"Mystical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... medicaments into Europe. The Spanish Arabs, in particular, are commended by Sprengel above their brethren for their observations on the practice of medicine. [41] But whatever real knowledge they possessed was corrupted by their inveterate propensity for mystical and occult science. They too often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless researches after the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated by the aspect of the stars. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... can tell where to find a clue to many an old pagan creed, because that (distinctly from all mere admiration of the beauty belonging to nature’s works) I acknowledge a sense of mystical reverence when first I look, to see some illustrious feature of the globe—some coast-line of ocean, some mighty river or dreary mountain range, the ancient barrier of kingdoms. But the Red Sea! It might well claim my earnest gaze ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... brother in comfortable but worn jerkin and hose of a dark leaf green. His manner to the little boy is full of affection, though occasionally he is superior after the manner of big brothers. Throughout the play, two moods alternate in Holger, a certain grave, half-mystical dreaminess and bubbling through it, the high spirits of ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... been given by that mysterious figure which appeared in Sinai, in 'the semblance of one who, though not young, was still untouched by time; a countenance like an Oriental night, dark yet lustrous, mystical yet clear. Thought, rather than melancholy, spoke from the pensive passion of his eyes; while on his lofty forehead glittered a star that threw a solemn radiance on the repose of his majestic forehead.' After explaining that he was the Angel of Arabia, this ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... die without a trace, while the equally minute, or even minuter, changes that make up the drift are forever imprinted on the history of the language, are we not imputing to this history a certain mystical quality? Are we not giving language a power to change of its own accord over and above the involuntary tendency of individuals to vary the norm? And if this drift of language is not merely the familiar set of individual variations ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... blacksmith with his hammer, the skilled artificer at his trade, the student at his subject, the good man in his course of life, and the bad man in his, do equally show that use becomes second nature. And so, in passing, let me say what incalculable importance there is in our getting habit, with all its mystical power to mould life, on the side of righteousness, and of becoming accustomed to do good, and so being unfamiliar ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... observational utility. It could afford no indication of time, because a pole-star moves very slowly, and the pole-star of Cheops' day must have been in view through that tunnel for more than an hour at a time. But, apart from the mystical significance which an astrologer would attribute to such a relation, it may be shown that this slant tunnel is precisely what the astrologer would require in order to get the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... had departed with his staff and his telescope and his knapsack, Billie sat down in a steamer chair under the trees and began to think. She lifted her eyes to the wall of mountains now mystical and unreal under their mantle of blue shadow. How could treachery and hatred and jealousy exist where there was so much beauty? It seemed to her that she had only to look about her to be inspired and uplifted; but Billie was too young to realize that it takes more than scenery ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... the few birds I know that sings through the long midday is the vireo. The vireo sings when otherwise the woods are still. You do not see him; you cannot find him; but you know he is there. And his singing is wild, and shy, and mystical. Often it haunts you like the memory of some former happiness. That day I heard ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... spotless white eider-down quilt of the winter returned, as far as the eye—even his binocular orbs—could reach, muffling tree and house, and garden and copse, and farm and field, and fallow and plow and meadow in the one mystical, silent, white disguise of winter. And the thrush ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... answered, with common-sense confidence; for he loved not mysteries. "You don't believe any nonsense of that sort, do you? There's nothing in the least mystical in the kind of sympathy that exists between Cyril and myself. It's all purely physical. We're very like one another. But that's all. There's none of the Corsican Brothers sort of hocus-pocus about us in any way. The whole thing is a simple caste ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... was a relaxation of this severity. Besides, communion is not absolutely necessary to salvation, and one may communicate spiritually in reading the word, which is like the body; in uniting oneself with the Church, which is the mystical substance of Christ; and in suffering for Him and with Him, this last communion of agony that is your portion, madame, and is the most perfect communion of all. If you heartily detest your crime and love God with ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... face the truth beyond the seeming. This is the poetry of the spirit, and ought to come as a revelation to the searcher. He may first find it in some pure lyric such as Shelley's "Skylark," or in some mystical fantasy such as Moore's "Lallah Rookh" or Coleridge's "Christabel," or in some story of human abnegation such as Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," or some wail of a soul in pain, as in Shelley's "Adonais," or in some outburst of exultant grief such as Whitman's "Captain, My Captain," or in some revelation ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... silence—keep peace—and let all the profane From our holy solemnity duly refrain; Whose souls, unenlightened by taste, are obscure; Whose poetical notions are dark and impure; Whose theatrical conscience Is sullied by nonsense; Who never were trained by the mighty Cratinus In mystical orgies, poetic and vinous; Who delight in buffooning and jests out of season; Who promote the designs of oppression and treason; Who foster sedition and strife and debate; All traitors, in short, to the Stage and the State: Who surrender a fort, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... minds. The Utopia was constructed on 'individualist' principles, because common sense naturally approves individualism. The whole social and political order is clearly the sum of the individuals, who combine to form an aggregate; and theories about social bonds take one to the mystical and sentimental. The absolute tendency is common to Bentham and the Jacobins. Whether the individual be taken as a unit of constant properties, or as the subject of absolute rights, we reach equally absolute ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere Of planets and of fixed in all her wheels Resembles nearest; mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular Then most, when most irregular they seem; And in their motions harmony divine So smooths her charming tones ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Anglo-Norman poets, wrote a work describing the character of each bird and beast, upon which he grounded moral reflections. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1253, was celebrated for a copious dissertation on mystical divinity, and a poem is extant ascribed to him, called the "Castle of Love" by Leland, in which the creation and redemption are represented as an allegory—our Lord being supposed to enter a magnificent castle, the body of the Virgin. The "Gesta Romanorum" strongly exhibits the want of discrimination ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... India,—treasures brought over sea in the rich days of the early Buddhist missions. Some were seated upon lotos-flowers, the lotos-flowers of the Apparitional Birth. Some rode leopards, tigers, lions, or monsters mystical,—typifying lightning, typifying death. One, triple-headed and many-handed, sinister and splendid, seemed moving through the gloom on a throne of gold, uplifted by a phalanx of elephants. Fudo I saw, shrouded and shrined in fire, and Maya-Fujin, riding her celestial peacock; and strangely mingling ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... and I was left alone with Tommy, who annoyed me much by attempting continually to wander off into the cave, whence I must recall him. I suppose that my experiences of the day, reviewed beneath the sweet influences of the wonderful tropical night, affected me. At any rate, that mystical side of my nature, to which I think I alluded at the beginning of this record, sprang into active and, in a sense, unholy life. The normal vanished, the abnormal took possession, and that is unholy to most of us creatures of habit ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... ribbon attached. The size of the receipt and seal was proportioned according to the amount paid—if you had a son or a daughter in Purgatory, it was wise to pay a large amount. The certificates were in Latin and certified in diffuse and mystical language many things, and they gave great joy to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... considerable; but it was natural that physicians, who stood by the bed of sickness as "ordained servants of the Divinity," should not be satisfied with a rational treatment of the sufferer, and should rather think that they could not dispense with the mystical effects of prayers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Reformation from Popery; when in Europe, both continental and insular, this ordinance was revived and exemplified. Among all nations in Christendom Scotland stands preeminent since first emancipated from bondage in mystical Babylon, for the frequency and fidelity of her ecclesiastical and national vows to the Most High. After many struggles with Popery and Prelacy, during which Christ's witnesses in that land derived strength and courage from ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... unto freedom. It is our privilege, Paul goes on to teach, to be children of the free woman, but although we are this by birthright, yet there has to be a personal appreciation of that fact, and an effort to maintain our liberty. The mystical significance of this allegory has never been elucidated in reference to the position of woman, but it may well be considered as establishing her claim, not only for personal freedom, but for the integrity of the home. Acting ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... his ignorance or carelessness; but he was accused of having poisoned his patient. This event might have been expected to bring his career to an end; but it was not long before he recovered the confidence of the people whom he deluded with his mystical language and promises of cure. He had three methods of treatment, all consisting of baths—hot, tepid, or cold—preceded or followed by the taking of wonder-working medicines. Horatillavus treated ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... increasing evil,) should not know that old wounds require rather vinegar than oil, the cautery instead of unguents. As a member of the persecuted Church, I will not allow the declarations of a brother of that holy and mystical body to be overborne and set at naught by an ill liver like this Philip Joy. I say that men have become too free in uttering their licentious imaginations about those who are placed by God's Providence above them for their soul's good and bodies' health, and that an example should be made to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... lover, we find a man who, in more than one respect, recalls M. Zola's later hero, the Abbe Froment of 'Lourdes' and 'Rome.' He has the same loving, yearning nature; he is born—absolutely like Abbe Froment—of an unbelieving father and a mother of mystical mind. But unlike Froment he cannot shake off the shackles of his priesthood. Reborn to life after his dangerous illness, he relapses into the religion of death, the religion which regards life as impurity, which denies Nature's laws, and so often ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... in some other mystical natures, a certain something had been developed in the soutar not unlike a spirit of prophecy—an insight which, seemingly without exercise of the will, sometimes laid bare to him in a measure the thoughts ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... as the brooding soul of the world, cannot fail of its oracular promise as to Woman. "The mothers," "The mother of all things," are expressions of thought which lead the mind towards this side of universal growth. Whenever a mystical whisper was heard, from Behmen down to St. Simon, sprang up the thought, that, if it be true, as the legend says, that Humanity withers through a fault committed by and a curse laid upon Woman, through her pure child, or influence, shall the new Adam, the redemption, arise. Innocence is ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a mystical man, so made or begotten of the devil, and sent into the world, Satan himself being the chief and ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... Maurice, but in certain ways he went further than that noble-hearted, if somewhat mystical, divine. It would have been an absurdity to ask my father whether it would not be better to give up Christianity and try instead the faith of Christ. That was always his faith. For him religion meant ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... story-telling is the prima facie quality of an intelligent and sociable being leading a life full of events in a universe full of phenomena. The child believes the wonders of romance by a right instinct; narratives of love and peril and achievement come home to the spirit of the youth; and the mystical, wonder-expecting eye of childhood returns to old age. The humor, wit, piety, and pathos of every age abound in the written stories of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... life of fashion and frivolity. He published The Purse, Mme. Firmiani, A Study of a Woman, The Message, La Grenadiere, The Forsaken Woman, Colonel Chabert (which appeared in L'Artiste under the title of Transaction), The Vicar of Tours, and he composed that mystical work which cost him so much pains that he almost succumbed to it, the Biographical Notice of Louis Lambert. At the same time he corrected, improved and partly rewrote The Chouans and the newly published Magic Skin, with a view to new editions, in accordance ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... only be arranged some mystical place over the edge of human existence, where we all could go and practise at living, have full-dress rehearsals of our parts, before we are hustled in front of the footlights in our very swaddling clothes, how many people are there who have reached what ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... stories which may properly anticipate their own denouements are what might be called "stories of premonition," in which the interest depends upon comparing actual events to the prophecy of dreams or some other mystical agency. In such tales the real interest is usually in the weirdness of the whole affair—though, to be sure, they do not always turn out as they are expected to. For, after all, this introduction of surprise into fiction is simply ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Cevenols were proclaimed outlaws, and the pope decreed a crusade against them. The military and religious enthusiasm of the Camisards went on increasing. Cavalier, young and enterprising, divided his time between the boldest attempts at surprise and mystical ecstasies, during which he singled out traitors who would have assassinated him or sinners who were not worthy to take part in the Lord's Supper. The king's troops ravaged the country; the Camisards, by way of reprisal, burned the Catholic villages; everywhere the war was becoming horrible. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the seat of Empire, he addressed his first epistle to the Christians with whom he had so recently held intercourse. The tradition that the "Babylon" from which this letter was written, [157:1] is no other than Rome, or the mystical Babylon of the Apocalypse, [157:2] is unquestionably of great antiquity; [157:3] and some of the announcements it contains are certainly quite in unison with such an interpretation. Thus, Peter tells his brethren of "the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... unhappy; the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge presumptuous and uninteresting." Scott's genius was antipathetic to Dante's; and he was as incapable of taking a lasting imprint from his intense, austere, and mystical spirit, as from the nebulous gloom of the Ossianic poetry. Though conservative, he was not reactionary after the fashion of the German "throne-and-altar" romanticists, but remained always a good ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... scarcely pronounced the mystical rhymes, than, as we have mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter, an appearance, as of a beautiful female, dressed in white, stood within two yards of him. His terror for the moment overcame his ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... a French minister, blew the clarion of reform. The watchword on all sides was, "Separate ye my people." Nothing but the stringency of his rules and the counter-efforts of the government prevented the pious masses from joining the reformer. Mystical sects, influenced by Jacob Boehme and Spinoza, appeared here and there. Chiliastic ideas spread abroad in proportion as men despaired of the speedy regeneration of the church through natural instrumentalities. All was commotion and disruption, and, for a time, everything seemed to be on the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... In a poem now printed for the first time, Toru refers to the scene of her earliest memories, the circling wilderness of foliage, the shining tank with the round leaves of the lilies, the murmuring dusk under the vast branches of the central casuarina-tree. Here, in a mystical retirement more irksome to an European in fancy than to an Oriental in reality, the brain of this wonderful child was moulded. She was pure Hindu, full of the typical qualities of her race and blood, and, as the present ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... whether we are listening to "the murmuring pines and the hemlocks," the softly sounding Angelus, the gossiping looms, the whir of wings in the drowsy air, or seeing the barns bursting with hay, the air filled with a dreamy and mystical light, the forest arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, and the stars, those "forget-me-nots of the angels," blossoming "in the infinite ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... and after each psalm. "The verse which serves as the antiphon text contains the fundamental thought of the psalm to which it is sung and indicates the point of view from which it is to be understood. In other words, it gives the key to the liturgical and mystical meaning of the psalm, with regard to the feast on which it ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... this impression of an universal organism, the assumption of a reciprocal influence of terrestrial bodies could not be foreign, nor did this cease to correspond with a higher view of nature, until astrologers overstepped the limits of human knowledge with frivolous and mystical calculations. ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... It is to be found not only upon stone monuments, but also in religious paintings,—especially certain kakemono suspended in temples. These kakemono usually display the footprints upon a very large scale, with a multitude of mystical symbols and characters. The sculptures may be less common; but in Tokyo alone there are a number of Butsu-soku-seki, or "Buddha- foot stones," which I have seen,—and probably several which I have not seen. There is one at the temple of Eko-In, near Ryogoku-bashi; one at the temple ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... grey dream, mystical in its colourless silence. Blue Italy was shrouded as the woman's face was shrouded. The speechlessness of Nature environed her speechlessness. She was an enigma set in an enigma, and the two rowers looked at her and at the sunless sky, and bent to ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Prince, friend of the imperial philosopher Marcus Aurelius, and compiler of the Mishna, the authoritative code of laws superseding all other collections. Then there are the fabulist Meir; Simon ben Yochai, falsely accused of the authorship of the mystical Kabbala; Chiya; Rab; Samuel, equally famous as a physician and a rabbi; Jochanan, the supposed compiler of the Jerusalem Talmud; and Ashi and Abina, the former probably the arranger of the Babylonian Talmud. This latter Talmud, the one invested with authority among ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... man, helped to form the group that gave rise to the Irish Renascence—the group of which William Butler Yeats, Doctor Douglas Hyde, Katharine Tynan and Lady Gregory were brilliant members. Besides being a splendid mystical poet, "A. E." is a painter of note, a fiery patriot, a distinguished sociologist, a public speaker, a student of economics and one of the heads of the Irish ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... English, if you would know the virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation. And so in all the arts. Whatever is profound and penetrating we stand off from; whatever is facile and shallow, particularly if it reveal a moral or mystical color, we embrace. Ibsen the first-rate dramatist was rejected with indignation precisely because of his merits—his sharp observation, his sardonic realism, his unsentimental logic. But the moment a meretricious ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... was then unable to see her son, forbidden as he was by her compact with his father to approach the house. The sorrow of the youth was equal to that of the mother. Inspired by the genius of repressed feeling, Etienne created a mystical language by which to communicate with his mother. He studied the resources of his voice like an opera-singer, and often he came beneath her windows to let her hear his melodiously melancholy voice, when Beauvouloir by a sign informed him she was alone. Formerly, ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... in one way. But he hated to be mixed up with all that, and he perceived that he must be mixed up with it more and more, if he wrote for the theatre. Whether he liked it or not, he was part of the thing which in its entirety meant high-kicking and toe-practice, as well as the expression of the most mystical passions of the heart. There was an austerity in him which the fact offended, and he did what he could to appease this austerity by reflecting that it was the drama and never the theatre that he loved; but for the time ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... in her letters, and in all two emotions predominate; a trust in God and an earnest conviction that a life of love—love to God and man—is the heart of religion. Her religion was contemplative as well as practical; but it was a religion of the conscience rather than one of mystical emotions. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... of St. Victor, a native either of Scotland or Ireland, was canon and prior of the monastery of that name at Paris and died in 1173. "He was at the head of the Mystics in this century and his treatise, entitled the Mystical Ark, which contains as it were the marrow of this kind of theology, was received with the greatest avidity." Maclaine's Mosheim, v. iii. cent. xii. p. 2. c. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the mystical hour when the night is going and the dawn has not yet come. He did not move, he merely opened his eyes, and he remembered everything at once, his capture, the flight through the forest, and the hurricane. He was conscious of peace ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... heart only could now see. At the first sign of his awaking she was on her feet with her hand upon the bell. On the arrival of the lamp Mavra would withdraw to the workroom. At night in her dreams she would continue her spiritual, almost mystical, contemplation of the beautiful fair head asleep on ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... inconsistent points of view, the second, as we should expect in a nature so little mystical, finally prevailed, so that Ennius may well be considered the preacher of scepticism or the bold impugner of popular superstition according to the point of view which we assume. In addition to these philosophic aspirations he ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in conducting a theatre for the exclusive performance of his own plays at Stockholm, Strindberg formulated a new dramatic creed—that of his mystical period, in which he was wont to sign himself "the author of 'Gustavus Vasa,' 'The Dream Play,' 'The Last Knight,' etc." It took the form of a pamphlet entitled "A Memorandum to the Members of the Intimate Theatre from the Stage Director" ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... everlastingness. Yes, she would sit just like that, and he and Jenny would sit near her for ever and ever. No mere abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness the place where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity had breathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenly touched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell of an astral light, where every moment of time ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... mulberry plots belonging to different owners I saw a little wooden shrine, evidently for the general good. It was there, it was explained, "not because of belief but of custom." The evening was drawing in and Fuji showed itself blue and mystical above the dark greenery of the country. As I gazed a sweet-sounding gong was struck thrice in the temple. Three times a day there is heard this summons to other thoughts than those ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... In all mystical writings, we find the conclusion that there is no one way in which the seeker may find reunion ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... philosophic purposes by the synthetic principles of comparative anatomy. But even the most important universal laws of organisation—of which the old system of comparative anatomy was one—had to take refuge in mystical ideas of a plan of structure and of creative final causes (causae finales); they were incapable of arriving at a true and clear perception of effective mechanical causes (causae efficientes). This last, most difficult, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... of the crowd has been much studied lately, by Le Bon and other writers in France, by Mr. Graham Wallas in England. I think that Le Bon is in danger of making The Crowd a mystical, superhuman entity. Of course, a crowd is made up of individuals, who remain individuals still. We must not accept the stuffed idol of Rousseau and the socialists, 'The General Will,' and turn it ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... already taken the fancy of the two daughters of the house. They were neither pretty nor ugly, but he shewed himself gracious towards them like a man who understands his business. I had, however, already made such great progress in my mystical education, that I considered the compliments he addressed to the girls ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The dim-aisled cathedral, whose tall arches spring Light, sinewy, graceful, firm-set as the wing From Michael's white shoulder, is hewn and defaced By iconoclast axes in desperate waste, And its wrecks seek the ocean it prophesied long, Cassandra-like, crooning its mystical song? Then the legends go with them,—even yet on the sea A wild virtue is left in the touch of the tree, And the sailor's night-watches are thrilled to the core 50 With the lineal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... disposition? My brother is able to officiate at sacrifices, and he has gone over to Vasava (Indra), and is engaged in performing his sacrifices, do thou therefore have thy sacrifice performed by him. My elder brother has forcibly taken away from me all my household goods and mystical gods, and sacrificing clients, and has now left to me only this physical body of mine, and, O son of Avikshit, as he is worthy of all respect from me, I cannot by any means officiate at thy sacrifice, unless with his permission. Thou must therefore ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... be said for the experimental novel, however, its primary aim, like that of history, is appreciation and understanding, not generalization and abstract formulas. Insight and sympathy, the mystical sense of human solidarity, expressed in the saying "to comprehend all is to forgive all," this fiction has to give. And these are materials which the sociologist cannot neglect. As yet there is no autobiography or biography ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... mind. It was whispered that a supernatural communication, of a nature obvious even to the exterior senses, had produced this wonderful change; and though some mentioned the proselyte as an enthusiast, none hinted at his being a hypocrite. This singular and mystical circumstance gave Colonel Gardiner a peculiar and solemn interest in the eyes of the young soldier. [4] It may be easily imagined that the officers of a regiment, commanded by so respectable a person, composed a society more sedate and orderly than a military mess always ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... hope of a life beyond. I presume that they therefore speak of two stones, a celestial and a terrestrial. The celestial stone is the eternal blessedness and, as far as the Christian world of ideas is considered, is Christ, who has aided mankind to attain it. The terrestrial stone is the mystical Christ whom each may cause to be crucified and resurrected in himself, whereby he attains a kingdom of heaven on earth with those peculiar qualities that have been allegorically attributed to the philosopher's stone. Therefore ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... us; and then came Emmanuel and his heavenly army, and all this to conquer Mansoul! Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. The blood of bulls and of goats cannot wash out our stains. We must be found in Christ as part of his mystical body, and thus in perfection obey the Divine law, and then, through the sin-atoning offering of Emmanuel, God's equal, eternal Son, a fountain is opened for sin and uncleanness, in which our souls, being purified, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... This way, then." The florist unlocked a glass door and led him down a moist green aisle. The hot air was choked with the scent of white azaleas, white lilies, white lilacs; all the flowers were white; they were like a prolongation, a mystical efflorescence, of the long rows of marble tombstones, and their perfume seemed to cover an odor of decay. The rich atmosphere made Glennard dizzy. As he leaned in the doorpost, waiting for the flowers, he had a ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... clear? Alas! there are not two men who understand them alike. Those who explain them to others do not agree among themselves; in order to make them clear, they have recourse to interpretations, to commentaries, to allegories, to parables, in which is found a mystical sense very different from the literal one. Men are needed everywhere to explain the wishes of God, who could not or would not explain Himself clearly to those whom He desired to enlighten. God always prefers to use as mediums men who can be suspected of having been deceived ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... case of this master of romance. George Eliot's dictum that we are, each one of us, but an omnibus carrying down the traits of our ancestors, does not appear at all to hold here. This fanciful realist, this naive-wistful humorist, this dreamy mystical casuist, crossed by the innocent bohemian, this serious and genial essayist, in whom the deep thought was hidden by the gracious play of wit and phantasy, came, on the father's side, of a stock of what the world regarded as a quiet, ingenious, demure, practical, home-keeping people. In his rich ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... body of these worshippers gathered together in the wilderness mainly from the seaboard aristocracy of the Church of England. A small frame building on the northern slope of the wide valley served them for a meeting-house. No mystical half-lights there but the mystical half-lights of Faith; no windows but the many-hued windows of Hope; no arches but the vault of Love. What more did those men and women need in that land, over-shadowed always by the horror ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... words a flavor of that sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... very close to Charlie Reynolds, though he had liked the flamboyant Good Guy. Now, it was all a long ways back, besides. Nelsen didn't feel exactly grief. Just an almost mystical bitterness, a shock and an uncertainty, as if he ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... sources. It was however Pythagoras, the great Greek-Italian philosopher of the sixth century B.C., the predecessor and to some extent the inspirer of Socrates and Plato, who was most generally accepted as the rival of St. Paul. It was his mystical doctrines of Number and Harmony, of the Unit and the Triad, which were most often marshalled against the Christian doctrine of the Unity and Trinity of the Godhead. Indeed it even seems that Pythagoras was believed by some of these adversaries of Christianity to be the incarnation of Deity ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... pure style of the Bible, the fresh and glowing figures of speech, the original poetic inspiration, and the thought, which bears the imprint of a profound philosophy and a high moral sense, and is free from all trace of mystical exaggeration. ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... teachings of the Christ from a Christian Science standpoint, and they no longer appear vague and mystical, but become luminous and powerful,—and, let me ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... disposition to make an antedeluvian point of view lest you should do injustice to the megatherium. But now I have given ear to him in his proper person, I find him really a sort of philosophical-allegorical-mystical believer, and yet with a sharp dialectic point, so that any argumentative rattler of peas in a bladder might soon be pricked in silence by him. The mixture may be one of the Jewish prerogatives, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... outstretched to hold a dozen bright washers which he was stirring with his forefinger. The hand with the washers sank gently to rest on his knee, and he sighed as he ceased stirring, and looked absently down the garage, his mystical cloak of bone and skin shrouding his thoughts. Idle men all down the garage hung about the cars, each holding within him some private affection, some close hope, something which sent a spurt of dubious ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... with the Hebrews and the Greeks was the type of intuitional perception, was an especial symbol of Hermes, called by the Hebrews Raphael. The plural used by the seer included myself as the partner of her literary and other studies. The term virgin in its mystical sense signifies a soul pure from admixture of ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... during the service, and look through the great gates at the candles and choristers, and listen to the organ-sustained voices, but the transepts he never penetrated because of the charge for admission. The music and the long vista of the fretted roof filled him with a vague and mystical happiness that he had no words, even mispronounceable words, to express. But some of the smug monuments in the aisles got a wreath of epithets: "Metrorious urnfuls," "funererial claims," "dejected angelosity," for example. He wandered about the precincts and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... far as to say that the new materfamilias was in some sort a priestess of the household, and that she must undergo a solemn initiation before assuming that position. And we may still further illustrate the mystical religious nature of the whole rite, if we remember that throughout Roman history no one could hold the priesthood of Jupiter (flaminium diale), or that of Mars or Quirinus, or of the Rex sacrorum, who had not been born of parents wedded by confarreatio, and ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... reading a very whimsical Treatise, entitled, William Ramsey's Vindication of Astrology. This profound Author, among many mystical Passages, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the virtues of Solomon's Seal. The Turks, he said, used to eat the young shoots, cooked. The children already knew that Solomon was the Grand Worshipful Master of all the masons of the world. About his majestic and mystical figure centered legends and traditions innumerable. Solomon's Knot was a curious intricate combination of curving lines. Solomon's signet was a stone of magical virtues. The temple of Solomon was the most wonderful ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... servitude, that they may become the slaves of their will. You call them 'Illuminati,' while they have undertaken to illuminate the minds with the beams of knowledge which the Rosicrucians obscure in a mystical fog." ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the emerald, the chryso-beryl, several varieties of rock-crystal, and also of the finer jaspers. The Sacred Writings prove that the Jews were acquainted with a considerable variety of ornamental stones, as may be seen in the description of the mystical city in the book of Revelation, of which "the twelve gates were twelve pearls." But the present inhabitants of Canaan, regardless of the natural wealth with which the hills and the valleys abound, trust to violence for the means ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... contentment and desire. This is marriage. This is attainment to that state of more perfect existence which terrestrial life procures for the soul of man, never thenceforth in all its future changes to be lost. The incorporeal mingling, the mystical union of two varied emanations of life; as Light and Heat intermarry in their offset and passage from the sun; and Truth and Love from the breast ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of hlenschlger silenced Hauch for many years. He possessed, however, a strong and fluent genius, which eventually made itself heard in a multitude of volumes, poems, dramas and novels. All that Hauch wrote is marked by great qualities, and by distinction; he had a native bias towards the mystical, which, however, he learned ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... many-sided; driven forward by a tremendous demonic urge toward the satisfaction of a curiosity which was cosmic and universal. Montaigne's was in a certain sense narrow, limited, cautious, earth-bound. It had nothing of the large poetic sweep, nothing of the vast mystical horizons and huge imaginative vistas of the great German. But on the other hand, it was closer to the soil, homelier, more humorous, in a certain measure more ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... our homes," while the Codex Telleriano-Remensis gives the more intelligible rendering "there is their home whither they descend," and adds that it is synonymous with Xochitlycacan, "the place where the flowers are lifted." It was the mystical Paradise of the Aztecs, the Home of the Gods, and the happy realm of departed souls. The Codex just quoted adds that the gods were born there, which explains the introduction of ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... description Miss Portman found marked in pencil, with reiterated lines, which she knew to be her ladyship's customary mode of distinguishing passages that she particularly liked. Some were highly oratorical, but most of them were of a mystical cast, and appeared to Belinda scarcely intelligible. She had reason to be astonished at meeting with such books in the dressing-room of a woman of Lady Delacour's character. During the solitude of her illness, her ladyship had first begun to think seriously on religious subjects, and the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Petterson, and W. Shaumann. Bio-Dynamic Agriculture: An Introduction. Spring Valley, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1976. A good introduction to this philosophical/mystical system of farming and gardening that uses magical compost ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... God, laid by Arab pirates centuries ago, amid the lust of rapine and the smoke of war, which ever heralded the onward march of conquering Islam, should serve as a firm basis for building up these simple children of Nature into the mystical sanctuary of the Christian Church. The lapse of time obliterates countless landmarks of Moslem creed in localities removed from external contact, but amid the dust of disintegrating forces and forgotten forms, the central Truth remains ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... also, near the same place, where I am inclined to believe that a "mystical sciencer" worked a trick on two worthy fellows, whom he promised to enrich with silver and gold if they would dig into the hillock for him and find therein a great brass pan which contained the treasure. This they did, and came to the brass pan covered ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... sufficiently inspire faith,—dispel worry,— whether that agency be mystical, human, or divine, will at once stop the body-wide stimulations and inhibitions which cause lesions which are as truly physical as is a fracture. The striking benefits of good luck, success, and happiness; of a change of scene; of hunting and fishing; of optimistic and helpful friends, ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... centaur and half god; her mother was the child of a desert lion and that sphinx that watches the pyramids;—she was more mystical ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... his home in Pennsylvania. It was the boys who faced and conquered hard physical jobs that became the men of endurance later." He had seen and shared the devotion of the missionary spirit, and had seen, too, how largely it failed of fruit by being spent on supernatural conversion and mystical emotion. He knew the tropical temperament, common to Hawaiian and negro,—how accessible to transient fervor, how deficient in persistence and continuity. He had watched his father's operations, as minister of public instruction under the Hawaiian king; his experiments ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Peckham gazed across the shimmering gold of the plain, to the mountains, which stood hushed into a palpitating blue; the Peak alone, white and ethereal, floating above the foot hills in the sun. Peckham was impressed in spite of himself. It made him think of a weird, mystical strain of music that had sometimes haunted his brain and yet which he had never been able to seize and capture. As he gazed on the soaring, mystical Peak, he remembered his dream, and slowly, but very surely, he perceived that a purpose was forming in his mind, almost without the ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... in the outer courts of these temples, as there have been in the courts of all temples, no mere actor could make an Egyptian priest of himself. Their very alphabet has a regal enchantment in its lines, and the same aesthetic-mystical power remains in their pylons and images under the blaze of the all-revealing ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Djatt, a name claimed, on the one hand by the Gipsies frequenting the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on the other by a people dwelling in the valley of the Indus." The Djatts were averse to religious speculation, and rejected all sectarian observances; the Hindu was mystical and meditative, and a slave to the superstitions of caste. From a remote period there were Djatt settlements along the shores of the Persian Gulf, plainly indicating the route by which the Gipsies travelled westward from India, as I have before ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Imagine such a scene on these mountain-slopes and foot-hills, under these cloudless skies; the sombre, evergreen boughs interwoven with the brightly colored foliage from the lowlands; this mellow, golden sunlight by day alternating with the white, mystical radiance of ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... O marvellous, mystical maiden, With the way of the wind on the wing; Low laughter thy lithe lips hath laden, Thy smile is a Song of the Spring. O typical, tropical tiger, With wicked and wheedlesome wiles; O lovely lost lady of Niger, Our Lady ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... which Egyptology knows nothing!—a mystical religion the existence of which has been vaguely suspected by a living French savant ... but this ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... flowers at the same time of year as did the Holy Flower, and within this reed fence she sits whenever the weather will allow, as I believe going through 'the rites of the Flower.' At least when I called upon her there one day, in a boat, I found her wearing a white robe and singing some mystical native song." ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... of the prosperity and happiness, but what is yet more strange, of the merit and perfection of others! A cowardly and shameful passion, which, not content with having caused the death of Jesus Christ, continues to persecute Him by rending His mystical body, which is the Church; dividing His members, which are believers; and stifling in their hearts that charity which is the spirit of Christianity! Behold, my brethren, the subtle temptation against which we have to defend ourselves, and under ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... I come, my children. Forget not, ye Romans, that I say so much. When the seed needs rain it falls. Sarishan, brothers and sisters all." And with this strange speech, mystical to the last, she rode away into the setting sun, on the gray donkey, looking more like an ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... to be drawn. Feeling how requisite it was he should put himself right, in every respect, with the lady of his choice, he made a fresh confession of his religious faith. His Catholicism, he told her, was outwardly of the Bossuet and Bonald type, but was esoterically mystical, Saint-Johnian, which form alone preserved the real Christian tradition. Somewhat encouraged by vague inquiries from Madame Hanska as to the income required by a household for living in Paris, he entered into ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... it? A mystical experience, an experience of the highest order, like unto Saint Therese, though in symbols of mundane things. But that is the fault of the age more than yourself. With more practise your mind will exhibit even greater power. You must continue in the path. ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... importance of a cult capable of such far-reaching developments be easily exaggerated? Secondly, and of more immediate importance for our investigation, is it not evident that we have here all the elements necessary for a mystical development of the Grail tradition? The Exoteric side of the cult gives us the Human, the Folk-lore, elements—the Suffering King; the Waste Land; the effect upon the Folk; the task that lies before the hero; the group of Grail symbols. The Esoteric side provides us with ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... of mist and burst into the moonlit heights above. He drew a deep breath of awe as he turned and looked about him. Overhead the sky was sparkling with innumerable stars, and the crescent moon was shining like burnished silver, while level with his breast rolled a limitless, silent, and mystical ocean of cloud which broke against the dark peaks in soundless surf, and spread away to the east in ever-widening shimmer. All the lesser hills were covered; only the lords of the range towered above the flood in sullen and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... here which is most fully satisfied hereafter. It makes the new life all the fresher and sweeter, you see. They wanted a home; but home is not a place, it is a state. There can be no home at all if there is not that mystical house, 'not made with hands,' where spirits blend and dwell ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... encircled her, yet he seemed to her thousands of miles away, speaking from out some depth of knowledge and of reality which hopelessly transcended her experience. She felt strangely diffident, strangely ignorant. Felt, though she had no name for it, the mystical empire, mystical terror of sex ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Trinity—Vishnu, Brahma, and Siva. By some means which have never been explained to me, my friend managed to get possession of Siva, and brought the idol home. He placed it in a gallery which he has in his house, believing from the first that it possessed mystical properties which it was his duty to fathom. The nephew now tells me that he has brought his craze to such a pass that he firmly believes that Siva speaks to him in Hindustanee. The unhappy man kneels nightly at the altar in front of the idol, ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is an ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... was great applause, but Hempel insisted on retiring. Left to himself, the young man with the handsome profile and the finely-set head played a few bars of prelude, and then, in a remarkably clear and resonant voice, sung Braga's mystical and tender serenade, the "Legende Valaque," amidst a silence now quite secured. But what was this one voice or that to all the passion of music demanding utterance? Soon there was a call to the young gentleman to play an accompaniment; and a huge black-a-vised Hessian, still ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... a convert to the opinion of the German philosopher, who affirms that "The Beautiful is greater than the Good." There have been disputes, we believe, on the subject of this axiom, some critics giving it a deep mystical sense, others, again, attempting to explain it in different ways. Our friend Hazlehurst, though a pretty good German scholar, seemed disposed to adopt the idea in its ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... her childish mind the matter of freedom became slightly mixed and she dreamed dreams of being free by owning unlimited amounts of it, and she coveted marvellous bank accounts, acquired in some mystical way, with which the woes of humanity could be relieved by giving. Along with this new idea of dispensing charity grew a desire to know why the crop of cash was short in Nathan Hornby's home. In her innocent way she led up to the subject of expenses in general, but Aunt Susan kept family ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... up, and all this had been done to frighten him—a British soldier—in command of a strong fort well garrisoned and fully supplied with all the munitions of war. In the fear that his fort would be destroyed by a mystical bomb, he was expected to march to a place of safety with all his forces. If this should be done it would not be long before these crafty fellows would occupy the fort, and with its great guns turned inland, ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... this meek northern saint of a flower, there is a southern flush of oleander bloom, that pours out hymns of mystical devotion, overflowing with the exuberant vitality, glowing with the intense ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... called upon to go out and hunt up the homeless, that he may convert his home into a promiscuous orphan-asylum. As before remarked, his creed is of the simplest, and there exists a complete and explicit understanding between his God and himself. There are no mystical, hidden meanings in Scripture for the Jew; nor does he dread any eternal, unheard-of, and inexplicable torments. His laws are very clear, and the punishments for their infraction very explicit. To the Jew it is a straight and well-lighted ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino |
