"Supernatural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law. Whether such a law is to be regarded as an expression of the mode of operation of natural forces, or whether it is simply a statement of the manner in which a supernatural power has thought fit to act, is a secondary question, so long as the existence of the law and the possibility of its discovery by the human intellect are granted. But he must be a half-hearted philosopher who, believing in that possibility, and having watched the gigantic strides of ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... pillows. Beulah placed a glass to his lips, and the doctor told him to take his time with his story. The jurors stood about the bed in silence, looking from one to the other with expressions that suggested they were almost in the presence of the supernatural. If the black bag with the money had slowly risen out of the floor someone would have quietly set it in a corner until Allan was ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... often have been shortened to the imagination by the prevalent belief that by supernatural aid the miles could be actually lessened. Rabbi Natronai was reported to be able to convey himself a several days' journey in a single instant. So Benjamin of Tudela tells how Alroy, who claimed to be the Messiah ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... presence of a supernatural power in the Temple:—No premature birth was ever caused by the odor of the sacrifices; the carcasses never became putrid; no fly was ever to be seen in the slaughter-houses; the high-priest was never defiled on the day of atonement; no defect was ever found in ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... authority for it than some historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE: It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every principle of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... contemporaries and that wondrous olden world, and to come upon the gods and heroes in their undress, a surprise of which no greatness, it is said, can stand the test. He introduces his spectators to a sort of familiar acquaintance with them; he does not draw the supernatural and fabulous into the circle of humanity (a proceeding which we praised in Sophocles), but within the limits of the imperfect individuality. This is the meaning of Sophocles, when he said that "he drew men ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... others had so much more character. As we passed a little opening in the woods, a great dark purple flower, that was a stranger to me, fixed its gaze upon me so that I felt the look, as we sometimes do from human eyes. Any thing supernatural is so in keeping with these solitary places, I felt as if some one had assumed that form to greet me. There were some beautiful new flowers; among them a snow-white iris, which was very lovely. It seemed like a miracle that this fair little creature should come up ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... about this time that a wave of the occult passed over the school. It began with Daphne Johnson, who happened to read a magazine article on "The Borderland of the Spirit World," and it spread like an epidemic of influenza. The supernatural was the topic of the hour. Ghost stories were at a premium, and any girl who could relate some creepy spiritual experience, which had happened to the second cousin of a friend of a friend of hers, was sure of a thrilled audience. This taste for the psychic was particularly ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... through every fibre. For there, close by the door, somebody—something—was peering through the space between the logs of the wall. The face was invisible, but the shape of a man's head was distinctly defined. He realized that it was no supernatural manifestation when a husky voice began to call the mare, in a hoarse whisper, "Cobe! Cobe! Cobe!" With a galvanic start he was about to spring forward to hold the door. A hand from without ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... use no supernatural arts, as I will prove to you. Take my lorgnette that lies behind you, part the leaves where the green grapes hang thickest, look up at the little window in the shadowy angle of the low roof opposite, and tell me ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... and scalped and Boone escaped with the greatest difficulty. At the battle of Blue Licks, two years later, two sons fought at his side, one of whom was killed and the other severely wounded. But Boone seemed to bear a charmed life. His years in the wilderness had developed in him an almost supernatural keenness of sight and hearing; and constant peril from the Indians had made him very careful. Whenever he went into the woods after game or Indians, he had perpetually to keep watch to make sure that he was not being hunted in turn. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Heiterkeit (joyousness) is sure to follow. The two are almost synonymous with him. Where Beethoven is unapproachable, however, is in his slow movements, the Adagios, solemn and portentous, in which all of world-sorrow finds expression. It is in these scenes of terror that his powers stand out with supernatural clearness. ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... lodestone, powerful enough to extract every particle of iron from a passing ship; of stagnant seas and fiery skies; of wandering saints and flying islands; all combined to invest the unknown with the terrors of the supernatural, and to deter the explorer of the great ocean. The half-decked vessels that crept along the Mediterranean shores were but ill-fitted to bear the brunt of the furious waves of the Atlantic. The now indispensable sextant was but clumsily anticipated by the newly invented ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... as serious as could have been wished all that day, for there was much on his mind. Perplexing questions tinged with supernatural terrors tormented him. Passing over those having a moral point, the most urgent one was, "S'pose dat ar soger miss him box an come arter it ternight. Ki! If I go ter see, I mout run right on ter de spook. I'se a-gwine ter gib 'im his chance, an' den take mine." So that evening ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... seemed inclined to undervalue external proofs. The other more and more yielded to its repugnance to admit the interruption of natural law, and became more and more disinclined even to discuss the supernatural; and, curiously enough, along with this there was in one remarkable school of religious philosophy an increased readiness to believe in miracles as such, without apparently caring much for them as proofs. Of late, indeed, things have taken a different turn. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... off! Come off!" from every wing was now the angry cry. "Me off, indeed! Oh, would yer? Sh'like to see the feller try!" Burleybumbo then appeared, and vainly tried to drag him back. JOHN stove his pasteboard head in with a most refreshing crack. The wicked Demon now rushed on; his supernatural might Was very little use to him on this surprising night. He tried to push him down the glade, but here again JOHN sold him; He caught the Demon round the waist, and at the Prompter bowled him. Ah! such a shindy ne'er was seen, such riot and such rage— It was the finest "rally" ever seen on ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... it was like a scene at the pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the supernatural in the revelation. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Christianity. As I have written a rather ample book, called "Theism," expressly designed to establish against Atheists and Pantheists that moral Theism which Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans have in common, and which underlies every attempt of any of the three religions to establish its peculiar and supernatural claims; I have no need of entering on that argument here. It is not true, that, as a Theist, I evade the objections urged by real atheists or sceptics; on the contrary, I try to search them to the very bottom. It is only in arguing ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... lack manhood; that a strong hand was often hidden under squalid raiment, and sometimes a stout arm was muffled trader a dusky cloak; thus the fault of nature was retrieved by valour, and deficiency in race requited by nobleness of spirit. He therefore feared the might of no supernatural prowess, save of the god Thor only, to the greatness of whose force nothing human or divine could fitly be compared. The hearts of men ought not to be terrified at phantoms, which were only awful from their ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... wretched Dink have in their whole make-up. I know he is alive because if he had died I'd have felt it. We were so close, so in sympathy, that nothing could happen to one without the other divining it. There was and is a bond between us that is in a way supernatural. I know and feel at all times that he is unhappy, miserable and in trouble, ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... Ware, and soon after, because of his senior's delicate health, was called on to assume the full duty. Theological dogmas, such as the Unitarian Church of Channing's day accepted, did not appeal to Emerson, nor did the supernatural in religion in its ordinary acceptation interest him. The omnipresence of spirit, the dignity of man, the daily miracle of the universe, were what he taught, and while the older members of the congregation may have been disquieted that he did not ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... living at Palmyra, N. Y., claimed to have had a supernatural revelation, by which he was directed to a spot where he found buried a series of golden plates covered with inscriptions, which he translated by means of two transparent stones (Urim and Thummim) found with them. The result ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... the month of December, just as Alonzo had played one of his bewitching airs, with his wonted execution, and was engaged, in converse sweet, with the enraptured Carlotta, an extraordinary and seemingly supernatural noise suddenly proceeded from a distant part of the hallowed ground where Alonzo sacrificed at the shrine of love. Jesu Maria! exclaimed the terrified damsel, what, in the name of heaven, can it be? ere the silvery tones ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... puts the miracle in very small compass, and dilates rather upon the attitude and mind of Jesus Christ preparatory to it. As if, apart altogether from the supernatural element and the lessons that are to be drawn from it, it was worth our while to ponder, for the gladdening of our hearts and the strengthening of our hopes, that lovely picture of sheer simple compassion and tender-heartedness. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... debated for centuries has been, not whether there was any primitive oral language, but what that language was. Some literalists have indeed argued from the Mosaic narrative that because the Creator, by one supernatural act, with the express purpose to form separate peoples, had divided all tongues into their present varieties, and could, by another similar exercise of power, obliterate all but one which should be universal, the fact that he had not ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... husband?" and "Devil take me," striking himself on the forehead and tossing about. There are chances and occasions which occur so opportunely in this world that little-minded men refuse them credence, saying they are supernatural, but men of high intellect know them to be true because they could not be invented. One of the chances came to the poor advocate, even the day after that terrible one which had been so sore a trial to him. One of his clients, a man of good ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... while it was yet vague and uncertain, giving a demoniac and supernatural cast to the group and its tropical surroundings, Esperance suddenly awoke and raised himself upon his elbow. For an instant he gazed around him in bewilderment and terror. Was he dead, and were those swarthy-visaged forms extended motionless on the grass of the oasis the forms of ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... instance, when the depth of water in a creek obliged him to moor his vessels close to the shore, an attack of the Indians was only repulsed by the use of artillery, the thunder and lightning of which seemed always to possess, in the eyes of the savages, a supernatural and therefore awful character. On another occasion, when a conference was held with one of the tribes, great alarm was caused by a notary, who attended to take notes of the conversation. The savages had never before seen the operation of writing; and ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... parts were of a peculiar steel blue, while the brighter portions glowed with a fleshy tint. At dusk, catching the reflection of the sun, they seemed to shine out of the dark sky like pale spectres of gigantic size, casting their supernatural lights over the waves. At midnight the expected lightning burst forth with as almost terror-inspiring grandeur; sometimes eight or ten flashes of forked lightning darted forth at once, lighting up the whole ocean, and showing the dark banks of clouds assembling in the distance. ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... other products and phenomena of nature are estimated, according to his absolute value, divested, as in the case of all other physical and organic sciences, of preconceived ideas or prejudices in favour of the supernatural. He should be studied as in physics we study bodies and the laws which govern them, or as the laws of their motions and combinations are studied in chemistry, allowance always being made for their reciprocal relations, and for their appearance as a whole. For if there be in the universe a distinction ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... dishonorable until the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. The use of medicine was also discouraged. Down through the centuries a few churchmen and many others, especially Jews and Arabs, took up the study. The church authorities did everything possible to thwart it. Supernatural means were so abundant that the use of drugs was not only irreligious but superfluous. Monks who took medicine were punished, and physicians in the thirteenth century could not treat patients without calling ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... coast. The figures of animals and birds carved upon it represent the mythological ancestors of the family or clan in front of whose abode the pole stands. The Indians often hunt similar animals to-day, but believe that their ancestors had supernatural power which raised ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... vision of a glorified form, which much encouraged him. This he certainly attested to his wife, Mr. Austen, and others, before his death; but Mr. Fox, in reciting this article, leaves it to the reader's judgment, to consider it either as a natural or supernatural circumstance. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... hermitage of Metronhena. Make for it with a pure intent and do your utmost endeavour to come into the hermitage, for therein is a true believer from Jerusalem, by name Abdallah, one of the holiest of men, whom God hath blessed with supernatural powers, such as dispel doubts and obscurity. Him certain of the monks seized by fraud and shut in an underground dungeon, where he has lain many a year. So, if ye desire to gain the favour of the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... led to anxious thoughts as to how long this was to last; and probably those members of the community who were less amenable to the influence of the priests, and were jealous of their own authority, were by no means so certain that the popular opinion of the supernatural nature of the white ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... enlightened understanding, hath also received by the Holy Ghost, conviction of the excellency and glory of the things that are of the Spirit of God, and so enflameth the heart with more fervent desires in this duty of prayer; for there is a supernatural excellency in the things that are of the Spirit; "But if the ministration of death, [to which the Pharisee adhered] written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... subvention, alimentation, nutrition, nourishment; eutrophy; manna in the wilderness; food &c. 298; means &c. 632. ministry, ministration; subministration[obs3]; accommodation. relief, rescue; help at a dead lift; supernatural aid; deus ex machina[Lat]. supplies, reinforcements, reenforcements[obs3], succors, contingents, recruits; support &c. (physical) 215; adjunct, ally &c. (helper) 711. V. aid, assist, help, succor, lend one's aid; come to the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... weird to me, this one-sided recognition, this unfamiliar familiarity: it gave me a queer thrill of the supernatural that I can hardly express to you. But I didn't know what to do, when a kindly-faced, middle-aged English upper-class servant rushed out at me, open-armed, and hugging me hard to her breast, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... little, finding no other explanation possible, Mrs. Whitelaw grew to believe quite firmly in the supernatural nature of that unforgotten cry. She remembered the unexplainable footstep which she had heard in the padlocked room in the early dusk of that new-year's-day, when Mrs. Tadman and she explored the old house; and she associated these two sounds in her mind as of a like ghostly character. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... were forty-four hours. He forgot the necessary slowness of navigation; he exaggerated to himself the power of Milady. He credited this woman, who appeared to him the equal of a demon, with agents as supernatural as herself; at the least noise, he imagined himself about to be arrested, and that Planchet was being brought back to be confronted with himself and his friends. Still further, his confidence in the worthy Picard, at one time so great, diminished day by day. This anxiety ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this is most wonderful; that by preternatural interposition both of them had notice given of their approaching death by an unpropitious form, which visibly appeared to them. Although there are people who utterly deny any such thing, and say that no man in his right senses ever yet saw any supernatural phantom or apparition, but that children only, and silly women, or men disordered by sickness, in some aberration of the mind or distemperature of the body, have had empty and extravagant imaginations, whilst the real ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... rigging stood out clearly and sharply, like a silhouette cut out of black paper, against a background of shining oil- smooth water and dense masses of twisting and writhing cloud-shapes all reflecting the weird, mysterious ruddy light. It was an awe-inspiring phenomenon, strongly suggestive of the supernatural, and from the uneasy glances that were directed aft from the forecastle it was not difficult to surmise that none of the men had ever before beheld anything like it. Neither had we of the afterguard, for that matter, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... mostly founded on events of Scripture, though the apocryphal gospels and legends of saints and martyrs were sometimes drawn upon for subjects or for embellishments. In these performances no regard was paid to the rules of natural probability; for, as the operation of supernatural power was assumed, this was held a sufficient ground or principle of credibility in itself. Hence, indeed, the name Marvels, Miracles, or Miracle-Plays, by which they were ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... purpose of propagating the Gospel, but with more reality aspiring to extend their subtile influence over all mankind, this society, with means the most slender and in the face of obstacles the most disheartening, have, with indomitable courage and supernatural patience, accomplished labors unparalleled in the achievements of mind. Now, in the wilds of Western America, taming and teaching races of whose existence the world of refinement had never heard; now climbing the icy ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in their wake is man's self-conceived religion. Now, some men take the prerogative in the manufacture of religion, and there evolve Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism, all inspired, all supernatural, and with their myriads of followers who believed and still believe that theirs ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... are now prepared to consider man as the personal subject of the new life. The spirit of God which takes hold of man and renews his life must not be conceived as a foreign power breaking the continuity of consciousness. The natural is the basis of the supernatural. It is not a new personality which is created; it is the old that is transformed and completed. If there was not already implicit in man that which predisposed him for the higher life, a consciousness to which the spirit could appeal, then Christianity would be ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... nearest to Napoleon regarded him as an almost supernatural being. The Baron of Mneval, who, before he was the private secretary of Marie Louise, when regent, had been secretary of the First Consul and Emperor, thus writes: "By the influence which Napoleon ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... To all who understand the ways of the East, it is as witty, and as full of what is popularly called "chaff" as it is possible to be. There is not a dull page in it, and it will especially please those who delight in the weird and supernatural, the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... that it cannot apprehend the absolute beginning or the absolute end of anything. If we tried to conceive the first man created as a child, and gradually unfolding his physical and mental powers, we could not understand his living for one day without supernatural aid. If, on the contrary, we tried to conceive the first man created full-grown in body and mind; the conception of an effect without a cause, of a full-grown mind without a previous growth, would equally transcend ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... about this splendid result, namely, that in matters of belief the humblest of us are lifted up to the level of the most sagacious, so that really a simple cornet in the Blues is no more likely to entertain a foolish belief about ghosts or witchcraft, or any other supernatural topic, than the Lord High Chancellor or the Leader of the House of Commons. How different is the intellectual regime of Eastern countries! In Syria and Palestine and Egypt you might as well dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of magic. There is no controversy about the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... wonder connected with this, which of all the phenomena of Nature, nearest approaches to the supernatural: it has uttered a sound—that beautiful sheaf of many tinted flames! Once, twice, we have heard it, or if it were not that, it was an angel's whisper! In that great solitude there is no fear of any other sound intruding to deceive our ear. There, is such deep ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... the tree, and sinks in moral worth and in peace of mind. Never, since the time of Helen, has there been a woman in literature of more physical charm. Tolstoi, whose understanding of the body is almost supernatural, has created in Anna a woman, quite ordinary from the mental and spiritual point of view, but who leaves on every reader an indelible vision of surpassing loveliness. One is not surprised at Vronsky's instant and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... less in earnest, he might have smiled at this, but her beauty, intensified as it was by the fervour of her feeling, seemed transfigured into something quite supernatural which ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... rumor passed through the town that Hughson had turned into a negro, and the negro into a white man. This was a new mystery, and day after day crowds would come and gaze on the strange transformation, some thinking it supernatural, and others trying to give an explanation. Hughson had threatened to take poison, and it was thought by many that he had, and it was the effect of this that had wrought the change in his appearance. For ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... those good souls, whose credulous morality is so invaluable a treasure to crafty politicians. Indeed there was wherewithal to charm everybody, except those few who are not much pleased with professions of supernatural virtue, who know of what stuff such professions are made, for what purposes they are designed, and in what they are sure constantly to end. Many innocent gentlemen, who had been talking prose all their lives without knowing anything of the matter, began at last ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... confidence in human reason and faith in social ideals, and while the materialists abandoned themselves to hideous orgies and sensual debaucheries, the higher-minded went to the opposite excess and sought by flight from the world and mortification of the flesh to attain to supernatural states of ecstasy. A book has come down to us under the name of Philo[60] which describes "the contemplative life" of a Jewish brotherhood that lived apart on the shores of Lake Mareotis by the mouth of the Nile. Men and women lived in ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... standpoint of the "mythological" school, and tended to see in the old stories myths of the sun and dawn and the darkness, and in the divinities sun-gods and dawn-goddesses and a host of dark personages of supernatural character. The present writer, studying the subject rather from an anthropological point of view and in the light of modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement with Sir John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced that Sir John would ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... and all other temptations, as I am sure you do, I cannot fancy there will be any danger of your not being able to check a dishonest merchant or an extortionate collector. For even the Greeks, when they see you living thus, will look upon you as some hero from their old annals, or some supernatural being from heaven, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Firemen overtook him. There he saw in the hall, lighted by the lanterns being carried back and forth so swiftly, and placed in the corner with no more care or consideration than was possible under such circumstances, the dead body of old Jordan. His body, and close beside it, as if in supernatural mockery of all things human, the doll, the Swiss maid with the machine in her stomach. Sighing and sobbing, he fell down; his forehead touched the dead hand of the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... compromise from heathenism. In the sixth century in the West dances in church were often forbidden. The only stock of ideas in the eighth and ninth centuries were fantastic notions of nature, heaven and hell, history, supernatural agents, etc., which notions the ecclesiastics had an interest to teach. Dramatic representation was a means of teaching. The external action corresponded closely with the mental concept or story. From the time of Charlemagne ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... echoed Karl and Caspar—both considerably relieved at this natural explanation of what had appeared so like a supernatural apparition. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... the speaker intends, [then] this extraordinary man, without the aid of fancy, without the advantages of person, voice, attitude, gesture, or any of the ornaments of an orator, deserves to be considered as one of the most eloquent men in the world.... He possesses one original, and, almost, supernatural faculty; the faculty of developing a subject by a single glance of his mind, and detecting at once, the very point on which every controversy depends. No matter what the question; though ten times ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... changes in the air, to the influence of planets or to the action of offended gods. The priests and charlatans who sought to excuse their inability to treat epidemics successfully were quick to affirm supernatural causes. Hippocrates (400 B.C.), with whom medicine may be said to begin, thought such diseases, even then called epidemics, were caused by the air; he says, "When many individuals are attacked by a disease at the same time, the cause must be sought in ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... of Ramy; and as she folded this letter and laid it between the leaves of her Bible, Ann Eliza felt that her last hope was gone. Miss Mellins, of course, had long since suggested the mediation of the police, and cited from her favourite literature convincing instances of the supernatural ability of the Pinkerton detective; but Mr. Hawkins, when called in council, dashed this project by remarking that detectives cost something like twenty dollars a day; and a vague fear of the law, some half-formed vision of Evelina in the clutch ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... winds of inspiration. At times he was astonished to see his pen fill the sheet so rapidly that he would stop, filled with pride at having thus reduced to obedience words and rhythms, and would ask himself what supernatural power had permitted him to arm these divine ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... parent of superstition, by ignorance. Those two animals prove the Sumatran's greatest scourge. The mischief the former commit is incredible, whole villages being often depopulated by them, and the suffering people learn to reverence as supernatural effects the furious ravages of an enemy they have ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... watered, but God gave the increase. Therefore, neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase."(47) In this beautiful allegory the Apostle compares the genesis of supernatural faith in the soul to that of a plant under the care of a gardener, who while he plants and waters, yet looks to God for "the increase." The Apostle and his disciple Apollo are the spiritual gardeners through whose preaching the Corinthians received the grace of mediate illumination. ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... briefly: "They regard the Bible as the human record of a divine revelation; not absolutely infallible, since there is no book written in any human language but must partake in a measure of the imperfections of that language. Many of this school, while admitting the Bible to contain the record of a true supernatural revelation, do not consider it to be without positive error of historical fact, not without false coloring from popular legend and tradition, but nevertheless a record as good as human hands could make a ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... spoke of the supernatural I had been thinking of something entirely different. The fact that he should speak of it at the very instant when I was thinking of something else, struck me as at least a ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... Ralph Bevan and young Horace fixed on Fanny Waddington and Barbara delighted eyes in faces of a supernatural gravity. Young Horace was looking odd and unlike himself, with his jaws clamped together in his prodigious effort not to giggle. Whenever Barbara's eyes met his and Ralph's, a faint smile quivered on her face ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... which had slumbered for several years after the death of Defoe, but which the genius of Fielding and Smollett had again brought into fashion. But their tales purported to be pictures of the manners of the day. This was rather the forerunner of Mrs. Radcliffe's[1] weird tales of supernatural mystery, which for a time so engrossed the public attention as to lead that "wicked wag," Mr. George Coleman, to regard them as representatives of the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Supernormal, not Supernatural. Supernormal, not Abnormal. The Prevailing Ignorance. Prejudice Against the Unusual. Great Changes Impending. The Naturalness of Occult Powers. The World of Vibrations. Super-sensible Vibrations. Unseen Worlds. Interpenetrating Planes and Worlds. Manifold Planes of Existence. Planes ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... special spirit as the author. Lakes, seas, rivers, springs, mountains, caverns, trees, bushes, villages, towns, houses, roads, air, sky, the ground in under, in short all nature and the principal things they see, are, in their opinion, populated by supernatural beings. I need hardly say that not all the innumerable spirits in whom they believe have the same importance in their minds and therefore are not all venerated to the same extent. In the animist's cult ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... me lies, doctor," answered Mr. Ridley, with a sudden calmness that seemed supernatural, "you may count on my doing. If she dies, I am lost." There was a deep solemnity in his tones as he uttered this last sentence. "You see, sir," he added, "what I ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... written by priests, or collected from their reports; and calculated solely to raise lofty ideas of the origin of each nation. Gods and demi-gods were the principal actors; and truth is seldom to be expected where the personages are supernatural. The Greek historians have no advantage over the Peruvian, but in the beauty of their language, or from that language being more familiar to us. Mango Capac, the son of the sun, is as authentic a ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... them to Ireland, and in the plains of Kildare, not far from the castle of Naas, miraculously set them up.... These stones (according to the British history) Aurelius Ambrosius, King of the Britons, procured Merlin by supernatural means to ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... supposition that neither of these theories, whether of fraud or fiction, will account, if taken by itself, for the whole of the supernatural phenomena, which strew the pages of the New Testament, then the objector, who relies on both, must believe, in turn, both sets of the above paradoxes; and then, with still more reason than before, may we exclaim, 'O infidel, great is ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the worship of incarnate deities is common in eastern Asia but here it acquires an extent and intensity unknown elsewhere. The Tibetans show a strange power of organization in dealing with the supernatural. In India incarnations have usually been recognized post-mortem and as incalculable manifestations of the spirit.[1014] But at least since the seventeenth century, the Lamas have accepted them as part of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... of love's lingering ember Has faded in gloom, You cannot neglect, O remember, A voice from the tomb! That stern supernatural diction Should act as a solemn restriction, Although by a mere legal fiction A voice from ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... condemned eternally to live over again a life, without purpose and without pleasure, and of which he has long since grown weary, there is no deliverance on earth. Nothing remains to him but the longing for death. Toward the close of the middle ages, after the human mind had been satiated with the supernatural, and the revival of vital activity impelled men to new enterprises, this longing disclosed itself most boldly and successfully in the history of the efforts to discover new worlds. An "impetuous desire to perform manly deeds" seized mankind as the earth-encircling, ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... whatsoever." Lilly was, in a word, a self-seeking but successful knave. People who had been robbed, women in love, men in debt, all in trouble and doubt, from the King downwards, sought his aid. He pretended to be a man of science, not a man gifted with supernatural powers. Whether he succeeded in believing in astrology and deceiving himself, it is impossible to say; he was probably too clever for that, but he deceived others admirably, and was one of the noted and most successful of the ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... does it to shew his knowledge of natural history. But surely the idea of so strange and awful a creature (a huge mild-faced man ending in a dragon's body) lying familiarly on the edge of the gulf, as a beaver does by the water, combines the supernatural with the familiar in a very impressive manner. It is this combination of extremes which is the life and soul of the whole poem; you have this world in the next; the same persons, passions, remembrances, intensified by superhuman despairs or beatitudes; the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the symbolic and the marvelous tempted Hawthorne constantly to the brink of the supernatural. But here his art is delicate. The old-fashioned ghost is too robust an apparition for modern credulity. The modern ghost is a "clot on the brain." Recall the ghosts in Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw"—just a suspicion of evil presences. The true interpretation of that story I have ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... character of a mythic, heroic, and Christian poem, and, at the same time, constitutes the unity of its parts. The ancients, whose representative types I introduce, knew and appreciated but two kinds of power, brute or physical, and spiritual, including all occult and supernatural efficacy, and strength of intellect and will. Virtue, triumphant by the aid of adventitious force, or relying upon unconquerable pride and disdain to resist it, was the highest reach of their dynamic conceptions. Moral power is properly a Christian idea. It is not, therefore, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the pastor, relieved. For he had been on the point of believing he had come upon something supernatural. It was well, he thought, that this was only ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... stronger his passion grew for hiaqua, and, when a spirit told him in a dream of vast hoards at the summit of Rainier, he determined to climb the mountain. The spirit was Tamanoues, which, Winthrop explains, is the vague Indian personification of the supernatural. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... one another in embellishing her young mind with all the graces, learning and accomplishments possible for the human mind to contain. Her native brightness and active mind absorbed everything with an almost supernatural rapidity and tact, and it was not long before she became their peer, and her qualities of mind reached out so far beyond theirs in its insatiable longing, that she, in her turn, became their tutor, adviser and consoler, as well as their ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... unfamiliar channel, but there they pursued their will independently to conclusions of their own. The storm had ceased, and something of the solemn spirit of the night had imparted itself to his reflections, giving them the sombre tinge of a supernatural dread. Perhaps there was an element of prescience in it. "I should not like to die," ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... brought on by weariness and long exertion; and when I awoke, I felt my strength greatly restored. Singular enough, my spirits were a good deal lighter, and I was far less despairing than I had been before. It seemed as if some supernatural influence sustained me— perhaps an inspiration given by the great Creator himself, to enable me to persevere. Notwithstanding that my disappointments had been many and oft-repeated, I bore up under the infliction as meekly as I could, and never yet had I felt in ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... pursued Greig. "The pistol we found is brand new and has never been fired. Certainly Whitmore didn't shoot himself and then swallow the gun. And since the clerks are sure that no one entered or left the office, why, the only explanation I can give is that some supernatural agency was employed ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... that the Blessed Mary had filled her place, and that her absence was unknown. The collection known as Vies des Peres exhibits the same naivete of pious feeling and imagination. Man is weak and sinful; but by supernatural aid the humble are exalted, sinners are redeemed, and the suffering innocent are avenged. Even Theophile, the priest who sold his soul to the devil, on repentance receives back from the Queen of Heaven ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... "And supernatural. I should come on the ghost days. For if ever a ghost walked out of its earthy habitation, I should think it would be here. Did you ever see a ghost, ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... adventure had proved. But courage must have something to attack, or at least to resist, before it can make itself manifest; and in this sickening waiting, listening, watching, without the use of one's eyes, there was something which smacked of the supernatural, something to damp the spirits of ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Fresleven's remains, till I got out and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest, though; but when an opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Abram, and the concealed anguish of Sarai in her conscious degradation, the hours wore heavily away, until the judgment of God upon the royal household brought deliverance. Pharaoh, though an idolater, knew by this supernatural infliction, that there was guilt in the transaction, and called Abram to an account. He had nothing to say in self-acquittal, and with a strange magnanimity, was sent away quietly, with his wife and property, followed only by the reproaches of ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... and she had inherited it; it was warning her that something dreadful was going to happen to him on his way to the hotel. "Well, if I see anything in the papers to-morrow morning about a big man being run down by a motor-car in the fog, I'll know there's something in the supernatural," said the cool elf that dwelt in her head. But agony transfixed her like an arrow because her thought reminded her that this glorious being whose eyes blazed with serenity as other people's eyes blaze only ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... writing. The little preserved is mainly preserved in quotations and fragments. But after this gap, from somewhat before the year 200, we come to the beginning of a regular series, and a series increasing in volume, of documentary evidence. Not, I repeat, of evidence to the truth of supernatural doctrines, but of evidence to what these doctrines and their accompanying ritual and organization were: evidence to the way in which the Church was constituted, to the way in which she regarded her mission, to the things she thought important, to ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... sleep had at last become so active through the exhausting and depleting medical regime that he went through in Malines that it actually was able to dictate its will to his body, and that everything might have happened to him as it did then and afterwards without any supernatural or ultranatural agency ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... And, with a supernatural effort, she flung me on to the side of the boat; we both hung half overboard; her hair touched the water. The decisive moment had come. I planted my knee against the bottom of the boat, caught her by the tresses with one hand and by the throat ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... of romance; however, though I cannot promise you all the discomfort generally pertaining to an old castle, you will find legends and ghostly lore enough to claim your respect; and if old Martha be still to the fore, as I trust she is, you will soon have a supernatural and appropriate anecdote for every closet and corner of the mansion; but here we are—so, without ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... mysterious, inexplicable power to follow the man she loves wherever he goes, to steal secretly after him, to lay herself down to sleep near him, to come back to him, as by some innate compulsion, however often she may be driven away. And other instances of supernatural interference are to be met with both in Kleist's ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... production of the annoying vermin lice—Exodus viii. 16-19—the plague of darkness, Exodus x. 22-24—the dividing of the Red Sea, Exodus xiv. 21-31. These bear all the characters of true miracles. And how far above the pretended supernatural doings of Mohammed, and the alleged Pagan and Romish miracles, were the wonderful deeds of Christ and His apostles! For example, our Saviour stilled the tempest, calmed the ruffled ocean, walked upon the sea, fed the famished multitude, opened the eyes of the blind, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... The supernatural creature had been rehearsing until 3 a.m., she had been trying on clothes from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. She had borne the chief weight of Smack Your Face, on her unique shoulders for nearly three hours and a half. She had changed ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... is akin to that worship and respect for the deeds and productions of those long dead or in distant countries, in which the human spirit relieved itself from the oppressive expectation of judgment and vengeance which had paralysed it, as the beauty of the supernatural world was lost sight of behind its terrors, and witches and wizards engrossed the popular mind, in which for a time saints and angels had held the ascendancy. The future now became the return of a golden age; not a garish and horrible novelty called heaven and hell, but ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... light topics. At length they diverged to the supernatural. Mr. Revel, as is customary with Englishmen, who are very sceptical, affected for the moment a belief in spirits. With the rest of the society, however, it was no light theme. Madame de Schulembourg avowed her profound credulity. The artist was a decided votary. Schulembourg philosophically accounted ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... Billie, and perhaps Gusty Bellows, were not quite as easy in their minds about that "ghost-ridden" island as they might have been; although, if taken to task, all would doubtless have stoutly denied any belief in things supernatural. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... the supernatural power that dwells in the earth, which brings forth the food that sustains life; there corn is spoken of as h'Atira, "mother breathing forth life." The power which dwells in the earth, which enables it to give life to all growing things, comes from above. Therefore, ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... spirit which is superannuated, while its "muddy vesture of decay" is in very tolerable repair. His natural man is still comparatively young, and lives on in the long, long thoughts of youth; but his supernatural man has aged, with certain moral effects which alarm his doubts of the pleasures he once predicated of eternity. "If it is going to be like this with me!" he says to himself, and shrinks from supplying the responsive clause of ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... votaries encumbered with the trappings of a futile erudition of the insignificant or clinging pathetically to the insecure relics of teleological doctrine, or, still less virile, seeking support in a return to the unscientific tales of supernatural spiritualism. ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... revealed his vision, his father's soul was filled with reverence and fear, and he breathed with a continual consciousness of supernatural presence. When his feelings became somewhat composed, he leaned over the couch, and spoke a few affectionate words to his son; but the invalid turned away his head, as if disturbed by the presence of a stranger. The ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... proposition, The Duke of Wellington is mortal, is immediately an inference from the proposition, All men are mortal, whence do we derive our knowledge of that general truth? No supernatural aid being supposed, the answer must be, from observation. Now, all which men can observe are individual cases. From these all general truths must be drawn, and into these they may be again resolved; for a general truth is but an aggregate of particular truths—a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various |
