"Hocus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 511; sortilege[obs3], ordeal, sortes Virgilianae[obs3]; hocus-pocus &c. (deception) 545. V. practice sorcery &c.n.; cast a nativity, conjure, exorcise, charm, enchant; bewitch, bedevil; hoodoo, voodoo; entrance, mesmerize, magnetize; fascinate &c. (influence) 615; taboo; wave a wand; rub the ring, rub the lamp; cast a spell; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... forty-second Andrew Ferrary, in single combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand; yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees, before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these clanjamphrey go in behind the scenes ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... landlady or take whatever other means suggest themselves for luring this girl from her room. I will summon Hazen and hold him very closely under my eye till the whole affair is over. He shall get no chance for any hocus-pocus business, not while I have charge of your interests. He shall do just what he has laid out for himself and nothing more; you may rely ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... in disgust at the cheap hocus-pocus of it—but the next moment a more violent emotion swept over him as he saw Diane seized and borne swiftly to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... down. Aunt Zeruah insists upon it that the way is to put the whole house in order, and shut all the blinds, and sit in your bedroom, and then, she says, nothing gets out of place; and she tells poor Sophie the most hocus-pocus stories about her grandmothers and aunts, who always kept everything in their houses so that they could go and lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I'll bet they could in our house. From end to end it is kept looking as if we had shut it up and gone to Europe,—not a book, not a paper, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... "Tails, go." He opened his hand, and looked at the coin. "Heads! Very good. Go on with your hocus-pocus, Doctor—I'll wait." ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... in three minutes than a million of maggots could have done in three weeks. After cheese comes nothing; then all we desired was a clear stage and no favour; accordingly everything was whipped away in a trice by so cleanly a conveyance, that no juggler by virtue of Hocus Pocus could have conjured away balls with more dexterity. All our empty plates and dishes were in an instant changed into full quarts of purple nectar and unsullied glasses. Then a bumper to the Queen led the van of our good wishes, another to the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... losing reputation while he was in charge, told them all to be good boys and he would speak to the Captain when he came aboard; and served them out three fingers of rum apiece, which the bo'sun took upon himself to hocus. By latest accounts, they're sleeping it off and—I say, waiter, you might tell the cook to devil ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this hocus-pocus about the ha'nt, that is easily explained. He needed a scapegoat on whom to turn the blame when the bonds should disappear; so he and this Cat-Eye Mose between them invented a ghost. The negro is a half crazy fellow who from the first has been young Gaylord's tool; I don't ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... change.] Interchange. — N. interchange, exchange; commutation, permutation, intermutation; reciprocation, transposition, rearrangement; shuffling; alternation, reciprocity; castling [at chess]; hocus-pocus. interchangeableness[obs3], interchangeability. recombination; combination 48[ref], 84.. barter &c. 794; tit for tat &c. (retaliation) 718; cross fire, battledore and shuttlecock; quid pro quo. V. interchange, exchange, counterchange[obs3]; bandy, transpose, shuffle, change ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hocus-pocus business on foot," muttered Hal, bitterly. "But I don't believe Jack feels much like telling us ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... worry now. Who was this spick foreigner who ran hooting after her? It was not like Davidge to be either curious or suspicious. But love was beginning its usual hocus-pocus with character and turning a tired business man into a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... hocus-pocus side of the case," he replied, "turns on matters Egyptian, doesn't it? Very well. Who else, that we know about, is associated, or ever has ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... is an infallible remedy for colic, provided, first, it be found in the dung of a wolf, second, that it docs not touch the ground, and, third, that it is not touched by a woman.[45] Another cure for colic is effected by certain hocus-pocus with a scrap of wool from the forehead of a first-born lamb, if only the lamb, instead of being allowed to fall to the ground, has been caught by hand as it dropped from its dam.[46] In Andjra, a district of Morocco, the people attribute many magical virtues to rain-water which has ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... "By the great hocus-pocus," he said, "you know, I believe you. If two fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I know would quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would stand by and help a fellow ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... hocus-pocus concerning character reading, a perverted revival of the ancient phrenology and physiognomy, has invaded the employment territory in America as the newest charlatanism. The study of the internal secretions, including blood and X-ray examinations, will surely assist the demand for a truly scientific ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... tent;" a National Theatre, "with Cold Water Douche in Basement for reception of English Dramatists;" Recipe for building a Navy, without paying for it, "Gift of that great Financial Expert, Sir Hocus Pocus;" one Conscientious Income Taxpayer, "has been driven by a Lady;" two Socialists in agreement as to what it means, "smaller one slightly damaged;" one Contented Farmer, "Babylonian Period;" and one extra-sized bottle, "Solution of the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... we have cited,—the one reconciling the conscience with the cowardice of the North, and the other conceding the arrogant pretensions of the South,—the negation of the power of the central government over Slavery was carried into effect. By a legislative hocus-pocus, known as the Compromise Measures of 1850, Congress, contrary to the uniform tendency of bodies entrusted with a discretion, vacated instead of enlarging its powers. Its sovereign function of territorial legislation was abdicated, in favor of that wretched and ragged pretender, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... and tell more effectually. Yet I wish sincerely to help poor Hogg, and have written to Lockhart about it. It may be my own desolate feelings—it may be the apprehension of evil from this political hocus-pocus, but I have seldom felt more moody and uncomfortable than while writing these lines. I have walked, too, but without effect. W. Laidlaw, whose very ingenious mind is delighted with all novelties, talked nonsense about the new government, in which men are to resign principle, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... flax, tobacco, etc.; but the travelling was difficult owing to the high grass. The people are pleasant-featured and good-natured, and the chief, Katchiba, maintains his authority by a species of hocus-pocus, or sorcery. He is a merry soul, has a multiplicity of wives—a bevy in each village—so that when he travels through his kingdom he is always at home. His children number 116, and the government is quite ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... of the Brigade made of all this hocus-pocus I had no idea. Afterwards, when the adventure was over, I asked Mary, "Where in the world did you get that stuff?" And she told me how she had once acted in a children's comedy, in which there was an old magician who spent his time putting spells ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... process does Comstockery conjure decency into the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily capable it might have been obscene to speak of the digestive process or of any of the digestive organs. We might easily have been taught that digestion was a moral ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... that these things are but trifles to the Theosophists and Esoteric Buddhists, who profess to project their astral bodies, and play many other hocus pocus tricks of transmitting voices and articles to immense distances. They may therefore be able to explain these phenomena, I cannot; still I have the belief that there is some spirit-force which can and does act as a medium between distant persons ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... night: Our Author Knows better how to juggle than to write: Alas! a Poet's good for nothing now, Unless he have the knack of conjuring too; For 'tis beyond all natural Sense to guess How their strange Miracles are brought to pass. Your Presto Jack be gone, and come again, With all the Hocus Art of Legerdemain; Your dancing Tester, Nut-meg, and your Cups, Out-does your Heroes and your amorous Fops. And if this chance to please you, by that rule, He that writes Wit is much ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... cases. Lord de Mowbray renewed his acquaintance with a man who was successful; bowed to Hatton whenever they met; and finally consulted him respecting the barony of Valence which had been in the old Fitz-Warene and Mowbray families and to which it was thought the present earl might prefer some hocus-pocus claim through his deceased mother; so that however recent was his date as an English earl, he might figure on the roll as a Plantagenet baron, which in the course of another century would complete the grand mystification of high ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... make him work on sheers, or some hocus-pocusin' arrangement, an' he can't afford to hev him git sick. That's what his kindness ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... forcing the article mentioned into his holster. "Why, they're quite hocus-pocus. You take the brother to ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... thought he worshiped the truth, but he did not. He knew that the truth was everything, but a lie came that seemed better than the truth. In his soul he knew he was not acting truly; that had he honestly loved the truth, he would not have played hocus-pocus with metaphysics and logic, but would have made haste to a manly conclusion. He took the package, and on his way to the dining-room, dropped it into ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... denounce visions of gray bulls as hocus-pocus would be to describe a puzzling situation much too subjectively, since the Government has apparently no evidence that these are not genuine prophecy. The best the Government can do is to call them ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Greek asked I would fain ask too, Who knows if all the Spectacle be true, Or an illusion of the gods [the Will, To wit] some hocus-pocus to fulfil? ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... is, ma'am," said Kantwise, "only this, you know, if I hocus you, why you hocus me in return; so it isn't so very ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... on some more of my paper, but without the usual result. I then discovered to my annoyance that a wealthy young fellow know as "Buck" de Vries, who had considered himself insulted by something that I had said or done, had been quietly spreading the rumor that I was a sort of hocus-pocus fellow and practically bankrupt, that my pretensions to fashion were ridiculous, and that I made a business of living off other people. Incidentally he had gone the rounds, and, owing to the rumors that he himself had spread, had succeeded in buying up ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... "Reuben Baker is not a name to be ashamed of, and if you think that by any of your underhand hocus pocus you can trespass on my premises and prevent my caring for my own property ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... while the other papers gnashed their teeth and looked on. Nor was the whole truth told by a long way, but a garbled version about foreign coves who worked the business and bolted, and a doting father who never consented to it—and such a hash-up and hocus-pocus as would have made a ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... like praestigiae may be in the toad. It might be a real toad (though actuated and guided by a daemon) which was cut in pieces, and that also which was whipt about, and at last snatcht out of sight (as if it had vanished) by these aerial hocus-pocus's. And if some juglers have tricks to take hot coals into their mouth without hurt, certainly it is not surprising that some small attempt did not suffice to burn that toad. That such a toad, sent by ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... found it in me to laugh at the whole miserable hocus-pocus, had I been less indignant. The situation was, besides, sufficiently grave; and as I listened to this silly and profane juggling, and observed the wildness of my grandfather's bearing, it became plain to me that he could not long endure such an influence. I guessed from his talk that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... a stake at the top of flood, you can neither prevent nor delay the inevitable ebb. There is no hocus-pocus in morality; and even the "sanctimonious ceremony" of marriage leaves the man unchanged. This is a hard saying, and has an air of paradox. For there is something in marriage so natural and inviting, that the step has an air of great simplicity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of plan, because it has pleased the Creator to set before Himself a "divine exemplar or archetype," and to copy it in His works; and somewhat ill, those who hold this view imply, in some of them. That such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith Torricelli's compatriots were satisfied to explain ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... have no retainers but two, whose common names were Hocus and Pocus, but as he hated the use of common names and as no one had heard of Hocus' lineage (nor did he himself know it) he called him, Hocus, "Freedom" as being a high-sounding and moral name for a footman and Pocus (whose name ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... quack Destruction; Or roar like Marshal, that Geneva Bull, Hell and Damnation a Pulpit full: Yet to express a Scot, to play that Prize, Not all those Mouth-Granadoes can suffice. Before a Scot can properly be curst, I must, like Hocus, swallow Daggers first. Scots are like Witches; do but whet your Pen, Scratch till the Blood comes, they'll not ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... drunk, or dreaming, or was I merely the victim of a gigantic and most elaborate hoax? How was it possible that I, a rational man, not unacquainted with the leading scientific facts of our history, and hitherto an absolute and utter disbeliever in all the hocus-pocus which in Europe goes by the name of the supernatural, could believe that I had within the last few minutes been engaged in conversation with a woman two thousand and odd years old? The thing was contrary to the experience ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... deduced also that the Conservatives were in their hearts as angry as were their opponents. What was to be gained but the poor interval of three months? There were clever men who suggested that Mr. Daubeny had a scheme in his head—some sharp trick of political conjuring, some "hocus-pocus presto" sleight of hand, by which he might be able to retain power, let the elections go as they would. But, if so, he certainly did not make his scheme ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... abysses of perfection; for this reason I need music. But Wagner makes one ill—What do I care about the theatre? What do I care about the spasms of its moral ecstasies in which the mob—and who is not the mob to-day?—rejoices? What do I care about the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor? You are beginning to see that I am essentially anti-theatrical at heart. For the stage, this mob art par excellence, my soul has that deepest scorn felt by every artist to-day. ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... my land?" I queried: for I did not understand all this hocus-pocus of locating any given spot in the Iowa prairies in 1855. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... this point to make a plea for the scientific imagination. He says the inventor-scientists have brought us the mystery of electricity, which is no hocus-pocus, but a special manifestation of the Immanent God within us and about us. He says the student in the laboratory brought us the X-ray, the wireless telegraph, the mystery of radium, the mystery of all the formerly unharnessed power ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Saint Rochus They made him stand and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus-pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chanted, Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of churchyard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art dead, So in thy heart be penitent!" And forth from the chapel door he went Into disgrace and banishment, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the height of business, directing the setting of the breakfast-table, clearing away the debris of the evening feast, and counting the silver with unusual care, lest a stray fork or spoon had, by some hocus-pocus known to the class, been slipped into the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... conquer evil, but to make up for it, and thus sin became as safe as it was easy. Inevitably also such a theory of worship often degenerated into an utter formalism which made hyprocrisy and unreality patent, until the hoc est corpus of the mass became the hocus-pocus of the scoffer. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... a familiar friend; to-day he is a stranger, and they fear him with a vague, nameless fear. Forty years he wears the mysterious thing, dies and is buried with it, and in all that time they never have a glimpse of his face. Though there is a deal of nonsense in the story, and a hocus-pocus instead of a mystery, we must remember that veil as a striking symbol of the loneliness of life, of the gulf that separates a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... weaker Side inclin'd, 710 Like Charity; else right and wrong Could never hold it out so long, And, like blind Fortune, with a slight Convey mens' interest and right From Stiles's pocket into Nokes's, 715 As easily as Hocus Pocus; Play fast and loose; make men obnoxious, And clear again, like Hiccius Doctius. Then whether you wou'd take her life, Or but recover her for your wife, 720 Or be content with what she has, And let all other matters pass, The bus'ness to the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Pott, Mr. Pickwick and Winkle accompanied that gentleman to his home, whilst Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass and Sam repaired to the "Peacock." They all first dined together at the "Town Arms" and arranged to reassemble there in the morning. It was here the barmaid was reported to have been bribed to "hocus the brandy and water of fourteen unpolled electors as was a stopping in the house," and where most of the exciting scenes of the election either took place, or had ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... begat Faribroth, Who begat Hurtali, that was a brave eater of pottage, and reigned in the time of the flood; Who begat Nembroth, Who begat Atlas, that with his shoulders kept the sky from falling; Who begat Goliah, Who begat Erix, that invented the hocus pocus plays of legerdemain; Who begat Titius, Who begat Eryon, Who begat Polyphemus, Who begat Cacus, Who begat Etion, the first man that ever had the pox, for not drinking fresh in summer, as Bartachin witnesseth; Who begat Enceladus, Who begat ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... beloved, filled his room with skulls and bones like a churchyard?' The most loathsome tasks were prescribed—to draw three teeth from a corpse or a nail from its finger, and the like; and while the hocus-pocus of the incantation was going on, the unhappy ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... quarter. It's for the championship, though, and not on account of any hocus pocus in ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... this is hocus-pocus to me," said Aunt Judy, suspending her knitting-work, and scratching her forehead with one of the needles, "I don't understand a bit more of the business than ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... during the performance of the symphony; his greedy eyes had rested on her all the while. He became enraged: "You don't imagine that progress can be made by such amateurish efforts?" he said with a roar. "It is all hocus-pocus. There is as a matter of fact no such thing as progress in art, any more than there is progress in the course ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... bye-street of London to distribute patronage and govern a great country. The Government of India would then have been made a department of the Government, with a Council and a Minister of State. But it appears that the old system of hocus- pocus is still to be ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... were taken seriously. Behind the hocus-pocus of such fine-sounding words, the bombast, the theatrical clash and clang of the swords and pasteboard helmets, there was always the incurable futility of a Sardou, the intrepid vaudevillist, playing Punch and Judy with history. When in the world was the like of the heroism of Cyrano ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... proscriptive policy for opinion's sake will greatly accelerate and aggravate the decomposition of the Democratic party in this State," said the Tribune. "That process was begun long since, but certain soft-headed quacks had thought it possible, by some hocus pocus, to restore the old unity ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... it. And another thing, I won't have her thumped about all over the chest, or any hocus-pocus of the sort. She has bronchitis and asthma, and that's all. If you can cure it well and good. But it only weakens her to have you tapping and listening, and it does no ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... notwithstanding importuners had frequently intimated that a place called the gaol was not far distant, and that the squire's office was within a stone's throw of "the corner." Colonel M'Carstrow, reports say, had some years ago got a deal of money by an unexplainable hocus pocus, but it was well nigh gone in gambling, and now he was keeping brothel society and rioting away his life faster than the race-horses he had formerly kept on the course ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... that at the worst Anscombe stood to lose nothing, I shrugged my shoulders and held my tongue. It was Marnham's deal, and although he was somewhat in the shadow of the hanging lamp and the candles had guttered out, I distinctly saw him play some hocus-pocus with the cards, but in the circumstances made no protest. As it chanced he must have hocus-pocused them wrong, for though his hand was full of trumps, Rodd held nothing at all. The battle that ensued was quite exciting, but the end of it was that an ace in the hand of Anscombe, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... suppose all this hocus-pocus is going to do us?" muttered Harry irritably, "as if an old fire could tell us anything we didn't know already. It's ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... up to oppose the new views, which, I confess, to be sustained in their main features by my own views and researches here on the ground and in the midst of the Indians, and men will rise to sustain the old views—the original literary mummery and philological hocus-pocus based on the papers and letters and blunders of Heckewelder. There was a great predisposition to admire and overrate everything relative to Indian history and language, as detailed by this good and sincere missionary in his retirement at Bethlehem. He was appealed to as an ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... race. We used to read in the novels of the last generation, "He was a magnificent specimen of manhood"—"Her golden head reached scarcely to his shoulder"—"She was a fairy creature—the tiniest of her sex." Thus we have mated, and yet expected that by some hocus pocus the boys would all "take after their father," and the girls, their mother. In his efforts to improve the breed of other animals, man has never tried to deliberately cross the large and small and expect to keep up the standard ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... he chiefly argued for were anti-Christian things—the abandonment of the purely moral view of life, the rehabilitation of instinct, the dethronement of weakness and timidity as ideals, the renunciation of the whole hocus-pocus of dogmatic religion, the extermination of false aristocracies (of the priest, of the politician, of the plutocrat), the revival of the healthy, lordly "innocence" that was Greek. If he was anything in a word, Nietzsche ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... in Illinois called St. Genevieve. By some hocus-pocus known to accomplished politicians, this city has had no Mayor since the 4th of June, 1867. In the absence of definite information upon the subject, we take it for granted that St. Genevieve must be a most delightful place to live in, and specially so, because, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... into effect. But, in its real, and therefore higher, sense, it means to dedicate, consecrate, and initiate into the arcana of the temple mysteries. But, in the present day it means a piece of imposture, connected with some magical hocus pocus of the ignorant and superstitious mind, a vulgar charm, that is supposed to bring the owner thereof some material benefit, irrespective of his mental, magnetic, and moral condition, "and," says the learned Webster, after describing his idea of such things, "they consist of three sorts, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... conclusion can be reached, whether by jumping, or by any other mode of logical progression. But the first principle which our author "keeps in mind" possesses just that amount of ambiguity which enables him to play hocus-pocus with it. It is this; that "the creation of value does not depend upon the finishing of the product" ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... didn't think he ought to be deposed. So long as the darkeys who came into his grove of a Sunday had passes from their masters, it was all right; but there was something that was not all right, and it was the occasion of no little uneasiness and perplexity to Mr. Riley. By some hocus-pocus Toby had learned to read his Bible. There was nothing wrong in that, of course, but a darkey who could read his Bible would be likely to read papers as well; and from them, especially if they chanced to be Northern papers, he might imbibe ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... said Rufus. His voice was shaky, and if there had been light enough to see it, his face was gray with terror of his own hocus-pocus. The cat's head had dropped out of the line of sunlight, and she had coiled herself up on the dresser among a disorderly litter of crockery ware. Dick, relieved from the fascination of her too-visible ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... recognized by law, was held up in scorn in ballads and mystery plays. In one church a Protestant lawyer raised a dog in his hands when the priest elevated the host. The most sacred words of the old worship, the words of consecration, "Hoc est corpus," were travestied into a nickname for jugglery as "Hocus-pocus." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... not particularly anxious to meet Acton, for Phil, in the holidays, had given Jack a pretty correct inkling of Acton's character, and he began to see—in fact, he did see—that Raffles and the shooting and the billiards, and the hocus pocus of "hedging on Grape Shot," and the trip to London, etc., was only one involved, elaborate plot to strike at Phil. Jack now fully realized that he had played a very innocent fly to Acton's consummate spider, and ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... were really a hocus-pocus. Suppose that whatever meaning you may choose in your fancy to give to it, the real meaning of the whole was mockery. Suppose it ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... it come by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the franchise will greatly hasten that good end in proportion only as every one of us has the knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will make him well-judging and scrupulous ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... upon her of raiment and ornaments and fine linen and taking Nur al-Din in her arms strained him to her bosom. And they ceased not, she and he, from kissing and clipping and strumming to the tune of "hocus-pocus,"[FN524] saying the while, "How short are the nights of Union and the nights of Disunion how long are they!" and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... eyes, by lugging in and ringing the changes on the balance of power, the Protestant religion, and your allies on the continent; acting like the juggler, who picks your pockets while he dazzles your eyes and amuses your fancy with twirling his fingers and reciting the gibberish of hocus pocus; for, in fact, the balance of power is a mere chimera. As for the Protestant religion, nobody gives himself any trouble about it; and allies on the continent, we have none, or, at least, none that would raise an hundred men to save ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... in their heads; it had become a dogma with them—something like the day on which Christ was to reappear and the Millennium to begin had formed in the heads of the Chiliasts. Weakness had, as it ever does, taken refuge in the wonderful; it believed the enemy was overcome if, in its imagination, it hocus-pocused him away; and it lost all sense of the present in the imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the deeds, that it had "in petto," but which it did not yet want to bring to the scratch. The heroes, who ever seek ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... always suspected the Papisher of having had a hand in the whole of that black and midnight business, in which the stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation of dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he had incarcerated was transformed into the doctor he found, conjoined with the peculiarly strange eldrich and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The people have always shown great indulgence and forbearance towards this plea: besides, before the time of re-election comes about, these inconvenient scruples may, in the din of new contests, be forgotten, or remembered only to be forgiven, and, by the hocus pocus of party, even metamorphosed into a recommendation. When, then, it is so easy to take shelter behind the ark of the constitution, ought we to enlarge the limits of this place of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... he put in (his ears evidently are as sharp as mine); "the inquiries having proceeded from Franklin, it was only natural for me to suspect that he was trying to mislead us by some hocus-pocus story. So I visited the girls. That I had difficulty in getting to the root of the matter is to their credit, Miss Butterworth, seeing that you had made them ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... before was flatter'd in our brain. Who ere yet view'd airs child invisible, A hollow voice, but in thy subtile skill? Faint stamm'ring Eccho you so draw, that we The very repercussion do see. Cheat-HOCUS-POCUS-Nature an assay O' th' spring affords us: praesto, and away! You all the year do chain her and her fruits, Roots to their beds, and flowers to their roots. Have not mine eyes feasted i' th' frozen Zone Upon a fresh new-grown collation ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... experience, that one would be justified in believing either that one's senses were deluded, or that one had not really got to the bottom of the phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary the conditions, if one could take a little silex, and by a little hocus-pocus a la crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one pleased, all the philosopher could do would be to hold up his hands and cry, "God is great." But short of evidence of this kind, I don't mean to believe ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... fatal to the Whigs; they, therefore, very dexterously adopted a small minority of the nation, consisting of the sectarians, and inaugurating them as the people with a vast and bewildering train of hocus-pocus ceremonies, invested the Dissenters with political power. By this coup-d'etat they managed the House of Commons, and having at length obtained a position, they have from that moment laid siege ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... would no doubt be unnecessary, but as every people regarded as a mass is easily impressed and full of criminal instincts, unreasonable violence, and fierce passion, there is nothing to be done but to keep the masses under by vague fears and such-like hocus-pocus. Therefore it is my opinion that it was not without good reason or by mere chance that the ancients imparted to the masses the notions of the gods and the underworld, but rather is it thoughtless and irrational when nowadays we seek to ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... these words after Doc, but they seemed to me a kind of hocus-pocus; and I don't believe any life-insurance company in the world would have issued me a policy on ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... letter-worship. He declares that he would resign all hope of immortality to save a single human soul from the hell of Mr. Spurgeon. But is not the hell of Mr. Spurgeon the hell of the New Testament? Does not Jesus speak of everlasting fire? Why seek to limit the duration of hell by some hocus-pocus of interpretation? It is idle to pretend that "everlasting" means something less than everlasting. If it means that in relation to hell it must also mean it in relation to heaven. Dr. Farrar cannot have two different ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... feel any animosity against them; I would much rather be fighting the French; but they, by a sort of hocus-pocus, are our allies," remarked Green. "In reality we are not making war on the Russian people; we are expressly ordered not to injure any of their property; our business is only to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... raise! Pray don't be so fastidious! She But as a leech, her hocus-pocus plays, That well with you her potion may agree. (He compels ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... said Jonas Billings from the crowd. "Chinese dukes, eh! What's it all about?" "Reg'lar hocus-pocus," remarked the vagabond brother of Rigby ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... if he let a lot of the men go, they might get all chawed up, and it wouldn't help the boy any, so he thinks we kin get him out of their hands by some hocus ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... my host pursued, "we can be good friends all the same. We don't need a hocus-pocus of false sentiment. We are men, aren't we?—men of sublime good sense." And just here, as the old man looked at me, the pressure of his hands deepened to a convulsive grasp, and the bloodless mask of his countenance was ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... in the country, doing good work in a funny, fussy, rigorous fashion of their own. They'd raise a dickens of a hocus-pocus back in Germany if they once suspected their government of playing that game. No. But Germany intends to stand off the other powers, while Turks tackle the Armenians; and the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... known. If our present state is imperfect, it is because we do not know enough. Every other road, excepting this, the king's highway, heads into a bog. These Jews actually believed in miracles; they had no science, and thought they could regenerate the world by hocus-pocus. They ought to be suppressed by law, and, if necessary, put to death, ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... about our throats: the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried here also. Now that we have 'found out' oxygen and hydrogen, and do not expect to alter their ways of proceeding by any epithets that we may apply to them, or any kind of hocus-pocus that we may practise on them, it is time to see what gen, or genus it is, that proceeds in these departments in so successful a manner, and with so little regard to our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate in a general way the unquestionable fact ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Malvina to test her strength, so to express it, on the unfortunate Mrs. Arlington, it was with the conviction that the result would restore him to his mental equilibrium. That Malvina with a wave of her wand—or whatever the hocus-pocus may have been—would be able to transform the hitherto incorrigibly indolent and easy-going Mrs. Arlington into a sort of feminine Lloyd George, had not really entered ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... is clear That nothing's here and nothing's there: I think our States do mean to choke us With this new Act of HOCUS POCUS. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... want things explained, any more'n Abe here! You prefer hocus-pocus. And nothin' will teach you. Take Rhody! Sees Michaelis flunk his job miserable. Sees Mary go down like a woman shot, hands and legs paralyzed again,—Doctor says, for good, this time. And what does the girl do about it? Spends the night ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... a regiment of Oregon mounted volunteers under command of Colonel James W. Nesmith—subsequently for several years United States Senator from Oregon. The whole force was under the command of Major Rains, Fourth Infantry, who, in order that he might rank Nesmith, by some hocus-pocus had been made a brigadier-general, under an appointment from ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... excellent Robert, that, by some hocus-pocus which I do not exactly comprehend, myself, I have introduced a wheel within a wheel, a letter within a letter, a play within a play, after the manner of the old dramatists; and I beg you to make a note that the foregoing admonitions and most sapient counsels are not addressed to you. You ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... and try. Now, hold it so while I say the spell," and I muttered some hocus-pocus, then directed it towards certain of the Mazitu who were gathering again. "There! Look! Look! You have hit them in the eye. You are a master of magic. They run, they run!" and run they did indeed. "Is there anyone yonder whom ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... many admired. He was ambitious that it should be said of him that he was far-and-away the cleverest of his party. He knew himself to be clever. But he could only be far-and-away the cleverest by saying and doing that which no one could understand. If he could become master of some great hocus-pocus system which could be made to be graceful to the ears and eyes of many, which might for awhile seem to have within it some semi-divine attribute, which should have all but divine power of mastering the loaves and fishes, then would they who ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... With a hocus-pocus of incantations she brews the magic draught, which Faust drinks. He is then hurried away by Mephistopheles back into the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... accidentally in a pamphlet on Quackery, published in 1805, at Kingston-upon-Hull. In a note to that little work, I am informed that Dr. Katerfelto practised on the people of London in the influenza of 1782; that he added to his nostrum the fascinations of hocus pocus; and that among other philosophical apparatus, he employed the services of some extraordinary black cats, with which he astonished the ignorant, and confounded the vulgar. But he was not, it seems, so successful in his practice when out of London: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... believe any nonsense of that sort, do you? There's nothing in the least mystical in the kind of sympathy that exists between Cyril and myself. It's all purely physical. We're very like one another. But that's all. There's none of the Corsican Brothers sort of hocus-pocus about us in any way. The whole thing is a simple ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... and what recourse is there left to the people but 'Boulangism'? 'Boulangism' is the instinctive, more or less deliberate and articulate, outcry of a people living under constitutional forms, but conscious that, by some hocus-pocus, the vitality has been taken out of those forms. It is the expression of the general sense of insecurity. In a country situated as France now is, it is natural that this inarticulate outcry should merge itself at first into a clamour for the revision ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... women—which, if taken all in all With what he did say, would buy many horses. Though nowadays he's not so much for women: "So few of them," he says, "are worth the guessing." But there's a work at work when he says that, And while he says it one feels in the air A deal of circumambient hocus-pocus. They've had him dancing till his toes were tender, And he can feel 'em now, come chilly rains. There's no long cry for going into it, However, and we don't know much about it. The Fitton thing was worst of all, I fancy; ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... no one would ever interfere to disturb us. Why should they? The Turks could not, and the natives of Fran-guestan would not. Leave me to manage them. There is nothing in the world I so revel in as hocus-sing Guizot and Aberdeen. You never heard of Guizot and Aberdeen? They are the two Reis Effendis of the King of the French and the Queen of the English. I sent them an archbishop last year, one of my fellows, Archbishop ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Never did he show the slightest fear of us or of anything, but he was unwearied in his efforts to regain his freedom. After a few days we put a strap upon his neck and kept him tethered by a chain. But in the night, by dint of some hocus-pocus, he got the chain unsnapped and made off, and he is now, I trust, a patriarch of his tribe, ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... little brandy could have had such an effect," Peter reflected half ruefully. "I suppose it's because she'd had nothing to eat. It's about the best thing that could have happened, but I never meant to hocus her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... me to Bodmin Fair to-morrow for a treat, an' see the Great Turk and the Fat 'Ooman and hocus-pocus. So tell me more ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... shall see. And it is NOT hocus-pocus. To do it properly, we should kill something to please him; but perhaps he will answer Caesar without that if we spill some ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... out of stock early in the winter." Dave snickered slowly. "And I'm the pertickler party that hocus-pocused 'em." ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... beneficent, and just in all his ways, before he leaves home, and after he returns home, shall, during his temporary sojourn within its influence become a very Nero for cruelty, and have his warm heart of flesh smuggled out of his bosom, by some hocus pocus, utterly unintelligible to any unprejudiced rational being, or indurated into the flint of the nether millstone, or frozen into a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... over while I was eating breakfast. There was some sort of hocus-pocus going on, connected with this excursion and the gold company. Anybody could see that. Whether they really expected Captain Bannister to come on the steamboat, or whether that was all a lie to make me stay, I could not tell. Captain Bannister had ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... anything. What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible,—that, in God's name, leave uncredited; at your peril do not try believing that. No subtlest hocus-pocus of "reason" versus "understanding" will avail for that feat;—and it is terribly perilous to try it in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... never a wooden dagger! I would not give a rush for a Vice that has not a wooden dagger, to snap at everybody he meets." Whereupon Mirth observes, "That was the old way, gossip, when Iniquity came in, like Hocus-Pocus, in a juggler's jerkin, with false skirts, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... spring near which we were outspanned, I took off my shirt to have a good wash, still chuckling at the memory of all the hocus-pocus of my old friend, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... the last drop, with all the horrors and delights that may lie hidden at the bottom of it. Just as it is our evident duty every day to commit every good deed and every rascality lying within our capacity.... No, I won't let you rob me of my death moments by any kind of hocus-pocus. It would imply a small-minded attitude, worthy neither of yourself nor of me.—Well, Felix, the twenty-sixth of November then! That's still seven weeks off. In regard to any formalities that may be required, you need have no worry ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... a drought has lasted a long time, people drop the usual hocus-pocus of imitative magic altogether, and being far too angry to waste their breath in prayer they seek by threats and curses or even downright physical force to extort the waters of heaven from the supernatural being who has, so to say, cut them off ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... as far as possible. A warm at the sanctum's fire diminishes the purple in Miss Parkington's cheeks; and the maid, by some hocus-pocus peculiar to her craft, again inflates Miss Waters into a balloon, and stitches up Miss Brindle's flounces and "gathers." The ladies join their respective gentlemen, who have been cooling their toes and uttering warm anathemas in the hall; and the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... triplex. I disposed of the snake, put out the gas; and down we three sat, amid profound darkness, like three male witches in "Macbeth," having previously locked the door to prevent any one disturbing our hocus-pocus. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... feared," he said with a tipsy grin, "but I had forgotten what I carry. I have a hocus-pocus here "—he touched his breast—"written by a wise man in Ravenna, and sealed with a dead Goth's hand, that is proof against devil or dam! And I ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... in the same reasonable manner as we approach any other scientific discovery. There is no hocus-pocus about it, nor are any statements made here which experience cannot verify. But the attitude we should beware most of is that of the intellectual amateur, who makes the vital things of life small coin to ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... respect," said the fat detective, pompously. "House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if this splinter be poisonous Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use of it as any other man. The card is some hocus-pocus,—a blind, as like as not. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is a hole in the roof." With great activity, considering his bulk, he sprang up the steps and squeezed through into the garret, and immediately afterwards we heard ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the black sombrero round in his hands. "All this here hocus comes of the killin' of a old man that never lifted a finger against nobody—and as game a kid as ever raked a hoss with a spur. But one killin' always means more. I ain't no gunman—or no killer. But, by cracky! some of my ideas has changed since I got that hole ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... only done to smoke us; Don't be so serious, my man! She must, as Doctor, play her hocus-pocus To make the dose work better, that's the plan. [He constrains FAUST ...
— Faust • Goethe
... see the words on the roll, the roll that wasn't, as though they were engraved on his eye-retinas: As a beginning, and to prove this isn't just a bit of hocus-pocus, one of the people at your Center is due to leave for here ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... receive a fraction of this money—perhaps even so large a fraction as one half. It may be that, ere now, some obliging person about the City Hall has offered to buy the claim for $1000, and take the risk of the hocus-pocus necessary for getting it—which to him ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... dieting and exercise. She had the tact which he lacked; she made the allowances for human nature's ignorance and superstition which he refused to make; she lessened the hardship of taking her common-sense prescriptions by veiling them in medical hocus-pocus—a compromise of the disagreeable truth which her father had always inveighed against as both immoral ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... who wishes to pose as a physician, and to sell his inexperience and his quack nostrums. Vendors of every sort of cure-all abound, as well as creatures who work on the superstitions and pretend to cure by charms and hocus-pocus. In the market there is such a swarm of these charlatans of healing that they bring the whole medical profession into contempt. Certain people go so far as to distrust the efficacy of any part of the lore of ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... would do—- that, and a pint of wine. I have a bottle of inky-pinkie in my pocket. (Approaches Goloshan.) By the hocus-pocus and the magical touch of my little finger; heigh ho! start ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... the painters of the day were noticeably impressed. There was much to concern everyone there, in any degree that can be put upon us as interested spectators. For myself, I care nothing for the gift of interpretation, and far less for that dreadful type of effete facility which produces a kind of hocus-pocus technical brilliancy which fuddles the eye with a trickery, and produces upon the untrained and uncritical mind a kind of unintelligent hypnotism. Art these days is a matter of scientific comprehension of reality, not a trick of the hand ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Hocus pocus, witches' charm! Move not as you fear my arm. Back or forward, do not try, Fixed you ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... authentic cases where 'sober, hard-working miners toiled for years, or even a lifetime, without having been able to draw a single dollar, or but few dollars in actual cash,' in 'debt until the day they died;' refuse to fix the wages in advance, but pay them upon some hocus-pocus sliding-scale, varying with the selling price in New York, which the railway slides to suit itself; and most extraordinary of all, refuse to let the miners know the prices on which their living slides, a 'fraud,'" says the report of Congress, "on ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... mutual change.] Interchange — N. interchange, exchange; commutation, permutation, intermutation; reciprocation, transposition, rearrangement; shuffling; alternation, reciprocity; castling (at chess); hocus-pocus. interchangeableness^, interchangeability. recombination; combination &c 48. barter &c 794; tit for tat &c (retaliation) 718; cross fire, battledore and shuttlecock; quid pro quo. V. interchange, exchange, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... force of the hocus-pocus of sorcery or sacrifice had but little that was inviting for philosophy to proceed on. If we thus take into account the state of Indian philosophic culture before Buddha, we shall be better able to understand the value of the Buddhistic ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... properly," retorted Fanny; "if you really were such a conjurer as you pretended to be just now, you would only have to say 'hocus pocus,' and the cards would all jump into the box ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Characters of John Bull, Nic. Frog, and Hocus ('The History of John Bull') Reconciliation of John and his Sister Peg (same) Of the Rudiments of Martin's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a step toward the monk; peremptorily) Enough now! Stop your hocus-pocus. You have played your trick. Now stop, or I'll knock all that jugglery out of ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... lost state of the dead, from the lurid Mangaian legend, in which infernal deities hocus and destroy the souls of all, to the various submarine and aerial limbos where the dead feast, float idle, or resume the occupations of their life on earth, it would be wearisome to tell. One story I give, for it is singular in itself, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Hocus-pocus Larifari!" cried Heinrich within, and gave the tankard to a half-grown fellow, of the age between boy ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... accepts it at its face value for the sake of the adventure," the tall youth replied. "But he's wise enough to know there may be a lot of hocus-pocus in the business." ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... to see any necessity for all this secrecy and hocus-pocus," District Attorney Sanderson protested irritably. "Why the devil don't you come clean and give us the low-down—if you have it!—on this miserable business, instead, of high-handedly summoning Captain Strawn to my office, so that you can give ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... her hocus pocus by throwing out all the cards in the pack under seven. She shuffled the rest with her left hand for luck; and then she gave them to me to cut. "Wi' yer left hand, Francie. Mind that! Pet your trust in Proavidence—but dinna forget that your luck's in yer left hand!" A long and roundabout ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... being betrayed into any unseemly manifestations of religious fervour. We had not gathered together at that performance to abase ourselves with furious hosannas before any dark Creator of an untamed Universe, no Deity of freaks and miracles and sinister hocus-pocus; but to pay our duty to a highly respected Anglican First Cause—undemonstrative, gentlemanly and conscientious—whom, without loss of self-respect, we could sincerely and ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... in trying! A pound's a pound, there's no denying; But think what thousands and thousands of pounds We pay for nothing but hearing sounds: Sounds of Equity, Justice, and Law, Parliamentary jabber and jaw, Pious cant, and moral saw, Hocus-pocus, and Nong-tong-paw, And empty sounds not worth a straw; Why, it costs a guinea, as I'm a sinner, To hear the sounds at a public dinner! One pound one thrown into the puddle, To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle! Not to forget the sounds we buy From those who sell ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... any other probate judge. He speculated—maybe for only the better part of ten seconds—but he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's best good to let this aunt by marriage take charge of her? Did any hocus-pocus contriving, with which he had become only too familiar, lie ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... of unknown origin, probably coined in burlesque imitation of scholastic Latin, as "hocus-pocus" or "panjandrum"), originally a term meaning whim, fancy or ridiculous idea; later applied to a pun or play upon words, and thus, in its usual sense, to a particular form of riddle in which the answer depends on a pun. In a transferred ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... corresponding to the abnormal strength of their minds; but they have never done mischief unless they intended to do it. That is why great scoundrels have been beneficent rulers whilst amiable and privately harmless monarchs have ruined their countries by trusting to the hocus-pocus of innocence and guilt, reward and punishment, virtuous indignation and pardon, instead of standing up to the facts without either malice or mercy. Major Barbara stands up to Bill Walker in that way, with the result that the ruffian who cannot get hated, has to hate himself. ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... suggested that the conjurors hypnotise the spectators, and make them believe they see these things. This is practically the suggestion of a wise Mohammedan, who is quoted by Yule as saying, "Wallah! 'tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down; 'tis all hocus-pocus," hocus-pocus being presumably ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... educated, submissive or rebellious, she would have behind her the marriage tradition of our general history. This tradition relates the woman to the man. He goes on with his business, and she adapts herself to him and to it. Even in citizenship, by some strange hocus-pocus, that fact of birth and geography was waved aside, and the woman automatically acquired the nationality of ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... papal privileges, candles, bells, votive tablets, and churches, but say that a Christian life consists in faith and love. Let us keep this up for two years and you will see where pope, bishop, monks, nuns, and all the hocus-pocus of the papal government will be; it will vanish away like smoke." God, Luther urged, has left us free to choose whether we shall marry, become monks, fast, confess, or place images in the churches. These things are not vital to salvation, and each may ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... individual are skilfully hit off, and the various events of the war, with the accompanying political intrigues, are symbolized by the stages in the progress of the suit, the tricks of the lawyers, and the devices of the principal attorney, Humphrey Hocus (Marlborough), to prolong the struggle. His Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus—a satire on the abuses of human learning,—in which the type of the fictitious biography is adopted, ...
— English Satires • Various |
