"Diabolism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Middle Ages was not merely a transformed man,—he was an insane cannibal, whose monstrous appetite, due to the machinations of the Devil, showed its power over his physical organism by changing the shape of it. The barbaric werewolf is the product of a lower and simpler kind of thinking. There is no diabolism about him; for barbaric races, while believing in the existence of hurtful and malicious fiends, have not a sufficiently vivid sense of moral abnormity to form the conception of diabolism. And the cannibal craving, which to the mediaeval ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... corybantic enthusiasm last week, the diminutive virtuoso was hardly visible to the naked eye. (As a matter of fact he is only 21 inches high and weighs just under 11 lb.) Yet by his colossal personality he dominated the vast assemblage and inspired the orchestra to such feats of dynamic diabolism as entirely eclipsed the most momentous achievements of any full-grown conductor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... disclaimest the devil, be not guilty of Diabolism. Fall not into one name with that unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom thou so much abhorrest, that is, to accuse, calumniate, backbite, whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others. Degen- erous depravities and narrow-minded ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... the diabolism seemed to her to be rampant; it effervesced through all Scott's being like the mysterious things he brewed within his test-tubes. Not that Mrs. Brenton would have known a test-tube by sight, however. She only had gleaned from her ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... very voluptuousness is accidental: the sum and substance, the property and business of their lives and natures, are compact of mischief, malice, treachery, and the desire of "getting the better of somebody." Nor has this diabolism anything grand or impressive about it—anything that "intends greatly" and glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a "Fleur du Mal" of the Baudelairian kind, but only an ugly as well as noxious weed. It is prosaic ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury |
