forefathers perhaps had seen that very Magian worship of the Light; and in those tents birth had already taken place. Under the Night of winter—under the power of dark Ahriman, the evil spirit of Destruction—lay bud and germ in bondage, waiting for the coming of Ormuzd, the Sun of Light and Summer. Beneath the snow, and in the frozen crevices of the trees, in the chinks of the earth, sealed ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Christ Jesus. Yes, and there is in us a Great Spirit who is uniting us by invisible bonds to all that is good and healthy and Godlike, a Spirit who disciplines our will when it is weakest and most self-indulgent, who trains our spirit and fights our battles against the evil spirit, a Person who makes us persons. How then do men differ? If in every man there is the Light which lightens him, the Christ, the Spirit, what is the difference between good and bad men? Does {62} a good man ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... had talks with the Evil Spirit, or Satan. He, too, was always near me. But he was always trying to get ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... touched its head, to show that it could not understand. We fancied that the chief comprehended his meaning, for he laughed, and cast a contemptuous look at the ugly block. Although he did this, however, in our presence, it is possible that he still had some superstitious fear of the idol, or of the evil spirit it might ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... is cracked," says Eleanor, calling him back sharply. "I always feel as if some evil spirit were near us when ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... me. I called out upon the Lord. His voice grew faint, and as I gazed intent upon him, he fell into utter darkness. I sank to the earth in a trance, during which a sound like the rush of pennons assaulted my ear: methought the evil spirit was bearing off his soul; I lifted up my eyes, but nothing stirred; the stillness ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... be determined. The Cardinal said nothing,—Babette trembled a little,—what a dreadful boy Henri really was, she thought!—Madame Patoux shut up her eyes in horror, crossed herself devoutly as against some evil spirit, and was about to speak, when Henri, nothing daunted, threw himself into the breach again, and turned with a fiery vehemence of appeal towards the young and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... thought him, in the deep shadow, some gnome or evil spirit of earth realised out of the dreams ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... grove dwells Comus, an evil spirit, who loves not the good. Here he finds the unlucky traveler and takes him to his court. There he offers him food and a pleasant drink. But in the glass is a potion which drives memory from the mind and makes one ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... my earliest years no history in the Gospels has taken such hold of me as that of the child possessed with a devil, which the disciples were not able to cast out; but when our Saviour came down from the mountain where He had been transfigured, He broke the bonds wherewith the evil spirit had held the miserable child bound. I always felt as if I must have known and loved that boy, and been his play-fellow in his happy days; and when I grew older, then the distress of the father on account of his lunatic son lay heavy ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... abstract. The entire ceremonial of Indian worship has for its groundwork the basest and most groveling superstition. All events in any way out of the ordinary run of human affairs are directly traced to the Good or Evil Spirit. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Succubus was obliged to depart, leaving an odour of sulphur and of hell, which made the throats of my servants, friends, and others sore for a whole day. Then the celestial light of God having enlightened my soul, I knew I was, through my sins and my combat with the evil spirit, in great danger of dying. Then did I implore the especial mercy, to live just a little time to render glory to God and his Church, objecting the infinite merits of Jesus dead upon the cross for the salvation of the Christians. By this prayer I obtained the favour of recovering ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... spirits, fairies, and goblins trooped out for revels about the country. The old Druid idea of obsession, the besieging of a person by an evil spirit, was practised by them ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... Brigson heading the line on each, side of the table, he could not help observing what a bad set they looked. The remembrance of Russell came back to him. Oh, if Edwin could have known that he was in such company at such a place! And by the door stood Billy, watching them all like an evil spirit, with a leer of saturnine malice on ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... inflamed by constant aggression and retaliation. Many times a year, in every village, the Great Spirit is called upon, fasts are made, the war parade is celebrated, and the warriors go out by handfuls at a time against the enemy. This fierce and evil spirit awakens their most eager aspirations, and calls forth their greatest energies. It is chiefly this that saves them from lethargy and utter abasement. Without its powerful stimulus they would be like the unwarlike tribes beyond the mountains, who are scattered among the caves and ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... feel frightened. Some evil spirit, possibly the kettle, seemed to whisper to her that she had been foolish in coming here, to cast doubts on what she had hitherto regarded as the one rock-solid fact in the world, her love for Geoffrey. Could she ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit and he came to the younger and said, "It is long that we have lived together. The time has come for us to part. Let us ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... beginning—as soon as I could—I told you I was afraid of myself." There was a piteous pleading in the low murmur in which Deronda turned his ear only. Her face afflicted him too much. "I felt a hatred in me that was always working like an evil spirit—contriving things. Everything I could do to free myself came into my mind; and it got worse—all things got worse. That is why I asked you to come to me in town. I thought then I would tell you the worst about ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... I cannot now even meet her eyes-they are almost terrifying. Nothing upon earth having passed between us, nor the most remote subject of offence having occurred, I have only one thing on which to rest my conjectures, for the cause of this newly-awakened evil spirit, and this is from the gentlemen. They had all of late been so wearied that they could not submit even for a quarter of an hour to her society : they had swallowed a dish of tea and quitted the room all in five minutes, and Colonel Goldsworthy in particular, when without any ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... not so much that the officers had lost control over their men. It seemed as if the Evil Spirit had been let loose and was doing his very best to encourage the people to ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... a weak and ungodly tenderness that would spare to drive forth the evil spirit which possesses the child by the use of the rod. I should fail in my duty alike to God and man," he added, in reply to a fresh gesture of intercession, "did I not teach him what it is to insult a lady ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... excited at this news; he engaged horses; he took his seat in the carriage. "Stop!" he cried suddenly. "Why, there's not a shadow of doubt," he murmured to himself, "that as soon as Angela sets eyes upon me again, the evil spirit will recover his power and once more take possession of her. And since I have already thrown her out of the window, what could I do if a similar case were to occur again? What would there be left for me to do?" He got out of the carriage, and wrote an affectionate letter to his wife, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... speak. Then the evil spirit stepped towards him, and putting forth his hands touched his throat. The fingers burned his flesh. "Set me ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... of the Guardian Angel, the voice of the Evil Spirit is heard seducing 'The Man' from the quiet path of humble human duties. The glories of the ideal realm are spread before him; Nature is invoked with all her entrancing charms; ambitious desires of terrestrial greatness are awakened in his soul; he is filled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... convert it to a cloud for each man's fancy to shift and shape at will. And this doctrine, I confess, plants the vineyard of the Word with thorns for me, and places snares in its pathways. These may be delusions of an evil spirit; but ere I so harshly question the seeming angel of light—my reason, I mean, and moral sense in conjunction with my clearest knowledge—I must inquire on what authority this doctrine rests. And what other authority dares a truly catholic Christian ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... man, shutting a clasp-knife with which he had been stripping the bark from a blackthorn stake, "you came upon me so still and sudden, that I thought you was an evil spirit. I've come across through the fields, and come in here at the gate agen the moat, and I was taking a rest before I came up to the house to ask ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... his uncle's one evening, he stopped to amuse himself with taking a gate off its hinges. When an old Quaker came out to see who was meddling with his gate, Isaac fired a gun over his head, and made him run into the house, as if an evil spirit were ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... transubstantiation and sacrifice were omitted. Marriage was relegated from the rank of a sacrament to that of a civil contract. Baptism was kept in the old form, even to the detail of exorcizing the evil spirit. Auricular confession was permitted but not ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... directly we turn to such records as remain to us we find that such forces as these have been in action from the very beginning. All disease was in early times referred generally to spirit possession. If only the evil spirit could be exorcised the patient would get well and the priest was, of course, the proper person to undertake this. Religion and medicine were, therefore, most intimately united to begin with and healing most intimately associated ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... he and the native Christian will submit to the same weakness on the part of the missionary. But they fail to understand it; and the missionary's power with them is very largely impaired by the manifestation of this evil spirit. Even if impatience were ever, anywhere, a virtue, in India it is always an unmixed evil and should be guarded against. The warning is the more needed because the tropical climate itself is a very bad ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... ye higher men—let me tickle you with this complimentary and flattering name, as he himself doeth—already doth mine evil spirit of deceit and magic attack me, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... ones, he would find alluded to in terms quite as vigorously damning as he could desire: and the actual effect of it upon my thoughts and work has been precisely that which would have resulted from the visible phantom of an evil spirit, the absolute opponent of the Queen of the Air,—Typhon against Athena,—in a sense of which I had neither the experience nor the conception when I wrote the illustrations of the myth of Perseus ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... long way—oh, I followed you. But poor Billy is never weary, the Wise Ones bear him up in their arms sometimes. So I followed you—and another, also, though he didn't know it. Oho! would you see me conjure you a spirit from the leaves yonder,—ah! but an evil spirit, this! Shall I? Watch now! See, thus I set my feet! Thus I lift my arms to ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... promiscuity all apparently existing amongst them. They allow the women great liberty and frequently change their mates or simply discard them when they are perhaps taken up by another. They believe in a devil or evil spirit which haunts the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... gaped with astonishment, and still the girl called out the same thing, until a crowd began to come round. Then Paul turned round and with sternness in his voice spoke to the evil spirit in the girl and said: "In the Name of Jesus Christ, I order ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... legends and many of the ceremonies of the Greeks. The serpent was a frequent emblem of various gods—it was often kept about the temples—it was introduced in the mysteries—it was everywhere considered sacred. Singular enough, by the way, that while with us the symbol of the evil spirit, the serpent was generally in the East considered a benefactor. In India, the serpent with a thousand heads; in Egypt, the serpent crowned with the lotos-leaf, is a benign and paternal deity. It was not uncommon for fable ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
