"Trance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ansthesia, analgesia, catalepsy, and every kind of susceptibility to suggestion. Here it is not these but other phenomena we expect to observe. Therefore it would be well to know of what kind are the phenomena we ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... own eager shout in the heat of my trance, How oft it awakes me from dreams full of glory, When I meant to have leap'd on the hero of France, And have dash'd him to earth ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... of your American mediums, he would be seized by a controlling power,—would snatch a pencil, and dash out upon paper the wildest discords. These we would play for him, at his request, from morning till night,—during much of which time he would seem to be in a happy trance. Of this music no chord or melody was true; they were jangling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... like one in a trance. He loved music, and understood it passing well. He had heard all the rare voices which Paris prided itself in the possession of, but he thought he had never known what music was till now. His heart throbbed in sympathy with every inflection of the voice of Amelie, which went ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... on the phenomena at Hydesville; for since then we have had many additional phenomena, as the varied physical phases, materialisation, slate-writing and drawing, painting, levitation, passing of matter through matter, trance-speaking, clairvoyance, psychometric reading, and numerous other modes of communicating with the spirit world. The correspondent says: William H. Hyde, who recently found the arm and leg bones of a human being at the old Fox homestead, ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... pages. A few moments, while its meaning seemed to seep into his slow-acting mind, and then a look of helpless bewilderment, as though the stolid Freshman just could not understand at all, came to his face; a minute John Thorwald stood, as in a trance, staring dully ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... light gave a foreboding look to Paris; like a pretty woman, the city has mysterious fits of ugliness or beauty. So the outer world seemed to be in a plot to steep this man about to die in a painful trance. A prey to the maleficent power which acts relaxingly upon us by the fluid circulating through our nerves, his whole frame seemed gradually to experience a dissolving process. He felt the anguish of these throes passing through him in waves, and the houses ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Blackmail! Toward a man who is a spy—a man who plots against the physical and moral fiber of your country! Blackmail! Come out of your trance. There are some things that can't be done, Ern! Life's full of forbidden trails. My temper was one of them and poor old Dick's drinking was another. And the one most impossible of all for a real man to take is the one you're headed toward—a real man ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... fell into a trance; the slaves made their cries; in short, there was that stir amongst them, that one would have thought they had heard the "blast of consternation from the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... band could keep presence of mind to go on playing the "Merry Widow," instead of stopping short with a gasp and crash of instruments, to start again with the "Tango Trance," ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... caught this vast Aeolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... how, overcome, they fell at last into a deathlike trance and stupor, till the sunlight woke them lying on the heathery hillside, ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... my advice, you'll get back at once to your bungalow and strip off that wet sleeping-suit," I bluntly counseled him, but I might as well have argued with a man in a trance. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pies de aquella imagen Lo jures como cristiano Del santo Cristo delante." Vacilo un punto Martinez, 20 Mas porfiando que jurase, Llevole Ines hacia el templo Que en medio la vega yace. Enclavado en un madero, En duro y postrero trance, 25 Cenida la sien de espinas, Descolorido el semblante, Viase alli un crucifijo Tenido de negra sangre, A quien Toledo devota page 96 Acude hoy en sus azares. Ante sus plantas divinas Llegaron ambos amantes, Y haciendo Ines que Martinez 5 ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... continuation of those of the embassy. Between two high, ivy-covered walls, connected by imposing stone arches, the coupe flew like an arrow, announced by two strokes of a clanging bell, which aroused Jenkins from the trance in which the perusal of his newspaper seemed to have plunged him. Then the wheels rolled less noisily over the gravel of a vast courtyard and stopped, after a graceful sweep, at the front steps, above ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... when the individual feels himself invaded by it is memorable. By the necessity of our constitution a certain enthusiasm attends the individual's consciousness of that divine presence. The character and duration of this enthusiasm varies with the state of the individual, from an ecstasy and trance and prophetic inspiration,—which is its rarer appearance,—to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it warms, like our household fires, all the families and associations of men, and makes society possible. A certain tendency to insanity ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... great Enemy of Mankind is filled with such Incidents as are very apt to raise and terrifie the Readers Imagination. Of this nature, in the Book now before us, is his being the first that awakens out of the general Trance, with his Posture on the burning Lake, his rising from it, and the Description of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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 trials lie ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... dance is to work up the dancer to a state of trance, in which he receives a revelation in regard to the ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... had seen a girl on the verge of hysteria, swore deep and long under his breath, staring as if in a trance. He came to himself only when the water overflowed the manhole, and he let go of the spout with a carelessness that earned him a wetting as it lifted, ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... clear and joyful note of colour in some figures standing before a door on the right! And how much better we recognise his sweet spirit in the features of the blest, with their clear eyes whose pupils are fixed trance-like under lightly drawn eyebrows."[34] ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... forward, he glanced from side to side with thoughtful yet mournful looks, as if his mind were engaged in meditating on some such insoluble problems. As he neared the head of the valley, however, he seemed to awake from a trance, suddenly put spurs to his mule, and went off at a canter. The rest of the party followed at some distance behind, but at so slow a pace, compared with that of the guide, that the latter was soon lost to sight ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 not rise for ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... moment the instinct of self-preservation startled me out of my trance, and I moved at last. There was just room for me to roll myself sideways off the bed. As I dropped noiselessly to the floor, the edge of the murderous canopy touched me on ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... that, whether merely for entertainment or for war, the dance was enough to scarce a civilized person into a trance, when Capt. Pipe suddenly clapped his hands and, as the music ceased, stepped forward and spoke. All the other speeches had been made in the Delaware tongue, but the first man of the tribe now spoke partly in English. This was for the purpose of giving them to understand just what was going on, ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... My trance was broken by the voice of the brakeman shouting, "Thunderkill," into the car, as the train drew up at a wooden station-house. Jumping out, I asked the way to General Van Bummel's. A man with a whip in his hand offered his services as guide and common carrier. I determined to experience a new sensation,—for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the soft, terraqueous chaunt I hear In choral, and the nuptial planet-dance I mark. With puissant sceptre o'er each sphere, Life thrones in music and in wonder's trance. Hail! vessels solar and terrestrial, hail! Whose prows shall cross the dim, celestial bars With helm sidereal and cloudy sail, Bannered with youth and lanterned with the stars. What fates for ballast? by what voices grim And laughters urged, your astral course I mark,— Warped to what ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... corner where the stone-wall lay hidden under a wilderness of cinnamon rosebushes and blackberry vines,—Rosa Tolman, dressed in white pique, with a great leghorn hat over her curls. The girl came hurrying up the path, with a rustle of starched petticoats, and still Dilly kept her trance-like posture. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... extraordinary mental condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the prophets in the olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the Scriptures, however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures were the expression of a people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences. Granting ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... apprehensive feet, and recognizing Mrs. Sumfit outside the door of Dahlia's room, embraced her, and heard her say that Dahlia had turned the key, and had been crying from mornings to nights. "It can't last," Mrs. Sumfit sobbed: "lonesome hysterics, they's death to come. She's falling into the trance. I'll go, for the sight ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... constant privations, fastings, continual prayer, flagellation, and introspection, they spent their lives. These ascetic individuals by these means were enabled to enter what may be called a "theologic trance" and their subsequent hallucinations, illusions, and delusions gave to them what they deemed to be a transcendental insight into the construction of the universe and what was expected between "fallen" ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... moon-light, fragrant with dew-wet roses and jasmine, harmonious with the clear tinkle of mandolin and guitar. Then a lethargy, like unto that which steeps the senses, and benumbs the faculties of the lotus-eaters, enveloped her brain, and she lay as one in a trance,—awake, yet sleeping; ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... religious mystics report.[8] These are each and all of them special cases of kinds of human experience of much wider scope. Religious melancholy, whatever peculiarities it may have qua religious, is at any rate melancholy. Religious happiness is happiness. Religious trance is trance. And the moment we renounce the absurd notion that a thing is exploded away as soon as it is classed with others, or its origin is shown; the moment we agree to stand by experimental results and inner quality, in judging of values—who does not see that we are ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... moment Keith was too overcome to speak. Then he became hysterical with joy. The rest of the school day passed in a trance. He ran a good part of the way home. Arrived there, he almost forgot to give his mother and Granny the inevitable kiss of greeting. And he might even have refused to be bothered by such a thing but for his fear of being put under some discipline that ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... 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 ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... standing like one in a trance, from which this address roused him, and he grasped Ormiston's ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... that had already fallen upon her lips and cooled them with bitter water, and hiding her head under the broad, fresh leaves of a calla that bent its marble cups above her knitted brow and loosened hair, she lay in deathlike trance, till the Fairy Anima swept her feet with fringed garments, and cast the serpent wand writhing and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... when he interpreted the true mind of God, he was wont to say this of himself: "He hath said, which heard the words of God and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." (67) Further, after he had blessed the Hebrews by the command of God, he began (as was his custom) to prophesy to other nations, and to predict their future; all of which abundantly ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... this situation of mind when Mr. Falkland sent for me. His message roused me from my trance. In recovering, I felt those sickening and loathsome sensations, which a man may be supposed at first to endure who should return from the sleep of death. Gradually I recovered the power of arranging my ideas and directing ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Plans were made of the wedding date and elaborate ceremony. The village Luga had never witnessed yet a marriage ceremony of this magnitude. The American bride was like a fairy princess of some ancient times. Petka was like one in a trance. But Vasska, the blacksmith, opposed to the idea of such a strange marriage, pounded his hand against the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... heard, and as they heard His words prophetic made them fear the more. But worse remained; for as on Pindus' slopes Possessed with fury from the Theban god Speeds some Bacchante, thus in Roman streets Behold a matron run, who, in her trance, Relieves her bosom ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... spring-time. Later on they came to a place where the brook fled faster, sparkling brightly in the sunlight over its shallow bed of pebbles; it was only her runaway caroling that could keep pace with that, and so her glee mounted higher, the young man at her side half in a trance, watching her laughing face and drinking in the sound of ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... passive, his cheek had become white, his forehead still knit. 'Axworthy!' he said, still as in a trance. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resolutely from his trance of thought, and began to walk back along the line. All the same, he would go up to Lake Louise, as he had promised, on the following morning. As far as his own intention was concerned, he would not cease to look after Lady Merton and her brother; Philip Gaddesden ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Malcolm thought she looked rather grave when she returned, as though something troubled her, but she would not hear of the party breaking up, and promised Malcolm that she would sing all his favourite songs to his friends, and she kept her word. Malcolm sat in a trance of beatitude while the beautiful voice floated out into the darkness, startling some night-bird in the copse; and Verity's eyes were wet, and she stole closer to her husband, for it seemed to her as though the shadows from the old life were creeping round her; ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Julia hung back a moment, but Mrs. Abigail, who had recovered from her tenth trance, and had been for some time engaged in an active search for Julia, now pounced upon her, and bore her off, before she had time to think, to the place of ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... more of it into words. She closed her arms about me again, and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light wind that had arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a trance of still delight. It told me the secret of the woods, and the flowers, and the birds. At one time I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests, over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things—I had almost said creatures, and finding new ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... him, half in a trance, and as if she did not hear; she did not know whither he went, nor what he did, nor anything that passed, until, as it seemed, after a long while, she looked up, and saw Prince Ludwig standing before her. He was composed and calm, but it seemed as if half the life had ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... it together and hung it to the frame of the doorway so that no one could enter the house without noticing it. Then returning to the quiet chimney corner, she sat down in the round-backed oak chair, and clasping her hands on her lap, waited, while over her came the curious trance-like sleep to which she had been subject at intervals all her life. She was accustomed to these trances, and even welcomed their coming for the sake of the clear insight and even the clairvoyance which followed them. They were seasons of refreshing to this ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... dem famines!" After nearly an hour of this intense excitement, the congregation was dismissed, one of them, at least, more dead than alive; for "Aunt Ceely," who had long been known as "er pow'ful sinful ooman," had fallen into a trance, whether real or assumed must be determined by wiser heads than mine; for it was no uncommon occurrence for those "seekin' 'ligion" to lie in a state of unconsciousness for several hours, and, on their return to consciousness, to relate the most wonderful experiences of what had happened to ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... it came to Larry in his trance of wonder, must take the place of blood, feeding the brain-cells, ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning temples of his excited and wondering listener; and presently a sort of trance came over him: he imagined that he was returned to the home of his infancy; that he was in the small chamber where, over his early slumbers, his mother had watched and prayed. There it was,—visible, palpable, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... once thoroughly impressed, for the first time, with awe or admiration, either for man or woman, he generally fell into a species of trance, from which it was exceedingly difficult to bring him round. He would have sat there, staring stupidly, till morning, with perfect satisfaction to himself, if Molyneux had not attacked him with a direct question, "How long do you think of staying at ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... placed country above party, the Duke shrank; and his followers were left to 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 ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... aspects, it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke, as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century; this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for many years ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... other evening from a slight trance into which I had fallen during one of the general's histories, by a sudden call from the Squire to furnish some entertainment of the kind in my turn. Having been so profound a listener to others, I could not in conscience refuse; but neither my memory nor invention being ready ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... himself, that all these beauties made up a lovely picture indeed, but nothing more; for his friend was an accepted suitor, and might indulge himself by keeping agreeable fancies alive as long as he chose; while Harry had been rather rudely awakened from his trance by very shabby treatment in the first place, and a refusal at last. To Hazlehurst, the most amusing part of Ellsworth's story was, an allusion to a certain resemblance in character between Mrs. Taylor and 'one ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... 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 dark, mysterious presence that had come bodily, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Robinson. The others stood free at that moment, and Robinson exclaimed, 'Sheriff Cross, you are my first man.' He raised his Winchester and fired at Cross, a distance of a few feet, and I saw Cross fall dead at my side. It was all a sort of trance or dream to me. I did not seem to realize what was going on, but knew that I could make no resistance. My gun was not within reach. I knew that I, too, would ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving: Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving: No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... rank generally speak. "The young leddy, they told me, no sooner heard that the vessel was in safety, than she gave way to a sorrow which it was pitiful to witness. They tried to comfort her, but she was not to be comforted. She had gone off into a sort of trance when the vessel brought up this morning ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... disciples (Luke 22:31). Are we to call these "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
... the ghost of a dead man, who perchance, having entered it, will abide there, leaving my spirit houseless, or perchance will shut up the doors of my heart in such fashion that they never can be opened. Can it not be done by trance as aforetime? Tell me, Hokosa, how often have you thus talked ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up by a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down on a pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching chest to match. This was the pigmy he ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... in a hasty voice, bade me begone. "You must not be seen by this giddy girl. Come hither this evening, as if by my appointment, and I will return with you."—She left me in a kind of trance. I was immovable. My reverie was too delicious;—but let me not attempt the picture. If I can convey no image of my state previous to this interview, my subsequent feelings are still more beyond the reach of my powers ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... went in and put his suitcase on the bed. He still appeared to be in more or less of a trance-state. ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... 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, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... and Halvor glanced over at Karin for advice; but she sat as if in a trance, staring ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was at least the Cyclops' case, until, Whether the boy beguiled the Child away, Or whether that limp Matron on the Hill Woke from her novel-reading trance, one day He waited long and wearily in vain,— But, from that hour, they ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... altar, and before thousands to witness. Some time was to elapse before the celebration of our marriage. Protracted engagements are unwise, yet I should not say so; this gave me time to open my eyes—my bewitched eyes: still, some months I passed in a trance of beatification, with visions of duties all performed—benevolence universal, and gratitude, and high success, and crowns of laurel, for my hero, for he was military; it all joined well in my fancy. All the pictured tales of vast heroic deeds were ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Lord was now giving her tranquil and joyful rest. She often spoke of the manner in which her soul was comforted, and that never-forgotten night. It is thus described by Dr. Moody Stuart, who was for many years her close friend: "There was nothing of the nature of a dream or trance; but as she lay sleepless, there appeared as if really before her eyes a white scroll unrolled, glistening with unearthly brightness, and with floods of vivid light ever flowing over it. Written at the head of the scroll, in large bright letters ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... though in a trance, seen the further fate of those whose sad career has filled the pages of this story. We may be blindfolded again, turned about right to left; and when the bandage is taken from our eyes the landscape is as before, silent and grand. The ruins ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... at the dame, who continued to ply her needles. Her eyes were half closed in a semi-trance, their lids trembling with nervous excitement. One of her moods, rare of late, was ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the hand that bestowed them. As if to recall them to a better sense of things, events now occurred which it is our business to relate, and which aroused the whole colony from the sort of pleasing trance into which they had fallen, by the united influence of security, abundance, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 of ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... he explained, while the cold sweat poured from his face, and his limbs were flaccid as an infant's, that the sound of a rattle had caused him to stop short—that a pleasant halo danced before his eyes, and sweet sounds met his ears—and that from that instant until the conclusion of the trance, "he was as happy as he ever ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... vigor and are overcome by the powers of darkness and cold. The goddess who loves the fair young god, and mourns him with passionate grief, until her wailings and prayers recall him from his deathlike trance, is Nature herself, loving, bountiful, ever productive, but pale, and bare, and powerless in her widowhood, while the sun-god, the spring of life whence she draws her very being, lies captive in the bonds of their ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... me when I came in, I thought you were in a trance! I had a wild notion to lose no ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... that the soul can temporarily quit the body during lifetime has been universally entertained; and from the conception of wolf-like ghosts it was but a short step to the conception of corporeal werewolves. In the Middle Ages the phenomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of the theory that the soul can leave the body and afterwards return to it. Hence it was very difficult for a person accused of witchcraft to prove an alibi; for to any amount of evidence showing that the body was innocently reposing ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Apollo of the woods—tall and graceful, yet robust and sinewy, inimitable in hang of foliage and throwing-out of limb; as if the beauteous, vital, leafy creature could walk, if it only would"; and mentions that in a dream-trance he actually once saw his "favorite trees step out and promenade up, down and around VERY CURIOUSLY." (1) Once the present writer seemed to have a partial vision of a tree. It was a beech, standing somewhat isolated, and still leafless in quite early Spring. Suddenly I was aware of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... slept, but lay in trance 265 All night within the fountain—as in sleep. Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance; Through the green splendour of the water deep She saw the constellations reel and dance Like fire-flies—and withal did ever keep 270 The tenour of her ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... damp trance young Juan lay[147] He knew not, for the earth was gone for him, And Time had nothing more of night nor day For his congealing blood, and senses dim; And how this heavy faintness passed away He knew not, till each painful pulse and limb, And tingling vein, seemed throbbing back to life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Mesmerism, Psychometry, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Inspiration, Trance, and Physical Mediumship; Prayer, Mind, and Magnetic Healing; and all ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... gazing in a silent trance till Arthur's step approached, when she bounded back to him, and clinging to his arm exclaimed, so that he alone could hear, 'Oh, I am glad you are come! It ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... few instances of so-called demoniacal possession are capable of being resolved into cataleptic trance, a state not unlike that produced by mesmerism, and in which many of the same phenomena seem naturally to display themselves; the well-known instance of the young servant girl, related by Coleridge, who, though ignorant ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... wished everybody a "Merry Christmas" before it was light in the morning, and lent every one of her new toys to the neighbors' children before noon, and eaten turkey and plum pudding, and gone to bed at night in a trance of happiness at the ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a trance, filled with strange wishes. Among the trees it was narrow for him; he wished to ascend to the top of that tower, to draw breath, to take in with his glance some wider horizon. Again he remembered that it was the month Mesori, that a year had passed since the maneuvers; ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... it and give the orchestra a chance!" says I. "And keep them elbows down! Don't try to stretch here; wait until you get back to the open fields for that. Yes, it's all over, and you're about to butt into society; so for Heaven's sake come out of the trance!" ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... humanity of the woman, I say, and nothing in her individuality of what is commonly called the interesting, that ministered to the breaking of the schoolmaster's trance. "Oh ye of little faith!" were the first words that flew from his lips—he knew not whether uttered concerning himself or the charwoman the more; and at once he fell to speaking of him who said the words, and of the people that came to him and heard him gladly;—how this ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... year. Then I wanted you to be ill—very, very ill for a long time, and weak, till your heart could hardly beat at all for want of blood, and you lay in a trance. Then the doctors would say, if anyone would give their blood he might come to life again. But no one could be found, for there were only strangers there. Then I hear about it, and come quickly, and the doctors start at once, for there ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... legends was to delineate stories in song form, she informed me. As there was nobody to interpret I was reluctantly compelled to dispense with her demonstration, although I had found it interesting to watch the strange expression of her eyes as she sang and the trance-like appearance she maintained. Another noticeable fact was the intense attachment of her dogs, which centred their eyes constantly upon her and accompanied her movements ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... entailed various consequences—in general the result was the withdrawal of the man's ordinary powers to a greater or less extent, according to the duration of the soul's absence. The consequences might be sleep, trance, swoon, coma, death; the precise nature of the effect was determined by the man's subsequent condition—he would wake from sleep, or return to his ordinary state from a trance, or come to himself from a swoon, or lie permanently motionless in death. When he ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... name." Closing his eyes, his body trembled or shuddered with a kind of paroxysm, and apparently with a great effort he pronounced the name "Cora Holt." This effort seemed to greatly exhaust him, and coming out of his temporary trance he begged us to excuse him, saying that there were opposing spirits present and he could do no more that night; that he had done all for us that lay within his power. He ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... clipping from the section of one of the metropolitan journals which carries a host of such advertisements as "spirit medium," "psychic palmist," "yogi mediator," "magnetic influences," "crystal gazer," "astrologer," "trance medium," and the like. At once I thought of the sallow, somewhat mystic countenance of Dudley, and the idea flashed, half-formed, in my mind that somehow this clue, together with the purchase of the book on clairvoyance, might prove the final ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving: Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Flood, who should be alive in the land except the Gods that made it—the Gods to whom his village prayed nightly—the Gods who were in all men's mouths and about all men's ways. He could not raise his head or stir a finger for the trance that held him, and Peroo was smiling ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling |
