"Magic spell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clawful cats. Here doth she revel hold o' moony nights, With grave-rank ghouls and moaning spectral sprites; And ... Saints! what's that? A hook-winged bat? Not so; perchance, within its hairy body fell Is man or maid transformed by magic spell. O, brothers, heedful be, and careful tread Lest magic gin should catch and strike us dead! O would my grannam might go with us here. Since, being witch, she doth no ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... straight as plumb lines, others coiled round, and intertwined among each other, until one could fancy one was looking on some mighty battle between armies of gigantic serpents, that had been arrested at its height by some magic spell. All these bush- ropes were as bare of foliage as a ship's wire rigging, but a good many had thorns. I was very curious as to how they got up straight, and investigation showed me that many of them were carried up with a growing tree. The only true climbers were the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a room to itself in the Dresden Gallery, where the most frivolous forget to chat and the thoughtful sit for hours in quiet meditation under its magic spell. One man says, "I could spend an hour every day for years looking at this picture and on the last day of the last year discover some new beauty and ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... fairies, has become to us a land of unmistakable reality; the curtain between the West and the East has been lifted, and our old forgotten home stands before us again in bright colors and definite outlines. Two worlds, separated for thousands of years, have been reunited as by a magic spell, and we feel rich in a past that may well be the pride of our noble Aryan family. We say no longer vaguely and poetically Ex Oriente Lux, but we know that all the most vital elements of our knowledge and civilization,—our languages, our ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Hamilton; and I think you will find her quite ready to be borrowed. You seemed to cast a magic spell over her, even before ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... as shrapnel around us. The vast hills covered with their leafy verdure of summer; the rich valley spread below us made radiant by the beauty of the descending sun and a light rain; voices rising on the misty air from the valley below—all seemed to unite in weaving a magic spell for the coming scene. As we gazed out over the peaceful valley a rainbow seemed to spring from a wooded hillside and arch the lovely meadow below us, coloring the fields in the most singular beauty; while its second reflection with softer colors arched like a corona above a high wooded ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... bosom, and turn it round and round. I had thought I could never have another moment's happiness, if my neighbor, Hans Gottlieb, should be magistrate: and with that verse of yours, it has been with me as when one calms the blood with a magic spell." ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... and was settling himself at the piano, in place of the musicians who had been performing. This was an especial treat not on the programme, and all that was needed in Mary's opinion to complete a heavenly evening. He played the same improvisation that had caught her up in its magic spell the day of her arrival, and she went to her room in the uplifted frame of mind which finds everything perfection. Even her strained relations with Ethelinda seemed a trifle, the tiniest thorn in a world full of roses. Her last waking thought was a resolution ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... message. "Father says you are to stay here until after dark. You are to hunt around until you find a toad, and when you find it, you must be sure not to let it get away from you. He is going to put a magic spell on the field to keep the crows away, but the spell will not work except in the dark. So you must stay here until ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calm unfearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on! The fairy moments go before thee; thou hearest still the clock-knell tolling them to their graves behind. On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; no lock bars thee, no magic spell drives thee back. Daughter of the dust, thou standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale and numberless, the hosts of space ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hearts can wish; King Gos has gone to feed the fish, Queen Cor has gone, as well; King Kitticut has found his own, Prince Bobo soon will have a throne Relieved of magic spell. ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... spot where affection may dwell In sacred communion with home's magic spell! Where flowers of feeling are fragrant and fair, And those we most love find a happiness rare; But clouds are a presage,—they darken my lay: This life is a shadow, and ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... about death, and the grandest of words, Eternal Life, which to most means nothing but prolonged existence, meant to her just death. If she had stolen a magic spell for avoiding it, she could not have shrunk more from any reference to the one thing commonest and most inevitable. Often as she tried to imagine the reflection of her own death in the mind of her Paul, the mere mention of the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... returns home after a long absence, before he is allowed to visit his wife, he must wash his person with a particular fluid, and receive from the sorcerer a certain mark on his forehead, in order to counteract any magic spell which a stranger woman may have cast on him in his absence, and which might be communicated through him to the women of his village. Two Hindoo ambassadors, who had been sent to England by a native prince and had returned to India, were considered ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... was, O so long ago! How they come back to me—dimly and brokenly, but with what a magic spell—those years of youth when I was soldiering! Again I hear the far warble of blown bugles. Again I see the tall, blue smoke of camp-fires ascending from the dim valleys of Wonderland. There steals upon ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... do not know, I never heard it said Which of the two was nimbler as they went. Esperveris was there, son of Borel, And him there slew Engelers of Burdel. And the Archbishop, he slew them Siglorel, The enchanter, who before had been in hell, Where Jupiter bore him by a magic spell. Then Turpin says "To us he's forfeited." Answers Rollanz: "The culvert is bested. Such blows, brother ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... joyful whinny of the flying steed, and immediately mounted upon a storm cloud and started in pursuit, hurling a red-hot thunderbolt at Malagigi to check his advance. But the necromancer muttered a magic spell and held up his crucifix, and the bolt fell short; while the devil, losing his balance, fell to the earth, and thus lamed ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... said Lady Jane, with a sarcastic smile, "to bring about this result, one must, before all things, be acquainted with a magic spell, through the might of which the earl will first glow with love for Catharine. For the queen has a proud soul, and she will never so forget her dignity as to love a man who is not inflamed with an ardent passion for her. But the earl ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... chant leaped wildly to meet the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its pathos; for such was the intensity of Margherita's emotion and dramatic quality that she endued each character with an almost startling vitality—or had she put her auditors under some magic spell with the compelling gaze of her deep eyes? They felt as if living in that past time, partakers in its very action, and they surrendered themselves to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... more trying, sickness, by the observation of a certain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up between the four planks of his coffin, after having said every evening: "Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!" How are we to explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Do men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongest wills are subject to it. Is it default of memory? People who possess this faculty in the highest degree yield to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... achievement of the Greek mind was the deliverance of itself in the sphere of the imagination. Behind the fair creations of Greek art lies a dark and ugly background, but it does lie behind them. That was its first conquest. Under the magic spell of Art the hateful and terrifying shapes of barbarous religion retreated and the world of imagination was peopled with gracious and attractive figures. The Greek Pantheon is, for all its defects, a world of dignified and beautiful humanity. 'No thorn or threat stains ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... the law as a moral necessity, ordinary men as a traditional everyday rule; for this very reason military discipline, in which more than anywhere else law takes the form of habit, fetters every man not entirely self-reliant as with a magic spell. It has often been observed that the soldier, even where he has determined to refuse obedience to those set over him, involuntarily when that obedience is demanded resumes his place in the ranks. It was this feeling that made Lafayette and Dumouriez hesitate at the last moment before the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the horrid phantom bends his bow, And points his dart to lay that victim low![1] She sinks, she falls, and her fond husband's breast Is the cold pillow to that marble rest! But softly tread upon the sacred ground, Where Britain's bards lie sepulchred round. Sons of the muse, who woke the magic spell, From the deep windings of "Apollo's shell!" Mute is each lyre, their silent strings are bound With willow, yew, and cypress wreath'd around. Their hopes, joys, sorrows, rest within the grave Admiring nations to their relics gave. Hail, mighty shades! bright spirits of the past; Here ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... love; but I refused them all, even the Egyptian captain who commanded the garrison of the storehouse; for I remembered you, the companion of my youth. My best possession would not have seemed too dear a price to pay for some magic spell that would have brought you to us when, at the festal games, I danced and sang to the tambourine while the loudest shouts of applause greeted me. Whenever many were listening I thought of you—then I poured forth like the lark the feelings ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have achieved the independence of the Provinces unaided by the sword of Orange-Nassau and the magic spell which belonged ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a magic spell on the audience. They have been boisterous, fretful, even at times disorderly. Not a dozen words are uttered by Trueman and the silence, save for his ringing ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... tired, and more nervous than she had any idea she could be, leaned luxuriously back in her mother's chair, with a delicious sense of unresponsibility about her, and watched a magic spell come over the room. Down came the shades in a twinkling, and the low red sun looked in on them no more; the table-cloth straightened itself; pickles and cheese and cake got out of their confused proximity, and marched each to their appropriate niche on ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... were evil, oh! what were her nights? She lived in constant terror lest he should again drug her food or drink, and, while she slept, throw his magic spell upon her. To protect herself from the first danger she would swallow nothing that had been near him. Now also she slept in the hut with her father, who lay near its door, a loaded rifle at his side, for he had ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... rest upon me, love! I feel their magic spell! With that same look you won me, love, Fair, gentle Bessy Bell! My doom you've idly spoken, love, You never can be mine! But though my heart is broken, love, Still, Bessy, it is thine! Adieu, false ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... artifice, Melting the spirit of each fleeting cloud From darkness unto beauty and soft grace— Thou art the emblem of that perfect love That sheddeth joy around it evermore, And from whose sweetness rise all gentle thoughts As scent from vernal flowers; that in the heart Waketh all goodness by a magic spell, As the fine touch of blindness makes a page Start into instant light and eloquence. Cherish thou kindness ever, for this life Would be most blissful if its sunshine came To strengthen on ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the touch, and melted and mingled together. Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless water. Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around her. Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Sidrophel, Where at his desk and book he sits, Puzzling aloft [26] his curious wits; He whose domain is held in common With no one but the ANCIENT WOMAN, 175 Cowering beside her rifted cell, As if intent on magic spell;- Dread pair, that, spite of wind and weather, Still ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... in many parts of America the wanderers are welcomed with feux de joie, or with salutes of shot-guns,—the guns, unfortunately, being shotted and aimed at them. I have mentioned in another chapter, on a Gypsy Magic Spell, that once in Tennessee, when an old Romany mother had succeeded in hoaxing a farmer's wife out of all she had in the world, the neighboring farmers took the witch, and, with a view to preventing effectually ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland |
