"Demoniacal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried Holmes, with frenzied eagerness. All the demoniacal force of the man masked behind that listless manner burst out in a paroxysm of energy. He tore the drugget from the floor, and in an instant was down on his hands and knees clawing at each of the squares of wood beneath it. One turned sideways as he dug his nails into the edge ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the surrender of another's scandal; and as he accepted the last scurrility with Christian resignation, his unfortunate employer could but strengthen his vocabulary and patiently endure the presence of this smiling, demoniacal tutor. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... that morning as though they would never finish dressing. Their clothes, their hairpins, even their combs and brushes, evaded them with demoniacal persistence, hiding under things, falling under the berths, rolling into corners, and otherwise misbehaving themselves, until the girls' nerves were all on edge and they were dangerously near the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... many tales related, in which the demoniacal element holds a prominent place, there is one relating to the projected marriage of his wife. It seems that Sir Francis was abroad, and his wife, not hearing from him for seven years, concluded he must be dead, and hence was at liberty to enter for a second time the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... impenetrable on that subject; and all that could be exacted from him was, that he would have a reckoning with us at his own time, and in his own way. Forrester, who knew his nature well, inferred from the vehemence of his expression that this reckoning would be carried out in a spirit of calm, demoniacal revenge, against which it would be impossible to set up any safeguards; and that, if we could not, by a legal separation, place Astraea under the protection of the laws, the only course that remained, as a measure of security, was to leave ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... "prescientific days" people were in no uncertainty about the interpretation of dreams. When they were recalled after awakening they were regarded as either the friendly or hostile manifestation of some higher powers, demoniacal and Divine. With the rise of scientific thought the whole of this expressive mythology was transferred to psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among educated persons who doubt that the dream is the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... the maddening fact that these Swiss, who were made the ministers of vengeance, were part of that accursed, detested, hated, shunned, despised, abhorred, loathed, execrated, contemptible, stupid, thick-headed, brutal, gross, cruel, bestial, demoniacal, fiendish, and utterly abominable race—I Tedeschi —whose very name, when hissed from an Italian month, expresses unutterable scorn ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... praisest me in that thou separatest me from thyself." The speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is well worth studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to the honesty of the true specialist, while, in representing him as the only one who can resist the demoniacal influence of the magician's music, he elevates him at a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra and the spiritually conscientious one join issue at the end on the question of the proper place of "fear" in man's history, and Nietzsche avails himself ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... allowably heighten the above picture by supposing that the person in her trance, in addition to being mad, might have displayed some of the perceptive powers occasionally developed in trance; and so have evinced, in addition to her demoniacal ferocity, an "uncanny" knowledge of things and persons. To be candid, Archy, time was, when I should myself have had my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... hideous with pigment and high upstanding hair, sat beating a wooden drum before the entrance, and chanting wildly to a ferocious-looking horde of naked savages, many bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, who danced around the blaze, the leaping figures in the red glare making the scene truly demoniacal. Little Sauk strode through the midst of them, unheeding the uproar, and flung aside the flap ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... Christianity retained these conceptions, merely changing the superhuman wolves into evil demons; and finally the occurrence of cases of Berserker madness and cannibalism, accompanied by lycanthropic hallucinations, being interpreted as due to such demoniacal metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the Middle Ages. The etymological proceedings, to which Mr. Cox would incontinently ascribe the origin of the entire superstition, seemed to me to have played a very subordinate part in the matter. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... know of physiological and pathological science leads me to entertain a very strong conviction that the phenomena ascribed to possession are as purely natural as those which constitute small-pox; everything that I know of anthropology leads me to think that the belief in demons and demoniacal possession is a mere survival of a once universal superstition, and that its persistence, at the present time, is pretty much in the inverse ratio of the general instruction, intelligence, and sound judgment of the population among whom it ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... deserved; for the smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after her—if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible—on his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remembrance of the steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... aloud—a wild, unpleasant, scornful laugh, that makes her cheek turn pale. Its mirth, she tells herself, is demoniacal. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... and followed, moving her arms without rhythm or measure. A smile of satisfaction came to the lips of the horrible woman—the smile of a female Mephistopheles who has found an apt pupil: hate, scorn, mockery, and cruelty were in it; a burst of demoniacal laughter could not have ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... pitched battle between the Christians and the Tlascalans, in which the firearms and lances of the Spaniards wrought terrible havoc on their antagonists. Astounded at the sight of the horses—those extraordinary beings, whether of animal or demoniacal origin they knew not—and appalled by the thundering of the guns, which seemed to have some superhuman source, the Tlascalans at first fell back. But they overcame their fears, fell savagely upon the invaders, and ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... conveniences were allowed at tables. They tore their food with their fingers and teeth, and drank out of water buckets. The men's countenances reflected faithfully this description of treatment. A more demoniacal looking assemblage could not be imagined; and nearly the most formidable sight I ever beheld was the sea of faces upturned to me when I first addressed them. Yet three years after, I had the satisfaction of hearing Sir George Gipps ask me what I had done to make the men look so well?—he had ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... even by a hundred well-armed people of the time of the cave men. The mammoth was a monster beast, with perhaps somewhat less of sagaciousness than the modern elephant, but with a temper which was demoniacal when aroused, and with a strength which nothing could resist. He could be slain only by strategy. Hence the everlasting watch over the triangular plateau and the gathering of the cave and river people to catch him at a disadvantage. But, even with a drove feeding near the slope which led to the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... sisters. And the plea of "delusion" will not excuse it, except to those who have not investigated its studied cruelty and malice. Sheer, unadulterated wickedness had its full share in the persecution; and that wickedness can only be partly extenuated by the plea of possible insanity or of demoniacal possession. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... look upon Von Kettler's face was even more demoniacal than before. Mad with rage at the prospective escape of his prey, and infuriated by his half-sister's appearance in the plane, Von Kettler had thrown all caution to the winds. In his insane hatred he was prepared to shoot down ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... of the centre itself appeared independent and always took a southerly direction. Before each outburst of agitation there was much hissing and a throbbing internal roaring, as of imprisoned gases. Now it seemed furious, demoniacal, as if no power on earth could bind it, then playful and sportive, then for a second languid, but only because it was accumulating fresh force. On our arrival eleven fire fountains were playing joyously round the lakes, and sometimes ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... characteristic of all natures of evil. Whatever the extent of the power granted to evil spirits, it was always abominable and contemptible; no element of beauty or heroism was ever allowed to remain, however obscured, in the aspect of a fallen angel. Also, the demoniacal nature was shown in acts of betrayal, torture, or wanton hostility; never in valiancy or perseverance of contest. I recollect no mediaeval demon who shows as much insulting, resisting, or contending power as Bunyan's Apollyon. They can only cheat, ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... finery, his feather mantles, plumes, clothing, shell money, his fancy bows, painted arrows, &c. When the torch was applied they set up a mournful ululation, chanting and dancing about him, gradually working themselves into a wild and ecstatic raving, which seemed almost a demoniacal possession, leaping, howling, lacerating their flesh. Many seemed to lose all self-control. The younger English-speaking Indians generally lend themselves charily to such superstitious work, especially if American spectators are present, but even they ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... former age was the tonus primus, the one particularly expressive of manly dignity and strength. And, to cap the climax, the ear of the musical Romanticist of our day has become quite accustomed also to hear in D-minor devilish rage and revengeful fury, as well as all sorts of demoniacal terror and dreadful, midnight, musical vampirism, as, for example, we find the Queen of Night giving vent in D-minor to the "hellish revenge" which boils in her heart, and in the Freischuetz hell triumphs in D-minor. In the seventeenth century, Sethus Calvisius, speaking ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... supernatural romance he leaves far behind him the sphere of Gothic terrors and soars into rarefied, exalted regions that inspire awe rather than horror. The Dweller of the Threshold in Zanoni is no red-cloaked, demoniacal figure springing from a trap-door with a deafening clap of thunder, but a "Colossal Shadow" brooding over the crater ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... who were the victims of senile dementia and kindred ills, were accused of witchcraft and intercourse with the devil, here in the United States, not a century ago. Witches were executed in England and men burned at the stake in Spain, not two hundred years ago, for the crime of demoniacal possession. Even in this enlightened age men are accustomed to consider insanity rather from its psychical standpoint than from its physical aspect. They do not take into consideration the fact that insanity is due to a physical lesion, and that its vagaries are but the symptoms ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... attempt, as Russell's face mingled the lines of mirth and despair in a querulous grin that seemed to say, "For heaven's sake, man, don't you see that I am laughing myself to death?" Field's "I am smiling!" was almost demoniacal in its mixture of wrath, vindictiveness, and impatience. There was the snarl of a big animal about the grin with which he exposed his teeth in the mockery of mirth. His whole countenance glowered at the invisible artist in lines of suppressed rage, that seemed ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... before an audience so numerous and so sympathetic—so eager to be swindled, so liberal in rewarding the swindler. Gravely does Miss Hannah More address Mr. Horace Walpole, concerning what she terms the 'demoniacal mummery'—'the operation of fraud upon folly' which then occupied the country. 'In vain do we boast of the enlightened eighteenth century, and conceitedly talk as if human reason had not a manacle left about her, but that philosophy had broken down all the strongholds of prejudice, ignorance, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Lane stood by the port rail, he saw right under his quarter, a large, low, black brig, with her decks crowded with men, and guns protruding from her ports; while on the weather rail, clinging with one hand to the shrouds, stood a strange, demoniacal-looking figure, holding in his outstretched hand, above the water, a burning blue light. On the quarter-deck a little knot of men seemed standing, a short distance apart from them was a strikingly handsome man, who, from his air of superiority, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... thought of what I should feel, should I ever be restored to her, and have to lead her through such places as my adored, my angelwife, almost drove me beside myself. For this picture, this ecstatic vision, what have I of late instead as the image of the reality? Demoniacal possessions. I see the young witch seated in another's lap, twining her serpent arms round him, her eye glancing and her cheeks on fire—why does not the hideous thought choke me? Or why do I not go and find out the truth at once? The moonlight streams over the silver waters: the ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... some five-and-twenty years ago, passing near Bilston on a summer's holiday, and seeing a great red, pied bull foaming, and roaring, and marching round a ring in which he was chained, while a crowd of men, each with a demoniacal-looking bulldog in his arms, and a number of ragged women, with their hair about their ears, some of them also carrying bull-dog pups, yelled about the baited bull. It gave us an awful fright, and haunted our childish dreams for ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... with an iron grasp, and he felt himself dragged upwards, while the skiff, impelled by a sudden stroke from Morgan Fenwolf, shot from beneath him. All Wyat's efforts to disengage himself were vain, and a wild, demoniacal laugh, echoed by a chorus of voices, proclaimed him in the power of Herne the Hunter. The next moment he was set on the top of the bank, while the demon greeted ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... I was witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette: who, because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts of adventures in that country, where he has never been. He was quite feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to describe how, in the presence of Vespasian, a compatriot cured soldiers who were demoniacal. We know from the New Testament that the belief in possession by demons was widespread among the vulgar in the first century of the common era, and the Essenes specialized in the science of exorcism. As the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... discontinuous series of phenomena together. Unconscious cerebration, dreams, hypnotism, hysteria, inspirations of genius, the willing-game, planchette, crystal-gazing, hallucinatory voices, apparitions of the dying, medium-trances, demoniacal possession, clairvoyance, thought-transference, even ghosts and other facts more doubtful; these things form a chaos at first sight most discouraging. No wonder that scientists can think of no other principle of unity among them than their ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... who now turned his attention to the second hyena. This one he reached with his heavy stick, striking it repeatedly and driving it to the wall. There the two carrion-eaters commenced to circle the chamber while the human carrion, their master, now in a perfect frenzy of demoniacal rage, ran to and fro in an effort to intercept them, striking out with his cudgel and lashing them with his tongue, calling down upon them the curses of whatever gods and demons he could summon to memory, and describing in lurid figures the ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... witchcraft, and the transmutation of copper and lead into gold were generally believed in. In preaching before Queen Elizabeth, Bishop Jewell urged that stringent measures be taken with witches and sorcerers, saying that through their demoniacal acts "your Grace's subjects pine away even unto death, their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth." Lord Bacon and other eminent men held the same belief, and many persons eventually suffered death for the practice ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... rage, fad. Fast, rapid, swift, quick, fleet, speedy, hasty, celeritous, expeditious, instantaneous. Fasten, tie, hitch, moor, tether. Fate, destiny, lot, doom. Fawn, truckle, cringe, crouch. Feign, pretend, dissemble, simulate, counterfeit, affect, assume. Fiendish, devilish, diabolical, demoniacal, demonic, satanic. Fertile, fecund, fruitful, prolific. Fit, suitable, appropriate, proper. Flame, blaze, flare, glare, glow. Flat, level, even, plane, smooth, horizontal. Flatter, blandish, beguile, compliment, praise. Flexible, pliable, pliant, supple, limber, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... thee God? Art thou not the 'living garment of God'? O Heavens, is it in very deed He, then, that ever speaks through thee? that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?... The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres: but godlike and my Father's." "This fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; through every star, through every ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... There was a confused sound of steps on the stairs, and then again the same wild cry that almost made her heart stand still. A moment later two policemen appeared, dragging a woman who was resisting and shrieking with demoniacal fury. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the side of a ship, and the other out of a third story window," said Titbottom, fitting a broad blade between his thumbs and blowing a demoniacal blast. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... ease, and I answered in embarrassed monosyllables. Whether I would or no, I seemed constantly to slide to the perilous edge of my seat, and no matter what care I used, I strewed crumbs over the rug until it seemed to me that my bit of cake had a demoniacal power of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... below. Then came an irregular rush forward, inarticulate cries pierced the air, war weapons were dashed clanging upon the earthen floor, while numerous torches, grasped from off the sacred altar, were waved aloft by excited hands, all serving to form as demoniacal a scene as was ever witnessed ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... letter addressed to Horace Walpole, in September 1788, speaks of the "demoniacal mummeries" of Dr. Mainauduc, and says he was in a fair way of gaining a hundred thousand pounds by them, as Mesmer had done by ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... passengers at the time, among them several women. When the trolley was pulled down and the car thrown in total darkness, the latter began to scream, and for a moment or so it looked as if the life of every person in the car was in peril, for some of the crowd with demoniacal yells of "There he goes!" began to fire their weapons indiscriminately. The passengers in the car hastily jumped to the ground and joined the crowd, as it was evidently ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... moment, Garth suddenly saw revealed a crouching figure, and a hideous, distorted face no more than six feet from his own. In the blinding glare it was outlined with a horrid clearness; in its grossness and bestial hatred, less human than demoniacal. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner |
