"Mystic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creative force—the real productive agent of novelty in the world. The strange thing is that the soul creates not the world only, but itself. Whence comes this mystic power? What is the origin of the soul? Bergson does not say. But in one passage he suggests that {120} possibly the world of matter and consciousness have the same origin—the principle of life which is the great prius ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... homesickness had passed into resignation. The whole world began now and ended for Skavinski on his island. He had grown accustomed to the thought that he would not leave the tower till his death, and he simply forgot that there was anything else besides it. Moreover, he had become a mystic; his mild blue eyes began to stare like the eyes of a child, and were as if fixed on something at a distance. In presence of a surrounding uncommonly simple and great, the old man was losing the feeling of personality; he was ceasing to exist as an individual, was becoming merged more ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... them in houses that to all appearances are the least likely to be haunted—houses full of sunshine and the gladness of human voices. In the midst of merriment, they have darkened the wall opposite me like the mystic writing in Nebuchadnezzar's palace. They have suddenly appeared by my side, as I have been standing on rich, new carpeting or sun-kissed swards. They have floated into my presence with both sunbeams and moonbeams, through windows, doors, and curtains, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the great Goddess personally resided. Himself too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated minister of her rites. Awestruck by the name of Religion, I bowed before the priest, and humbly and earnestly intreated him to conduct me into her presence. 90 He assented. Offerings he took from me, with mystic sprinklings of water and with salt he purified, and with strange sufflations he exorcised me; and then led me through many a dark and winding alley, the dew-damps of which chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude's unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance. They were only external things, after all. They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, legend-haunted corner of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... four dirks, had got two pieces of rusty old iron and placed them cross-wise on the extemporised floor. With what skill and nimbleness he proceeded to execute this sword-dance,—which is no doubt the survival of some ancient mystic rite,—with what elegance he pointed his toes and held his arms akimbo; with what amazing dexterity, in all the evolutions of the dance, he avoided touching the bits of iron; nay, with what intrepidity, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... somewhat startled when he expressed his belief, that the performer of this mystic strain was one of the company then present, who exerted, for this end, a faculty not commonly possessed. Who this person was he did not venture to guess, and could not discover, by the tokens which he suffered to appear, that his ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... have I seen the day Break o'er thy roofs and towers like a dream In mystic silver, mirrored by the Bay, Bedecked with shadow craft ... and then a gleam Of golden sunlight cleaving swiftly sure Some narrow cloud-rift—limning hill or plain With flecks of gypsy-radiance that endure But for the moment ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... banker, grown artistic, Talk a jargon new and strange? Will this feeling, subtle, mystic, Even reach ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various
... be destroyed, because the believers of it, invariably, believe it to be established on such mysterious supernatural principles; and I expect but very few, comparatively, will ever have sufficient strength of mind to throw off the mystic veil. ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... met by the unanalyzing instinct of reverence. The old church calls back its frightened truants. Some who have lost their hereditary religious belief find a resource in the revelations of Spiritualism. By a parallel movement, some of those who have become medical infidels pass over to the mystic band of believers in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... one suppliant tear Should stay the ever-moving sphere? A sick man's lowly-breathed sigh, When from the world he turns away, And hides his weary eyes to pray, Should change your mystic dance, ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... his task has been, Day after day, more weary; For Heav'n design'd his guilty mind Should dwell on prospects dreary. Bound by a strong and mystic chain, He has not pow'r to stray; But, destin'd mis'ry to sustain, He wastes, in solitude and pain, A ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... met with a very unemotional reception. Its style was peculiar,—almost as unlike that of his Essays as that of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" was unlike the style of his "Life of Schiller." It was vague, mystic, incomprehensible, to most of those who call themselves common-sense people. Some of its expressions lent themselves easily to travesty and ridicule. But the laugh could not be very loud or very long, since it took twelve years, as Mr. Higginson ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the opposite sex, that gentle hope of pleasing man, that secret emotion of being pleased by him, that tremor at the idea of being desired, and that flush at the thought of being desirable, which, I suppose, may animate the mystic sensibilities of spinsterhood. She was anything but aggressive and confident, yet there was a modest, puny poise about her; she was like a plant that has always lived in a narrow, city flower-pot, at a window too seldom visited by the sun, which ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... fragments and then held fast to their ruins, indeed even went so far as to find these caricatures and ruins more beautiful than the original. The Rococo is violent in chains, insolent in constraint, drunken in sobriety. It is the art of a rich, voluptuous, mystic, restless age. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... emancipate himself from metempsychosis through contemplation and ecstasy to be attained by the calm of the senses, by corporeal penance, suspension of breath, and immobility of position. The followers of this school pass their lives in solitude, absorbed in this mystic contemplation. The forests, the deserts, and the environs of the temples are filled with these mystics, who, thus separated from external life, believe themselves the subjects of supernatural illumination and power. The Bhagavad-Gita, already spoken of, is the best exposition ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... by Justin Martyr and others, who have written of the power and miraculous gifts of the early Church. But when the pure doctrine became corrupted, and the Christian Church (like the Jewish of former times) gave itself up to idolatry, masses, image-worship, and the like, the knowledge of the mystic name was withdrawn, and all miracles have ceased in the Church from that up ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... seasoning, such as the interweaving of subjects relating to love with murder or incest. The delineations of Polyxena willing to die and of Phaedra pining away under the grief of secret love, above all the splendid picture of the mystic ecstasies of the Bacchae, are of the greatest beauty in their kind; but they are neither artistically nor morally pure, and the reproach of Aristophanes, that the poet was unable to paint a Penelope, was thoroughly well founded. Of a kindred character is ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... mysterious, and, therefore, stimulating. Those varying spray wreaths, rising like Ossian's ghosts from its abyss; those shimmering rainbows, through whose veil you look; those dizzying falls of water that seem like clouds poured from the hollow of God's hand; and that mystic undertone of sound that seems to pervade the whole being as the voice of the Almighty,—all these bewilder and enchant the discriminative and prosaic part of us, and bring us into that cloudy region of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for my priests—my priests in their linen robes, with great harps, carrying along a mystic skiff ornamented with paterae of silver. No more feasts on the lakes! no more illuminations in my Delta! no more cups of milk at Philae! For a long time ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... without losing aught of its religious significance, a statue henceforward became a work of art, admired and prized for the manner in which the sculptor faithfully represented his model, as well as for its mystic utility. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... this goes to show that he, a man wise beyond his fellows, had not yet learned the unwisdom of striving to lift the veil of tomorrow, behind whose mystic curtain what is to be ever jostles out of place what ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... is a very grand thing. At five or half-past five the barristers and students in their gowns follow the benchers in procession to the dais; the steward strikes the table solemnly a mystic three times; grace is said by the treasurer or senior bencher present, and the men of law fall to. In former times it was the custom to blow a horn in every court to announce the meal. The benchers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... way in Europe. The debate continued until long after the biblical-critical movement was in progress. The controversy was conducted upon both sides in practically total ignorance of these facts. There are traces upon both sides of that insight which makes the mystic a discoverer in religion, before the logic known to him will sustain the conclusion which he draws. There will always be interest in the literature of a discussion conducted by reverent and, in their own way, learned and ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... knew the gods so well, To you I burn my sacrificial fire! Again reveal the mystic hidden rune Whereby to find the slopes of asphodel— Ah, then to hear Apollo charm his lyre And see Diana 'neath the ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... three mystic significations; it denotes providence; it is the expression of law; and thirdly, of power; it restores the courage of the faithful and strikes terror to the hearts of ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... mystic journey as the tortured glass sphere floated over the bottom, following the slow drift of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... to his reputation for wonder-working, the mystic had an AEolian harp in each of the windows of his house, so arranged that Ariel-like voices would float through the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Blasphemer, cease! I have seen the Cross, the holy symbol of His mystic love, standing in the heart of the eternal city, Rome; the ruins of a power far greater than thine were crumbling into dust around It; hundreds of gods such as those you trust in, were lying prostrate on the ground, trampled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... land made by the company, after it had got fairly under way, was of six hundred acres to Governor Winthrop, on the 6th of September, 1631, "near his house at Mystic." The next was to the deputy-governor, Thomas Dudley, on the 5th of June, 1632, of two hundred acres "on the west side of Charles River, over against the new town," now Cambridge. The next, on the 3d of July, 1632, was three hundred acres to John Endicott. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... upon one of these mystic lodges that Baptiste had accidentally stumbled, and strange thoughts flashed through his mind; for within the sacred place were articles, doubtless, of value more than sufficient to purchase the necessary horse with which he could win the fair Unami. Baptiste was sorely tempted, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Llewellyn Leigh, however, the place had no such mystic significance. On the afternoon following the visit of Miss Wycliffe to the tower, he had walked hither from the college, down the long, winding street on whose well-worn pavements the yellowing leaves of the elms threw a sheen like gold. He had noted many a colonial house built ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Lord's Supper as narrated in the Gospels, and then goes on to say: "Which the wicked devils have IMITATED in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated you either know or can learn." Tertullian also says (2) that "the devil by the mysteries of his idols imitates even the main part of the divine mysteries."... "He baptizes his worshippers in water and makes them believe that this purifies them from their ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... most curious of these was a necklace composed of amulets, or charms, which, it will be observed, are all attributes of Isis and her attendant, Anubis, or of her husband Osiris, here considered as Bacchus. The mystic articles kept in the Isiac coffer were, says Eusebius, a ball, dice, (turbo) wheel, mirror, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... which is the retro-choir, or so-called Lady Chapel. The nave and choir have aisles, but the transepts have not. While strict orientation has been secured in the main building, it will be noticed that the chancel is slightly deflected towards the south, in supposed mystic allusion to the drooping head of the Saviour upon the Cross, a piece of symbolism very frequent in Gothic churches, and here rendered peculiarly ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... century. The dissenter's view is symbolized by a scene in a very humble chapel in England, the Catholic view by a vision of high mass at St. Peter's and the Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a learned German professor,—while the view of the modern mystic who remains religious in the face of all destructive criticism is shown in the speaker of the poem. The intuitional, aspiring side of his nature is symbolized by the vision of Christ that appears to him, while the intensity of its power fluctuates as he either holds ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... sire the sabbath heeds, And so they worship naught but clouds and sky. They deem swine's flesh, from which their father kept, No different from a man's. And soon indeed Are circumcised; affecting to despise The laws of Rome, they study, keep and fear The Jewish law, whate'er in mystic book Moses has handed down,—to show the way To none but he who the same rites observes, And those athirst to lead unto the spring Only if circumcised. Whereof the cause Was he, their sire, to whom each seventh day Was one of sloth, whereon he took in hand No ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... concerned, is also one which may profoundly affect the individual soul. But in these cases it is the exceptional soul which is alone affected—the seer of visions, the prophet. And it is not necessarily in connection with the ordinary worship, or customary sacrifice, that such instances of mystic communion with the gods are manifested. For the development of the mystical tendency of worship and sacrifice, we must look, not to the lowest, or to the earliest, stages of religious evolution, but to a later stage in the evolution of the sacrificial meal. It is where, as in ancient ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... the Atlantic. Not a breath of wind passed over land or sea. To the northward Chun Castle stood darkly on the summit of the neighbouring hill, and the cromlech loomed huge and mysterious; southward were traces of mystic circles and upright stones, and other of those inexplicable pieces of antiquity which are usually saddled on the overladen shoulders of the Druids. Everything, in fact—in the scene, the season, and the weather—contributed to fill the mind of the old man with romantic musings as he wended ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... unconscious of the storm. Thy temple, NATURE, rears it's mystic form; From earth to heav'n, unwrought by mortal toil, Towers the vast fabric on the desert soil; O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend. And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend; 70 A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep Lead the slow votary up the winding steep; Ten thousand piers, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Todcaster used to begin his famous story of the exciseman (I shall not tell it here, for very good reasons), my poor mother used to turn to Lady Dawdley, and give that mystic signal at which all females rise from their chairs. Tufthunt, the curate, would spring from his seat, and be sure to be the first to open the door for the retreating ladies; and my brother Tom and I, though remaining stoutly in our places, were speedily ejected from them by the ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Church expectant," for the Resurrection and their "perfect consummation and bliss", that the "Church expectant" and the "Church militant" are not two Churches, but the one Church of Christ in two places and in two states, on earth and in Paradise, fighting and waiting; that they have still "mystic sweet communion" in praise and worship and prayer—the Church in Paradise leading our worship as the choir leads the worship ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... look at her. She was to him, in that moment, mystic, holy, a thing apart. He dropped on his knees beside a silvery white apron, his eyes on the ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... the afternoon of August 9, 1911, when I first saw this remarkable shrine. Densely wooded hills rose on every side. There was not a hut to be seen; scarcely a sound to be heard. It was an ideal place for practicing the mystic ceremonies of an ancient cult. The remarkable aspect of this great boulder and the dark pool beneath its shadow had caused this to become a place of worship. Here, without doubt, was "the principal mochadero of those forested mountains." It is still venerated ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... expected of him, until he appears to agree with his compeers or followers, and begins to be as eccentric as he likes. Commencing with long hair touching his shoulders, and with an absence of the use of Someone's soap, he passes on through mystic moonlight glances to a still more artistic appreciation of the charms of Nature at her simplest, until Mrs. Grundy looks askance, and duchesses and other leaders of Society squabble over him, and try one against the other for the honour and pleasure of his society. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the time. Who is so devout a believer in free speech and free trade and the let-alone policy in government, and the coming of the Millennium by steam? Who prostrates himself with such unfeigned adoration before the great god, "State-of-Society," or so mutters, for a mystic O'm, the word "Law"? Then how delightful it is, when he traces the whole ill of the world to just those things which we now all agree to detest,—to theological persecution, bigotry, superstition, and infidelity to Isaac Newton! In fine, the recent lessons of that great schoolboy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... frontier politics. James Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance and pinchbeck bluster to an immortality of contempt. Bret Harte in verse and story touched the parallels of tragedy and of comedy, of pathos, of bathos, and of humor, which love of life and lust of gold opened up amid the unapprehended grandeurs ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of devils, and gave unto them grace through the very thing that had been disclosed to his own sight as a sign of victory against the onrush of foes; and how on the third day the Glory 185 of men and Lord of all mankind rose from the tomb and from death, and ascended into heaven. Men wise in the mystic things of the Spirit thus said unto the victory-inspired monarch as they had 190 learned from Silvester. And at their hands the prince of the people received baptism, and held to the faith according to the will of the Lord from ...
— The Elene of Cynewulf • Cynewulf
... musical world remembered with respect and admiration the Camilla Urso of her brilliant girlhood. The wonderful child-life had ended. The new artist-life now begins. Once more the swift fingers might fly over the mystic strings. Again the bow arm ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... makes. Hard by, two trenches scoops from out the ground; Smites with her weapon in the sable throat, A sheep presented; in the open ditch Empties the blood; then bowls of wine she pours, And bowls of smoking milk; with mystic words Invokes the powers terrestrial; begs the king Of shades, and begs his ravish'd spouse to aid, Nor of his soul the aged king defraud. These when with lengthen'd prayers, and murmurings long, Appeas'd; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... She and he were wandering alone together along that fairy shore where every sea-shell gleamed like pearl and every wave broke iridescent at their feet. The sun shone in the sky for them alone, and the caves were mystic palaces of delight that awaited their coming. And once it seemed to her that he drew her close, and she felt ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... intoxication, a holy happiness, takes possession of those for whom has been reserved the supreme joy of braving death for their country. Death is everywhere, but they do not believe in it any more. And when, on certain mornings, to the sound of cannon that mix their rumblings with mystic voices of bells, in the devastated church which cries to the heavens through every breach opened in its walls, the Chaplain blesses the regiment that he will accompany the next minute to the firing line, every head will be bent at the same time and all will feel ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... his book, a mystic seer, The soul of Behmen teaches, And England's priestcraft shakes to ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... snowstorm, with great flakes falling loosely, and the contact produced this strange luminosity. The sea rose so suddenly and tumbled about so wildly that the Paracuta was several times in danger of being swallowed up by the waves, but we got through the mystic-seeming tempest all safe ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Mystic. Disc. Proem. art. iv. p. 6: "Cum ipsa [S. Teresa] scire vellet, quid in illa mystica unione operaretur intellectus, respondit [Christus] illi, cum non possit comprehendere quod intelligit, est non intelligere intelligendo: tum quia prae claritate nimia ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel, where she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place, tinged purple by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to enlarge the little chancel, parted in two by a double grille, behind which the nuns could hear the service ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... thin-edged sweetness of the Singing Mouse's voice pierced keenly through the air. I was right glad when the little creature came and sat on my knee, and in its affectionate way began to nibble at my finger-tips. It sat erect, its thin paws waving with a tiny, measured swing, and in its mystic voice, so infinitely small, so sweet and yet so majestically strong, began a song which no pen can transcribe. Knowing that the awakening must come, but unwilling to lose a moment of the dream, I, who with one finger could have crushed the ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... revisit their native land. The number, indeed, was so considerable, that the priest who officiated was obliged to make use of the mop, or hyssop, with which the Roman Catholic missionaries were wont to scatter the holy drops, whose mystic virtue could cleanse the soul in a moment from the foulest stains of infidelity. "Thus," says a Castilian historian, "the calamities of these poor blind creatures proved in the end an excellent remedy, that God made use of to unseal their eyes, which they now opened to ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... living Head, their Intercessor, their Guide. His resurrection is the warrant of their future life. He has gone before and will come again to receive His own. Christianity is Christ: all believers are members of His mystic body: the Church is His bride. He is the Alpha and the Omega of the world's history. In the contemplation of His personality as the chief among ten thousand His people are changed into His image as from ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... over, gambling and speculation are joined in many ways to superstition; and the Eastern diver is superstitious to the hour of his death. At Marichchikkaddi he devotedly resorts to the mystic ceremony of the shark-charmer, whose exorcism for generations has been an indispensable preliminary to the opening of a fishery. The shark-charmer's power is believed to be hereditary. If one of them can be enlisted on a diver's boat, success is assured to all ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... the torrent forms a small subterranean cascade.* (* We find the phenomenon of a subterranean cascade, but on a much larger scale, in England, at Yordas Cave, near Kingsdale in Yorkshire.) The natives connect mystic ideas with this cave, inhabited by nocturnal birds; they believe that the souls of their ancestors sojourn in the deep recesses of the cavern. "Man," say they, "should avoid places which are enlightened neither ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... coordination of muscular effort. In the light of knowledge gained in later years, I can now see in that long, slouching, shuffling figure, in that tallow-colored face with the bloodless, loose lips and the wandering, mystic eyes of periwinkle blue—I can see in that girl-face framed by a trashy picture-hat, and in that girl-form wrapped in the old golf-cape, one of the earth's unfortunates; a congenital failure; a female creature doomed from her mother's ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... throat where it joined the shoulders. From the aspect of the young girl's face, at once ethereal and intelligent, where the delicacy of a Greek nose with its rosy nostrils and firm modelling marked something positive and defined; where the poetry enthroned upon an almost mystic brow seemed belied at times by the pleasure-loving expression of the mouth; where candor claimed the depths profound and varied of the eye, and disputed them with a spirit of irony that was trained and educated,—from all these signs an observer would have felt that this ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... The mystic merging of Beatrice into ideal beauty is, of course, mentioned often in nineteenth century poetry, most sympathetically, perhaps, by Rossetti. [Footnote: See On the Vita Nuova of Dante; also Dante at Verona.] Much the same ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... as so many dismal castaways have found, that there is a mystic companionship in that weed which has come out of the vegetable world, as the dog from among the animals, to make fellowship with man. Rudd and his pipe were Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday on the desert island of loneliness. They stared ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... tradition of Eden. Some have caught glimpses of these isles, and some more favoured mortals have even landed, and returned again with senses dazzled at the ravishing sights they have seen. But in every case after these rare favours, these mystic lands have remained invisible as before, and the way to them has been sought for in vain. Such are the tales told with reverent earnestness, and listened to with breathless interest, not only by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans of old, but by the Irishman, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... their convent, and they first erected an altar and celebrated Mass. Pere Dolbeau was the officiating priest. The people, most of whom came from curiosity, knelt around on the earth, while cannon from the ramparts announced the mystic services. The Giffards joined in them reverentially, but Rose was full of wonderment. Indeed, her joy was so great at seeing Destournier again that she could ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... age when, if the manlier traits are ready to be developed, the worthless ones are equally sure to unfold themselves. Few of us that have not found the first draught of life intoxicate! Few of us that have not then run wild, as colts that have slipped their bridle! Experience—that mystic word—is wanting; the retrospect of past years wakes no sigh; expectant youth looks forward to future ones without a shade of distrust. The mind is elastic—the body vigorous and free from pain; and it is then youth ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Ages, had their heads full, as the "Arabian Nights" prove, of enchanters, genii, peris, and what not? The Jewish rabbis had their Cabala, which sprang up in Alexandria, a system of philosophy founded on the mystic meaning of the words and the actual letters of the text of Scripture, which some said was given by the angel Ragiel to Adam in Paradise, by which Adam talked with angels, the sun and moon, summoned spirits, interpreted dreams, healed and destroyed; and by that book ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... constellation of gold and silver coins. "Wants a little more spending," he said. "Two-pence halfpenny is the mystic sum which turns to millions. So Lisle has swindled you, has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Ethelney, where there was a religious establishment and priests to perform the necessary rites. The new convert was clothed in white garments—the symbol of purity, then customarily worn by candidates for baptism—and was covered with a mystic veil. They gave Guthrum a new name—a Christian, that is, a Saxon name. Converted pagans received always a new name, in those days, when baptized; and our common phrase, the Christian name, has arisen from the circumstance. Guthrum's Christian name was Ethelstan. ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hundred and sixty-five times, without variation. From the indistinct utterance, elevated voice, and rapid manner in which it is pronounced, it certainly has a wild effect, and is more strongly impressed with the character of a mystic rite, or incantation, than with any other religious ceremony with which we could ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... no subject more profoundly mysterious than those mystic intercommunings between the first and second persons in the adorable Trinity before the world was. Scripture gives us only some dim and shadowy revelations regarding them—distant gleams of light, and ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... at last that he would practise his "short" awhile; that would be doing something, at any rate. He sat down at the big writing- table and began to dash off mystic signs at furious speed. But the speed did not keep up. The silence of the great room, of the immense house, of all the scores of rooms and galleries and corridors, closed in about him. He had practised his "short" in the night school, with the "L" thundering past at intervals of five ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... praise In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st, And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fall'st. Moon, that now meet'st the orient Sun, now fliest With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies; And ye five other wandering Fires, that move In mystic dance, not without song, resound His praise, who out of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields Before us; thy most ancient dreams Are mixed with far Canadian fields And murmur ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... superstitious thought of appeasing the fancied wrath of God, or of giving Him pleasure (base thought) by any pain of hers; for her spirit had been trained in the freest and loftiest doctrines of Luther's school; and that little mystic "Alt-Deutsch Theologie" (to which the great Reformer said that he owed more than to any book, save the Bible, and St. Augustine) was her counsellor and comforter ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... somewhat mystic personage, who foresees every misfortune, {492} prophetically sees her son in the fearful monster's jaws; she veils herself shuddering and withdraws into ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young; And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair, And a voice said in mastery while I strove, 'Guess now who holds thee?' 'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang, 'Not ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... "Let me see; it was a sort of historical, half prophetic discourse, very learned and hard for a hunting man to understand, about the past and the future, and the safety of my throne, and its depending upon the recovery of a certain mystic stone carried off—carried off—let me see, Leoni, who did you say carried ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... and sincere, it was, no doubt, an impressive sight to see rank succeeding rank, of the old and the young, all calm and all devout, seated before the tent of the preacher, in the sunny hours of June, listening to his eloquence, or partaking of the mystic bread and wine; but in these our latter days, when discipline is relaxed, along with the sedate and the pious come swarms of the idle and the profligate, whom no eloquence can edify and no solemn rite affect. On these, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to see the stupendous granite walls separated in a gigantic split that must have been made by a terrible seismic disturbance; and from this gap poured the dark, turgid, mystic flood. ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... confirmed Balzacian?—to employ a former expression of Gautier in Jeune France on the morrow following the appearance of that mystic Rabelaisian epic, The Magic Skin. Have you experienced, while reading at school or clandestinely some stray volume of the Comedie Humaine, a sort of exaltation such as no other book had aroused hitherto, and few have caused since? Have you dreamed ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the caldron The weird passions dance, And the only god they worship Is the mystic ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... coin. Into these gorgeous altar-cloths, or these delicate wrappings for chalice and paten, she stitched her heart. To work at them was prayer. Jesus, and His Mother, and the Saints; it was with them she communed as her stitches flowed. She sat in a mystic, a heavenly world. And the silence and solitude of her work made one of its chief charms. And now to be asked to share it with a strange girl, who could not love it as she did, who would take it as hard business—never ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his full height. "Yes, we belong to the Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine of North America." Pet rolled off the lengthy title so rapidly the old fellow was astounded. Resting his hands on the cell bars, he gazed admiringly at Clayton fully a half minute, ere he asked: "Are yez Pope of it?" Later ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... heart: how like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the Earth; making all the Earth a mystic Temple to him, the Earth's business all a kind of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover doing God's messages among men: that rainbow was set in the clouds by the hand of God! Wonder, miracle encompass the man; he lives in an element of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Peaches.' It takes place on the borders of the Yao Ch'ih, Lake of Gems, and is attended by both male and female Immortals. Besides several superfine meats, they are served with bears' paws, monkeys' lips, dragons' liver, phoenix marrow, and peaches gathered in the orchard, endowed with the mystic virtue of conferring longevity on all who have the good luck to taste them. It was by these peaches that the date of the banquet was fixed. The tree put forth leaves once every three thousand years, and it required three thousand years after that for the fruit to ripen. These were Hsi Wang Mu's ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Royal Rosicrucian Lodge at Bungay, Suffolk, to spy the proceedings of the Society, of which her husband was a member, and being frightened by the sudden whirring and striking eleven of the clock (just as the Deputy-Grand-Master was bringing in the mystic gridiron for the reception of a neophyte), rushed out into the midst of the lodge assembled; and was elected, by a desperate unanimity, Deputy-Grand-Mistress for life. Though that admirable and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... emblem of the spiritual oneness of the believer's soul with Christ. We may be led through circumstances, as you have been, to love one with whom we should not form such a union. Indeed, in the true and mystic meaning of the rite, you could not marry Christine Ludolph. The Bible declares that man and wife shall be one. Unless she changes, unless you change (and that God forbid), this could not be. You would be divided, separated in the deepest essentials of your life ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... costume of such ancient and honorable orders as Knights of Adam; Visionaries of Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Georgeous Regalians; Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the Impenitent Order of ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... unhappily reserved for the cruel destruction accomplished by Alexander, a few centuries later. The prophecies of Isaiah were still resounding in the ears of an ungrateful people. He had spoken of the coming Christ and His all-peaceful mission in mystic imagery, and had given miraculous evidences of his predictions. But suffering should be the precursor of that marvellous advent. The Assyrian dashed in resistless torrent upon the fold. Israel was led captive. Hosea was in chains. Samaria and the kingdom of Israel were added to the conquests ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... understand, In apathy of heart and will, I took the woman from the hand Of him who stood for God, and heard Of Christ, and of the Church his Bride; The Feast, by presence of the Lord And his first Wonder, beautified; The mystic sense to Christian men; The bonds in innocency made, And gravely to be enter'd then, For children, godliness, and, aid, And honour'd, and kept free from smirch; And how a man must love his wife No less ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... before thy King, My soul! Earth's kings, before Him bow ye down; Before Him monarchs humbly roll,— Height, might, and splendor, throne and crown. He in the mystic Land divine The sceptre wields with valiant hand. In vain dark, evil powers combine,— He, victor, rules the better Land." —Ingleman.—Trans. ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... lintel of the door represented on Plate V., enlarged. I intended, in the Lecture on Marble Couchant, to have insisted, at some length, on the decoration of the lintel and side- posts, as one of the most important phases of mystic ecclesiastical sculpture. But I find the materials furnished by Lucca, Pisa, and Florence, for such an essay are far too rich to be examined cursorily; the treatment even of this single lintel could scarcely be enough explained in the close of the Lecture. I must dwell on ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... evening as the two men gazed in moody silence at the approaching night. The sky had taken on that deep blue velvet softness of Italian beauty, and the low, red west of the dying day might have been reflected from some funeral pyre in distant, mystic India. A murmur of drowsy birds came from the darkening trees—a few hushed, plaintive notes, wistfully calling in tones ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... as done to Him. That is most blessedly true. Nor is it true only because He lovingly reckons the deed as done to Him, though it really is not; but, by reason of the derived life which all His children possess from Him, they are really parts of Himself; and in that most real though mystic unity, what is done to them is, in fact, done to Him. Further, if the service be done in His name, then, on whomsoever it may be done, it is done to Him. This great saying unveils the true sacredness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... elder chivalry, that were spread out on it, over the dead letter of the past, the brave Atlantic breeze came in, the breath of the great future blew, when the turn came for this knight's adventure; whether opened in the prose of its statistics, or set to its native music in the mystic melodies of the bard who was there to sing it. The Round Table grew spheral, as he sat talking by it; the Round Table dissolved, as he brought forth his lore, and unrolled his maps upon it; and instead of it,—with ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... it will be the happy discoverer's constant companion all his earthly and penitential days. As the English reader is carried on through the fourth tract, The Supersensual Life, he experiences a new and an increasing sense of ease and pleasure, combined with a mystic height and depth and inwardness all but new to him even in Behmen's books. The new height and depth and inwardness are all Jacob Behmen's own; but the freedom and the ease and the movement and the melody are all William Law's. In his preparations for a new ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... rights of his fellows; when no woman will be made forlorn, no little child wretched by bigotry or greed, Masonry has ever been a prophet. Nor will she ever be content until all the threads of human fellowship are woven into one mystic cord of friendship, encircling the earth and holding the race in unity of spirit and the bonds of peace, as in the will of God it is one in the origin and end. Having outlived empires and philosophies, having seen generations appear and vanish, it will yet live to ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of the church. Behind the high altar, in the gloom of a double row of pillars, is the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, damp and dark and silent. The dim stained windows only show the flowing crimson and violet robes of saints, which blaze like flames of mystic love in the solemn, silent adoration of the darkness. It is a weird, mysterious spot, like some crepuscular nook of paradise solely illumined by the gleaming stars of two tapers. The four brass lamps hanging from the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... chanted to the Islands, and to the sea, and the dwellers in the sea. It was not that she left her stand, nor came nearer, but the Sacred Island itself was steering straight, like a magical barque, drawn by the wonderful song, to the mystic shore of Samoa. Now Queen Mab, where she stood among her court, with the strange brown fairies of the Southern Ocean, could behold the Sacred Island, with all its fairy crew. Beautiful things they seemed, as the sailing isle drew nearer, beautiful ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... with, what softness the scepticism of Jarno, the commercial spirit of Werner, the reposing polished manhood of Lothario and the Uncle, the unearthly enthusiasm of the Harper, the gay animal vivacity of Philina, the mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of Mignon, are blended together in this work; how justice is done to each, how each lives freely in his proper element, in his proper form; and how, as Wilhelm himself, the mild-hearted, all-hoping, all-believing Wilhelm, struggles ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... home for a time he had quite, like Ulysses, Forgotten; but now o'er the troubled abysses Of the spirit within him, aeolian, forth leapt To their freedom new-found, and resistlessly swept All his heart into tumult, the thoughts which had been Long pent up in their mystic recesses unseen. ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... neared the Palace entrance, a female fortune-teller ran forward, thrusting towards her a gazelle's skin, filled with the instruments of her mystic craft, and crying out: "I divine-I reveal! What is present I manifest! What is absent I declare! What is future I show! Beautiful one, hear me. It is all written. To thee is greatness, and thy heart's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at the western entrance, shall spread themselves over the mosaic floor, and throng each chapel, altar, gallery, and transept—when anthems of praise shall peal from the double doors of the painted organ, and holy rites give a mystic language to the sacred ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... the canyon beneath the white, steady stars, through scrub oak and chaparral, the air sweet scented with wild spice, through slopes set with sleeping folded poppies and Mariposa lilies, past cactus groves, columnar, stately, mystic; the mesa slopes receding, its great bulk dim mass, the twin notches that marked the Pass of the Goats hardly discernible against the sky. They crossed a white road, unfenced but evidently a main source of ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... I think, of what we call folklore or anthropology, which to many seems trivial, to many seems dull. It may become the most attractive and serious of the sciences; certainly it is rich in strange curiosities, like those mystic stones which were fingered and arrayed by the pupils in that allegory of Novalis. I am not likely to regret the accident which brought me up on fairy tales, and the inquisitiveness which led me to examine the other fragments of antiquity. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... of Osiris, King of Egypt, was credited with the invention of writing and hieroglyphics, the drawing up of the laws of the Egyptians, and the origination of many sciences and arts. The Alexandrian school ascribed to him the mystic learning which it amplified; and the scholars of the Middle Ages regarded with enthusiasm and reverence the works attributed to him — notably a treatise on ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... lives yet, there are more worlds waiting, For the way climbs up to the eldest sun, Where the white ones go to their mystic mating, And the holy will is done. I'll find you there where our love life heightens— Where the door of the wonder again unbars, Where the old love lures and the old fire whitens, In ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... word. When the Boiset family, especially Madame, cross-examined him as to the details of his visit to Miss Ogilvy, he merely described the splendours of that opulent establishment and the intellectual character of its guests. Of their mystic attributes he said nothing at all, only adding that Miss Ogilvy proposed to do herself the honour of calling at the Maison Blanche, as ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... sweet hours, even as bitter ones, do not loiter in their passing or come again. Soon enough Robert saw himself very far gone from the undissembled sternness of his old resolutions. If he could but be rid of that altogether! He thought he had obtained a mystic recognition of the terrorless but uncommunicating Joy of life which while men live they pursue, desiring it with the one human craving which survives every misfortune, every thwarted hope, all enslavement of the heart's small freedom—the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... mystic pool herdsman and monarchs alike receive summons and admission. The most Christian King must, for his own sake, accomplish his own sanctification; his sanctification provides for that ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... child or the scream of a trapped animal. Assuming it to be the latter, Will again hesitated. Often enough he had laughed at the folk-tales of witch hares as among the most fantastic fables of the old; yet at this present moment mystic legends won point from the circumstances in which he found himself. He hurried forward to the edge of a circle from which the sound proceeded. Then, looking before him, he started violently, sank to his knees behind a rock, and so remained, glaring ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... but foreshadowed the greater things to come. And these minute decisions shaped the policies and precedents of what would become mighty affairs. Whether Brown should be allowed to save his paltry three dollars and a half or not determined larger things. To Bob's half-mystic mood, up there under the mottled shadows, every tiny move of this game became portentous with fate. A return of the old exultation lifted him. He saw the shadows of these affairs cast dim and gigantic against the mists of the future. These men ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... a mystic power, Shall summon mute Antiquity, to tell The buried glories of the long lost hour; And she will answer the enchanter's spell— Then shall we hear what wondrous things befell When the young world existed in its prime. The truths revealed will turn the wisest pale, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... which was adorned with sculptured figures; at one end was a recess, with a roof of timber richly carved and gilt, and here stood a colossal image of Huitzilopochtli, the war-god. His countenance was hideous; in his right hand he held a bow, and in his left a bunch of golden arrows, which a mystic legend connected with the victories of his people. A huge serpent of pearls and precious stones was coiled about his waist, and costly jewels were profusely sprinkled over his person. On his left foot were the delicate feathers of the humming-bird, from ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Thee, amid the mystic shadows, The solemn hush of nature newly born; Alone with Thee, in breathless adoration, In the calm dew ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... several personages of the Nativity. In the centre is the Christ-Child, either in a cradle or lying on a truss of straw; seated beside him is the Virgin; Saint Joseph stands near, holding in his hand the mystic lily; with their heads bent down over the Child are the ox and the ass—for those good animals helped with their breath through that cold night to keep him warm. In the foreground are the two ravi—a man and a woman in awed ecstasy, with upraised arms—and the adoring ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... on a white Christmas Eve, Thor's priests held their winter rites beneath the Thunder Oak. Through the deep snow of the dense forest hastened throngs of heathen folk, all intent on keeping the mystic feast of the mighty Thor. In the hush of the night the folk gathered in the glade where stood the tree. Closely they pressed around the great altar-stone under the overhanging boughs where stood the white-robed priests. Clearly shone the moonlight ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... libertine, you must understand; things happened to me and desire drove me. Any young man would have served for that Locarno adventure, and after that what had been a mystic and wonderful thing passed rapidly into a gross, manifestly misdirected and complicating one. I can count a meagre tale of five illicit loves in the days of my youth, to include that first experience, and of them all only two were sustained relationships. Besides these ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... 'Camp Fire Game.' You play it like Stage Coach, or Fruit Basket, only instead of taking parts of a coach or names of fruits you take articles that belong to the Camp Fire, like bead band, ring, moccasin, bracelet, fire, honor beads, symbol, fringe, Wohelo, hand sign, bow and drill, Mystic Fire, etc. Then somebody tells a story about Camp Fire Girls, and every time one of those articles is mentioned every one must get up and turn around. But if the words 'Ceremonial Meeting' or 'Council Fire' are mentioned, then all must change seats and the story teller ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... asked if I would go with him to bring in the body. I shook my head. Life out here breeds a higher understanding of the mystic division between soul and body; one learns to contemplate the disfigured dead with a calmness that is not callousness. But this was different. How real a part he had played in my life these last two years! I wanted always to be able to recall him as I had known ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... to her ability"; she "was a woman of profound veneration rather than of a warm loving nature. Therefore her prayer was invariably a prayer of deep yearning reverence. I remember well the impression which it made on me. There was a mystic influence about it. A sort of sympathetic hold it had on me, but still I always felt when I went to prayer, as though I were going into a crypt, where the sun was not allowed to come; and I shrunk from it." To complete the portrait of this conscientious lady who was to have the supervision ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... laymen who had turned from the vanities of youth—fabliau or romance—and now aimed at edification or instruction. Science in the hands of the clergy must needs be spiritualised and moralised; there were sermons to be found in stones, pious allegories in beast and bird; mystic meanings in the alphabet, in grammar, in the chase, in the tourney, in the game of chess. Ovid and Virgil were sanctified to religious uses. The earliest versified Bestiary, which is also a Volucrary, a Herbary, and a Lapidary, that of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... not lost its power. To modern ears it is, of course, done to death since the "Castle of Otranto"; though as a minor element it can still be gently used by the poet and novelist in a moated grange, a house in a marsh or a maze. Another point of wonder, so well known in later times, is the large and mystic number of windows, like the 365 windows attributed to great buildings of the present age. It would not be difficult from these papyrus tales to start an historical dictionary of the elements of fiction: a kind of analysis that should be the death ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... enjoying, in looking out for artistic promise, in welcoming and praising any performance of a kind that Rossetti recognised as "stunning." They were sure of their ground. The brotherhood, with its magazine, The Germ, and its mystic initials, was all a gigantic game; and they held together because they were revolutionary in this, that they wished to slay, as one stabs a tyrant, the vulgarised and sentimental art of the day. They did not effect ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the lad who first became an archer in the wilderness. Unconsciously confirming prophecy, and still attesting the truth of a revelation which they contemn and deny,—thus strangely dwelling so different from all other nations,—preserving the initiatory rites and the mystic symbols of the faith of Abraham, the customs and traditions of the age of the patriarch,—these nations dwell distinct, separate from each other and from all other nations, awaiting the day when ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... their credit, not for being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools, still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity, but always by men, vain and irresolute authors. There is nothing so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... was in the sky as he neared Gloucester. When he entered, its roofs and towers were precipices of gold and fire, straining up to the New Jerusalem which floated in the clouds. The streets of the ancient city had a mystic look, white and hushed and tenantless. But already the cheeky sparrows were about, scandal-mongering beneath the eaves with an unholy disregard for the awe by ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... be the only puppy in a litter," answered the Mistress, refusing to part with her enthusiasm over the miracle, "then this one ought to bring us luck. Let's call him 'Bruce.' You remember, the original Bruce won because of the mystic number, seven. This Bruce has got to make up to us for the seven puppies that weren't born. See how proud she is of him! Isn't she ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... Fate's mystic dower, ZAMIEL, ZAMIEL, work thy power! Spirit of the evil dead (At Madrid), bless, bless the lead! May they be as featly sped As the one that pierced his head. I am sick of shilly-shally, May they—metaphorically, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... a remarkable work, enclosing a mystic and profound idea, although the musical element predominates, entrancing the soul by the unfamiliar magic of its melody, which envelopes the thoughts that shine out like a glister of gold and diamonds through a limpid stream. Certain lines pursue me incessantly and will continue ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... different sorts of wood, and the spectators cast into the flames a kind of toad-stool (Bran) in order to counteract the power of the Trolls and other evil spirits, who are believed to be abroad that night; for at that mystic season the mountains open and from their cavernous depths the uncanny crew pours forth to dance and disport themselves for a time. The peasants believe that should any of the Trolls be in the vicinity they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... demand for certain comfortable little nostrums (delicately sweet and pungent to the taste, cheering to the spirits, and fragrant in the breath), the proper distillation of which was the airiest secret that the mystic Swinnerton had left behind him. And, besides, these old ladies had always liked the manners of Dr. Dolliver, and used to speak of his gentle courtesy behind the counter as having positively been something to admire; though of later years, an unrefined, and almost rustic ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knowledge bore the same relation to the soul of the people as light does to darkness. But innocent happiness dwells in that darkness, and the Mystics were of opinion that that happiness should not be sacrilegiously interfered with. For what would have happened in the first place if the Mystic had betrayed his secret? He would have uttered words and only words. The feelings and emotions which would have evoked the spirit from the words would have been absent. To do this preparation, exercises, tests, and a complete change in the life ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... for the middle hour of night, Now swiftly coming, to convene her court. Set in an ocean of perpetual calm Was the fair island honoured by her reign; Slowly around her rolled the Frigid Zone, Dim in the mystic moonlight far away,— A silvery ring, circling her nearer realm With the pale lustre of its snowy walls, Defending from all storm and sudden change The sea which bathed the island's level shores. She ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... secrets are going on here? Is it a Freemason's Lodge and those the mystic signs?" asked a gay voice at the door; and there stood Rose, full of smiling wonder at the sight of her two uncles hand in hand, whispering and nodding ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott |
