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Demon   /dˈimən/   Listen
Demon

noun
1.
An evil supernatural being.  Synonyms: daemon, daimon, devil, fiend.
2.
A cruel wicked and inhuman person.  Synonyms: devil, fiend, monster, ogre.
3.
Someone extremely diligent or skillful.  "She's a demon at math"



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"Demon" Quotes from Famous Books



... life, health, riches, rank, and happiness are sometimes sacrificed for its sake; that it makes the otherwise honest, perfidious, and a man who has been hitherto faithful a betrayer, and, altogether, appears as a hostile demon whose object is to overthrow, confuse, and upset everything it comes across: if all this is taken into consideration one will have reason to ask—"Why is there all this noise? Why all this crowding, blustering, anguish, and want? Why should such a trifle ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... sympathetic understanding?—nay, who would even generally be at one with me in my appreciation. Such harmony of intelligences is the rarest thing. All through life we long for it: the desire drives us, like a demon, into waste places; too often ends by plunging us into mud and morass. And, after all, we learn that the vision was illusory. To every man is it decreed: thou shalt live alone. Happy they who imagine that they have escaped ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... alone," said Ruth passionately one day. "Don't you see how I hate her? I could almost kill her! I am trying to fight down the demon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... peace, and there'"—the Prince forsook the roll—"'and there he tempted Bodhisattwa, and menaced him, a legion of devils assisting.' The daughters, it is related, were changed to old women, and of the battle this is written: ... 'And now the demon host waxed fiercer, and added force to force, grasping at stones they could not lift, or lifting them they could not let them go; their flying spears stuck fast in space refusing to descend; the angry thunder-drops and mighty hail, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... where great St. Peter's meets the western horizon; and we forget utterly those dark centuries during which this lovely hill was given over to Nero's fearful ghost, until a Pope, with his own hands, cut down the grand trees that crowned its summit, thus exorcising the demon birds which the people believed to linger in them and still to work ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... and copper-colored birds which killed the farm animals. They also stole babies, leaving in their place changelings, goblins who were old in wickedness while still in the cradle, possessing superhuman cunning and skill in music. One way of getting rid of these demon children was to ill-treat them so that their people would come for them, bringing the right ones back; or one might boil egg-shells in the sight of the changeling, who would declare his demon nature by saying ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... a belief that if ever, by any chance, a demon saw himself in a mirror, he was frightened at his own ugliness and incontinently fled. And if Christian people would only hold up the mirror of Christian principle to the hosts of evil things that afflict our city and our country, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... a former occasion, she let her vengeance carry her too far. She had aroused the prudent suspicions of Victorin. He had resolved to be rid of this Damocles' sword so constantly flourished over them by Lisbeth, and of the female demon to whom his mother and the family owed so many woes. The Prince de Wissembourg, knowing all about Madame Marneffe's conduct, approved of the young lawyer's secret project; he had promised him, as a President ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... must be made in the diabolical arcana. With furious zeal he dives into the bowels of the earth; he toils midst poisonous minerals, and deadly salts—the sublime discovery of gunpowder blazes upon the world; and finally, the dreadful art of fighting by proclamation seems to endow the demon of war ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... figures of rhetoric, the sands of the sea, &c., Procopius (Anecdot. c. 18) attempts a more definite account; that it had been exterminated under the reign of the Imperial demon. The expression is obscure in grammar and arithmetic and a literal interpretation would produce several millions of millions Alemannus (p. 80) and Cousin (tom. iii. p. 178) translate this passage, "two hundred ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... silence gazing into the glowing ashes. His fingers beat a nervous tattoo against the chair and presently, with some mumbled words, he rose and moved towards the door. Now I knew the fight was on, the fight with the Demon, drink, that was drawing him away from me. I followed him ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... Owen. There's some story of a demon in human shape on the water with her last night, and Mr. Prendergast can't get a word ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... day and night habit of thinking of business brings on the insomnia habit and that starts the auto suggestion that you are fighting for your natural sleep. This produces worry, the demon that kills and maims. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... believe I shall ever know greater happiness than was mine in the weeks following Grace Draper's first visit to our Marvin home. Many times I looked back to that night when I had lain sobbing on my bed, fighting the demon of jealousy and gasped in amazement at my ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... this demon dance of lights and shadows, the flame of the lamp went out, as if in obedience to an invisible breath, and in the darkness that followed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... deal in that," said the demon. "You must have an excuse up your sleeve, a pretext. A true excuse is a fine thing in its way; but when you come to a serious emergency, an ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... and whole body of Jesus became even more colourless: he appeared to be on the point of fainting, and Gesmas (the wicked thief) exclaimed, 'The demon by whom he is possessed is about to leave him.' A soldier then took a sponge, filled it with vinegar, put it on a reed, and presented it to Jesus, who appeared to drink. 'If thou art the King of the Jews,' ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... will, putting all its strength into a succession of heartrending mee-ow—mee-ows. Yan's heart was touched. He was about to dash to the rescue when there was a scrambling in the far grass, a rush of gray, and the Cat—the old mother Cat was on the scene, a picture of demon rage, eyes ablaze, fur erect, ears back. With the spring of a Deer and the courage of a Lion she made for the black murderer. Eye could not follow the flashings of her paws. The Skunk recoiled and stared stupidly, but not long; ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... water was hammered to foam amidst great boulders and the roar as usual was deafening. Just through the centre was a clean, clear chute followed by a long tail of waves breaking and snapping like some demon's jaws. As we struck into them they swept over us like combers on the beach in a great storm. It seemed to me here and at other similar places that we went through some of the waves like a needle and jumped to the top of others, to balance half-length out of water ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... the bookseller, the latter, glancing at a page, inquired, "Why papar instead of paper?" Mr. Lenox was overwhelmed with mortification; but Stevens sent for a skillful bookbinder, who removed the objectionable a and with a camel's hair pencil substituted an e for it, so that the demon was conquered after all, but only through great trouble. How would it seem possible to reissue a printed book, copy it exactly, and yet make an atrocious blunder? The Type Spirit is equal to even this feat. The book was ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... village to plunge boldly onward through the bush we would pass the village fetish ground, well defined by the decaying bodies of lizards and birds, a grinning human skull or two, broken pots and pieces of rag fluttering in the wind, all offered as propitiation to the presiding demon of the place, while away in the bush, behind the houses, we saw the giant leaves of the plantain groves that yielded the staple food of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... Wisdom. Everywhere we are finding means to employ the secret forces of nature for our own benefit, or to ward off physical evils which seemed to our forefathers as inevitable, supernatural; and even the pestilence, instead of being, as was once fancied, the capricious and miraculous infliction of some demon—the pestilence itself is found to be an orderly result of the same laws by which the sun shines and the herb grows; a product of nature; and therefore subject to man, to be prevented and extirpated by him, if ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... the two rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. The monsters that haunt them are quite distinct from the rocks themselves, which, having many other subordinate significations, are in the main Labour and Idleness, or getting and spending; each with its attendant monster, or betraying demon. The rock of gaining has its summit in the clouds, invisible, and not to be climbed; that of spending is low, but marked by the cursed fig-tree, which has leaves, but no fruit. We know the type elsewhere; and there is a curious lateral allusion to it by Dante when Jacopo di Sant' Andrea, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Subsequently at the battle of Perryville, Mrs. McMeens' husband lost his life from excessive exertions while in attention to the sick and wounded. Being deprived of her natural protector, she returned to her home in Sandusky, which was made desolate by an additional sacrifice to the demon of secession. While at home, not content to sit idle in her mourning for her husband, she was busily occupied in aiding the Sanitary Commission in obtaining supplies, of which she so well knew the value by her familiarity ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... that she nearly choked her. "I never thought of that possibility before. Yes—yes; he had money in his little purse. I have no doubt that, on missing me, he returned by the road we had travelled to his native place. That demon won't haunt my dreams again. But here comes the coffee, and Miss Turner's delicious cakes and home-made bread and butter. I hope you are fond of coffee, my dear? I detest tea;—it is a sort of nervous, maudlin, sick-chamber trash, only fit for ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... them Carmichael and Nicholson were the chief. They passed many hours of each day with him, and worked steadily and enthusiastically for his pardon and release. He was touched and grateful, but beneath his gratitude there still lurked the demon of unrest. She had not come—the one being for whom he waited—she had sent no word. He knew that her mother lay dying—above all things he knew that on the great day of the attack she had stood resolutely between him and death—but nothing, no explanation or assurance, calmed ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... my son, that the blandishments of carnal love have more power over hermits and monks than over men who live in the world. All through my life the demon of lust has tempted me in various ways, but his strongest temptations did not come to me from meeting a woman, however beautiful and fragrant she was. They came to me from the image of an absent woman. Even now, though full of days and ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... human? It stood on the broad way and looked around, beheld me and approached. It came within a few yards of me, and at the sight and presence of it an indescribable awe and tremor seized me, rooting my feet to the ground. It reminded me of symbolical images of Genius or Demon that are seen on Etruscan vases or limned on the walls of Eastern sepulchres—images that borrow the outlines of man, and are yet of another race. It was tall, not gigantic, but tall as the tallest man below the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Demon Jim, that's what I call him when he ain't round the place, but when he's home it was always Master Jim 'cause he was reckless with the whip. He was a Rebel officer fighting round the country and didn't take us slaves to Texas ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... his hands behind him with several feet of good stout rope and hobbled him about the ankles with a dog chain. Then we blindfolded him and put a pillowslip over his head for good measure. Things began to look brighter. Even a demon fullback has to have one or two limbs working in order to accomplish anything. When all was fast Bangs gave Ole a preliminary kick. "Now, brethren," he roared, "bring on the Macedonian guards ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... known, perhaps, than any other Hindoo legend, is the story of the demon, RAHU, who brings about ECLIPSES, by devouring the Sun and Moon. For when the gods had upchurned the nectar, the delectable Butter of the Brine, Rahu's mouth watered at the very sight of it: and "in the guise of a god" he mingled ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain

... with them later. The spooler usually understood is the 'print spooler' controlling output of jobs to a printer, but the term has been used in connection with other peripherals (especially plotters and graphics devices) and occasionally even for input devices. See also {demon}. ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... would seem holy both in her own eyes and her priest's, but with a love for all that is fair and lofty, for self-devotion and self-sacrifice—shall we blame her—shall we even smile at her if, after the dreadful question: "Is this the possession of a demon?" had alternated with, "Is this the inspiration of a god?" she settled down, as the only escape from madness and suicide, into the latter thought and believed that she found in the ideal and perfect manhood of One whom she was told to revere and love as ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... great bulging abdomen distended with eggs, her lambent eyes shining with the terrible passion of anticipation. For one thing only she had been created. That accomplished she died. And there she crouched awaiting the fulfillment of her life's cycle with the blazing eyes of a demon. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... o'clock sun saw him galloping towards Norburne; and by good fortune Halsell Common lay in his road and gave him some fine leaps for Rattler. Nothing like "taking" a few bushes and ditches for exorcising a demon; and it is really astonishing that the Centaurs, with their immense advantages in this way, have left so ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... highlands of Ethiopia no storm-driven wind ever sweeps down without being stabbed at by a native to wound the evil spirit riding on the blast. In some parts of Austria a heavy gale is propitiated by the act and speech of a peasant who, as the demon wings his flight in the raging storm, opens the window and casts a handful of meal or chaff to the enraged sprite as a peace offering, at ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... suppose I don't shoot you, what will happen then? Why, a lot of your cavalry—the greatest blackguards in your army—will burst into this pretty room of yours and slaughter me here like a pig; for I'll fight like a demon: they shan't get me into the street to amuse themselves with: I know what they are. Are you prepared to receive that sort of company in your present undress? (Raina, suddenly conscious of her nightgown, instinctively shrinks and gathers it more closely about her. He watches ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... awe-inspiring. It was the face of the man that turned me cold. It was blue-gray in the first place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of a demon—a ghoul—anything you please except of the sleek, oily old ruffian who sat in the day-time over his turning-lathe downstairs. He was lying on his stomach, with his arms turned and crossed behind him, as if he had been thrown down pinioned. His head and neck were ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... morning; now, between potations of brandy, cursing Sir Oliver for a slave-driver, while Batty Langton looked on and criticised with a smile that tolerated a world of fools for the sake of one or two inspired ones; anon working like a demon and boasting while he worked. Already on a hillside between Boston and Sweetwater Farm—the hill itself could be seen from the farmstead, but not their operations, which lay on the far side—three hundred ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... soul or sense." Always mistress of her imagination as well as of her heart, she permitted herself to be charmed but never carried away—receiving from all, but giving nothing in return. Her life was brilliant, but there was lurking in the background the demon of sadness and lassitude and the terrible disease ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... behind. The big red demon, tearing down the road, was warming to its work. With cylinders heating, and her mixture therefore going snappily as a natural result, she too had taken on a slight accession of speed. Two meteors, flung from space across the earth's rotundity, could scarcely have been ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... glowworm shining by a bush made him set his teeth; trifling and well known as it was, the light suddenly seen thrilled him with the terror of the unexpected. Strange rushings sounded among the fern, as if the wings of a demon brushed it as he travelled. Felix knew that they were caused by rabbits hastening off, or a boar bounding away, yet they increased the feverish excitement with which he was burdened. Though dark beneath the firs, it was not like the darkness ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... grave, it was not surprising that many fabulous stories should be eagerly circulated respecting him, and that Carbajal should be clothed with mysterious terrors as a sort of supernatural being, - the demon of the Andes! ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... the change? Some evil spirit appears to rule in this horrible region of everlasting swamp. A wave of the demon's wand, and an incredible change appears! The narrow and choked Bahr Giraffe has disappeared; instead of which a river of a hundred yards' width of clear running water meets us at the junction of our cutting. As far as the eye can reach to the E.S.E., there is a succession ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... beyond the usual term of humanity, and passions so fierce in one tottering on the verge of the grave, it was not surprising that many fabulous stories should be eagerly circulated respecting him, and that Carbajal should be clothed with mysterious terrors as a sort of supernatural being,—the demon of the Andes! ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... leaped into being and vanished in the twinkling of an eye. Hideous idols with round, staring eyes started forth from the darkness, glared at us for an instant and were gone. Grotesque masks, suddenly revealed by the shimmering light, took on the semblance of demon faces that seemed to mow and gibber at us as we passed. As for the life-sized models—realistic enough by daylight—their aspect was positively alarming; for the moving light and shadow endowed them with life and movement, so that they seemed ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... other day under a wild sunset and moonrise I passed the place which is best reputed as Ethandune, a high, grim upland, partly bare and partly shaggy; like that savage and sacred spot in those great imaginative lines about the demon lover and the waning moon. The darkness, the red wreck of sunset, the yellow and lurid moon, the long fantastic shadows, actually created that sense of monstrous incident which is the dramatic side of landscape. The bare grey slopes seemed to rush downhill like routed hosts; the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... interrupted Herr von Funkelstein. The room had a storm-window, of which the lattice stood open. In front of it, on the roof, seen against a white house opposite, stood a demon of a cat, arched to half its length, with a tail expanded to double its natural thickness. Its antagonist was invisible from where Hugh sat. Von Funkelstein started up without making the slightest noise, trod as softly as a cat to the table, took up ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... whispered. "Oh, this is very far from a hopeless world. What I have seen to-day—even the fortitude of infamous men—manhood, black and white—the war within the war. Don't you see, all Russia is out here in the wilderness casting forth her demon? We must not mind blood nor death—for the result means the life or death of ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... to combine with their clamour and unrest, and rise to the flat in which the child lay gazing at the darkness. It was situated but a few feet from the track of the Elevated Railroad and existence seemed to pulsate to the rush and roar of the demon which swept past the windows every few minutes. No one knew that Judith held the thing in horror, but it was a truth that she did. She was only seven years old, and at that age it is not easy to explain one's self so that ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... she flung herself at his feet, nearly dying from fright. Every nerve of her body quivered; but vainly she pressed her pallid lips to his polished boots. Her alarm and pleading seemed to arouse the demon in him more than ever. Grasping her roughly, he threw her violently on a heap of dresses, and in an instant, after trying to stop the kicking of her feet, he began beating ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... often of the gross, brutal, repulsive kind, but sometimes the sadist inflicts on his "beloved" object refined tortures of which only a cunning "demon" is capable. The sufferings which the wives of some sadists have to undergo are known only to themselves and ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... base; and concrete took 14 days to harden, but the Krupp experts brought a new concrete that hardened in 24 hours, and, within a week from leaving its home, the great Krupp demon began to batter a road ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... himself to doubt, he would doubt, until he saw reason for not doubting it. By applying this method he gradually became convinced that the only existence of which he could be quite certain was his own. He imagined a deceitful demon, who presented unreal things to his senses in a perpetual phantasmagoria; it might be very improbable that such a demon existed, but still it was possible, and therefore doubt concerning things perceived ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... come on! Now, thank God, we again have peace and love. It's good when there's agreement in the house! It's good, children, good! [Going out] The demon has vanished under the earth, and God walks on the earth! ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... with me? Would you harm your friend, child?" The fierce eyes drooped and, averting her head, she sat mute and still. "I am going to help you," I continued, "because in spite of any or every demon, I know you are sweet ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... you please," I replied. I felt the demon within me. But I had the sense to realize that a quarrel with Dr. Courtenay, under the circumstances, would be far from wise. He had no intention of quarrelling, however. He made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... strange horror with which the victim of hydrophobia repels the pure water, she no longer found the consolation which, had sorrow reached her in any other shape, she would have drawn from the healing influence of religion. We were both of us unhappy, dismayed, DEMON-STRICKEN. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... I am possessed of a demon, that I can never rest: just saved from one danger, I must rush into another. Suppose I ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... upon my imprudence. The countenance of Melchior, when he left me, was that of a demon. Something told me to prepare for death; and I was not wrong. The next day Melchior came not, nor the next; my provisions were all gone. I had nothing but a little wine and water left. The idea struck me, that I was to die of starvation. Was there no means of escape? None; I had no weapon, no tool, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... visitor from the Antipodes expressed his desire to meet me, I am really sorry that I was not able in person to attest my deep reverence and admiration as well as affection for Mrs. Butler, and my conviction that only moral and spiritual influences can quell the demon of impurity, while the despair which tries to keep it within limits by moderation and indulging it, is a folly and an infatuation, especially when coupled with police licenses and police espionage. Our ladies since 1869 have learned to detest the despotic police and the despotic doctor with ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... unlike the real utterances of Love when he comes. The blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked, golden-locked St. Michael portrayed in celestial-martial splendour upon one of the panels of the triptych over the altar in the Convent chapel, had, as he bent stern young brows over the writhing demon with the vainly-enveloping snake-folds, something of the young soldier's look, it seemed to Lynette. Ridiculous and profane, Sister Cleophee or Sister Ruperta would have said, to liken a handsome, stupid, young ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... said, "I have good news for you; the demon wolf is in the forest. I saw him making his way along a glade an hour since as I was on my way thither. I turned back to follow him, and tracked him to a ravine in the hills choked ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... begun a splendid book that Mrs. Orrin Pendergast lent me; I have forgotten who wrote it, but its name is 'The Bloody Butcher's Bride; or, The Demon of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... was altogether beside itself on one point, in especial; it created a nightmare of its own, and gave it the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Behind this it placed another demon, if possible more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard to these two men, English society seemed demented. Defence was useless; explanation was vain; one could only let the passion exhaust itself. One's ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... whole scene was lit by a pale glare. Abdullah and the chiefs sprang up. Everything around them was bathed in an awful white illumination. Far away by the river there gleamed a brilliant circle of light—the cold, pitiless eye of a demon. The Khalifa put his hand on Osman Azrak's shoulder—Osman, who was to lead the frontal attack at dawn—and whispered, 'What is this strange thing?' 'Sire,' replied Osman, 'they are looking at us.' Thereat a great fear filled all their ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... of its door, seemed to grin like a red-eyed demon at the mischief which it had done, for the story of the snow image is one of those rare cases where common ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... which must be directly in the path of the gale, had been able to withstand it. She thought of the mason sitting in his flimsy beaten room listening to the mouthings of the tempest, alone. He was not complaining, she felt. The tempest and the strife of life merely roused the ironic demon within him—to laugh sardonically, to ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... will never come again. Drink in peace and let us talk of other things. Do not take this great oath, as much as we wish—Laertes, Penelope, Telemachos, and I—that Odysseus might come. But now, as if we had not troubles enough, a new one has come upon us. I know not what evil demon put it into the mind of Telemachos to go to Sparta to inquire about his father. And the ungodly suitors have sent out a ship to watch for him, and kill him on his return. We shall lose him, too, if Zeus does not hold ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... up avidly, licking hungrily for more fuel, a demon for desire, newly born, yearning to rage a giant of destruction. The girl snatched a handful of the burning grass and ran with it; a little further forward, then to the side, scattering ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... steep'd in sullen sleep his rheumy eyes. He slept—but rested not, his guardian sprite Rose to his view in visions of the night, And thus, with many a tear and many a sigh, He heard, or seem'd to hear, the mimic demon cry:—[25] "Is this a time for distant strife to pray, When all my power is melting fast away, Like mists dissolving at the beams of day, When masters dare their ancient rights resume, And bold intruders fill the common room, Whilst thou, poor wretch, forsaken, shunn'd by all, Must pick ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... bride in the next street who longs to learn crochet work; the little troop of neighbor children who crowd the house to learn the haunting strains of a Christian lyric. A cholera epidemic breaks out, and, instead of blind fear of a demon-goddess to be placated, there is practical knowledge as to methods of guarding food and drinking water. The baby of the house is ill and, instead of exorcisms and branding with hot irons, there is a visit to the nearest hospital and enough ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... word at first. He let me understudy Victoria Lafontaine, a young artist very much in vogue just then, who had the most delightful talent. I played in La maison sans enfants, and I took her role at a moment's notice in Le demon du jeu, a piece which made a great success. I was fairly good in both plays, but Montigny, in spite of my entreaties, never came to see me in them, and the spiteful stage manager played me no end of tricks. I used to feel a sullen anger stirring within me, and I struggled with myself ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... use our canteens in the preserve. That is lion country and there are long distances between springs. This is jungle below us and there is a source there I think we can safely tap. But first I must find Nymani and prove to him that this is truly deviltry of a sort, but not demon inspired." ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... and all her neighbors that she was possessed. In answer to queries, the evil spirit that spoke through Mildred declared that "old Alice of Westwell"[6] had sent him to possess the girl. Alice, the spirit admitted, stood guilty of terrible witchcrafts. The demon's word was taken, and Alice seems to have been "arraigned upon this evidence."[7] But, through the justices' adroit management of the trial, the fraud of the accuser was exposed. She confessed herself a pretender and suffered "condign punishment." This case happened within ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... "Puaa hae!" She pointed to starboard. A gray fin moved slowly through the water twenty feet away. "A shark, and a wicked beast he is!" She reached to pick up an opened cocoanut and tossed some of the milk over her shoulder to appease the demon. "Mako!" she repeated. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... the daughter he believed he had known all his life, he was engaged in a contest with the soul of a woman he had never known. And the more she confessed, the more she apparently yielded, the more impotent he seemed, the tighter the demon gripped him. Obstacles, embarrassments, disappointments, he had met early in his life, and he had taken them as they came. There had followed a long period when his word had been law. And now, as age ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... swells In foam-streaked stretch of hill and dale, Where shrill the north-wind demon yells, And flings the spindrift down the gale; Where, beaten 'gainst the bending mast, The frozen raindrop clings and cleaves, With steadfast front for calm or blast His battered schooner ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Natalie walked in absolute bewilderment. She could have no idea of the effect of her reply, except as outwardly evidenced in the mate's attitude. She could not know that in the breast of Rolfe, as in that of Bill Blunt, she had resurrected the demon of distrust towards Vandersee. All the voyage's suspicion that had troubled Rolfe resurged to the top now; knowing that Barry had been taken by supposed navy officers, the honest mate saw no room for doubt that the big Hollander had deliberately ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... that this is madness. So of old men said of Christ, "He hath a demon''; so they said of Paul, "Thou art beside thyself.'' If magnificent moral courage and unyielding devotion to duty are "madness,'' then the more the world has ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... might have touched even a mild-tempered cook; it made a demon of Bertha. She started around the table with the obvious intention of doing Smaltz bodily harm, but at the moment, Porcupine Jim, whose roving eye had been searching the table for more food, lighted upon one of the special dishes set before ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... seen them together somewhere in the grounds, and though he hid what he felt, the sight had goaded him almost to frenzy. Then came the summons from Lady Helena to go to Powyss Place. He set out, but before he had gone half-way, the demon of jealously whispered in his ear, 'Your wife is with Juan Catheron now—go back and surprise them.' He turned and went back—a madman—the last glimpse of reason and self-control gone. He saw his wife, not with Juan Catheron, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... hailed as an entirely new phenomenon in Russian literature, amazing in its highly artistic pictures, full of power and dignity, combined with an exterior like that of the inartistic productions of folk-poetry. This poem was productive of all the more astonishment, because his "The Demon,"[13] written much earlier (1825-1834), was little known. "The Demon" is poor in contents, but surprisingly rich in wealth and luxury of coloring, and in the endless variety of its pictures ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... to say, that the amphibious steam-boat carried us to Sukkur in rather less than three weeks—our voyage in some respects resembling the midnight journey of the demon horseman— ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... "and what is it, valiant knight, save an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory, and a passing through the fire to Moloch? [Footnote: Moloch was the fire-god of the ancient Ammonites, to whom human sacrifices were offered.] What remains to you as the prize of all the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... Foreign Parts. But the vital principle is an impulse from an immortal artist, and sometimes baffles, even in its tenderest phasis, the machinations of society for its extinction. There are infants that will defy even starvation and poison, unnatural mothers and demon nurses. Such was the nameless one of whom we speak. We cannot say he thrived; but he would not die. So at two years of age, his mother being lost sight of, and the weekly payment having ceased, he ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... would have dared marry without money, and a countess, too—and so refined, and delicate enough to blow away. And he—an angel and a demon in one! What would have become of them both, and of his genius with him?" So far as I have been able to discover, this was the first even semi-public ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb

... made that of Suzanne almost a forgotten affair, Mademoiselle was not less agitated; she was filled with a variety of novel emotions. Looking about her salon, dining-room, and boudoir, cruel apprehensions took possession of her. A species of demon showed her with a sneer her old-fashioned luxury. The handsome things she had admired from her youth up she suddenly suspected of age and absurdity. In short, she felt that fear which takes possession of nearly all authors when they read ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... of a true God must surely contain. All is as clear-cut as their rocks, and as unfruitful as their dry valleys, and as dreadful as their brazen sky; "thou shalt not" this, that, and the other. Their God is jealous; he is vengeful; he is (awfully present and real to them!) a vision of that demon of which we in our happier countries make a quaint legend. He catches men out and trips them up; he has but little relation to the Father of Christian men, who made the downs of South England and ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... speak, it might relate the wearisome hours passed in a palace (for the demon Ennui cannot be expelled even from the most brilliant; nay, prefers, it is said, to select them for his abode), and we should learn, that while an object of envy to thousands, the mistress, or unacknowledged wife of le Grand Monarque, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... the meaning of this? 'says he. 'Where did that child come from? Why the demon don't you speak?' And with that he seized me again by the scruff of the neck ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... the literature of Virginia life, the office of the Lynchburg Virginian was near, and its editor, Mr. James McDonald, proved a kindred soul to the young physician. In the absences of the editor, Dr. Bagby filled his chair and fell a victim to the fascination with which the Demon of the Fourth Estate lures his chosen to their doom. In Lynchburg he first found his true calling and there, too, he met with his first failure, the demise of the Lynchburg Express, of which he was part owner, and which went to the wall by reason of the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... lasted but a day or two; and it was Susan's anxious care to keep their very existence hidden and unknown. It is true, that occasional passers-by on that lonely road heard sounds at night of knocking about of furniture, blows, and cries, as of some tearing demon within the solitary farm- house; but these fits of violence usually occurred in the night; and whatever had been their consequence, Susan had tidied and redded up all signs of aught unusual before the morning. For, above all, she dreaded lest some one might find out in what danger ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... spent almost his entire time abroad; some strange unrest—possibly his Cossack blood—possessed him like a demon, and he never stopped anywhere very long. After his pilgrimage in 1848 to Jerusalem, he returned to Moscow, his entire possessions in a little bag; these consisted of pamphlets, critiques, and newspaper articles mostly inimical to himself. He ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... corner-stone still "rests upon a book." The eagerness for knowledge shown in every act of the early colonial years has intensified, till "to know" has become a demon driving one to destruction. Eternity would seem to have been abolished, so eager are the learners to use every second of time. Overwork, mental and physical, has been the portion of the New England woman from the beginning. Climate and all natural conditions fostered an alertness unknown to ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... incisions and he who has the most upon his weapon enjoys a certain fame. As a natural consequence this makes him somewhat jealous of his finely decorated cane, much more so than he is of his wife, that for her part gives him no motive for cultivating the yellow demon's acquaintance. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... rose, but thus he eased his thought, "I'll now give sixpence where I gave a groat; Where once I went to church, I'll now go twice— And am so clear, too, of all other vice." The Tempter saw his time; the work he plied; Stocks and subscriptions pour on every side, 'Till all the demon makes his full descent In one abundant shower of cent. per cent., Sinks deep within him, and possesses whole, Then dubs director, and secures his soul. Behold Sir Balaam, now a man of spirit, Ascribes his gettings to his parts and merit; What late he called a blessing, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... from under the lid, showed to be boiling furiously, with grand prophecy of broth. Ghastly horror in his very bones, the keeper lifted the lid—and there, beside the beef, with the broth bubbling in waves over her, lay the child! The demon had torn off her frock, and thrust ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... "Yes, happy!" agreed the demon, nodding his horned head, "but not satisfied. That will never be till he sees the marriage of his beloved son——" ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... perpetrated by me in unthinking moments. I'll go even so far as this: I'll acknowledge there are times when, if I let myself off the chain, I'd astonish all Timber Town; for there lurks somewhere inside my anatomy a demon which, let loose, would turn the town into a little hell, but, gentlemen, believe me, he is bound hand and foot, he's in durance vile. I'm no saint, but I'm no forger or counterfeiter, or animal ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... religion, at all prevented men from dying as in afore time? And should we be at all astonished at what the Jews said to him, when they heard this assertion—"Then said the Jews unto him. Now we know that thou hast a demon [i. e. art mad.] Abraham is dead, and the Prophets, and thou sayest if a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death?" So said the Jews, and if in our times, a man was to make a similar assertion, should we ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... ever waiting to receive back those who have wandered farthest from him. Can I refuse love and pity, when He freely gives them in full measure to you? Will Christ forsake you—He who saved Mary Magdalen? He will cast out this demon that has possession ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton

... But still the demon of the drink continued to grow stronger and stronger in their kindling blood, and the tumult was made perfect by one of the men, in the capering of his inebriety, rising from his seat, and taking the old leddy by the toupie to raise ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... phenomenon, a purple thing that journeyed towards some unutterable end, portentous as marching judgment, tragic as fate, searching as epidemic, and yet heavily painted and generally touched up by the brush of some humorous demon, such as lays about him in preparation for Christmas pantomime, sworn to provide the giants' faces and the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... into delighted laughter. Of all women the most steadfast of soul, her outward moods were as variable as a child's. "Agreed!" she cried. "You and the minister and Diccon Demon shall lay your muskets across your knees, and Angela shall witch you into stone with her old, mad, heathen charms. And then—and then—I will gather more gold than had King Midas; I will dance with the hamadryads; I will find out ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... to return, and the demon who amuses himself by beguiling Alpine travellers suggested the memory of a certain short cut which involved a bit of amusing scrambling. I was speedily occupied in fighting my way downwards through a steep ravine, cloven by a vicious little torrent from a lofty glacier, when—how it happened ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... swords, only served to stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be interrupted by the attendants and fought like madmen, without skill or method. I thrust and parried mechanically, blind and frantic as if a demon had entered into me, till I saw the Prince stretched at my feet, bathed in his blood, and Zicci bending over him and whispering in his ear. The sight cooled us all; the strife ceased. We gathered in shame, ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... with a mission And bows but to courage and patience and skill. Hate it, with hatred that's deep and undying, For once it is welcomed 'twill break any man; Whatever the goal you are seeking, keep trying And answer this demon by ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... made in his image to witness him: And were no eye in us to tell, Instructed by no inner sense, The light of heaven from the dark of hell, That light would want its evidence,— Though justice, good and truth were still Divine, if, by some demon's will, Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed Law through the worlds, and right misnamed. No mere exposition of morality Made or in part or in totality, Should win you to give it worship, therefore: And, if no better proof you will care for, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... Before him sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated, the angelic, and the irrefragable to him, were tyros all. Our censor in private, and in public our familiar: like a malignant demon, no respect, no place, no human barriers could exclude him. On no side could the offended eye turn, and not find him there. Disgraced by his company, counteracted by his arrogance, insulted by his sarcasms; obliged to accept the first of favours, life, at his hands; his apparent inferior in the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft



Words linked to "Demon" :   doer, evil spirit, disagreeable person, succubus, worker, succuba, dibbuk, incubus, unpleasant person, actor, dybbuk



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