"Demoniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had travelled in Spain in the seventeenth century. On one night of storm, Stanton had seen carried past him the bodies of two lovers who had been killed by lightning. As he watched, a man had stepped forward, had looked calmly at the bodies, and had burst into a horrible demoniac laugh. Stanton saw the man several times, always in circumstances of horror; he learnt that his name was Melmoth. This being exercised a kind of fascination over Stanton, who searched for him far and wide. Ultimately, Stanton was confined in a madhouse by ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... sorely wailing drew To the curs'd strand, that every man must pass Who fears not God. Charon, demoniac form, With eyes of burning coal, collects them all, Beck'ning, and each, that lingers, with his oar Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves, One still another following, till the bough Strews all its honours on the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... ringing voice: "A man's a man for a' that!" Afterward they sat in silence that grew more tense as the minutes passed, but it seemed that Henshaw, with demoniac cunning, had decided to prolong the agony by delaying his written order and the consequent decision of the engineer. And Harrigan, watching the suffused face of Campbell, knew that the time had come when his will would not suffice to ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Hulda" ("Halte-Hulda") (1858) was a partial fulfilment of this pledge. If it is not high tragedy, in the ancient sense, it is of the stuff that tragedy is made of. Hulda is an impressive stage figure in her demoniac passion and tiger-like tenderness. Though I doubt if Bjoernson has, in this type, caught the soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to catching it than any of his predecessors. If Gudrun Osvif's Daughter, of the Laxdoela Saga, was ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Savitar, the active one, Goes earth and heaven between, compels demoniac powers, To S[u]rya gives assistance, and through darksome space Extends to ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... camp as joyously and eagerly employed in preparing and devouring their most substantial breakfasts as if the night had been passed in dancing; and I marked many a fair but pale face, that I recognised as a demoniac of the night, simpering beside a swain, to whom she carefully administered hot coffee and eggs. The preaching saint and the howling sinner seemed alike to relish this ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... to me? But then I found an excuse for my beloved one. I considered her the victim of one of those forms of hypnotism of which there can no longer be any doubt. She could not have gone there without the demoniac influence of a stronger personality. He had charmed her from her home by the exercise of diabolic arts. My fury was entirely for him. I sought him at once, only to learn that he had left the city a few days before, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Grammont relates, with a satisfaction truly worthy of a cannibal, the particulars of the punishment of Vanini, who was burned at Thoulouse, although he had disavowed the opinions with which he was accused; this president carries his demoniac prejudices so far, as to find wickedness in the piercing cries, in the dreadful howlings, which torment wrested from this unhappy victim to superstitious vengeance. Are not all these avengers of the gods miserable men, blinded by their piety, who, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... none other." The inquisitor proceeded accordingly to catechize him, and soon satisfied himself of the schoolmaster's heresy. He commanded him to make immediate recantation. The schoolmaster refused. "Do you not love your wife and children?" asked the demoniac Titelmann. "God knows," answered the heretic, "that if the whole world were of gold, and my own, I would give it all only to have them with me, even had I to live on bread and water and in bondage." "You have then," answered the inquisitor, "only to renounce the error of your opinions."—"Neither ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as he thought of his triumph over Monte-Cristo and the vengeance he was about to take upon his hated enemy, for he had decided to put Esperance to a lingering and terrible death and send the lad's gory head to the agonized father, a grim smile stole over his otherwise impassible countenance, and a demoniac ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... once repeated. In these wars, Cathedrals, as well as towns and their inhabitants, were scarred and wounded. Hardly had these dissensions ended in 1494, when the Wars of Religion commenced under Charles IX, and Gascony was again one of the most terrible fields of battle. Here the demoniac enthusiasm of both sides exceeded even the terrible exhibitions of Languedoc. The royal family of Navarre was openly Protestant and contributed more than any others to the military organisations of their Faith. Jeanne d'Albret, in 1566, wishing ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... alone excepted!—which Albyn can send down from her mountains, all athirst for each other's blood, while a king and his nobles, and shouting thousands besides, attend, as at a theatre, to encourage their demoniac fury! Blows clang and blood flows, thicker, faster, redder; they rush on each other like madmen, they tear each other like wild beasts; the wounded are trodden to death amid the feet of their companions! Blood ebbs, arms become weak; but there ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... The demoniac interest excited by this scene withdrew the attention of those who were enjoying it from me, and gave me the opportunity of escaping unperceived, merely with the loss of my bandbox. Of that the infuriated mob made themselves masters; and the hats, caps, bonnets, and other articles ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... yet been adopted, for him to appear anywhere. And then he had himself tied to his chair with ropes hidden under his cloak, and spent day after day looking at his mistress' windows, quite unable to read a word or attend to conversation, raging and sobbing and howling like a demoniac, but never asking to be untied; until, at the end of a fortnight or three weeks, he was rewarded, most characteristically, by being at once delivered of all love for his lady, and inspired with ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... many days was the state of Cornelius Campbell. Those who knew and reverenced him feared that the spark of reason was forever extinguished. But it rekindled, and with it came a wild, demoniac spirit of revenge. The death groan of Chocorua would make him smile in his dreams, and when he waked, death seemed too pitiful a vengeance for the anguish that was ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... white and working with demoniac passion. His eyes were wild, and blazing with a wanton malignancy that awed every man who looked at him—Sanderson included. His teeth were bared in a horrible snarl; the man was like some wild animal—worse, ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers and launch it in your presence. "Let me see," he will say. "Give me a moment. I SHOULD have some theory for that." A blither spectacle than the vigour with which he sets about the task, it were hard to fancy. He is possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the elements for his life, and bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horse-shoe, with a visible and lively effort. He has, in theorising, a compass, an art; what I would call the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... art, of intellect to higher intellect, of less to more within the same exact limits as to kind of excellence, should be rehearsed under new names or improved theogonies. Hitherto, no relation of man to divine or demoniac powers had included the least particle or fraction or hint of any moral element; nor was such an element possible in that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... view from the Citadel (of course, I had to trot them up again for the sunset), my charges let themselves be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a demoniac desire to get their money's worth of Egypt, were unable to enjoy any sight, in their nervous dread of missing some other spectacle, which people at home might ask them about. These strained their wearied ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... almost Niagara chorus, now subsiding into comparative silence, and again without further provocation rising into infernal sublimity, shook the roof of Tammany. Sex—the sex of women—was the subject of this infernal scorn; and the great Democratic gathering, with yells and shrieks and demoniac, deafening howls, consigned the memorial of Susan B. Anthony to the committee ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... from a base of gasping, bellowing grunts and groans. Had I been alone, I should have fled as from a pack of fiends, but our Indians quietly recognized this awful sound, if such stuff could be called sound, simply as the "whiskey howl" and pushed quietly on. As we approached the landing, the demoniac howling so greatly increased I tried to dissuade Mr. Young from attempting to say a single word in the village, and as for preaching one might as well try to preach in Tophet. The whole village was afire with bad whiskey. This was the first time in my life that I learned ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... taking leave of us. Our boxes were brought up by a couple of sailors, and after about a quarter of an hour's wait, during which time the vessel rose and fell with the swell, the craft that had hailed us loomed up slowly in the darkness, amid the excited jabber of her demoniac-looking crew. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... righteousness, will never become so absorbing but that in it we may have our hearts in heaven, and the silent hour of communion with Him will never be so prolonged as to neglect outward duties. There was a demoniac boy in the plain, and therefore it was impossible to build tabernacles on the Mount of Transfiguration. But the disciples that had not climbed the Mount were all impotent to cast out the demoniac boy. We, if we keep near to Jesus Christ, will find that through Him we can 'go ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... all who come unto God by him. No case of leprosy was ever beyond the power of the Lord to cleanse. No blindness was ever too dark for him to remove. No palsy was ever too dead for him to quicken into healthy life. No fever was ever too burning for him to cool. No demoniac was ever so insane or epileptic, under the power and in the possession of even a legion of devils, but that he could have them all cast out and the possessed one sit calmly, be clothed and in his right mind. Nothing is impossible with God. The ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... was not real because, in it, Eben's usually calm face was distorted into a demoniac frenzy and his voice quavered and ranted ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the horn would have been a work of supererogation. Maddened by our vociferous exuberance, Nobby lifted up his voice and barked like a demoniac. The ungodly hullaballoo with which we shook the dust of Bordeaux from off our tires will be remembered fearfully by all who witnessed our exit ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... finally discovers that she knows him fully, and can be deceived by him no more. Some such hour always must come for strong decided natures irrevocably pledged—one to the service of good, and the other to the slavery of evil. The demoniac cried out, 'What have I to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to torment me before the time?' The presence of all-pitying purity and love was a torture to the soul possessed by the demon ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with lust for power, insane with illusions of personal aggrandizement. You don't believe? Listen to me, then, appreciate to what demoniac lengths he was prepared to go to flatter ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... fiendish purpose—the gratification of his inveterate hate and long sought revenge, by the commission of the most damnable act known this side of the "bottomless pit" of darkness; and his sin-polluted heart actually swelled with venomous delight, and demoniac exultation. One of the fairest flowers of earth is to be plucked by his rude hand, and soiled by his touch and embrace! Will he ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... twenty-eight perhaps, thick set and powerful, tanned to the brownness of an Indian by sun, wind and rain, but the features obviously were those of the white race. It was an evil face, but a strong one. Henry felt a shiver of repulsion. He felt that something demoniac had entered the lodge, because he knew that this was Simon Girty, the terrible renegade, now fully launched upon the career that made his name infamous throughout the Ohio Valley ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gray eyes glittered with a demoniac light; his thin lips were tightly drawn over his sharp teeth; he was evidently expecting some proposition to murder, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... had a pair of wicked-looking eyes that fairly blazed with fury as, catching sight of me, it suddenly halted, glaring at me, emitting a low, angry, hissing sound, and clashing its formidable jaws together in what looked like an access of perfectly demoniac ferocity. Struck motionless for the moment, in sheer amazement, I quickly recovered myself and, believing that the thing was about to spring at my face and inflict a possibly fatal bite, I raised my cutlass and, with a slashing blow, clove ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... started up with a wild shriek of rage, and swept through them like a mist, extinguishing Washington Otis's candle as he passed, and so leaving them all in total darkness. On reaching the top of the staircase he recovered himself, and determined to give his celebrated peal of demoniac laughter. This he had on more than one occasion found extremely useful. It was said to have turned Lord Raker's wig grey in a single night, and had certainly made three of Lady Canterville's French governesses give warning before their month was up. He accordingly ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... superannuated prejudice, we must ascribe the slowness of the German movement on the path of reascent. Meantime the earliest torch-bearer to the murky literature of this great land, this crystallization of political states, was Bodmer. This man had no demoniac genius, such as the service required; but he had some taste, and, what was better, he had some sensibility. He lived among the Alps; and his reading lay among the alpine sublimities of Milton and Shakspeare. Through his very eyes ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... The Missouri river will turn and flow backward towards its source before this revenue, which is the price of blood, like the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas sold his Master, will ever come back again. After Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of the demoniac that dwelt among the tombs, this man was far more impressible with regard to motives addressed to his better nature than while he was possessed by these demons; so we may charitably hope that now, after ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Simon Girty, set about the work of preparation to meet the next American force which might be sent against them. In a body, these savages, led by Little Turtle, LeGris and Blue Jacket, proceeded to Detroit, where they "paraded the streets, uttering their demoniac scalp yelps while bearing long poles strung with the scalps of many ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... arises and walks, for she was of the age of twelve years (chap. 5:42); the multitudes that are to be fed sit down in ranks by hundreds and by fifties (chap. 6:40), etc. As examples of vivid description may be named the account of the demoniac (chap. 5:2-20), and the lunatic. Chap. 9:14-27. It is not necessary to assume that Mark was himself a disciple of our Lord. If, as ancient tradition asserts, he was the disciple and interpreter of Peter he could receive from his lips those ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... which had been mixed together with eggs, flour, and sugar! It is a spiritual creation, in which the details as well as the whole are pervaded by one spirit. Consequently, the producer did not follow his own experimental impulse, but acted under that of his demoniac genius." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... and especially by the great ladies who are at the head of it. The Conservatives, male and female, had a further grudge against him as the reputed friend of Peel, who was the object of their almost demoniac hatred. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Danann became the Daoine-sidhe, a fairy folk, still occasionally called by their old name, just as individual fairy kings or queens bear the names of the ancient gods. The euhemerists gave the Fomorians a monstrous and demoniac character, which they did not always give to the Tuatha De Danann; in this continuing the old tradition that Fomorians were hostile and the Tuatha De Danann beneficent ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... assault with all the courage and address of a practised swordsman. Thrust succeeded thrust with mortal rapidity, but the active eye of Gomez Arias foiled their deadly aim with consummate skill and dexterity. A demoniac spirit seemed to agitate Don Rodrigo, and he continued for some minutes wasting his strength in the fruitless attack, and impairing his own means of resistance. The combat was too fierce to be of long duration, and a few moments would have brought it to a mortal issue (for Don Lope ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... wearily up to the door, when one within the house rose and led him to the seat he himself had just occupied. As we sat facing the congregation, we looked around upon the multitude to find the marks of those demoniac passions which are to strew carnage through our own country when its bondmen shall be made free. The countenances gathered there, bore the traces of benevolence, of humility, of meekness, of docility, and reverence; and we felt, while looking on them, that the doers of justice to a wronged ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... predecessors, led them forward, and the wall was won. In front was the first row of low saklias (stone houses) and, climbing their walls, the attackers rushed forward, when to their horror the ground gave way beneath their feet, and amid shouts of demoniac laughter they fell on to the swords and daggers of the Murids below. The flat roofs had been taken off the whole row of houses and replaced by layers of brushwood thinly covered with earth; every house, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... visited the scene of this engagement the morning after its occurrence, and for the first time beheld the horrible evidences of the demoniac spirit of these rebel fiends in their treatment of our dead and wounded. Men were found with their brains beaten out with clubs, and the bloody weapons left by their sides and ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken save by the herons Home to their roosts in the cedar trees returning at sunset, Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter." ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... these barbarians, merry in their pleasant sports. Such are the joys of peace, so different from the miseries of demoniac war. At length the festivities were closed, and all began to prepare to ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... appeal on our part, preached on the very steps of the capitol, and there committed that violence for which he hath already answered with his life. We defend him not in that; but neither do we defend, but utterly condemn and execrate the unrighteous haste, and the more than demoniac barbarity of his death. God, we rejoice in all our afflictions to believe, is over all, and the wicked, the cruel, and the unjust, shall ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... especially as I have never seen any of them. So it is, but imagination based on deep study. I have made use of all I know or can surmise logically regarding this strange race. With such strange compelling qualities, is it any wonder that there is abroad an idea that in the race there is some demoniac possession, which tends to a more definite belief that certain individuals have in the past sold themselves to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... idol. He died there on the 30th of December 1832. Ludwig Devrient was equally great in comedy and tragedy. Falstaff, Franz Moor, Shylock, King Lear and Richard II. were among his best parts. Karl von Holtei in his Reminiscences has given a graphic picture of him and the "demoniac fascination" of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... aghast with horror, and his eyes fell upon the countenance of Richard Delany, which was now lit up with demoniac joy, as he muttered between ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... the enormous mass of condensed humanity; people panted for breath; they gasped, and rolled their eyes in horrible frenzy, and still the conductor yelled fiercely, and with demoniac leer:— ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... occur to the reader, the habitual employment in both poems of the fictions of pagan mythology. This is an objection as old as Miltonic criticism. The objection came from those readers who had no difficulty in realising the biblical scenes, or in accepting demoniac agency, but who found their imagination repelled by the introduction of the gods of Greece or Rome. It is not that the biblical heaven and the Greek Olympus are incongruous, but it is that the unreal is blended with the real, in ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... achievement to turn some twenty shivering, balky, stubborn cayuses and bronchos out of their shelter and swing them through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail again. But with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his encouraging refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion dynamically bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without the straying of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing, shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... threw up his feet, and dropped his forty-three avoirdupois pounds forcibly upon my lungs. He repeated this operation several times before I fully recovered from the shock conveyed by his combined impudence and weight; but pain finally brought my senses back, and with a wild plunge I unseated my demoniac riders and gained a clear space in ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... Rawjester, Esq., was encompassed by dark pines and funereal hemlocks on all sides. The wind sang weirdly in the turrets and moaned through the long-drawn avenues of the park. As I approached the house I saw several mysterious figures flit before the windows, and a yell of demoniac laughter answered my summons at the bell. While I strove to repress my gloomy forebodings, the housekeeper, a timid, scared-looking old woman, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... ruthless foot down trodden!— I will die with thee, united We two will together conquer These barbarians. Then since little, But a span at best, belongeth To my life, a noble vengeance Let this dagger take upon me!— But, good God! what evil impulse With demoniac instinct prompteth Thus my hand? I am a Christian, I've a soul, and share the godly Light of faith: then were it right, 'Mid a crowd of Gentile mockers, Thus the Christian faith to tarnish By an action so improper? What example would I give them By ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... insatiate fire-fiend raging flew In wild demoniac rage the structure through, Tearing down rafters, hurling to the ground, Props, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... scene of action, facing the party making a murderous assault, knowing by personal experience his physical powers and his desperate character, and by general reputation his life-long habit of carrying arms, his readiness to use them, and his angry, murderous threats, and seeing his demoniac looks, his stealthy assault upon Justice Field from behind, and, remembering the sacred trust committed to his charge—Neagle, in these trying circumstances, was the party to determine when the supreme moment for action had come, and if he, honestly, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter; they often denote it by some mark only, as these others, Andria, Eunuchus; or these, Sylla, Cicero, Toyquatus. I love a poetic progress, by leaps and skips; 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble, demoniac. There are pieces in Plutarch where he forgets his theme; where the proposition of his argument is only found by incidence, stuffed and half stifled in foreign matter. Observe his footsteps in the Daemon of Socrates. O God! how beautiful are ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... pale Anxiety, corrosive Care, The tear of Woe, the gloom of sad Despair, And deepen'd Anguish generous bosoms rend;— Whilst patriot souls their country's fate lament; Whilst mad with rage demoniac, foul intent, 5 Embattled legions Despots vainly send To arrest the immortal mind's expanding ray Of everlasting Truth;—I other climes Where dawns, with hope serene, a brighter day Than e'er saw Albion in her happiest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... started up in terror only to fall victims to the tomahawk of their merciless foe, or to hear a rifle shot and get a glimpse of a form with flying black hair disappearing with wonderful quickness in the forest. Wetzel always left death behind him, and he was gone before his demoniac yell ceased to echo throughout the woods. Although often pursued, he invariably eluded the Indians, for he was the fleetest runner ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Demoniac laughter broke out when Taillefer, catching the smothered murmurs of his guests, tried to greet them with a grin. His darkly flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the image ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... round for minutes that seemed hours to the horrified nurse—round and round with all the strength and speed the young man could put forth—round and round until the room was a blur before his throbbing eyes, until his expression became fully as demoniac as Nora had been fancying it. Just as she was recovering from her paralysis of horror and was about to fly shrieking from the room she was halted by a sound that made her draw in air until her bosom swelled as if it would burst ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... are feverishly addicted to early rising. Men with gardens are like those hard drinkers whose susceptibilities are hopelessly blunted. Who but a man diverted from the paths of honest feeling and natural enjoyment, possessed of a demoniac mania, lost to the peace and serenity of the virtuous and the blessed, could find pleasure amid the damps, and dews, and chills, and raw-edgedness of a garden in the early morning, absolutely find pleasure in saturated ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... all in the league of blood; and that the bakers of Paris had received an order from Versailles to put poison in all their loaves within the next twenty-four hours. 'Frenchmen,' exclaimed this livid villain, tearing his hair, and howling with the wildness of a demoniac, 'do you love your wives and children? Will you suffer them to die in agonies before your eyes? Wait, and you will have nothing to do but dig their graves. Advance, and you will have nothing to do but drive the tyrant, with his horde of priests ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... And the cross-roads where our screeches, Furrowing the startled air, Our demoniac yelling, hooting, Make the hardened unbeliever Cross himself and fall ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... hope of affording them relief, their father separated them, sending the youngest to lodge with a neighbor and taking the oldest into his own room, it was remarked that the neighbor's house immediately became the scene of demoniac activity, as did the Squire's apartment, which had previously been virtually undisturbed. Here and now developed a phenomenon that places little Miss Mompesson on a par with the celebrated Fox sisters, for her father's bed chamber was turned into ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Order! The honorable member from Ballynamuck must resume his seat. He is out of order. The question before the House is not the good taste of demoniac visitants. I call upon the right honorable gentleman, the Minister for the Department ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... movement of the President is dictated by personal hostility toward me"; but he was deceived when he added that it all conduced to his benefit. Every mind that was both just and well-informed warmed toward the object of such pitiless and demoniac wrath; but in what land are minds just and well-informed ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... grievance, fancied or real, his regard for the honor of the government and the maintenance of its power, induces him to throw his head-gear in air, out-yell the lustiest lung in the crowd and attest his enthusiasm by demoniac courage ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... many more like them were the spectators of Cigarette's ballet; applauding with the wild hurrah of the desert, with the clashing of spurs, with the thunder of feet, with the demoniac shrieks of irrepressible adoration ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... such as it was, had been disturbed by the discovery of gold at Mount Brown. As time went on, the occasional sight of northward-bound drays and pack-horses revived the old lunacy in its most malignant form, till the demoniac at last gave formal notice of his intention to leave the station, and push his fortune on the diggings. His resignation was in due course forwarded to Captain Royce; whereupon that potentate sent him a peremptory ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... epilepsy: "Because there are many children and others afflicted with the epilepsy, who cannot take medicines, let the following experiment be tried, which I have found to be effectual, whether the patient was a demoniac, a lunatic, or an epileptic. When the patient and his parents have fasted three days, let them conduct him to church. If he be of a proper age, and of his right senses, let him confess. Then let him hear Mass on Friday, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... hours before I was awakened from this stupor, for the moon was riding high in the heavens. Over me was bending the demoniac face of a Hindu priest, a worshipper of Siva as I knew from the caste marks on ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... was known except that three years ago he had appeared and bought this farm. He was a grizzled man of fifty-five, with a long, tobacco-stained, gray mustache and an open-necked blue-flannel shirt. To Carl, beside the shack, Bone Stillman was all that was demoniac. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... instructed the Indians to throw a little real energy into their pursuit of the coach, and they followed my instructions rather more completely than I expected. The coach was surrounded by a demoniac band of shooting and shouting Indians. Blank cartridges were discharged at perilously close proximity to the rulers of four great nations. Looking around to quiet my followers, I saw that the guests of the occasion were a trifle pale, but they were all of them game, and came out ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... drinking upon the mind, that a law was formerly passed in Spain which excluded drunkards from being witnesses in a court of justice. But the demoralizing effects of distilled spirits do not stop here. They produce not only falsehood, but fraud, theft, uncleanliness, and murder. Like the demoniac mentioned in the New Testament, their name is "Legion," for they convey into the soul a ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the judge's words, she became terribly enraged; made use of the most fearful threats, and would have wreaked summary vengeance on her late chattel had not the clumsy soldiery interfered. Then, with demoniac refinement of cruelty, she bethought herself of the girl's baby at New Orleans still in her power, and threatened most horrible torture to the child if its mother dared to accept ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... about me a little, and trying to keep the car straight by feeling rather than sight. When I had accomplished these feats, and had not brought the car to grief (even though we passed several vehicles, and I was drawn by a demoniac influence to swerve towards each one as if it had been the loadstone to my magnet, or the candle to my moth), Jack finally consented to grant my request. He told me clearly what to do, and I did it, or some inward servant of myself did, whenever the ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... mirth of the evening banquet seemed to Harold as the malign revel of some demoniac orgy. He thought he read in every face the exultation over the sale of England. Every light laugh in the proverbial ease of the social Normans rang on his ear like the joy of a ghastly Sabbat. All his senses preternaturally ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wishes to speak trivially; Browning mentions trivialities when he wishes to speak sensationally. Now this sense of the terrible importance of detail was a sense which may be said to have possessed Browning in the emphatic manner of a demoniac possession. Sane as he was, this one feeling might have driven him to a condition not far from madness. Any room that he was sitting in glared at him with innumerable eyes and mouths gaping with a story. There was sometimes ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... troops closed. Then there was everywhere a hand-to-hand battle there was no time to load and fire; swords flashed and fell, bayonets stabbed, the royals and the Camisards took each other by the throat and hair. For an hour this demoniac fight lasted, during which Cavalier lost five hundred men and slew a thousand of the enemy. At last he won through, followed by about two hundred of his troops, and drew a long breath; but finding ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... continuous adventure and hairbreadth escapes from avalanches that were constantly threatening to overwhelm them; of treacherous snow-bridges that crumbled away beneath their feet; of furious, icy winds that, seeming to be imbued with demoniac intelligence and malignity, always assailed them in some especially perilous situation, and sought to buffet them from their precarious hold; and of long hours of intolerable suffering when, during the hours of darkness, they were compelled to ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... anxiously invoking its approach.] The same, or similar facts, might be brought forward on behalf of Nero. And thus these unfortunate princes, who have so long (and with so little investigation of their cases) passed for monsters or for demoniac counterfeits of men, would at length be brought back within the fold of humanity, as objects rather of pity than of abhorrence, would be reconciled to our indulgent feelings, and, at the same time, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... has its chivalry and its pageantry, it has also revolting hideousness and demoniac woe. The young, the noble, the sanguine were writhing there in agony. Bullets respect not beauty. They tear out the eye, and shatter the jaw, and rend the cheek, and transform the human face divine into an aspect upon which ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... is the most lifelike and astounding. The career of this half-mad girl is sinister and tragic; she is half-sister in her temperamental traits to Paulina in the same master's admirable story The Gambler. Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov is another woman of the demoniac type to which Nastasia belongs. Then there are high-spirited, hysterical girls such as Katarina in Karamazov, Aglaia Epanchin in The Idiot, or Liza in The Possessed (Besi). The border-land of puberty is a favourite theme with the Russian ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... hardly have growled more savagely than did this insane man as he caught her up from the bed of snow into which she had fallen and shook her with fierce passion. A large, strong man, with an influx of demoniac, strength in every muscle, his wife was little more than a child in his hands. He could have crushed the life out of her at a ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... unconscious victims. Setting his gun down by the side of the bed, so that he could have it handy for use, if necessary, he took the axe and struck each of his victims a blow upon the head. He said, with a demoniac chuckle, that it was more difficult to kill a woman than a man, as it required two blows from the axe to kill the woman, while one was sufficient for the man. He then ransacked the house, and, between some blankets underneath the straw-bed upon which the old folks were sleeping, he found a ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... made the lady gasp and tremble, and caused me to grind my teeth with rage. It was a long, drawn-out sigh, the moan of a man in agony of flesh or spirit. It was Newman's voice. Mingling with it, and following it, came the low, demoniac chuckle of ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... moral activities. Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol or with bang, and produce, by dint of intense thinking, mental conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania. Demoniac possession is mythical; but the faculty of being possessed, more or less completely, by an idea is probably the fundamental condition of what is called genius, whether it show itself in the saint, the artist, or the man ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... strove more strenuously than I had ever done before; I even made a solemn vow not to give way to the temptation, but I believe nothing less than chains, and those strong ones, could have restrained me. The demoniac influence, for I can call it nothing else, at length prevailed; it compelled me to rise, to dress myself, to descend the stairs, to unbolt the door, and to go forth; it drove me to the foot of the tree, and it compelled ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... gallery outside. I was chilled with fear. Then I remembered that it might be Pilot, and the idea calmed me. But it was fated I should not sleep that night, for at the very keyhole of my chamber, as it seemed, a demoniac laugh was uttered. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt, my next to cry: "Who is there?" Ere long steps retreated up the gallery towards the third floor staircase, and then ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... were translated thence to the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prez, where they are preserved in a rich shrine.[4] An arm of this saint was with great devotion translated to mount Cassino, in the eleventh century,[5] and by its touch a demoniac was afterwards delivered, as is related by Desiderius at that time abbot of mount Cassino,[6] who was afterwards pope, under the name of Victor III. See Mabill. Annal. Bened. t. 1, l. 3 and 4; and the genuine history of the translation of the body of St. Maurus to the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... with unshaken fortitude[277] is the greatest triumph of an Indian warrior, and the highest confusion to his enemies, but often the proud spirit breaks under the pangs that rack the quivering flesh, and shouts of intolerable agony reward the demoniac ingenuity ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... heavens.' It is tolerably clear that the variable character of this star had been detected long before Montanari (to whom the discovery is commonly attributed) noticed the phenomenon. The name Algol is only a variation of Al-ghul, the monster or demon, and it cannot be doubted that the demoniac, Gorgonian character assigned to this star was suggested by its ominous change, as though it were the eye of some fierce monster slowly winking amid the gloom of space. The two stars called the Aselli, which ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... the grasp of his haunting devils. Extricating himself violently from the kindly clasp, he turned away from Ivan and stood for a moment mute. When he again faced round, his face was all but irrecognizable. And through the tirade that followed, this demoniac look grew more and more horrible, till Ivan felt himself overwhelmed: as much by Joseph's appearance as by his words. For the moment, the man was beyond sanity. And from the depths of his bemired soul poured fragments of that understanding ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... enhanced by continuous sharp, rifle-like reports, the joints of the growth exploding as the air within was liberated by the heat of the fire. All around this blazing Gehenna were swiftly running figures of men applying with demoniac suggestion torches here and there, that a new area might be involved. Others were mounted, carrying flaming torches aloft, the restive horses plunging in frantic terror of the fiery furnace in the depths of the brake, the leaping sheets of flame, the tumultuous clouds of smoke. Oh, ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... rays, for there was in Dead Man's Diamond a certain sinister look and a boding of things to happen that are better not mentioned here. The face of the spider-idol was lit by that fatal gem; there was no other light. In spite of his shocking limbs and that demoniac body, his face was ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... "Vite!" a while and then "Doucement" a while; and then "Doucement" and "Vite!" alternately, and mixed in a few short, simple Anglo-Saxon cusswords and prayers for dressing. But nothing I said seemed to have the least effect on that demoniac scoundrel. Without turning his head he merely shouted back something unintelligible ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the lorry reached the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing down canyons and gorges like a demoniac corkscrew. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... than are sufficient to shut him up in prison at Sainte-Pelagie, had managed, by means of every form, of wickedness and excess, to make our beloved Paris a frightened slave, crouching to earth under their abominable tyranny; in spite of everything, I could not have dreamed that even their demoniac fury could have gone so far as to try to burn Paris, after having ruined it! Nero of the gutter! Sardanapalus drunk with vitriol! So your vanity wanted such a volcano to engulf you, and you wished to die by the light of such an auto-da-fe. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... I handed my rifle to Ajor, and drawing my pistol, stepped out in full view of the startled party. The Band-lu did not run away as had some of the lower orders of Caspakians at the sound of the rifle. Instead, the moment they saw me, they let out a series of demoniac war-cries, and raising their spears ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was locked and the windows barred, when suddenly the sound of demoniac cries roused the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the lower swale. Throughout the day came successive tales of havoc and disaster, of dams scooped out, bridges swept away, roads washed into stony gulches, and fields and gardens overwhelmed with debris. The Idlewild brook, that the poet Willis made so famous, seemed almost demoniac in its power and fury. Not content with washing away dams, roads, and bridges, it swept a heavy wall across a field as ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... answered Menteith, astonished alike at his sudden appearance, and at the unutterable fury of his demeanour. His cheeks were livid—his eyes started from their sockets—his lips were covered with foam, and his gestures were those of a demoniac. ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... enrich his heir. 100 Unthinking crowds thy forms, Imposture, gull, A Saint in sackcloth, or a Wolf in wool. While mad with foolish fame, or drunk with power, Ambition slays his thousands in an hour; Demoniac Envy scowls with haggard mien, And blights the bloom of other's joys, unseen; Or wrathful Jealousy invades the grove, And turns to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... in this infernal act we see but another instance of the demoniac hate of the slave power, arrested by the strong arm of the government, under the heaven inspired leadership of Abraham Lincoln, in its career of treason, murder and despotism; and we are admonished anew ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... idyllic pleasure in the simple charms of Nature, especially in the monastery garden of the Carlovingian time, contrasts strikingly with the tone of these very mundane vagantes clerici, for whom Nature had not only long been absorbed and freed from all demoniac influence, but peopled by the charming forms of the old mythic poems, and made for the joy and profit of men, in the widest and naivest ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... wampum, made from various colored shells, for a similar purpose. Color played its part in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It speaks to the eye sooner than form. A black flag hoisted upon the battle field proclaims louder than words the demoniac cruelty that reigns, while a white signifies that submission has been decided upon. Joseph's coat of many colors proclaimed the father's favoritism to his brothers, and worked a mighty change in the history of the race to which he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... separated from us by a too high royalty or a too base villany, it loses intelligibility, it forfeits sympathy, it becomes more and more an object of simple curiosity, and removes into the region of the unknown. Even if the type passes into the supernatural, into fairyland or the angelic or demoniac world, it must not leave humanity behind. These spheres are in fact fragments of humanity itself, projections of its sense of wonder, its goodness, and its evil, in extreme abstraction though concretely felt. Fairy, angel, and devil cease to be conceivable except as they ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... by whistling spheres of light He flashes and he flames; He turns not to the left nor right, He asks them not their names; One spurn from his demoniac heel,— Away, away they fly, Where darkness might be bottled up And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to commit some atrocious crime, to waylay and strike, to speak words of outrageous insult. I do verily believe that only the opportunity was wanting, some chance conflict of the street or temptation of solitude, to have changed these demoniac impulses to action—I whose most violent physical achievement has been to cross over Broadway. It is good that I am home and the blood has left my brain. What shall I think of this if I read it ten ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... no!" and tremendous yells and laughter). "Time's up," "That'll do." (Loud hisses, groans, laughter, tigers, and demoniac sounds from the galleries). Cries of "Phillips! Phillips." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of frail build, but he now seemed to be possessed of a demoniac's strength, and my arms failed to hold him. I felt his hands upon my neck and ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... spirit of divination "which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying." There is only one mention of astrology (Acts vii, 43); there are no witches, neither are there charms or incantations. The diseases mentioned are numerous: demoniac possession, convulsions, paralysis, skin diseases,—as leprosy,—dropsy, haemorrhages, fever, fluxes, blindness and deafness. And the cure is simple usually a fiat of the Lord, rarely with a prayer, or with the use ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various animals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods: they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of fire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac powers ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... clattering confusion of the double discharge, the demoniac laughter of the Erie rang, and my Oneidas, retreating, hurled back insult and anathema, promising to return and annihilate every living sorcerer in the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of more than human beauty, while others swore by their heads that she was so hideous fire would not burn her! These damned her for a malignant witch; those upheld her as a heavenly angel, urged by love divine to expiate, through voluntary suffering, the nameless crimes of the demoniac Doctor. But unless the redemption were effected within a certain time, she must be swallowed up with him in common destruction. Were the how and wherefore of these alternatives called in question, the answer was a wise shake of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... warriors. A man will fight with terrible persistence when he knows that defeat is inevitable death by torture. It is a thousandfold better to fall beneath the arrow, the tomahawk or the war-club, than to be consumed alive amid the jeers and tortures of yelling Indians inspired with demoniac instincts. Thus with the trapper it was always ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... more than weakness; my poor, frail sense of ethics collapsed completely at the sight of the bribe he offered me to become a party to the dark conspiracy that sprang from the depths of his own demoniac mind. Ah, well; none of us is perfect, ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... strong conqueror of demons. Again we have 'straightway.' The language seems to imply that this wretched sufferer burst hurriedly into the synagogue and interrupted the utterance of astonishment by giving it new food. Perhaps the double consciousness of the demoniac may be recognised, the humanity being drawn to Jesus by some disturbed longings, the demoniac consciousness, on the other hand, being repelled. It is no part of my purpose to discuss demoniacal possession. I content myself with remarking that I, for one, do not see how Christ's credit as a divine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... surplices of the choir, and accomplished their sacred duties without any discovery of the impropriety of their conduct. It is true they encountered in their course a patrol of the civic guard; but the representatives of law and order, forming probably their own conclusions as to the significance of the demoniac apparition, are said to have prudently taken to flight ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... From the answer of the demoniac that the devils which possessed him were Legion.—St. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... went on within him. But when suddenly Berber's arms dropped to his sides and she saw how he shivered, as if at some unearthly touch on his temples, she was alert. Color was surging into his face; his features, large, irregular, took on for the instant a look of speechless, almost demoniac power; he seemed to be swimming some mental tide before his foot touched the sands of language and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... main force, though protected by strong canvas sheets bound to the rails. The main deck was quite impassable. The promenade deck, even the lofty spar deck, was scourged with the broken crests of waves that tried with demoniac energy to smash in the starboard bow, for the Sirdar was cutting into the heart ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... known her from childhood, she had been most uniform in her temper and her conduct; now all this was changed. To-day, perhaps, she would be like her old self,— only weaker and more fragile,—to-morrow a new being entirely, stronger and more restless, with a demoniac light in her eyes, and a sort of feverish malignancy dominating her whole personality. When I noticed this I studied to avoid her. If the Lona I had known were merely an ideal of which no actual prototype existed, I wished ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... the good Saviour who was bringing to them the glad tidings of a free salvation. He knew that Romish devotees, led astray by their priests, as were the poor blinded Jews, would call the apostles of truth liars, seducers, possessed of the devil, as Christ was constantly called a demoniac, an impostor, and finally put to ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... unparalleled in common human experience. But if we look at it as regards the character of him who works the miracle, it then becomes a supernatural work, or a preternatural work, having a divine or a demoniac origin. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... perfection. He will in generosity and bravery acquire such renown, that mankind will no longer remember Hatim and Rustam; but until [he attains] the age of fourteen, he is exposed to great danger if he sees the sun or moon; yea, it is to be feared he may become a mad demoniac, and shed the blood of many; and restless [of living in society], he will fly to the woods, and associate with beasts and birds; great and strict pains must be taken that he should never behold the sun by day or the moon by night, or cast a look even towards the heavens. If this period [of fourteen ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... character boasted so much charm with a solitary fault—too facile vulnerability to the prying eyes of those to whom Paris meant those days and social strata in which Michael Lanyard had moved and had his being. Witness—according to Crane—the demoniac cleverness of the Brazilian in unmasking the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... uttering a syllable. Never shall I forget the expression of his countenance as he received the casket. The fierce, wild, exulting flash of his dark sunken eye, whose reddish blackness seemed suddenly to ignite and burn like heated iron. There was something demoniac in its glare, and it haunted me in my ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... horror, when he looked at the designs of the vermilion inlay, in the white, gleaming crystal. Weird forms. Shapes of creatures somewhat like gigantic spiders, and more unlike them. Demoniac things, wickedly fanged, jaws slavering. Executed with masterly skill, that made them ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... of thunder, like the bursting of a world, whereupon all that restless sea of shadows, and their bright abode, vanished suddenly; and there ensued a flood of darkness, peopled with shoaling fears, and I heard the approach of hurrying sounds, with demoniac laughter, and shouts coming as for me, nearer and louder, saying, 'Cast out! Cast out!' and it rushed up to me like an unseen army, and I fled for life before it, until I came to the extreme edge of that spiritual world, where, as I ran looking backwards for terror at those viewless ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... had taken him into his arms, and having touched his coat three times had gone away glorying as if he had touched a relic of the greatest saint in the world. On the other hand, Luther looked round about him, with his demoniac eyes, and said, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Englishman certainly had been seen in the neighborhood since;—seen, as she had heard, that very night. "Great G—d!" exclaimed Stanton, as he recollected the stranger whose demoniac laugh had so appalled him, while gazing on the lifeless bodies of the lovers, whom the lightning ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... children full of play designs That spring at once from schoolroom's form. Instead of all this angry storm, Another might have thanked you well For saving prey from that grim cell, That hollowed den 'neath journals great, Where editors who poets flout With their demoniac laughter shout. And I have scolded you! What fate For charming dwarfs who never meant To anger Hercules! And I Have frightened you!—My chair I sent Back to the wall, and then let fly A shower of words the envious use— ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... returned I was sitting on the edge of the bed, shivering with cold, and barefooted. All was silent, but I felt that my sleeve was still clutched by my unearthly visitant. The silence lasted a long time. Then followed a chuckling laugh that froze my very marrow, and the gnashing of teeth as in demoniac frenzy; and then a wailing moan, and this was succeeded by silence. Hours may have passed—nay, though the tumult of my own heart prevented my hearing the clock strike, must have passed—but they seemed ages to me. And how were they ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... thrust up their heads like beasts of prey which have long lain bound. She felt strange and homeless in her glittering life, and thought with a sort of demoniac longing of the horrible places from which she ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Dr. Nevius's book, this evidence rests almost entirely on the written reports of native Christian teachers, for the Chinese were strictly reticent when questioned by Europeans. 'My heathen brother, you have a sister who is a demoniac?' asks the intelligent European. The reply of the heathen brother is best left in the obscurity of a remarkably difficult and copious Oriental language. We are thus obliged to fall back on the reports of Mr. Leng and other native Christian teachers. They are perfectly modest and rational ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... control as to conceal wholly the shock conveyed by the words of his beautiful sweetheart. He stared for a moment, speechless, into that lovely face, glowing with enthusiasm, ambition, and love. A mocking, demoniac smile appeared one moment on his lips, then faded quickly, and Pollnitz was again the tender, passionate lover of Anna Pricker. "Yes, my dearly-beloved Anna," whispered he, clasping her in his arms, "on that blessed and happy day you will be my wife, and the laurels ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... earth. The nymphs were fascinated, and soon began to peep out between the branches, and one by one deserting the shady covert, drew near under the irresistible attraction of the music. Then the goat-men rushed upon them with a demoniac fury. Folded in the arms of their ruthless assailants, the nymphs strove to keep up a while longer their raillery and loud laughter, but the mirth died on their lips. With heads thrown back and eyes ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... sordid and depressing happenings. Berenice had been an impressionable child. Some things had gripped her memory mightily—once, for instance, when she had seen her stepfather, in the presence of her governess, kick a table over, and, seizing the toppling lamp with demoniac skill, hurl it through a window. She, herself, had been tossed by him in one of these tantrums, when, in answer to the cries of terror of those about her, he had shouted: "Let her fall! It won't hurt the little devil to break a few bones." This ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... from a bakery with a loaf of bread under his arm. They instantly set upon and beat him and, after nearly killing him, hung him to a lamppost. His body was left suspended for several hours. A fire was made underneath him, and he was literally roasted as he hung, the mob revelling in their demoniac act. Recognition of the remains, on their being recovered, was impossible; and two women, mourned for upwards of two weeks, in the case of this man, for the loss of their husbands. At the end of that time, the husband of one of the mourners, to her great joy, returned like ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley |
