Monster

“ A very weak monster! The Man i' th'
Moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well drawn,
monster, in good sooth!
CALIBAN. I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island;
and will kiss thy foot. I prithee be my god.
TRINCULO. By this light, a most perfidious and drunken
monster! When's god's asleep he'll rob his bottle. ”

“ A palpitating billow of fire, rolling, plunging, bounding rising, falling, swelling, heaving, and with mad passion bursting its red-hot sides asunder, reaching out its arms, encircling, squeezing, grabbing up, swallowing everything before it with the hot, greedy mouth of an appalling monster. ”

“ A monster such had never yet been seen!
Firm as a rock upon a mountain high,
Seated upon it, there appeared to me
A shameless whore, with eyes swift glancing round,
And, as if not to have her taken from him,
Upright beside her I beheld a giant ”

“ And the ancient demon, the spirit of prehistoric confusion, of hoary chaos, rejoiced in the destruction of things, while the wild eyes of the madman reflected horror, like the horror of the death agonies of some monster. ”

“ I myself have seen the monster raise himself on his hideous arms and legs and, “being wrought upon in the extreme” by his intolerable prescience of a change in the weather, lift his head and roar—roar as the jungled lion roars, or as the bull that sees his rival cross the meadow where he ranges in challenge to mortal combat. ”

“ An awful monster at the pit's mouth, baiting the distorted souls with pestilence or dangling hopes before their burning eyes, only to mock their struggles and let them sink down! down! down! Death comes to one sufferer, and then, with a gloating laugh, the monster drops another life into the pit to let it writhe in its awful misery. ”

“ What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster, which, after all,—though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the real personage,—may be said to have been created mainly by ourselves. ”

“ When any thing occurs to ruffle the temper of the savage monster, these jaundiced eye-balls suddenly change to a blood-red hue, and roll, furiously glaring, in their projecting orbits; the portal of the mouth opens, and a huge, human tongue, swollen, inflamed, and papillated, surrounded by a whole armory of rending teeth, is thrust forth, presenting to view a creature so strange, hideous and malevolent, that nothing in nature can be compared to him. ”

“ It is true of the monster, as we have known him up to now, that one can neither quite praise him nor quite blame him without a blush--he reflects so the nature of the company he's condemned to keep. His splendid easy power addressed to noble aims makes him assuredly on occasion a purely beneficent creature. I parenthesise at any rate that I know him in no other light--counting out of course the acquaintance that consists of a dismayed arrest in the road, with back flattened against wall or hedge, for the dusty, smoky, stenchy shock of his passage. ”

“ For a time their efforts are in vain. The glorious sun disappears gradually in the mouth of the voracious monster; but at last increasing din seems to effect its purpose. The monster appears to pause, and, like a fish that has nearly swallowed the bait, but, on second thought, rejects it, gradually disgorges the burning morsel. ”

“ For more than twenty years I have borne the brand of an inhuman monster on my soul, and I wonder that it has not transformed me into something so repulsive and loathsome that every one would shrink from me in fear and disgust. ”

“ “Monsters, monsters! But there are no monsters! What you call 'monsters' are superior forms, or forms
simply beyond your understanding. Aren't the gods monsters? Isn't a man of genius a monster, like a tiger or a spider, like all individuals who live beyond social lies, in the dazzling and divine immorality of things? Why, I too then—am a monster!” ”

“ It is a great monster which grips you by the throat and shakes you as a dog does a squirrel. The process shakes the [Pg 124] life out of its body and leaves it broken and dead, or else it twists its neck, bites strong and deep, and is allowed to go. You must draw blood to make the monster of city life quit—the rich, warm blood of enthusiasm and applause. ”

“ Then, as truth stared at her and she at truth, so monstrous was its aspect that, with one shuddering intake of the breath, life withered within her, light vanished without.
When ultimately, without knowing who she was; when, conscious only of an objective self struggling in darkness with the intangible and the void, when then life and light returned, she was on the floor, the monster peering at her. ”

“ Buts at the boulder-ribbed bottom, staggers and rears at the shock;
Leaps like a terrified monster, writhes in its fury and pain;
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the onset again.
Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears ”

“ Something of the freak, the monster, or the only half human, seems to taint his blood, displaying itself in follies and excesses of the most violent or pitiful nature, which, when dispassionately narrated in the chronicles of centuries, show him to be a crank or a fool at the very time when wisdom might most be expected of him. ”

“ Not only must he fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. ”

“ Every night as she lay awake she pictured what it would be if it were born—this creature conceived in savagery and debauch, this child that she loathed and dreaded. She could imagine it living—a demon, a monster, a thing to shriek at, to make one's blood run cold. ”

“ Every now and then a wave of blood would surge to the heart of the thousand-headed monster: eyes would dart hatred, murderous cries would go up. Men cowering away in the third and fourth row began to throw stones. ”

“ Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! ”

“ Gaping, empty, unsightly, the place is the very skull of the monster himself—the fittest place of all wherein to encounter the great slug, and deal him one of those death blows which every sunrise, every repentance, every child-birth, every true love deals him. ”

“ It is like the shark of the sea: drag him into the air, and the monster will perhaps struggle fearfully and frighten timid people with the powerful blows of his tail, and the terrible array of his teeth, but leave him quietly to die and he will die. ”

“ To him the monster seemed to reveal its liquid heart as to a faithful friend, and told him how it fretted in its granite prison, and how the sight of human wickedness sometimes made it long to rush over the land and submerge this fulsome human ant-hill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An unnatural monster, who sawed his fellow beings in sunder, harrowed them to fragments under harrows of iron, chopped them to pieces with axes, and burned them in brick-kilns, because they bowed before a different, and less bloody idol than his own. ”

“ Knowing that it would be sure death if he were once seized by the powerful monster, and aware of the dread which all animals have of fire, he dropped his gun and caught up a blazing brand, which he flung in the very face of the brute. ”

“ Who can ever tell what ascendency is exercised by the monster over the hero; by the horrid-looking saint covered with vermin over the powerful of this world in their terror at having to endure everlasting flames in payment of their terrestrial joys? ”

“ His bellowings are soft and gentle, he writhes in so sentimental a fashion that he can scarcely be taken as a monster, and since he leaves his victims with their bones unbroken and their flesh unscarred, who is to say that he has devoured them? ”

“ They have goggle eyes and open mouths, and their faces are in distorted and exaggerated action. One, painted bright red, tramples on a writhing devil painted bright pink; another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea- green devil, an indigo blue monster tramples on a sky-blue fiend, and a bright pink monster treads under his clawed feet a flesh- coloured demon. ”

“ Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. ”

“ We smile at the barbaric imagination that placed here, at the door of hell, the head of a vast and hideous monster of the crocodile family, into whose gaping jaws the damned are being thrust by a pantomime devil; but eight centuries ago Christian people had too lively a faith in the materialistic horrors of the infernal kingdom to perceive anything extravagant in this idea of stuffing a scaly monster with condemned sinners. ”

“ The monster, who wished that the world had but one neck, that he might sever it, would have gloated at such realization! How many days or hours would have here sufficed to annihilate all the races of men? ”

“ The mighty monster is here a little beneath you, on your right, as it were sleeping with one of his feet resting against the mountain you are passing along, the other being to the west of the rocky eminence before you. ”

“ It was incredible, she told herself, that this ravening monster, dripping blood from claws and teeth, that had arisen roaring in the night, could be the Humanity that had become her God. She had thought revenge and cruelty and slaughter to be the brood of Christian superstition, dead and buried under the new-born angel of light, and now it seemed that the monsters yet stirred and lived. ”

“ The green-eyed monster, unbidden, enters the heart and enthrones himself as ruler of the happiness of the individual over whom it assumes sway. She heard all that mother and son said, and then watched him as he went out. ”

“ And must he not be already surprised and shocked at the precocious growth of the infant monster which he found and named? "So prone are mortals to their own damnation, it seems as though a devil's use were gone." ”

“ In its talons, the monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house from which it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we distinctly saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful despair at the horrible fate which awaited them. ”

“ The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were—— No, they were not inhuman. ”

“ Every one wished to show to his companion what terrified himself, and each perceived the same expression of horror on the face of the other, only hands and eyes were directed to a different quarter, as if to a point where the monster, half laughing and half threatening, rose opposite to each. ”

“ And then the tail of the monster, which had lain dormant for some time, began to exhibit signs of life, and to form graceful curves in the air, as though enjoying a mighty triumph, or beckoning other monsters to come forward and witness the result of an interview with the lords of the creation. ”

“ Though I perceived that the animal was no longer able to do him any injury, I confess I could not without emotion see a man stark naked, black and bloody, clinging with arms and legs round the slimy and yet living monster. ”

“ When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. ”