"Exorcise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The scene vanished from her vision as if the moonlight had been extinguished. It was some moments before she realised that she was running madly, as if hoping flight might help her exorcise that ironic vision. But when she did realise what she was doing, she but ran the faster; let people think what they would; she no longer cared; their esteem no more mattered, for she was finished with them one and all—yes, even ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... not astonishing that a game which called for such vigorous exorcise [Footnote: Ferdinand Vol. I, p. 134, and Major C. Swan in a Report concerning the Creeks in 1791. Schoolcraft, Vol. v, p. 277, that the Whites exceed the Indians at this game.] and which taxed the strength, ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... this reputation; and in some villages, when a change of pastors takes place, the parishioners are eager to learn whether the new incumbent has the power (pouder), as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm they put him to the proof by inviting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the result answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and respect of his flock. In some parishes, where the reputation of the curate in this ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... instantly expelled the city; while a second, in the butchers' quarter, ordained that any dog which henceforth should attack a stranger should be immediately destroyed. It was plain, said the butchers, that the clergy were of no use; they could not exorcise demons! That afternoon, catching sight of a poor old fellow in rags and tatters, quietly walking up the street, they hounded their dogs upon him, and had it not been that the door of Derba's cottage was standing open, and was near enough for him to dart in and shut it ere they reached him, he ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... in a tongue unknown to me—charms, spells, undoubtedly, to exorcise the devils that had hold of him. I followed the direction of his gaze, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... accessible to the Broadway philosopher, and a Turkish khan to the sybarite; one has but to mount a staircase, and find himself in the presence of authentic effigies of all the prominent men of the nation, sun-painted for the million. This pharmacist will exorcise his pain-demon; that electrician place him en rapport with kindred hundreds of miles away, or fortify his jaded nerves. Down this street he may enjoy a Russian or Turkish bath; down that, a water-cure. Here, with skill undreamed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... accessible to bribes (a virtue in which they stood almost alone), who were firm in their faith, and soon had learning enough to defend it; who were constant in their parish work, and of whom many were credited with prophetic and healing powers. They could exorcise ghosts from houses, devils ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... the same time. All the pupils, all the sisters, and indeed every one, came running to see what was the matter. The sisters made the sign of the cross, but did not venture to approach me. The Mother Prefect threw some holy water over me to exorcise the evil spirit. Finally the Mother Superior arrived on the scene. My father had told her of my fits of wild fury, which were my only serious fault, and my state of health was quite as much responsible for them as the violence of my disposition. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... possess. Preparations for our present condition have been so long neglected, that we now have a double duty to perform. We have not only to propitiate to our aid a host of good spirits, but we have to exorcise a host of evil ones. Every aspect of our affairs, public and private, demonstrates that we need, for their successful management, a vast accession to the common stock of intelligence and virtue. But intelligence and virtue are the product of cultivation and training. They do ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... refer it rather to the calm meditations of others, who will find materials enough within themselves. And lest the impatient should throw aside our essay with the disgust of satiety, or the persevering should by our prolixity be vexed with the very spirit which we would rather teach them to exorcise, we here take a respectful leave, with our sincerest wishes, that life may be to the reader a succession of pleasant emotions, and death a resting ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the other had the slightest. My Catholic friend, I knew, always carried a bottle of holy water in his pocket, and at my entreaty forbore for the moment to exorcise. The legal gentleman, though a "writer" himself, was not at all convinced about the phenomena, as was perhaps natural, seeing the exceedingly bad company to which it professed to relegate him. As for me, my scepticism was to me robur et aes triplex. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... seemed perplexed. He passed a hand over his shiny bald head as if to stimulate thought and exorcise bewilderment. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... &c. (prediction) 511; sortilege[obs3], ordeal, sortes Virgilianae[obs3]; hocus-pocus &c. (deception) 545. V. practice sorcery &c.n.; cast a nativity, conjure, exorcise, charm, enchant; bewitch, bedevil; hoodoo, voodoo; entrance, mesmerize, magnetize; fascinate &c. (influence) 615; taboo; wave a wand; rub the ring, rub the lamp; cast a spell; call up spirits, call up spirits from the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Paul not to be afraid? It is easy to say, 'Fear not,' but unless the exhortation is accompanied with some good reason shown, it is wasted breath. Paul got a truth put into his heart which ends all fear—'For I am with thee.' Surely that is enough to exorcise all demons of cowardice or despondency, and it is the assurance that all Christ's servants may lay up in their hearts, for use at all moments and in all moods. His presence, in no metaphor, but in deepest inmost ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the strong vitality in his little, spare, wiry frame. Dr. Woodford, after hearing Anne's story, thought it well to ask him whether he would prefer the ministrations of a Roman Catholic priest; but whether justly or unjustly, Peregrine seemed to impute to that Church the failure to exorcise the malignant spirit which had led him to far worse aberrations than he had confessed to Anne. Though by no means deficient in knowledge or controversian theology, as Dr. Woodford soon found in conversation with him, his real convictions ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a Christian priest and a Christian maid is necessary. The priest to exorcise the powers of darkness; the damsel to touch this chest with the seal of Solomon. This must be done at night. But have a care. This is solemn work, and not to be effected by the carnal-minded. The priest must be a Cristiano ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... plea on behalf of this woman. The life she offered might have psalmic iteration; the dead monotony of it in prospect did, nevertheless, exorcise a devil. Carinthia promised, it might seem to chase and keep the black beast out of him permanently, as she could, he now conceived: for since the day of the marriage with her, the devil inhabiting him had at least been ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and drove him to crazy escapades and deeds of flagrant lawlessness. He needed no assurance that the boy would not "fall down" at soldiering. He would take to it as a duck to water. And the discipline might be the making of him, prove the way to exorcise the devil. Still there were other considerations which to him seemed paramount for ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to me, please. I am a perfect child-tamer, and guarantee to exorcise his seven evil spirits in less than no time. Meanwhile, sit you down ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... the lamp even more violently, as if it were a charm that could exorcise fear and bring a man over safely. The shadows danced until his brain reeled, and King swore be would thrash the fool as soon as be could reach him. He lay belly-downward on the rock and crawled like an insect ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... with contumely; for, being heathen maidens, Father Bischof would speedily exorcise and exile them back to Greece. And now tell me what you think of the new opera. Do you expect it to ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... conformity throughout to the most famous legends of Talmudic fabrication.—F.A.] pleasant as is your conversation, you must acknowledge I can't allow evil spirits about the house without getting it an ill reputation. So pardon me if I exorcise you with this." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... seen her in the dragon's cave, Seen how she leaped to meet that serpent grim, Shot forth the poisonous arrows of her tongue, And darted hate and death from blazing eyes, Then were thy bosom steeled against her tears!— Take thou the lyre, sing thou to me that song, And exorcise the hateful demon here That strangles, chokes me! Thou canst sing the song, Mayhap, though ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... much distressed, and exerted himself mightily (he was a professed electrician), combining will power with that ancient agent, prayer, to exorcise the evil influence. But his efforts were useless, as the vagabonds well knew, before they brought me there on exhibition. They had not spent the week in vain. I had sold myself to them as squarely as fools ever ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... exorcise evil spirits and the accessory visitations; 2 To cure predestined sickness; 3 ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... him into ridicule whenever the opportunity offered, he had naturally become my sworn enemy. 'Tant de fiel entre-t-il dans l'ame d'un devot!' When the storm was at its height, he posted himself on the quarter-deck, and, with book in hand, proceeded to exorcise all the spirits of hell whom he thought he could see in the clouds, and to whom he pointed for the benefit of the sailors who, believing themselves lost, were crying, howling, and giving way to despair, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... later period, her accusers attempted to make out that she had been a devotee of these nameless woodland spirits, but in vain. No doubt she was one of the procession on the holy day once a year, when the cure of the parish went out through the wood to the Fairies' Well to say his mass, and exorcise what evil enchantment might be there. But Jeanne's imagination was not of the kind to require such stimulus. The saints were enough for her; and indeed they supplied to a great extent the fairy tales of the age, though it was ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... which special circumstances had brought within her consciousness. The Julia Bentley of the last few moments was not the Julia Bentley she was accustomed to meet and interrogate, and she asked herself how she might exorcise the meanness that had so unexpectedly appeared in her. Should she pile falsehood on falsehood? She felt it would be cruel not to do so; but Emily said, 'He wants to marry to get rid of me, and not because he ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Lotteringhi heareth knock at his door by night and awakeneth his wife, who giveth him to believe that it is a phantom; whereupon they go to exorcise it with a certain orison and ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... rejected. I should not have suspected you, madam, of such weakness. Grant there were evil spell, or charm, attached to it, which, trust me, there is not—as how should there be, to a harmless piece of gold?—my benediction, and aspersion with holy lymph, will have sufficient power to exorcise and expel it. To remove your fears it shall ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... comes the double warning. Strange voices are already heard among us; some seem like echoes of the German spirit we are fighting to exorcise, others of that anarchic spirit still more fatal that makes a lawless democracy the most deadly foe of liberty and ordered progress. If we in our turn make self-interest, regardless of the rights of others, our guide, find in hatred, ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... was not dead, and begged to be taken out of the tomb. The noise I made soon awoke the whole house, and as I had locked my door, no one could get in. I heard my mother and brothers uttering pious ejaculations to exorcise the evil spirit which they believed had got hold of me, while I trebled my frantic yells for deliverance. By vigorously shaking the door, they finally burst it open, and then I was surprised to ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... information; (4) that the mere multiplication of "precautions" in the shape of increased armaments and a readiness for war, in the absence of a corresponding and parallel improvement of opinion, will merely increase and not exorcise the danger, and, finally, (5) that the problem of war is necessarily a problem of at least two parties, and that if we are to solve it, to understand it even, we must consider it in terms of two parties, not one; it is not a question of what ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Sometimes an infinite weariness oppressed her to the earth. A thought was born in her mind and it had no name. It was growing and could not be expressed. She had no words wherewith to meet it, to exorcise or greet this stranger who, more and more insistently and pleadingly, tapped upon her doors and begged to be spoken to, admitted and caressed and nourished. A thought is a real thing and words are only its ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... attempted to control the spirit for his own advantage. A rude form of religion was reached, found in {117} certain stages of the development of all religions, in which man sought to manipulate or exorcise the spirits who existed in the air or were located in trees, stones, and other material forms. Out of this came a genuine worship of the powerful, and supplication for help and support. Seeking aid and favor became ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... from a high-backed chair and an extra blanket, and again betook himself to bed. Stepping on a tack that had been left over when the floor matting was laid provoked certain exclamations calculated to exorcise the demon—or should I say alarm the angel?—of decorative art, and he was soon wrapped in the slumber of the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... ignorance conceived him to be, appeared on the window sill and grinned, and chattered through the casement what seemed to them to be the most horrible incantations. Horror-struck, the poor people crowded together on their knees on the floor, and began to exorcise him with prayers most vehemently, until some external cause of alarm made their persecutor vanish. The neighbours found the family half dead with fear, and could with difficulty extract from them the cause. 'Oh! worthy neebours!' at last exclaimed the goodman with a groan, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... threw the inexhaustible money-bag into the abyss, and then spoke the final words. "You fiend, I exorcise you in the name of God! Be off, and never show yourself before ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... these exorcise the spectre host of the brain and quell the horrid brood of fear. The noble purpose of self sacrifice enables us to smile upon the grave, "as some sweet clarion's breath stirs the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of a system to which many individuals—perhaps as highly endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia—had contributed their all of earthly endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations. I determined to make proof if there were any spell that would exorcise her out of the part which she seemed to be acting. She should be compelled to give me a glimpse of something true; some nature, some passion, no matter whether right or wrong, provided ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over. The wretched shepherd is constrained to do so, and sleeps in the vicinity of his flock, finding, if he can, the shelter of a ruined tomb or of the broken arch of an aqueduct, or even of a cave from which pozzolana has been dug, and strives to exorcise the malaria fiend by kindling a big fire and sleeping with his head in the thick smoke of it. But the buttero, well mounted, to whom it is a small matter to ride eight or ten miles to his home every night, lives with his family either in Rome or in one of the small towns on the slopes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... patient may be likened to a medium who is possessed by a spiritual being of low order. The very low condition of the spirit causes him to adhere and cling to the medium, and unless the will is directed to exorcise him, he will keep his subject continually under his influence and the proper individuality of the person will ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... standards the very refuse of the German jails; and, allowing an unlimited license of plunder during some periods of their career, had themselves evoked a fiendish spirit of lawless aggression and spoliation, which afterwards they had found it impossible to exorcise within its former limits. People were everywhere obliged to be on their guard, not alone (as heretofore) against the military tyrant or freebooter, but also against the private servants whom they hired into their service. For some time back, suspicious persons had been seen strolling ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... extravagant supposition, but, while endeavoring to make light of his own cowardice, the idea still haunted and tormented him. Sometimes, in the effort to rid himself of the persistence of his own imagination, he would try to exorcise the demon who had got hold of him, and this exorcism consisted in despoiling the image of his temptress of the veil of virginal purity with which his admiration had first invested her. Who could assure him, after all, that this girl, with her independent ways, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... determined to complete my labors. For fifteen days I never left my garret, spending whole nights in pallid thought. I worked with difficulty, and by fits and starts, despite my courage and the stimulation of despair. The music had fled. I could not exorcise the brilliant mocking image of Foedora. Something morbid brooded over every thought, a vague longing as dreadful as remorse. I imitated the anchorites of the Thebaid. If I did not pray as they did, I lived a life in the desert like theirs, hewing out my ideas as they were wont to hew their ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... His slight start and faint exclamation, caused Ik Stanton to look around also, and then, with a mischievous and observant twinkle in his eyes, the bon vivant resumed his cigar, which no symphony could exorcise from his mouth. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... of Fontrailles, the Duke de Bouillon's memoirs, a letter of Turenne, and the declaration of La Rochefoucauld? Their united testimony is so concordant that it is altogether irresistible. The Queen racked her brains to exorcise this fresh storm, and to persuade the King and Richelieu of her innocence. Anne went much farther; she did not confine herself to falsehood and dissimulation. Menaced by imminent danger, she went so far ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... answered, 'under favour, the seventy-second of the canons ratified and enjoined on us, the clergy, anno Domini 1604, doth expressly provide, that "no minister, unless he hath the licence of his diocesan bishop, shall essay to exorcise a spirit, evil or good." Therefore it was,' I did here mildly allege, 'that I did not presume to enter on such a work without lawful privilege under your lordship's hand and seal.' Hereupon did our wise and learned bishop, sitting in his chair, condescend upon the theme at some length ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... a letter subscribed "Fidelia," that gives me an account of an enchantment under which a young lady suffers, and desires my help to exorcise her from the power of the sorcerer. Her lover is a rake of sixty; the lady a virtuous woman of twenty-five: her relations are to the last degree afflicted, and amazed at this irregular passion: their ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... aversion to him. The elder Comtesse de Fiesque remonstrated with her; but she only cried the more. Madame de Fiesque then brought books to show her her duty as a wife; but it did no good, and at last she got into such a state that we sent for the cure with holy water to exorcise her." [Footnote: Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, II. 265. The cure's holy water, or his exhortations, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... order freely to understand the sweep and the greatness of this perfect law of liberty, we must remember that the new life is implanted in us precisely in order that we may suppress, and, if need be, cast out and exorcise, that lower 'listing,' of which I have said that it is always ignoble and sometimes animal. For this freedom will bring with it the necessity for continual warfare against all that would limit and restrain it—namely, the passions and desires and inclinations of our baser ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... how to exorcise him, and afterwards go to the huts and say that Mzimu is angry; so the negroes bring them bananas, honey, pombe (beer made of sorghum plant), eggs, and meat in order to ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... made him stand aloof from the radiant guest, Happiness, for a brief half hour? That story of Charlotte's; it would come back to him; he wished now he had never heard it. For having heard he could not forget: he could not exorcise this grim Thing which stood side by side with Happiness in his sunny room. The fact was, his acute mind took in the true bearings of the case far more clearly than Charlotte had done. He felt sure that Mrs. Home had been wronged. He felt equally ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... not the purpose of the dress to conceal organs the sight of which was tabooed.[1542] In Central Borneo, in order to drive off evil spirits, rough figures of human beings are cut in wood, the tabooed organs being exaggerated. Those organs are the real amulets which exorcise demons, for they are often cut on the timbers of the houses without the rest of the figure. Then, by further derivation, such representations became purely ornamental on houses, weapons, etc.[1543] The Egyptians used representations of what were later tabooed organs as hieroglyphics, and in their ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of singular elevation, passionately exclaiming: "Oh, that a man who could have entertained the gods with high conceits and philosophic parle,—could have communed with spirits of the skies, should be assailed and pestered from the pit!—Go on, woman, we will exorcise you, we will purge you, though you be fouler than the Augean stable, that had been left uncleaned for thirty years; ay, though you be as foul as is the stall that holds the grimy company of the lost, and which goes uncleaned for ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... sloping to the clear horizon, and the breath of a large life in their nostrils, these two men were caught up suddenly, as it were, by the throbbing soul of the North, so that the subterranean life in them awoke and startled them. Trafford conceived that tobacco was the charm with which to exorcise the spirits of the past. Pierre let the game of sensations go on, knowing that they pay themselves out in time. His scheme was the wiser. The other found that fast riding and smoking were not sufficient. He became surrounded by the ghosts of yesterdays; and at length he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... speak if you be a ghost, or I'll exercise [exorcise] ye wid this butt of a musket," quoth the cowboy@an Irishman to be sure, whose round bullet head was discernible in the human mass, by ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... lessons are taught by that tragic figure of the weeping and yet unchanged king. One is of the power of forbearing gentleness to exorcise hate. The true way to 'overcome evil' is to melt it by fiery coals of gentleness. That is God's way. An iceberg may be crushed to powder, but every fragment is still ice. Only sunshine that melts it will turn it into sweet water. Love is conqueror, and the only conqueror, and its conquest ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... what all these preparations were for. "Madam," answered the eunuch, "they are to exorcise the evil spirit that possesses you, to shut him up in this pot, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... gives a long history of how he was called to a parish priest, who complained of the devil's having created a disturbance in his house by throwing the pots and pans about, and so forth, and of how he advised the priest to exorcise the fiend by invoking his own authority as a pastor ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... that can fall to the lot of mortals," and such an event makes the parents "holy." Among this Kaffir people, moreover: "Every father of twins has the right to act as substitute for the village-chief in the exercise of his priestly functions. If the chief is not present, he can, for example, exorcise a sick person. Even the twin-child himself has all priestly privileges. For a twin boy there is no forbidden flesh, no forbidden milk, and no one would ever venture to curse him. If any one should kill a twin-child, the murderer's whole village would be ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and then, a ghastly shape glide in, And fright us with its horrid gloom or glee, It is the ghost of some forgotten sin We failed to exorcise on bended knee. ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... shall abandon any hope of mutual joy, and consecrate themselves to the alleviation of misery in the world. Having by violence and crime thrust one evil out of life, they are now by patience and benevolence to endeavor to exorcise others. At the same time, remarking that Providence has infinitely varied ways of dealing with any deed, Hawthorne leaves a possibility of happiness for the two penitents, which may become theirs as "a wayside flower, springing ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... come to Dalag for a day? These people are panic-stricken, won't do a thing I order, won't take treatment, but are trying to exorcise the devils of disease by ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... from Tennessee and Edward Everett from Massachusetts. A melancholy interest attached to this assembly. It was mainly composed of old men whose political views were those of Clay and Webster, cherished leaders now dead and gone. In their platform they sought to exorcise the evil spirit of partisanship by inviting their fellow citizens to "support the Constitution of the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws." The party that campaigned on this grand ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... wrecked vessel, worn round the arm for seven weeks.[30] For colic, he recommended the heart of a lark attached to the right thigh, and for pain in the kidneys an amulet depicting Hercules overcoming a lion. To exorcise gout, he used incantations, these being either oral or written on a thin sheet of gold during the waning of the moon. Writing a suitable inscription on an olive leaf, gathered before sunrise, was his specific ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Cotton Mather took her into his own family, to see whether he could not exorcise her. His account of her conduct, while there, is highly amusing for its credulous simplicity. The cunning and ingenious child seems to have taken great delight in perplexing and playing off her tricks upon the learned man. Once he wished to say something in her presence, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... reconcile the teachings of theology with our idea of justice? And certain thoughts constantly recur to the poet, and shake the edifice of his faith; he drives them away, they reappear; he is bewitched by them and cannot exorcise these demons. Who had a more elevated mind than Aristotle, and who was wiser than Solomon? Still they are held by Holy-Church "bothe ydampned!" and on Good Friday, what do we see? A felon is saved who had lived all his life in lies and thefts; he was saved at once "with-outen penaunce of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... was loaded with chains, placed in the women's yard, starved, and then flogged, and his body cruelly cut in order to exorcise the powers of sorcery that were in him. When Mary went to him he was a bruised and bleeding heap of flesh lying unconscious by the post to which he was fastened. The women in the yard were sitting about indifferent to ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... disappear; And where they play'd their merry pranks before, Have sprinkled holy water on the floor: And friars, that through the wealthy regions run, Thick as the motes that twinkle in the sun, Resort to farmers rich, and bless their halls, 30 And exorcise the beds, and cross the walls: This makes the fairy quires forsake the place, When once 'tis hallow'd with the rites of grace: But in the walks where wicked elves have been, The learning of the parish now is seen, The midnight parson, posting o'er the green, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden |
