"Superhuman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unfleshed in folly. They struck Fleetwood with a curious reminder of the puking inexperienced, whom he had seen subsequently plunge suicidally. He had a sharp vision of the attractive forces of the game; and his elemental nature exulted in siding with the stronger against a pretender to the superhuman. For Woodseer had spoken a trifle loftily, as quite above temptation. To see a forewarned philosopher lured to try the swim on those tides, pulled along the current, and caught by the undertug of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... superhuman knowledge of events must have showed in my face. Still smiling with frank affection, he said, "John put me in touch with the whole situation before he left Aiken. The year of probation was ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... to reduce man's relations with the great world-power Beauty to mere intellectual dilettantism or sensual superfineness. But the general intuition has not been shaken, the intuition which recognised in Beauty a superhuman, and, in that sense, a truly divine power. And now it must become evident that the methods of modern psychology, of the great new science of body and soul, are beginning to explain the reasonableness of this intuition, or, at all events, to show very plainly in what direction we must look for the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... when the Babylonian represents Bel or Merodach as the solar deity, destroying Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, for there is confusion in the thought. The imaginary god is sometimes given solar, sometimes human, sometimes superhuman characteristics. There is no actuality in much of what is asserted as to the sun or as to the wholly imaginary being associated with it. The mocking words of Elijah to the priests of Baal were justified by the intellectual confusion ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... that whilst the former either proceed of mankind, or seek human intercourse, these form a segregated society—one might say, a peculiar kingdom of their own—and are only, by accident or the pressure of circumstances, moved to converse with men. Something superhuman, approximating them to the gods, is mingled up in them: they possess power to help and to hurt man. They are however, at the same time, afraid of him, because they are not his bodily match. They appear either far below the human stature, or misshapen. Almost all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... absurd to attempt to dissect the morality of the gospel from its history, and to say, "We are willing to receive the Christian code of morals as a very excellent rule of life, and to regard Jesus as a rare example of almost superhuman virtue, but we must consider the narrative of supernatural events interwoven with it as mythological," i. e., false. Which is much the same as to say, "We will be very happy to receive your friend if he will only cut his head off." Of what possible use would the Christian code of morals ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... fairy tales or superstitions of monstrous beings inhabiting some forest, mountain, or cave; and pages have been written in the heroic poems of all languages describing battles between these monsters and men with superhuman courage, in which the giant ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... bloom borne toward him on a breeze. She swam down close, floated softly, but Frank did not even look in her direction. Came Peachy with such marvels of flying, such diving and soaring, such gyrating and flashing, that it took superhuman self-control not to drop everything and stare. But nobody looked or paused. Came Clara, posturing almost at their elbows. Came all save Julia, but the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Cortina was taken on May 30. The Austrians had barricaded the famous road winding up through the Dolomites, and dug elaborate trenches; but the Italians, by superhuman efforts, moved up their mountain guns, while the Alpini scrambled over the mountains by the glaciers of Serapis and the tarns of Croda da Lago, and descended into Cortina on either side. Then, holding the enemy on the east, they advanced into the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was some superhuman phenomenon, before which every passion bowed the knee, every purpose froze to crystals;—the figure of a praying maiden! He who stole a look at that sight lost every ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... original—the means by which so narrow and so long a passage could be efficiently ventilated. The least I could do, however, was to appease Eveena's fear before turning my attention to the objects of my own curiosity. The presence of physical strength, which seemed to her superhuman, produced upon her nerves the quieting effect which, however irrationally, great bodily force always exercises over women; partly, perhaps, from the awe it seems to inspire, partly from a yet more unreasonable but ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... revolver to the man's ear, while I, by superhuman effort, dragged our preserver away, and chained him up to the sink, after ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... awakened by a personality of extraordinary nobility and attractiveness. The personal affection inspired imagination and ideality to their highest flights. Its original object became invested with superhuman traits and elevated to a deity. To trace with certainty and minuteness the historic lineaments of the real man is not altogether possible; but the essential truth concerning ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the most trifling blow," and he is to use it only when absolutely necessary; and in the notes of variants appended, reference is made (p. 158) to a Meklenburg story where the beer in an inexhaustible can disappears the moment its possessor reveals the secret. The gifts made by fairies and other superhuman beings have indeed generally some condition attached (most commonly, perhaps, that they are not to be examined until the recipients have reached home), as is shown pretty conclusively by my friend Mr. E. Sidney Hartland in a most interesting paper on "Fairy Births and Human Midwives," which enriches ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Jimmy, laughing in his turn. "A threat of Clifton's, who said that he would 'make him dance the hornpipe on his hands, damn it!' suggested the idea of a turn to him, so they say. He set to work with superhuman energy—and now he is ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... as you please! I am afraid all these superhuman theories of yours. You will never get through the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... The hypocrite's unmasked!—She has deceived The king, all Spain, and me. She loves, I know She loves! I can bring proofs that will make you tremble. The king has been deceived—but he shall not, By heaven, go unrevenged! The saintly mask Of pure and superhuman self-denial I'll tear from her deceitful brow, that all May see the forehead of the shameless sinner. 'Twill cost me dear, but here my triumph lies, That it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wretchedly ill, and too utterly indifferent respecting my fate, to ask these men any questions, but contrived, by almost superhuman exertion, to climb up the perpendicular ladder which led to the deck; and when I presently emerged from the foetid atmosphere of the hold into the free air and dazzling sunshine of what proved to be early morning, I was so overcome by the sudden ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... an enchanted region, was challenged by his royal entertainer to what seemed an humble feat of strength—merely, sir, to lift a cat from the ground. The god smiled at the challenge, and, calmly placing his hand under the belly of the animal, with superhuman strength strove, while the back of the feline monster arched far up-ward, even beyond reach, and one paw actually forsook the earth, until at last the discomfited divinity desisted; but he was little surprised at his defeat when he learned that this creature, which seemed to ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... heavens. "He is no god—Aole ia he Akua—" they say, "he is a man like us, yet in his nature and appearance godlike. And he was the first-born of us; he was greatly beloved by our parents; to him was given superhuman power—ka mana—which we have not.... Only his taboo rank remains, Therefore fear not; when he comes you will see that he is only a man like us." It is such a character, born of godlike ancestors and inheriting through the favor of this god, or some member of his family group, godlike power ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to hich the speaker pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there did stand ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... from the Sun the germ of sensibility transmit it to animals, always with the help of the Sun's heat. See the soul germs enfolded in animals develop, improve little by little, from one animal to another, and at last become incarnated in a human body. See, a little later, the superhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains of ether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that will gradually lead him to the highest round of the ladder of spiritual growth, where all material substance has been eliminated, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... entire nudity". Their filthy habits. Papooses fastened in framework of light wood. Indian modes of fishing. A handsome but shy young buck. Classic gracefulness of folds of white-sheet robe of Indian. Light and airy step of the Indians something superhuman. Miserably brutish and degraded. Their vocabulary of about twenty words. Their love of gambling, and its frightful consequences. Arrival of hundreds of people at Indian Bar. Saloons springing up in every direction. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Innsbruck, in which town a college of the Society was nearing completion; and Augsburg, whose bishop, his old friend the celebrated Otto Truchsess, desired to consult him on the affairs of his diocese. There, overwhelmed with his almost superhuman labours, Canisius fell ill. He desired to be taken to the college at Ingolstadt, and Cardinal Truchsess accompanied him thither, while the Duke of Bavaria sent him his physicians. Thanks to their skill and to the enforced ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... superhuman effort I roused myself to the determination of doing something, of making one last effort, and, if I failed, to look my fate in the face. What, thought I, was to be the end of all the hopes I once cherished, and which were cherished ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... time in his life Kenelm Chillingly was seized with terror,—terror and consternation. His jaw dropped; his tongue was palsied. If hair ever stands on end, his hair did. At last, with superhuman effort, he ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Whenever I finish it, I will send you the first two together. I do not think they can begin to illustrate it, until the third arrives; for it is a single minded story, as it were, and an artist should know the end: which I don't think very likely, unless he reads it." Then, after relating a superhuman effort he was making to lodge his visitors in his doll's house ("I didn't like the idea of turning them out at night. It is so dark in these lanes, and groves, when the moon's not bright"), he sketched for me what he possibly ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... East, tired of individualistic ambitions, tired of great men, flagellated by the phantom of human greatness, was thirsty for something higher and more solid than any human personality. Adoration of great personalities being the very wisdom of this world, the East stretched its hands to a superhuman ideal, to the Holy Wisdom. It is a psychological fact that youth sees his ideal in personal greatness, progressed age in holiness. The East asked for something more eternal than Peter, Paul or John. There is wisdom, and there is holy wisdom. Philosophical or personal wisdom existed from the beginning ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... friend; he had seen him during months of pestilence two years since—always brisk, decisive and gay, indeed inspired to greater effort by the greater demands on him. What had so completely altered him, had poisoned and vexed his soul as with a malignant spell? It was not the almost superhuman sacrifices required by his duties;—it came of the unfortunate infatuation of his heart, of which he could not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... hours of the day and night, her sense of duty urged her to do all that she had ever done when her sight was perfect, and, like most blind persons, she resented any reference, expressed or implied, to her infirmity. Consideration for her called for almost superhuman tact and dexterity. To the best of their ability the four strove to shield her without her being able to perceive their sedulity. To the charm of Terentia's music she, moreover, yielded readily. Music, as never before, occupied the leisure ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... itself and he had literally outdone himself. Slipping from Salt's back she tossed her bridle to Shelby who had hurried toward her, and taking Pepper's head in her arms petted and caressed him as she would have petted and caressed a child which had made a superhuman effort to ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... lead a solitary life for two motives. One is because he is unable, as it were, to bear with human fellowship on account of his uncouthness of mind; and this is beast-like. The other is with a view to adhering wholly to divine things; and this is superhuman. Hence the Philosopher says (Polit. i, 1) that "he who associates not with others is either a beast or a god," i.e. a godly ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Fearless Individual. And it is a worthy desire. To be able to wipe off all fearfulness, anxiety and worry from your mental tablets is no easy task, but when once accomplished, it gives you a glimpse of Heavenly Joy and Superhuman Strength. And, You can be Fearless, I tell you—each one of you—you can be what you will to be. I have seen it. I have done it. I am going to give you sound and positive instructions in this paper so that you may forge ahead ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... Jesus, spoke to him with indignation: "So thou hast claimed to possess a superhuman divine power? These are serious accusations, and they are legally proved; answer if thou canst." Jesus remaining silent, Caiaphas resumed, "Thou thinkest that by silence thou canst save thyself. Thou darest not to admit before the fathers and ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... presented me as her 'dearest friend,' and, without raising his eyes, he bowed profoundly and turned away. How I endured all I was called to witness that morning, I know not; but my strength seemed superhuman. The ceremony was performed in church, and after our return to the house, Mr. Carlyle asserted and claimed the right to kiss the bridesmaids. There were four, and I was the last whom he approached. I was standing in the shadow of the window-curtain, which ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... work, directing the natives in putting on coat after coat of preservative and rubbing it in well. But von Hofe was everywhere, mixing his chemicals, seeing that everything was done exactly as he wished it, and seemingly endowed with superhuman energy. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... the spur—the first—and Forest King rose at the leap, all the life and power there were in him gathered for one superhuman and crowning effort; a flash of time, not half a second in duration, and he was lifted in the air higher, and higher, and higher in the cold, fresh, wild winter wind, stakes and rails, and thorn and water lay beneath ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... lying there defenseless, of Kashtanov speeding towards it on his wrecker's errand, kindled within him a strength that was unnatural, superhuman. Like a wildcat he tore loose from the choking grip on his throat; Istafiev tried to subdue that sudden, unlooked-for surge of power, but could not. Five piston-like, jabbing blows crunched into him from Chris's hurtling fist, and with the fifth ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... Genevieve, that I make superhuman efforts; but no one is master of his thoughts. They are so impulsive and rapid that they seem to escape ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... complications, was not prepared to claim this right, even the capitalists considering the king's projects far too hazardous to give him the necessary support. Leopold II was, therefore, left to his own resources to accomplish an almost superhuman task: to obtain the necessary recognition from the Powers, and to sufficiently develop the resources of the Congo to persuade the Belgian people to ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... skilled mariners, electrical and mechanical engineers, and men whom he himself had instructed in the peculiar duties that would fall to them in the navigation and management of the ark, every detail of which he had laboriously worked out with a foresight that seemed all but superhuman. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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
... upon him, and take him to Thee," sobbed the grandfather, hiding his face on the table. He could not endure to look upon the superhuman torments of the child, while the weak, helpless father cried in the bitterness of his heart, "it is my only ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... 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 out their red and black flags, and, when the police attempted ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... the melon was visible in the distance a Greek temple with the inscription: 'The Temple of Satisfaction.' The third picture represented the half-nude figure of a woman in a recumbent position, much fore-shortened, with red knees and very big heels. My dog had, with superhuman efforts, crouched under the sofa, and apparently found a great deal of dust there, as he kept sneezing violently. I went to the window. Boards had been laid across the street in a slanting direction from the manor-house to the counting-house—a very useful precaution, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... medicine," is anything,—a little book, a bright pebble, a church relic, a medal, an old bullet, a coin, a piece of cloth, a pack of cards. It is the faith that goes with it, not the object itself, that counts. Even Aguinaldo has been invested by his followers with superhuman power. Just before he resorted to arms against the Americans the natives knew that the time for rebellion had come, for a woman in Biacnabato gave birth to a child dressed in a general's uniform, and above Tondo ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... dismissed all apprehension, and allowed his mind to drift to a bend of the Murrumbidgee, a couple of miles above Hay. There were his young barbarians all at play; there was their dacent mother; he, their sire, looking blissfully forward to superhuman work, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... renewed his struggles, and rendered the passage of the place not only difficult but dangerous—to himself as well as to his enemies. Just as they reached a somewhat open space on the top of the cliffs, Jo succeeded, by almost superhuman exertion in bursting his bonds. Keona, foaming with rage, gave an angry order to his followers, who rushed upon Bumpus in a body as he was endeavoring to clear himself of the cords. Although John struck out manfully, the savages were too quick for him. They raised him suddenly aloft ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... unutterable anguish of its closing scenes—the swift remorse, the unavailing agony of that noble nature, too late undeceived, the wild, pathetic tenderness wherewith Othello clasped the dead Desdemona to his heart, smoothing back her loosened tresses with an inarticulate cry of almost superhuman love and woe—the horror of the catastrophe was all swallowed up in a sympathy whose pain was wellnigh too great to be aroused by mimic despair. The fall of the curtain was greeted with a tempest of applause. Men sprang to their feet and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... stages of cultivation, from the flooded paddy field to the grain in the ear being reaped by the gaily coloured butterflies of women. Water buffaloes drag a primitive plough through the drenched soil, while the bright-faced young ploughboy, by what appears to be a superhuman effort, balances himself precariously ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... Arno, are surprised by the sound of trumpets, and run to arms. His design has reached us only in an old engraving, which perhaps helps us less than what we remember of the background of his Holy Family in the Uffizii to imagine in what superhuman form, such as might have beguiled the heart of an earlier world, those figures may have risen from the water. Leonardo chose an incident from the battle of Anghiari, in which two parties of soldiers fight for a standard. Like Michelangelo's, his cartoon is lost, and has come ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... idea flashed across my mind, and I continued to struggle, at the same time gradually forcing my enemy backward towards the door. He shouted for help, but was unheard. He cursed and swore and shouted until, with a sudden and almost superhuman effort, I tripped him, bringing his head into such violent contact with the stone lintel of the door that the sound could surely be heard a considerable distance. For a moment he was stunned, and in that brief second I released his grip ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... to the explanation of such things by a reference to superhuman interference, I should be inclined to think that the Almighty had designedly kept these monuments buried in the Earth, until the time had arrived when man had sufficient leisure and knowledge to discover the contents of records, written ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... I pursued by phantom savages and pierced by phantom arrows, but the creations of the Indian imagination had now become as real to me as anything in nature. I was persecuted by that superhuman man-eating monster supposed to be the guardian of the forest. In dark, silent places he is lying in wait for me: hearing my slow, uncertain footsteps he starts up suddenly in my path, outyelling the bearded aguaratos in the trees; and I stand paralysed, ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... 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 for ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... measuring little more than four feet in height. But what he lacked in height he made up in breadth; it almost seemed as though, intended by nature to be a man of many inches, he had been compressed to his present dimensions by art. His vast chest and limbs, indicating strength nearly superhuman, his long iron arms and massive head, all gave colour to this idea. Otter had one redeeming feature, however—his eyes, that when visible, which at this moment was not the case, were large, steady, and, like his skin, of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... greatest conquest, that of himself, sacrificing all his aspirations and resigning his power, to go and die, rewarded by the ingratitude of those who owed him their existence as free men. The more the life of this man is studied, the greater he appears, and the nearer he seems to the superhuman. ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... as no human hand could adequately portray. But the scenes, the splendors of heaven, the horrors of hell, the serene beauty of Paradise, the sun and planets suspended between celestial light and gross darkness, are pictured with an imagination that is almost superhuman. The abiding interest of the poem is in these colossal pictures, and in the lofty thought and the marvelous melody with which they are impressed on our minds. The poem is in blank verse, and not until Milton used it did we learn the infinite variety and harmony of which it is capable. He played ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... astonishing human expression of the Creative Spirit we had ever seen. His manifold talents, his protean interests, his tireless energy, his thunderbolts which he did not let loose, as well as those he did, his masterful will sheathed in self-control like a sword in its scabbard, would have rendered him superhuman, had he not possessed other qualities which made him the best of playmates for mortals. He had humor, which raises every one to the same level. He had loyalty, which bound his friends to him for life. He had sympathy, and capacity for ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... great love of the emperor for his wife seemed too absorbing, almost superhuman, and when death ruthlessly snatched her from the side of Charlemagne, everybody believed that it was a judgment ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... color in it; for Letty was very much in love. To an impartial view, David was a stalwart fellow with clear gray eyes and square shoulders, a prosperous yeoman of the fibre to which America owes her being. But according to Letty he was something superhuman in poise and charm. David had no conception of his heroic responsibilities; nothing could have puzzled him more than to guess how the ideal of him grew and strengthened in her maiden mind, and how her after-worship ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... invite it, sir, now that I've got a job to do. But that's as far as I'll go in promising. I won't make any superhuman effort to avoid it. I'll take all due precautions, for the sake of the job, but if it gets me, what the hell? The quicker it does, the better—the sooner I'll ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... and to the Voices and to the 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 ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... into the case again, goaded by the papers, particularly by the Record, to efforts which he must have considered superhuman. The remarkable nature of the mystery, its picturesque and unique features, the fact that three men had been killed within a few days in precisely the same manner, and the absence of any reasonable hypothesis to explain these deaths—all this served to rivet public attention. Every amateur ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the Sieg, whose white sheet far away looked motionless as it fell into its granite cup edged for miles around with glaciers,—in short, from this vantage ground the whole landscape whereon our simple yet superhuman drama was about to be enacted could be seen ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... staunch when they come! But if no one is astonished that oaks are 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
... hurt through her children. Children are extremely cruel without intending it; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the reason is that they do not conceive their elders as having any human feelings. Serve the elders right, perhaps, for posing as superhuman! The penalty of the impostor is not that he is found out (he very seldom is) but that he is taken for what he pretends to be, and treated as such. And to be treated as anything but what you really ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... 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. As ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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
... his pocket—from the hair, ears and noses of great warriors, and perform sundry other marvels, there was not a Mangeroma in all that great assemblage who did not regard the American as something superhuman, or who would have ventured, even in the most secret recesses of his soul, to meditate treachery to him or anybody connected ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... The spirits I have raised abandon me, The spells which I have studied baffle me, The remedy I recked of tortured me I lean no more on superhuman aid; It hath no power upon the past, and for The future, till the past be gulfed in darkness, It is not of my search.—My Mother Earth![119] And thou fresh-breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains, Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... this time the unhappy Simpson had shown an almost superhuman endurance. Now he bristled—and after looking up and down the board for a sympathetic face, and not finding one, he declared, loudly ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... astonishment. Chowbok rolled the bales rapidly into their place, and stood before me shuddering as in great fear; horror was written upon his face—this time quite involuntarily—as though the natural panic of one who had committed an awful crime against unknown and superhuman agencies. He nodded his head and gibbered, and pointed repeatedly to the mountains. He would not touch the grog, but, after a few seconds he made a run through the wool- shed door into the moonlight; nor did he reappear till next day at dinner- time, when he ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... accompany the Argo, and to show the heroes the way to Colchis. They also informed them that the Golden Fleece was guarded by a fearful dragon, that king Aetes was extremely cruel, and, as the son of Apollo, was possessed of superhuman strength. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... a rustling, with mutters of impatience, as buttons refused to comply with the nervous efforts of awkward and trembling fingers. Then came a long breath of content, as things began to run smoother, and presently a sigh of superhuman bliss; then a voice, new and deep, ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... and with incredible fatigue, he explored the country in all directions, observing, and afterwards describing its physical features, as well as the character and customs of the savages. From time to time, we even find him in arms against the dreaded Iroquois, but notwithstanding his superhuman efforts, the colony could make but little progress while its destinies remained in the hands of mercenary agents, who were utterly regardless of its interests, and intent only on enriching themselves at its cost. After Quebec had been founded fourteen years, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... character, minute observation, a fine memory and all his instincts were charged with almost superhuman vitality, but no one could argue with him. Had the foundation of his character been as unreasonable and unreliable as his temperament, he would have made neither friends nor money; but he was fundamentally ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... his final sermon, he maintained his preeminence; and in no one discourse of his last years, did he decline into mediocrity, or fail to remind the elder part of his audience of a period when his eloquence was almost superhuman.[13] ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... after the manner of orientals, gave the most absurd exaggerations as to the prowess of the British soldiers, especially of the officers, many of both being described as fiends, who proved their infernal nature by deeds of superhuman daring and strength. An alliance with "Shatan" was of course a mode of accounting for defeat which saved the honour of the fugitives, and satisfied the denizens of Cabul, as well as the wild clans en route thither, that a retreat was wisdom. The government of Cabul ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... soft metal, striking the bony substance within, had splashed as it progressed through, with the result that the hole made on coming out was as big as the knee-cap itself. The sailor bore his wound with a stoicism which seemed to me superhuman. The sweat was pouring off his face in his agony, but he had stuffed a cap into his mouth so that he might not disgrace himself by crying out, and even in his agony he lay perfectly still, with staring eyes, as he waited to be carried ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... charming, dangerous reveries decided their fate. To the sweetness of the first impression succeeded a more tender sentiment; then came love, each having endowed the other with superhuman qualities ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... very well, provided the skipper was there to superintend, manage and carry out his voluble orders; but as the surf prevented him from coming on board, and the lightness of Hez's head militated against the almost superhuman possibility of carrying out the skipper's orders, things remained in statu quo, the skipper ashore, and Hez ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... immortal gods the practice was confined to surgery, in treating the wounds received in the conflicts which were constantly described as occurring amongst the gods themselves, or between the gods and the demons. Of course they performed many miraculous cures, as would be expected from their superhuman character. ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... from an engine will set fire to dry grass, so the tears of Rosa and of her companions infected the whole congregation in a moment. Men, women, old men and lads in new smocks were soon all sobbing, and something superhuman seemed to be hovering over their heads—a spirit, the powerful breath of an invisible and all ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... after the monster and hit it on the slenderest part of its hind-legs in the hope of breaking its shin-bone. With superhuman strength he felled the giant. Anna was saved, and the pilot held her ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... superhuman obstacles. In addition to his enemies he suffers all sorts of terrible bodily afflictions. Whenever the remittances from the Lapierres do not arrive the ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... at her, but could not catch her eyes. My efforts to emulate Mr. Yocomb's spirit were superhuman, but my success was indifferent. I was too anxious, too doubtful concerning the girl who was so gentle and yet so strong. She had far more quietude and self- mastery than I, and with good reason, for she was mistress of the situation. Still, I gathered hope every hour, for I felt ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... we had advanced two years before, and explain to her the different positions held by the enemy. She was intensely interested in visiting the Sikandarbagh, the Shah Najaf, the mess-house, and, above all, that glorious memorial of almost superhuman courage and endurance, the Residency, ruined, roofless, and riddled by round shot and bullets. Very little had then been done towards opening out the city, and the surroundings of the Residency were much as they had been during the defence—a labyrinth of streets and lanes; it was therefore ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... three subsequent moonlight and twilight ventures, she at length came out in the sunset, and I doubt if the setting sun ever revealed a lovelier sight than greeted our eyes on that evening. A glance in the clear light satisfied us that the superhuman beauty we almost worshipped, and the splendor that seemed too lavish to be real, were no mere glamor of lamplight or moonlight, but surpassed in the reality all that our stunted, sceptical, Western imaginations, even stimulated as they were, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... preachers,' a preacher determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, but not so much crucified, as crucified and risen again—crucified indeed, but now glorified. Rutherford's life for his people at Anwoth has something altogether superhuman and unearthly about it. His correspondents in his own day and his critics in our day stumble at his too intense devotion to his charge; he lived for his congregation, they tell us, almost to the neglect of his wife and children. But by the time of his banishment his home was desolate, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... guns back by hand over the rocky ground, but it could not be done, and we had to abandon them. Hescock also had lost most of his horses, but all his guns were saved. Bush's battery lost two pieces, the tangled underbrush in the dense cedars proving an obstacle to getting them away which his almost superhuman exertions could not surmount. Thus far the bloody duel had cost me heavily, one-third of my division being killed or wounded. I had already three brigade commanders killed; a little later I lost ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... the trouble, Socrates?" you will say; "if you have been doing nothing unusual, how have these rumours and slanders arisen?" I will tell you what I take to be the explanation. It is due to a certain wisdom with which I seem to be endowed—not superhuman at all like that of these gentlemen. I speak not arrogantly, but on the evidence of the Oracle of Delphi, who told Chaerephon, a man known to you, that there was no wiser man than Socrates. Now, I am not conscious ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... and ranged in an ascending hierarchy, ordinarily comes a superhuman vicarious leisure class of saints, angels, etc.—or their equivalents in the ethnic cults. These rise in grade, one above another, according to elaborate system of status. The principle of status runs through the entire hierarchical system, both visible and invisible. The good fame of these several ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Vandover started up in bed, raising his clasped hands above him, crying out, "Oh, help me! Why don't you help me? You can if you only will!" Who was it to whom he had cried with such unerring intuition? He gave no name to this mysterious "You," this strange supernatural being, this mighty superhuman power. It was the cry of a soul in torment that does not stop to reason, the wild last hope that feels its own helplessness, that responds to an intuition of a force outside of itself—the force that can save it in ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... work he had! It was superhuman. Only the man who has tried to write fiction himself knows what it means when it is recorded that Scott produced two of his long novels in one single year. I remember reading in some book of reminiscences—on second thoughts it was in Lockhart himself—how ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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.
... human duties and human proprieties, and an attention to these, they maintain, is the only religion which is required by it. Strange my Christian brethren, that men, whose lives are least remarkable for superhuman excellence, should be the very men to refer most frequently to those sublime comments on Christian principle, and should so confidently conclude from thence, that themselves are right and all others are wrong. Yet so ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... superhuman effort he dragged the enraged man from the prostrate form in the road. It no longer struggled, but lay ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... 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
... statues, and ruined temples, would fill them with such astonishment, that for a time they would be as men spell-bound—wholly incapable of reasoning with sobriety. They might incline at first to refer the construction of such stupendous works to some superhuman powers of the primeval world. A system might be invented resembling that so gravely advanced by, Manetho, who relates that a dynasty of gods originally ruled in Egypt, of whom Vulcan, the first monarch, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Like a being of superhuman strength, the doctor rowed; no one could keep up with him. Round and round the lake, into every inlet, close under the shadows of the islands; again and again, over every mile of that treacherous, glassy, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... that, as Baltimore began to break this fresh track, she should have had political as well as physical and mechanical obstacles to overcome. The conquest of the natural difficulties alone required superhuman effort and endurance. But Baltimore had also to fight a miserable internecine warfare in her own State, for Maryland immediately subscribed half a million to the canal as well as to the newly formed Baltimore and Ohio ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... grievous blessing it was that was spoken over him and his success in life by this man dedicated to death, even as he stepped upon the scaffold. Pelle sat staring at the floor without a sign of life, a brooding expression on his face; his very soul was shuddering at the foreboding of a superhuman burden; and suddenly a light was flashed before his eyes; there could never be happiness for him alone—the fairy-tale was dead! He was bound up with all the others—he must partake of happiness or misfortune with them; that was why the unfortunate Due gave him his blessing. In his soul he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... mythology were once men, and he traces for us the evolution of a man into a hero, the hero into a demigod, and the demigod into a divinity. By a slow process, the natural man is divested of all our common faults and frailties; he is clothed with superhuman attributes and declared a being separate and apart, and is lost to us in ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... 1 ] whose place and character it is very difficult to determine. In some traditions he appears as the son of Jouskeha. He had a prodigious influence; for it was he who spoke to men in dreams. The Five Nations recognized still another superhuman personage,—plainly a deified chief or hero. This was Taounyawatha, or Hiawatha, said to be a divinely appointed messenger, who made his abode on earth for the political and social instruction ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... augescente superstitione, arbitrantur deas;" i.e. they deem (arbitrantur) very many of their women possessed of prophetic powers, and, as their religious feeling increases, they deem (arbitrantur) them goddesses, i.e. possessed of a superhuman nature; they do not, however, make them goddesses and worship them, as the Romans did Poppaea and her infant, which is covertly implied in facerent ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... said Planchet, making a superhuman effort, whilst all his contracted muscles, his pallor, and his trembling, betrayed the most acute anguish. "Come! I have been a soldier and consequently have some courage; do not make me linger, dear Monsieur d'Artagnan; our money is ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this man was venerated with an almost superstitious regard in Italy, and in the sixteenth century? His creations were touched with a superhuman beauty which his contemporaries felt, yet charged with a profoundly human meaning which they could not fathom. No one epoch has held the key to him. There lives not a man and there never has lived a man who could say, "I fully understand Michael Angelo's works." It will be ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... this, Mr. Wyatt, in fact, sprang from the boat, and, as we were yet in the lee of the wreck, succeeded, by almost superhuman exertion, in getting hold of a rope which hung from the fore-chains. In another moment he was on board, and rushing frantically ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... complain now that he was cold and impassive; his very voice shook with an intensity of passion, which he was making superhuman efforts ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... 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 the success ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this book go back first to a still earlier stage, a stage of pre-history, to a time when no one, not gifted with superhuman insight and prescience, could have foreseen the course which human civilization would pursue. All over the world, for tens of thousands of years, a culture persisted, associated with stone implements, and marked by a similarity which is often extremely striking, in races and tribes ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... live it for its own sake, without any idea of future rewards and penalties? It certainly seemed that centuries must elapse before the advent of a society wise enough to lead a life of rectitude without the moral control of some cultus and the consolation of superhuman equality and justice. Yes, a new religion! The call burst forth, resounded within Pierre's brain like the call of the nations, the eager, despairing desire of the modern soul. The consolation and hope which Catholicism ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... enough, there came the battered old schooner, butting her way through the waves of the channel; and, before long, the two cannon were safe in the storehouses, while Capt. Fernald found himself vested with a reputation for almost superhuman sagacity and luck. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the sight of the superhuman beauty of Beatrice which completes his contrition and resuscitates his love so as to fit him to pass through ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... moment a beloved creature absents himself, though she has rendered him even too happy, every woman straightway imagines that he has hurried away to some easy conquest. In this respect, women endow men with superhuman faculties. Fear magnifies everything, it dilates the eyes and the heart: it ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... Pollyanna, the dawning happiness in her eyes leaping forth in a flash of ineffable joy and relief. "Then you love somebody—" By an almost superhuman effort Pollyanna choked off the "else" before it ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... that I could ever experience towards her such a tranquil emotion as this easy friendliness. For the last five years my imagination had been playing round her memory, until I suppose I had built up in my mind some almost superhuman image, some goddess. What I was passing through now, of course, though I was unaware of it, was the natural reaction from that state of mind. Instead of the goddess, I had found a companionable human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself, and by sheer force ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... Superhuman in wisdom, thrice blest in luck is the bluecoat who conscientiously can live up to his own ideals, carry out the law as written by his superiors without being sent to "rusticate with the goats," or being demoted ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... been reached, as the North Peak was, in one march from the ridge camp. It must have involved a camp in the Grand Basin with all the delay and the labor of relaying the stuff up there. But the men who accomplished the astonishing feat of climbing the North Peak, in one almost superhuman march from the saddle of the Northeast Ridge, could most certainly have climbed the South ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... a place where he could descend. In his haste he fell; his hands were scratched, blood flowed from a cut in his forehead when he dragged himself up to the face of the cliff again. He tried to shout when he saw a figure drag itself up from among the rocks, but his almost superhuman exertions had left him voiceless. His wind whistled from between his parted lips when he came ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... by the 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 and confidence. None of these good people could of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... superstitious awe of his band. The rapidity of its maneuvering, the manner in which men, at one moment scattered, were in another formed in a serried mass, against which all their efforts broke as waves against a rock, seemed to them to be something superhuman. In that part of Wessex, therefore, the invaders gradually withdrew their forces across the frontier; but in other parts of the country, the tide of invasion being unchecked, large tracts of country had been ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the fate he believed unalterable. Lenore sensed a terrible, sinister earnestness in him. She could not divine its meaning. But it was such a driving passion that no man possessing it and free to the violence of war could ever escape death. Even if by superhuman strife, and the guidance of Providence, he did escape death, he would have lost something as precious as life. If Dorn went to war at all—if he ever reached those blood-red trenches, in the thick of fire and shriek and ferocity—there to express in horrible earnestness ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... have caused Great Britain to feel that no great indignity was suffered in admitting the claim to national existence of a people who had such a representative as Washington. What but the most eminent qualities of mind and feeling—discretion superhuman—readiness of invention, and dexterity of means, equal to the most desperate affairs—endurance, self-control, regulated ardor, restrained passion, caution mingled with boldness, and all the contrarieties of moral excellence—could ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 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
... Notwithstanding the incomparable sagacity of its author, the 'Principia' contained merely a rough outline of planetary perturbations, though not through any lack of ardor or perseverance. The efforts of the great philosopher were always superhuman, and the questions which he did not solve were simply incapable of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the professions by children of the well-to-do, the competition becomes ever keener, and the poor boy or girl who must struggle not only against this excessive competition, but also against his economic handicap, confronts an almost superhuman task. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode so remote and so completely of the past as his love-affair with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view. There was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox, and if other problems had not pressed on him he would have been lost in wonder at the prodigy of the Wellands' daughter urging him to marry his former mistress. But he was still dizzy ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... took essays to him, and occasionally lingered to talk. But they never became exactly intimate. A few conversations of "pith and moment"; a warm shake of the hand and a keen look of pleasure in the blue eyes of the recumbent giant when, after one year of superhuman but belated effort, Delafield succeeded in obtaining a second class; a little note of farewell, affectionate and regretful, when Delafield left the university; an occasional message through a common friend—Delafield had little more than these to look back upon, outside the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... success when they feel that their leader "knows his job," and in every Army troops are the critics of their leaders. The achievements of Jackson's forces in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 were almost superhuman, but under Stonewall Jackson the apparently impossible tasks were undertaken and achieved. General Ewell, one of Jackson's commanders, stated that he shivered whenever one of Stonewall's couriers approached him. "I was always expecting him to order me to assault ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... like the home minister, has to guard against one-sidedness, if he would keep to the Book which he professes to be his standard. The many-sidedness of the Bible, its appeal to man's whole nature, is one of the most marked proofs of its superhuman origin. While it addresses itself continually to man's moral nature, to his sense of right and wrong, while it appeals to his intellect and heart, it also speaks to his fears and hopes. These appeals are made to all, whatever may be their ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... modest and clerkly life; and from a sleek scribe was become a ragged outlaw flying through the streets. I saw the gallows, I felt the lash sink like molten lead into the quivering back, still bleeding from the stirrup-leathers: I forgot all but the danger. I lived only in my feet, and with them made superhuman efforts. Fortunately the light was failing, and in the dusk I distanced the pack by a dozen yards. I passed the corner of the Palais Royal so swiftly that the Queen's Guards, though they ran out at the alarm, were too late to intercept me. Thence I turned ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... attention upon several portraits of lovely women which adorned it. "Here," said he, "are heads worthy to crown that striking figure in the gondola. Behold that all-surpassing portrait by Giorgione, of such beauty as painters and poets may dream of but never find, and yet not superhuman in its type. Too impassioned for an angel; too brilliant for a Madonna; and with too much of thought and character for a Venus—she is merely woman. Belonging to no special rank or class in society, and neither classical nor ideal, she personifies ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... a short time ago that Shelley was an example of supreme, divine, superhuman genius. It is the sort of thing Mr Gilbert's 'rapturous maidens' might have said: 'How Botticellian! How Fra Angelican! How perceptively intense and consummately utter!' There is really ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... only principle which Goethe advocates, activity and earnestness—especially in self-culture,—and in this last quality, which he sublimely advocates, I find the only comfortable element in his wonderful writings. He is inhuman, not superhuman. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a 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 Migwan ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... habitation, and with difficulty worked his way toward the building the soldier shouted words 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
... Primer, with a mingling, superhuman, but for her of ironical deprecation and derision. "Only a daughter, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... reverence and piety. The outrage on reverence would be put down to her, if she allowed herself to be likened to her of Cnidus and her of the Garden. She would have you bear in mind the close of your discourse, where you spoke of the unassuming modesty that attempted no superhuman flights, but kept near the earth. It was inconsistent with that to take the same woman up to heaven and ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... encourage spiritual sympathy, and, except in his books, he habitually kept silence on ultimate things. But he had always thought of them; and as he lay dying, in almost the last moments of consciousness, he repeated dearly to himself those great, those superhuman lines which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Macbeth between his wife's death and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... at this moment a mighty ill man—almost ready, in fact, to visit a land from which he will be little likely to return. I refer to 'The undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.' By superhuman efforts I have kept this man Peters alive now long past the time-limit set by his Creator for him to go—I mean, three score and ten years; but even I and science have our limitations, and the beginning of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... door again with superhuman vigour. Behind me I heard Dona Rita laughing softly, statuesque, turned all dark in the fading glow. I called out to her quite openly, "Do keep your self-control." And she called back to me in a clear voice: "Oh, my dear, will you ever consent to speak to me after all this? But don't ask for ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... 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 secret, to ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... few minutes only Van der Bern and two others of his command remained. Twenty-seven Belgians were dead or wounded. Within a few minutes more of the corporal's companions fell, mortally wounded. Then the boy picked them up and displaying almost superhuman strength carried them to safety. As he was making his retreat, burdened by the two wounded men, Van der Bern was hit twice by German bullets. He staggered on, placed his men in charge of the Red Cross and without a word walked to headquarters and reported the engagement. Then he fell in a ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... (safe) 644; right as a trivet; in seipso totus teres atque rotundus [Lat.] [Horace]; consummate &c (complete) 52; finished &c 729. best &c (good) 648; model, standard; inimitable, unparagoned^, unparalleled &c (supreme) 33; superhuman, divine; beyond all praise &c (approbation) 931; sans peur et sans reproche [Fr.]. Adv. to perfection; perfectly &c adj.; ad unguem [Lat.]; clean, clean as a whistle. Phr. let us go on unto perfection [Hebrews vi, 1]; the perfection of art is to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... strenuous settling passed, at the end of which my abandoned house was resuscitated, as it were. Without Suzette, my little maid-of-all-work, it would have been impossible. I may say we attacked this seemingly superhuman task together—and Suzette is so human. She has that frantic courage of youth, and a ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... signs of recent disturbance,—footprints in the sawdust! With a cry of rage and suspicion, Fairley slipped into the pit and sprang toward the nearest opening. To his frenzied fancy it had been tampered with, his secret discovered, the fruit of his long labors stolen from him that very night. With superhuman strength he began to open the pit, scattering the half-charred logs right and left, and giving vent to the suffocating gases that rose from the now incandescent charcoal. At times the fury of the gale would drive it ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... man can believe that the son of a carpenter, together with twelve of the meanest and most illiterate mechanics, unassisted by any superhuman wisdom and power, should be able to invent and promulgate a system of theology and ethics the most sublime and perfect, which all such men as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero had overlooked, and that they, by their own wisdom, repudiated every false virtue, though ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... like a thunderbolt, and without a superhuman courage and the aid of Heaven, I should have been crushed at once; but I felt that the fate of my whole life might depend upon that moment. Borch's character was well known to me; I knew him to be as cowardly as base, and also that strength of will is all powerful with such ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Could he get it aboard? Would he have the strength? These thoughts passed through his mind with lightning rapidity. But still he kept on, and ere long he had the joy of seeing the big hook loom in sight. Then an almost superhuman pull, and the warp was on deck, and securely fastened around the capstan. A shout went up from the tug when this had been accomplished, and Eben staggered back, exhausted by his mighty efforts. He saw the warp suddenly tighten, and felt the "Eb and Flo" swerve ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... a stiff bracer, ties a vinegar-soaked handkerchief round his forehead, and sets to work to remodel his piece. He is a trifle discouraged, but he perseveres. With almost superhuman toil he contrives the only possible story which will fit the necessities of the case. He has wrapped up the script and is about to stroll round the corner to mail it, when he learns from the manager who is acting as intermediary between the ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... after all those thirteen years of almost superhuman struggle and that one moment of almost superhuman victory, I think we may safely include Cyrus Field among the masters of ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... evolution of all organic forms, and of inorganic forms also. And it must be contended that Mr. Wallace, in order to be quite self-consistent, should arrive at the very same conclusion, inasmuch as he is inclined to trace all phenomena to the action of superhuman WILL. He says:[304] "If therefore we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our own WILL, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be will-force; and thus, that the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... real burden," continued Fuchsia; "they become indolent and slovenly; all they want in the whole world is more, and more, and more—cocaine. The effect on some is to clear and stimulate the brain and, for a short time, they seem superhuman; but soon this marvellous illumination that has flared up dies down like a fire of straw, and leaves them nothing but the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... and I was alone, by superhuman efforts I contrived to wriggle on my stomach to the foot of the ascending stairway, but not having sufficient strength to wriggle off on arrival at the top, my long-dreaded horror of being sucked under the barrier, where moving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... it was very probably that hard, unyielding Faith which made the Sixteenth Century Spaniard the almost superhuman being that he was. Only Spain of the Sixteenth Century could have produced the Conquistadors or such a man as St. Ignatius Loyola, whose learned, devout, and fanatically militant Society of Jesus struck fear into the hearts of Protestant and Catholic ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... own day, Leonard Digges recording its popularity, and Beaumont and Fletcher imitating it in The Maid's Tragedy. "I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his genius being superhuman than this scene ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Clement. Nor was this all; the work itself, abstruse and scientific as was its subject, had to be treated in a clear and popular form to gain the Papal ear. But difficulties which would have crushed another man only roused Roger Bacon to an almost superhuman energy. By the close of 1267 the work was done. The "greater work," itself in modern form a closely-printed folio, with its successive summaries and appendices in the "lesser" and the "third" works (which ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... much more the white, was, among the Northern nations, in himself a creature magical and superhuman. "He is God's dog," whispered the Lapp, and called him "the old man in the fur cloak," afraid to use his right name, even inside the tent, for fear of his overhearing and avenging the insult. "He has twelve men's strength, and eleven men's wit," sang ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... she looked to him like one of the angels on a cathedral trumpeting an apocalyptic summons to the dead to bloom from their graves. When she played the cornet it was with a superhuman tone that shook his emotions almost insufferably. She had sung, too, in four voices—in an imitation of a bass, a tenor, a contralto, and finally as a lyric soprano, then skipping from one to the other. They called her "Mamise, the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes |
