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Magnetism   /mˈægnətˌɪzəm/   Listen
Magnetism

noun
1.
Attraction for iron; associated with electric currents as well as magnets; characterized by fields of force.  Synonyms: magnetic attraction, magnetic force.
2.
The branch of science that studies magnetism.  Synonym: magnetics.



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"Magnetism" Quotes from Famous Books



... Antiqua Sivalensis,' remained unfinished at the time of his death.), Colonel Sabine (The late Sir Edward Sabine, formerly President of the Royal Society, and author of a long series of memoirs on Terrestrial Magnetism.), and Dr. Robinson (The late Dr. Thomas Romney Robinson, of the Armagh Observatory.), and others. I never enjoyed a day more in my life. I missed having a look at H. Watson. (The late Hewett Cottrell Watson, author of the 'Cybele Britannica,' one of a most valuable series of works ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... or of families, no matter how just the resentment. Is it that affection finds out the ways of the heart, and we love to fall into them again? Does the phenomenon come within the province of the science of magnetism? Or is it reason that tells us that we must either forgive or never see each other again? Whether the cause be referred to mental, physical, or spiritual conditions, everyone knows the effect; every one has felt that the looks, the actions or gestures ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... of most of the Staff that they developed an interest in terrestrial magnetism. For one thing every man had carried boulders to the great stockade surrounding the Magnetograph House. Then, too, recorders were regularly needed to assist the magnetician in the absolute Hut. There, if the temperature were not too low and the observations ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... mysterious in her fascination he would have been appalled. He was of his day, and could not explain glibly the mysteries and marvels of personal attraction and repulsion, of will-power and dominion, by the easy word magnetism. He would have called it 'witchcraft, magic, devilry,' and he did later on, and trembled. But all this was only beginning when Wilhelmine sat listening to the silence that summer morning. A heavy footfall on the balcony without aroused her ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... and divination have exercised an influence not only (as at present) over the uneducated, but over the greatest minds, over kings and queens and wealthy people. Animal magnetism, one of the great sciences of antiquity, had its origin in occult philosophy; chemistry is the outcome of alchemy; phrenology and neurology are no less the fruit of similar studies. The first illustrious workers ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... body can move about its poles: the earth is a magnetic body, therefore, etc. The iron and its magnetism are typical of two natures in one person; so it is said, "Si exaltatus fuero a terra, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... ancient discipline, and he must needs try to please them and at the same time preserve the bond of union with the State Church,—the Lutheran,—of which, as his tenants, they were officially considered members. His tact and great personal magnetism at last healed the differences which had sprung up between the settlers, the opportune finding of Comenius' 'Ratio Disciplinae' enabled them with certainty to formulate rules that agreed with those of the ancient Unitas Fratrum, and a marked outpouring of the Holy Spirit at a Communion, August 13th, ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... help it? I had a feeling the first moment I saw you that you and I were destined to be friends. Is there not a certain mysterious something—call it magnetism or instinct—that either draws us toward or repels us from every person we meet in either a greater or less degree? With me this instinct is very strong, and I obey it implicitly, never in one instance having found it to fail. I know at once who ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... ago, it was the fashion to ridicule the idea of "love at first sight;" but those who think, not less than those who feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. Modern discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or magnetoesthetics, render it probable that the most natural, and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy—in a word, that the brightest and most enduring of the psychal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... a soul. He haunted her. She lay on her couch and stared wide-eyed at vacancy. The sound of his voice still rang in her ears. She wondered now why the memory of it was so unpleasant to her. And then she thought she knew that it was because the magnetism of his eyes was missing. His body was a mere shell covering an intricate piece of machinery. She tried to think what it must be like to be actuated by a mind without a soul. She had pledged herself obedience to this man, trusting ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... that Rosalind's engagement had had no power to shadow the radiance of his smile. Whatever he had suffered he had borne in secret, as his manner was, keeping a brave front to the world, and seeming to lift the burden of others by the very magnetism of his cheery presence. Peggy had driven to the station in the lowest possible stage of dejection, but she felt life worth living again, as Arthur pinched her arm in acknowledgment of a new coat, gave a dexterous little jerk to her elbow, which sent her parasol flying along ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... on Neptune were those which attracted widest notice, the work he subsequently performed in relation to gravitational astronomy and terrestrial magnetism was not less remarkable. Several of his most striking contributions to knowledge originated in the discovery of errors or fallacies in the work of his great predecessors in astronomy. Thus in 1852 he published new and accurate tables of the moon's parallax, which superseded J. K. Burckhardt's, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of musical temperament, of noble heart, of exalted purpose. Our visits were kept up bimonthly throughout one year. We would spent Saturday evening and Sunday together. Those visits revealed to me the magnetism, intensity, and tenderness of a friend. Truly, with us time and distance were almost completely obliterated from our consciousness. I say distance, for we would walk together. Tenderness suits the amiable and gentle in disposition, but ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... unmistakable ring of truth in her deep tones. And she was human. Clavering had begun to doubt it, notwithstanding her powerful disturbing magnetism. But was he falling in love with her? He was attracted, dazzled, and he still felt romantic. But love! In spite of his suspicions she seemed to move ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... so much influenced by his words, as the way he said them, for I knew by the look in his eyes when he told me his story, and by what I felt at the recital of it, that there was a strange intensity, a wonderful magnetism, in his presence. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... it, my boy," replied Mr. Middleton, entirely carried away by the powerful magnetism of Ishmael's ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... of light, what sunnie seed, What glance of day hast thou confined Into this bird? To all the breed This busie ray thou hast assigned; Their magnetism works all night, And dreams of Paradise ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell

... her now, he was gazing ahead with his blue eyes filled with light, and she saw that there was something far beyond the physical magnetism which drew her to him, and a pride and joy filled her. She would indeed be his helpmate in all his undertakings and striving for noble ends. They talked for some time of these things and their plans to aid in their fulfilment, and then they gradually spoke of Verisschenzko and ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... happy auspices, and on the 16th they stopped over at Geneva. From there Balzac sent his mother two samples of flannel which he had worn over his stomach. He wanted her to show them to M. Chapelain, a practitioner of medical magnetism, in order to consult him regarding a malady which he suspected that he had, and ask him where it was located and what treatment he should follow. Balzac was a believer in occult sciences, and once before, during the epidemic of cholera in 1832, he wrote ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... his touch, and he smiled at the unconscious dignity, the womanly reserve of the frank and friendly little lady. "Thus far and no farther," he thought, with the quick perception of character that was part of his power. But the Bishop was as unconscious as the child of his own charm, of the magnetism in him that drew hearts his way. Only once had it ever failed, and that was the only time he had cared. But this time it was working fast as they walked and talked together quietly, and when they reached the open door that led from the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... seems to cast a spell over the beholder, from the first; one can no more keep his eyes off it, when it is within one's range of vision, than he can keep from breathing. It draws one's attention to itself as irresistibly as though its magnetism were a living and breathing force exerted directly to that end. It is the subtlety of its unapproachable loveliness, commanding homage from all beholders, whether ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... a pulpit orator was assured by the charm of his voice, the magnetism of his manner. His head was singularly handsome, and often when he spoke his face was irradiated like that of a seraph, and the women of all his congregations adored him from the first glance, embarrassing him with their ardent praises. That he had ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... 12th, about twelve at night, died Mr. Zachariah Williams, in his eighty-third year, after an illness of eight months, in full possession of his mental faculties. He has been long known to philosophers and seamen for his skill in magnetism, and his proposal to ascertain the longitude by a peculiar system of the variation of the compass. He was a man of industry indefatigable, of conversation inoffensive, patient of adversity and disease, eminently sober, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... fallen greatly, once she was out from under the magnetism of the old cobbler's glistening eye. Mr. Sorber was such a big, determined, red-faced man! How could the little cobbler overcome such an opponent! He was another David against a ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... over her again, and she was ready to face the music, whatever tune it might play. So susceptible is the foolish spirit of mortal to those subtle, impalpable influences of atmosphere that we try to describe, in terms of inexact science, as personality, vibration, aura, magnetism. ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann

... in the branches that more immediately touched on his career. The physical laboratory was the best mounted in Italy. Bancalari, the professor of natural philosophy, was famous in his day; by what seems even an odd coincidence, he went deeply into electro-magnetism; and it was principally in that subject that Signor Flaminio, questioned in Latin and answering in Italian, passed his Master of Arts degree with first-class honours. That he had secured the notice of his teachers one circumstance sufficiently proves. A philosophical society was started ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mocks at us, and kills us—without our seeking to deepen the shadows that surround us. But where is the man who thinks he has lived that will deny woman's power over us? Has he ever taken leave of a beautiful dancer with trembling hands? Has he ever felt that indefinable enervating magnetism which, in the midst of the dance, under the influence of music, and the warmth, making all else seem cold, that comes from a young woman, electrifying her and leaping from her to him as the perfume of aloes ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... moment, strange to say, I almost fancied could follow him. The magnetism of his spirit imposed upon me, carried me away with him. Then sober reason told me that ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... in Mr. Mason no magnetism to attract young men, and I do not remember ever to have asked his advice or opinion. In this he presented a strong contrast to all the other Commissioners. Mr. Slidell was as old a man and as experienced in public affairs as Mr. Mason, but he was a genial companion even to ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse

... obligation to investigate Nature by the pure light of experiment"; it entered into scientific investigations with energy. Borelli in mathematics, Redi in natural history, and many others, enlarged the boundaries of knowledge. Heat, light, magnetism, electricity, projectiles, digestion, and the incompressibility of water were studied by the right method and with ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... be true," he said, at last, reluctantly. "I don't think you possess great animal magnetism! Yours is a more elusive, more—how shall I put it?—an attraction more spirituelle. . . . To those it touches, worse ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... neighborhood of an electrified body. As one remarkable instance we have the Leyden jar; and after the splendid experiments of Faraday in complete and final establishment of the substantial identity of magnetism and electricity, we may cite the magnet, both the natural and the electro-magnet, in neither of which it is possible to produce one kind of electricity by itself, or to charge one pole without charging an opposite pole with the contrary electricity at the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... hard to explain untechnically. But the long and the short of it is that when a current of electricity passes through a wire there's a lot of magnetism present round that wire; and if you put another wire parallel to, and within what we call its magnetic field—why then, the second wire will also become ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... group before him moved a muscle or dropped an eye as he advanced, but gazed upon him like persons under the influence of magnetism. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... now in its ninety-first edition. It consists of fourteen chapters, whose titles are as follows: "Science, Theology, Medicine," "Physiology," "Footsteps of Truth," "Creation," "Science of Being," "Christian Science and Spiritualism," "Marriage," "Animal Magnetism," "Some Objections Answered," "Prayer," "Atonement and Eucharist," "Christian Science Practice," "Teaching Christian Science," "Recapitulation." Key to the Scriptures, ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy

... MAGNETISM. A book and complete outfit of apparatus for sixty-one experiments. Weight 4 ounces. ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John

... very well as far as you would go, gentlemen," said the Colonel of the 23d. "The autopsy might explain the delirium of our unfortunate friend, but it would not account for the impression produced upon the young lady. Is it fascination, magnetism, or what?" ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... was soon followed by a succession of poets whose productions clearly revealed the magnetism of the English revival, and gave promise of the rise of that poetic art which we have seen reach its culmination in our own day. Richard H. Dana wrote the "Buccaneer"; Fitz-Greene Halleck, "Marco Bozarris"; Edgar A. Poe "The Raven"; the painter Allston turned easily from brush to ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... delusions, but to make a study of human nature under certain modern conditions. In one age men cure diseases by potable gold and strengthen their faith by a belief in witches, in another they substitute animal magnetism and adventism. Within the memory of those of us who are not yet old, the religious fervor of millenarianism and the imitation science of curative mesmerism gave way to spirit-rappings and clairvoyant medical treatment. Now spiritism ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... there, for the first time, saw La Fontaine's Fables. It was a cheap copy, adorned with some two hundred woodcuts, which, by their worn appearance, betokened an extensive manufacture. I became a purchaser, and gave the book to my little boy, then just beginning to feel the intellectual magnetism of pictures. In the course of the next year, he frequently tasked my imperfect knowledge of French for the story which belonged to some favourite vignette. This led me to inquire whether any English version existed; and, not finding ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... combination of a permanent magnet and an electromagnet which is connected to the alternating current supply. During half of the alternating current cycle, the alternating current flowing through the winding of the electromagnet magnetizes the electromagnet so that it strengthens the magnetism of the permanent magnet, thus causing the vibrator arm to be drawn against the magnet. The vibrator arm carries a contact which touches a stationary contact point when the arm is drawn against the magnet, ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... a hiccup than a "How do you do?" I saw Peter use his eyes like grappling irons on the camera-eyes of Mr. Moyle. Then his magnetism, like a band of pirates, swarmed aboard of the other's mentality. He put out his hand and shook the hand of the man, whether Camera eyed Dick wished to shake hands or not, and with that shake, the lamp seemed suddenly to be snatched away from ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... through which they will be drawn up to God. "If the Spirit that raised up Jesus dwell in you" (Rom. 11: 9), is the great condition of final quickening. As the magnet attracts the particles of iron and attaches them to itself by first imparting its own magnetism to them, so Christ, having given his Spirit to his own, will draw them to himself through the Spirit. We are not questioning now that all who have eternal life dwelling in them will share in the redemption of the body; we are simply entering ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... handicapper: He will not give us everything. I have never met a woman of supreme beauty with more than a mediocre intellect, by which I do not mean intelligence. There may be some, but I am only writing my own life, and I have not met them. A person of magnetism, temperament and quick intelligence may have neither intellect nor character. I have known one man whose genius lay in his rapid and sensitive understanding, real wit, amazing charm and apparent candour, But whose ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... that his tone and manner were saturated with a feeling of reality. He actually thought himself the mariner,—so I am persuaded,—while he was reading. As the poem proceeded, and we plunged deeper and deeper into its mystic horrors, the actual world receded into a dim, indefinable distance. The magnetism of this marvellous interpreter had caught up himself, and me with him, into Dreamland, from which we gently descended at the end of Part VI., and "the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... never obtained commercially, the metal always being mixed with various proportions of carbon, silicon, sulphur, phosphorus, and other elements, making it more or less suitable for different purposes. Iron is magnetic to the extent that it is attracted by magnets, but it does not retain magnetism itself, as does steel. Iron forms, with other elements, many important combinations, such as ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly

... modern researches are accurate) in the stories he tells of his own success in Hypnotism, as it is called now, Mesmerism or Magnetism as it was called then. Who was likely to possess these powers, if not this good-humoured natural force? "I believe that, by aid of magnetism, a bad man might do much mischief. I doubt whether, by help of magnetism, a good man can do the slightest ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... and power, than this. Her business being to obtain votes for the right side, she addressed herself to that end with singular adaptation. But when we add to this lawyerlike comprehension of the necessities of the case, her earnestness, enthusiasm, and personal magnetism, we account for the effect she produced on that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... short absence on account of my Florida debility, which had reduced me to 120 pounds in weight, I began to pursue physics into its more secret depths. I even indulged the ambition to work out the mathematical interpretation of all the phenomena of physical science, including electricity and magnetism. After three years of hard labor in this direction, I thought I could venture to publish a part of my work in book form, and thus submit it to the judgment of the able scientists whose acquaintance I had made at the meetings of the American ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... falter save possibly for brief moments during the gloomy summer of 1864. The people who gave their unreserved support to Lincoln were endued with intelligence and common sense; not attracted by any personal magnetism of the man, they had, by a process of homely reasoning, attained their convictions and from these they were not to be shaken. This is the safety of a dictatorship as long as the same intelligence obtains among ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... hear what you say about parallelism: I am an utter disbeliever of any parallelism more than mere accident. It is very strange, but I think Forbes is often rather fanciful; his "Polarity" (36/2. See Letter 41, Note.) makes me sick—it is like "magnetism" ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... excited town of Nuremberg, he was sent to be educated by and live with a schoolmaster named Daumer, and was studied by Feuerbach. They found, in Kaspar, a splendid example of the 'sensitive,' and a noble proof of the powers of 'animal magnetism.' In Germany, at this time, much was talked and written about 'somnambulism' (the hypnotic state), and about a kind of 'animal magnetism' which, in accordance with Mesmer's theory, was supposed to pass between stars, metals, magnets, and human beings. The effects produced on the patient ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... with the history of animal magnetism during the present century know that it has nobly fulfilled its mission as a system of therapeutics, by alleviating or curing all forms of disease of both body and mind. That which cures bodily diseases and sometimes overcomes insanity has certainly power ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... a fact that very few doctors know, that the whole nervous system can only be fed by the lymph, whose central station is the so-called ductus thoracicus (thoracic duct), in the upper region of the chest. As there is no pulsation or magnetism connected with the same, the body must lie down and rest at night. Then and only then is the system enabled to feed all the nerve centers, especially through the influence of the sympathetic nerve system, which may be said to work in the form of a relay station, through its inherent ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... "Negative. This has less than no self-induction. It feeds back to instead of fighting an applied current. Put any current in it, and it feeds back to increase the magnetism until it reaches saturation. Then it starts to lose its magnetism and that feeds back a counter-emf which increases the demagnetizing current until it's saturated with opposite polarity. You get an alternating magnet, which doesn't evolve heat because of its magnetic instability, but absorbs heat ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... is all my wife's fault. She dreamed Don Carlos had returned to Spain; she believes in dreams. It is magnetism, she says, and when she dreams a thing it is sure to happen, she assures me. On this conviction I allow her to speculate, she having her bank and her stockbroker; she speculated and lost. It is true she speculates ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... ease in holding the attention of children is, for teachers, a sufficient practical reason for telling stories rather than reading them. It is incomparably easier to make the necessary exertion of "magnetism," or whatever it may be called, when nothing else distracts the attention. One's eyes meet the children's gaze naturally and constantly; one's expression responds to and initiates theirs without effort; the connection is immediate. For the ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... day out of her course. We first find it in Ptolemy (vii. 2) whose Maniolai Islands, of India extra Gangem, cause iron nails to fly out of ships, the effect of the Lapis Herculeus (Loadstone). Rabelais (v. c. 37) alludes to it and to the vulgar idea of magnetism being counteracted by Skordon (Scordon or garlic). Hence too the Adamant (Loadstone) Mountains of Mandeville (chaps. xxvii.) and the "Magnetic Rock" in Mr Puttock's clever "Peter Wilkins." I presume ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... the negative virtues that belong to apathetic classes, such as patience, endurance, self-sacrifice, exhausting the brain-forces, ever giving, asking nothing in return; the other, the outgrowth of the two supreme powers in nature, the positive and negative magnetism, the centrifugal and centripetal forces, the masculine and feminine elements, possessing the divine power of creation, in the universe of thought and action. Two pure souls fused into one by an impassioned love—friends, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in spite of Slocum's exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation in his story. He did not share the man's superstition, although he was not a skeptic regarding magnetism. Yet even then, the widow's action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger. A day or two later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he saw her lithe, graceful, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... of life, vitality, as an entity—a fact as real as electricity or light, though it may be only a mode of motion. It may be of physico-chemical origin, as much so as heat, or light; and yet it is something as distinctive as they are among material things, and is involved in the same mystery. Is magnetism or gravitation a real thing? or, in the moral world, is love, charity, or consciousness itself? The world seems to be run by nonentities. Heat, light, life, seem nonentities. That which organizes the different parts or organs of ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... wizard of words Nature may have made him; no matter that he has the dark art of making the worse appear the better reason; no matter that his golden voice is like music, and his very appearance pleasantly thrills you with the strange and subtle magnetism of the man: if he have not ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... as I got my fingers between the pouting lips of her vermilion slit, working them gently so as gradually to again rouse all the lubricity of her nature. Within a couple of minutes a flood of sperm rewarded my efforts to please her, and she gasped in ecstasy: "What a boy you are! There is such a magnetism in your touch, I came directly. In fact, the idea of possessing you, my lovely boy, makes me spend continuously. I even kept coming in the short sleep I have just had, and when I awoke your precious prick was still standing hard in my hand; you ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous

... and wives never came to her with their heartaches and confided to her their troubles. Little children either shrank from her or grew quiet in her presence. What was missing from her life was the magnetism of love. She had become so absorbed in herself that she forgot everybody else and thought more of her rights than her duties. The difference between Mrs. Lasette and Mrs. Larkins was this, that in passing through life ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... his generation. In his "reply," lies a world of meaning—one of the answers to the old question of the reason for personal antipathies and attractions, and may perhaps be said, in this case, to touch upon animal magnetism. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... the abysses of personality—human or super-human—every new original work of art draws us, by an irresistible magnetism, into itself, until we are compelled to become what it is, until we are actually transformed into ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... swallowed passes into the head, and another has his head cut off and replaced every night. One thinks himself a child, and talks and acts like a child. Many appear as if constantly intoxicated. One has the gift of tongues, another deals in magic, several in animal magnetism. One thinks he is a white polar bear. A number have hallucinations of sight, others of hearing. One repeats whatever is said to him, another repeats constantly words of the same sound, as door, floor. One is pursued by the sheriff, many by the devil. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... fasting and conjurations. After the pipe, which precedes all important councils, the medicine-men sat down opposite to each other, a few feet apart. The trial of power seems to have been conducted on principles of animal magnetism, and lasted a long while without decided advantage on either side; until the Black Snake, concentrating all his power, or "gathering his medicine," in a loud voice commanded his opponent to die. The unfortunate conjurer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... the centre of his group, large or small according to his magnetism and eloquence, stood the park 'shouter,' airing his special grievance, playing his special part, preaching his special creed, pleading his special cause,—anything, probably, for the sake of shouting. We were plainly ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and published, of a National Convention are always interesting, but lose much of the impression and force of actuality with which an auditor and spectator is affected. The gayety and magnetism of numbers, the scintillations of brain in special advocacy, followed by tumultuous accord. The intensity, the anxiety depicted, while results far-reaching and momentous are pending, furnish a scene vivid and striking that cannot be pictured. ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... rather infrequent, not from waning friendship, but rather because their mutual interests had drifted apart. Their relations were too firmly established to need the aid of correspondence, and each knew that when they met again they would resume their old ways. In the sympathetic magnetism of personal presence confidences would be given that they would naturally hesitate to write ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... seemed to have been acting upon the girl like magnetism, for tho the look of wild suffering had not left her face, she had raised herself and was staring into his burning eyes; then suddenly, with an effort that shook her frame she clenched her hands and gave a gasp for breath, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... Regor,—and Thord felt a warm glow of contentment in the consciousness that these lately enrolled members of the Revolutionary Committee were so far faithful to their bond. Signed and sealed in the blood of Lotys, they had responded to the magnetism of her name with the prompt obedience of waves rising to the influence of the moon,—and Sergius, full of a thousand wild schemes for the regeneration of the People, was more happy to know them as subjects to her power, than as adherents to his own cause. He was calmly cognisant of the presence ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... to me. Abuse is not argument. Neither is silly mockery. I console myself with the thought that men have laughed at the theory of the earth going round, and at vaccination, and lightning rods, and magnetism, and daguerreotypes, and steamboats, and cars, and telephones, and at the theory of the circulation of the blood, and at wireless telegraphy, and at flying in the air. So your gibing is forgivable. But—I'm very, very much disappointed, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... Ney of the South, to go forward with all his forces. Only Longstreet demurred and protested against the charge. When Pickett asked him for the order to advance he turned away his head sorrowfully and would not speak. Then Pickett, that great leader of men, who was one half daring and one half magnetism and all hero, said proudly: "I shall go forward, sir." And turned ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... begun to tingle, and in a few moments more it might have been too late to make peace with these proud and self-respecting people, who had never submitted to indignity. But in the space of six seconds the magnetism of the Cherub had begun to do its work. He murmured, nodded, and smiled, took the family into his confidence with a few graphic gestures, explained that the ladies were upset by an accident, appealed to the landlord's chivalry, and the landlady's heart. Gathering ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... astonish the vulgar, and to confound the wisdom of the wise. Under that ordinance, our four millions of negroes are as unalterably bound to obey the white man's will, as the four satellites of Jupiter the superior magnetism of that planet. If individual masters, by releasing individual negroes from the power of their will, can not make them free or release them from subordination to the instinctive public sentiment or will of the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... spent at Caldera was employed in surveying the bay, and in obtaining observations for its geographical position, and for magnetism. The flood tide sets to the northward and westward, through the straits, and the ebb to the eastward. In the bay we found it to run two miles an hour by the log, but it must be much ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... Asolo and Venice appear in 'Pippa Passes' and 'In a Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's subsequent vexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; and the magnetism which Asolo was to exercise upon him, only fully asserted itself ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... you could get on friendly—or at least on talking terms with the fellow," he said, at last. "You seem to have a sort of genius for establishing relations with people—seempathy, I suppose, or animal magnetism, or youthful vitality, or something. I ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... for the lovers of marvels and of mysteries. It contains an immense collection of anecdotes of spectral apparitions, of illusions of vision or of hearing, of striking phenomena exhibited in dreams, in insanity, in trance, or in magnetism, and furnishes many very valuable hints to aid in the solution of these mysteries, by which so many have been bewildered or affrighted. It is written in a style of great ease and elegance, and can not fail to find a very ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. After studying for many years the real or alleged phenomena of what has been called mesmerism, or electro-biology, or hypnotism, Dr. Gregory published in 1851 his Letters to a Candid Inquirer on Animal Magnetism. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... of only too many of the fairest and best of both sexes. Labor, study, and research in America, Europe, and Eastern lands, have resulted in the Magnetic Lung Protector, affording cure for Catarrh, a remedy which contains No Drugging of the System, and with the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the afflicted organs; MUST RESTORE THEM TO A HEALTHY ACTION. WE PLACE OUR PRICE for this Appliance at less than one-twentieth of the price asked by others for remedies upon which you take all the chances, and WE ESPECIALLY INVITE ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... at his giving of thanks if his own feelings have a touch of fire, than they would to that of a more perfunctory parson whom they liked better. As is the heartiness of the priest, so is the heartiness of the people—with such strictness that one is disposed almost to credit some of it to actual magnetism. Response is no ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the most reesentful outfit I'm ever inveigled into tryin' to give a show to. I certainly has no thought of rubbin' wrong-ways the pop'lar bristles. All I aims at is to give a exhibition of anamile magnetism, cure what halt an' blind—if any—is cripplin' an' moonin' about, c'llect my dinero an' peacefully hit the trail. An' yet it looks like a ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... no fault in kine, etc., and kine are like fire etc. The Hindu idea is that kine are cleansing or sanctifying. The Rishis discovered that the magnetism of the cow is something that is possessed of extraordinary virtues. Give the same kind of food to a cow and a horse. The horse-dung emits an unhealthy stench, while the cowdung is an efficacious ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... much a part of the rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little patients. They are put to shifts for room, like passengers on board ship. The dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not by self-interest, but by their own magnetism and that of their cause) sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has his ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... principle so as to produce, in some more perfect mechanism, his force and his ideas? I think so. Man is a retort. In my judgment, the brain of an idiot contains too little phosphorous or other product of electro-magnetism, that of a madman too much; the brain of an ordinary man has but little, while that of a man of genius is saturated to its due degree. The man constantly in love, the street-porter, the dancer, the large eater, are the ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... Friederike, appears as a vision of rustic grace and modest maidenhood. In the midst of this circle moves the richly-gifted youth, laying under a spell father, daughters, and all who come within the magnetism of his presence. In no other situation, indeed, are the attractive sides of Goethe's character so strikingly manifest as in his intercourse with the Sesenheim family and the friendly group attached to them. It is without a touch of ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... "there being in truth," as Evelyn says, "no compost or laetation whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... Caesar" is one which brings out the meanness and magnetism of Cassius, and emphasizes the mistaken patriotism of Brutus. It is full of pathos, duplicity, assassination, treachery, erroneous loyalty, suicide, hypocrisy, and all the intrigue, jealousy, cowardice and deviltry which characterized the politics of fifty years B. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... importance to that community, which had sacrificed all worldly advantages to what it believed to be obedience to the Word of God—at once knit together their church in closer relations, and drew to it others from the outside, attracted by the magnetism of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... smaller or large arc of the circle, in response to my mental intention of concentrating a smaller or larger degree of force upon it. Perhaps you will say that the difference in the movement of the needle depended on the quantity of magnetism that was flowing from me, to say nothing of other known forces, such as heat, light, electricity, etc. Well, that is precisely the proposition I am putting forward. What caused the difference in the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... that no one of the many pictures of Mr. Webster gives a true idea of what he was. We can readily believe this when we read the descriptions which have come down to us. That indefinable quality which we call personal magnetism, the power of impressing by one's personality every human being who comes near, was at its height in Mr. Webster. He never, for instance, punished his children, but when they did wrong he would send for them and look at ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... chief charm. Her eyes were good and her mouth, with its small, even, teeth, attractive, but she would have laughed if anybody had called her beautiful. She sometimes doubted if she were even pretty. Yet few men had met her and remained entirely undisturbed. She had a magnetism. One hapless youth, who had laid his heart at her feet and had been commanded to pick it up again, had endeavored subsequently to explain her attraction (to a bosom friend over a mournful bottle of the best in the club smoking-room) ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... read Professor Gregory's "Letters on Animal Magnetism" and the "Manual of Psychometry," published in Boston, he might make a new departure, might understand the vast extent of his own powers, which he has not yet developed, and show to those whom he has already astonished that there is much more in the mysteries of earth and heaven than their ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... on a whining breeze; and she did not court to win him, she flew. In his more reflective hour the attractiveness of that lady which held the mirror to his features was paramount. But he had passionate snatches when the magnetism of the flyer drew him in her wake. Further to add to the complexity, he loved his liberty; he was princelier free; he had more subjects, more slaves; he ruled arrogantly in the world of women; he was more himself. His metropolitan ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of civilisation engendering the magnetism they find so trying, had, however, by the date with which we are now dealing—the fourteenth century—already given rise to a very general movement towards Thibet on the part of the previously dissociated occultists. Far more widely ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... treat the crab with a feeling of real liking for the human nature inside, and don't be discouraged by his shell. Be more than ordinarily likable when you have to deal with a surly prospect. Exert all the magnetism you have. He will feel drawn to you. You will ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... "Electricity, magnetism, the sun and the intense cold; no one knows exactly what produces it," replied Amos Henderson. "It is quite likely that there is some opening to this cave, and the sun shines in it, or the lights ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood

... true account of the magnetism which poured forth from this remarkable man as he spoke: this well-dressed, foppish apostle of the greatest love that man has ever known. And as he spoke the whole story of his own great, true love for the woman who once had so deeply ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... began that Florentine career which ended with his martyrdom in 1498. He had preached in Florence eight years earlier, but on that occasion he passed unnoticed through the crowd. Now he took the whole city by storm. Obeying the magic of his eloquence and the magnetism of his personality, her citizens accepted this Dominican friar as their political leader and moral reformer, when events brought about the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. Michelangelo was one of his constant listeners at S. Marco and in the Duomo. He witnessed ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... accord with institutions, suits our meditative mood, sustains us with a sound philosophy, and braces us by healthy contact with the Nature he so dearly loved. But in Wordsworth there is none of Shelley's magnetism. $What remains of permanent value in Coleridge's poetry—such work as "Christabel", the "Ancient Mariner", or "Kubla Khan"—is a product of pure artistic fancy, tempered by the author's mysticism. Keats, true and sacred poet as he was, loved Nature with a ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... are working diligently at many interesting branches of physical science: magneto and muscular electricity, dia-magnetism, vegetable and animal physiology: Matteucci in Italy, Bois-Reymond, Weber, Reichenbach, and Dove in Germany. The two maps of isothermal lines for every month in the year, lately published by the last-mentioned savant, are remarkable and most valuable proofs of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... wonder that all the old ladies loved him? And it was no special court to old ladies. He talked so to school-boys, and to shy people who had just poked their heads out of their shells, and to all the awkward people, and to all the gay and easy people. And so he compelled them, by his magnetism, to talk so to him. That was the way he made his first friends,—and that was the way, I think, that he ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale

... needlessly. Prudence he had, but no fear. His resolution to lead the charge at the Bloody Angle—rashness at once—shows fearlessness. Tender-hearted as he was, Lee felt battle frenzy as hardly another great commander ever did. From him it spread like magnetism to his officers and men, thrilling all as if the chief himself were close by in the fray, shouting, "Now fight, my good fellows, fight!" Yet such was Lee's self-command that this ardor ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... Fyfe if he were thrown much in her way. There was something about him that she resented. The difference between him and the rest of the rude crew among which she must perforce live was a question of degree, not of kind. There was certainly some compelling magnetism about the man. But along with it went what she considered an almost brutal directness of speech and action. Part of this conclusion came from hearsay, part from observation, limited though her opportunities had been for the latter. Miss Stella Benton, for all her poise, was not above ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... position—and your money! Rich and brilliant clergymen aren't so common, Donald Brown. And your personality, your magnetism! Men care for you. Women have ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... tour—where was the great new Party? He had hoped to have five hundred thousand men at his back, but they had come in by beggarly hundreds. There was even talk of an insurance bonus to attract them. Lassalle had exaggerated both the magnetism of his personality and the intelligence and discontent of the masses. His masterful imagination had made the outer world a mere reflection of his inner world. Even in those early days, when he was scarcely known, and that favorably rather than otherwise, he had imagined himself ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Acetate of Morphia. 31, Cure of Urinary Calculi, by means of the internal use of the Bicarbonate of Soda. 32, Attempt to cure Abdominal Dropsy by exciting Peritoneal Inflammation. 33, Artificial Respiration. 34, Secale Cornutum. 35, Animal Magnetism. 36, Sketch of the Medical Literature of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. 37, Erysipelatous Mumps or Angina Parotidiana. 38, Taenia. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... tinder—ten thousand hearts have been prepared for it—swift as a flash of lightning a sympathetic current passes through the whole throng—ten thousand lips take up the cry. They are all carried away by contagion, magnetism, or madness, and a shout goes up enough to rend the sky. When some great and noble sentiment has laid hold of them, the shout of a people is one of the grandest things on earth; when it is some awful prejudice, unreasoning ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... faculties and feelings, and the profound sleep that falls on the young girl. Perhaps Shakspeare knew this, though his commentators, old and new, seem not to have done so; and without a professed faith, such as some of us moderns indulge in, in the mysteries of magnetism, perhaps he believed enough in the magnetic force of the superior physical as well as mental power of Prospero's nature over the nervous, sensitive, irritable female organization of his child to account for the "I know thou canst not choose" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... they do not hesitate to cut down even large trees to get at the nests. The Mexicans shoot them because their plumage is thought to be beneficial to health. It is held close to the ears and the head in order to impart its supposed magnetism and keep out the maleficent effects of the wind. In the pairing season these birds keep up a chattering noise, which to my ears was far from disagreeable, but very irritating to a Mexican whom I employed. He used to shoot the birds because ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... compass, appears in a letter written by Peter Adsiger, in the year 1269. This letter is preserved among the manuscripts of the university of Leyden; extracts from it are given by Cavallo, in the second edition of his Treatise on Magnetism. From these extracts it is evident that he was acquainted with the attraction, repulsion, and polarity of the magnet, the art of communicating those properties to iron, the variation of the magnetic needle; and there are even some indications that he was acquainted ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... Mrs. Gladstone and in a spirit of spontaneous courtesy bent over her hand and kissed it with an air of sympathy so great as to be beyond the expression of words. It was little acts such as this that won unstinted liking for the man as well as loyalty to the King. It was this magnetism of the kindly heart, this instinctive courtesy of character, coupled with a remarkable dignity of bearing at the right moment and in the right place, and a rare memory for faces and incidents and peoples and places, that made King Edward so truly the Sovereign of his people. ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... them all—as never subject to prejudice, or the impulse of passion, never losing that perfect poise which it has been impossible for the greatest of men to achieve—as possessed of a mysterious magnetism which carried conviction to His hearers even when claiming to be one with the Infinite—as inspiring thousands with a love which has led them to give their lives for ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... upon him that his position had undergone a change. Difficult to define it; to an ordinary bystander people would have seemed to welcome him cordially as ever. The gradations of respect in polite society are so exquisitely delicate, that it seems only by a sort of magnetism that one knows from day to day whether one has risen or declined. A man has lost high office, patronage, power, never perhaps to regain them. People don't turn their backs on him; their smiles are as gracious, their hands as flatteringly extended. But that man would be dull ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Magnetism" :   attractive force, geophysical science, geophysics, attractive, attraction



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