"Supernaturalism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attributed to the gods are nothing but the ideals they value and grope for in themselves. The ideal of the freethinker, the conception that places the supreme worth of human life in the expanding horizon of man's usefulness to man, is forever menaced by the supernaturalism of the theist which manifests itself in the multifarious religious sects that are the most active and constant menace to civilization and to mankind today. That religion in the past has produced suffering incalculable and has been the greatest obstacle in the advance of secular knowledge ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... for the production of phantasmagoria and diablerie, I had frequent opportunities of testing the fallacy and absurdity of so-called 'presentiments and forebodings.' I am afraid it is the absence of spirituality in the hearts of the people, that drives this generation to seek supernaturalism in the realm of merely normal physics. The only true spiritualism is that which emanates from the Holy Ghost,—conquers sinful impulses, and makes a Christian heart ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... replaced by clubs and grill-rooms and fried-fish shops. Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends. Note, too, that the family has outgrown its ecclesiastical sanction; the oil of supernaturalism which once greased the wheels has run dry; the machinery is creaking. Industrial conditions have killed the old home. REQUIESCAT! Honour thy father and mother. Industrialism has killed that commandment. Thou shalt not steal. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... sacraments in like manner, {13} because of his crude supernaturalism and his inadequate intellectual and spiritual penetration, drifted to a semi-medieval view. He intended to transform these ceremonies and to have them fit "the pure Word of God." In his primary intention they were to be no longer objective works of grace, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... The Literature of Supernaturalism was never more in request than since the Seeresses of Rochester commenced their levees at Barnum's Hotel. The journals have been filled with jesting and speculation upon the subject,—mountebank tricksters and shrewd professors have plied their keenest wits to discover the processes ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... meanings of these "spiritual tales" consistently indicated in symbols taken from Scottish life, nor is their supernaturalism native to it. Mrs. Spoer (Ada Goodrich-Freer), in her "Outer Isles" (1902), tells us "The Celtic Gloom" amuses the Hebridean. If so, what effect would such discussion as that of "The Lynn of Dreams" and "Maya" have upon him? But if such essays are not written out of Highland ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... foremost and most effective champions of Darwinism, and no scientist has been more conspicuous in the battle between the doctrine of evolution and the older religious orthodoxy. Outside of this particular issue, he was a vigorous opponent of supernaturalism in all its forms, and a supporter of the agnosticism which demands that nothing shall be believed "with greater assurance than the evidence warrants"—the evidence intended being, of course, of the same kind as ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the idea strikes him: "Have we not here a great opportunity for placing the motive-power of spiritual fervor behind, or within, the sluggish framework of social idealism? Here it lies, well thought-out, carefully constructed, but inert, like an aeroplane without an engine. By giving the glow of supernaturalism, of the worship of a personal God, to the good old Religion of Humanity, may we not impart to our schemes for a well-ordered world precisely the uplift they at present lack? It was all very well for chilly New England transcendentalism to 'hitch its ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... view; for that, however, neither Schiller nor Kant was ripe, since both thought it necessary to assume that human history began about six thousand years ago and began substantially as reported in Genesis, however the original authentic tradition might have been incrusted with spurious supernaturalism. The explanation of society thus resolved itself for them into the problem of a rational interpretation of the Bible. Kant believed, like Rousseau, in an original paradisaic condition, in which man had lived as a happy, peaceful animal. But while man's emergence from that state was regarded ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas |
