deifying

Updated: June 4, 2025

There is a retrograde movement of thought since the Augustan age. Virgil and Horace take substantially the same view of the Empire as that which the philosophy of history has taught us is the true one; they call it a necessity, and express that belief by deifying its representative.

Charles Thomas Cruttwell - The History of Roman Literature : From the earliest period to the death of Marcus Aurelius

From time to time the impropriety of thus specially deifying one aspect of the universal spirit made itself felt and then Vishnu and Śiva were adored in a composite dual form or, with the addition of Brahmâ, as a trinity. But this triad had not great importance and it is a mistake to compare it with the Christian trinity.

Sir Charles Eliot - Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1

Nay, more, by personifying nature in its particular phenomena, by deifying it, by representing its effects as the acts of free being, they take from it that character of calm necessity which is precisely what makes it so attractive to us. Their impatient imagination only traverses nature to pass beyond it to the drama of human life.

Friedrich Schiller - The Works of Frederich Schiller

Nay, more, by personifying nature in its particular phenomena, by deifying it, by representing its effects as the acts of free being, they take from it that character of calm necessity which is precisely what makes it so attractive to us. Their impatient imagination only traverses nature to pass beyond it to the drama of human life.

Friedrich Schiller - Aesthetical Essays of Frederich Schiller

Wise in their generation, these 'blind leaders of the blind' ascribe to this Deity of their own invention, powers impossible, acts inconceivable, and qualities incompatible; thus erecting doctrinal systems on no sounder basis than their own ignorance; deifying their own monstrous errors, and filling the earth with misery, madness, and crime.

Charles Southwell - An Apology for Atheism: Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination: by One of Its Apostles

You have persuaded me already that you were right in deifying Orestes and Pylades, though I thought differently just now. I had no conception, either, what a painter you were. Your description of the pictures in the Oresteum was most vivid; that battle-scene, and the way in which the two intercepted one another's wounds.

of Samosata Lucian - Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 03

You will understand, then, Marquis, that it is not necessary to acquire the habit of deifying the fancy you entertain for the Countess. You will know, at last, that love to be worthy of the name, and to make us happy, far from being treated as a serious affair, should be fostered lightly, and above all with gayety.

Ninon de Lenclos - Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos : The Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century