"Demoniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... roared the Swede. He was like a demoniac. "Yes, fight! I'll show you what kind of a man I am! I'll show you who you want to fight! Maybe you think I can't fight! Maybe you think I can't! I'll show you, you skin, you card-sharp! Yes, you cheated! ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... where our screeches, Furrowing the startled air, Our demoniac yelling, hooting, Make the hardened unbeliever Cross himself and fall ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... facing the advancing enemy. Volley after volley was flung wildly at them from every side, regardless of comrade, regardless of everything but the lust to kill. The tumult of battle rose high. The demoniac yells filled the air to the accompaniment of an incessant rattle of rifle fire. The Bell River horde knew that at last their lust was to be satisfied. So their triumph rose in a vicious chorus upon the still air, and added its terror ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... ringing voice: "A man's a man for a' that!" Afterward they sat in silence that grew more tense as the minutes passed, but it seemed that Henshaw, with demoniac cunning, had decided to prolong the agony by delaying his written order and the consequent decision of the engineer. And Harrigan, watching the suffused face of Campbell, knew that the time had come when his will would not suffice to make him follow the dictates ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... thou feel'st Thy wound, yet not thy last and deadliest wound By this repulse receiv'd, and hold'st in Hell No triumph; in all her gates Abaddon rues Thy bold attempt; hereafter learn with awe To dread the Son of God: he all unarm'd Shall chase thee with the terror of his voice From thy Demoniac holds, possession foul, Thee and thy Legions, yelling they shall flye, And beg to hide them in a herd of Swine, 630 Lest he command them down into the deep Bound, and to torment sent before thir time. Hail Son of the most High, heir of both worlds, Queller of Satan, on thy glorious work ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... as her name might have informed you; and as for her eyes, I consider them, or used to do so, of course—for her injured nation have been long expelled from Alexandria by your fanatic tribe—as altogether divine and demoniac, let the base imagination of monks ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... crime, to waylay and strike, to speak words of outrageous insult. I do verily believe that only the opportunity was wanting, some chance conflict of the street or temptation of solitude, to have changed these demoniac impulses to action—I whose most violent physical achievement has been to cross over Broadway. It is good that I am home and the blood has left my brain. What shall I think of this if I read it ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the answer of the demoniac that the devils which possessed him were Legion.—St. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... frequently cowards. Lady Isabel trembled in hers; and well she might, hearing that one allusion. They set upon him, twenty pairs of hands at least, strong, rough, determined hands; not to speak of the tagrag's help, who went in with cuffs, and kicks, and pokes, and taunts, and cheers, and a demoniac dance. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... mirth of the evening banquet seemed to Harold as the malign revel of some demoniac orgy. He thought he read in every face the exultation over the sale of England. Every light laugh in the proverbial ease of the social Normans rang on his ear like the joy of a ghastly Sabbat. All his senses preternaturally sharpened to that magnetic keenness in which we less hear and ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sympathetic pages created by feminine intuition he dominates the machine. When the heroine takes into her own hands the right of the individual to a second chance for happiness," the Colonel declaimed with a demoniac grin, "she turns to experience with such a one perfect love, as the honoured wife of a splendid and prosperous man and the mother of ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... I asked myself with almost superstitious awe, if he were not indeed a demoniac being, ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... us, foremost among the betting men, the observed of all observers in the grand stand, where, with those popular country gentlemen, the Messrs. Dawson, he cheered the winners in the two great races, both of which, with demoniac luck, he ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... of the lias clay there are large numbers of a fossil shell, Gryphea incurva, known locally as "devils claws"; they certainly have a demoniac claw-like appearance, and worry the drainers by catching on the blade of the draining tool, and preventing ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... of the Pi Utahs; the fearful cries of the demoniac Indians; the shrieks of the females and children; the rapid and effective fire of the rifles; the stampede of the oxen; their recovery and the final repulse, the Pi Utahs being routed after a loss of thirty-six ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... savages employed wampum, made from various colored shells, for a similar purpose. Color played its part in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It speaks to the eye sooner than form. A black flag hoisted upon the battle field proclaims louder than words the demoniac cruelty that reigns, while a white signifies that submission has been decided upon. Joseph's coat of many colors proclaimed the father's favoritism to his brothers, and worked a mighty change in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in 1750. The same year the relics of St. Maurus were translated thence to the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, where they are preserved in a rich shrine.[4] An arm of this saint was with great devotion translated to mount Cassino, in the eleventh century,[5] and by its touch a demoniac was afterwards delivered, as is related by Desiderius at that time abbot of mount Cassino,[6] who was afterwards pope, under the name of Victor III. See Mabill. Annal. Bened. t. 1, l. 3 and 4; and the genuine history of the translation of the body of St. Maurus ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the corner before them, waited Clematis, roguishly lying in a mud-puddle in the gutter. He had run through alleys parallel to their course—and in the face of such demoniac cunning the wretched William despaired of evading his society. Indeed, there was nothing to do but to give up, and so the trio proceeded, with William unable to decide which contaminated him more, Genesis or the loyal Clematis. To his way of thinking, he was part of a dreadful pageant, and he winced ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... daughters. The man, on receiving the command, recoiled a few paces, transfixed with horror; and then he advanced nearer, and seemed as if remonstrating with him. But the parent's face assumed an absolutely demoniac expression; and more peremptorily repeating his order, he stalked out of the room. And now commenced a fearful scene. The lovers were torn from each other's arms, and the women were brought forth again. The storm had grown more violent, and the spray was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... working. We furnished a joyous and comic spectacle to every town and village through which we passed. The whole community, men and children, came out to assist at our departure; and all alike were diverted, but not the less irritated, by the demoniac obstinacy of the brutes, who seemed under the immediate inspiration of the fiend. Everybody was anxious to share in the scourging which was administered to them right and left; and once propelled into a gallop (or such a gallop as our Brobdignagian leaders could accomplish), they were forced ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted! I gasped for breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors—oh! most unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fanatic repeats to me, after others, that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them? do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to speak otherwise than with ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices—of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death—of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work—of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell—of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... there was no need for her to say another word. With consummate skill she had gradually wrought her audience up to a pitch of demoniac fury; she had pictured her—and their—beloved young mistress in the power of the wretch who crouched with smarting, lacerated back yonder in the shed—insulted, ill-treated, and finally driven to madness and death by him: and now, at a word from one of them, the whole body of negroes sprang to their ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... is, mad with lust for power, insane with illusions of personal aggrandizement. You don't believe? Listen to me, then, appreciate to what demoniac lengths he was prepared to go to ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal—these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his sight and paralyze his hand. His love of darkness and destruction, far from seeking sympathy in the rage of ocean, disappears as he approaches the beach; after having tortured the innocence of trees into demoniac convulsions, and shattered the loveliness of purple hills into colorless dislocation, he approaches the real wrath and restlessness of ocean without either admiration or dismay, and appears to feel nothing at its shore except a meager interest in bathers, fishermen, ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... on in a tumultuous mass: they sway, they bend, they leap, they shout. The other half of Pandemonium has turned out, and surrounding ears are deafened by the demoniac chorus. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... that they were all of common stature and costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. Each man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... popular idol. He died there on the 30th of December 1832. Ludwig Devrient was equally great in comedy and tragedy. Falstaff, Franz Moor, Shylock, King Lear and Richard II. were among his best parts. Karl von Holtei in his Reminiscences has given a graphic picture of him and the "demoniac fascination" of his acting. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... indifference with which many generals, many men in power, the rhetors and the politicians, speak of what is more than a sacrifice in a sacred cause, is an unholy and demoniac waste of human life. But some one—some avenging angel, will call them ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... In-Or-In were finding their lot fortunate. Something had prompted them to linger in the alley in the vicinity of the shack, and it was to this fated edifice that Mr. Williams, with demoniac justice, brought Sam for the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... tasting of his slain body, and of their several punishments and fulminations afterwards, are but a representation of the regeneration. For what in us is unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine but demoniac, the ancients termed Titans, that is, TORMENTED ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the smallest of Japanese shops, yet more of a surprise to me than any of the larger sacred edifices already visited. For, on either side of the entrance, stand two monster-figures, nude, blood-red, demoniac, fearfully muscled, with feet like lions, and hands brandishing gilded thunderbolts, and eyes of delirious fury; the guardians of holy things, the Ni-O, or "Two Kings." [4] And right between these crimson monsters a young girl stands looking at us; her slight figure, in robe of silver ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... statuesque beauty, her superiority to all human weakness, whether of love or of remorse. Even in those collisions into which she had come with him she had risen in his estimation. At Chetwynde she had shown some weakness, but in her attitude to him he had discovered and had adored her demoniac beauty. At Lausanne she had been even grander, for then she had defied his worst menaces, and driven him utterly discomfited from her presence. Such was the Hilda of his thoughts. He found her now changed from this, her lofty calm transformed to feverish impatience, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... was no longer on his guard, and the outlaw, profiting by the darkness, had already detached his carbine from the saddle. In another moment, beyond doubt, he would have carried into execution his demoniac purpose, had it not been for the appearance of a horseman, who was coming at full gallop along the road. Besides the horse which he rode, the horseman led behind him another, saddled and bridled. He was evidently a ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the darkness deepened, a medley of doleful noises pervaded the horrible wilderness. An unearthly gabble of strange water-fowl broke out suddenly, was kept up for a few seconds only, and then ceased. Only once in the night did Arlington hear that demoniac gabble; but he lay awake for hours expecting and dreading to hear it again. The owls were not so sparing of their vocal performances, scores of them joining in concert to serenade the lost man. Sometimes their ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the practical operation of Christianity—first of all in our own hearts, and then flowing out in action. I mean especially the method of Jesus, which consisted not of mere teaching but of help—which touched not only the issues of the sin-sick soul, but the weakness and want of the body. To the demoniac, to the leper, to the impotent man by the pool, he brought not abstract truths, but words of healing and works of practical deliverance. How striking is the fact that the freshest and noblest charities of this nineteenth century are only developments ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... best pictures he could find in St Petersburg, and whose owners could be induced to part with them. The prices he gave to tempt sellers were often most extravagant. As soon as he had purchased a picture, and got it safely home, he would set upon it with demoniac fury, tearing, scratching, even biting it; and, when it was utterly defaced and rent into the smallest possible fragments, he would dance and trample on it, laughing like a fiend. The enormous fortune he had accumulated during his long and successful career as a fashionable portrait-painter, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... but it was now nearly dark. Most of the soldiers had provided themselves, to light the work of slaughter and pillage, with one of those coloured lanterns which are to be found in such profusion in Chinese towns, and their demoniac aspect was greatly heightened by the illuminations they carried as they flitted to and fro. The butchery was proceeding without the least sign of abatement; shots, shouts, shrieks, and groans resounded on every side; the streets presented ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... dramatic interest of the group below. What splendour of colour! What variety of expression! What masterly grouping of the heads! I see all this—but to me Raffaelle's picture wants unity of interest: it is two pictures in one: the demoniac boy in the foreground always shocks me; and thus from my peculiarity of taste the pleasure it gives me is not so perfect as ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... The man was no taller than himself. He was white, and above his fur clothing was a dark, brutish face with eyes of almost Indian blackness. For a moment they shone fiercely in the lamplight. They were alive with demoniac purpose. A purpose he had come so many weary miles to fulfil. Then, in a moment, the whole picture changed with the rapidity of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... dark for a fool and a madman; he cursed the infatuation which rose like a demoniac possession from his early life. When that failed he tried to kill it by remembering the passage of time, the loathing she must have nursed all these years. He summoned the image of Elizabeth to his aid, to find it eclipsed by something infinitely more real and vital. Beverly ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gate was locked and the windows barred, when suddenly the sound of demoniac cries roused the slumberers ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... a thought came across her mind, which at once crimsoned her cheek—she knew she had fainted on the first visit of the vampyre, and now he, with a hideous reverence, praised beauties which he might have cast his demoniac eyes over at such ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... corpses, and were the fore-runners of the filthy Aghoris, who were frequent in northern India especially near Mount Abu and Girnar a century ago and perhaps are not yet quite extinct. The biographers of Sankara[500] represent him as contending with these demoniac fanatics not merely with the weapons of controversy but as urging the princes who favoured him to ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... compact mass; round which the three corps of royal troops closed. Then there was everywhere a hand-to-hand battle there was no time to load and fire; swords flashed and fell, bayonets stabbed, the royals and the Camisards took each other by the throat and hair. For an hour this demoniac fight lasted, during which Cavalier lost five hundred men and slew a thousand of the enemy. At last he won through, followed by about two hundred of his troops, and drew a long breath; but finding himself in the centre of a large circle of soldiers, he made for a bridge, where alone it seemed ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lungs. He repeated this operation several times before I fully recovered from the shock conveyed by his combined impudence and weight; but pain finally brought my senses back, and with a wild plunge I unseated my demoniac riders and gained a clear space in the middle ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... vent to the hideous cries. The Highlander had lived long in the wilderness, and was an adept in its ways. With the noiseless motion of a redskin he wormed his way through the underwood until close alongside of the nocturnal visitor, and then suddenly stopped a howl of more than demoniac ferocity by clapping a ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... nothing more than weakness; my poor, frail sense of ethics collapsed completely at the sight of the bribe he offered me to become a party to the dark conspiracy that sprang from the depths of his own demoniac mind. Ah, well; none of ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... man came wearily up to the door, when one within the house rose and led him to the seat he himself had just occupied. As we sat facing the congregation, we looked around upon the multitude to find the marks of those demoniac passions which are to strew carnage through our own country when its bondmen shall be made free. The countenances gathered there, bore the traces of benevolence, of humility, of meekness, of docility, and reverence; and we felt, while looking on them, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and the sound of a coming storm is borne upon the breeze. The Norwegian sailors sing louder than ever to drown this ominous sound, but they are soon too alarmed to sing, and hasten into their cabins making the sign of the cross, which evokes a burst of demoniac ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... discovery, a man laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and Jasper Wilde's voice, with a demoniac ring, ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... is this. A prey to enchantment and demoniac art all your life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly satisfied; nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly hideous that ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with cats, bats, and owls surmounts the fireplace, perhaps. A full moon shines over all, and a caldron on a tripod holds fortunes tied in nut-shells. The prevailing colors are yellow and black: a deep yellow is the color of most ripe grain and fruit; black stands for black magic and demoniac influence. Ghosts and skulls and cross-bones, symbols of death, startle the beholder. Since Hallowe'en is a time for lovers to learn their fate, hearts and other sentimental tokens are used to good effect, as the Scotch lads of ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... ever, dived as willingly and swam yet further than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... usually by most common-place motives; but, for that reason, ready and glad at times to escape from them and their dulness and baseness; to give vent, if but for a moment, in wild freedom, to that demoniac element, which, as Goethe says, underlies his nature and all nature; and to prefer for an hour, to the normal and respectable ditch- water, a bottle of champagne or even a carouse on fire-water, let the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... gun and followed, lured by the demoniac shape. A little of the superstition of the natives had gotten into his veins: he dare not kill the thing unless it came toward him, and he had to shoot ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Englishman certainly had been seen in the neighborhood since;—seen, as she had heard, that very night. "Great G—d!" exclaimed Stanton, as he recollected the stranger whose demoniac laugh had so appalled him, while gazing on the lifeless bodies of the lovers, whom the lightning had ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... small devil on stilts, not more than three or four inches tall, but there was no mistaking his identity. No other living thing could possess such demoniac little red-hot pin points of eyes, or be so bristly and grisly and vicious. The stilts suddenly folded flat, and the devil rushed upon his prey. The girl stepped back; her foot ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a demoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... comes—the chirping of sparrows—Jack wanders out—the breath of the morning stirs his memories—he thinks of other days. Then comes in Jack's song, which neither Calabressa nor any one else present could say was meant to be comic, or pathetic, or a demoniac mixture of both. The accompaniment which the handsome young English fellow played was at once rhythmical, and low and sad, like ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... of the Fourth Gospel, and, consequently, about its title to belief, there has been endless controversy among the learned. But there are pretty plain indications, in the shape of the omission of demoniac miracles and some lack of local knowledge, that it is not the work of a Palestinian Jew. Opening with a reference to the Logos, it strikes the key of Alexandrian philosophy. It is, indeed, rather theological than historical, so that it has been not inaptly compared to the Platonic, in ...
— The Religious Situation • Goldwin Smith
... old lion it is. But our great Waterloo was in Palestine. There came a day when all hell rode up, led by Apollyon, and the Captain of our salvation confronted them alone. The Rider on the white horse of the Apocalypse going out against the black horse cavalry of death, and the battalions of the demoniac, and the myrmidons of darkness. From twelve o'clock at noon to three o'clock in the afternoon the greatest battle of the universe went on. Eternal destinies were being decided. All the arrows of hell pierced our Chieftain, and the battle-axes struck ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... suddenly blazing with demoniac fury. "Answer me, yes or no, if you are not afraid! If your faith in Him is as perfect as you would have me believe, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... I. 'Knowing as much as I do, I may surely know more—know all. Tell me, I entreat you, madam, all that you can conjecture respecting this demoniac persecution of one ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... disordered characters by hypnotic influence that have been effected at the Salpetriere in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert in psychical therapeutics are closely analogous to the cures wrought by Jesus on some victims of "demoniac possession."[7] The cases of apparition,[8] also, which have been investigated and verified by the Society for Psychical Research have laid a solid basis of fact for the Biblical stories of angels, as at ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... against the pavilion, were now beside themselves with demoniac fury. They broke plates and dashed them upon the floor. The attendants had served them with a ragout composed of the flesh of the wild ass, an unclean animal, and their anger knew no bounds. Aulus rallied them ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... of the assailant being his overthrow, that sovereign has a perfect right to put his rival to death, if he succeed in obtaining possession of his person. The most confirmed believer in Richard III.'s demoniac character would not think of adding the execution of Richmond to his crimes, had Plantagenet, and not Tudor, triumphed on Bosworth Field. James II. has never been blamed for causing Monmouth to be put to death, but for having complied with his nephew's request ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... in new folds, a thing first seen in this picture, as he tried to base his work upon the nude figures, an idea which had not occurred to anyone before, no not even to Giotto himself. Under that arch, in which he made a Christ releasing a demoniac, he drew an edifice in perspective, perfectly, in a style then little known, displaying improved form and more science. He further executed it in the modern manner with great judgment, and displayed such art and such invention and proportion in the columns, doors, windows and cornices, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... to shut him up in prison at Sainte-Pelagie, had managed, by means of every form, of wickedness and excess, to make our beloved Paris a frightened slave, crouching to earth under their abominable tyranny; in spite of everything, I could not have dreamed that even their demoniac fury could have gone so far as to try to burn Paris, after having ruined it! Nero of the gutter! Sardanapalus drunk with vitriol! So your vanity wanted such a volcano to engulf you, and you wished to die by the light of such an auto-da-fe. Instead ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... war, insane and demoniac, to fill the world with tears and woe. As we read the record of these horrid outrages which through all the centuries have desolated this globe, it would seem that there must be a vein of insanity as well as of depravity, in the heart of fallen man. England ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing down canyons and gorges like a demoniac corkscrew. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... form. Japanese superstition regards the fox with abject terror; his craft and cunning are celebrated in legendary ballads; and a condition of mental disorder, known as 'possession by the fox,' is a common belief, bringing crowds of devotees to Inari's temples, either to pray for the exorcism of the demoniac influence, or to avert the danger of falling under the dreadful spell." (Macmillan's Magazine, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... the wounded officers in the ambulances were one, a lieutenant of regulars, and another of higher rank. These two were dragg'd out on the ground on their backs, and were now surrounded by the guerillas, a demoniac crowd, each member of which was stabbing them in different parts of their bodies. One of the officers had his feet pinn'd firmly to the ground by bayonets stuck through them and thrust into the ground. These two officers, as afterwards found on examination, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... their hearts loved as one who has suffered and overcome. Blessing on the God-born human heart! Let the hounds of God, not of Satan, loose upon sin;—God only can rule the dogs of the devil;—let them hunt it to the earth; let them drag forth the demoniac to the feet of the Man who loved the people while he let the devil take their swine; and do not talk about disgrace from a thing being known when the disgrace is that the thing ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... have delighted the old poets. Its wild, demoniac laughter awakens the echoes on the solitary lakes, and its ferity and hardiness are kindred ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Jove!" gasped the horrified valet. Sybilla Silver's eyes blazed like coals of fire, and the demoniac smile, that made her brilliant beauty hideous, gleamed on ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... eminent in his profession—"that they were only fiddlers." Paganini's playing was most unearthly and inhuman. I never heard anything like the tones he produced from his violin—the sounds now crashing as if a demoniac was tearing and straining at the strings, now melting away with the softest and tenderest harmonies. He kept his hearers enthralled by his magical music, and astonished by his wonderful execution. I shall never forget hearing him play the "Walpurgis ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... knife and bent over Jake's body. A yell greeted this. Dogs and men moved confusedly around the thing on the ground, in a sort of demoniac circle upon which the hissing, flaring pitch-pine torches danced with infernal effect. Peter Champneys watched it, his soul revolting. He had no sympathy for Jake; he felt for him nothing but hatred. He couldn't think of that gay and innocent girl coming ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... me practice taking one hand from the wheel, looking about me a little, and trying to keep the car straight by feeling rather than sight. When I had accomplished these feats, and had not brought the car to grief (even though we passed several vehicles, and I was drawn by a demoniac influence to swerve towards each one as if it had been the loadstone to my magnet, or the candle to my moth), Jack finally consented to grant my request. He told me clearly what to do, and I did it, or some inward servant of myself did, whenever the master ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... bridge to gasp for breath. They held on by main force, though protected by strong canvas sheets bound to the rails. The main deck was quite impassable. The promenade deck, even the lofty spar deck, was scourged with the broken crests of waves that tried with demoniac energy to smash in the starboard bow, for the Sirdar was cutting into the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... drawn into more and more magical circles by his playing, full of genius, which made of the piano an orchestra of lamenting and jubilant voices. There were sonatas, or rather veiled symphonies; songs whose poetry might be understood without words; piano pieces both of a demoniac nature and of the most graceful form; sonatas for piano and violin; string quartettes, each so different from every other that they seemed to flow from many different springs. Whenever he bends his magic wand, there, when the powers of the orchestra ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... 'joy in the Lord,' will manifest itself by efflorescing into all holiness and all loftiness and largeness of obedience. You may try to frighten men into righteousness, you will never succeed. You may try to coerce their wills, and your strongest bands will be broken as the iron chains were by the demoniac. But put upon them the silken leash of love, and you may lead them where you will. You cannot grow grapes on an iceberg, and you cannot get works of righteousness out of a man that has a dread of God at the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... change in six hours; seventy-nine in which its operations took place in as few as three; and twenty-seven where conversion followed instantaneously after the perusal. At once, poor sinners, who five minutes before had been like the demoniac in the gospel, were seen sitting 'clothed, and in their right mind.' Thus I speak within the mark, Mr. Reding, when I say I will warrant a change in you in twenty-four hours. I have never known but one instance in which it seemed to fail, and that was the case of a wretched old ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... the "adverse faction," as it is clearly of such a nature as to convulse the country. To what meanness will not these Tories stoop, for the furtherance of their barefaced schemes of oppression and pillage! The facts they have so grossly distorted with their tortuous ingenuity and demoniac intentions, are simply these:—A saveloy was ordered by one of the upper servants (who is on board wages, and finds his own kitchen fire), the boy entrusted with its delivery mistook the footman for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... career of this half-mad girl is sinister and tragic; she is half-sister in her temperamental traits to Paulina in the same master's admirable story The Gambler. Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov is another woman of the demoniac type to which Nastasia belongs. Then there are high-spirited, hysterical girls such as Katarina in Karamazov, Aglaia Epanchin in The Idiot, or Liza in The Possessed (Besi). The border-land of puberty is a favourite theme with the Russian writer. And consider the splendidly fierce ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... five chandeliers hanging by sliding bronze chains from the ceiling—one in each corner, and in the centre one—enormous pyramids of lighted lamps, illuminating even the demoniac faces of the Atlantes and the complex tracery of the cornice. About the tables, seated or standing, or moving restlessly from one to another, there are probably a hundred persons, whom we must study at ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... authors of the Malleus Maleficarum; for they required signs of supernatural agency, such as the suspension of the possessed in the air without any visible support, or the use of different languages, unknown to the demoniac in his ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... an instant her face was convulsed with a fairly demoniac fury. Then a mask of blankness obliterated all expression. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... earth. But a struggle had first to be carried on between the new gods of light and order and Tiamat, the dragon of the "Deep," the impersonation of chaos. Merodach volunteered the task; Tiamat and her demoniac allies were overthrown and the sky formed out of her skin, while her blood became the rivers and springs. The deep was placed under fetters, that it might never again break forth and reduce the world to primeval chaos; laws were laid down for the heavenly bodies, ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... I have written, but I can see that I give you no real insight into the demoniac cleverness of Cullingworth. His views upon medicine were most revolutionary, but I daresay that if things fulfil their promise I may have a good deal to say about them in the sequel. With his brilliant and unusual gifts, his fine athletic record, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... who had travelled in Spain in the seventeenth century. On one night of storm, Stanton had seen carried past him the bodies of two lovers who had been killed by lightning. As he watched, a man had stepped forward, had looked calmly at the bodies, and had burst into a horrible demoniac laugh. Stanton saw the man several times, always in circumstances of horror; he learnt that his name was Melmoth. This being exercised a kind of fascination over Stanton, who searched for him far and wide. Ultimately, Stanton was confined in a madhouse by relatives ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... sound of a scurrying rat, and another sound which made the lady gasp and tremble, and caused me to grind my teeth with rage. It was a long, drawn-out sigh, the moan of a man in agony of flesh or spirit. It was Newman's voice. Mingling with it, and following it, came the low, demoniac chuckle of Captain Swope. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... STAY," answered Otto. The poor girl almost fainted with joy. The Rowski frowned with demoniac fury, and grinding his teeth and cursing in the horrible German jargon, stalked away. "So be it," said the Prince of Cleves, taking his daughter's arm—"and here comes Snipwitz, my barber, who shall do the business for you." With this the Prince too moved on, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and none other." The inquisitor proceeded accordingly to catechize him, and soon satisfied himself of the schoolmaster's heresy. He commanded him to make immediate recantation. The schoolmaster refused. "Do you not love your wife and children?" asked the demoniac Titelmann. "God knows," answered the heretic, "that if the whole world were of gold, and my own, I would give it all only to have them with me, even had I to live on bread and water and in bondage." "You have then," answered the inquisitor, "only to renounce the error of your opinions."—"Neither ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mad, Allan!" answered Menteith, astonished alike at his sudden appearance, and at the unutterable fury of his demeanour. His cheeks were livid—his eyes started from their sockets—his lips were covered with foam, and his gestures were those of a demoniac. ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... "the little maid furiously." That child of sorrow and of tears, whom he had never seen before, and whose young heart ached from the wrongs heaped on her innocent young head, was to him an object of demoniac fury. ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... His kingdom and righteousness, will never become so absorbing but that in it we may have our hearts in heaven, and the silent hour of communion with Him will never be so prolonged as to neglect outward duties. There was a demoniac boy in the plain, and therefore it was impossible to build tabernacles on the Mount of Transfiguration. But the disciples that had not climbed the Mount were all impotent to cast out the demoniac boy. We, if we keep near ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... these priceless mementoes, there remained only the marble, life-size, bust of the son, which Mr. Gibbons had providentially removed to a place of safety, and a few minor objects. And all this ruin, and irreparable loss, had been visited upon this charitable and patriotic family, by a furious, demoniac mob, because they loved Freedom, Justice, and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... apparition, by implying the lesser miracle in the greater. In subordinating the cure to the vision, he obtained sublimity; in placing the crowd and patient on the foreground, he gained room for the full exertion of his dramatic powers. It was not necessary that the demoniac should be represented in the moment of recovery, if its certainty could be expressed by other means. It is implied, it is placed beyond all doubt, by the glorious apparition above; it is made nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of the apostle in the centre, who, without hesitation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... arose from the enormous mass of condensed humanity; people panted for breath; they gasped, and rolled their eyes in horrible frenzy, and still the conductor yelled fiercely, and with demoniac leer:— ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards slip in and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white hot sands. Birds, hummingbirds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of the night-singing mockingbird. If it be summer and the sun well down, there will be a burrowing owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksy things dart across the open places, or sit motionless ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... continued the belief in demoniac possession. By one of those accidents which greatly influence history the belief in demon possession was strongly held in Palestine in the time of Christ and the Gospel narratives reflect all this in ways upon ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... amused at your disgustful wind-up after writing me such a compassionate letter. I am as jolly as a sandboy so long as I live on a minimum and drink no alcohol, and as vigorous as ever I was in my life. But a late dinner wakes up my demoniac colon and gives me a fit of blue ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the moisture that rose had the tints of an hundred Rainbows; the long grass flashed and waved; the many birds in the boughs began to sing Hymns of Thankfulness and Joy. But below, ah, me! what a Dreadful scene of blood and Carnage, and Demoniac revenge, there was shown! Of our band we had lost three Killed; five more were badly Wounded; and there was not one of us but had some Hurt of greater or lesser seriousness. We had killed a many of the Maroons; and the two or three that had escaped with Life, albeit most grievously ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... was destined to be so memorable, two young men were breasting the sleet and hail, which tore down Broadway with demoniac glee, as though amused that the cable cars were stalled fully a mile along the line, and the people were obliged to get out and walk, facing the full fury of the elements, if they hoped to arrive at their destinations ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... to his sentence, a gun barked outside, there was a howl of demoniac pain and rage, and then a scream that would tingle in the ear of Doctor Randall Byrne ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... his soul like thunder. "What will it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" it had said; and earth and earthly affairs had assumed the shape of nothingness; the tough, hard work of years was scattered—like a potent lever it lifted away the demoniac weight of darkness and pride from his soul, as it rung down into its frozen depths. And the strong angel of God, who had been contending with the powers of evil, to wrest it from eternal loss, bore up the glad news to heaven, that the hoary sinner repented ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... the man himself as he straddled in the middle of the polished floor, staring at her, that she gazed with a startled attention a face like the feeble and idiot countenance of an old sheep, with the same flattened length of nose and the same weakly demoniac touch in the curve and slack hang of the wide mouth. It was not that he was merely ugly or queer to the view; it seemed to Annette that she was suddenly in the presence of something monstrous and out of the course ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... events, that, had he cried out, "Come to my arms, my long-lost brother!" or were a strawberry-mark actually found, I could not have been surprised. As it was, his frenzied tugs at the lapel of my coat threatened its immediate destruction, and my spinal column ached under his demoniac slaps on the back, before I ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... that falls, He knows not how, by force demoniac dragg'd To earth, and through obstruction fettering up In chains invisible the powers of Man; Who, risen from his trance, gazeth around Bewilder'd with the monstrous agony He hath indured, and, wildly staring, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... silence, and again without further provocation rising into infernal sublimity, shook the roof of Tammany. Sex—the sex of women—was the subject of this infernal scorn; and the great Democratic gathering, with yells and shrieks and demoniac, deafening howls, consigned the memorial of Susan B. Anthony to the committee ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the bellows, uttered a grand and most sweet melody." Dunstan was a favourite at court, in the reign of King Edmund. Enemies were plentiful, however, and they spread the report that Dunstan evoked demoniac aid in his almost magical work in its many departments. It was said that occasionally the evil spirits were too aggravating, and that in such cases Dunstan would stand no nonsense. There is an ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... with the terrible which my wider reading had given me; that ominous item in the annals of morbid horror which tells of the creature Jacques Roulet, of Caude, who in 1598 was condemned to death as a demoniac but afterward saved from the stake by the Paris parliament and shut in a madhouse. He had been found covered with blood and shreds of flesh in a wood, shortly after the killing and rending of a boy by a pair of wolves. One wolf was seen to lope away unhurt. Surely ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... no court dandy now; his fancy clothing clung to him in rags, while the powder-flash within the cellar had blackened his face and made sad havoc with his gay mustache. He endeavored to smile at me as our eyes met, but the effort produced only what seemed like a demoniac grin. ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... creatures; of which in the day-time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth. And then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been an impressionable child. Some things had gripped her memory mightily—once, for instance, when she had seen her stepfather, in the presence of her governess, kick a table over, and, seizing the toppling lamp with demoniac skill, hurl it through a window. She, herself, had been tossed by him in one of these tantrums, when, in answer to the cries of terror of those about her, he had shouted: "Let her fall! It won't hurt the little devil to break ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... considering the sufferings of a people or for being in anywise tender hearted, is not when a madman or a cohort of madmen are howling about your houses or your city, with knives and torches, blood in their eyes, fiery rum in their veins, demoniac rage in their hearts, and the instincts of hell in their natures. A mob has no mind, only passions. It were as idle to attempt to make it listen to reason, as to argue with a lunatic in the height of his frenzy. A mob is not only a creature of passions, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... altogether, and the arch-fiend seemed pacified, if not utterly routed, until at the close of the service, a bell was rung as appointed in the office. The sound of this bell had the effect of increasing the demoniac uproar to such a degree that the padre officiating was fain to hurry through the rest of the service as best he could and beat a precipitate retreat, with the acolytes, bells and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... was not real because, in it, Eben's usually calm face was distorted into a demoniac frenzy and his voice quavered and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... are. I've never been misled for a moment by your other brief rhapsodies—the classic Anne—the demoniac Marian—but you're landed high and dry this time. The mystery may have something to do with it, but the woman has far more. She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld and she looks intelligent ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... toward a madman, who suddenly cried out, "I know Thee, Thou Holy One of God," whereupon Jesus spoke a few authoritative words and cured him of his malady, by methods that will describe the nature of the man's psychic disturbance to any advanced student of occultism. Demoniac possession is not believed in by orthodox Christians of today, but Jesus evidently shared the belief in obsession held by students of Psychism and similar subjects, judging from the words He used in relieving ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... beautiful house, wherein the aesthetic guest can find comfort for his eyes as well as for his body. It will be a happy house—or else I'll burn it down. It will be a house of air and sunshine and laughter. These three cannot be divorced. Laughter without air and sunshine becomes morbid, decadent, demoniac. I have in me a thousand generations. Laughter that is decadent is not good for ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... gray eyes glittered with a demoniac light; his thin lips were tightly drawn over his sharp teeth; he was evidently expecting some proposition to murder, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... of an orange; it had a pair of wicked-looking eyes that fairly blazed with fury as, catching sight of me, it suddenly halted, glaring at me, emitting a low, angry, hissing sound, and clashing its formidable jaws together in what looked like an access of perfectly demoniac ferocity. Struck motionless for the moment, in sheer amazement, I quickly recovered myself and, believing that the thing was about to spring at my face and inflict a possibly fatal bite, I raised my cutlass and, with a slashing blow, clove the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... unfortunate action of the prisoner. At the moment when the distant heights resounded with the fierce yells of the savages, and leaping forms came bounding down the slope, the remarkable warrior of the Fleur de lis—the fearful enemy who had whispered the most demoniac vengeance in his ears the preceding night—was the only one that met and riveted the gaze of the governor. He paused not to observe or to think who the flying man could be of whom the mysterious warrior was in pursuit,—neither did it, indeed, occur to ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... it in your presence. "Let me see," he will say. "Give me a moment. I SHOULD have some theory for that." A blither spectacle than the vigour with which he sets about the task, it were hard to fancy. He is possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the elements for his life, and bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horse-shoe, with a visible and lively effort. He has, in theorising, a compass, an art; what I would call the synthetic gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer, who should see the fun of the thing. You are not ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... demons are another proof of the reality of possessions; they show that at all times the Church and her ministers have believed them to be true and real, since they have always practiced these exorcisms. The ancient fathers defied the heathen to produce a demoniac before the Christians; they pride themselves on curing them, and expelling the demon. The Jewish exorcists employed even the name of Jesus Christ to cure demoniacs;[253] they found it efficacious in producing this effect; it is true that ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... arose from his appalling work, and his loathsome face assumed, beneath his mask, an expression of demoniac satisfaction. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... as he stretched out his hand, and held the end of his paper cigar to the red coals burning in a brazero on the table before him, the frown upon his features changed to a demoniac smile. Possibly from the knowledge that this man was now in his power. Sure was he of this; but what would he not have given to be as sure of ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... hated the whole thing—the dampness which mildewed his shoes and rusted out his nettings; the day heat which kept him bathed in clamminess; the pestiferous insects; the forest with its voices like sobbings and hammerings and demoniac chatterings; the food he had to eat; the company he had to keep; the chiefs who bored him; the girls who derided him; the beachcombers who nauseated him; the white sands, the blue waters, the smells, the sounds, the routine of existence with one day precisely like another—the whole thing of it. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Gerard into the church, but had a good shrug first. There they found the demoniac forced down on his knees before the altar with a scarf tied round his neck, by which the officiating priest held him like a dog in ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... amateur gardeners are feverishly addicted to early rising. Men with gardens are like those hard drinkers whose susceptibilities are hopelessly blunted. Who but a man diverted from the paths of honest feeling and natural enjoyment, possessed of a demoniac mania, lost to the peace and serenity of the virtuous and the blessed, could find pleasure amid the damps, and dews, and chills, and raw-edgedness of a garden in the early morning, absolutely find pleasure in saturated trousers, in shoes swathed in moisture, in skies that are ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... A demoniac laugh broke from the livid lips of Claude Frollo; Quasimodo could not hear this laughter, but ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of the demoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks of hair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled the room. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. The man who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner. But the movement was his ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... have thought him changed to stone, so motionless and so patient did he stand. How long the baiting lasted no one knew; it may have been an hour, then Joseph's passive silence roused the anger of the overlord, who became demoniac in his rage. His followers joined in harrying the victim, until the place became a babel. Finally Elzemah stepped forward, torch in hand, and spat upon ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... and waving his arm, on which was a horsehair glove. He spoke, in his unknown nasal jargon, words which echoed through the arched room; his eyes seemed astonishingly large and bright, his ears stuck out, and his head was all shaved, except a bristling top-knot, which gave it a demoniac fierceness. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Is the bosom of Mercy to be feared and the breath of peace despised? What is Life that she should mock me?—this hideous harlot whose kisses poison and whose words betray? Is she not the mother of all ills? Behold her demoniac brood: Hate and Horror, Discord and Disease, Pride and Pain! she is the creature of Time, the slave of Space. She is the bastard spawn of Heat and Moisture— was engendered 'mid the unclean ooze of miasmic swamps, in the womb of noisome fens. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... affording them relief, their father separated them, sending the youngest to lodge with a neighbor and taking the oldest into his own room, it was remarked that the neighbor's house immediately became the scene of demoniac activity, as did the Squire's apartment, which had previously been virtually undisturbed. Here and now developed a phenomenon that places little Miss Mompesson on a par with the celebrated Fox sisters, for her ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... "Limping Hulda" ("Halte-Hulda") (1858) was a partial fulfilment of this pledge. If it is not high tragedy, in the ancient sense, it is of the stuff that tragedy is made of. Hulda is an impressive stage figure in her demoniac passion and tiger-like tenderness. Though I doubt if Bjoernson has, in this type, caught the soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to catching it than any of his predecessors. If Gudrun Osvif's Daughter, of the Laxdoela ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the complete dramatic course,—tragedies of jealousy, pantomimes of rapture, and farces of parting. There were billets on one side and the other; hints of a fatal destiny, and a ruthless, lynx-eyed tyrant, who held a demoniac grasp over the Duchess by means of certain secrets which he knew: there were regrets that we had not known each other sooner: why were we brought out of our convent and sacrificed to Monsieur le Duc? There were frolic interchanges of fancy and poesy: pretty bouderies; sweet reconciliations; yawns ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The demoniac interest excited by this scene withdrew the attention of those who were enjoying it from me, and gave me the opportunity of escaping unperceived, merely with the loss of my bandbox. Of that the infuriated mob made themselves masters; and the hats, caps, bonnets, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... up to me, on the northern side of the street—said something which I could not hear distinctly, then pushed me down the stone steps leading to one of the brokers' offices, and commenced fighting with a species of brutal and demoniac desperation characteristic of a fury. My damage is a scratch, about three-quarters of an inch in length, on the third finger of the left hand, which I received from the iron railing I was forced against, and three buttons torn from ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... fiercest—one alone excepted!—which Albyn can send down from her mountains, all athirst for each other's blood, while a king and his nobles, and shouting thousands besides, attend, as at a theatre, to encourage their demoniac fury! Blows clang and blood flows, thicker, faster, redder; they rush on each other like madmen, they tear each other like wild beasts; the wounded are trodden to death amid the feet of their companions! Blood ebbs, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... conceivable purpose had I been subjected as a victim to influences as much beyond my control as the Fate or Demoniac Necessity of a Greek Myth? In the legends of the classic world some august sufferer is oppressed by powers more than mortal, but with an ethical if gloomy vindication of his chastisement,—he pays the penalty of crime committed by his ancestors or himself, or he has braved, by arrogating ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she, the untrue, Yet pitiable, not despicable, gazed. Fawning, her body bent, she gazed With eyes the moonstone portals to her heart: Eyes magnifying through hysteric tears This apparition, ghostly for belief; Demoniac or divine, but sole Over earth's mightiest written Chief; Earth's chosen, crowned, unchallengeable upstart: The trumpet word to awake, transform, renew; The arbiter of circumstance; High above limitations, as the spheres. Nor ever ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... quite make out who Eleanore was; they took her for Daniel's wife. This misunderstanding, it seemed, was then cleared up by the Methodist after he had craned his neck and called his powers of recognition into play. The demoniac woman nodded, to be sure, and kept on blinking, but in her face there was an expression of rustic disapproval. Her mouth was opened, and the tusks of her upper jaw shone forth uncannily ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... bray and rubbed its shaggy sides against us in the most companionable way. In the flickering light of my lamp I caught sight of its long ears waving over me—I don't believe I had seen three donkeys before in my life; there were none where I came from—and heard that demoniac shriek, and I verily believe I thought the evil one had come for me in person. I know that I ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... succession of striking situations, and its cumulative interest. From beginning to end, however, Mr. Heavysege makes no attempt to produce a dramatic effect. It is true that he has availed himself of the phrase "an evil spirit from the Lord," to introduce a demoniac element, but, singularly enough, the demons seem to appear and to act unwillingly, and manifest great relief when they are allowed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... specter, glaring through the foliage. Thrice had these demoniacs been discovered prowling about the inhabited portions of the isle; and at day-break, an attendant of the holy Morai once came upon a frightful figure, doubled with age, helping itself to the offerings in the image of Doleema. The demoniac was slain; and from his ineffaceable tatooing, it was proved that this was no other than Foni, the false prophet; the splendid form he had carried into the rebel fight, now squalid with ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... than the one between Romola and Tito, when he finally discovers that she knows him fully, and can be deceived by him no more. Some such hour always must come for strong decided natures irrevocably pledged—one to the service of good, and the other to the slavery of evil. The demoniac cried out, 'What have I to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to torment me before the time?' The presence of all-pitying purity and love was a torture to the soul possessed by the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... modern world of wealth; it is only because I have faith in democracy and hope in the people of my country that I do not go to worship my God on a desert island. The world which I see about me at the present moment—the world of politics, of business, of society—seems to me a thing demoniac in its hideousness; a world gone mad with pride and selfish lust; a world of wild beasts writhing and grappling ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... monasteries became, under these conditions, dens of iniquity, and the nunneries were no better. The nunnery of Saint Fara in the eleventh century, according to a contemporary description, was no longer the residence of holy virgins, but a brothel of demoniac females who gave themselves up to all sorts of shameless conduct; and there are many other accounts of the same general tenor. Pope Gregory VII. tried again to do something for the cause of public morality, in 1074, when he issued edicts against both concubinage and simony—or the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... he hissed from between his clenched teeth, while the hot blood of anger mantled on his face, and his eyes were lit up with the fires of demoniac passions—'do you think to desert me and cast me off forever?'—As he spoke, his right hand was thrust into the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... volleyings of musketry from serried ranks of troops, the illusion enhanced by continuous sharp, rifle-like reports, the joints of the growth exploding as the air within was liberated by the heat of the fire. All around this blazing Gehenna were swiftly running figures of men applying with demoniac suggestion torches here and there, that a new area might be involved. Others were mounted, carrying flaming torches aloft, the restive horses plunging in frantic terror of the fiery furnace in the depths of the brake, the leaping sheets ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... postilions, and almost raised mobs by his insolent rodomontades. The Reformation, he told the people, had ruined everything. But fine times were coming. The Catholics would soon be uppermost. The heretics should pay for all. Raving and blaspheming incessantly, like a demoniac, he came to the court. [52] As soon as he was there, he allied himself closely with Castelmaine, Dover, and Albeville. These men called with one voice for war on the constitution of the Church and the State. They told their master that he owed it to his religion and to the dignity ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and Chehonaai thought it would be wise to give birth to demoniac monsters and let them devour the evil ones, but First Man objected, and finally the council agreed that the Winds should perform the task by bringing forth a devastating storm. The faithful were warned and given time to seek refuge under the water, inside the sacred mountains, in the higher ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis |
