"Supernatural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at length determined that it must be the "great medicine" of the white party; an appellation given by the Indians to anything of supernatural and mysterious power that is guarded as a talisman. They were completely thrown out in their conjecture, however, by an offer of the white men to exchange the calf for a horse; their estimation of the great medicine sank in an instant, and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... largest species I have ever seen, either in the Alps or our museums. They made no attempt to move when we approached; they seemed to regard themselves as kings of the desert, looked on Tyre as an appanage which belonged to them, and whither they were about to return. Nothing more supernatural ever met my eyes; I could almost suppose that behind them I saw the terrible figure of Ezekiel, the poet of vengeance, pointing to the devoted city which the divine wrath had overwhelmed with destruction. The discharge of a few muskets made them rise from their rock: but they showed no disposition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... about the length and breadth of a man. It did not appear to be a beaten path, nor were there people enough in the neighbourhood to make such a path. Probably it was an old track, long disused and forgotten, for by such natural causes is man's belief in the supernatural fed. ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... my time for vedette duty. I relieve Butler. Not long till dawn, I think. Far to my left I hear sounds, as if an army is stirring. My time will be short on post. Where was I? Yes; the supernatural power of ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... impostor. Many, however, had full faith in his supernatural power, and often he seemed to believe in his own spectral ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... evil comes to me; for if on the one hand thou dost tell me that the barber and curate of our village are here in company with us, and on the other I find myself shut up in a cage, and know in my heart that no power on earth that was not supernatural would have been able to shut me in, what wouldst thou have me say or think, but that my enchantment is of a sort that transcends all I have ever read of in all the histories that deal with knights-errant that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the men huddled together on the forecastle looked ghastly and death-like in this unearthly light, and the hull, spars, rigging and canvas of the schooner assumed such a weird and supernatural appearance when illumined by it, that she might easily have been mistaken for a cruiser ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... dogmas may have existed in some form elsewhere, they become new revelations to us, by her supernatural selection ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... much about 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 ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the voice choked in her throat. As rapidly as this mysterious being had risen from, he sank into his former crawling attitude, and disappeared. All this occurred in much less time than has been occupied in relating it, and the poor maiden almost thought she had been deceived by some supernatural appearance. She was soon aroused from her painful state of voiceless terror by the words of Burrell, who now spoke more loudly ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... what aspect, or relation, to the field which it concerns did the term religion originally come forward? The general field, overlooked by religion, is the ground which lies between the spirit of man and the supernatural world. At present, under the humblest conception of religion, the human spirit is supposed to be interested in such a field by the conscience and the nobler affections, But I suspect that originally these great faculties were absolutely excluded ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the deep penetrating accents of his words, carried a sting to Hugo's conscience. He felt as if Dino had a supernatural knowledge of his past life and his future, when ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... we must speak further of their bearing on the evangelist's view of the Old Testament. His Messianic quotations are introduced by such phrases as "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet," or, "then was fulfilled," etc. The tendency of modern scepticism to ridicule the supernatural element in prophecy has caused some writers to depreciate this method of quotation. And we find even a thoughtful Roman Catholic writer speaking of it as "giving the impression that the supple and living story of the life of Jesus is only a chain of debts which fall due, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... with mingled feelings. If the words of Beth Cameron had created in his mind a notion that the mystery surrounding Black Rock was supernatural in character, the interview with Jonathan K. McGuire had dispelled it. That McGuire was a very much frightened man was certain, but it seemed equally certain to Peter that what he feared was no ghost or banshee but ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... certain great outstanding experiences in our Lord Jesus' life. Let us briefly notice what these were and group them together. There was the Bethlehem Birth. That was a thing altogether distinctive in itself. It was a supernatural birth, the Spirit of God working along purely human lines, in a new special way, for a special purpose. It was a rare blending of God and man in the action of life. It was followed by the Nazareth Life; that was a commonplace life, lived in a commonplace village, but ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... the very atmosphere they breathed—heavier upon them fell the sense of something almost supernatural, beyond the human and the finite. Skeptic and faint believer, sinner, Christian and scoffer, they were all alike now in the presence of a faith whose evidence was before them in harrowing vividness, in the torment and agony of a fellow creature who ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... according to the Septuagint chronology, which may very possibly have been the original Hebrew chronology. There is thus ample time given for the multiplication and diffusion of man over the earth, and for the formation—either by natural or supernatural causes, in combination with the anomalous and altogether extraordinary condition of the earth—of all the various ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... read, in story books, of mysterious gentlemen who went about doing good merely for the pleasure of it, and who always reached the scene of distress with fairy-like certainty, when everybody and everything would have gone to ruin without them. Such a strange, supernatural embodiment of goodness seemed Marcus Wilkeson to her childish fancy. When he entered the room—and he was an every-day caller now—she looked around with great anxiety to see that all the chairs were in their proper places; that there ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... reaches a high development in savagery, is the ritual element, especially the idea of ceremonial uncleanness, based on a dread of the supernatural influences which the sexual organs and functions are supposed to exert. It may be to some extent rooted in the elements already referred to, and it leads us into a much wider field than that of modesty, so that it is only necessary to touch slightly on ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... powers of premonition seem supernatural, it may be well to reveal the comparative simplicity of his methods. Genius, analyzed, is often disappointing, Mr. Plimpton's was selective and synthetic. To illustrate in a particular case, he had met Mr. Parr in New York and had learned that the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Don Augustin Pascual, and other illustrious naturalists. Sit down, and I will tell you a strange and wonderful story in proof of my thesis, which is, though you call me an obscurantist for it, that supernatural events still occur on this terraqueous globe. I mean events which you cannot get into terms of reason, or science, or philosophy—as those 'words, words, words,' in Hamlet's phrase, are understood (or ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... (theological Rationalism) lays it down as an axiom that religion is revealed to men in no other manner than that which is agreeable both to the nature of things and to reason, as the witness and interpreter of divine providence; and teaches that the subject-matter of every supposed supernatural revelation, is to be examined and judged according to the ideas regarding religion and morality, which we have formed in the mind by the help of reason.... Whosoever, therefore, despising that supremacy of human reason, maintains that the authority of a revelation, said to have been communicated ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Superhuman is not supernatural. How shall half-way judge of journey done? Shall this germ and protoplast of being Rest mid-life and say his ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... "Wallenstein"; returned to France in 1814; declared for the Bourbons, and pled in favour of constitutional liberty; he was a supporter of Louis Philippe, and a rationalist in religion, and declared himself opposed to the supernatural element ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... rites to be observed in case of any manifestations of the Evil One's power, at last confounded religion with magic) regarded the Abbe Tolbiac as somewhat of a wizard, and respected him as much for the supernatural power he was supposed to possess as for the irreproachable ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... poor soul had agonised and trembled at the thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only because she had always credited the police with supernatural powers of detection. That they should come to know the awful fact she kept hidden in her breast would have seemed to her, on the whole, a natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly suspect it appeared beyond the range ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a ghastly supernatural terror which far exceeded any ordinary sense of fear, he gazed at her, spellbound, his blood freezing, his very limbs stiffening, for now—now she looked like the picture he had painted of her; and Death—Death, livid, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... to and from the windlass-end, when, suddenly, we heard a loud scream coming from ahead, apparently directly from under the bows. The darkness, and complete stillness of the night, and the solitude of the ocean, gave to the sound a dreadful and almost supernatural effect. I stood perfectly still, and my heart beat quick. The sound woke up the rest of the watch, who stood looking at one another. "What, in the name of God, is that?'' said the second mate, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... vague fear of this mad man who despite his reputed age seemed as youthful and as agile as a man in his thirties, was gripping me. Perhaps the strangeness of the wilderness park added to my awe, for certainly one could expect almost anything supernatural to happen in the twilight of the forest of giant trees, whose interlacing branches overhead shut out ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... the female organ of generation), with all the privileges and perquisites which such honor bestowed upon woman, there came the inevitable revolt, which comes in course of time, from all tyranny and special privilege, whether it be individual, national, racial, sexual, or supernatural. Thus there was established a "new religion," and this time it was the male organ which was deified as the symbol of eternal life, of creative energy. In many instances both symbols were represented, but for the most part the same subtle struggle for supremacy, the remnants ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... the pale light flickered upon her features, I thought I could detect the semblance of a smile. The splendor of her costume and the glittering gems which shone upon her spotless robe gleamed through the darkness with an almost supernatural brilliancy, and so beautiful did she look, so calm her pale features, that as I opened and shut my eyes and rubbed my lids, I scarcely dared to trust to my erring senses, and believe it could be real. What could it mean? Whence this silence; this cold sense of awe and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... exactly you describe what I have felt so often, and which I thought nobody had ever felt but myself! But hark! here comes the sweeping sound over the wood-tops;—now it dies away;—how solemn the stillness that succeeds! Now the breeze swells again. It is like the voice of some supernatural being—the voice of the spirit of the woods, that watches over them by night. Ah! what light is yonder? But it is gone. And now it gleams again, near the root of that ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... most 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 ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... and dreaded as a diabolical and supernatural being; and indeed he took no pains to undeceive the public, for the superstitious terrors inspired by his person served to keep away all the chamois-hunters from his chamois, which he cared for and managed as a great lord cares for the deer in his forests. Round the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... of Swat was a man of seventy years of age at the time of the Umbeyla expedition; he had led a holy life, and had gained such an influence over the minds of Mahomedans in general, that they believed he was supplied by supernatural means with the necessaries of life, and that every morning, on rising from his prayers, a sum of money sufficient for the day's expenditure was ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... when either attempts to block the other's path. Charles Darwin wisely said, "I do not attack Moses, and I think Moses can take care of himself." Both physicists and theologians were wrong when they thought of "nature" as something fixed, so that it is possible to state what is natural and what supernatural; "nature" is plastic, responding all the while to new stimuli, and the title of a recent book, Creative Evolution, indicates a changed scientific and ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses was affected; he felt it rather as a consciousness—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence—some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and superior to them in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... lament Tamburini as if he were your father; "whether it is true that we are to have the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito, this season; and what a heaven of delight we shall experience from the united action of these twenty supernatural pettitoes." You needn't express yourself after this fashion, else you will shock miss, who lounges near you in an agony of affected rapture: you must sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your cane, and say "divine—yes—hope it may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... and its beating suspended for a moment or two. The farmstead was intensely quiet, with the ominous stillness of death. All the windows were shrouded with their check curtains. There was no clatter of Suzanne's wooden clogs about the fold or the kitchen. If it had been Sunday, this supernatural silence would have been easily accounted for; but it was Thursday. I scarcely dared go on and ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... strange and 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, exclaimed with many ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... and his horse moved at last, but they did not come forward; they rode slowly toward the right, curving in a circle about the kneeling boy, but coming no nearer. They were still vague and indistinct, but they seemed blended into one, and the supernatural aspect of the misty form of horse and rider increased. The horse trod lightly now, and Dick no longer heard the sound of footsteps, only the bitter moaning of the wind over the vast ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... the very heart of the Black Forest, the companion of its people, the observer of their most intimate talk and ways. You have heard the women gossip at the well, you have made friends with Leegart the seamstress, who believes that quite against her will she is gifted with supernatural powers. There is Haespele, too, who made Joseph his new boots, and would marry Martina if he could; and there is David, the father of Martina, who was hardly kept from murdering his daughter when she came home in disgrace, and whose grandson becomes the apple of his eye. The whole picture ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power issuing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... warrior, clad in steel, save the beautifully-formed head, which was covered only by his own luxuriant raven curls. In a better light it could not have been placed, particularly in the evening; the rays, condensed and softened, seemed to gather up their power into one focus, and throw such an almost supernatural glow on the half face, give such an extraordinary appearance of life to the whole figure, that a casual visitant to that chamber might well fancy it was no picture but reality on which he gazed. But no such emotion was at work in the bosom of Nigel Bruce, though ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... move almost inevitably to one of two denouements—a materialistic explanation or a supernatural. THE TENANT OF CROMLECH COTTAGE has a surprise for the reader in that the physical explanation of the noises and movements that have disturbed the novelist owner of the haunted cottage—that these were occasioned ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... and Lady Constance. The latter had chosen to represent "Miranda," and her loveliness seemed almost supernatural. The pale gold of her hair and the perfect shell-pink of her complexion were set off to advantage by her gown, which, simple as it was, yet showed by that very simplicity the hand of the master ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, which gives an account of the exodus from Jerusalem of the "children of Lehi"; and it goes on to tell of their wanderings in the wilderness, during eight years, and their supernatural protection by one of their number, a party by the name of Nephi. They finally reached the land of "Bountiful," and camped by the sea. After they had remained there "for the space of many days"—which is more Scriptural than definite—Nephi was commanded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate, and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... must have known the dangers. No need of supernatural knowledge here. His familiarity with David and Jeremiah and other Hebrew writers, His knowledge of human nature as it had grown to be, His knowledge of a foe subtler than human, the fine sensitiveness of His finely organized sensitive spirit—these ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... he retired early and lay open-eyed in the diffused starry light, wakeful in the glint of the moon as it shimmered through the half-opened door. It was that half hour in which all the past appears supernatural; that forerunner of sleep, in which the remotest memories are revived. The sea roared, strident calls of the night birds broke the stillness, the gulls complained with a lament like tortured children. What were his friends doing now? What were they ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is wonderful, even to those who are small cogs in the great machine, and so it must seem almost supernatural in its showing of strength to those who look upon it for ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... commonplace events. To be sure, the shepherd Antoli had seen him, but had spoken of him voluntarily as a mysterious creature, one of the blessed saints come down to aid the sick. The beggar woman had seen him, but had fallen prostrate at his feet as in awe of supernatural presence. When the wandering god had talked across the hedge the eyes of Giacomo and Assunta had apparently been holden; and now Bertuccio, whose ears were keen, and whose eyes, in their lazy Italian fashion, saw more then they ever seemed to, Bertuccio had been ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... (or down) helter-skelter without knowing whither or why; but as a fact—a great and mysterious fact—to be pondered over, studied, and perchance in some small measure understood. By the multitude these men were sneered at as eccentric or feared as supernatural. Their calm, clear, contemplative attitude seemed either insane or diabolic; and accordingly they have been pitied as enthusiasts or killed as blasphemers. One of these great souls may have been a prophet or preacher, and have called to ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... had retreated to the stairs, it was the Professor's Wife who once more voiced their thoughts. This time her voice carried overtones of supernatural horror. ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Hinduism as contrasted with the remorselessness of Siva or the cold indifference of Brahma. It was the dawn of a doctrine of faith, and in this character it was probably of later date than the rise of Buddhism. Indeed, the Brahmans learned this lesson of the value of Divine sympathy from the Buddha. The supernatural element ascribed to Krishna, as well as to Rama, was a growth, and had its origin in the jealousy of the Brahmans toward the warrior caste. His exaltation as the Supreme was an after-thought of the inventive Brahmans. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... hoped to share; and, when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines from affording them passage, they made long and circuitous journeys through the Indian country, and appeared in the province as if conveyed by a supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened almost to madness by the treatment which they received, produced actions contrary to the rules of decency, as well as of rational religion, and presented a singular contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian successors of the present day. The ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... scrowl Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl, 430 With which, like Indian plantations, The learned stock the constellations Nor those that draw for signs have bin To th' houses where the planets inn. It must be supernatural, 435 Unless it be that cannon-ball That, shot i' th' air point-blank upright, Was borne to that prodigious height, That learn'd Philosophers maintain, It ne'er came backwards down again; 440 But in the airy region yet Hangs like the body of MAHOMET For ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which supernatural, and evil, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... dreams are chimerical? No, no, some of them are mysterious. My preceptors have told me a thousand incidents, which will not permit me to doubt of it. Besides, though I were not otherwise convinced, I could not forbear giving some credit to my dreams. The old man who appeared to me had something supernatural, he was not one of those men whom nothing but age makes venerable; there appeared a divine air about his person. In short, he was such a one as our great prophet is represented; and if you will have me tell you what I think, I believe it was he, who, pitying my affliction, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... that all the existing languages, instead of being primordial creations, or the direct gifts of a supernatural Power, have been slowly elaborated, partly by the modification of pre-existing dialects, partly by borrowing terms at successive periods from numerous foreign sources, and partly by new inventions made some of them deliberately, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... Christian, though he reduced the dogmatic element to a minimum. Some of his disciples, however, became freethinkers in the technical sense, and held that revelation was needless, and that in point of fact no supernatural revelation had been made. The orthodox, on the other hand, while admitting or declaring that faith should be founded on reason, and that reason could establish a 'religion of nature,' admitted in various ways that a supernatural revelation was an essential ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... the apartment narrowly, as people commonly, but foolishly, are wont to do in similar cases. His search, as might have been expected, was useless; but not liking at present to alarm his domestics with a report of the house being haunted, he resolved to await further evidences of the supernatural visitation. Next morning at about the same hour, the apparitions again entered his apartment; and acting as they had previously done, gazed earnestly at him for some seconds ere they vanished. On the morning of the third day the trio appeared again, when the gentleman of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... had been educated, who becomes a shepherd, solacing himself with his pipe (musical) and the simplicities of country lore for the loss of love and ambition; and eventually, after his death, is deified by rustic tradition into a supernatural helper of "all things that are kind"—here is an idea for the tenderest handling. My feeling is, while giving Mrs. BUCKROSE every credit for such an inspiration, that she should have been a little sterner with herself over the treatment, and thus avoided a certain stickiness that may irritate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... depended upon the testimony of a very few & usually of a single individual—We will first therefore consider the revelation of Mount Sinai. Taking the fact plainly it happened thus. The Jews were told by a man whom they believed to have supernatural powers that they were to prepare for that God wd reveal himself in three days on the mountain at the sound of a trumpet. On the 3rd day there was a cloud & lightning on the mountain & the voice of a trumpet extremely ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... Temperaments of every type are to be met in her pages—a sensitive poet, troubled by "confusion of thought" deepening into melancholia; a harum-scarum boy, in whose sunny joyousness she discerns the germ of supernatural grace; vehement sinners, fearful saints, religious recluses deceived by self- righteousness, and men of affairs devoutly faithful to sober duty. Catherine enters into every consciousness. As a rule we associate ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... to your feet, and don't run after your tail, that is to say, recollect that you are an animal devoid of reason; or if you seem at present to have a little of it, we are already agreed that this is a supernatural and altogether unparalleled circumstance. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... round to the company. All that was expected in return was to cover bits of paper with writing, and thus convert them into amulets; for, in his capacity of sorcerer, the Christian is supposed to possess supernatural ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... strange pugnacity. But the Irish peasant also has qualities which are common to all peasants, and his nation has qualities that are common to all healthy nations. I mean chiefly the things that most of us absorb in childhood; especially the sense of the supernatural and the sense of the natural; the love of the sky with its infinity of vision, and the love of the soil with its strict hedges and solid shapes of ownership. But here comes the paradox of Shaw; ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... a king, that, as such, he is sure of the future, and that the solemn proceeding in regard to the Immaculate Conception was a triumphant reply to all the errors of modern thought. This dogma brings to naught all the rationalist systems which refuse to acknowledge in human nature either fall or supernatural redemption. The means, besides, which were adopted in order to prepare its promulgation, tended to bring the various churches throughout the world into closer relation with their common Head and Centre. They who ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... memoranda are followed by a long and very interesting list of 'Parochial Superstitions,' some of which, but not all, are generally known. He also tells one or two stories with a caustic touch where he might have suggested a supernatural atmosphere. ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... for their games, dances and festivals, which have been fully described by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes in various reports to the Smithsonian Institution. They have many secret orders, worship the supernatural, and believe in witchcraft. Their great fete day is the Snake Dance, which is held in alternate years at Walpi and Oraibi, at the former place in the odd year and at the latter place in the even year, some time during the month of August. It is purely ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... of course, a history. In October of the year 1513, a noble lady of Bologna, named Elena Duglioli dall Olio, imagined that she heard supernatural voices bidding her to dedicate a chapel to St. Cecilia in the Church of S. Giovanni in Monte. Upon telling this to a relative, Antonio Pucci of Florence, he offered to fit up the chapel at his own expense, and induced his uncle, Lorenzo Pucci, then newly ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... with it, that I consider the manner in which I am rescued from my dejection and despair almost as an interposition of Providence. A person reading the poem with feelings like mine will have been awed and controlled, expecting something spiritual or supernatural. What is brought forward? A lonely place, 'a pond, by which an old man was, far from all house or home:' not stood, nor sat, but was—the figure presented in the most naked simplicity possible. The feeling of spirituality or supernaturalness is again referred to as being ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... 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 ghastly foulness, and whose semblances, marked ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... ready to cope with a material and not a supernatural being; still it was purely a venture, and at no previous time had there seemed so little hope of success. Nevertheless not a moment was lost in hauling out the net and placing it in position across the room so that it hung straight, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... a secret association of children and grownups, pledged to mutual help and a variety of altruistic aims—a scheme, with all its faults, at least human and understandable. But Miss C.J. DELAGREVE has chosen to complicate it by (apparently) a dash of the supernatural, in the person of a character called Saint Ken, about whom we are told that he lived in a tunnel on the Underground and employed himself in helping distressed passengers. Well, what I in my brutal way want to know is whether this is a joke, or what. Because if ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... religion—that is, of the relations of man with the supernatural, with God and immortality, with the soul, our personality or the ego, and its existence or nonexistence after death—is the greatest and deepest which ever confronted mankind. In the present state of human knowledge, science can give no definite and final conclusions on these ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... feel, I suppose, the pathos of that mythic situation in Homer, where the Greeks at the last throb of battle around the body of Patroclus find the horror of supernatural darkness added to their other foes; feel it through some touch of truth to our own experience how the malignancy of the forces against us may be doubled by their uncertainty and the resultant confusion of one's own mind—blindfold night ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... replied at length. "But I want to say this right here: if some person or presence, some supernatural being, say, should come here to-night, at this table, and tell me that by giving up my life right now I would, through that act, bring ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that is behind it, like a spider in his web—feeling and interpreting every quiver of it, sending messages out into the world by means of it. But he always eludes you. You have no instrument that can touch him. You only know that he is there, enshrouded in mystery, a supernatural being not only using the brain but educating it for use. The brain itself has no knowledge or thought, and no power of itself to originate knowledge or thought. The brain of a baboon differs very little from the brain of a man. The difference is in the being who is behind it. ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... not sufficiently in earnest in your petitions; and next, that you imagine that your prayers are to do all, without any exertion on your part—that the mere fact of having asked the help of the Almighty will insure you a supernatural ease and delight in performing these duties, forgetting that, while we are in this world we have to fight, to run steadily forward, not to sit still and expect all to be smooth for us. We must show diligence unto the end—we must watch ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... coming woe. Phoebe, of course, was well aware of this, and it was partially because of it that she asked the question; but the strongest motive power that moved her was that she herself was a strong believer in the supernatural. And though men will not acknowledge it, or rarely do so, nevertheless all are more or less influenced by a certain undefined and shadowy belief in the supernatural, even in this grosser shape; and I believe most have a desire, though mixed with a strange ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... dismember the once powerful Spanish Empire. The same causes have produced the same effects in all Spain's distant colonies, and to-day the mother country is almost childless. Criticism, physical discovery of the age, and contact with foreigners shook the ancient belief in the fabulous and the supernatural; the rising generation began to inquire about more certain scientific theses. The immutability of Theology is inharmonious to Science—the School of Progress; and long before they had finished their course in these Islands the friars quaked at the possible consequences. The dogmatical affirmation ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Fu-hi as their first historical emperor; and they place his lifetime in the years 2852-2738 B.C. Some accounts represent him as a supernatural being; and we see him depicted as a human figure with a fish tail something like a mermaid. He is credited with having established social order among his people, who, before him, had lived like animals in the wilds. The social chaos out of which Chinese society ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... all half measures; it is satisfactory in no respect, and shares the bad points of the two other methods without yielding the advantages of either. How can the man of the nineteenth century, how can this creature so supremely intelligent, who has displayed a power well-nigh supernatural, who has employed the resources of his genius in concealing the machinery of his life, in deifying his necessary cravings in order that he might not despise them, going so far as to wrest from Chinese leaves, from Egyptian beans, from seeds ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the most refined and opulent families, were beheaded. The group of youth and innocence stood clustered at the foot of the scaffold, while, one by one, their companions ascended, were bound to the plank, the ax fell, and their heads dropped into the basket. It seems that there must have been some supernatural power of support to have sustained children under so awful an ordeal. There were no faintings, no loud lamentations, no shrieks of despair. With the serenity of martyrs they met their fate, each one emulous of showing to her companions ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... elephant!" 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
... story of the apparition seen at Linlithgow by James IV, when undergoing his annual penance for having taken the field against his father. Some of the younger men about the Court had devised what they felt might be an impressive warning to the King against going to war, and their show of supernatural interference was well ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... brought him so near to the gates of death, and he saw the grave so ready to devour him, that he would often say his recovery was supernatural: but that God that then restored his health continued it to him till the fifty-ninth year of his life: and then, in August 1630, being with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex, he there fell into a fever, which, with the help of his constant infirmity—vapours from the spleen—hastened ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... where mists are much more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others, though not to the same advantage as in France." Benvenuto thought this one of the most extraordinary things that had happened to him; and records it after a wonderful dream, as if it, too, were supernatural. It is, however, possible that some eyes are so constituted as not to be able to see this phenomenon in their own case; at least, I have sometimes tried in vain to get other people to see it. I should not have noticed it had I not been about ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... he found the farmer and his wife very much depressed, but he had no hope of being able to convince them that they had heard nothing supernatural, and thought it best to avoid the subject. He passed the day in calling on some of the neighbors who had asked him to visit them, and returned to the farm-house just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... their devotions, and I will tell you another story that has been current for some generations in our city, by which you will find that Don Juan is not the only libertine that has been the object of supernatural ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... the partition of which amongst the tribes lies at the bottom of the allusive metaphor of my text, was given to them under the sanction of a supernatural defence; and the law of their continuance in it was that they should trust and serve the unseen King. It was He, according to the theocratic theory of the Old Testament, and not chariots and horses, their own arm and their own sword, that kept them safe, though the enemies ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and revealed the sunny-haired child standing beside him. If an angel had come, the effect could not have been greater. Like all who are morbid, he was largely under the dominion of imagination; and Johnnie, with her fearless, gentle, commiserating eyes, had for him the potency of a supernatural visitor. But the healthful, unconscious child had a better power. Her words and touch brought ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... course, I do not mean that these folk could make themselves invisible, or that they had any supernatural powers—any more, at least, than you and I have—or that they were anything but savages; but this I do think, that out of old stories of these savages grew up the stories of fairies, elves, and trolls, and scratlings, and cluricaunes, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... to desist; the sound of the bell jarred on his nerves. It sounded like a summons, and a summons on that deserted craft was quite out of place. Who knew what mightn't answer it in the way of the supernatural? ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... ingenuity. He ground his teeth at the mere thought of it. Then Sylvia would come to hear of it, and what would she think? She would naturally be repelled, as any nice-minded girl would be, by the idea that her lover was in secret alliance with a supernatural being. And her father and mother—would they allow her to marry a man, however rich, whose wealth came from such a questionable source? No one would believe that he had not made some unholy bargain before consenting to set this incarcerated spirit free—he, who had acted in absolute ignorance, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... life on it, did not trouble him. He had his refuge in Revelation. Zachariah too was a Christian, but the muscles of his Christianity were—now at any rate, whatever they may once have been—not firm enough to strangle this new terror. His supernatural heaven had receded into shadow; he was giddy, and did not know where he was. He did not feel to their full extent the tremendous consequences of this new doctrine, and the shock which it has given to so much philosophy and so many theories, but he felt ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... radiates; and probably the amount of drink thus consumed weakened Robson's power over his mind, and caused the concentration of thought on one subject. This may be a physiological explanation of what afterwards was spoken of as a supernatural kind of possession, leading him ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... with the wayward pranks of a fancy which seems a little too restive to be entirely controlled by his artistic sense; but they possess much dramatic truth and power. He delights in the supernatural element, but approaches it from the gentler human side. In "The Carbuncle," only, we find something of that weird, uncanny atmosphere which casts its glamour around the "Tam O'Shanter" of Burns. A more satisfactory illustration of his peculiar qualities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... heart an eager determination to enter the lists as a Sabbath-school teacher the very first opportunity, and to pray her lessor into her heart, having done what she could to get it into her head. If her anxious and well-nigh discouraged pastor could have been gifted with supernatural and prophetic vision, and could have seen that resolve, and, looking ahead, the fruit that was to be borne from it, how would his anxious soul have thanked God and ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... motive they cannot guess. The man's appearance does not make things any clearer. He still stands affrighted, trembling, and repeating his Paternosters. But now in changed tone, for his fear is no longer of the supernatural. Reason reasserting itself, he has given up the idea of disembodied spirits, convinced that the two figures coming forward are real flesh and blood; the same whose blood he assisted in spilling, and whose flesh he lately believed to be decaying in the obscurity of a cave. He stands appalled as ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... adventure which had so long kept him a prisoner in Laleli's house lent him an atmosphere of romantic interest, and his own nature increased the illusion. The brilliant young officer, with his almost supernatural beauty, his ready tongue, his sweet voice, and his dashing grace, was well calculated to make an impression upon any woman; to a young girl who had grown up in very quiet surroundings, who had hitherto regarded Paul Patoff as the ideal of all that a man ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... of two kinds, true and false, just as we have a true Christ and false Christs, true and false prophets, and true and false apostles. By a false miracle, we mean not a pretended miracle, which is no miracle at all, but a real miracle, a supernatural performance, wrought for the purpose of deceiving, or of proving a lie. The miracles of this power are real miracles, but are wrought for the purpose of deception. The prophecy does not read that he deceived the people by means of the miracles which he claimed that ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... printer: it was the only example of such a piece of fortune which could then be instanced, and which, even during Fabert's life, had appeared so extraordinary, the vulgar never feared to ascribe his elevation to supernatural causes. It was said that from his youth he had busied himself with magic and sorcery, and that he had made a league with the devil. Mine host, who, to the stupidity inherent in all the natives of the province of Champagne, added the credulity of our Brittany peasants, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his nights in so isolated a situation; for the right wing was almost entirely unoccupied on this floor. But Archibald appears to have been singularly free from fear, whether of the natural or of the supernatural. He collected together all his boyish penates—his gun, his sword, his fishing-rods, and his riding-whips, and arranged them about the walls. He swept down the cobwebs from windows and ceiling; turned out of doors a lot of miscellaneous lumber that ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... depended upon. Yet, while owning Sir Eustace to be a brave, gallant, and kind-hearted Knight, there were times when even they felt a shudder of dread and almost of hatred pass over them, when tales were told of the supernatural powers he was supposed to possess; when Leonard Ashton's adventure with the cats was narrated, or the story of his sudden arrival at Lynwood Keep on the night before the lady's funeral. His own immediate ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the spirits of men," by which means it was enabled to avoid the effects of age. It will be remembered that the Motombo referred to this belief, of which afterwards I heard in more detail from Babemba. But if this god had anything supernatural about it, at least its magic was no shield against a bullet from ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... exclaimed: "Is not Napoleon the man of history, the man of all ages? May we not say that there is something supernatural in him, since it is true that God disposes of the fate of empires, and that Napoleon the Great gladly submits everything to Providence and ascribes everything to religion?" In their official enthusiasm the Tribunes, as accomplished courtiers, made one motion after another. One ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... 'as any influence with 'uman nature!" returned Borkins, vehemently. "The story's common knowledge, Sir Nigel, sir. Them there flames is supernatural. Frozen flames the villagers calls 'em, because they don't seem to give out no 'eat. That part of the Fens in unin'abited and there isn't a soul in the whole village as would venture anywhere ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... among them. The Governor of Podgorica, then Turkish, Yussuf Mucic by name, offered a large sum of money for his head, but no one could be found willing to meet that terrible man whom legend and story had endowed with supernatural powers. Finally, a criminal consented to attempt the deed on the promise of his liberty, and this led to one of the most incredible episodes in Marko's life. The criminal lay in wait for him on a lonely ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... so intense at the siege of Amposta, that serpents of an enormous magnitude are reported by L. Marineo to have descended from the mountains, and taken refuge in the camp of the besiegers. Portentous and supernatural voices were frequently heard during the nights. Indeed, the superstition of the soldiers appears to have been so lively as to have prepared them for ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the earliest "gods" were supposed to perform were not at first regarded as supernatural. They were merely the boons which the mortal ruler was supposed to be able to confer, by controlling the waters of irrigation and rendering the land fertile. It was only when his powers became apotheosized with a halo of accumulated ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... prepared by some disposition for such a form. But when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect. Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height. Now since the natural power of the created intellect does not avail to enable it to see the essence of God, as was shown in the preceding article, it is necessary that the power of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... office of the good physician, swung itself gently on its noiseless hinges, into the position distinguished in description as "slightly ajar," and thus remained fixed, after a fashion that spiritual mediums might have been able to account for, on supernatural principles. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... affixed to almost every thing that has an ancient look and is in a dilapidated condition. In my wanderings among them, I never rejected their proffers of rude hospitality, and I have listened with pleasure to their wild traditions. I soon found that, like other Indians, they draw from a supernatural "dream-world" the fortitude that enables them to bear without a murmur their hard lot in the present. They readily embraced the superstitions of the Spaniards, and rendered to the virgin of Guadalupe the adoration they had formerly bestowed upon their own gods. Their conversion ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... years there has been no one in the court of the world able to question and interpret this witness of the Lord in Egypt. The scientists have been asking for some other revelation than the Bible, for the supernatural in a scientific form, for something beyond man, for something all could see, for something that would answer to pure science, for something that could be seen, handled, measured, tested, and amenable to mathematics; something superhuman, for something in which the human ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... natural science, and we never hear of their appearing to any who did not previously believe in their existence. But should philosophers be freed from such terrific visions, if substantial knowledge has not the power of banishing them from the mind? Why should supernatural beings feel so shy in conversing with men of science? These would, indeed, be the fittest persons to whom they might impart their secrets, and communicate information respecting the invisible world; but it never falls to their lot to be favored with such visits. It ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... to the land of the Goths, and then vanished. They fought with the Goths, and defeated them. Old Ermanaric stabbed himself for shame, and the hearts of the Goths became as water before the tempest of nations. They were supernatural creatures, the Goths believed, engendered of witches and demons on the steppes; pig-eyed hideous beings, with cakes instead of faces, 'offam magis quam faciem,' under ratskin caps, armed with arrows tipped with bone, and lassos of cord, eating, marketing, sleeping on horseback, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... The supernatural being then took an oval-shaped chunk of glass (which she called a stone) and requested us to "hang on to it." She ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... eaten the vitals of non-catholic sectaries. The teaching of so-called Christian churches has evaporated into a mere natural theism, the supernatural element has disappeared. Both the Socialist and Agnostic frankly confess that the demolition of the sects is but a preliminary skirmish: the real battle lies farther afield. The lines of conflict between us and them are daily ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... destroy Him. Their immediate object was to further alienate the common people, and to counteract the influence of His former teachings with the masses. They set anew the old-time snare of demanding from Him a supernatural sign of His Messiahship, though thrice already had they or others of their kind so attempted to entrap Him, and thrice had they been foiled.[759] Before them, Satan in person had similarly tried and failed.[760] To their present impertinent and impious ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... are naturally capable of being known, and sometimes to apprehend them actually. Hence for one angel to enlighten another does not belong to the notion of an active intellect: neither does it belong to the passive intellect for the angel to be enlightened with regard to supernatural mysteries, to the knowledge of which he is sometimes in potentiality. But if anyone wishes to call these by the names of active and passive intellect, he will then be speaking equivocally; and it is not about names that we ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... name; and, by its vivid portraiture of the state of the general's army, gives the best clue to the spell of his gigantic power. The blind belief entertained in the unfailing success of his arms, and in the supernatural agencies by which that success is secured to him; the unrestrained indulgence of every passion, and utter disregard of all law, save that of the camp; a hard oppression of the peasantry and plunder ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... him her private bulletin. Her first fears of peril had died away, but her sense of mystification had increased and was more deeply touched with awe. She opened certain windows every night and felt that she was living in the world of supernatural things. Robin's eyes sometimes gave her a ghost of a shock when she came upon her sitting alone with her work in her idle hands. But supported by the testimony of such realities as breakfasts, long untiring walks and unvarying blooming healthfulness, she ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... capture of Rome by the Goths. An aerolite had fallen in the marketplace of Coomassie, and, still more strange, a child was born which was at once able to converse fluently. This youthful prodigy was placed in a room by itself, with guards around it to prevent anyone having converse with the supernatural visitant. In the morning, however, it was gone, and in its place was found a bundle of dead leaves. The fetish men having been consulted declared that this signified that Coomassie itself would disappear, and would become nothing ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... city; my heart is fixed beyond all change, resolved I am and bound by sacred oath; these women, once so charming and enticing, now behold I altogether loathsome; the gates, which were before fast-barred and locked, now stand free and open! these evidences of something supernatural, point to a climax of ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... and we must assume that they speak from their own spiritual experience. But this state of mind does not seem to be a very common one. Those who believe in the divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenance in communion with the 'Christ who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Those who regard Jesus only as a prophet sent by God to reveal the Father, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... on the flat lands of Saxon Tweoxneham, a name which passed into the forms of Thuinam and Twynham, that the great Priory Church was destined to stand. But not even when the human builders began to erect the church on the miraculously chosen ground did supernatural interposition cease. A stranger workman came and laboured at the building: never was he seen to eat as the other workmen did, never did he come with his fellows to receive his wages. Once, when a beam had been cut ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... when they were joined by Miss Miggs, who gave them to understand that she too had been taken prisoner because of her charms, and detailed such feats of resistance she had performed (her virtue having given her supernatural strength), that they felt it quite a happiness to have her for a champion. Nor was this the only comfort they derived at first from Miggs's presence and society: for that young lady displayed such resignation and long-suffering, and so much meek endurance, under her trials, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... supernatural for two women to count alike," answered the incorrigible bachelor, who would have ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... is a miracle? Is it something supernatural? Supernatural only in the sense of being above the natural, or rather, above that which is natural to man in his ordinary state. A miracle is nothing more nor less than this. One who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, of his oneness with ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... naturally pass from hating the persons of their tyrants to a more violent abhorrence of their doctrines: and the spectators, moved with pity towards the supposed martyrs, are easily seduced to embrace those principles which can inspire men with a constancy that appears almost supernatural. Open the door to toleration, mutual hatred relaxes among the sectaries, their attachment to their particular modes of religion decays; the common occupations and pleasures of life succeed to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... connected with answers to prayer the more I shrank from the publicity, and from undertaking the task. There were dozens of answers far too sacred for the public eye, which were known only to a few, others known only to God. But if the record were to carry weight with those who did not believe in the supernatural element in prayer, many personal and scarcely less sacred incidents must of necessity ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... grindstone, they fashioned these materials into an infinity of shapes—hearts, human fingers, serpents, animals, images of divinities. All these were amulets; and they were probably less valued for the charm of the workmanship than for the supernatural virtues which they were supposed to possess. The girdle-buckle in carnelian (fig. 210) symbolised the blood of Isis, and washed away the sins of the wearer. The frog (fig. 211) was emblematic of renewed ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... was literally forced upon him. "The excellence aimed at," says Coleridge, "was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations," those produced by supernatural agency, "supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever sense of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency." To Coleridge, whatever ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE. Naturalness of the idea of supernatural intervention in causing and curing disease Prevalence of this idea in ancient civilizations Beginnings of a scientific theory of medicine The twofold influence of Christianity on the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... early literature is that it seems to have a double meaning, that, underneath its natural, we find ourselves continually seeing or suspecting a supernatural meaning. In the older epics the characters seem to be half typical and only half historical. Thus did the early poets endeavor to make realities out of appearances; for, except a few typical men ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... is excellent, and the vital principle in all these things."—DR. LIEBER: ib., p. 64. "Whether provision should or not be made to meet this exigency."—Ib., p. 128. "That our Saviour was divinely inspired, and endued with supernatural powers, are positions that are here taken for granted."—Murray's Gram., i. 206. "It would be much more eligible, to contract or enlarge their extent, by explanatory notes and observations, than by sweeping away our ancient landmarks, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... at us out of German-land through a pleasant, clear translation, and they remind us how easily the supernatural and loves to dwell in airborn castles. The beautiful instinct of reverence common to child-life is readily taken advantage of by writers for the young; but where in England we find in stories some angel-mother who discovers the treachery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various |
