After due investigation of such and various other phenomena, Sir William Crookes, among other theories to explain them, gives this theory:—‘ The actions of a separate order of beings, living on this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us.
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

There the goddess (Athena) received that 1631 whereby she excelled in strength all the deathless ones who dwell in Olympus, she who made the host-scaring weapon of Athena.
— from Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica by Hesiod

By such means it may appear who those are, that, by an indis Page 546 criminate support of all administrations, have totally banished all integrity and confidence out of public proceedings; have confounded the best men with the worst; and weakened and dissolved, instead of strengthening and compacting, the general frame of government.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke

Don’t drag it out so.”
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We call this a state of childishness, but it is the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death is of sleep.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

But after what you have said, it is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Perhaps the most beautiful description of a holy well and a description illustrative of such divination is that of Ireland’s most mystical well, Connla’s Well:—‘Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan, son of Ler, out of Tír Tairngire (“Land of Promise, Fairyland”), went to Connla’s
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz

That the negro, José, eighteen years old, and in the personal service of Don Alexandro, was the one who communicated the information to the negro Babo, about the state of things in the cabin, before the revolt; that this is known, because, in the preceding midnight, he use to come from his berth, which was under his master's, in the cabin, to the deck where the ringleader and his associates were, and had secret conversations with the negro Babo, in which he was several times seen by the mate; that, one night, the mate drove him away twice; * * that this same negro José was the one who, without being commanded to do so by the negro Babo, as Lecbe and Martinqui [pg 260] were, stabbed his master, Don Alexandro, after he had been dragged half-lifeless to the deck; * * that the mulatto steward, Francesco, was of the first band of revolters, that he was, in all things, the creature and tool of the negro Babo; that, to make his court, he, just before a repast in the cabin, proposed, to the negro Babo, poisoning a dish for the generous Captain Amasa Delano; this is known and believed, because the negroes have said it; but that the negro Babo, having another design, forbade Francesco; * * that the Ashantee Lecbe was one of the worst of them; for that, on the day the ship was retaken, he assisted in the defense of her, with a hatchet in each hand, with one of which he wounded, in the breast, the chief mate of Amasa Delano, in the first act of boarding; this all knew; that, in sight of the deponent, Lecbe struck, with a hatchet, Don Francisco Masa, when, by the negro Babo's orders, he was carrying him to throw him overboard, alive, beside participating in the murder, before mentioned, of Don Alexandro Aranda, and others of the cabin-passengers; that, owing to the fury with which the Ashantees fought in the engagement with the boats, but this Lecbe and Yan survived; that Yan was bad as Lecbe; that Yan was the man who, by Babo's command, willingly prepared the skeleton of Don Alexandro, in a way the negroes afterwards told the deponent, but which he, so long as reason is left him, can never divulge; that Yan and Lecbe were the two who, in a calm by night, riveted the skeleton to the bow; this also the negroes told him; that the negro Babo was he who traced the inscription below it; that the negro Babo was the plotter from first to last; he ordered every murder, and was the helm and keel of the revolt; that Atufal was his lieutenant in all; but Atufal, with his own hand, committed no murder; nor did the negro Babo; * * that Atufal was shot, being killed in the fight with the boats, ere boarding; * * that the negresses, of age, were knowing to the revolt, and testified themselves satisfied at the death [pg 261] of their master, Don Alexandro; that, had the negroes not restrained them, they would have tortured to death, instead of simply killing, the Spaniards slain by command of the negro Babo; that the negresses used their utmost influence to have the deponent made away with; that, in the various acts of murder, they sang songs and danced—not gaily, but solemnly; and before the engagement with the boats, as well as during the action, they sang melancholy songs to the negroes, and that this melancholy tone was more inflaming than a different one would have been, and was so intended; that all this is believed, because the negroes have said it.—that of the thirty-six men of the crew, exclusive of the passengers (all of whom are now dead), which the deponent had knowledge of, six only remained alive, with four cabin-boys and ship-boys, not included with the crew; * *—that the negroes broke an arm of one of the cabin-boys and gave him strokes with hatchets.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

Driving in spars at any point and on any system, inch by inch he covered more and more safely from ruin this distracting impersonation of seven hundred pounds.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

The vain and haughty projects of youth for future life; the giddy reveries of insatiable self exaltation; the discontented dreams of what might have been or should be, instead of the thankful understanding of what is; the casting about for sources of interest in senseless fiction, instead of the real human histories of the people round us; the prolongation from age to age of romantic historical deceptions instead of sifted truth; the pleasures taken in fanciful portraits of rural or romantic life in poetry and on the stage, without the smallest effort to rescue the living rural population of the world from its ignorance or misery; the excitement of the feelings by labored imagination of spirits, fairies, monsters, and demons, issuing in total blindness of heart and sight to the true presences of beneficent or destructive spiritual powers around us; in fine, the constant abandonment of all the straightforward paths of sense and duty, for fear of losing some of the enticement of ghostly joys, or trampling somewhat "sopra lor vanità, che par persona;" all these various forms of false idealism have so entangled the modern mind, often called, I suppose ironically, practical, that truly I believe there never yet was idolatry of stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our idolatry of shadows; nor can I think that, of those who burnt incense under oaks, and poplars, and elms, because "the shadow thereof was good," it could in any wise be more justly or sternly declared than of us—"The wind hath bound them up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices."
— from Modern Painters, Volume 3 (of 5) by John Ruskin

Sometimes badly, but more often effectively, they have struggled to establish a state which in turn can found the democratic ideology of Sun upon which the democracy of the future must, they believe, be based.
— from The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger

He had been baptized; he had been taught the rudiments of the Christian faith; he had met two other Brethren at the court; his tongue was glib and his imagination lively; and now he poured into Zinzendorf's ears a heartrending tale of the benighted condition of the slaves on the Danish island of St. Thomas.
— from A History of the Moravian Church by J. E. (Joseph Edmund) Hutton

Add to this two sentinels who can look down into our subterranean chamber, but are outside the palisade so that we cannot speak to them....
— from The Boys' Life of Lafayette by Helen Nicolay

"A better bred dog, in one sense, than Bim you couldn't find.
— from The Brown Study by Grace S. (Grace Smith) Richmond

His bones, offal, and rejected food, without ceremony were thrown on the floor, no regard being paid either to company or carpets; and when admonished of the impropriety of his conduct, his inattention to the hints which were given, and perseverance in domestic irregularity, only served to confirm those who witnessed his singularities, that he was either deranged, or some foreigner totally unacquainted with the refinements of civilized life.
— from The captivity, sufferings, and escape of James Scurry Who was detained a prisoner during ten years, in the dominions of Hyder Ali and Tippoo Saib by James Scurry

Like a dark incarnation of suffering over this expansive scene passed Clement Hicks to the meeting with John Grimbal.
— from Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts

—The weather was cold, with a strong Easterly wind and frequent showers, { 327} so that we were detained in our station.
— from Voyages from Montreal Through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in 1789 and 1793. Vol. I by Alexander Mackenzie