"Superhuman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wont to meet in the Hotel de Russie to arrange their daily plan of campaign, and when at last the people rose up against Giolitti and his enormities, the Vatican had its mob in readiness to make counter-demonstrations, and was prevented from letting it loose only by the superhuman efforts of decent Catholics and orderly citizens. It is a fair thing to add that the attitude of the Roman Catholic clergy throughout Italy has with some few exceptions been consistently patriotic. Even the bishops and archbishops of the provinces have deserved well of their King and country, while ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... when the Babylonian represents Bel or Merodach as the solar deity, destroying Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, for there is confusion in the thought. The imaginary god is sometimes given solar, sometimes human, sometimes superhuman characteristics. There is no actuality in much of what is asserted as to the sun or as to the wholly imaginary being associated with it. The mocking words of Elijah to the priests of Baal were justified by the intellectual ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... I should say," said he, with the rare, almost superhuman patience that has made him ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... fame are. A friend of mine once spent a whole evening with a great novelist without discovering who he was. She said to him when she found him out, 'I couldn't believe that any one I could meet could be great.' Really, I hope you will forgive me for not being as superhuman as my posters. It was the mystery of the unknown. If you knew all about me I would be entirely commonplace." She was more concerned about his opinion of her than she expressed in words. Her eagerness appeared ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... could come under such circumstances and bring Grosvenor with him, it is Tayoga," replied the hunter. "I think sometimes that the Onondaga is superhuman in ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... after he had been brought within the Fold, I do not think I can exaggerate the solicitude which he all along showed, the reasonable and prudent solicitude, to conform himself in all things to the enunciations and the decisions of Holy Church; nor, again, the undoubted conviction he has had of her superhuman authority, the comfort he has found in her sacraments, and the satisfaction and trust with which he betook himself to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, to the glorious St. Michael, to St. Margaret, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... captain stopped at the door of the chart-room and observed him in silent admiration. To the man who with difficulty composed a letter to his family, the fact that Channing was writing something to be read by millions of people, and more rapidly than he could have spoken the same words, seemed a superhuman effort. He even hesitated to interrupt it ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... formerly associated with us upon this floor; who was no more infallible than the rest of us poor mortals; and yet the moment, by death or accident, he is placed in the executive chair, it would seem as if some Senators believed him to be endowed with superhuman wisdom, and ought to be invested with all the powers of this Government; that Congress ought to get on their knees before him, and take his insults and his dictation without resentment and without even an attempt ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... the perusal of Shakspeare, on whom Dryden had now turned his attention, led him to feel that something further might be attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in smooth verse, and that the scene ought to represent, not a fanciful set of agents exerting their superhuman faculties in a fairyland of the poet's own creation, but human characters acting from the direct and energetic influence of human passions, with whose emotions the audience might sympathize, because akin to the feelings of their own hearts. When Dryden had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... superhuman effort Rupert hid his disappointment. Unexpected as the answer was, he ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... leaves this question conveniently and carefully unanswered. But a question which has seriously occupied doctors of jurisprudence in every age cannot be an absolutely idle one. As a matter of fact, a mixture of human and superhuman goes to the making of a State. Some legal basis is indispensable to explain the somewhat oppressive relationship in which subjects occasionally stand to rulers. I believe it is to be found in the negotiorum gestio, wherein the body of citizens represents the dominus negotiorum, and the government ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... how dignity and reserve have been cast aside as virtues that are antiquated and outworn, until half the world—the world that should be orderly, harmonious, beautiful—has become an arena for the exhibition of vulgar ostentation or almost superhuman egoism—a cockpit resounding with raucous voices ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... "A superhuman pride fills the soul of this young man!" thought the high priest, and he took farewell of ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Tragique. Five notable figures, Decamps, Ravachol, Vaillant, Henry, and Caserio, within a period of three years, performed a series of terrorist acts that cannot be forgotten. Their utter desperation and abandon, the terrible solemnity of their lives, and the almost superhuman efforts they made to bring society to its knees mark the most tragic and heroic period in the history of anarchism. At Levallois-Perret a demonstration was organized by the anarchists for May 1. They brought out their red and black flags, and, when the police attempted ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... ten years, Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs, In hunger and in thirsts, fevers and colds, In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes, and cramps, ... Patient on this tall pillar I have borne. Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... favored the influence which Jeanne obtained both over friends and foes. The French nation, as well as the English and the Burgundians, readily admitted that superhuman beings inspired her; the only question was whether these beings were good or evil angels; whether she brought with her "airs from heaven or blasts from hell." This question seemed to her countrymen to be decisively ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... mischief. Released many times only to fall into new excesses, Mirabeau found at last in the French Revolution an opportunity for expressing his sincere belief in constitutional government and an outlet for his almost superhuman energy. From the convocation of the Estates-General to his death in 1791, he was one of the most prominent men in France. His gigantic physique, half-broken by disease and imprisonment, his shaggy eyebrows, his heavy head, gave him an impressive, though sinister, appearance. And for quickness ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... large experience, seldom fail to command submission and respect. Troops fight with marked success when they feel that their leader "knows his job," and in every Army troops are the critics of their leaders. The achievements of Jackson's forces in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 were almost superhuman, but under Stonewall Jackson the apparently impossible tasks were undertaken and achieved. General Ewell, one of Jackson's commanders, stated that he shivered whenever one of Stonewall's couriers approached him. "I was always ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... the very outset, we have the keynote struck of superhuman excellence; and though the reference is, on the surface, only to physical perfection, yet beneath that there lies the deeper reference to a character which spoke through the eloquent frame, and in which all possible beauties and sovereign graces were united ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in making Niagara a background whereon to display one's marvellous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Craddock's pistol away from him on that first day, she had believed him capable of the superhuman task of enforcing order in Ascalon without bloodshed. Sincere as she had been in her desire to have him assume the duties of peace officer, she had acted unconsciously as a lure to ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... resistance. Once open the mind to the sway of one feeling and it requires a greater power of feeling, thought, or will—or even all three—to unseat it. Our feelings influence our judgments and volitions much more than we care to admit. So true is this that it is a superhuman task to get an audience to reason fairly on a subject on which it feels deeply, and when this result is accomplished the success becomes noteworthy, as in the case of Henry Ward Beecher's Liverpool speech. Emotional ideas once accepted are soon cherished, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... could not be done, and we had to abandon them. Hescock also had lost most of his horses, but all his guns were saved. Bush's battery lost two pieces, the tangled underbrush in the dense cedars proving an obstacle to getting them away which his almost superhuman exertions could not surmount. Thus far the bloody duel had cost me heavily, one-third of my division being killed or wounded. I had already three brigade commanders killed; a little later I lost my ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... pride, her glory, her hero, the greatest man she had ever produced, was no morel." For such were here reflections upon the "old rebel" of former days. But that past had been utterly obliterated—no faintest memory of it remained. For years she had looked up to the Duke as a figure almost superhuman. Had he not been a supporter of good Sir Robert? Had he not asked Albert to succeed him as commander-in-chief? And what a proud moment it had been when he stood as sponsor to her son Arthur, who was born on his ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... ship, or a watch, that the same kind of causality—namely, understanding and will—resides in nature. It is also declared that the internal possibility of this freely-acting nature (which is the source of all art, and perhaps also of human reason) is derivable from another and superhuman art—a conclusion which would perhaps be found incapable of standing the test of subtle transcendental criticism. But to neither of these opinions shall we at present object. We shall only remark that ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... me that Eichhorn, like other learned Infidels, is caught in his own snares. For if the prophecies are of the age of the first Empire, and actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire should not have been predicted;—for superhuman predictions, the last two at least must have been. But if the book was a forgery, or a political poem like Gray's Bard or Lycophron's Cassandra, and later than Antiochus Epiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman should have escaped notice. In both cases the omission of the last ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... directions, observing, and afterwards describing its physical features, as well as the character and customs of the savages. From time to time, we even find him in arms against the dreaded Iroquois, but notwithstanding his superhuman efforts, the colony could make but little progress while its destinies remained in the hands of mercenary agents, who were utterly regardless of its interests, and intent only on enriching themselves at its cost. After Quebec had been founded ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... She's just what I need." And now he studied again the scene in which Kedzie took down the draught of bitter beer, and there was a superhuman vividness in the close-up, with its magnified details in which every tiny muscle revealed ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... directors disdainful of ordinary ways of transacting business. A mystery made of the most common-place affairs! We may be thankful that the world has at last seen through these pretenders to superhuman sagacity. With but remarkably few exceptions, the great railway men of the time have committed the grossest blunders; and the stupidest blunder of all, has been the confounding of proper and improper expenditure; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... after her; she shrieking that she was poisoned, they shrieking that she was mad; and all this happening amid a crowd which, not knowing what part to take, divided and made way for the victim and the murderers. Terror gave the marquise superhuman strength: the woman who was accustomed to walk in silken shoes upon velvet carpets, ran with bare and bleeding feet over stocks and stones, vainly asking help, which none gave her; for, indeed, seeing her ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... in spite of his gigantic strength, was powerless as an infant in the grasp of these terrible opponents. He was within a few paces of me, struggling with two of them, and making superhuman efforts to regain possession of his knife, which had dropped or been wrenched from his hand. And all this time, where were our arrieros? Were they attacked likewise? Why didn't they come and help us? All this time!—pshaw! it was no time: it all passed in the space of a few seconds, in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... microphone. He got at an oxygen-bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously, should be an antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act to increase the oxygenation of the blood-stream and muscles, and to make superhuman exertion possible if necessary. Breathing ninety-five per cent oxygen produced the effect the terror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heart slowed nearly to normal and his body relaxed. He held out his hand ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... regained his cool blood. He remembered, too, that Lygia was protected not only by Ursus and Linus, but by the Apostle Peter. At the mere remembrance of this, fresh solace entered his heart. For him Peter was an incomprehensible, an almost superhuman being. From the time when he heard him at Ostrianum, a wonderful impression clung to him, touching which he had written to Lygia at the beginning of his stay in Antium,—that every word of the old man was true, or would show its truth hereafter. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... riding that car, making it answer to his will, as it had been born in him to master a horse. He had never driven to suit himself, had never reached an all-satisfying speed until now. Beyond that his motive was to save Stewart—to make Madeline happy. Life was nothing to him. That fact gave him the superhuman nerve to face the peril of this ride. Because of his disregard of self he was able to operate the machine, to choose the power, the speed, the guidance, the going with the best judgment and highest efficiency ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... His death. Is that the invention of a man? On the contrary, it is a strange course of procedure, a superhuman confidence, an inexplicable reality. In every other existence than that of Christ, what imperfections, what changes! I defy you to cite any existence, other than that of Christ, exempt from the least vacillation, free from all such blemishes ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... and of her five representatives in Congress only one was friendly to the policy of the Administration. Michigan, which had been Republican by twenty thousand in 1860, now gave the Administration but six thousand majority, though Senator Chandler made almost superhuman efforts to bring out the full vote of the party. Wisconsin, which had given Mr. Lincoln a large popular majority, now gave a majority of two thousand for the Democrats, dividing the Congressional delegation ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the most elevated of the Andes, the travelers were seized with a malady called by the Indians soroche, which deprives the most intrepid man of his courage and his strength. A superhuman will is then necessary to keep one from falling motionless on the stones of the road, and being devoured by those immense condors which display above their vast wings! These three men spoke little; each wrapped himself in the silence ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... raging fury. With a terrible scream, like that of a goaded beast, a hoarse yell that came grating out of her parched throat, she thrust her arms, stiff with pain, like two steel rods, under the arms of that limp corpse and, with a superhuman effort, with Herculean strength exalted by suffering, she lifted the corpse, pressed it to her body, raised it with her outstretched arms and dragged it, with its legs trailing behind it, hurrying along at a mad pace, with the one idea of getting home with her child, her only child, away, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... the North Peak was, in one march from the ridge camp. It must have involved a camp in the Grand Basin with all the delay and the labor of relaying the stuff up there. But the men who accomplished the astonishing feat of climbing the North Peak, in one almost superhuman march from the saddle of the Northeast Ridge, could most certainly have climbed the South ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... was becoming an acute one with the Gardiner family. Tom delivered papers during the week and helped out in a grocery store on Saturday, and his earnings helped slightly, but not much. Midwinter taxes on two houses ate up more than two weeks' income. With almost superhuman ingenuity Migwan apportioned their expenses so the money covered them. This she had to do practically alone, for her mother was as helpless before a column of figures as she would have been in a flood. Meat practically disappeared from the table. The big bag of ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... Spence; and this conviction was confirmed by Draper's reiterated assurance of his father's appreciation. But Millner had begun to suspect that one might be necessary to Mr. Spence one day, and a superfluity, if not an obstacle, the next; and that it would take superhuman astuteness to foresee how and when the change would occur. Every fluctuation of the great man's mood was therefore anxiously noted by the young meteorologist in his service; and this observer's vigilance was now strained to the utmost by the little cloud, no bigger than a man's ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... that you can understand. You master page 142. Here you are secure. You pour into the astonished ear of your guest your views upon the subject. Such ripe erudition in one whose chief interests lie elsewhere seems to him almost superhuman. Your views on page 142 are so sound that he longs to continue the conversation into what had before seemed the more important matter contained in page 143. But etiquette forbids. It is your royal prerogative to confine ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... By making almost superhuman efforts the party on the rock managed to get abreast of Roylance just as he was half-way between the boat and a patch of rugged boulders which had seemed to promise foothold till help could reach him from ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... passes by him to lay others low. War and carnage flee before him to ravage other parts of the field, as Hector from before the divine Achilles. You say he hath no pity; no more have the gods, who are above it, and superhuman. The fainting battle gathers strength at his aspect; and, wherever he rides, victory ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... matter and complicated proceedings to a degree apparently almost insurmountable. Lost in the destruction of the safe were some $900,000 in re-insurance policies. This meant restoration of this data from the records of the re-insuring companies and at that time this looked like a superhuman undertaking. However, I immediately detailed two employes with instructions to devote their entire time to this angle of affairs. The companies met the situation with every courtesy and finally after several months' exertion all of the reinsurance was located, ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... are, and since every living soul has, as the substratum of its identity, what might be called a "spiritual body," there is nothing in the revelation made to us through the activity of our complex vision to forbid our free and even fanciful speculation as to its use, by the very highest of superhuman personalities, even, let us say, by the Christ himself, of this mysterious energy of the soul which I ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Singh sat drawing silently in the dust, with his injured feet stretched out in front of him. A monkey in the giant tree above us shook down a little shower of twigs and dirt. A trumpet blared. There began much business of closing tents and reducing the camp to superhuman tidiness. ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... the situation. His own ball was somewhere near the centre, the red about eighteen inches from the top left-hand pocket, and the white midway between the right-hand cushion and the D. With an almost superhuman stroke (but not, as was subsequently averred, with his eyes shut) he smote the red, and his ball travelled rapidly up and down the table. On the down journey it glanced off the white, after which, still going at a tremendous pace, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... raced, straining every nerve. Not one of his companions was burdened like him, yet not one of them made greater speed in the effort to escape. His exertions were almost superhuman. It seemed that the knowledge of Inza's awful peril actually lifted him ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... when she comes, an' finds as it ain't all been took,—or, as you might say,—vanished away,—why the question as I ax's you is,—w'ot will she say? Oh Lord!" And here, Adam gave vent to his great laugh which necessitated an almost superhuman exertion of strength to keep the table from slipping from its precarious perch. Whereupon Miss Priscilla screamed, (a very small scream, like herself) and Prudence scolded, and the two rosy-cheeked maids tittered, and Adam ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... railroad fashion had concluded to leave it till the next train. The poor girl was thrown into a most uneasy position, without the power of changing it. She was nearly suffocated for want of air; the hay-seed fell into her eyes and nostrils, and it required almost superhuman efforts to refrain from sneezing or choking. Added to this was terror lest her absence be discovered, and the heavy box examined. In that state of mind and body, she remained more than two hours, in the hot sun on the railroad platform. At last, ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... the cause of science almost comparable to that of Saint Simeon Stylites. Yet they tell me he might live in luxury if he spent on himself what he spends on science. His knowledge is of that strange, remote character, that it seems sometimes almost superhuman. He knows the ridges and chasms of the moon as a surveyor knows a garden-plot he has measured. He watches the snows that gather around the poles of Mars; he is on the lookout for the expected comet at the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not seem very amiably disposed toward the great Russian czar. Having been already emancipated by their own leaders, they do not appear to be aware of his superhuman benevolence in their behalf. They have issued a manifesto against him. They propose to raise a peasant army of a million of men, from the ages of sixteen to sixty, to assault Warsaw and other Polish cities ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... theory is, that the Traditional Text—not in superhuman perfection, though under some superhuman Guidance—is the embodiment of the original Text of the New Testament. In the earliest times, just as false doctrines were widely spread, so corrupt readings prevailed in many places. Later on, when Christianity was better ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... me that the danger was past. I had not imagined it possible that I could ever experience towards her such a tranquil emotion as this easy friendliness. For the last five years my imagination had been playing round her memory, until I suppose I had built up in my mind some almost superhuman image, some goddess. What I was passing through now, of course, though I was unaware of it, was the natural reaction from that state of mind. Instead of the goddess, I had found a companionable human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself, and by sheer force of will brought ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... most superhuman efforts to raise you in society. You can be ten times as proud of your name as of ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... oaks are uprooted by the whirlwind, that a wayfarer stumbles at night on an unknown road, or that a soldier caught between two fires is vanquished, no more should he condemn without appeal those who have been worsted in almost superhuman moral conflicts. To succumb under the force of numbers or obstacles has never been counted ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... he would find that the steam launch was waiting for them in a little bay where the cliff on which the house stood curved inwards. Then, a merry party of young English folks all collected together by Mrs. Carr that morning by the dint of superhuman efforts, they would scramble down the steps cut in the rock and steam off to some neighbouring islet to eat luncheon and wander about collecting shells and flowers and beetles till sunset, and then steam back again through the spicy evening air, laughing and flirting ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... loud, distinct voice). "If the ghost is here and I see him, so help me God I'll fire at him!" Suddenly, as we enter the field, a most extraordinary noise responds—terrific noise—human noise—and yet superhuman noise. B. T. D. brings piece to shoulder. "Did you hear that, pa?" says Frank. "I did," says I. Noise repeated—portentous, derisive, dull, dismal, damnable. We advance towards the sound. Something white comes lumbering through the darkness. An asthmatic sheep! Dead, as I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... good, intangible, or divine; to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value, would already practically imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enough appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look, morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody—and WITH which, nevertheless, perhaps ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Boydell's Shakspeare Gallery, is esteemed among the best of Fuseli's works. It is, indeed, strangely wild and superhuman—if ever a Spirit visited earth, it must have appeared to Fuseli. The "majesty of buried Denmark" is no vulgar ghost such as scares the belated rustic, but a sad and majestic shape with the port of a god; to imagine this, required poetry, and in that our artist was never deficient. He had fine ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... superhuman efforts and patience of Annette and two housemaids, directed from below by Owen and Judge Rutherford, it was half-past two o'clock before I was ready to descend to the car in which Matthew had been sitting, ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... right and left. With firm and quick tread he ascends the ladder. At the top he stands for a moment irresolute. Is it possible to reach the window? It seems impossible. But he makes a spring for it, and by an almost superhuman effort he gains it. He rescues the child.; with great risk he regains the ladder, and begins the descent. He is nerved by the cheers of the crowd; but when about half way down his strength gives way, and he falls. The child escapes all danger, but ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... think not avowedly so, an adherent of the philosophy of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. The primal force, from which all things proceed, is the Immanent Will. The Will is unconscious and omnipotent. It is superhuman only in power, lacking intelligence, foresight, and any sense of ethical values. In The Dynasts, Mr. Hardy has written an epic illustration ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... men, oppressed by a sad and stolid bovine-sort of integrity. A sober seriousness and enormous certitude characterized all of them. They appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers as "Gloomy Gus" (the pessimistic hero of the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... reflected, there was much in his determination to recommend it. It was the obvious thing to do—unless we admitted that Norhala was superhuman; and that I would not admit. In command of forces we did not yet know, en rapport with these People of Metal, sealed with that alien consciousness Ruth had described—all these, yes. But still a woman—of that I was certain. And ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... he did force him, armed and on horseback as he was, many paces back, and Robert Bruce again galloped over the field, bareheaded indeed, for his helmet had fallen off in the strife, urging, inciting, leading on yet again to the charge. And it was in truth as if a superhuman strength and presence had been granted the patriot king that night, for there were veteran warriors there, alike English and Scotch, who paused even in the work of strife ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... men had rushed into the room at the noise of the struggle, and strove vainly to tear the Russian from his hold. But he hung on with the tenacity of a mastiff. There was a ringing in Foyle's ear and a red blur before his eyes. With a superhuman effort he got his elbow under the Russian's chin and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... fundamental principle Russia, the whilom Ally, without whose superhuman efforts and heroic sacrifices her partners would have been pulverized, was tacitly relegated to the category of hostile and defeated peoples, and many of her provinces lopped off arbitrarily and ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... who had recently come from New Orleans, broke the news to his unhappy brother. Terrible was the anguish of Uncle Joshua, when he became convinced that he must lose her. Nothing could induce him to leave her room; and as if endowed with superhuman strength, he watched by her constantly, only leaving her once each day to visit the quiet grave, the bed of his other daughter, where now the long green grass was waving, and the summer flowers were blooming, flowers ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Archbishop Thomson: "The miracles of the Gospel are works done by Christ in the course of His divine mission of mercy, which could not have proceeded from ordinary causes then in operation, and therefore proved the presence of a superhuman power, and which, by their nature and drift, showed that this power was being exerted in the direction of love and compassion for ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... which he still had in his pocket—from the hair, ears and noses of great warriors, and perform sundry other marvels, there was not a Mangeroma in all that great assemblage who did not regard the American as something superhuman, or who would have ventured, even in the most secret recesses of his soul, to meditate treachery to him or ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... little success. Lord Bacon was a poet. [Footnote: See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death particularly]. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which distends, and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of his victim with violent kicks of his heels, and slew his foe like a lion slaying an infuriated elephant. At the cries of that hero while he was being slain, his wives and guards that were in his tent all awake, O king! Beholding somebody crushing the prince with superhuman force, they regarded the assailant to be some preternatural being and, therefore, uttered no cries from fear. Having despatched him to Yama's abode by such means, Ashvatthama of great energy went out and getting upon his beautiful car stayed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... things which appear very extraordinary, may often be explained by a chance resemblance or a freak of nature. Marvels being always the result of optical illusion or heated fancy, a time must come, when that which appeared to be superhuman or supernatural, will prove to be the most simple and natural event in the world. I doubt not, therefore, that the things, which we denominate our prodigies, will one day receive ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... close to that dark and inert thing at last; she put out her hand and touched it. The man was lying on his face; just as he had fallen, no doubt; with a superhuman effort she gathered up all her strength and lifted those hunched-up shoulders from the ground. Then she gave a smothered cry; the pallid face of Eros Bela was staring sightlessly up ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... forces, a word which conveys no meaning to the average mind, because force is invisible. But to an occult investigator the forces are not merely names such as steam, electricity, etc. He finds them to be intelligent beings of varying grades, both sub and superhuman. What we call "laws of nature," are great intelligences which guide more elemental beings in accordance with certain rules designed to ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... time for instruction and Damis leaped to the control board. He pulled a lever far down and in an instant the entire crew was flat on the floor as though an enormous weight had pressed them down. With a superhuman effort, Damis raised himself enough to cut off the power. The ship shot on through the rapidly thinning air, its sides glowing a dull red. The heat inside ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... window in a German sleeping car—not without blasting; and trying to open a window in the ordinary first or second class carriage provides healthful exercise for an American tourist, while affording a cheap and simple form of amusement for his fellow passengers. If, by superhuman efforts and at the cost of a fingernail or two, he should get one open, somebody else in the compartment as a matter of principle, immediately objects; and the retired brigadier-general, who is always in charge of a German train, comes and seals it up again, for that is the rule and the law; ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... into a careless habit of using the words supernatural and superhuman, as if equivalent. A human act may be super-doggish, and a Divine act superhuman, yet all three acts absolutely Natural. It is, perhaps, as much the virtue of a Spirit to be inconstant as of a poison to be sure, and therefore always ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... whole course of events, at least all since Bull Run, seems clear if I can but know—or even believe—that any man has such superhuman power. Can ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... was Pere Francois Xavier, a man with all the fire and enthusiasm of youth in his blood—just the one for daring, hazardous enterprises; just the one to undergo all the privation and toil of planting a mission; to undertake plans requiring superhuman efforts, and to carry them through successfully by main force of will. A better assistant for Father Ignatius could not have been found. It was force, will, and intellect in the service of love and meekness; only there was a doubt if the servant might not usurp the place of the master, and the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... his passionate detractors and his personal devotees, and these last afflicted him far more than the first. Like the priest, the physician cannot escape taking on superhuman proportions in the eyes of those to whom he has rendered back life, their own or a dearer, and the Doctor (having long outlived the time when it flattered him) was often exasperated to the limits ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... of evolution is a warrant for the idea that we ourselves, even erected men and women, are but stages to what may be higher. We look with contempt upon the apes, but time must have been when "simian" would have been as proud an adjective as "human" is to-day: and human may become superhuman. ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... was light he was up in our lines cracking jokes with everyone he met, and asking "are we downhearted," to which he got the usual roar as answer. It really never stopped raining all day, and never again it is to be hoped will any of us spend another Christmas like it. By superhuman efforts some few ration donkeys were persuaded along by their drivers, and arrived that night, but what they carried was only a small part of a ration. Our hopes were fixed on the wheeled transport, which had brought their loads of guns and ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... appreciation, and the ridicule of what he considered his best and most distinctive work, contributed in all probability to a still more unfortunate result—the premature depression and deadening of his powers. He schooled himself to stoical endurance, but he was not superhuman, and in the absence of sympathy not only was any possibility of development checked, but he ceased to write with the spontaneity and rapture of his earlier verse. His resolute industry was productive of many wise, impressive, and charitable reflections, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... querulous; hours long she lay and poured forth complaints and reproaches. When she could speak no more for very weariness, she moaned and wept, till Emily also found it impossible to check the tears which came of the extremity of her compassion. The girl was superhuman in her patience; never did she speak a word which was not of perfect gentleness; the bitterest misery seemed but to augment the tenderness of her devotion. Scarcely was there an hour of the day or night that she could claim for herself; whilst it was daylight she tended the sufferer ceaselessly, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... which he proposed to accomplish this superhuman task, was shown when he told the Southern people through the Civic authorities of Washington on the 27th of February—When the latter called upon him —that he had no desire or intention to interfere with any of their Constitutional rights—that they should have all their rights under the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... of the Jews in the Presence of Jesus.—The record of the achievement of Jesus, in ridding the temple courts of those who had made the House of the Lord a market place, contains nothing to suggest the inference that He exercized superhuman strength or more than manly vigor. He employed a whip of His own making, and drove all before Him. They fled helter-skelter. None are said to have voiced an objection until the expulsion had been made complete. Why did not some among ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... would all add weight to the reason against the invocation of angels by Christians. The Israelites of old had no clear knowledge, as we have, of one great Mediator, who is ever making intercession for us; and yet they sought not the mediation and intercession and good offices of those superhuman beings, of whose existence and power, and employment in works of blessing to man, they had no doubt[8]. This is a point of great importance to our argument, and I will refer to a few passages in ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... one of the negroes, as if by a superhuman force, was sent from this formless mass, whirling headlong through the air, and fell at the feet of the manager, striking his skull with great force on the ground; soon a second flew out; then from the center of this turbulent group Orso's body ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the clergyman were left with the father and the children, and with an unexampled wedding collation—one of Pansy's underived masterpieces. The clergyman frightened the younger children; they had never seen his like either with respect to his professional robes or his superhuman clerical voice—their imaginations balancing unsteadily between the impossibility of his being a man in a nightgown and the impossibility of his being a woman with ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... exactly ten letters since her departure, but only two had been dispatched, and by a fatal error these two were identical. After a superhuman effort to couch his burning thoughts in sufficiently cool terms, he had achieved a partially successful result; but, discovering after addressing the envelope that he had misspelled two words, he laboriously made ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Lord Mongrober never gave any chance of retaliation by return dinners. There lived not the man or woman who had dined with Lord Mongrober. But yet the Robys of London were glad to entertain him; and the Mrs. Robys, when he was coming, would urge their cooks to superhuman energies by the mention of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... realize that Olga is more than a mere type. He agrees with me that she's a sort of miracle. To Terry she's only a mute and muscular Finnish servant-girl with an arm like a grenadier's. To Percy she is a goddess made manifest, a superhuman body of superhuman vigor and beauty and at the same time a body crowned with majesty and robed in mystery. And I still incline to Percy's opinion. Olga is always wonderful to me. Her lips are such a soft and melting red, the red of perfect animal ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... back into the case again, goaded by the papers, particularly by the Record, to efforts which he must have considered superhuman. The remarkable nature of the mystery, its picturesque and unique features, the fact that three men had been killed within a few days in precisely the same manner, and the absence of any reasonable hypothesis ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... presence; and perhaps they were not aware of the gentle, affectionate way in which they spoke of the weather and similar topics. Miss Lavender was; her eyes opened widely, then nearly closed with an expression of superhuman wisdom; she looked out of the window and nodded to the lilac-bush, then exclaiming in desperate awkwardness: "Goodness me, I must have a bit o' sage!" made for the garden, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... can assimilate—is within the reach of the trained pupil, but for the untrained clairvoyant to touch it is hardly more than a bare possibility. It has been done in mesmeric trance, but the occurrence is of exceeding rarity, for it needs almost superhuman qualifications in the way of lofty spiritual aspiration and absolute purity of thought and intention upon the part both of the subject and ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... period with you; but I ask you this, and I demand that you answer me truthfully, and that you remember that you are speaking to her father. Imagine that I had the power to tell you, or rather that some superhuman agent could convince you, that you had but a month to live, and that for what you did in that month you would not be held responsible either by any moral law or any law made by man, and that your life hereafter would not be influenced by your conduct in that month, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... thousand things the uneducated hand can not do. It becomes graceful, steady of nerve, strong, skilful, indeed it almost seems to think, so animated is it with intelligence. The cultured will can seize, grasp, and hold the possessor, with irresistible power and nerve, to almost superhuman effort. The educated touch can almost perform miracles. The educated taste can achieve wonders almost past belief. What a contrast between the cultured, logical, profound, masterly reason of a Gladstone and that of the hod-carrier ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... to lift the veil of her sex. Woman, let us hope, will at last unriddle woman. Smit by the sunbeams, or rather by the moonbeams, of self-discovery, the Sphinx of modern times will reveal in weird and superhuman music the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... went together. The captain, an enormous brawny Celt, with superhuman whiskers and a shock of the fieriest hair, had figged himself out, more majorum, in the full Highland costume. I never saw Rob Roy on the stage look half so dignified or ferocious. He glittered from head to foot with dirk, pistol, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... that led to our excitement at Melun. We had, after superhuman efforts, got the Naturalist into the carriage, and had breathlessly fallen back in the seat, expecting the train to move forthwith. Ten minutes later it slowly steamed out of the station, accompanied by the sound of the tootling ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... us to suspend harsh words with regard to such a man, who has upon the greatest question affecting our human reason almost, we might say, revealed the truth (viz., in his theory of the categories), we should describe him, and continually we are tempted to describe him as the most superhuman of recorded blockheads. Would it be credited, that at this time of day, actually in the very closing years of the eighteenth century, a man armed with some reading, but not too much study—and sixty years' profound meditation should treat it as a matter of obvious ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... has it been permitted to do the same amount of good, and to save more misery and suffering, both during and after the war, than to Miss Ettie Rout. Her superhuman energy and indomitable perseverance enabled her to perform, in the most efficient manner possible, a work which few women would care to handle, and of which but an infinitesimally small number are capable. The French Government ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... streets with it, or to tell the British public that Fitzroy Y-ll-wpl-sh is short of money, or that the sallybrated hauthor of the Y—- Papers is in peskewniary difficklties, or is fiteagued by his superhuman littery labors, or by his famly suckmstansies, or by any other pusnal matter: my maxim, dear B, is on these pints to be as quiet as posbile. What the juice does the public care for you or me? Why must we always, in prefizzes and what not, be a-talking about ourselves and our igstrodnary ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... avatar. V. create, move, uphold, preserve, govern &c; atone, redeem, save, propitiate, mediate, &c; predestinate, elect, call, ordain, bless, justify, sanctify, glorify &c Adj. almighty, holy, hallowed, sacred, divine, heavenly, celestial; sacrosanct; all-knowing, all-seeing, all-wise; omniscient. superhuman, supernatural; ghostly, spiritual, hyperphysical^, unearthly; theistic, theocratic; anointed; soterial^. Adj. jure divino [Lat.], by divine right. Phr. Domine dirige nos [Lat.]; en Dieu est ma fiance [Fr.]; et sceleratis sol oritur [Lat.] [Seneca]; He mounts the storm and walks upon the wind ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rebuilding the sides which the night previous had been destroyed by shell-fire and the heavy rains. Then followed scenes of relief parties coming in, and working parties hard at it trying to drain their dug-outs. This latter seemed to me an almost superhuman task; but through it all, the men smiled. Bending low, I raced across an open space, and with a jump landed in an advanced sniper's post, in a ruined farm-house. I filmed him, carefully and coolly picking off the Germans foolish enough to show ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... the home minister, has to guard against one-sidedness, if he would keep to the Book which he professes to be his standard. The many-sidedness of the Bible, its appeal to man's whole nature, is one of the most marked proofs of its superhuman origin. While it addresses itself continually to man's moral nature, to his sense of right and wrong, while it appeals to his intellect and heart, it also speaks to his fears and hopes. These appeals are made to all, whatever may be their diversity in character and condition. If ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... of waiting: my obstinacy was something superhuman. The bare idea that Michael might lose his place, through my fault, made me desperate, I suppose. "I won't trouble you to send for me," I persisted; "I will go with you at once as far as the door, and wait to hear if I may come ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... study of a real type, and a type which all the tragedians knew. The character of the professional seer or "man of God" has in the imagination of most ages fluctuated between two poles. At one extreme are sanctity and superhuman wisdom; at the other fraud and mental disease, self-worship aping humility and personal malignity in the guise of obedience to God. There is a touch of all these qualities, good and bad alike, in Tiresias. He seems to me ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... and a fine sense of order. No historian I have ever read is so minute; yet he never gives you a word about the people; his interest is entirely limited in the concatenation of events, into which he goes with a lucid, almost superhuman, and wholly ghostly gusto. 'By the ghost of a mathematician' the book might be announced. A very brave, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too much stunned by this evidence of Ridgeway's apparently superhuman penetration to reply. After enjoying his host's confusion for a moment with his eyes, Ridgeway's mouth ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... would remark, "a fellow with a heart, I would not be here." He had left the army and had made himself so obnoxious to his family by his laziness and impudence, that an exasperated brother-in-law had made superhuman efforts to procure him an appointment in the Company as a second-class agent. Having not a penny in the world he was compelled to accept this means of livelihood as soon as it became quite clear to him that there was nothing more to squeeze out of his relations. He, like Kayerts, regretted ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... shield their beauties from unhallow'd arms! Oh! may their suppliant steal a passing kiss? Alas! he pants not for superior bliss; Thrice-bless'd his virgin modesty shall be To snatch an evanescent ecstacy! The fierce extremes of superhuman love, For his frail sense too exquisite might prove; He turns, all blushing, from th' Aoenian shade, To humbler ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... up, placed the poor bird that had sacrificed itself for him next his heart, and, with superhuman ardor, urged the iceberg on to safety or destruction. Suddenly he heard the roaring of the breakers. He fell on his knees and closed his ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... burst its bounds; it was a rhythmic stampede. Louder and louder, her clicking heels beat the furious time; higher and higher her dexterous toes flew to her feathers that bowed to meet them, and when her last superhuman kick sent her hat flying, and the Humorist caught it on his head, they had brought ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven Ronins was condemned to death;—he had no court of ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... you, Mr. Stone," said Rhoda Schuyler, testily; "I didn't suppose you were superhuman, but I did think, with your reputation and all, you would be able to find that woman. I've heard say that nobody could absolutely vanish in New York City, and ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... knows all about the one, and the Duke of Sussex knows all about the other, but the uninitiated know nothing of either! Jockeys are wonders—so are their boots! Crickets have as much calf, grasshoppers as much ostensible thigh; and yet these superhuman specimens of manufactured leather fit like a glove, and never pull the little gentlemen's legs off. That's the extraordinary part of it; they never even so much as dislocate a joint! Jockey bootmakers are wonderful men! Jockeys ain't men ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... superhuman effort the young fellow controlled himself once more as he arose. Not lightly had he given a promise. Silently he dusted the snow from his uniform and strode over to where the sorrel awaited him. The horse had made no attempt to run away; apparently being ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... pine-ridge, he had dismissed all apprehension, and allowed his mind to drift to a bend of the Murrumbidgee, a couple of miles above Hay. There were his young barbarians all at play; there was their dacent mother; he, their sire, looking blissfully forward to superhuman ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... came to this: if you wanted a complete change from Palestine you had to go to Egypt for it, either via hospital or on leave. In the latter case, when you had succeeded in the superhuman task of convincing the orderly-room clerk that your name was next on the roster, there came first a long trek across country to railhead. Here you were harassed by an officious person called the R.T.O. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... to the longboat, and we began to ask ourselves and each other how she had fared. We were still afloat, it is true, but only because of our long-continued and almost superhuman exertions, while our boat was an exceptionally good one and by no means overloaded. How it would be with our consort, overcrowded with helpless, terror-stricken women and children, and perilously deep in the water, we scarcely dared to think; for, with the ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... and all things for the attainment of superhuman wisdom," said Glyndon; and his countenance was lighted up with ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 'might possibly' be useful. It might affect 'secret crimes,' that is, crimes where the offender is undiscoverable. That, however, is a trifle. These cases, he thinks, would be 'uncommonly rare' under a well-conceived system. The extent of evil in this life would therefore be trifling were superhuman inducements entirely effaced from the human bosom, and if 'human institutions were ameliorated according to the progress of philosophy.'[618] On the other hand, the imaginary punishments are singularly defective in the qualities upon which Bentham ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... however, destroy all; and here comes in the important question of Celtic survival. Some admirers of the conquerors credit them with superhuman massacres. According to them no Celt survived; and the race, we are told, was either driven back into Wales or destroyed, so that the whole land had to be repopulated, and that a new and wholly Germanic nation, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Geneva, in his remarkable work, Esprits et Mediums. Professor Flournoy is known to be one of the most learned and most critical exponents of the new science of metapsychics. He even carries his fondness for natural explanations and his repugnance to admit the intervention of superhuman powers to a point where it is often difficult to follow him. I will give the narrative as briefly as possible. It will be found in full on pp. 348 to 362 of his ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... northerly train, travelled as far as he could by rail, then hired conveyances to carry him to where men and snow-ploughs were cutting a road to the imprisoned cars. Mr. Thorne joined them in their work. His strength seemed superhuman. Muscular men were amazed at his swift, dexterous movements. All day they toiled. The following night was a terrible one to the heart-sick passengers. The fires were out; not a morsel of food to eat. Ruey, chilled and weak, could not even find relief in sleep. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... man, the leader and liberator of the people," said Field with a smile, "who has carried all before him, and who I verily believe will carry all before him, for Providence has given him those superhuman energies which can alone emancipate a race, wishes to confer with you on the state of this town and neighbourhood. It has been represented to him that no one is more knowing and experienced than yourself in this respect; besides ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... he could stay for no more. Already his mask and wig had fallen off. The moonlight struck full upon his face and the fine proportions of his figure. He saw that there were half a dozen men spurring onwards in pursuit; but he was full of that fury which gives to men an almost superhuman strength. ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... reach her father again, but could not. Umballa folded his arms tightly about her and attempted to kiss her. This time her strength was superhuman. She freed her hands and beat him in the face, tore his garments, dragged off his turban. The struggle brought them within the radius of the colonel's reach. The prisoner caught his enemy by the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... for a pillow—stained with his own blood—and held it up before him. A light came into his dying eyes,—a light of heaven, perhaps, no pain in his heart now. One trembling hand would still do his bidding; by a superhuman effort of his resolute will he caught the bit of bunting and carried it to his lips in a long kiss of farewell. His lips moved. He was saying something. Katharine bent to listen. What was it? Ah! she heard; they were the words he said on the deck of the transport when they saw the ship wrecked ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he was locked with a creature of almost superhuman strength. The sinewy fingers of a powerful hand sought his throat while the other lifted the bludgeon above his head. But if the strength of the hairy attacker was great, great too was that of his smooth-skinned antagonist. Swinging a single terrific ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... He was caught between fire and water; he made a superhuman effort, the effort of a counterfeiter of money who is on the point of being boiled, and who seeks to escape. He rose to his feet, flung aside the straw pallet upon the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... men who make of iron, constructed one city—enormous—superhuman; and while that he labored, his brothers in the plain drove far away the sons of Enos and the children of Seth, and put out the eyes of all who passed that way, and the night came when the walls of covering of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... "The strong, broad, heavy, powerful frame of Mr. Bradlaugh was hard to move, with its every nerve and muscle strained to resist the coercion. Bending and straining against the overpowering numbers, he held every inch with surprising tenacity, and only surrendered it after almost superhuman exertions to retain it. The sight—little of it as was seen from the outside—soon became sickening. The overborne man appeared almost at his last gasp. The face, in spite of the warmth of the struggle, had an ominous pallor. The limbs barely sustained him.... The Trafalgar ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Frank could answer, Heale had broken forth into loud praises of him, setting forth how the stranger owed his life entirely to his superhuman strength ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... some Rich thought hidden in the basest thing, Which he transmuted into golden words, So that in hearing him I often thought Upon the story of that Saint whose mouth Was radiant with the angel's blessed touch, Which gave him superhuman eloquence; And though he was ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of wisdom, I reply, wisdom such as may perhaps be attained by man, for to that extent I am inclined to believe that I am wise; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have a superhuman wisdom which I may fail to describe, because I have it not myself; and he who says that I have, speaks falsely, and is taking away my character. And here, O men of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say something extravagant. ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... the brazen servant Thomas Aquinas made under the influence of particular stars. His great brown shoulders, his barreled chest, his upper arms like a man's leg, his packed forearms, his neck like a bull's, his shaven head. All seemed superhuman, and then came his shy embarrassed smile, his troubled eyes. One felt he hated ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... spiritual world appeared to man in the guise of the astral. The corresponding spiritual beings manifested themselves in forms which embodied only the higher principles of the human being, and in those principles the symbols of their particular spiritual forces were astrally visible. Superhuman forms were manifested ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... over the world. Every vein in its leaves, every stamen in its cup, every fibre of its roots, is numbered, and no power on earth can make the number more or less. Still more, when we strain our weak eyes and, with superhuman power, cast a more searching glance into the secrets of nature, when the microscope discloses to us the silent laboratory of the seed, the bud and the blossom, do we recognize the infinite, ever-recurring form in the most minute tissues and ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... of the ear, there came also an illusion of vision. The months of her recent life rose before her, in one hurrying spectacle of scenes and faces, and the spectacle aroused in her but one idea—one sickening impression—of crushing and superhuman effort. What labour!—what toil! She shuddered under it. Then, suddenly, her mind ran back to the early years before, beyond, the days of "war"—sordid, unceasing war—when there had been time to love, to weep, to pity, to enjoy; before wrath breeding wrath, and violence begetting ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into those shaggy dells; for there is no need of night to conceal us, and the unwitnessed blush of morn or the dreary silence of noon is, no less than the moon's reign, the season for the sports of the superhuman tribes." ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should study humanity if he would know whether his personages are human. This appears to me the cruelest irony, the most sarcastic affectation of humility. If you had asked that character in fiction be superhuman, or subterhuman, or preterhuman, or intrahuman, and had bidden the novelist go, not to humanity, but the humanities, for the proof of his excellence, it would have been all very easy. The books are full ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pang, the only real one I ever felt in my life! But it taught me one thing, that the only road toward realization of life and one's self is through suffering. I found out that I could bear, for it seems to me as I look back at that horrible nightmare, that it was almost by a superhuman effort I was able to read the letter at all. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... attained to the altitude of five feet; yet here were we destined to pass the night—and a wretched night we did pass. We got over the first part tolerably, but as it grew late our eyes grew heavy. We yawned, fidgeted and made superhuman efforts to keep awake and seem happy; but it would not do. There were only two berths in the cabin; and, as so many gentlemen were present, Mrs Gowley would not get into either of them, but declared she would sit up all night. The gentlemen, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... buffeting such as this tells upon any man, no matter what his strength of mind or body to begin with; and a perpetually soaked body is apt in time to sodden the soul, unless it have something superhuman to cling to, as this man had in his simple trust in God and the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... and good fortune so that we might govern you willing or unwilling, we should neither lose our heads nor desire sole supremacy, but that instead he should reject it when offered and I return it when given is a superhuman achievement. I speak in this way not for idle boasting,—I should not have said it at all if I were to derive any advantage whatever from it,—but in order that you may see that whereas there are many public benefits to our credit and we have in private many lofty titles, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... itself, abstruse and scientific as was its subject, had to be treated in a clear and popular form to gain the Papal ear. But difficulties which would have crushed another man only roused Roger Bacon to an almost superhuman energy. By the close of 1267 the work was done. The "greater work," itself in modern form a closely-printed folio, with its successive summaries and appendices in the "lesser" and the "third" works (which make a good octavo more), ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... encore. The dance was a marvellous one, a piece of dazzling intricacy, of swift and unexpected subtleties, of almost superhuman grace. It must have proved utterly exhausting to any ordinary being; but to that creature of fire and magic it was no more than a glittering fantasy, a whirl too swift for the eye to follow ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and dreaded. He dreads her more delicate nervous organisation, which often takes shapes to him demoniacal and miraculous; her quicker instincts, her readier wit, which seem to him to have in them somewhat prophetic and superhuman, which entangle him as in an invisible net, and rule him against his will. He dreads her very tongue, more crushing than his heaviest club, more keen than his poisoned arrows. He dreads those habits of secresy and falsehood, the weapons of the weak, to which savage ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... wear away and break down ordinary souls that, when a crisis came, they would be found wholly unequal to grapple with it; and we may therefore the better form some idea of the strength of mind and almost superhuman fortitude of this admirable queen, if, from time to time, we fix our attention on these not exaggerated complaints, for indeed the misfortunes that elicited them admit of no exaggeration; and then remember that, after so long a period of such uninterrupted ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... suppressed the murmuring sigh that arose; and her beloved mother's precepts were remembered, and her injunctions, that in every trial, she would cling to her God for help. And truly, and wonderfully was this lone girl supported; and almost superhuman were the efforts she was enabled to make. Fortunately, much manual labour was saved by the faithful servant, Nancy, whom no entreaties could force to quit. She insisted on accompanying the children ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... mouth, and he saw that she was making a superhuman effort to control herself, pressing the beautiful lips together, though they moved gainfully in spite of her, and visibly ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... his friend and fellow-lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant, in cold blood, and with the most careful premeditation; premeditation so studied, as to leave the circumstances of the death an impenetrable mystery for weeks to all the world, though fortunately without altogether baffling the almost superhuman ingenuity of Mr. Edward Wimp, of the Scotland Yard Detective Department. I propose to show that the motives of the prisoner were jealousy and revenge; jealousy not only of his friend's superior influence over the workingmen ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... brown bear, and much more the white, was, among the Northern nations, in himself a creature magical and superhuman. "He is God's dog," whispered the Lapp, and called him "the old man in the fur cloak," afraid to use his right name, even inside the tent, for fear of his overhearing and avenging the insult. "He has twelve men's strength, and eleven men's wit," ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... and trips in Latin;—on the contrary, the reader would be amazed if it were not so; because he would regard it as a thing more than phenomenal,—as a matter partaking of the miraculous;—he must consider himself as coming in contact with a being altogether superhuman;—if the "Tacitus" of the fifteenth century, who, as a Florentine, may have been a complete master of the choicest Tuscan, had written with the correctness of the Tacitus of the first century, who, as befitted a "civis ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... wonderful month of war, and the almost superhuman energy Madame displayed in assisting to direct operations. It was not strange that her constitution collapsed under the remarkable strain, and that for a while death hovered round the sick room. Her complete recovery called for a ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... carry. Without ever becoming a "Mahatma," a Buddha, or a Great Saint, let him study the philosophy and the "Science of Soul," and he can become one of the modest benefactors of humanity, without any "superhuman" powers. Siddhis (or the Arhat powers) are only for those who are able to "lead the life," to comply with the terrible sacrifices required for such a training, and to comply with them to the very letter. Let them know at once and remember always, that ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... Davie, coming down towards him with vicious intentions. He quietly pushed the ball before him for a few yards, then kicked it far over the boy's head, and followed it up like an antelope. Mivins depended for success on his almost superhuman activity. His tall, slight frame could not stand the shocks of his comrades, but no one could equal or come near to him in speed, and he was quite an adept at dodging a charge, and allowing his opponent to rush far past the ball by ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... who first saw that recumbent figure. A hoarse inarticulate groan escaped him. He twisted clear of the hands that supported him and by a superhuman effort staggered to his feet, he even took an uncertain step in the direction of the bed, his starting eyes fixed on the spare figure. Then his strength deserted him and with a cry that rose to a shriek, he pitched ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... thing that had happened, I looked in Derrick's face. Its white fury appalled me. What he had borne hitherto from the Major, God only knows, but this was the last drop in the cup. Daily insults, ceaseless provocation, even the humiliations of personal violence he had borne with superhuman patience; but this last injury, this wantonly cruel outrage, this deliberate destruction of an amount of thought, and labour, and suffering which only the writer himself could ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... up the aisle, looked at the dark walls; Max—modern, critical—looked up at the wondrous rose window, and felt the overshadowing power of superhuman things. The modern world crumbled before the impassive silence, criticism found no challenge in its brooding spirit, for the mind cannot analyze ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... If, by some superhuman power, engineers could have raised in a block, a thousand feet thick, all that portion of the terrestrial crust which supports the lakes, rivers, gulfs, and territories of the counties of Stirling, Dumbarton, and Renfrew, they would have found, under that enormous ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... for one final effort, and succeed, by superhuman patience, in getting the fool to understand that you wish to know if Mr. Williamson is in, and he says, so it sounds to you, ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome |
