"Superhuman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of encouragement and, climbing over a heap of ruins and braving a toppling wall, entered the building. In the cellar he found the bodies of three children. Near them was a woman, barely alive, who by almost superhuman efforts for hours had succeeded in freeing herself from a mass of debris which had fallen upon her. The soldier picked the woman up in his arms and carried her to a place of safety. It was found that both legs were broken and that she had been badly ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... prison, saying during the night, in a sweet voice, "Why persecutest thou us?" The blood of Stephen, which had almost smothered him, sometimes troubled his vision. Many things that he had heard said of Jesus went to his heart. This superhuman being, in his ethereal life, whence he sometimes emerged, revealing himself in brief apparitions, haunted him like a spectre. But Saul shrunk with horror from such thoughts; he confirmed himself with a sort of frenzy in the faith of his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... have discovered by this time that the Captain was no ordinary man. Whatever he did in connection with himself was done with almost superhuman energy and noise. Since the commencement of his residence in the garret he had unwittingly subjected the nerves of poor Mrs Roby to such a variety of shocks, that the mere fact of her reason remaining on its throne was an unquestionable proof of a more than usually powerful constitution. ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... feeling his best and I advised him to remain on shore while I took the boat. As we made the change we again observed the boat, bounding through the next rapid, whirling on the tops of the waves as though in the hands of a superhuman juggler. I managed to overtake her in a whirlpool below the rapid, and came to shore for her captain. He was nearly exhausted with his efforts; still he insisted on continuing. A few miles below we saw some ducks, and shot at them with a revolver. But the ducks flew disdainfully away, and landed ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... received the chilled and frightened victims of the storm, and indeed, as soon as we were able to dispose of the more delicate and needy ones, we turned our thought to the brave crews of the little boats, for their exertions had been almost superhuman, and they ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... race between the two crews with the paddlers standing on the gunwales, which tested the skill of the girls to the uttermost. With superhuman effort they kept their balance and came sweeping in neck and neck, the watchers on shore cheering lustily. "Go it, Hinpoha!" shouted Nyoda, and Hinpoha raised her head to look at her, lost her balance, and upset the canoe, leaving Sahwah and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... terrible, averring that two men like these had never been known in the land since the days of Vitus Bering and his crew; for their rancor had swollen till at feel of each other's flesh they ran mad and felt superhuman strength. It is true, at any rate, that neither was conscious of the filling room, nor the cries of the crowd, even when the marshal forced himself through the wedged door and fell upon the nearest, which was Glenister. He came at an instant when the two had paused at arm's-length, glaring ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Eva, things which appear very extraordinary, may often be explained by a chance resemblance or a freak of nature. Marvels being always the result of optical illusion or heated fancy, a time must come, when that which appeared to be superhuman or supernatural, will prove to be the most simple and natural event in the world. I doubt not, therefore, that the things, which we denominate our prodigies, will one ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... impressionable islanders were enraptured by the affability of the man whom the population of Sicily soon came seriously to consider as a new Messiah. It is a fact that the people of Southern Italy did believe that Garibaldi had in him something superhuman, only the Bourbon troops looked rather below than above for the source of it. The picturesque incidents of the historic march were many; one other may be mentioned. While the chief watered his ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... hath been heard by us that Ila was both his mother and father. And the great Pururavas had sway over thirteen islands of the sea. And, though a human being, he was always surrounded by companions that were superhuman. And Pururavas intoxicated with power quarrelled with the Brahmanas and little caring for their anger robbed them of their wealth. Beholding all this Sanatkumara came from the region of Brahman and gave him good counsel, which was, however, rejected by Pururavas. Then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... known as La Periode Tragique. Five notable figures, Decamps, Ravachol, Vaillant, Henry, and Caserio, within a period of three years, performed a series of terrorist acts that cannot be forgotten. Their utter desperation and abandon, the terrible solemnity of their lives, and the almost superhuman efforts they made to bring society to its knees mark the most tragic and heroic period in the history of anarchism. At Levallois-Perret a demonstration was organized by the anarchists for May 1. They brought ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... great a man!... I saw Cherbourg for the first time. This port, which Louis XVI. had designed simply for one of refuge, had been transformed by Napoleon into one from which an attack could be made. In those days of prodigies, however incapable of amazement I might have been, this roadstead, won by superhuman exertion from the ocean, this vast basin hewn to a depth of fifty feet in the granite, with accommodations for fifty men-of-war, for their building, for their repair, for their armament, filled me with an admiration such ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... firm in the ancient faith at which all her own courtiers were sneering, and as brave as a young lioness. Frederick hated her as he hated everything German and everything good. He sets forth in his own memoirs, with that clearness which adds something almost superhuman to the mysterious vileness of his character, how he calculated on her youth, her inexperience and her lack of friends as proof that she could be despoiled with safety. He invaded Silesia in advance of his own declaration of war (as if he had run on ahead to say it was coming) and ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... concerns. Have they none of their own? If they are happy, does their happiness depend on us, comparatively so imbecile and vile? He believed, as nearly all nations do, in different ranks and orders of superhuman beings; and perhaps he thought (but I never was in his confidence or counsels) that the higher were rather in communication with the next to them in intellectual faculties, than with the most remote. To me the suggestion appears by no means irrational, that if we are managed or cared for at ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... a warrior boldly to the conquest, sounding their voices in the halls of Congress, appealing to human and divine power to protect their nonsense, and bidding defiance to our constitutional rights, Our slaves are our property, protected by the law of God-by that inspired and superhuman wisdom that founded our great and glorious constitution. Yes, sir! it was an institution entailed upon us by our forefathers, and a wise providence has provided proper laws by which we shall protect and see these poor miserable devils of helpless slaves, that can't take care ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... he was of superhuman cunning, held the Empire in the hollow of his hand. He could make or break the most powerful statesman within a single day. In that small fireproof safe of his, concealed beneath the floor of the wine-cellar at the Gorokhovaya—that safe in which were preserved so many amorous letters from neurotic ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... confesses, merely by acting as any professional man ought to have acted—and with the best intentions. At the same time, all the blame I should ever think of casting upon him is that he allowed his high-strung, saintly, I had almost said superhuman ideas to stand in the way of his ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... to every method of acquiring it, is demanded as a preliminary—the Neoplatonists did not make matters easy for themselves,—and a new and mighty principle is set up which is to bridle fancy, viz., the authority of a sure tradition. This authority must be superhuman, otherwise it would not come under consideration; it must therefore be divine. On divine disclosures, that is revelations, must rest both the highest super-rational region of knowledge and the possibility of knowledge itself. In a ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... learning, their office seems practically rather that of the dwarfs, as gatherers and guardians of treasure useless to themselves, but with which some luck's-child may enrich himself and his neighbors. Other analogies between them and the dwarfs, such as their accomplishing superhuman things and being prematurely subject to the dryness of old ago, ("Der Zwerg ist schon im siebenten Jahr ein Greis," says Grimm,) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... have somewhat too set and mechanical a rhythm. The earnestness and fervour seemed to have gone out of them in somewise since she had come to womanhood. The names of the saints her lips invoked were dull and cold, and evolved no image of human or superhuman love and power. What need of intercessors whose personality was vague and dim, whose earthly histories were made up of truth so interwoven with fable that she scarce dared believe even that which might be true? In the One Crucified was help for all sinners, gospel and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Gellius vi. 1. 6, from C. Oppius et Iulius Hyginus. In his famous character of Scipio (xxvi. 19) Livy seems to think that Scipio did this to make people think him superhuman or of divine descent. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... "Calf love, mistaken for a heroism that shall be lifelong, yet early waning into disappointment; the inexplicable desire that comes on a man of riper years to be the all-in- all to some one woman, whose ordinary human kindness and human beauty he has idealised into superhuman perfection, and made the one object of his desire; or lastly the reasonable longing of a strong and thoughtful man to become the most intimate friend of some beautiful and wise woman, the very type of the beauty and glory of the world which we love so well,—as we exult ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... we are bound to estimate at its genuine value. The more we refine our faculties, other things equal, the wiser we grow: we are the more raised above the thickness of the atmosphere that envelops our fellow-mortals, and are made partakers of a nature superhuman and divine. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... and Dirk, and told them of their plan. Louie, too, awoke, heard the plan, and tried to warn them against it. Any attempt, he said, to communicate with those not on Eden would surely increase the wrath of Those who wanted only the natural state here—a wrath still withheld because of superhuman mercy, but which must not ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Rose, where Venus, attired in the fashionable costume of the fifteenth century, is seated in a chare, by courtesy a chariot, but in fact a clumsy covered wagon without springs. Six doves are perched upon the shafts, and fastened by mediaeval harness. The goddess of course possessed superhuman powers for guiding this extraordinary equipage, but to mere mortals it must have been a slow coach, and a horribly uncomfortable conveyance even when horses were substituted for doves. An ordinance of Philip le Bel, in 1294, forbids any wheel carriages to be used by the wives of citizens, as too ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... walked, and which I often noticed from our windows when the master was making his way home past our house from the fatiguing rehearsals, stamped the great musician in my imagination as an exceptional and almost superhuman being. When, as a boy of nine, my mother introduced me to him, and he asked me what I was going to be, whether I wanted perhaps to be a musician, my mother told him that, though I was indeed quite mad on Freischutz, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... crimes, her evil nature, her flint-like callousness, her more than inhuman cruelty, her contempt for the laws of God and man, she was condemned to bury her magnificent personalty, her transcendent beauty, her superhuman charms, in gilded obscurity at a King's left hand. A powerful story ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... it be possible for her hugeness, her power, her wealth to remain inert in a world crisis? Would she be content tacitly to admit the truth of old accusations of commerciality by securing as her part in the superhuman conflict the simple and unadorned making of money through the dire necessities of the world? There was bitterness, there were sneers, there were vague hopes and scathing injustices born of torment and racking dread. Some few were patiently just, because they knew something ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dough-kneading should not be rehearsed. Clothing, ornaments, and furniture served in like manner as a pretext for the introduction of spinners, weavers, goldsmiths, and cabinet- makers. The master is of superhuman proportions, and towers above his people and his cattle. Some prophetic tableaux show him in his funeral bark, speeding before the wind with all sail set, having started on his way to the next world the very day that he takes possession of his new abode (fig. 128). Elsewhere, we see him as ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... processes of nature and of the narrow limits within which it is in our power to control and direct them, have commonly arrogated to themselves functions which in the present state of knowledge we should deem superhuman or divine. The illusion has been fostered and maintained by the same causes which begot it, namely, the marvellous order and uniformity with which nature conducts her operations, the wheels of her great machine revolving with a smoothness and precision ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... [1588] A superhuman phenomenon, if produced by a deity, is called a "miracle," and is held to be beneficent; if produced by a nontheistic process, it is called "magical," and ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... name Cyclopean, attached to those desolate remains of buildings which were older than Greek history itself, attests their romantic influence over the fancy of the people who thus attributed them to a superhuman strength and skill. And the Cyclopes, like all the early mythical names of artists, have this note of reality, that they are names not of individuals but of classes, the guilds or companies of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of waiting: my obstinacy was something superhuman. The bare idea that Michael might lose his place, through my fault, made me desperate, I suppose. "I won't trouble you to send for me," I persisted; "I will go with you at once as far as the door, and wait to hear if I may come in." The footman was still present, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... of these preparations, joined to the almost superhuman proof of bodily strength which he had just given, depressed every heart, when his young and generous adversary was contrasted with him. Deep sorrow for the fate of Lamh Laudher prevailed throughout the town; the old men sighed at the folly of his rash and fatal ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... usurpation would shock its piety; it says, God is in me, IMMANUEL, nobiscum Deus. And, at the moment when philosophy with pride, and universal conscience with fright, shouted with unanimous voice, The gods are departing! excedere deos! a period of eighteen centuries of fervent adoration and superhuman faith ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... seemed to Frank Merriwell that he must give out; a hundred times he set his teeth and vowed that he would die before he would weaken. No one could know the almost superhuman courage and fortitude which enabled him to keep up and continue his work in the proper manner. Those who watched the crew closely fancied that he worked with the utmost ease, for all ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... mystery! Bill Scott knows all about the one, and the Duke of Sussex knows all about the other, but the uninitiated know nothing of either! Jockeys are wonders—so are their boots! Crickets have as much calf, grasshoppers as much ostensible thigh; and yet these superhuman specimens of manufactured leather fit like a glove, and never pull the little gentlemen's legs off. That's the extraordinary part of it; they never even so much as dislocate a joint! Jockey bootmakers are wonderful men! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and all the following days, whether she thought of her mother or of herself, every moment she felt her throat swelling with sobs and her eyes filling with tears, but to prevent them from overflowing and furrowing her cheeks she repressed them, and by a superhuman effort of will turned her thoughts in other directions, mastered them, ruled them, separated them from her sorrow, forced herself to feel consoled, tried to amuse herself and to think of sad things no more, in order to regain ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... an almost superhuman effort to sustain himself, and keep from sinking, but I saw, with horror, that he was settling slowly and surely, and that all his struggles only ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... here upon the banks of the placid Hudson, I could hear the awful moans and rustling of the fearsome thing which had lurked and threatened me from the dark recesses of the cave, I made the same mighty and superhuman effort to break the bonds of the strange anaesthesia which held me, and again came the sharp click as of the sudden parting of a taut wire, and I stood naked and free beside the staring, lifeless thing that had so recently pulsed with the warm, ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Despite the superhuman efforts and patience of Annette and two housemaids, directed from below by Owen and Judge Rutherford, it was half-past two o'clock before I was ready to descend to the car in which Matthew had been sitting, patiently waiting in the sunshine ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... quickly. Mr Waller, in the intervals of work, talked a good deal, mostly of Edward, his doings, his sayings, and his prospects. The only thing that seemed to worry Mr Waller was the problem of how to employ his son's almost superhuman talents to the best advantage. Most of the goals towards which the average man strives struck him as too unambitious ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... wolves—and not only wolves, but wolves on the track, which must ere a few minutes could elapse be upon him. A pang of horror, and a cold perspiration poured from his face;—but fear was not a part of his nature, and by almost superhuman efforts, and, in such an awful moment, forgetting all pain, he dragged himself and the trap towards an oak tree, against which ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... not efface the humor evoked by the sight or sound of the magnificent orchestrelle. During one of the Captain's New York trips, he had heard a famous orchestra. The effect upon him was of something superhuman. The Captain went again—followed the musicians to Boston and Philadelphia. The result was more or less the same. Soul flew in one direction; mind in another; and, inert before the players—a little fat man, perspiring, weeping, ecstatic. What came of it, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... at the usual hour, the sky stranger came again. And, though Wunzh had fasted seven days, he felt a new power arise within him. He grasped the stranger with superhuman strength, and threw him down. He took from him his beautiful garments, and, finding him dead, buried him in the softened earth, and did all else as he had ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Terrible and almost superhuman was the contest which now followed: the awful sea-woman flung Beowulf down on his back and stabbed at him with point and edge of her broad knife, seeking some vulnerable point; but the good corslet resisted ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... its every nerve and muscle strained to resist the coercion. Bending and straining against the overpowering numbers, he held every inch with surprising tenacity, and only surrendered it after almost superhuman exertions to retain it. The sight—little of it as was seen from the outside—soon became sickening. The overborne man appeared almost at his last gasp. The face, in spite of the warmth of the struggle, had an ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... the same side with the Russian people who have seen the Nazi hordes swarm up to the very gates of Moscow, and who with almost superhuman will and courage have forced the invaders ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... against the extension of the evil into the territory beyond the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. But having placed three-fifths of the slave population under the Constitution, having pledged the Constitution to the protection of slave property, it required an almost superhuman effort to confine the evil to one section of the country. Like a loathsome disease it spread itself over the body politic until our nation became the eyesore of the age, and a byword among the nations of the world. The time came when our beloved country ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... jumping from a rampart so high that the enemy had not set a guard there. Sand without a moment's hesitation went to the rampart, where, always religious, even in his childish pleasures, he made a short prayer; then, without fear, without hesitation, with a confidence that was almost superhuman, he sprang to the ground: the distance was twenty-two feet. Sand flew instantly to Wonsiedel, and reached it, although the enemy had despatched their best runners in pursuit. Then the garrison, seeing ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... mind no doubt affords the true type of health and wholeness in this respect. The Greek could see, and feel, and paint, and carve, and speak nothing but emotional man. In nature he saw nothing but personality,—nothing but human or superhuman qualities; to him the elements all took the human shape. Of that vague, spiritual, abstract something which we call Nature he had no conception. He had no sentiment, properly speaking, but impulse and will-power. And the master minds of the world, in proportion to their strength, their ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... there were yet natural traits of character in Napoleon which call out the severest reprobation, and which make him an object of indignation and intense dislike among true-minded students of history. His egotism was almost superhuman, his selfishness was most unscrupulous, his ambition absolutely boundless. He claimed a monopoly in perfidy and lying; he had no idea of moral responsibility; he had no sympathy with misfortune, no conscience, no fear of God. He was cold, hard, ironical, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... mental values. If an estimate must be made, make it under the mark of truth rather than above it. While avoiding the folly of idealism, we also must shun the ways of the narrow mind, and the eyes that refuse to see the truth. Wild animals are not superhuman demigods of wisdom; but neither are they idiots, unable to reason from cause to effect along the simple lines that vitally ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... enclosing walls would reach such an elevation that they must have quickly fallen under their own weight if they had ever been carried so high: the whole restoration, accomplished without any certain data, embodies the concept of something vast and superhuman, well befitting the city of blood and tears, cursed by the Hebrew prophets. Babylon was, however, at the outset, but a poor town, situated on both banks of the Euphrates, in a low-lying, flat district, intersected by canals ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to trial and triumphantly acquitted. So far, everything goes well with him. Unfortunately, however, the murdered man, with that superhuman strength which on the stage and in novels always accompanies the agony of death, had managed in falling from the dog-cart to throw the marriage certificate up a fir tree! There it is found by a worthy farmer who talks that conventional rustic dialect which, though unknown ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... myself was impossible, but with a superhuman effort I succeeded in slipping the noose from my hands and hooking my fingers in the cord around my throat. The fellow behind placed his knee in my back, and drew the cord with all his might to strangle me; but I cried hoarsely for help, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... that ancient neighborhood; the child cried, but she could not answer it. She fell again and again, and at last all her strength seemed to fail her, her feet refused to carry her farther and she crept painfully, a few yards at a time, slowly along the ground. The fear of her superhuman enemies had forsaken her, and her only desire was to reach the light that shone from the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... not an Earthling. I am a superhuman alien from outer space. My mission on Earth is ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... their personality. A practised stenographer, engaged by Mr. Stilton, took down many of these communications as they were spoken, and they were afterwards published in the "Revelations." It was also remarked, that, while Miss Fetters employed violent gestures and seemed to possess a superhuman strength, I, on the contrary, sat motionless, pale, and with little sign of life except in my voice, which, though low, was clear and dramatic in its modulations. Stilton explained this difference without hesitation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... hero. In this only had he changed, that now he would work, and some said equally well, whether he were drunk or sober. Those who were mostly inclined to make a miracle of him—and there was a school of worshippers ready to adore him as their idea of a divine, superhuman, miracle-moving, inspired prophet—declared that his wondrous work was best done, his calculations most quickly and most truly made, that he saw with most accurate eye into the far-distant balance of profit and loss, when he was ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... storm, like a prisoner released from dungeon and chains, again to look upon the faces of those he loved; and all nature put on a holiday garb to greet him. Every tree and bush was sparkling, as if with rapture. If a magician of superhuman power had waved his wand over the earth, it could not have been more changed. Long icicles were suspended from the fences and the overhanging roofs, and even the sheds looked brilliant and beautiful in their icy covering; but the trees! what ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... the Greeks to human beings of such superhuman faculties as to be regarded the offspring of some god, and applied in modern times to men of an intellect and force of character of such transcendent nature as to inspire ordinary mortals with ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... realized his position. With an almost superhuman effort, he threw Bronson from him, and reaching around felt for his revolver. It was gone, and thrown to the other end ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... Correggio is, that he has aimed at the realistic representation of pure unrealities. His saints and angels are beings the like of whom we have hardly seen upon the earth. Yet they are displayed before us with all the movement and the vivid truth of nature. Next we feel that what constitutes the superhuman, visionary quality of these creatures, is their uniform beauty of a merely sensuous type. They are all created for pleasure, not for thought or passion or activity or heroism. The uses of their brains, their limbs, their every feature, end in enjoyment; innocent and radiant wantonness ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and with almost superhuman energy dragged it to the window: a moment ago he could not have moved it. Standing on the chest and looking down, he saw figures at the tower foot. They were so indistinct, they looked like one huge form. He waved his bonnet ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... her godmother she found her by no means as difficult to convince as she had expected. To go to the point of rebellion which Madame Thuillier had actually reached, the poor woman, who was acting against her instincts and against her nature, had needed a tension of will that, in her, was almost superhuman. No sooner had she received the false confidences of her goddaughter than the reaction set in; the strength failed her to continue in the path she had taken. She was therefore easily the dupe of the comedy which Celeste's ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... and would have made these gods known to us. How they were frustrated you know. It seems—for my own part I know not, 'tis Satni says so, ceaselessly, these two months since his return—it seems then, the time is come when these Gods would make them known to us. They have endowed Satni with superhuman power. That I know, and none may doubt it now. Satni is resolved to keep his betrothed, and the Lybian Guards were not deceived, it was he who yesterday called down the thunder and the floods from Heaven upon the soldiers sent here to ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... enemies in the valley from some mountain top, with that huge spy-glass—Hale could see now that the brass tube was a telescope—that he might slip down and unawares take a pot-shot at them. The Red Fox communicated with spirits, had visions and superhuman powers of locomotion—stepping mysteriously from the bushes, people said, to walk at the traveller's side and as mysteriously disappearing into them again, to be heard of in a few hours an incredible ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... piano, she would insist that she was tired, and refuse to study any more for that day. Once or twice, by an extreme effort, she managed to devote a whole half hour, and then, as though such exertion was superhuman, she would retire, and for several weeks afterward plead that half hour as an excuse for her negligence. All this Gualtier bore with perfect equanimity. Hilda said nothing; and generally, after Zillah's ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... something to be approached only with a reverent fear. If in this connection she had ever thought of Reuben, it was in those days when he seemed so earnest in the faith, and when their feelings were blent by some superhuman agency. But at his divergence into the paths of skepticism, it seemed to her simple and intense faith that thenceforth their pilgrimages must be wholly distinct: his—and she trembled at the thought of it—through some terrible maze of error, where she could not follow: and hers—by God's grace—straight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Antigenes of Enna. He was more than a believer in the power of the gods to seize on men and make them the channel of their will; he was a living witness to it in his own person. At first he saw shadows of superhuman form and heard their voices in his dreams. Then there were moments when he would be seized with a trance; he was wrapt in contemplation of some divine being. Then the words of prophecy would come; they were not his utterance but the bidding of the great Syrian goddess. Sometimes ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... at his passion for publishing, his belief that "there could not be too much poetry abroad." And lastly there was Carlyle, half scornful of FitzGerald's "ultra modesty and innocent far-niente life," his own superhuman activity regarded meanwhile by FitzGerald with a gentle half-pitying wonder, of which one catches a premonitory echo in this extract from a long letter {87} of Sir Frederick Pollock's to W. H. Thompson. It bears date ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... table. Occasionally there was a rumble of deep voices in conversation, and in the dark corners subdued laughter—while on the front benches the animated and giggling whispering of three little girls tended to relieve the hour from an almost superhuman gravity. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... waiting for the signal, spring forward; and when the first quarter is reached, a belated fifth, handicapped with the knowledge that he has made a desperately bad start, bounds after them. If by dint of some superhuman grace vouchsafed, some latent strain, some most unexpected speed, he nears, overtakes, runs neck and neck, slowly gains, passes all four and dashes breathless and quivering under the string, a whole length ahead, the world of spectators shouts the judges smile, and number five wins ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... six weeks the dominie's efforts were almost superhuman. He saw every cottage whitewashed; he was nurse and doctor and cook. The laird saw him carrying wailing babies and holding raving men in his strong arms. He watched over the sick till the last ray of hope fled; he buried them tenderly when all ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty—far from it—indeed, we have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it; but with the fullest stretch of our perseverence, we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond the first of the four books[1] of which this Poetic Romance consists. We should extremely ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... died and was buried, but though, during all the hours which marked that saddest of all tragedies, there were signs of human woe and weakness, as if "Himself He could not save," yet what signs of dignity and superhuman majesty! For He was addressed on the cross as a King by a dying criminal, and as a King He promised to save him; while the darkened sky, the rending rocks, and all the august circumstances which attended His humiliation, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... prayers of the Yasnas and the Vispereds, differing only in this, that each one of the twenty-four extant is devoted to the traits of a single deity, or at least of one class of divine beings (the bountiful immortals, and so forth). The usual word in the Yashts for the superhuman beings at ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Silences;—and, on the whole, found that it was an adventure, in sorrowful fact, equal to the fabulous ones by old knights-errant against dragons and wizards in enchanted wildernesses and waste howling solitudes; not achievable except by nearly superhuman exercise of all the four cardinal virtues, and unexpected favor of the special blessing of Heaven. His adventure achieved or found unachievable, he has returned with experiences new to him in the affairs of men. What this Colonial Office, inhabiting the head of Downing Street, really was, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... fortune on the afternoon of Sunday, the fifth of January last. I was certainly extremely fortunate in my interpreters in the enterprise, and that not alone in respect of their artistic talent; for had it not been for their superhuman patience, their imperturbable good humor and good fellowship, there could have been no performance. The terror of the Censor's power gave us trouble enough to break up any ordinary commercial enterprise. Managers promised and even engaged their theatres ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Pere Francois Xavier, a man with all the fire and enthusiasm of youth in his blood—just the one for daring, hazardous enterprises; just the one to undergo all the privation and toil of planting a mission; to undertake plans requiring superhuman efforts, and to carry them through successfully by main force of will. A better assistant for Father Ignatius could not have been found. It was force, will, and intellect in the service of love and meekness; only there was a doubt if the servant might not ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... shared the same fate with men; and, consigned to the same prisons, ever resigned and ready to die for principle, they knew how to die nobly. It was truly an age of the martyrdom of woman—an age in which she lived, through almost superhuman conditions, at the side of man. She was all-powerful, triumphant as never before; not, however, through her intellectual superiority as in the previous age, but through her courage. There was not one powerful ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... throng, with its increased numbers, and of course proportionably increased resources for the production of shrill whoops and noisy stamping, and for the exhibition of striking attitudes and rampant motions, was altogether strange, wonderful and seemingly superhuman. ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... the whimsical faces which present themselves in a Gothic cornice. His voice also was high-pitched and querulous, so that, when smarting under Master Peter Young's unsparing inflictions, the expression of his grotesque physiognomy, and the superhuman yells which he uttered, were well suited to produce all the effects on the Monarch who deserved the lash, that could possibly be produced by seeing another and an innocent individual suffering for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that, for the Indian had probably got a good start of them, and, being a powerful man, animated by the certainty of pursuit sooner or later, would not only put his strength but his endurance to the test. If they were to overtake him it must be by superhuman exertion. Lake Winnipeg was twenty miles off. They must catch up the Indian before he reached it, as otherwise it would be impossible to tell in which direction he ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... uprooted by the whirlwind, that a wayfarer stumbles at night on an unknown road, or that a soldier caught between two fires is vanquished, no more should he condemn without appeal those who have been worsted in almost superhuman moral conflicts. To succumb under the force of numbers or obstacles has never been counted ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... clung to him, and, as he walked home, he regretted the impulse that had led him to attend the funeral. For all the melancholy of valediction was his. The dead girl was free—and he had a sudden vision of her, as she had lain in the mortuary, with the look of superhuman peace on her face. Over the head of this, he was sarcastic at his own expense. For though she WERE being treated like a piece of lumber, what did it matter to her? Beneath the screening lid, she continued ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... accomplished scoundrel? He had the threads all in his fingers, he controlled the situation; we were struggling blindly, snarled in a net of mystery from which there seemed no escaping. My imagination clothed him with superhuman attributes. For a moment a wild desire possessed me to turn upon him, to confront him, to accuse him, to confound him with the very certainty of my knowledge, to surprise his ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... persuaded his hearers that, after this trip, many others still more wonderful would be undertaken. In fact, it was to be but the first of a long series of superhuman expeditions. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... fire and did what they could to cheer the sick man and the sad women, that the wonderful merits of the great Doctor Killmany began to be frequently discussed. Marvellous stories were told of his almost superhuman skill. He had brought back from the very gate of death scores of men and women who had been given up to die by their physicians,—so it was said; and special instances of cures were related that were certainly calculated to inspire hope ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... what it betokened. With a frightful yell of mingled hatred and execration, the seething human mass bore down upon him! His own followers and friends did what they could for him, but that was very little. His case was desperate. Desperation, however, inspires some people with an almost superhuman energy. Life was sweet, and that day he fought for his life. The very shouting and hooting of the mob, the roar of the angry multitude, which might well have filled even a brave man with panic, stimulated him, strengthened him to resist to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... his misfortunes he managed to beat the Academy, for that body, in spite of its superhuman efforts, did not contrive to publish its Dictionary till four years after the appearance of Furetiere's. The latter is a great curiosity of lexicography, a vast storehouse of peculiar and rare information. It is always consulted by scholars, but never without a recollection of the extraordinary ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... quadrumana are, nevertheless;—their superhuman strength enabling them to make terrible havoc wherever and whenever their fury becomes aroused. But without provocation this rarely occurs, and a man or woman who passes by them without making a noise, is not ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... bright object, and differing only in degree from the nervous or imaginative control which has been known to arrest and cure disease, which chained St. Simeon Stylites to his pillar, and sustains the Hindoo fakirs in their apparently superhuman vigils. These children of Nature had probed with direct simplicity some of the deep secrets which men of science often fail to discern through tortuous devices. I was assured that this trance was merely the result of a concentrative energy of the will, which riveted the faculties ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... agony in his voice, the note of almost superhuman suffering and despair, was so intense, that, without thinking of what it was this man was grieving over, I found ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... the pandita impersonated the spirit and appeared in the darkened room. Over his chest and forehead he had stretched thin gauze and beneath this had placed many fire-flies, which to the imaginative people made him appear superhuman. His entrance into the room was attended by a vigorous shaking of the house, caused by a younger brother stationed below. A weird dance followed and then the spirit advised the people to rise and wipe out the whole Christianized population. The Mandaya had become so impressed by the ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... the father flies not from the peril into which he has drawn the children. What to me were life, stained by the blood of mine own beloved retainers, basely deserted by their chief? Edward has proclaimed that he will spare none. Fool! he gives us, then, the superhuman mightiness of despair! To your bows!—one shaft—if it pierce the joints of the tyrant's mail—one shaft may scatter yon army to the winds! Sir Marmaduke has gone to rally noble Somerset and his riders; ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... own swathings; 'twould better serve thee and us to get thee below and prepare thine 'hinfant' grown some meat and wine with etceteras, and plenty of them, for she hath a lusty and ever-present appetite. But stay, where wilt thou cradle thy babe's nurse, in this room beyond the closet?" With a superhuman effort, as it were,—the woman, confident of the importance of her position, and the forbearance such an one should have in dealing with the less consequential,—suppressed her choler and raised her eyebrows, and spoke with the coldness of ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... fur coat; but each time he tried to recall what was in the telegram, it seemed that a hammer kept knocking at his head, dulling his senses. The grateful country boy had no inkling that close beside him was sitting a man who had to exert superhuman strength not to succumb to an attack of raving madness. As a matter of fact, the boy was in danger of a maniac's clutching him by the throat and drawing him into a ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... in trying to save my dear lost brother. He ought, as you think, and as other people think, to be consistently noble, after that, in all his thoughts and actions, to the end of his life. Suppose that temptation does try him—such temptation, Iris, as you innocently present—why doesn't he offer a superhuman resistance? You might as well ask, Why is he a mortal man? How inconsistent, how improbable, that he should have tendencies to evil in him, as well as tendencies to good! Ah, I see you don't like this. It would be ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... event, which bears the stamp of superhuman necessity, men play but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher, does that deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither illustrious England nor august Germany is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... then with her hair streaming wild, with lips bloodless, she stood upright and rushed to the deck. The wind tore at her, flying water buffeted her, and the hulk swayed under her feet; but, as though endowed with superhuman power, as though scorning the elements to which she had bowed through the night she ran forward, heedless of everything but that her ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... in which those at home would glean the terrible tidings from the accident columns of a newspaper. Another minute, and I was swept through the open door into a state-room— another one of suspense, and the ship righted as if by a superhuman effort. There seemed a respite—there was a silence, broken only by the roar of winds and waves, and with the respite came hope. Shortly after, the master of the ship appeared, with his hat off, and completely drenched. "Thank God, we're safe!" he said, and returned ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... as he reflected on the fact that in all the unwritten history of his people he was the first man to survive the inexorable power of the wurali. As long as he lived this fact would lift him above the level of all his fellows. Even the chief could not boast of such a superhuman feat. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... that singular cavern. It was also a sight worth seeing—the countenance of Nigel, as well as that of the hermit, while they watched and admired her eager, puzzled play of feature, and it was the most amazing sight of all to see the all but superhuman joy of Moses as he held the lamp and listened to facts regarding the past of his beloved master which were quite new to him—for the hermit spoke as openly about his past domestic affairs as if he and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... that it was impossible; but, as the peril increased, despair seemed to endow him with superhuman strength, and he kept up the struggle bravely, ending by drawing the man out on to the ledge of stones nearly on a level with the water, where he had been at first standing at the foot of ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... grace to give us up that unfortunate man; surely his great talents entitle him to exceptional treatment; moreover, he has displayed such audacity, blent with so much ingenuity, that his exploit might seem superhuman. We know not for what crimes you Holiness has kept him so long in prison; however, if those crimes are too exorbitant, your Holiness is wise and holy, and may your will be done unquestioned; still, if they are such ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Perverse, when he descends upon the printing office, sometimes becomes the Imp of the Perverted. Here his achievements will not bear reproducing. Suffice it to say that in point of indecency he displays the same superhuman ingenuity as in his more innocent pranks. His indecencies are all, indeed, in print, but fortunately scattered, and it would be a groveling nature that should seek to collect them; yet the absence of this chapter from the world's book of humor means the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... asking for some other revelation than the Bible, for the supernatural in a scientific form, for something beyond man, for something all could see, for something that would answer to pure science, for something that could be seen, handled, measured, tested, and amenable to mathematics; something superhuman, for something in which the human and the Divine blend. Thank Heaven, all they ask is granted in this stone monument. Here we have science forecast for thousands of years; here we have the grandest of problems ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... our possessing such great power and standing at the summit of excellence and good fortune so that we might govern you willing or unwilling, we should neither lose our heads nor desire sole supremacy, but that instead he should reject it when offered and I return it when given is a superhuman achievement. I speak in this way not for idle boasting,—I should not have said it at all if I were to derive any advantage whatever from it,—but in order that you may see that whereas there are many public benefits to our credit ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... L250 or L300 to the hospital. Some of the more cautious thought the scheme a little wild, and on far too extensive a scale for success; but the indomitable chairman, who had fully considered the pros and cons, threw into the movement the whole force of his almost superhuman energy, and carried conviction to the minds of the most timid of his colleagues. The scheme was enthusiastically resolved upon, although, as Walsh said, after the fetes were over, "Some of us were actually frightened at what ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... visited he found a ladder left by some workmen, and long enough for his purpose. Indeed, it seemed likely to be too long, for when he tried to introduce it into the skylight, it only entered as far as the sixth round, and then was stopped by the roof. However, with a superhuman effort Casanova, hanging to the roof, below the skylight, managed to lift the other end of the ladder, nearly, in the action, flinging himself down into the canal. But he had succeeded in forcing the ladder farther in, and the rest was comparatively easy. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... keep fifty miners' families; that of the richest would keep two hundred. "Nay," the bishops say, "we are poorer than you think." Only the other day, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated that most of the bishops spent more than they received. Indeed! Then the age of miracles is not past. By what superhuman power do they make up the deficiency? We tell the Archbishop that he lies. It is not a polite answer, we admit, but it is a true one; and this is a case where good plain Saxon is most appropriate. Edward ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Army. Its methods and meetings, however distasteful to the educated and refined, have a special attraction for these dangerous classes. Its Officers are accustomed to handle them with superhuman love and patience, as well as with a tact and adroitness such as has often elicited the admiration and praise of those who have no sympathy with our creed or ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... he isn't a good sort of chap," said Sir Isaac, with that same note of almost superhuman rationality, "only—he isn't going to ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... emperor's request, to inquire his name; and on hearing it, she struck her hands on her bosom, telling his Majesty he saw there the bravest man in the king's dominions; which the emperor scarce crediting, and observing that the man must be, then, a superhuman being to be so distinguished in a nation of the brave, Countess Fanny related the well-known tale of Captain Kirby and the shipful of mutineers; and how when not a man of them stood by him, and he in the service of the first insurgent State of Spanish America, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... first saw that recumbent figure. A hoarse inarticulate groan escaped him. He twisted clear of the hands that supported him and by a superhuman effort staggered to his feet, he even took an uncertain step in the direction of the bed, his starting eyes fixed on the spare figure. Then his strength deserted him and with a cry that rose to a shriek, he pitched forward ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... the ancient singer, Ilmarinen, the eternal forgeman, and Lemminkainen, the reckless wizard, as mentioned above, are conceived as being of divine origin. In fact, the acting characters of the Kalevala are mostly superhuman, magic beings. Even the female actors are powerful sorceresses, and the hostess of Pohyola, especially, braves the might of all the enchanters of Wainola combined. The power of magic is a striking feature of the poem. Here, as in the legends of no other people, do the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... these, each seventy feet in height, form the facade of the marvellous rock-temple of Ipsambul—"the finest of its class known to exist anywhere"—and constitute one of the most impressive sights which the world has to offer. There stands the Great King, four times repeated, silent, majestic, superhuman—with features marked by profound repose and tranquillity, touched perhaps with a little scorn, looking out eternally on the grey-white Nubian waste, which stretches far away to a dim and distant ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... the Bolognese. The drapery was fluttering, scanty, and of a light sea-green tint, as if it had imbibed a hue from the element beneath. The face was of that dark bronzed color which human ingenuity has, from time immemorial, adopted as the best medium to portray a superhuman expression. The locks were dishevelled, wild, and rich; the eye, full of such a meaning as might be fancied to glitter in the organs of a sorceress; while a smile so strangely meaning and malign played about the mouth, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... pilgrimage which was to blossom heavenly and earthly blessings as beautiful and countless as the flowers which jeweled the slopes and valleys they traversed. The monstrous undertaking begun so gloriously, blessed with the benison of prayers, sacrifices, tears; blessed later with superhuman success and crowned with an immortal halo ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... finds as it ain't all been took,—or, as you might say,—vanished away,—why the question as I ax's you is,—w'ot will she say? Oh Lord!" And here, Adam gave vent to his great laugh which necessitated an almost superhuman exertion of strength to keep the table from slipping from its precarious perch. Whereupon Miss Priscilla screamed, (a very small scream, like herself) and Prudence scolded, and the two rosy-cheeked maids tittered, and Adam went chuckling upon ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... me that fifty miles is entirely beyond the bounds of discretion. It is, in fact, beyond the bounds of discretion to be riding any distance in the present season here; fifty miles is overcome to-day only by the exercise of almost superhuman will-power. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... age was one in which man's temper and powers took a new range and energy. Sidney or Raleigh lived not one but a dozen lives at once; the daring of the adventurer, the philosophy of the scholar, the passion of the lover, the fanaticism of the saint, towered into almost superhuman grandeur. Man became conscious of the immense resources that lay within him, conscious of boundless powers that seemed to mock the narrow world in which they moved. All through the age of the Renascence one feels this impress of ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... figures have more humanity in them, stand closer to us, because the meaning is no longer petrified in the shape, but speaks to us freely and directly, in a look, a gesture, a sweep of the garment. The Greek said,—"With these superhuman lineaments you are to conceive the presence of Jove; these are the appropriate forms of the immortals." Giotto said,—"See what divine meanings in every-day faces and actions; with these eyes you are to look upon the people in the street." The one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the hashish is beginning its work. Well, unfurl your wings, and fly into superhuman regions; fear nothing, there is a watch over you; and if your wings, like those of Icarus, melt before the sun, we are here to ease your fall." He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... same instant, Claggett Chew reached out to pluck the parakeet from behind the sheltering head and neck of "the fashionable." Chris, with a superhuman effort, changed himself to a mouse, tearing his foot from the frayed cord that held it, and leaped into the air. Simultaneously, Claggett Chew, overcome by the approaching blackness he had been fighting, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... most critics of the Army springs undoubtedly from the fact that they are bound to account for its success without admitting that any superhuman power attends its ministry, yet day after day, and night after night, the wonderful facts go on multiplying. The man who last night was drunk in a London slum, is to-night standing up for Christ on an ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... but very eminent knave,' as de Quincey called him. 'Cre nom! I wonder what de Quincey meant by 'middling.' A man who could keep in the front rank under the Bourbons, during the Revolution, with Napoleon, and back again under the Bourbons, and yet die in bed, must have been superhuman. St. Peter, in his stead, would have lost his napper ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... constantly on the Fox family to enquire if their spirit friends had returned. For the first few days a stoical negative was their only reply; after this, they began more and more fully to recognise the loss they had sustained. The wise counsellors were gone; the sources of strange strength and superhuman consolation were cut off. The tender, loving, wonderful presence no more flitted around their steps, cheered their meals, encouraged them in their human weakness, or guided them in their blindness. And these most wonderful and providential ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... it as shall drown all capacity of receiving; neither is it to be respecting humanity legitimately conceived. But by certain operations of the imagination upon ideas of beauty received from things around us, it is possible to conceive respecting superhuman creatures (of that which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived) a beauty in some sort greater than we see. Of this beauty, however, it is impossible to determine anything until we have traced the imaginative operations to which it owes its being, of which operations this much ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... copied into his commonplace book one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior, and was most careful in the formation of all his habits. Franklin, too, devised a plan of self-improvement and character-building. No doubt the noble characters of these two men, almost superhuman in their excellence, are the natural result of their early care and earnest striving ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... influence which Jeanne obtained both over friends and foes. The French nation, as well as the English and the Burgundians, readily admitted that superhuman beings inspired her; the only question was whether these beings were good or evil angels; whether she brought with her "airs from heaven or blasts from hell." This question seemed to her countrymen to be decisively settled in her favor by the austere sanctity of her life, by the holiness of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... where—an English improvisatrice! a gayer Annot Lyle! whilst her sister, of a higher order of beauty, and with an earnest kindness in her smile that deepens its power, lends to the piano, as her father to the violin, an expression, a sensibility, a spirit, an eloquence almost superhuman—almost divine! Oh to hear these two instruments accompanying my dear companion (I forgot to say that she is a singer worthy to be so accompanied) in Haydn's exquisite canzonet, "She never told her love,"—to hear her voice, with all its power, its sweetness, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Church and at religion. She wanted the human society as the absolute, without religious abstractions. So Paolo's oaths enraged her, because of their profanity, she said. But it was really because of their subscribing to another superhuman order. She jeered at the clerical people. She made a loud clamour of derision when the parish priest of the village above went down to the big village on the lake, and across the piazza, the quay, with two pigs in a sack on his shoulder. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... eyelashes, and steadfastly directed his gaze on the face of the artilleryman, which was faintly lighted up by the feeble gleam of the candle. Suddenly, with a piercing cry, he lifted himself on his bed, as if by some superhuman force: his hair stood upright, his whole body shook with a fevered trembling, his hand seemed endeavouring to push something from him, an ineffable horror was expressed on his countenance.... "Your name!" he cried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick had supposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for knowing how to address letters to eminent people, and in what terms to conclude them, he had a smattering of archaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had learned to depend—her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to the range ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton |
