Beast

“ Beast, how you frightened me!’ she cried. ‘I never knew how much I loved you until just now, when I feared I was too late to save your life.’
‘Can you really love such an ugly creature as I am?’ said the Beast faintly. ”

“ Not a big beast, you will say; but in the wild he ruled big, being snaky and of a fighting turn, so to say. He was, in fact, the very devil, and he looked it—hard as nickel-steel. A dull, tawny devil, with a peculiar purplish sheen in some lights—due to the longer hair—on his short, hard coat, turning black on his throat, legs, and tail—as if he had walked in black somewhere—and finished off with patches of creamy white on head and ears. There was an extraordinary air of hard, tough, cool, cruel, fighting-power and slow ferocity about the beast—a very natural born gladiator of the wild places. ”

“ For what is the voice but the Beast calling, awakening that other Beast sleeping in the depths of mankind, the Beast which all great art has ever sought to chain up, as the archangel chains up, in old pictures, the demon with his woman's face? How could the creature attached to this voice, its owner and its victim, the singer, the great, the real singer who once ruled over every heart, be otherwise than wicked and contemptible? ”

“ And yet for one I think it true.
The days of wonder have not ceased
If there are beasts in forms of men,
As sure it happens now and then,
Why may not man become a beast,
In way of punishment at least? ”

“ The expression of a noble beast's agony is rendered in so life-like a manner that its protruding eyes seem to glaze into the awful stare of death, and instinctively the spectator listens for the stifled whimper and whinnying screams of a wounded creature. ”

“ All this time the beast outside was snorting like a race-horse catching its breath after a run, the demon walking in front of it, examining its teeth, or mouth, or eyes, or whatever you do examine when you go poking around in front of it. ”

“ His eyes sought a human form, but beheld, creeping towards him from a corner opposite, which resembled rather the lair of a wild beast than the abode of anything human, a monster, the sight of which made his blood run cold. ”

“ The beast tale is a very old form which was a story of some successful primitive hunt or of some primitive man's experience with animals in which he looked up to the beast as a brother superior to himself in strength, courage, endurance, swiftness, keen scent, vision, or cunning. ”

“ These, as natural brute beasts, the ten-horned beast and two-horned beast, or false Prophet, made to be taken and destroyed, in the lake of fire, blaspheme the things they understand not:—they count it pleasure to riot in the day-time—sporting themselves with their own deceivings, while they feast [26] with you, having eyes full of an [27] Adulteress: for the kingdoms of the beast live deliciously with the great Whore, and the nations are made drunk with the wine of her fornication. ”

“ You know that for thousands of ages men worshiped wild beasts as God. You know that for countless generations they knelt by coiled serpents, believing those serpents to be gods. Why did the real God secrete himself and allow his poor, ignorant, savage children to imagine that he was a beast, a serpent? Why did this God allow mothers to sacrifice their babes? ”

“ The beast is the very incarnation of familiar qualities of man; and such names as lion, bear, fox, owl, parrot, viper, worm, when we apply them as epithets to men, condense into a word some leading feature of a human life. Consistently with this, we see in looking over details of savage transmigration that the creatures often have an evident fitness to the character of the human beings whose souls are to pass into them, so that the savage 18philosopher’s fancy of transferred souls offered something like an explanation of the likeness between beast and man. ”

“ Yet sometimes vegetables and animals are, by certain epithets or circumstances, extended to other significations; as a Tree, when called the tree of life or of knowledge; and a Beast, when called the old serpent, or worshipped.
When a Beast or Man is put for a kingdom, his parts and qualities are put for the analogous parts and qualities of the kingdom; as the head of a Beast, for the great men who precede and govern; the tail for the inferior people, who follow and are governed; ”

“ Forthwith like birds they fly, And through the wood they hie; The woeful beast they find, And him with cords they bind. One with a rope before Doth lead the captive Boar: Another on his back Doth make his bow to crack. The beast went wretchedly, For Venus horribly He feared; who thus him curst: "Of all the beasts the worst, Didst thou this thigh so wound? Didst thou my Love confound?" [Pg 140] The beast thus spake in fear "Venus, to thee I swear! By thee, and husband thine, And by these bands of mine, And by these hunters all, Thy husband fair and tall, I mindèd not to kill! ”

“ The beast left him no blood, licked up his marrow and blood and poured fire into him instead. When the beast smacked its lips voluptuously, when it greedily swallowed the blood and the marrow, when the man thought that he was dying, then the beast pricked him with a needle of its fiery tongue and goaded him to shivering-point ”

“ Behold the beast, for which I have turned back; Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage, For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble." ”

“ The whole character of the beast, from beginning to end, is seen, but pursued to, and therefore having its agency in, its last form; this enables us to identify the beast personally all through, and brings him under the character of guilt which has attached to him from the beginning, or marked the course of his protracted progress, whatever unrestrained iniquity this may shew itself in at the close. ”

“ If any man worship the Beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb ”

“ And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. For God did put in their hearts to do His mind, and to come to one mind, and to give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished. ”

“ The Beast in the fairy story, though at heart a youthful Prince of considerable attractions, once transmogrified might have remained a Beast for good and all but for his fortunate encounter with Beauty's father. ”

“ Could he never do that again? Must he, when cured, remain for all the rest of his life the man conquered by the beast, the man eaten up by the beast, the man broken in the contest with the dragon-beast? ”

“ Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites. ”

“ Then the man told him all; of his bootless journey to the distant seaport,—of how his eldest daughters had [Pg 25] desired jewels and gold raiment, and of Beauty’s wish for one white rose.
Silently, the Beast heard; then, drawing a deep breath, like a human sigh, he spake again very softly. “Merchant,” he said, “death is the price they pay who steal that without which life to me were one long death. But if life still to thee is sweet, thou must bring hither that young maid of whom thou spakest. ”

“ Amidst a storm of menaces we are all ordered out of our rooms, and this again and yet again, perhaps, until the beast satisfies himself or is satisfied that none is skulking, and that nothing is in error but his own drunken vision. ”

“ But remember your promise and come back when the two months are over, or you may have cause to repent it, for if you do not come in good time you will find your faithful Beast dead. You will not need any chariot to bring you back. Only say good-bye to all your brothers and sisters the night before you come away, and when you have gone to bed turn this ring round upon your finger and say firmly: 'I wish to go back to my palace and see my [pg 017] Beast again.' Good-night, Beauty. Fear nothing, sleep peacefully, and before long you shall see your father once more. ”

“ The people are to be called upon to make an image to the beast, which expression doubtless involves the idea of some deferential action toward, or concessions to, that power; and the image, when made, is an image, likeness, or representation of the beast. Verse 15. The beast from which the image is modeled, is the one which had a wound by a sword and did live, or the papacy. ”

“ so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed. ”

“ For what gross Wickedness, I say, was there ever committed in all, or any part of the World, that we have had any Account of, in any History or News-Papers, but this Beast with his Seven Heads, Ten Horns, and Ten Crowns, and his Name of Blasphemy, have not had a share and hand in it, so then all Covetous Men are Beasts, Blasphemers, Lyers, Thieves and Murtherers as well as Idolaters. ”

“ And all the world wondered at the beast, and they worshipped the dragon, which gave power unto the beast, and they worshipped the beast saying: who is like unto the beast? who is able to war with him? ”