"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of all endeavor. He claimed to have attained, himself, to this union, and to have received direct inspiration. Giving a Greek coloring to the Hebrew notion of prophecy, "My soul," he says, "is wont to be affected with a Divine trance and to prophesy about things of which it has no knowledge"[67].... "Many a time have I come with the intention of writing, and knowing exactly what I ought to set down, but I have found my mind barren and fruitless, and I have gone away with nothing done, but at times I have come empty, and suddenly ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... instant was plain when he realized this was no ghost of Steele, but the Ranger in the flesh. Blome's whole frame rippled as thought jerked him out of his trance. His comrades sat stone-still. Then Hilliard and Pickens dived without rising from the table. Their ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... and hearing all this, turned upon her husband and said to him, 'What meanest thou, Arriguccio? This is not that so far which thou camest to tell us thou hadst done, and we know not how thou wilt make good the rest.' Arriguccio stood as one in a trance and would have spoken; but, seeing that it was not as he thought he could show, he dared say nothing; whereupon the lady, turning to her brothers, said to them, 'Brothers mine, I see he hath gone seeking to have me do what I ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... girl they brought me, pinioned hand and foot In catalepsy—say I should have known That trance had not yet darkened into death, And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I knew? Sum up the facts—her life against her death. Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure Breeds such by thousands. And her ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... thrue!" ejaculated Barney, who stood staring at the whole proceeding like one in a trance. "Did ye iver ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... from which it would be extremely awkward to flee. For the first time since certain boyhood fits of bashfulness, he now realized the aptness of that oft-read expression, "rooted to the spot." That he should be thrown into this trance-like embarrassment, this powerlessness of motion, this feeling of a schoolboy first introduced to society, of a player caught by stage ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... restrictions, her feet bound, her actions restrained, not only by outward force, but by the law of her nature, more effectual still,—has desired to be. That voiceless poet, to whom what can be is nothing, but only what should be if miracle could be attained to fulfil her trance and rapture of desire—is held by no conditions, modified by no circumstances; and miracle is all around her, the most credible, the most real of powers, the very air she breathers. Jeanne of France is the very flower of this passion ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... Uncle Eb had given me. Such sublimity of proportion I have never seen since; and yet it was all very small indeed. The stores had a smell about them that was like chloroform in its effect upon me; for, once in them, I fell into a kind of trance and had scarce sense enough to know my own mind. The smart clerks, who generally came and asked, 'Well, young man, what can I do for you?' I regarded with fear and suspicion. I clung the tighter to my coin always, and said nothing, although ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... began to talk hurriedly with another man who showed him some papers and Tom watched him as one in a trance. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... endowed with a wonderful presentiment of the future," replied the chaplain; "and all that you ought either to do or to leave undone is faithfully mirrored in various ways in her mind, during a half-waking trance. Now she knows of your deep sorrow, and she sends me, the father-confessor of her convent, to comfort you, but at the same time to warn you; for, as she affirms, and as I am also inclined to think, many strange and heavy ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... soon roared out an oath and wanted to know where we were from. After telling him as near as I possibly could, under the circumstances, he again became silent. His look and brace of revolvers were not reassuring, to say the least. He soon came out of his trance and did not keep us long in suspense, for his next act was to pull out both of his life-takers, and, not in very choice language, introduce himself as Commanche Bill from Arkansas, emphasizing the Arkansas by letting the contents of both of his instruments of death pierce ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... the hill inspir'd meet: Love, put thy tapers out, that we And th' world may seem as blind as thee; And be, since she is lost (ah wound!) Not Heav'n it self by any found. Now as a prisoner new cast, Who sleepes in chaines that night, his last, Next morn is wak't with a repreeve, And from his trance, not dream bid live, Wonders (his sence not having scope) Who speaks, his friend or his false hope. So Amarantha heard, but feare Dares not yet trust her tempting care; And as againe her arms oth' ground Spread ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... process which I had to pursue. I had to acquire faith in myself and my powers by repeated experiments extending over a period of several months; but you have not time for that, so I must imbue you with it by the process of suggestion while you are in a state of trance. Now, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... along the trance towards an open room, and on entering it they met a fair damsel in the garb of a handmaid, to whom the knight spoke in familiarity, and kittling her under the chin, made her giggle in a wanton manner. By her he was informed that the Archbishop was in the inner chamber at dinner with her mistress, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... divested of any outward sensations by which to measure its duration. She, who could call up visions in the minds of others, who possessed the faculty of closing her bodily eyes in order to see distant places and persons in the state of trance, she, who expected no surprises in her own act, had seen something very vividly, which she could not believe had been a reality, and which she yet could not account for as a revelation of second sight. That ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... evening, and as any one who was even slightly acquainted with Miss Fitzroy must have been aware that she would decline to talk of anything else, sympathy for him is not altogether deserved. The boat swung softly in a trance of speed, and Miss Fitzroy, better known to a large circle of intimates as Fanny Fitz, tried to think the motion was pleasant. She had made a good many migrations to England, by various routes and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... almost as subconscious as the subconsciousness about which I was reflecting. I had fallen again into the old habit of forgetting where I was going, and seeing things with one eye off, in a blind abstraction. I awoke from a sort of trance of absentmindedness in a landscape that might well awaken anybody. It might awaken a man sleeping; but he would think he was still in a nightmare. It might wake the dead, but they would probably think they were in hell. Halfway ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... word Davy looked like a man newly awakened from a trance. His voice, which had rung out like a horn, seemed to wheeze back like a whistle; his eyes, which had begun to blaze, took a fixed and stupid look; his lips parted; his head dropped forward; his chest fell inward; and his big shoulders seemed to shrink. He looked about him vacantly, put one hand ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... opaline; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, that breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and merged, a voice rose above them, resonant and glorious, rose and sank and pleaded and laughed and loved, while the two young listeners leaned unconsciously toward each other in their saddles. Silence fell again. The very forest life itself seemed hushed in a listening trance. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... moveless of limb that they might have been corpses. Mentally, too, they were almost moribund. They stared vacantly, straight out to sea. They stared with the unwinking fixedness of those whose gaze is caught in hypnotic trance. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... innocent and tender moods of early youth before worldliness had hardened around his heart. Gradually, as he listened to it, the fires in his brain were allayed, and all yielded to a sense of coolness and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance of utter rest, and yet was dimly aware that either something in his own condition, or some supernatural accession of tone, was changing the music from its proper quality to a harmony more infinite and awful. It was still low and indeterminate ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array: Stout Glo'ster[2] stood aghast in speechless trance: To arms! cried Mortimer,[3] ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... analyse love: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task was an answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do so five years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself be carried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to be utterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was five years ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... your kind eyes looked languishing on mine, And wreathing arms did soft embraces join, A doubtful trembling seized me first all o'er; Then, wishes; and a warmth, unknown before: What followed was all ecstasy and trance; Immortal pleasures round my swimming eyes did dance, And speechless joys, in whose sweet tumult tost, I thought my breath and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... The trance continued till after breakfast, when our officers' impatience could no longer withstand the bait, and, though short of efficient boats, the yawl and lieutenant's gig were manned for a hazardous enterprise. The former was crammed with six sailors, two marines, and a supernumerary mate; while ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... half years who, in an attack of somnambulism, went to the stable, saddled his horse, asked for his whip, and disputed with the toll-keeper about his fare, and when he awoke had no recollection whatever of his acts, having been altogether an hour in his trance. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... old Dominie in the school-room, seated at his elevated desk, the usher not present, and the boys making a din enough to have awaked a person from a trance. That he was in one of his deep reveries, and that the boys had taken advantage of it, was evident. "Mr Dobbs," said I, walking close up to the desk, but the Dominie answered not. I repeated his name in a ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... trampled, soaked, Each stream dyed, choked, Each leaguered city and blockaded port Made famine's sport; The empty wave Made reeling dreadnought's grave; Cathedral, castle, gallery, smoking fell 'Neath bomb and shell; In deathlike trance Lay industry, finance; Two thousand years' Bequest, achievement, saving, disappears In blood and tears, In widowed woe That slum and palace equal know, In civilization's suicide,— What served thereby, what satisfied? For justice, freedom, ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... for a scroll, parchment, oracle, prophecy, precedent; do you ask for tablets marked with thought or words cut deep on the marble surface, do you seek measured utterance or the mystic trance? ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... the two stars broke under the strain, and by that time news had come to Mr. Fairbanks that Wall Street was Easy Money's other name. Armed with his grin, he marched into the office of De Coppet & Doremus, and when the manager came out of his trance Shakespeare's worst enemy was holding down the job ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... dumb-struck at what he beheld; as to whether he breathed or no, I cannot tell; but this I know, that he sat staring at that marvelous treasure like a man in a trance, until, after a few seconds of this golden display, the other banged down the lids again and burst out laughing, whereupon he came back to himself with ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... experience such visions there is no manner of doubt. St. Paul fell into a trance at his conversion, and again at a later period, when he seemed to be caught up into the third heaven. The most sober and practical of the mediaeval mystics speak of them as common phenomena. And in modern times two of the sanest of our poets have recorded ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... trance of peace had given them the light sadness which fulfilled beauty brings, they found it good to hasten down the deserted street to the cafes and thronging friendly people. They knew how to live and take their pleasure, those people of Ghent. No sullen silence and hasty gorging for them. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... that the intruder would be burying its fangs in my throat, and still I could not stir—could not utter sound, but lay like one in a trance. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: 10. And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, 11. And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: 12. Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. 13. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... doorway, her bare arm extended, her lips parted in a tender smile, Stuart knew that his face was red. The fact that he knew it increased his confusion until the whole room became a blur. His feet refused to move, and he stood staring at the approaching vision as if in a trance. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... that he did not finish his sentence; no more penetrated, at least, into my drowsy ear. I awoke slowly from a trance-like sleep, with a confused notion of having to pick up the thread of a dropped hint. I went up ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... me the least opportunity of reply, dropped me in the centre. I found myself descending with an increasing rapidity, till the horror of my mind deprived me of all reflection. I suppose I fell into a trance, from which I was suddenly aroused by plunging into a large body of water illuminated by the rays ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... simple to a degree, and precisely agreed with Mr Fanshawe's surmise as to what had really happened. During Claire's trance of forgetfulness, the box had been wheeled away, with a large consignment of luggage, and the mistake discovered only when the various items were in process of being packed into a company's omnibus, when, there being no one ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... gloves, handkerchief, and vinaigrette in the grass to do so. "Oh, Mr. Homos," she fluted, and the tears came into her eyes, "it was beautiful, beautiful, every word of it! I sat in a perfect trance from beginning to end, and I felt that it was all as true as it was beautiful. People all around me were breathless with interest, and I don't know how I ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... if with adamantine chains, while her mind and soul were the voiceless spectators of a tragedy of which she knew that she was the cause. She could not even open her eyes. If she could have loosed but a muscle from the rigidity of the trance, she knew that her whole frame would be relaxed in an instant. Then she would have bounded—oh! with what speed—into the other room, where her immortal part was helplessly watching the conflict, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... troubled her. She did not know how to go about it; she hesitated to seek those who advertised their alleged occult powers for sale,—trance-mediums, mind-readers, palmists—all the heterogeneous riffraff lurking always in metropolitan purlieus, and always with a ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... profound that Aunt Hester began to be afraid he had fallen into a trance. She did not try to rouse him herself, it not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... go no further. There were limits to what he could endure. He fell into a trance-like state of passivity, his body ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... up. He lay as one in a trance, absolutely motionless, with his enormous eyes tight closed. The eyelids had big silver scales on them, like all the rest of ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... guided by the flames, approaches the coffin from which a lady in a shroud and a black veil arises. When he kisses her, the whole building falls asunder with a crash. Sir Bertrand is thrown into a trance and awakes in a gorgeous room, where he sees a beautiful lady who thanks him as her deliverer. At a banquet, nymphs place a laurel wreath on his head, but as the lady is about to address him the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... stood Sarah, motionless, frozen with fear. A candle was in her hand, just lighted. Hester's voice seemed to break her trance. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... into the streets of the New Town, which was as deserted and silent as a city of the dead. The shops were closed, no vehicle ran, cats sported in the midst of the sunny causeway; and our steps and voices re-echoed from the quiet houses. It was the high-water, full and strange, of that weekly trance to which the city of Edinburgh is subjected: the apotheosis of the Sawbath; and I confess the spectacle wanted not grandeur, however much it may have lacked cheerfulness. There are few religious ceremonies more imposing. As we thus walked and talked in a public seclusion the bells ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my friend, you leave the bar, Resolv'd on drums, on dress, and war, While fancy paints in liveliest hues, Swords, sashes, shoulder-knots, reviews, You quit the study of the laws, And show a blade in Britain's cause, Of length to throw into a trance, The frighten'd kings of Spain and France! A hat of fiercest cock is sought, And your cockade's already bought, While on your coat there beams a lace, That ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... with remarkable insight for a character in a witch story, "supposed they were drunke." But a few days later the same servant fell into conversation with Mother Sutton, when a beetle came and struck him. He fell into a trance, and then went home and told his master. The next night the servant said that Mary Sutton entered his room—the vision we ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... trance simply because there's not enough left in him to constitute an individuality. The germ has taken the inside clean out of him. He's just an ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... apathy. The notion of it as a happy state seems derived from the experience of ecstasies; or else the pleasant, refreshed feeling with which one wakes from profound repose is referred to the period of actual sleep."38 A Buddhist author speculates thus: "That the soul feels not during profound trance, is not for want of sensibility, but for want of sensible objects." Wilson, Hodgson, and Vans Kennedy three able thinkers, as well as scholars, in this field agree that Nirwana is not annihilation as we understand that word. Mr. Hodgson believes that the Buddhists expect to be "conscious in Nirwana ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Guido asked him that question, I expected to hear from Dante a mocking answer, but instead, to my surprise, he sat quite still for a little while, almost like a man in a trance, with his hands clasped about his knees, and it seemed to me as if he were seeing, as indeed he was seeing, things that we who were with him did not see and could not see. After a while he spoke in a soft voice, and for the most part his words came sharp and clear, like the words ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in the power of the gods to seize on men and make them the channel of their will; he was a living witness to it in his own person. At first he saw shadows of superhuman form and heard their voices in his dreams. Then there were moments when he would be seized with a trance; he was wrapt in contemplation of some divine being. Then the words of prophecy would come; they were not his utterance but the bidding of the great Syrian goddess. Sometimes the words were preceded by a strange manifestation of supernatural ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... trance, foresaken, speechless, sad, Armida wildly stared and gazed about, "And is he gone," quoth she, "nor pity had To leave me thus twixt life and death in doubt? Could he not stay? could not the traitor-lad From this last trance help or recall ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... among the pads some twenty feet apart. Pushing up so as to make a triangle with my canoe, I dangled a red ibis impartially between them. For two or three long minutes neither moved so much as an eyelid. Then one seemed to wake suddenly from a trance, or to be touched by an electric wire, for he came scrambling in a desperate hurry over the lily pads. Swimming was too slow; he jumped fiercely out of water at the red challenge, making ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... morning, his pockets bristling with papers, and his mind with projects. He would attack the work of the day with ferocious intensity, then in the midst of it, without warning, he would lapse into an apparent trance, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the ceiling, and such a smile on his face as one usually reserves for ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... I am not, strictly speaking, a spiritualist. I have only studied hypnotism. It is true I have studied hypnotism in all its known manifestations; but what is called spiritualism, is entirely unknown to me. When a subject is thrown into a trance, I may expect the hypnotic phenomena known to me: lethargy, abulia, anaesthesia, analgesia, catalepsy, and every kind of susceptibility to suggestion. Here it is not these but other phenomena we expect to observe. Therefore it would ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... cover the ground with frantic leaps that would have surprised his owner could he have realized what was going on. But Elder Brown's eyes were half closed, and he was singing at the top of his voice. Lost in a trance of divine exaltation, for he felt the effects of the invigorating motion, bent only on making the air ring with the lines which he dimly imagined were drawing upon him the eyes of the whole female congregation, he was supremely unconscious that ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... you whose business it is to keep an eye upon this ferment! unless the ceaseless flux of these human phenomena lull you to a trance, what a quantity of silly speeches you must hear! I picked up twenty in as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... morning, for instance, when Lillian Cowperwood had received that utterly destructive note, like a cannonball ripping through her domestic affairs, she had been walking like one in a trance. Each day now for weeks she had been going about her duties placidly enough to all outward seeming, but inwardly she was running with a troubled tide of thought. She was so utterly unhappy. Her fortieth year had come for her at a time when life ought naturally to stand fixed and firm ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... pain. The cruel lady, without any show 290 Of sorrow for her tender favourite's woe, But rather, if her eyes could brighter be, With brighter eyes and slow amenity, Put her new lips to his, and gave afresh The life she had so tangled in her mesh: And as he from one trance was wakening Into another, she began to sing, Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing, A song of love, too sweet for earthly lyres, While, like held breath, the stars drew in their panting fires. 300 And then she whisper'd in such trembling tone, As those who, safe together met alone ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... and growled for more. She fed him again, while the tomtoms went on roaring, and the child in its red pillow watched with its weary eyes. And when he was full fed, only a fragment of glass remained between her fingers, he fell upon the ground and lay like one in a trance. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... sounds did not come to her common, hackneyed. Why, sometimes, out in the hills, in the torrid quiet of summer noons, she had knelt by the shaded pools, and buried her hands in the great slumberous beds of water-lilies, her blood curdling in a feverish languor, a passioned trance, from which she roused herself, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... with music and song; those happy nights, which were veritable refections of the gods. . . . On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear. At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstasy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony. Or, in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... history count for very little in these narratives. It was allowed, however, that Titurel the Chief had grown extremely aged, but it was not allowed that he could die in the presence of the Sangrail. He seemed to have been laid in a kind of trance, resting in an open tomb beneath the altar of the Grail; and whenever the cup was uncovered his voice might be heard joining in the celebration. Meanwhile, Amfortas, his son, reigned in ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... restoration. The dash of water in his face was answered only by a faint shivering sigh. The thimbleful of whiskey forced between his lips only gurgled down his throat, and Drummond felt no responsive flutter of pulse. The shock to his system must indeed have been great, for Harvey lay like one in a trance. Drummond feared that he might never again open his eyes ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... Zhack flitted by in a trance; And the Squidjum hid under a tub As he heard the loud hooves of the Hooken advance ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... iron determination. They will sit so long holding an arm in one position that it shrivels. Others will lie for years on a bed of spikes. They eat very little, live on charity, and are often lost in a state of trance. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Still the trance seemed to hold her enthralled. The music was diabolically merry. She could fancy evil spirits tripping to it in swarms around her. They seemed to point at her, and wave their arms around her, and from them came an influence, magnetic in its quality, that forbade her to resist. All ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... shooting him down in cold blood; but, on the other hand, even as the man had said, he could not kill Ku Sui, but had to capture him, in order to take him to Earth to confess to crimes now blamed on Eliot Leithgow. "Do as he says, Friday," he instructed the still staring negro; and, like a man in a trance, Friday obeyed. ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... knew what he was about, such an affair had been precipitated upon him. He had felt its pleasures and pains to the uttermost, and now it was ended. All that was left as a result was a pile of MSS. which the critic pronounced wonderful. It was as if he had been in a trance, or mesmerized. Henceforth he would confine his writings to actualities or ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... flowed from her lips with an earnestness that thrilled the audience. A pallor overspread the face of the marquis, while the lady drew back behind the draperies, almost as if in fear. At the conclusion of that effort the walls echoed with plaudits; the actress stood as in a trance; her face was pale, her figure seemed changed to stone and the light ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... returned, and the mistake pointed out. During his imprisonment, which lasted two days, he had neither eaten, drunk, nor taken any repose; and when he appeared, his countenance was as pale as death. On receiving his accounts, he was a long time silent; then suddenly awaking, as if from a trance, he ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... She looked at the Bishop without surprise as she awoke from her long trance, and, her lips still warm from the kiss, smiled upon him. These things were not strange to her, for they certainly must have been realised sooner or later, and it might be that she was coming out of one dream only to have another still; but it seemed to her perfectly natural that Monseigneur should ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... a trance, beat his breast and twisted his hands in his locks. Theodore's cries quickly drew some monks to his aid, among them ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... gentleman's nurse, came out about this time to call the ladies in to supper, and found her child, as she always called him, dead on the shore, her mistress and kinswoman both lying dead by him. Her loud lamentations, and calling her young master to life, soon awaked the friend from her trance, but the wife was ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... making up his mind upon this unexpected emergency, Philip fell, as it were, into a long reverie, than which nothing could be more inopportune. With a country in a state of revolution and exasperation, the trance, which now seemed to come over the government, was like to be followed by deadly effects. The stationary policy, which the death of Requesens had occasioned, was allowed to prolong itself indefinitely, and almost for the first time in his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... here is money ready too, If you have lost in play. You're even welcome to my handsome slave, With jet black hair, and eyes so grave." "No!" said the other, "I need naught, But ere I slept to-night, I thought, Being in a trance, that you were sad, And as the thought nigh drove me mad, I hurried to your tent, And found ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... He did not enter the 'enchanted garden,' which he opened for others. If he talks of 'flaying the sacrifice,' of leaving sense behind, of Epopteia, this is but the parlance of his school. The instrument to which he looks for growth in knowledge is not trance, but disciplined reason. Hence Gnosis, when once obtained, is indefectible, not like the rapture which Plotinus enjoyed but four times during his acquaintance with Porphyry, which in the experience of Theresa never lasted more ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... darkness to bright daylight was almost overpowering. For the first time for six months, the imprisoned family looked forth on the external world, and were dazzled and bewildered by the sight. The grocer himself, despite his sober judgment, could scarcely believe he had not been in a trance during the whole period. The shop was scarcely opened before it was filled with customers, and Leonard and Stephen were instantly employed. But the grocer would sell nothing. To those who asked for any article ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... everyone raised on Earth had been raised in a commune, never knowing his or her parents. They had been raised, they had been indoctrinated and they had mated in the communes—and then gone into Sleep. More than likely, Nelson's parents were there still, dreaming in their trance, having long ago forgotten each other and their son, for those were things of a harsher world over which one could have no control. In Sleep one dreamed of a world that suited the dreamer. It was artificial. ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... Talana Hill victory soon became apparent. The threat of Erasmus sitting on Impati still impended, and Yule moved his camp next day to a site which he believed to be out of range. But in the meantime Erasmus awoke from his trance and, on the afternoon of October 21, opened fire with a six-inch gun,[18] and again Yule was compelled to shift his camp. He had already asked for reinforcements, but White was unable to spare them, and recommended him to fall back upon Ladysmith. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... report, so loud that it resembled the simultaneous discharge of a whole army of rifles, smote upon their ears; and then, as they stood in a trance of breathless expectation, wondering what was about to happen, an immense section of the icy cliff was seen to be in motion. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing rapidity, it slid downward into the water, with a continuous roaring reverberating ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... this mean, Maddelina?' said Emily, awakening from the pleasing trance, into which the music had lulled her. 'This is the eve of a festival, Signora,' replied Maddelina; 'and the peasants then amuse themselves with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... embrace of the serpent came back also. But Wagner murmured words of sweet assurance and consolation—of love and joy, in her ears; and she felt that it was no dream, but that she was really saved! Then, winding her arms round Fernand's neck, she embraced him in speechless and still almost senseless trance, for the idea of such happy deliverance was overpowering—amounting to an agony which a mortal creature could ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... and vows, not only by much learning, not by entering into a trance, not by sleeping alone, do I earn the happiness of release which no worldling can know. O Bhikshu, he who has obtained the extinction ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... moved—he felt; He raised the maid from where she knelt; His trance was gone, his keen eye shone With thoughts that long in darkness dwelt; 330 With thoughts that burn—in rays that melt. As the stream late concealed By the fringe of its willows, When it rushes reveal'd In the light of its billows; As the bolt bursts on high From the black cloud that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... troop. Early in the morning, at a fixed hour, he issued from his house in one of the small alleys, staff in hand, and with a curious kind of horn or whistle. This he blew as he walked along, from time to time, without turning his head, in that strange trance of passivity which distinguishes the Valencian peasant. Out from dark corners, narrow passages, mud hovels on all sides, came tearing along little pigs, big pigs, dark, light, fat, thin pigs,—pigs of every description,—and joined the procession headed by this sombre-looking herdsman, with ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... seemed to be growing visibly bigger, and as she lay there in a trance of wonder and admiration she saw point after point of dazzling white light flash out in the dark portions, and then begin to send out rays as though they were gigantic volcanoes in full eruption, and were pouring torrents of living ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... Navajos of espionage and had them taken by surprise and imprisoned in an underground foul den. Then met the chiefs of the tribe in their estufa, or secret meeting place, to pass judgment on the culprits. The old medicine chief smoked himself into a trance in order to receive special instructions from the great Spirit regarding the degree of punishment to be inflicted on the unlucky Navajos. After sleeping several hours, he awoke and announced that he had dreamed the Navajos were to be clubbed to ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... you come again? which they not understanding, persuaded her to keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was; but some hours after she desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone with her, to whom she said, "I will acquaint you, that during the time of my trance I was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither distinguish nor describe; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me, clothed in long ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... the fire, and examined the naked feet, quite uninjured, of the performers. He publishes an extract to this effect from his diary. The performers, I believe, were Klings. Nothing is said to indicate any condition of trance, or other abnormal ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... twenty days upon a hunting excursion. In a day or two after his absence, the sultana invited Koout al Koolloob to an entertainment, and having mixed a strong soporific in some sherbet, presented it her to drink. The effect of the potion was instantaneous, and she sunk into a trance; when the sultana putting her into the chest, commanded it to be given to a broker, and sold without examination of the contents, for a hundred deenars; hoping, that whoever might be the purchaser, he would be so fascinated with the charms of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... among many others, and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard faintly a reading of the Articles of Faith; wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling more—whether he should go to hell for touching the bread and wine that he did not dare to take nor to refuse; spent the morning service uncertain whether dreaming, or out of the body, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... had been one of those who hastened to his rescue. Now and then he broke out into a deep cry, which he did not seem to hear himself; but even the grey dawn of the morning, brightening over the rounded outlines of the mountains, did not awaken him from his trance of terror and bewilderment. Miss Anne kept near to him all night, and Stephen lingered about her, making a seat for her upon the grass, and taking care that Martha also should be at hand to wait upon her. There was a great buzzing of people about them, hurrying to and fro; and every now ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... to track their hidden lair, Far from the town, with long-drawn subtlety: To scan the vales, the hills, the limpid air, The grass and flowers, clear ice, and streams so free; To hear the birds wake from their winter trance, The wind-stirred ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it. I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... of the drums was hypnotic. As if in a trance he saw, at the side of the way they must go, the form of the head priest beckon them on. The two victims at his side took one step on the path to their death. And the same stiff rigidity held Jerry as he, too, moved onward ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... at Somerset House was, in all probability, Mrs. Hannah Trupnel. She, that in April of this year is spoken of, in an old news-book, as having "lately acted her part in a trance so many days at Whitehall." She appears to have been full of mystical, anti-Puritan prophecies, and was indicted in Cornwall as a rogue and vagabond, convicted and bound over in recognizances to behave herself in future. After this ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... with the deserted body of man, as ghosts with an abandoned house. How unlike are we made! What to me, in like case, would have been a solemn satisfaction, the bare suggestion, even, terrifies the Spaniard into this trance. Poor Alexandro Aranda! what would you say could you here see your friend—who, on former voyages, when you, for months, were left behind, has, I dare say, often longed, and longed, for one peep at ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the shops Joe worked as in a trance. Every iron rivet that he drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter was duly considered. The ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... so close that he could not get up without colliding with one of them, so full of aimless talk that he mislaid tools in his distraction. Juan was a pest and Casey thought malevolently how he would kill him when the job was finished. Juan went around like one in a trance, his heavy-lidded, opaque eyes following every movement of the girl, which kept her younger sisters giggling. But even with interruptions and practically no assistance the truck stood at last with four good tires on its wheels, and Casey wiped ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and all classes ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... They were frightened, plainly enough, and that was odd, since Leroy was no coward or he'd never have been one of the four chosen by the Academy for the first Martian expedition. But the fear in his eyes was more understandable than that other expression, that queer fixity of gaze like one in a trance, or like a person in an ecstasy. "Like a chap who's seen Heaven and Hell together," Harrison expressed it to himself. He was yet to ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... contemporary and ancestor brought into the world the "old man-cult," ancestor- worship, gods and goddesses of ranging degrees and power, but very much like men and women except for power and longevity. Certain natural phenomena—death, sleep, trance, epileptic attack—all played their part, bringing about ideas of the soul, immortality, possession, etc. With culture and the growth of inhibition and knowledge and the use of art and symbols, the primitive beliefs modified their nature; the gods became ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... names of all the plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as a banker when his notes fall due. The Cypripedium not due till to-morrow. He thought, that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was within two days. The redstart was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, whose brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, and whose fine clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... from the line lay all that night hideous in respirators. Anxious Staffs rang up other anxious Staffs. Gunners questioned the infantry. The infantry desired information from the gunners. All along the line the private soldier was jolted from that kind of trance which he calls "getting down to it," and was bidden to stand to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... mainly emphasising his Skylark. It was his Ode to the West Wind that made me want more of him ... with his complete works I made myself a nuisance in class, never paying attention to what anyone said or did, but sitting there like a man in a trance, and, with Shelley, dreaming beautiful ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... became rigid in her seat like a figure of stone. Had I continued she would have gone off into a trance. When I ceased speaking she opened wide her eyes, and murmured with fixed gaze, as though still dazed: "O Traveller in the path of Destruction! Who is there that can stay your progress? Do I not see that none shall stand in the way of your desires? Kings shall lay their crowns at your feet; the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... trance. She ran out of the study and through the dark library to the drawing-room and the front windows. Just in time, she stood behind the curtains, and caught a last glimpse of Canning's receding back. Brave and dear it ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... know that fellow's voice," puzzled Sarle. April thought she did too, but she was in a kind of happy trance where voices did not matter. The next episode was Ghostie at the studio window blotting out the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... forgot about Tara and the Game and the silver watch that made him reliable. He simply lay there in a trance-like stillness, that was not of the West, absorbing it all, with his eyes and his dazzled brain and with every sentient nerve in his body. And again—as when his mother smiled her praise—the Spring sunshine itself seemed to flow ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... men confer; But often, ev'n in doing right, they err: From caprice, not from choice, their favours come; They give, but think it toil to know to whom: The man that's nearest, yawning, they advance: 'Tis inhumanity to bless by chance. If merit sues, and greatness is so loth To break its downy trance, I pity both. I grant at court, Philander, at his need, (Thanks to his lovely wife) finds friends indeed. Of every charm and virtue she's possest: Philander! thou art exquisitely blest; The public envy! Now then, 'tis allow'd, The man is found, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... next witness, who declared she had sought a spell to make the man, she was forced into marrying, fall into a trance, just before the marriage ceremony was to take place; and that, instead of bringing this about, the spell Edward Curtis had sold her had caused her to have St. Vitus's Dance,—was adroitly trapped into admitting ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... be all," she said to herself, as she wandered among the tall white lilies in the twilight; "is it a trance, or am I myself? I have not unthought or unfelt, yet I seem falling into a very sweet hypocrisy! Alick says thought will come back with strength. I ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have struck a jarring note at the first night of "Hernani." I was trying to account for its wrongness when Soames suddenly and strangely broke silence. "A hundred years hence!" he murmured, as in a trance. ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... This speechless trance seemed to have its influence upon the awe-inspiring shadow outside the door: for, after giving utterance to another specimen of shrill piping, it withdrew with as much silence as if it had been but the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... on to picture Italy prostrate under the armed heel of Austria, and in its concluding verse the trance was broken, the trampled figure had risen to its feet, had wrested the sword from the oppressor's hand, had hurled him to the earth, and stood triumphant over his lifeless body. I have heard finer voices ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... sort themselves at will. There was a general expectation that Portland would publicly declare against Fox; but friendship or timidity held him tongue-tied. Malmesbury sought to waken him from his "trance," but in vain.[144] He lay under "the wand of the magician" (Pitt's phrase for the witchery that Fox exerted), even when so staunch a Whig as Sir Gilbert Elliot saw that the wizard's enchantments were ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... with such intensity, and with such perfect faith in its truth, as to cause him to walk in his sleep, like a somnambulist. No doubt your dear mother can tell you many strange and extraordinary stories of somnambulists, who do the most wonderful and startling things while in this kind of trance state, of which they are utterly ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... world in which the hypnotized subject has been wandering, remains when real consciousness is restored. It is very rare for even the idea of having been in dreamland to survive the awakening from the hypnotic trance. Dr. Luys says that hypnotic suggestion sometimes has periods of incubation more or less long. The subject is at first gently drawn to do a certain thing or things, and then the drawing becomes an irresistible impulse. They are first ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... the last as to be able even to sing in the flames. It is with awe and astonishment we learn that the very opposite of this was the state of mind of Jesus. The word with which He burst out of the trance of silence may be taken as the index of what was going on in His mind during the preceding hours; and it is a cry out of the lowest depths of despair. Indeed, it is the most appalling sound that ever pierced the atmosphere of this earth. Familiar as it is to us, it cannot be heard ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... crucifix rolled down the steps of the altar. The smoke had now grown very thick, so that it drove the troopers out into the open air. Before them were burning houses. Behind them shone the painted windows of the Abbey filled with saints and martyrs, awakened, as from a sacred trance, into an angry and animated life. The eyes of the troopers were dazzled, and for a while could see nothing but the flaming faces of saints and martyrs. Presently, however, they saw a man covered with dust who came running towards them. 'Two messengers,' he cried, 'have been ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... trance-like silence after it, which may have lasted twenty heart-beats. Then I said, We all thank you for your charming quotation. How much more wholesome a picture of humanity than such stuff as the author of the "Night Thoughts" ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sensation of cold on a windy day in Britain far more severe than I have done in Canada, when the mercury indicated a much lower degree of temperature. There is almost a trance-like stillness in the air during our frosty nights that lessens the unpleasantness ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... my life. He took me away from it—to the mountains—to Scotland, and a child was born. Mother, it was only then that I awoke as from a trance. It seemed as if a ring of sin begirt me. Tears—ah, me! what tears were shed. But rest and content came at last, and then we ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... language, 'Master is not at home.' But I kent what not at home means in the morning at a gentleman's door in London; so I said, 'Very weel, as I hae had a long walk, I'll e'en rest myself and wait till he come;' and with that, I plumpit down on one of the mahogany chairs in the trance. The lad, seeing that I was na to be jookit, upon this answered me, by saying, he would go and enquire if his master would be at home to me; and the short and the long o't was, that I got at last an ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... his fist, saying: 'Go; why tarriest thou?' The Messias answered him: 'I indeed am going; but thou shalt tarry until I come'; thereby condemning him to live until the day of judgment. He lives forever, but at the end of every hundred years he falls into a fit or trance, on recovering from which he finds himself in the same state of youth in which he was when Jesus suffered, being then about thirty years ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... mothers wailed aloud, the children cried, and the tumult grew until Constantine heard it, where he sat lonely and wretched in his darkened room. He looked out of his window on the mournful sight in the courtyard, and was roused as from a trance, saying to himself: "O Divine Providence, who hast formed all men alike, lo! the poor man is born, lives, suffers, and dies, just as does the rich; to wise man and fool alike come sickness and health; and no man may avoid that fortune which Nature's law hath ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... a paroxysm of tears. He tried to tear the devil out of the pulpit rails. When he was not a teetotum he was a windmill. His pump position was the most appalling. Then he glared motionless at his admiring listeners, as if he had fallen into a trance with his arm upraised. The hurricane broke next moment. Nanny Sutie bore up under the shadow of the windmill—which would have been heavier had Auld Licht ministers worn gowns—but the pump affected her to tears. ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... "visions"—the word is ambiguous—or are they imaginative presentments of evil, as it thrusts itself on the soul, with all its allurements and all its ugliness? "Visions" in the sense that is associated with trance, we shall hardly call them. They are pictures showing his gift ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... General stopped suddenly, and the splendid claret and honey color of his cheeks went a dark shade more to claret. He had come to from his trance, and remembered me. "I don't know why I'm telling you all these details," he declared abruptly. "I suppose you're tired to death listening." His alert ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Nay, then 'tis time to stirre him fro[m] his trance: I pray awake sir: if you loue the Maide, Bend thoughts and wits to atcheeue her. Thus it stands: Her elder sister is so curst and shrew'd, That til the Father rid his hands of her, Master, your Loue must liue a maide at home, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... had all left, I still sat looking attentively at him, lost in astonishment and marvelling what would be the end of so singular and unheard-of a trance. Without the least warning, so suddenly that I was not a little startled, the full stream of life seemed to return upon him in an instant. It had been arrested as suddenly and for many hours—and now in a moment, before one could swallow one's spittle, it resumed its course ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... to him, telling him to prepare, that he had been chosen, and that further signs would come to him. He fell on his knees beside the bed and remained there in a trance until daylight. He had heard the voice of God, he had seen His light, he had been chosen as His servant. Some weeks later a second visitation came to him, similar to the first, but telling him that at the last hour of the present year God would come in His own person to save the world, and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... ever," said the young man, silencing her lips with his own, and in their trance of love the world seemed to reel away from under their feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells |
