"Afflatus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth are upon us; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strong formations, doubts, suspense—for then the afflatus of such themes haply may fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot from surrounding war and revolution, our speech, though without polish'd coherence, and a failure by the standard called criticism, comes forth, real at least as ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Greeks believed that hornets were the direct progeny of the snorting war-horse. The phrase "mad as a hornet" has become a proverb. Think, then, of a brush loaded and tipped with this martial spirit of Vespa, this cavorting afflatus, this testy animus! There is more than one pessimistic "goose-quill," of course, "mightier than the sword," which, it occurs to me in my now charitable mood, might have been thus surreptitiously voudooed by the war-like hornet, and the plug ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... necessary, as in the old classic story, to show the whip to awe them into cringing submission. This theory found its fittest formula a little later, when Hillsborough, speaking for the Government he adorned, and {149} inspired by a more than usual afflatus of folly, declared that "we can grant nothing to the Americans except what they may ask with a halter round their necks." It is difficult to believe that a reasonable minister, endowed with a sufficient degree of human ability to push his way from ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey. It mounts up like a human aspiration. It seems to spread out its wings and to be lifted straight upwards out of sight by the afflatus of its own happy heart. To pour out this in undulating rivulets of rhapsody is apparently the only motive of its ascension. This it is that has made it so loved of all generations. It is the singing angel of man's nearest heaven, whose vital breath is music. Its sweet warbling ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... all religions depend for their origin and continuation directly upon inspiration, I state an historic fact. It may be known under other names, of credit or discredit, as mysticism, ecstasy, rhapsody, demoniac possession, the divine afflatus, the gnosis, or, in its latest christening, 'cosmic consciousness.' All are but expressions of a belief that knowledge arises, words are uttered or actions performed not through conscious ideation or reflective ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... print; it's striking. It's almost blank verse. Ye'll be jingling into poetry just e'now. If the afflatus comes, give way, Robert. Never heed me; I'll bear ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... "Father O'Flynn", offer a charming variety, and among their novels and short stories are some books of high quality and not a few in a high degree interesting and entertaining. To Standish O'Grady we turn for tales, with a kind of bardic afflatus about them, of the hero age of legendary Ireland—tales which drew attention to the romantic Celtic past of myth and saga, and must have been an inspiration to more than one writer of the younger generation. In contrast to the broad ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... 1. The breath whose might I have invoked in song. The breath or afflatus of the Universal Mind. It has been 'invoked in song' throughout the whole later section of this Elegy, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... words that would send the spirit heavenward, or even earthward with any added love for humanity, not one. On the other hand, in papers and periodicals, even in books, are great multitudes of verses, unexceptionable in sentiment and helpful in influence, which bear so little of the true poetic afflatus, are so careless in construction or so faulty in diction, so imperfect in rhyme or rhythm, so much mingled with colloquialisms or so hopelessly commonplace in thought, as to be unworthy of a permanent place in a book like this. They would not bear reading ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... sublimity. Most fortunate was it that I awoke; for, on attentively inspecting the faces of the figures, I saw them working and writhing with all the contortions of the Pythoness or the Sibyl, labouring in the very throes of inspiration, struggling with the advent of the prophetical afflatus. At length their lips parted, when, in a low, solemn voice, that thrilled through the dark, deserted, and silent hall, they poured forth alternately the following vaticinal strain, each starting and ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... his wives; was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother; and was completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest". Not a very auspicious beginning, it must be confessed, and scarcely suggestive of the Divine afflatus. Those who planted the Catholic Church used no violence, and did not inflict death. No! on the contrary, they endured death, and their blood became the seed of the Church. And that is quite another story. In former days every one admitted the present Anglican ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan |
