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Supernatural   Listen
adjective
Supernatural  adj.  Being beyond, or exceeding, the power or laws of nature; miraculous.
Synonyms: Preternatural. Supernatural, Preternatural. Preternatural signifies beside nature, and supernatural, above or beyond nature. What is very greatly aside from the ordinary course of things is preternatural; what is above or beyond the established laws of the universe is supernatural. The dark day which terrified all Europe nearly a century ago was preternatural; the resurrection of the dead is supernatural. "That form which the earth is under at present is preternatural, like a statue made and broken again." "Cures wrought by medicines are natural operations; but the miraculous ones wrought by Christ and his apostles were supernatural." "That is supernatural, whether it be, that is either not in the chain of natural cause and effect, or which acts on the chain of cause and effect in nature, from without the chain." "We must not view creation as supernatural, but we do look upon it as miraculous."
The supernatural, whatever is above and beyond the scope, or the established course, of the laws of nature. "Nature and the supernatural."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Supernatural" Quotes from Famous Books



... and lay open-eyed in the diffused starry light, wakeful in the glint of the moon as it shimmered through the half-opened door. It was that half hour in which all the past appears supernatural; that forerunner of sleep, in which the remotest memories are revived. The sea roared, strident calls of the night birds broke the stillness, the gulls complained with a lament like tortured children. What were his friends doing now? What were they saying ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... superfluity and an irrelevance. Moreover (to say nothing of the fact that the Ghost was doubtless a popular figure in the old play, and demanded by the public) it was highly desirable that Hamlet's knowledge of the usurper's crime should come to him from a supernatural witness, who could not be cross-questioned or called upon to give material proof. This was the readiest as well as the most picturesque method of begetting in him that condition of doubt, real or affected, which was necessary to account for his behaviour. But to ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... fatigue and hunger, a superstitious feeling for a moment came over me, and I half asked myself whether I had not reached some enchanted region, into which the evil spirit of the prairie was luring me to destruction by appearances of supernatural strangeness and beauty. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... as we have it, is not all Shakespeare's, but in part the work of Thomas Middleton, a second or third-rate playwright contemporary with Shakespeare, who wrote a play, called "The Witch," which is plainly an imitation of the supernatural scenes in this tragedy. The Cambridge editors believe that Middleton was permitted to supply certain scenes at the time of the writing of Macbeth: Mr. Fleay, that Middleton cut down and patched up Shakespeare's perfected work, adding much inferior matter of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... on the other hand, that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... episode the girls never went far from the house on foot. They would take the cars and spin down the open road, but a sort of horror of the supernatural kept them from ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... therefore is to be presumed competently versed in the rudiments of ethics. You have read Grotius, Puffendorf, and Cumberland. For my part I never opened a volume of any one of them. I am self-taught. My science originates entirely in my unbounded penetration, and a sort of divine and supernatural afflatus. With all this your lordship knows I am a modest man. I have never presumed to entrench upon the province of others. Let the professors of ethics talk their nonsense. I will not interrupt them. I will not endeavour to set your lordship against them. It is necessary for me to take politics ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... inasmuch as they proclaimed absolute dogmas, decrees, or judgments. (20) Thus Moses, the chief of the prophets, never used legitimate argument, and, on the other hand, the long deductions and arguments of Paul, such as we find in the Epistle to the Romans, are in nowise written from supernatural revelation. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... the natural greatness of intellect, greater still in the acquired greatness of character, greatest of all in the supernatural grace of saintliness, witnessed this fifth century from its beginning: one of them, during two decades of years; the second, during three; the last, during six decades. They saw in their own persons, or they heard in authentic ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... nights of sleeplessness devote every energy of body and soul to the greatness of France. He loved not ease, he loved not personal indulgence, he loved not sensual gratification. The elevation of France to prosperity, wealth, and power, was a limitless ambition. The almost supernatural success which had thus far attended his exertions, did but magnify his desires and stimulate his hopes. He had no wish to elevate France upon the ruins of other nations. But he wished to make France the pattern of all excellence, the illustrious leader ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... "I lay no claim to supernatural experiences. The realities of life are sufficiently wonderful ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... her talents, for reasons either fortuitous or intrinsic. Let us take, for example, a woman whose relative navetete makes the process clearly apparent, to wit, a simple shop-girl. Her absolute first choice, perhaps, is not a living man at all, but a supernatural abstraction in a book, say, one of the heroes of Hall Caine, Ethel M. Dell, or Marie Corelli. After him comes a moving-picture actor. Then another moving-picture actor. Then, perhaps, many more—ten or fifteen head. Then a sebaceous ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... who are interested in such things. The affirmation of the resurrection, on the other hand, is the affirmation of the continuity of the work of God Incarnate; it is an assertion that Christianity is a supernatural action of God going on all the time, the essence of which is, not that it invites the believer to imitation of the life of Christ, so far as seems practical under modern conditions, but that it calls him to union ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... necessity find a place? What about the long-drawn-out conversations in books and on the stage that are attributed to historical persons? What about the actions attributed to them, which need not be true but only seem to be so? The supernatural element is the only thing lacking to make such ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... just; that his justice can not sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become practicable by supernatural influences! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest."[A] And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of what universal christendom is impelled to abhor, denounce, and oppose;—is not in favor of what every attribute ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... opposition to so many rivals, so much advanced before him, to a high command and authority, in the army. His great courage, his signal military talents, his eminent dexterity and address, were all requisite for this important acquisition. Yet will not this promotion appear the effect of supernatural abilities, when we consider, that Fairfax himself, a private gentleman, who had not the advantage of a seat in parliament, had, through the same steps, attained even a superior rank, and, if endued with common capacity and penetration, had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... at which he is beating are, in the very nature of things, incapable of being opened. It may be that the mind of man is incapable of grasping the secrets within them. The question has even occurred to me whether, if a being of such supernatural power as to understand the operations going on in a molecule of matter or in a current of electricity as we understand the operations of a steam-engine should essay to explain them to us, he would meet with any more success than we should in explaining to a fish the engines of a ship which so ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... is fraught with extreme peril to life. The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which supernatural, and evil, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... was an artist of great but peculiar talent—a fine draughtsman, an admirable colorist, but his imagination was of a Gothic cast, and he delighted in strange, fantastical, and supernatural subjects. He had travelled much in Germany, and his mind was imbued with the superstitions and legends of that storied land. These he loved to illustrate with his pencil, and his walls were covered with German scenes ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... moment, the stranger's whistling came clear upon their ears; there was the same wild, unearthly notes as before, but the cadences were stronger, and there was a supernatural ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... ancient, and in the modern romantic, drama, oracles, portents, prophecies, horoscopes and such-like intromissions of the supernatural afforded a very convenient aid to the placing of the requisite finger-posts—"foreshadowing without forestalling." It has often been said that Macbeth approaches the nearest of all Shakespeare's tragedies ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... becomes sick through his fears. At least seventy-five per cent of the deaths in all the tribes are murders for supposed sorcery." In that they differ from the natives of Yucatan, who respect wizards because of their supposed supernatural powers. ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... God was just then attracting, general attention, and, in some quarters, wrathful dismay. But gradually, as the high theme unfolded itself, and the lecturer showed the utter futility of all that this world has to offer when compared with the realities of the Supernatural Kingdom, curiosity was awed into reverence, and the address closed amid a silence more eloquent ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... the supernatural part of a wirreenun's training, which argues cunning in him and credulity in others, I must get to his more ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... smile was Mr. Rae's; amazing both in the suddenness of its appearing and in the suddenness of its vanishing. Upon a face of supernatural gravity, without warning, without beginning, the smile, broad, full and effulgent, was instantaneously present. Then equally without warning and without fading the smile ceased to be. Under its effulgence the observer unfamiliar with Mr. Rae's smile was moved, to a responsive ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... has to violate his sacred trust arises from the fear that such a revelation would break the heart of an exemplary old Goody Two-Shoes, for whom he has all his life long cherished a youthful love, the thought of which, and not his supernatural vocation, has sustained him, so I understood him to say, throughout his priestly career. All very pretty and "pale young Curatey," and theatrically sentimental, but don't put this man forward as the self-sacrificing hero of a Melodrama. No; the subject is best let alone. Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... condemn something you know little or nothing about," Mr. Crane said, in his serious, kindly way. "My dear Carlotta, even though you don't 'believe in' the supernatural, do try to realize that your lack of belief doesn't bar the rest of us ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... presented, for his opinion, a treatise denouncing the idea, that there was any God, who manifested any interest in the affairs of men, that there was any Particular Providence. Though Franklin did not accept the idea, that Jesus Christ was a divine messenger, and that the Bible was a supernatural revelation of God's will, he certainly did not, in his latter years, deny that there was a God, who superintended the affairs of this world, and whom it was proper to worship. It is generally supposed that Thomas Paine was the author of this treatise, and that it was a portion of ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... them came Adrien and Lady Constance. The latter had chosen to represent "Miranda," and her loveliness seemed almost supernatural. The pale gold of her hair and the perfect shell-pink of her complexion were set off to advantage by her gown, which, simple as it was, yet showed by that very simplicity the hand of the master by whom it had been designed. It was of palest green satin, edged ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... vainglorious Hull; nor was it long before he justified his reputation and won glory for the arms of Canada by capturing the American General at Detroit, together with 2500 troops and thirty-three cannon. Brock's ally on this occasion was the Chief Tecumseh, an Indian of reputed supernatural birth, the natives having been induced to throw in their lot with the British colonists in consequence of the seizure of the old port of Michillimackinac by a small force of regulars and Canadian voyageurs. Following his career of victory, Brock was soon afterwards confronted ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... him. "The excellence aimed at," says Coleridge, "was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations," those produced by supernatural agency, "supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever sense of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency." To Coleridge, whatever appealed vitally to his imagination ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... Although badly restored by Louis XVIII, the nave remains intact, and the pavement is just as it was when the bare feet of Jeanne trod its stones, in ecstatic humility, during the long trance of devotion when she felt that supernatural beings were about her and unmistakable voices were bidding her to do what maid had never dreamed of doing before. In a little chapel, beside the main edifice, is the stone fount where the infant Jeanne was baptized. Fastened to the wall there hangs a remnant of ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... she answered, "wonderfully clever; so clever and so odd that sometimes I fancy he is hardly 'canny.' There is something almost supernatural about his acuteness and his ingenuity, but they are so kindly used; I wonder he has not brought out any playthings ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... journeyman's work for the journeyman, for Borrow it was of great value because it familiarised him with the marvellous and the supernatural and so helped him towards the expression of his own material and spiritual adventures. The wild and often other- worldly air of much of his work is doubtless due to his wild and other- worldly mind, but owes a considerable if uncertain debt to his reading of ballads and legends, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... begun to be manifest in Western character, when the fusion of Europe and Asia was commencing to make itself felt. And in Scriabine, that new intensity of sensation attained something near to heroic supernatural stature. What was beautiful and sick in his age entered into his art. Through it, we learn, not a little, how ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... the tea-set were soon removed, and a fresh consultation presently began in the keeper's room. Mac Fane was again enraged, and blamed the keeper; who began to suppose there was something supernatural in my behaviour. He said I looked at him as if I knew it was poison, and it was very strange! Mac Fane swore he would dose me at supper, and would go and make me eat it himself, or blow my brains out; but he presently recollected I ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... superstitious and, as it proved, fatal insinuation, that the birth of the Chevalier de St George was owing to the supernatural intercession of St Francis Xavier, was much insisted on by the Protestants as an argument against the reality of his birth. See the Introduction to "Britannia Rediviva," Vol. X. p. 285. In that piece, our author also alludes to this foolery: ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... there is nothing mystical; no supernatural or supernormal interference is postulated. Supernormal experiences may have helped to originate or support the belief in spirits, that, however, is another question. But this hypothesis of the origin of belief in a good unceasing ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... vague anxiety disturbs the castle. A dumb tempest, without lightning or thunder, broods over it, like an electric vapour on a marsh. All is silence, deep silence; but the lady is troubled. She suspects that some supernatural power has been at work. For why indeed be thus drawn to this youth, more than to some one else, handsomer, nobler, renowned already for deeds of arms? There is something toward, down yonder! Has that woman cast ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... that the creature was not of supernatural origin helped to raise a trifle the spirits of the men; and then came another diversion in the form of ravenous meat-eaters attracted to the spot by the uncanny sense of smell which had apprised them of the presence of flesh, killed and ready for ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... are any more supernatural than the telegraph and telefone and electric light, and many other seemin'ly supernatural works. And who knows but there may still be some hidden powers in nature that is the source of ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... imperial touch of a great artist,—in short, everything about the strange old man seemed beyond the limits of human nature. The rich imagination of the youth fastened upon the one perceptible and clear clew to the mystery of this supernatural being,—the presence of the artistic nature, that wild impassioned nature to which such mighty powers have been confided, which too often abuses those powers, and drags cold reason and common souls, and even lovers of art, over stony ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac

... informed the latter with a sort of involuntary mysticism which dealt wholly with the darker side of the soul. For this was one of the most peculiar of the problems of the Victorian mind. The idea of the supernatural was perhaps at as low an ebb as it had ever been—certainly much lower than it is now. But in spite of this, and in spite of a certain ethical cheeriness that was almost de rigueur—the strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the Victorians allowed to their imaginations ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... than that of the boatmen. He was a tall, fine-looking man, ever moving with that dignity which seems instinctive in one accustomed to command. The keen-sighted Indians were not slow in recognizing his superiority of rank, and all considered him invested with supernatural powers. Often, when it rained as they were wishing to go hunting, they would entreat him to sweep away the clouds. His invariable reply was, pointing to the skies, "The Great Spirit there controls all things. I have no such ability." They stood in awe of his ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... hand!" The remark was made of Titian and his wonderful color effects, and then again of Rembrandt with his mysterious limpid shadows—their competitors could not understand it! And so they disposed of the subject by attributing it to a supernatural agency. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... bit the miracle resolved itself into a series of events which, though surprising enough, could not by any stretch of the credulity be called supernatural. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... be 'ard on the boys,' and found considerable relief in remembering that he had agreed 'to leave them tae the Almichty.' But the manner of leaving them was so solemnly awful, that I could not wonder that Slavin's superstitious Irish nature supplied him with supernatural terrors. It was the second day after the funeral that Geordie and I were walking towards Slavin's. There was a great shout of ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them — Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put up thy grave-stone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee! Hearkening to these voices, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... a revelation. A revelation is not made for the purpose of showing to idle men that which they may show to themselves, by faculties already given to them, if only they will exert those faculties, but for the purpose of showing that which the moral darkness of man will not, without supernatural light, allow him to perceive. With disdain, therefore, must every considerate person regard the notion,—that God could wilfully interfere with his own plans, by accrediting ambassadors to reveal astronomy, or any other science, which he has ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... could it embrace the whole world, could it ingraft on the world its love and charity, an epoch would come recalling that in which not Jupiter, but Saturn had ruled. He did not dare either to doubt the supernatural origin of Christ, or His resurrection, or the other miracles. The eye-witnesses who spoke of them were too trustworthy and despised falsehood too much to let him suppose that they were telling things that had not happened. Finally, Roman scepticism permitted disbelief ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, any thing less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... we have a Congress which can enact tariff regulations susceptible of interpretations enough to satisfy the love of mystery of the entire nation. Instead of loafing round Memnon at sunrise to catch some supernatural tones, we talk words into a little contrivance which will repeat our words and tones to the remotest generation of those who shall be curious to know whether we said those words in jest or earnest. All these mysteries made common and diffused certainly increase the feeling of the equality of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the papal decision that the sun goes round the earth, this is because all intelligent Catholics now hold, with Pascal, that, in deciding the point at all, the Church exceeded her powers, and was, therefore, justly left destitute of that supernatural assistance which, in the exercise of her legitimate functions, the promise of her Founder ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... kind of investigation is considered by scientific minds entirely logical and inevitable. As this so-called holy book is found to contain so many errors, inaccuracies, false statements and absurdities, the notion, or claim, of its being a "revelation," communicated, or inspired, from a supernatural source, is unreasonable and untenable. An all-wise Creator could not be ignorant, or inaccurate. This particular book, like many other similar and rival ones to be found in other parts of the world, may be scientifically assumed to be ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... to pray as Christ prayed in Gethsemane in fellowship with His sufferings. But we have also to pray as knowing the power of His Resurrection. We have to rise in faith to claim the supernatural power which neither He used nor we may use merely for self-preservation, which yet is to be set free in the ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot

... The "supernatural" denouement is the last resource of a bewildered dramatist, and introduces either an individual in green scales and wings to match, who gives the audience to understand that he is a fiend, and that he has private business ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various

... shore of an island which, when Columbus discovered it, appeared to be the abode of plenty. It was at this juncture, when the natives were becoming more and more unfriendly, that Columbus justified himself by the tyrant's plea of necessity, and made use of his astronomical science, to obtain a supernatural power over ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale

... a carpenter. They were to have been wedded, but during the interval between the betrothal and the marriage there came to her a figure, which was that of an angel of the Lord, saying to her that a son would be born to her the paternity of which would be supernatural, and that this son would be the Messiah told of in Jewish prophecy. She informed her betrothed of this, and that she had evidence that what had been told her would occur. At first Joseph was greatly troubled and resolved that the marriage should not take place lest ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... phantom; and, looking more attentively, Hugonet was still sensible of two other forms, the outlines, it seemed, of a hart and a hind, which appeared half to shelter themselves behind the person and under the robe of this supernatural figure." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... casual failure of crops under imperfect arrangements of culture. Now, the one great qualification for wrestling strenuously with such difficult contingencies in solitary situations, is the spirit of cheerful hope; but, when any room had been left for apprehending a supernatural curse resting upon their efforts—equally in the most thoughtfully pious man and the most crazily superstitious—all spirit of hope would be blighted at once; and the religious neglect would, even in a common human way, become its own certain ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... are blood-relations of the Sun-god, some through their father, others through their mother, directly begotten by the God, and their souls as well as their bodies have a supernatural origin; each soul being a double detached from Horus, the successor of Osiris, and the first to reign alone over Egypt. This divine double is infused into the royal infant at birth, in the same manner as the ordinary ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... dexterity which mystified the simple folk of the country. This diversion, and his proficiency in it, gave rise to that mysterious awe with which he was regarded by the common people of his home region; they ascribed to him supernatural powers, and refused to believe that he was really dead even after the ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... large tracts of territory that religion once regarded as peculiarly its own; and just as psychology and pathology were found to hold the key to an understanding of such a phenomenon as witchcraft, so we may yet realise that a true explanation of religious phenomena is to be found, not in some supernatural world, but in the workings ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... they had filled the grave up and smoothed it down on the surface, and then, throwing the head into the game-bag, retraced their steps to the fort. Their nerves were by this time worked up to such a pitch of excitement, and their minds filled with such a degree of supernatural horror, that they tripped and stumbled over stumps and branches innumerable in their double-quick march. Neither would confess to the other, however, that he was afraid. They even attempted to pass a few facetious remarks as they hurried along, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... reasons for his belief. He either saw these things himself or knew somebody, strictly truthful, who had seen them. He did not know, what I am going to prove to you, that a thing may be true and yet not be real. In other words, that there are times when we do actually see marvels that seem supernatural, but that, on such occasions, we must not believe our own eyes, but search for a natural cause, and, if we look faithfully, we are sure ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... settlement of Roger's, which had avoided death duty. He found George in a bow-window, staring out across a half-eaten plate of muffins. His tall, bulky, black-clothed figure loomed almost threatening, though preserving still the supernatural neatness of the racing man. With a faint grin on his fleshy ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... stories, narrating an event, or maintaining his own side of a controversy. He was the oldest of the party, and always interesting, so he was tolerated in this—generally. He was superstitious, and believed in the supernatural to a certain extent, denying that such belief was a weakness, else "Napoleon and Sir Walter Scott were the weakest of men." General Beatty relates an incident of an evening's talk (July 24th) ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... who until my visit had never seen a Bible or heard a missionary, there were conflicting ideas regarding the Book. Some, at first, were afraid of it. It was "great medicine," and only for the white man. One old conjurer who boasted of his supernatural powers and of the wonderful things he could do by the aid of his "medicines," failing signally when I challenged him to show his power, declared, that it was because of the Book which I carried in my pocket. Then, I permitted an Indian to take the Book some distance away; and when he still failed, ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... lips, and the doctor told him to take his time with his story. The jurors stood about the bed in silence, looking from one to the other with expressions that suggested they were almost in the presence of the supernatural. If the black bag with the money had slowly risen out of the floor someone would have quietly set it in a corner until Allan was ready ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... recognised in one of the servants, Etienne Brule by name, the man who had escaped uninjured from the famous encounter with Pamphilo de Narvaez, and who had ever afterwards regarded La Pommeraye as a being of a supernatural order. This man had been with De Roberval on his voyage, and from him, after an hour's cross-questioning, La Pommeraye at last elicited the truth. The remembrance of the horrors through which he had passed, and his terror of De Roberval's wrath if it were ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... great power—a far more potent ally than he has in his animal friends—the use of fire. Unquestionably to the minds of animals it is a supernatural power. They cannot create it, understand it, and it is very doubtful if they can yet use it to advantage. How marvellous is this thing—fire! That great blazing pillar of cloud that destroys all, and leaves nothing to show where it has taken its enemies! To animals it springs up wherever ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... believed he might have fled himself had he been free. What could have caused that sound? He fought off the numbing chill that once again began to creep over him. He was wide-awake now; his head was clear, and he resolved to retain his senses. He told himself there could be nothing supernatural in that wind, or wail, or whatever it was, which had risen murmuring from ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... but for me at the moment, looking at the scene in so dreamy a fashion, it seemed merely like a dramatic conclusion to my dream. It was but an accident confirming what was but an aspect. But it confirmed it with a strange and almost supernatural completeness. The white light out of the window in the north lay on all the roofs and turrets of the mountain town; for there is an aspect in which snow looks less like frozen water than like solidified light. As the snow accumulated ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... jilt Laurence, Mary Virginia sank deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. A terror of Inglesby's power, as of something supernatural, was growing upon her, a terror almost childish in its intensity. He had begun to occupy the niche vacated by the Boogerman her Dah had threatened her with in her nursery. She could barely conceal this terror, save that an instinct warned her that to let him know she feared him would be fatal. And ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... Kew smiled (in her supernatural way) almost as much as her portrait, by Harlowe, as you may see it at Kewbury to this very day. She is represented seated before an easel, painting a miniature of her son, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... This conclusion is confirmed by the preservation in Wales of a bridge-sacrifice tradition. It relates to the "Devil's Bridge" near Beddgelert. "Many of the ignorant people of the neighbourhood believe that this structure was formed by supernatural agency. The devil proposed to the neighbouring inhabitants that he would build them a bridge across the pass, on condition that he should have the first who went over it for his trouble. The bargain was made, and the bridge appeared in its place, but the people cheated ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... no easy thing to secure admission to the Captain of the Port. The very phrase, "the Captain of the Port," that had been bandied back and forth for the last few minutes, became odious to her; it seemed to designate the title of some august and supernatural and tyrannous power who held her life and death ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... instant the trumpets sounded a charge, and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of Sultz, while the rearguard, consisting of Trevico's Neapolitan regiment, was assailed by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir Francis Vere. The effect seemed almost supernatural. The Spanish cavalry—those far-famed squadrons of Guzman and Basta—broke at the first onset and galloped off for the pass as if they had been riding a race. Most of them escaped through the hollow into the morass beyond. The musketeers of Sultz's regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... all believe that they were called and supported by the Deity; and that no tender beings like women could otherwise voluntarily undergo such tortures—they become inspired with supernatural powers of courage and fortitude. When Duli Sukul, the Sihora[14] banker's father, died, the wife of a Lodhi cultivator of the town declared, all at once, that she had been a suttee with him six times before; and that she would now go into paradise with him a seventh ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... was less affection, but, perhaps, more homage. Conquered and subjected, the Germans, either as soothing to their vanity, or from habitual inclination for the marvellous, were tempted to consider Napoleon as a supernatural being. Astonished, beside themselves, and carried along by the universal impulse, these worthy people exerted themselves to be, sincerely, all that it ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... from a fitful dream of his Cousin Maria. She with a supernatural strength seemed to be holding the door against some unseen, unknown power that moaned and strove without, and threw itself in despairing force against the cabin. He could see the lithe undulations of her form as she alternately yielded to its power, and again drew the door against ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... weapon with which the victory had been achieved had vanished. You had risen from the dead, had assailed one of the surviving enemies, had employed bullet and dagger in his destruction, with both of which you could only be supplied by supernatural means, and had disappeared. If any inhabitant of Chetasco had done this, we should have ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... his playing the great artist rendered exquisitely that kind of agitated trepidation, timid or breathless, which seizes the heart when one believes one's self in the vicinity of supernatural beings, in presence of those whom one does not know either how to divine or to lay hold of, to embrace or to charm. He always made the melody undulate like a skiff borne on the bosom of a powerful wave; or he made it move vaguely like an aerial apparition suddenly ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... They will engage in it with interest, they will talk of their own recollections of the dead, and listen to yours, though they become sometimes pleasant, sometimes even laughable. I found it so. It robbed the calamity of something of its supernatural and horrible abruptness; it prevented that monotony of object which is to the mind what it is to the eye, and prepared the faculty for those mesmeric illusions ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... taken his seat at Potiphar's table, and he observed a maiden looking at him from one of the palace windows. He commanded that she be ordered away, for he never permitted women to gaze at him or come near to him. His supernatural beauty always fascinated the noble Egyptian ladies, and they were untiring in the efforts they made to approach him. But their attempts were vain. He cherished the words of his father Jacob, who had admonished his son to keep aloof from the women of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... her face, and said: "See, that is the blood of your friends; yours will soon cover it." But she did not falter, and the savages probably left her untouched for this reason. They are very superstitious, and must have thought that there was something supernatural about her. Shortly after this she heard the tramp of feet outside, and an English voice calling to ask if there was anybody inside; running out, she found that the British commissioner and a large force had arrived. And with ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 24, June 16, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... doubtless deepened the natural and inherited piety for which he was so remarkable; and some strange and unexplained noises which during a long period were heard in the rectory, and which its inmates concluded to be supernatural, contributed to that vein of credulity which ran through his character. He was sent to the Charterhouse, and from thence to Oxford, where at the age of twenty-three he was elected fellow of Lincoln. He had some years before acquired ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... last. With a wild cry, "Lucia! Ha! Lucia! Fury! Avenger! Fiend!" he started to his feet, and glared around him with a bewildered eye, as if expecting to behold some ghastly supernatural visitant. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... personal character acts by a kind of talismanic influence, as if certain men were the organs of a sort of supernatural force. "If I but stamp on the ground in Italy," said Pompey, "an army will appear." At the voice of Peter the Hermit, as described by the historian, "Europe arose, and precipitated itself upon Asia." It was said of the Caliph Omar that his walking-stick struck ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... was very desirous to have him taken; for he reckoned that if he were once taken, the greatest part of the war would be over. They then searched among the dead, and looked into the most concealed recesses of the city; but as the city was first taken, he was assisted by a certain supernatural providence; for he withdrew himself from the enemy when he was in the midst of them, and leaped into a certain deep pit, whereto there adjoined a large den at one side of it, which den could not be seen by those that were above ground; and there he met ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... her faith in the whole business, she would probably have said she thought "there was something in it," and stopped at that. In minds like hers, there is no clearly drawn line between the unusual and the supernatural. An apparent miracle pleased her as it would please a child, without setting her to find out how it was done. She would consult a wizard, taking the chances of his having occult sources of information, with the same irregular faith in ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... tricks of Madame Palladino, I was simply flooded with letters of advice and of explanation. The same thing occurred recently when the papers reported that I was experimenting with Beulah Miller. Now it is easy to understand that those who fancied that the Miller child had supernatural gifts of telepathy and clairvoyance would wish to bring their questions to me so that I might make Beulah Miller trace their lost bracelets or predict their fortune in the Stock Exchange. But I was at a loss to understand ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... upon the phenomena of nature, he was able to understand almost nothing. In his inability to comprehend the activities going on around him he came to regard the forces of nature as manifestations of some supernatural beings. This was eminently natural. He had a direct consciousness of his own power to act, and it was natural for him to assume that the activities going on around him were caused by similar powers on the part of some being like himself, only superior ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn

... there was formerly an Arhan,(2) who by his supernatural power(3) took a clever artificer up to the Tushita heaven, to see the height, complexion, and appearance of Maitreya Bodhisattva,(4) and then return and make an image of him in wood. First and last, this was done three times, and then the image ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost supernatural impression which this strange being made on ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... amusement here consisted in seeing boys from the mosque stick into their cheeks, &c., daggers and pointed weapons, which the priest blessed, and which were therefore innocuous; a milder specimen of the supernatural I certainly never witnessed. All took place at the Regent's palace, from which I have just returned. His son, a boy of about fourteen, was present to-night and last night. A rather nice-looking boy. He never came ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... any more than if they had been as mute as herself. To all this mass of absurdities the better informed paid no more attention than to the usual idle exaggerations of the vulgar, which so frequently connect that which is unusual with what is supernatural. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... time Malleville seemed to be endowed with some new and supernatural strength in her jumping: for she bounded so high that her feet rose almost to a level with the top of the seat, and then, as she came down gently upon the floor of the cart, Beechnut released his hold upon her, and she walked to her chair and sat down. Beechnut then mounted to his place by ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott

... estimated as all other products and phenomena of nature are estimated, according to his absolute value, divested, as in the case of all other physical and organic sciences, of preconceived ideas or prejudices in favour of the supernatural. He should be studied as in physics we study bodies and the laws which govern them, or as the laws of their motions and combinations are studied in chemistry, allowance always being made for their reciprocal relations, and for their appearance as a whole. For if there be ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... and for the many lambs here devoured by our noted teachers, Don Miguel Bosch, Don Maximo Laguna, Don Augustin Pascual, and other illustrious naturalists. Sit down, and I will tell you a strange and wonderful story in proof of my thesis, which is, though you call me an obscurantist for it, that supernatural events still occur on this terraqueous globe. I mean events which you cannot get into terms of reason, or science, or philosophy—as those 'words, words, words,' in Hamlet's phrase, are understood (or are ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... malignant influence can have excited the people either to incur or to suffer their present situation? Were we not well acquainted with the arts of factions, the activity of bad men, and the effect of their union, I should be almost tempted to believe this change in the French supernatural. Less than three years ago, the name of Henri Quatre was not uttered without enthusiasm. The piece that transmitted the slightest anecdotes of his life was certain of success—the air that celebrated him was listened ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... already beginning to be recognized. Is it possible to link them with those great lines running through the visible universe which we call the Natural Laws, or are they fundamentally distinct? In a word, Is the Supernatural natural or unnatural? ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... religion—that is, of the relations of man with the supernatural, with God and immortality, with the soul, our personality or the ego, and its existence or nonexistence after death—is the greatest and deepest which ever confronted mankind. In the present state of human knowledge, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... 1,2, the [Greek: thespesin phuza] of the Achaeans is not to be explained as a supernatural flight, occasioned by the gods. It is a great and general flight, caused by Hector and the Trojans. For although this was approved of and encouraged by Jupiter, yet his was only that mediate influence ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... name which passed into the forms of Thuinam and Twynham, that the great Priory Church was destined to stand. But not even when the human builders began to erect the church on the miraculously chosen ground did supernatural interposition cease. A stranger workman came and laboured at the building: never was he seen to eat as the other workmen did, never did he come with his fellows to receive his wages. Once, when a beam had been cut too short ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins

... He fancied that all this was some supernatural temptation, and, unwilling to look at the markets any longer, turned towards Saint Eustache, a side view of which he obtained from the spot where he now stood. With its roses, and broad arched windows, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... the processes described by the alchemists of the 13th century are not put forward as being miraculous or supernatural; they rather represent the methods employed by nature, which it is the end of the alchemist's art to reproduce artificially in the laboratory. But even among the late Arabian alchemists it was doubted whether ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... at gaze, uncomprehending, too astonished for speech. We had come, even the unbelievers of us, prepared for the supernatural, for something surpassingly eery, and anything so commonplace as the smoke of a fire was a surprise greater than the sight of all Jo Kettle's imaginations ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... setting out for Eternity; but cast thine Eye on that thick Mist into which the Tide bears the several Generations of Mortals that fall into it. I directed my Sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good Genius strengthened it with any supernatural Force, or dissipated Part of the Mist that was before too thick for the Eye to penetrate) I saw the Valley opening at the farther End, and spreading forth into an immense Ocean, that had a huge Rock of Adamant running ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... every air breathed of the balmy pasture, and the honey-suckled hedge. I was continually coming upon some little document of poetry, in the blossomed hawthorn, the daisy, the cowslip, the primrose, or some other simple object that has received a supernatural value from the muse. The first time that I heard the song of the nightingale, I was intoxicated more by the delicious crowd of remembered associations than by the melody of its notes; and I shall never forget the thrill of ecstasy with which I first saw the lark rise, almost from beneath ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... could find nothing real and true that was not accompanied by the marvellous and the 'supernatural.' The nineteenth century could find nothing real and true that was. Which view was right and which was wrong? Was either complete? Of these two questions, the second alone is profitable at the present. Both views were right—in a certain way of contemplating; both views ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... Portuguese discoverers first came to Aru, and has formed the foundation for a continually increasing accumulation of legend and fable. I have no doubt that to the next generation, or even before, I myself shall be transformed into a magician or a demigod, a worker of miracles, and a being of supernatural knowledge. They already believe that all the animals I preserve will come to life again; and to their children it will be related that they actually did so. An unusual spell of fine weather setting in just at my arrival has made them believe I can control the seasons; and the simple circumstance ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... brilliant and cogent argument in favor of a system illustrated by such a man; he is the type of the reign of law in the moral order—that reign of law which the philosophic Duke of Argyll has so recently and so ably discussed as pervading the natural as well as the supernatural world. One of the chief characteristics of the Christian is duty. Throughout a checkered life the conscientious performance of duty seems to have been the mainspring of the actions of General Lee. In his relations of father, son, husband, soldier, citizen, duty shines conspicuous ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... Abrupt the supernatural Cross, Vivid in startled air, Smote the Emperor Constantine And turned his soul's ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... for brevity we may term the stories based upon supernatural agency: this was a favourite with olden Persia; and Mohammed, most austere and puritanical of the "Prophets," strongly objected to it because preferred by the more sensible of his converts to the dry legends of the Talmud and the Koran, quite as fabulous without ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... as a natural development, an entire shift from the historical idea of the Church as an authoritative and supernatural instrument of salvation, to a Church whose authority was entirely vital, {l} ethical, spiritual, dynamic. The Church of these spiritual Reformers was a Fellowship, a Society, a Family, rather than a mysterious and supernatural entity. They felt once again, as powerfully ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... of the supernatural silence which reigned and which reminded of the silence in the arctic regions. There was not the slightest breeze, the snowflakes fell vertically, crystal-clear, the snow blinded the eyes, the sun appeared like a red hot ball with a halo, the sign ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... described an East End parish in which he spent some of his earliest years. Over that parish, he says, might have been written Dante's inscription over the entrance to the Inferno: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." After speaking of its physical misery and its supernatural and perfectly astonishing deadness, he says that he embarked on a voyage round the world, and had the opportunity of seeing savage life in all conceivable conditions of ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... published the illustrations for Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques" and those for "The Wandering Jew "—the first humorous and grotesque in the highest degree—indeed, showing a perfect abandonment to fancy; the other weird and supernatural, with fierce battles, shipwrecks, turbulent mobs, and nature in her most forbidding and terrible aspects. Every incident or suggestion that could possibly make the story more effective, or add to the horror of the scenes was seized upon ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... the paralysis of years has been gradually loosening its fetters, and this morning, the distressing and ghastly distortion of one side of his face almost disappeared. Though his voice is well nigh gone, it returns fitfully, and his strength seems supernatural. Fearing that you might not arrive in time, I have written down his last confession, and here commit ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... of mercy or judgment, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and he is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means, excepting and reserving to himself, nevertheless, a power to act in a supernatural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident, that, in the case of an infection, there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for supernatural operation; but the ordinary course of things appears sufficiently ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... decorously draped, in the other—seem to me to run together better than any two other novelists of our company. They do not attempt elaborate analysis; they do not grapple with thorny or grimy problems; they are not purveyors of the indecent, or dealers in the supernatural and fantastic, or poignant satirists of society at large or individuals in particular. But they can both, in their different ways, tell a plain tale uncommonly well, and season it with wit or pathos when either ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... lower classes, but the men were of all ranks, come hither to forget awhile the protracted scenes of wretchedness, which awaited them at their miserable homes. The curtain drew up, and the stage presented the scene of the witches' cave. The wildness and supernatural machinery of Macbeth, was a pledge that it could contain little directly connected with our present circumstances. Great pains had been taken in the scenery to give the semblance of reality to the impossible. The ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... and meanest, with the whole force and majesty of society. It is the minister of wrath to wrong-doers, indeed, but its nature is beneficent, and its action defines and protects the right of property, creates and maintains a medium in which religion can exert her supernatural energy, promotes learning, fosters science and art, advances civilization, and contributes as a powerful means to the fulfilment by man of the Divine purpose in his existence. Next after religion, it is man's greatest good; and even religion ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... not uncommonly fulfilled. There is a theory that it arises from a species of second-sight, a subtle spiritual communication with the future. I well remember that Herr Raumer, the eminent spiritualist, remarked on one occasion that I was the most sensitive subject as regards supernatural phenomena that he had ever encountered in the whole of his wide experience. Be that as it may, I certainly felt far from happy as I threaded my way among the weeping, cheering groups which dotted the white decks of the good ship Spartan. Had I known the experience which awaited me in ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... what had been told her about a creaking board and a light that came and went without human agency. Frightened for a minute, she stood stock-still, then she rushed down. Whatever it was, natural or supernatural, she went to see it; but the light vanished before she passed the lower stair, and only a long-drawn sigh not far from her ear warned her that the space between her and the real hall was not the solitude she was anxious to consider it. A sigh! That meant a ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... of the flowers; how some seemed only to flaunt themselves, and others had so much more character. As we passed a little opening in the woods, a great dark purple flower, that was a stranger to me, fixed its gaze upon me so that I felt the look, as we sometimes do from human eyes. Any thing supernatural is so in keeping with these solitary places, I felt as if some one had assumed that form to greet me. There were some beautiful new flowers; among them a snow-white iris, which was very lovely. It seemed like a miracle that this fair little creature ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... a fact that Florozonde was the fashion. As regards her eyes, at any rate, the young man had not exaggerated more than was to be forgiven in an artist; her eyes were superb, supernatural; and now that the spangled finery of a fair was replaced by the most triumphant of audacities—now that a circus band had been exchanged for the orchestra of La Coupole—she danced as she had not danced before. You ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... we cannot pronounce on the positive presence of moral causes which produced their disbelief, we may conjecture negatively the nature of those, the absence of which precluded the possibility of faith. Christianity demands a belief in the supernatural, and a serious spirit in the investigation of religion, both of which were wholly lacking in Lucian. It requires a deep consciousness of guilt and of the personality of God, which were wanting in Celsus. It exacts a more delicate moral taste to ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... drinking, sleeping and waking, fighting and loving, into a society and a mise-en-scene which we suspect can exist and which we know do not. Every man, at some turn or term of his life, has longed for supernatural powers and a glimpse of Wonderland. Here he is in the midst of it. Here he sees mighty spirits summoned to work the human mite's will, however whimsical; who can transport him in an eye-twinkling whithersoever he wishes; who can ruin cities ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... in our Lord's self-revelation here is that He shows Himself possessed of supernatural and thorough knowledge. One remembers the many instances where our Lord read men's hearts, and the prayer addressed to Him probably, by Peter, 'Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men,' and the vision which John saw of 'eyes like a flame ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... rules, The Vade Mecum of the true sublime, Which makes so many poets, and some fools: Prose poets like blank-verse, I 'm fond of rhyme, Good workmen never quarrel with their tools; I 've got new mythological machinery, And very handsome supernatural scenery. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... flesh; and in everything that man creates for himself he merely attempts to give body or expression to thought. The science of Carlyle's time was busy proclaiming that, since the universe is governed by natural laws, miracles are impossible and the supernatural is a myth. Carlyle replies that the natural laws are themselves only the manifestation of Spiritual Force, and that thus miracle is everywhere and all nature supernatural. We, who are the creatures of time and space, can indeed apprehend the Absolute only when He weaves about Him the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... the building, he was still puzzled in mind and had decided to say nothing about his discovery to his companions. Chris and the captain would be sure to view the matter in its most supernatural light. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... hour. I counted one, two, three, four, five, and resolved to rise immediately. My bed was partially screened by a long curtain looped up at one side. As I raised my head from the pillow, Rosa looked inside the curtain, and smiled at me. The idea of anything supernatural did not occur to me. I was simply surprised, and exclaimed, 'Why, Rosa! How came you here, when you are so ill?' In the old familiar tones, to which I was so much accustomed, a voice replied, 'I am well, now.' With no other thought than that of greeting her joyfully, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... Washington was very handsomely dressed, and made a most elegant appearance. Colonel Patterson appeared awe-struck, as if he was before something supernatural. Indeed, I don't wonder at it. He was before a very great ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... till they put away their clubs and knives, and farming utensils took the place of bows and arrows and spears. This strange change in African savages came to be talked over among the people. It was so wonderful that the other tribes could account for it only as an instance of supernatural magic. There was nothing they knew of that would lead men like the Bechuanas to bring war to an end, and no longer ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... limitation, to the region of the universal. The one draws God to man, brings perfection here, and reaches its highest form in the joyous life of Greece, where the natural world was clothed with almost supernatural beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds this life good because it reflects and suggests the greater life that is to be. Both poetry and religion are a reconciliation and a satisfaction; both lift man above the contradictions of limited ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... put that question to herself. But strange are the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost supernatural, from the earliest effects of her prayer. A thought had struck her all at once, and this thought prompted her immediately to turn round. Perhaps it was in some blind yearning after the only memorials of life ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... of immortality. All readers of literature of the supernatural, in books like "The ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... a tabular synopsis of the First Partition with its several Sections, Members and Subsections. After various preliminary digressions Burton sets himself to define what Melancholy is and what are its species and kinds. Then he discusses the Causes, supernatural and natural, of the disorder, and afterwards proceeds to set down the Symptoms (which cannot be briefly summarized, "for the Tower of Babel never yielded such confusion of tongues as the Chaos of Melancholy doth ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... reason to believe that, after the death of their Master, they pursued their missionary labours with renovated ardour. That they were called apostles as well as the Twelve, cannot, perhaps, be established by distinct testimony; [46:2] but it is certain, that they were furnished with supernatural endowments; [46:3] and it is scarcely probable that they are overlooked in the description of the sacred writer when He represents the New Testament Church as "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... borrowed from a German romance, by the celebrated Tieck, called Das Peter Manchem, i. e. The Dwarf Peter. The being who gives name to the tale, is the Burg-geist, or castle spectre, of a German family, whom he aids with his counsel, as he defends their castle by his supernatural power. But the Dwarf Peter is so unfortunate an adviser, that all his counsels, though producing success in the immediate results, are in the issue attended with mishap and with guilt. The youthful baron, the owner of the haunted castle, falls in love with a maiden, the daughter of a neighbouring ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... traversing the house from end to end. If, therefore, she happened to be sleepless, she might issue forth into the garden, and wander about there without let or hinderance until she was ready to accept the wooing of the god of dreams; or, if supernatural terrors daunted her, she could in a few seconds transfer herself and her fears to Miriam's chamber, which occupied the same position in the right wing that hers did ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne



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